INTENSE CITY

Parabola, a quarterly print magazine about the study of the myths, rituals, symbols, and arts of the world’s spiritual traditions, has featured a poem I wrote entitled, “As Above, So Below” on their website.

Read it here.

Photo: Getty Images

The evening was beautiful and the streets were quiet. I walked towards the coast, almost as if I was drifting along, further and further away from myself. The ghostly lights of streetlamps flickered as I passed them, and were swallowed up by the night. It was touchingly silent.

The bridge overlooking the coast came into view like shifting sands across a dreamy landscape. It felt like a dream, the kind you have during a nap on a sunny afternoon. Not entirely dream, but not reality either. It was then that I realized that time itself was expanding and that the boundaries that contained my life were being stretched almost imperceptibly.

I was breathing in a new life. It permeated my entire body, leaving traces of the salty sea in my nostrils. I felt as though my body was being irrigated. It occurred to me that I didn’t who it was that was doing all of this breathing.

I looked down over the bridge and into the churning sea. The waves were rolling over each other, devouring one another to the rhythm of a frantic heartbeat. A different world came into view; it was denser, and more shadowed. My mind was reeling and I could not tear my eyes away from the waves down below that seemed to be operating under their own laws.

In the distance, I saw the bright beam of a lighthouse scanning the waters. I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it before. The light looked godly to me, as though it had weight and a life of its own. I trusted it somehow, putting my feeble faith in it. The roar of the sea was deafening, but I noticed that the more attention I paid to that sweeping arc of light, the more the roar of the sea became muffled, like the sound of thunder in a retreating rainstorm.

I said a prayer to myself silently. I don’t know why. Normally I don’t have much belief in that sort of thing. The words often seem empty to me, a dead thing. But there I was, asking for help in a prayer and it felt very different, like the words themselves were wearing clothes and parading around in my chest. I know that sounds odd, but it really felt like that, almost familiar, you could say.

I remember there was this deepening silence, like after you hear something really beautiful, a poem or a song, a rare silence that can last for a second or two or your whole life. One of those moments where you suddenly realize that everything is unmistakably one.

And then I inevitably started thinking about it; churning it, dissolving it – all of these things that were happening. Something or someone wanted to understand it so desperately. Then the thoughts start piling up, one after another like trains, and before I realized it, I was stuck, lost in those waves again, and their magnificent laws.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

The house was quiet when I awoke. I stood waiting as the coffee machine gurgled away into the morning like a mad orchestra. The dark acidic smell awakening my lazy senses.

The air was refreshingly cool. The streets were wet and empty of faces. The shadows on the sidewalks disappeared one by one as they were illuminated by the grey light that broke over the buildings. I hadn’t bothered to get dressed. I smoked a cigarette lazily by the open door to the deck.

I listened to the soft murmur of a city still asleep and to the churning of my thoughts that bubbled up from mysterious places. I observed these thoughts appearing from consciousness and then, receiving no attention, dropping away to their mysterious origin. I felt like a boat wandering aimlessly, tossing and turning over dark deep waters. For a moment I realized that this is probably how I am most mornings, running through the random and the ridiculous.

The rain fell.

The air was soft and gentle, embracing the backyard in a cloak of mist and fog. It was like a dance, this new day arising. It felt as if all the possibilities, if I could entertain them just for a moment, threatened to crush me.

I sipped my coffee. It felt warm, secure and comfortable in my hands. I smoked another cigarette by the open door and realized that my body was awakening to the day, becoming filled with a subtle energy.

Lights flickered on in other houses. It was five in the morning. I didn’t feel like writing. I could think of a thousand better things to do.

You have the feeling that the world may in fact be conspiring to make you happy. Sometimes these little glimpses of happiness come in the form of a stranger’s smile on the street or from the sudden scent of someone baking bread at the local market.

You begin to feel that these are not merely accidents.

One day, Providence even brings a woman into your life. She is strikingly beautiful; everyone says so. She has long red hair, round brown eyes and a smile that radiates like the sun. You start flirting with her innocently and you notice that you seem to have some miraculous power to make her blush, even to make her laugh.

You cannot stop thinking about her and then, the unimaginable, the unthinkable happens; you’re kissing her on her bed in a small basement apartment. You’re not sure how you got there. This room that is littered with Thai take away containers, books, old vinyl, and a half opened bottle of red wine; a jazz record is playing in the background, Mingus probably. When you touch her smooth shoulders she shudders a little and turns to look deeply into your eyes.

She meets your parents and you meet hers. Everything goes smoothly like it was cosmically preplanned. Sometimes, in unexpected moments you find yourself wondering what you could have done to deserve this.

