redux: weddings, La Cienega and Agra

One year ago I went to a wedding:

The sun rose behind the clouds, moving from hidden to vermillion to amber curtains of light pouring down onto the ocean. The full moon hung in the western sky, almost as if it was waiting to hear the "I do," and it occurred to me that the same moon was just beginning to rise in Agra, where my yin was visiting the Red Fort:

how far apart are these places:
8000 miles? a 20 hour flight? 9½ hours worth of time zone?

These places are one moon away from each other, one moon that holds the day in perfect harmony with the night. I thought about these things as the preacher gave his sermon. I thought about four years earlier, when I stepped foot on this particular beach for the first time. So much has changed since then, and yet to the sand and the beach and the ocean and the moon it was nothing. It was less than nothing – a blink of the eye, slip of the tongue, a cliché waiting to happen:

Time is a scam; a beautiful, inexplicably lovely scam.

do these denizens of Agra ever worry about time?

I have heard people liken the mind to a monkey:

"There goes my monkey mind again."

But these types of statements are an affront to monkeys the world over.

The mind - at least the mind prevalent in this part of the world during this time in history - is better compared to the ruthless precision of Swiss watches. A Rolex-ed tyranny of minutes and minutia, seconds and second-guessing. To live and breathe and swing from trees is the privilege and birthright of humans and monkeys alike. Have you ever heard a child ask:

"Do i have enough time to climb this tree?"

How about La Cienega, do you think she wonders about time in Nepal?

No; we were in communication this very morning:

La Cienega wrote:

the author responded:

7:29am
in joying india ??

7:29am
that is fantastic!
[my yin] is in Agra right now.

7:30am
Life is!!!
You no

7:30am
alas, no. school. writing thesis.
saw picture of you and carrots. lovely.

7:30am
hmm...thought of you a bunch of times...in Kathmandu hehehe...from months ago! Lost my camera..boohoo

7:30am
we're already planning a future traipse.

cameras are overrated, a poor substitute for the creativity of memory.

7:32am
I agree! I actually havent taken many pictures...the crew i was travlling with did! So entering Nepal alone i took on the camera...crossed the border...no more camera!

7:32am
how long are you staying?

7:32am
???

7:32am
beautiful. have you been to Bhutan?

7:33am
In love! Yes! It is Beautiful! One of the 13 grandmothers lives there...a nepalese shaman! Hope to connect wioth her when she returns to nepal

7:33am
envy. someday someday someday...

7:34am
if you truly desire you WILL make it manifest!!

7:35am
agreed. envy, like all emotions, is beautiful in its impermanence.

7:35am
When do you and [your yin] enter into sacred union

7:35am
last Sunday in February.

7:38am
Beautiful!!! You are a most beautiful pair!!! May all the love that is, continue to radiate from each of you!!! and spread out over the whole world!!!! Radiant love!!! Yum! Thank you for the blessing of your presence in my life! Often you come into my heart and my mind and i am lost in love and gratitude!!! Please know this! So much love and gratitude!!!

7:39am
always and ever the same.
love, light, and safe travels.
every moment is a gift.

Conversations like these, scattered and infrequent though they be, is why i call her La Cienega:



And while La Cienega is never beside the point, I should nonetheless return to the wedding...

There were three flower girls, the youngest of whom had a shiner and trailed behind her sisters (or cousins) saying "you dropped some" and pointing to the petals in the sand. It was adorable, the magnificent fragility of life and the imponderable resiliency of children. How sad it is that, as we grow older, each of us has to learn that we can be hurt. Even sadder, however, is that we come to believe that we can be injured in a way that dampers our spirit and being.

The preacher giving the service spoke to these things in his own obtuse way. It was a more traditional service than the one my yin and I would have six months later, but I was able to listen for the truths he spoke rather than becoming lost in the semantics. I was reminded once more that the largest difference between Christian theology and Eastern thought (at least as it's been taught to me) is a matter of which state one calls 'acquired' and which state one calls 'natural.'

In other words, how original is our sin?

a Rose by any other name...

Maybe I'll end up becoming a Christian mystic like Dostoevsky and see grand mal visions of the Divine and pen great sweeping novels with unpronounceable characters' names. Maybe I'll write heartfelt accounts of normal people, flawed and anonymous, that come to represent the shifting tides of history as an empire begins to collapse upon itself.

How far apart are 19th century St. Petersburg and 21st century Washington?

The wedding and sunrise were followed by breakfast, and I made small talk with friends and strangers while my mind pondered Dostoevsky. I questioned an acquaintance about her vipassana retreat and asked the server to prepare me a plate without any meat. In spite of this, the ocean breeze smelled like bacon.

After the cake was cut, I wished my friend congratulations. She is one of those special maniacs that does things like build surfboards in her free time and sews dresses for the bridesmaids. I still remember three years ago, when she attempted to set me up with her roommate and fed me a spinach-feta burger with sweet potato fries. The match-making didn't take, though, and that night I walked the beach with Mardou.

But this is beside the point.

The point is that I spoke with my yin after the wedding and gave her a brief recap. She told me about Agra and sent a picture of the Taj Mahal, as seen from the Red Fort:

more of the Taj to follow...

My favorite, though, was this one of her with a half-Canadian:

"looks like you got laid," i observed.

Alas, getting laid is also beside the point... at least for the time being.