The Wave

The wave just keeps carrying us forward, forward into Tomorrow, into the Future that is Now.

Pilu and I landed on Ibiza two weeks ago tomorrow.  We landed, drove off the ferry at 7 am, on a cold, grey morning.  We exited the port, and without the feeling to stay in Eivissa-town, hit the road.  We drove some twenty minutes to another pueblito, found a room in the Spanish early morning, and slept all day.

The next, we rose to cloudless skies, warmth, and festivities in the street.  We packed the car up and drove off into the process of the next 10 days, crisscrossing the island, sleeping in the car mostly, occasionally (and mostly to shower) in hostals, and oh, the life of the Gypsie (more suited to some than to others)!  We began to explore the island, it’s cities, it’s naturaleza, all the time looking for a place to live, and we just kept coming up empty.  Both of us, thinking everything was gonna be so easy easy, and here we couldn’t find a rock to turn over and call home.  Truth to tell, it was discouraging and took its toll on us both.

It wore on us, more than anything the not-knowing, not knowing if we had made a mistake coming here, not knowing how to start, not knowing if the island wanted us or not.  Everything seemed to be passing through our fingers, nothing to hold onto, as closed and shuttered as all the shops we passed on the street.

And then, just as suddenly, the clouds parted and revealed the sun behind.  After a morning of phoning various possible leads on a place to live, we had an appointment with a guy at 6 pm at the port in Eivissa.  At this point we were both still wanting a house out in the country somewhere, not too far, but not in the city, and especially not in Eivissa, which to both of us seemed to personify the heart of the tourist-madness of the island, something we hoped to avoid.  But anyway, we met with this guy; he showed us a room in an apartment right on the port, right in the middle – the room ok, the space so-so.

But he too has a room in his house, and he invites us to come and check it out.  He has a daughter of 9 and had been thinking of looking for a woman who might also be able to take care of her at times, but not a couple.  Anyway, he invites us to check it out, saying it’s like practically a house in the country.  I’m not understanding every word he says, but Pilu is, and both our ears perk up at this.  We go check out the house, Pilu driving the Toledito (her little red car), and Jose (his name) sees how we’ve been living gypsy style in the car and this seems to endear us to him, as he has a gypsy’s heart himself he tells us.

He guides us a few streets away, up a hill, onto a road high enough that we can see the old walled city easily in the not-so distance, and the city below, but the road itself has no shops, just houses and flats, and is kind of isolated, reserved.  We enter through the gate, marked ‘Veinty tres’, and stepping into the house . . . it was like finally being in the rooms I had been dreaming about for a long time, unbeknownst to me.  Sabes?  It’s perfect, all designed and decorated by his hands, small and intimate and colorful, and seems to call to me from some distant past that is also my future.

We take him back down to the port in the car, talking more and more animatedly.  Pilu (who’s doing all  the talking) makes an offer to Jose, to let us the room.  He stops and thinks about it, and then offers (of all things) that we pay less, to which we of course agree, and all of a sudden, we’re part of a family.

Since then, it’s like we stepped through a time portal, a doorway in time and space, and everywhere we look doors have started opening.  I don’t feel capaz to paint the whole picture right now, all the gorgeous details, but they’re all pointing in one direction, and that is that Eivissa wants us here, has called us here, and we are inclined to bow our heads and offer our thanks.

At night, staring out the bedroom window at all the lights of Eivissa-town, it’s like we sit like kings on a mountaintop, at a reserve from the madness, able to watch it all in peace ourselves.  But then, back on the street, we’re 5 minutes by foot and down stairs from both the sea on one side and the heart of the city on the other.  Forgive my French, but we are in the very puta of Eivissa, in a small house with a vista unrivaled by any other techo around us, all hand made with love.  I still find myself rebounding out of disbelief into reality, at all these petals of all these flowers opening around me.

In other words, Mandala and Pilu and Eivissa are getting along swimmingly!!

We have arrived . . . in Eivissa, in the Future, in Today.  Orale!!!!

hey big Moms,

thanks for the compliment about the blog and my writing.  and i guess, to answer your question: when it is effortless is when it’s the best.  it’s when i get too much of myself mixed up in there that it gets confused.  but even so, i’ve started drawing some mindmaps for a novel, and seeing myself standing there lonely before yet another mountain needs surmounting, i wonder if i got it in me.

i was feeling that i don’t, that this is something i can’t do, because i can’t do what all those other guys do, Tolstoy and Doestoevsky, Ralph Ellison and Steinbeck, those guys got gifts i don’t.  but I mean i realized that i can’t tell a story like them cause i’m not them; i’m not trying to make something from the outside, but to channel it from inside – i’m just trying to tell my own story, and that, i can probably do.

for me, the secret in storytelling has always been the voice itself, because it’s the voice that relates all that happens, whatever fantasies or horrors.  the greats tell great stories in great voices.  sometimes a great voice doesn’t even need a great story, like Catcher in the Rye or Notes from Underground.

anyway, just started rambling there….all is well here, fantastic.  looks like i’ll be staying here in Mexico City practically the entire time, rather than traveling a bit like i had thought.  i live in an apartment with a cousin of a friend i met in india, also mexican.  we live in the awesomest boho neighborhood in the city, full of cafes and shops, and mexicans that look like me.  i’m in this sliver of mexico that is more like brooklyn than tijuana.  i walk to school past a couple city parks, buy a couple choclate pastries and a cafe con leche on the way in everymorning.