You have been to a lot of places together. You have made love all over the world, exploring each others bodies across different time zones and at different hours. Together the world takes on a new dazzling light; a contagious glow follows you around. Your days roll out naked and serenely. Every day is a crazy song and a composition of colors you have never seen before. This is how you look at the world together.

It’s always the little things that matter.

A barbecued steak with grilled red potatoes, deep green steamed broccoli, a sunset red glass of wine and a conversation filled with the energy of life; all of its endless possibility. You embrace the whole world together; breathe the same air; allowing a door to open onto a sweeter and more profound intimacy.

Moments like this are always accompanied by the feeling that there’s nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. Your inner moon descends and the barking dogs in your head fall silent. You love listening to her; even when she complains that her thighs are getting bigger. Her voice is soft and soothing; swollen even, from the depths of a boundless love.

She is sitting there gracefully, holding a dying moth in her hands. It trembles as it kisses her fingers with its long circular tongue. The sky is moonless within the music of midnight, the tree branches embrace the starry sky.

“That’s how I want to die,” you say.
“But you’re too big and heavy,” she says, smiling sadly.
“You know what I mean,” you say, lifting the wine to your lips; drinking in the deep dark river of oblivion.

The moment closes behind you forever but a new, uncharted one opens up and beckons for you both to enter, watchfully. It is always like this, a succession of white pearls on the great necklaces of our lives.

You drink a little too much, the wine lifting you into a hazy world with its ecstatic song. She puts you to bed and places a cold glass of water nearby. She leans over, kisses you and turns off the light. You watch this from some distant tower, until horses gallop across your thoughts, taking you away with them.

In the morning, the lifeless shell of the moth lays heavy on the patio table. You had hoped that miraculously it would be given a new birth; another chance to seek out the mysterious balls of light it continually ached for. But instead, the inevitable happened. It lies heavy on the table with the weight of the world and the sadness of the universe.

You can still remember the moth trembling.

I was sitting with a zen monk and I couldn’t stop looking out the window in front of me.
“Why are you looking out the window,” he asked, “concentrate on your posture.”
I tried to bring my attention back to my posture but I soon found myself drawn outwards again to the window in front of me.
Smiling, he asked me “are you a a writer.”
“Yes.”
“I feel so sorry for you,” he said laughing.

“It’s a lovely morning,” she said turning over.
Her breath escaping from her lips with the scent of half forgotten dreams.
Opening my eyes, I took in the soft supple sunlight that softened the white walls of the bedroom.
“It is,” I said, putting my arm around her waist; her body naked, rested and relaxed.
Searching her brown eyes, I whispered, “What would you like to do today honey?”
She released a soft sigh that hung in the air like a question.

“Ok, how about I go get us some coffee?” I asked, my hands eagerly searching over the curve of her back.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“A little after ten,” I said.

Still sleepy, I stumbled out of bed and reached for my glasses. My jeans and a t-shirt lay in a stale abandoned crumpled heap on the floor.
“Hurry back love,” she said.
“I will,” I said as I put on my jeans.

With my head muddled and confused with images and words I stepped out into the new morning. It felt like a morning that was just like most of my mornings; distant and unapproachable, like a film unrolling and I was merely a spectator in some empty theatre.

I walked through the backyard, the air was cool and since it was Saturday morning it was quiet. I would even say it was peaceful except for the incessant whirring in my head of dusty thoughts.

I think I was in the narrow alley behind our house when I had an indescribable feeling that somehow something was missing. Instinctively I felt my back pocket for my wallet.
No, it’s there, I thought.

As the sun came out from behind a cloud and illuminated the grey stones of the dark building that faced the alley, I suddenly had a thought and I found myself following it, groping after it like a fat man in a marathon.

The thought was something like this: I’m going to try to remember myself. I’m going to try to be here now, in this moment.
I took a thoughtful but exaggerated breath. I tried to bring my sleep soaked body into my feeble awareness.
I have feet, legs and hands, I said to myself as I tried to become aware of them.

Just a few moments later, I found myself in front of several shelves of delicious looking pastries at the local coffee shop. The deep chocolate brownies covered in caramel drew out a particular weakness in me and for what could have been an eternity it was all I knew.

Then in the low hum of morning conversations, soft jazz music and the clinking and clattering of cups, that previous thought returned. I had forgotten all about trying to remember myself; to be here now.
Maybe as a punishment I should skip the brownies for today, I thought.

