A picture is worth a thousand words, it is said, but sometimes no camera can capture what's in front of me. I climbed a hill, or rather I started to and instead of gong to the top sat down on a rock only 20-30 feet up. With about 20 degrees of descent still ahead, the sun is bright and warm, flowing over rows of rectangular lakes that reflect the lingering clouds towards the horizon, but tinted with rows of green rice plants, which in just a week have replaced dark brown mud and dry stalks.
A rocky dirt road cuts down the middle, arriving to dive into an expansive line of palm trees that partially block the view of the river-bed beyond, which at this time of year is more bed than river. Colored huts with low, thatched teepee roofs make up the underbrush, guest-houses for the many tourists of Hampi. Beyond the river rising skyward is the big gopuram or tower of the central and old-but-not-ancient temple of modern Hampi. Surging beyond that are just a few of the countless rock-hills that make up a magnificent world cultural heritage site of which I have seen relatively little.
On the road below me pass motor vehicles of varying wheelage and purpose, but generally small, and folks from near and far. Two of the kitchen staff from my guest-house have just now arrived to dump and burn some garbage only ten feet off the road, 30 feet in front of me. Alas, this is just India, and how much can I worry about such things. Surely, as I read from another blogger (LINK?), the shock value of almost everything slowly diminshes in time.
This morning I awoke to symptoms of heinous food poisoning and spent a few hours purging bidirectionally. I consider it a successful endeavor as after taking sleep, liquids, Pepto-chews, and two medium bananas I am recovering swimmingly. Mm, a swim in the river would be nice. Is there time before the big, Italian, home-made tagliatelle dinner we will be served at 6pm, which I probably won't eat? Another thing I didn't quite get to here. Still, I haven't had a whif of illness or indigestion so far, one month (one third) into this expedition, so I can at least cross that off my list. Also bought some postcards, so email me your address if you wan't to connect snail-style, even if you think I know it.
I often feel, in what little down-time we have, especially if I can use that time to really come down, quite out of place in the Italian group. More recently it has felt the opposite of lonely, that I want to be alone, that I want to stretch out my wings, my presence, and just be, me, in India, for a few moments. Perhaps when the project ends and I still have 5 weeks ahead of me, I will indeed be glad to be heading off on my own. Tomorrow we will do a bit of performance in town across the river before our overnight bus to Mysore, likely sleepless. Two more intense weeks there, and then we'll travel to Rajasthan and Varanasi, mostly in travel and not workshop mode. Guess its time to start planning that travel. At least now I have an Indian friend, Pramode, our visiting native scholar, to visit in Mumbai on my way out. My way out.
“Do you have a flashlight?”
I was blissfully napping after my first dinner in three days, albeit restricted to a fruit salad, in my hammock which I had finally found a place to put up. Giulia, my new roommate, can’t see the combination lock to our room.
“Eh, no, my flashlight just died.”
The silence is broken, my fast from words and communication is unwittingly and definitively ended. Things here just happen like that, they begin, they end, and flow just is what it is.
What to say about three days abstaining from food and (most) communication? We all felt hard hit on day two, and the usual six or seven hours of morning became interminable hours of nothingness. This was the one-two punch: I wasn’t eating, and so energy was way down for us all and we canceled classes, but I couldn’t do much of anything else either: talking, reading, writing, singing. At most meditation and pranayama (yogic breathing), and a bit of stretching.
Today (fast day 3) we could take blended banana’s at lunch, so morning work was more doable, though full of breaks for near-dizziness. More banana’s and a fruit salad later, I feel the plunge ahead into further phases of work, enabled it seems by this steadiness of flow achieved in these slow days of Niyama, restriction, when everyone was abstaining from one thing or another.
Riccardo and Paolo have also both moved on, left Hampi, separately, for broader horizons. It was four days from their official separation, but they were still at our “guest-house” (complex of cabanas, café, and lawn comprising our lodging) and very much present. To me this helps settle things too.
HAPPY NEW YEAR. We’ll all be asleep well before midnight.
Tomorrow morning begins three days of fasting from food (not water) and “communication”. The former will be hard because shit its three days and we’re working our tails off. The latter will be hard simply in that, well, we’re here working together, not solo. No talking certainly, but gestures are supposed to be out, as well as any other kinds of outward expression not absolutely necessary for the work: facial expressions, eye communication, writing, drawing, singing, playing music, etc. A few people started early and have let a lot of the gestural part slide. I keep anticipating that I’ll have little trouble keeping things to myself, outside of those moments when, of course, my challenge is exactly that, when I want to communicate, share.
The trickier part is the negotiation of letting things in from the outside only as necessary for the work, as the intention is that one is also closed off to incoming communication. All this comes from Vipasana meditation, in my understanding, and I believe that we will get instruction from our resident esoteric and teacher of street performance István “Goldi” Goldman (That’s “Stephen”, in Hungarian). Earlier he said that the powerful part of this that all of one’s sense of communication goes inward, sending the communion with the self very deep.
At least we won’t have to worry about ordering any food. Or kvetching about being hungry.
We started working 10-12hr days here in Hampi, after nearly a week of scattered comings and goings (Dec20-26), including hours of juggling and slack-rope training, but that teacher leaves tonight and with the fast I suspect much will change. In any case we are to keep up this rhythm through the 3rd, after nine days straight; then workshop some material and depart on the 4th, overnight to Mysore, for 2 straight weeks of 4hrs a day Yoga classes.
Already, each work day here we have started around 5am, with nary more than a moment’s pause until 1pm. This has for me been a somewhat brutal practice for the 3-day fast: I wake early, stay fairly concentrated through yoga practices; then I struggle through the first circus class, trying to embrace the failure; finally, part-way through the second I pause, practice my inner wake-up call, reminding myself that its much nicer and very much worth it to open my heart to positivity, inner warmth, and half-full-ness. Not eating for 8hrs or so through that has been trying, to say the least. A big lunch followed by 4hrs of music, dance, and seminar precede a very light dinner and much-needed sleep. Perhaps in between I manage to shower, or pack my bag, or do a little writing. Sometimes not. The following days I’ll mostly just sleep and meditate in the off time.
Why document and share all the details, a record of my reflection on how I manage my time and logistics and energy? Is it for you, Reader, or for me?
Kudlee beach is an isolated arc of beach, 20-30 min walk from Gokarna main town, 10-15min to walk from end to end, passing countless little “Hotels” resturants with cabanas behind them, that mostly serve the same mix of cuisines on a menu 4-8pgs long: Indian basics, Italian pizzas and pastas, continental breakfast (though more yogurt than meat), and some strain of Chinese cooking that I only half follow.
But more to the point, it has a beauty of natural landscape that is hard to beat. Also a bit hard to photograph, though I’ve been doing my damnedest. What no camera can capture though is the night sky. The beach stretches broadly to both sides; the sea amenably follows suit as it roars and crashes ceaselessly, its shimmering depths cutting of the sky at the horizon, which itself is book-ended by two hills. Tonight we will light up a bonfire and thus the Four Elements will all be passionately present. But as I collapse back onto my neck I find that sea and beach and surrounding hills are merely side players, supporting and framing broadly and openly a densely populated firmament that dazzles my sense of earthliness.
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