“Can I help you?” the young woman behind the counter asked
“Yeah, can I have two medium coffees and two of those amazing chocolate brownies?”
“Sure,” she said smiling gently.
She turned to get the coffee as I stood there fumbling over my wallet.
“Excuse me,” I said as the woman placed the paper cups of steaming fresh black coffee in front of me.
“Yes?” she asked as she picked up silver tongs and approached the pastry case.
“Do you have any bad habits?” I asked.
She looked thoughtful for a moment and then she let out a quiet laugh, her face flushed.
“Umm, yeah I do,” she said, “I never live my life in the moment, y’know, like right now even though I try really hard to.”

A few seconds passed between us that felt like an hour.
“Yeah, I have that habit too,” I said finally, smiling with her.

I walked out of the coffee shop with the sounds of soft jazz music, the morning conversations and the clinking and clattering of cups closing, with the door, behind me.

It was just before eleven in the morning on that sunny Saturday and I was smiling, carrying a couple cups of coffee and two chocolate caramel covered brownies.

The sound of street cars, human voices and muffled sirens flow into the window as dusk approaches. Street lamps outside are coming to life as Wednesday lays down her weary head.

An ash is flicked away and conversation drifts out the open window into the neighbourhood and mixes gently with the sounds of the city.

There is music all around us.
“It is so easy to do nothing with you, nothing at all,” she says.

You are a thousand mirrors and one of them has just shattered in my throat
My refection is shimmering across the surface of your eyes.
Vast worlds are contained in those eyes and I am drowning.

“Come back to me,” she says.
Suddenly, there is a heavy weight on my chest.
My heart is frantic.
What is happening?
It feels like I have forgotten everything, even how to breathe.
I’m searching for words, the right ones, to say to her.

“I feel like we were both submerged in a body of water and tied together with a six foot string. Time again, I feel you will pull me in closer and then push me away,” she says.

Her eyes have a soft sadness, like silk.
I am afraid, she sees right through me.
Suddenly I become aware that I don’t know her at all.

She turns off the light and we sit on the bed listening to the neighbours wind chimes in the darkness. A car passes and the light invades her face and then moves down her neck and across the soft slopes of her breasts.

The heaviness in my chest returns.
We sit, clothed in silence staring at each other through the shadows for a long time.
“I love you,” she says.

Somewhere a great wave crashes and a moon is burning.
Somewhere an unnamed star twinkles in the heavens.
I want to name that star after us.

(Photo: Donata Wenders)

I wake up early, remembering my commitment to write. I kiss your sleepy mouth. Your red hair is disheveled across the pillow like an explosion of red oil paint on a sheer white canvas. You are in silence with a faraway look in your eyes as though you had just returned from a vast distance. There is a gentle suppleness present in your body. You are so at home in the nest of pillows and blankets. It is so difficult to leave you there.

Leave you there for the sake of what; to scribble this down?

I make you coffee even though I know it will be stone cold by the time you wake up. I feel the importance of this simple act of making you coffee in the morning; like something that is holy and ritualistic; like our lives depend on it in some way.

I buzz around you; moving swiftly upstairs and downstairs with my mind in a flurry of thoughts. Meanwhile, downstairs you are still in the land of dreams. I sit on the couch, sipping coffee. I am not really there. Now and then I mechanically venture over to the door and light a cigarette and watch the smoke float out the door to greet the crisp, cool morning.

“What a long day it’s going to be,” I complain inwardly. The vastness of this new day rises up to meet me like an abyss and I picture a car plunging over a cliff on some dramatic television series. It’s amazing to watch all these morning thoughts that surface and vanish through my head without any awareness. Is it the same with everyone?

I sit down at my desk while the new day is announcing itself above the city. I don’t recognize this new day. I take it for granted, as I usually do. How easily I forget that I cannot relive any of these days that are given to me. Throughout the churning of thought, the moment beckons to me very softly like a whisper and I don’t hear it. I am walking like a savage through these precious moments, paying no attention, like an uninvited house guest who is full of bad habits.

I keep thinking of your long red hair on the pillow and the darkness of the room. I keep thinking of how I take everything in my life for granted. I forget that I will die. How could the familiarity of the situation be different? How can I bring more of myself into these moments that seem familiar? Can I see them, taste them, feel them and remember them in a new way?

There is a deep green plant on my table that smells of earth and sunshine. It is loved and it asks of nothing from me except for my attention. Is there some silent communication taking place that I am unaware of? I’ve got no place to go and nothing to do except write this down. This writing isn’t particularly interesting. What would I feel compelled to write if I was dying? I see myself being carried away by all this verbiage and I try to remember myself sitting here. The sensation of my hands, this pen pressed firmly in these fingers and the weight of this body sitting here on this chair.

The next minute, I am gone again. I am so far from home. All these great distances I can travel from home yet still be in one place. What is needed for this writing practice? How do I describe this life into words? I picture a darkened movie theater where a thick red curtain draws back and a screen rolls down followed by a whirring sound as images present themselves. Who would I see? Where do I find myself and in what situations? What is this mysterious thing called Life and how can I be more present to it?

(Photo: Ed Ed, Celestial Light)

In an antique train overcrowded with weary passengers we arrive at Mughal Sarai Railway Station in Varanasi. The world outside the barred window of the train throbs with passengers and porters with suitcases piled on their heads. Women in flowing saris follow casually along the platform as vendors race towards the train to sell warm snacks and sickly sweet cardamom-spiced tea in earthenware cups.

As soon as we step onto the train platform a gigantic mass of humanity simply swallows us up in its wake and takes us up the stairs, through the station, and into a noisy crowd of rickshaw-pullers, hotel touts and postcard selling children. The morning air is scented with a rich bouquet of incense and spices mingled with sandalwood and marigold flowers.

If you had to choose one city to represent everything that is truly Indian, you would probably choose Varanasi. However, Varanasi is not a tourist haven in terms of specific sights. It is more of an experience that shakes your whole entity, your state of mind, and all of your senses. It seems that on the banks of this sacred river anything is possible. The sacred and everyday life merges easily in Varanasi. Devout Hindus consider Varanasi to be a unique meeting place between heaven and earth where gods and goddesses can descend to this world and mortals can be transferred directly to the after-life.

We walk along the banks of the river Ganges as the sun rises like a halo above the city, illuminating the countless temples that form the west bank’s skyline. The arrival of the golden dawn brings thousands of worshippers through the shroud of mist and down the long flights of stone steps called ghats, which reach like roots into the river.

A very active boat culture exists all along the ghats and embarking on a trip at dawn is a wonderfully atmospheric way to see Varanasi. We find a skinny man in a loin cloth who offers to take us across the Ganges for a small sum. As the sky grows lighter and the mist begins to dispel, our boatman takes up his oars and we pull away from the shore, across the surface of the dark and mysterious waters. The chant of early morning prayers, punctuated by ringing bells and the loud snap and bang of morning laundry being thwacked on rocks echoes across the river. Thousands of people stand in the water, facing east across the river, praying and pouring water out of urns held up to the sunrise, heralding the gift of a new day.

As our boat approaches the somber Marnikarnika burning ghat, we put away our cameras since photography is prohibited. Contradictory to the West, life and death coexist harmoniously in Varanasi. Living and dying are both celebrated. The boat drifts by a cluster of foreigners who stare transfixed in morbid fascination as thick grey smoke billows up from several sandalwood pyres while bodies of relatives are brought in on stretchers, entirely wrapped in red and gold fabrics and covered in marigolds. First the relatives wash the body in the Ganges to purify it and then the body is placed on top of an orderly pile of logs by men in white loincloths called doms who are from a special untouchable caste. Next the doms neatly stack more logs on top of the body before lighting the pyre. It doesn’t take long for the fire to catch, and at any one time you can see two or three bodies burning steadily in the river breeze. Later, the ashes will be scattered onto the waters of the Ganges.

A typical body takes three to four hours to burn and often there is usually a large bone left over like the hips or lower back. The unburned bones are simply thrown into the river as well as the ashes after they are sifted by a man called the Watchman for gold and silver, which he keeps. The boatman also informs us that “not everyone is able to die in Varanasi because the sandalwood needed to burn the bodies is very expensive.”

After the joyous, yet solemn process of salvation for the dead, a fascinating place to visit is the old city of Varanasi which is located just behind the main ghats. Winding your way through the deep narrow and ancient alleys that are seething with life is a deeply exhilarating experience. Most of the streets are no wider than eight feet and although they cannot accommodate cars or rickshaws large numbers of aimlessly wandering holy cows are free to roam the streets. There are a hundreds of unique and colourful shops to explore in this bustling marketplace. Down one lane you can find naan bread that has been freshly baked over a fire and rich Indian sweetmeats for sale while in another twisting lane, vendors are selling silver bracelets and earrings, sitars or other Indian musical instruments and brightly painted puppets or wooden toys. There is a magical quality present in these ancient alley ways that is strangely seductive and as old as faith itself.

In the evening the Ganges is ritually put to sleep at dusk. This involves various ceremonies that take place along the ghats. As the river rippled past, we released our offerings to Mother Ganges; a floating candle made from one dry leaf with a few marigold petals on it along with a wick in a dab of butter-oil. The candles are placed in the river where they are taken across the shimmering surface of the Ganges by its gentle current.

Looking out across the Ganges, there are thousands of these floating candles, flickering like constellations on the water. It occurs to me how easy it is to feel connected to the divine in this spiritual atmosphere that has sustained India and her people through the centuries.

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