I go to school 5 days a week from 9 to 2.  Still, I feel like Spanish is kicking my ass.  Finally went to the bookstore the day before yesterday, bought a handful of books to start cutting my teeth on, including Farenheit 451, which I’ve never read before.  Part of the aggravation is that in school, I can more or less entender (i.e. grok) todo, but out here, hanging out, chillin’ with the cool kids, I’m lost in the dark.  I’m guessing what’s going on, using context, catching a handful of words here and there, before losing myself again in slang and mumbles.

In other words I’m realizing again how cocky I am, thinking I can do anything faster than anybody else.  Spanish is a whole world, and I’m at an inbetween point, a stage a nativespeaker never goes through, because a child is an empty cup, and I’m fullup and learning on top.  In Spanish my mouth is a clumsy instrument, slow and drawling, and my mind too.  Que pena!

In other words once again, I am now humbled and ready to learn; there is not so much time!  Finally checking my finances and projecting a budget, I realize I can only comfortably make it till the second week of November, which means less than two months to make a world of difference.  I want to put my nose to the grindstone and get to it!

speak Spanish.

Que padre! I can do this job by going to school, and hanging out with foreigners learning Spanish and puro Mexicanos tambien.  Also by watching TV, shooting the shit, going to parties, eating at restaurants, asking directions, going to the super . . . pretty much by just living an ordinary ass life with nothing special on top, I can do this job.  And to clarify the fact, I am now living with the cousin of another sanyas friend from Pune, who just had some space open up in his pad i.e. complete breakup.  It’s in an awesome ‘hood, la Condessa, full of small shops and cafes, plus I can walk to school, just 20 minutes by foot in this ginormous city.

Just walking to school and back every day this week, I’ve had this view of Mexico City in that it could be Brooklyn, and the craziest part, is that I could be Mexicano, claro que es possible. I couldn’t be Spanish, but somehow I could be Mexican, with this pale skin and rosy locks, and why not?  I was born not so far from here, just on the other side of an imaginary line, though a world away.

One of the greatest adrenaline jolts of this chapter is that now I am practicing letting go of even more, like a good Zen student, of even this thing that has always been with me since I was 2, that is:  English.  In English I dance and play; I can express and communicate a vast array of concepts and feelings.  The way I use English is part of my intelligence.  In Spanish, I’m just a beginner, a Borat-speaker of the language, friendly mainly in the present tense, but slowly, slowly, day by day, I am letting go of English, immersing, coming up breathing, in Spanish, and it’s soo awesome and rewarding.  In this case it’s like everything I practiced and learned this past year, about watching people and paying attention, plus in the years before, all of it comes into play, and that’s it: it’s all play!  All I need do is stay aware, relax into learning, stay aware, and the rest is taking care of itself.  Every moment is an opportunity to learn, and there are so many moments in even a single day, countless moments in which life can take an unexpected shortcut, if we but cut free from the deadweight of ‘everyday’.

I am speaking Spanish every day, using just a few sentences in English, primarily in tenses I don’t yet know (in Spanish).  My guess, my goal, is to be living exclusively en Espanol inside of 3 weeks.  That also means at some point, I’m a switch to Spanish here too.  I’d like to write in Spanish.  Why not?  Haven’t you read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao?

There’s also the two new pools of people the universe has plugged me into, all of whom know me as Mandala, my newbirth name.  There’s the friends and family of Elias, the friend I made in Pune 6 months ago, which is at least 15 people I’ve already met, his 2 Chihuahuas, and his cousin Adib, with whom I now live, in his spare bedroom.  Then there’s the kids at school, which for some fortuitous circumstance are almost exclusively female and Japanese (or Korean).  Es verdad!  And it’s cool to speak Spanish with pretty girls who are learning at the same level cause then I can understand more, without all the slang, but on top of that, there’s the Mexican crew, who are all light-skinned and uber-cool, and who speak the way I want to speak.  Between these two pools of people to learn with, all I gotta do is keep my ears open, and I’m good at that, I’ve got big ones.

And this morning, having breakfast with a friend, I realized something anew, something so simple, I can’t believe it hasn’t occurred to me before, about the big picture, about what this past year has been all about, all my life leading up to these moments.  The story of the past year is that of me learning to live bravely with my heart exposed; to be myself, in such a myriad of worlds of circumstances.  The thing is that now, now I wear my Heart on my chest, where everyone can see it if they want to or not.  I’m no longer hiding anything, and I don’t have to.  That’s the difference now, that’s what my time in Pune, all of my yearning in Pilgrimage 2.0, that’s what it’s all about.  It was an internal change with an external outgrowth.

It’s taken all of this, all these miles covered, all these experiences lived, in order for me to feel free to be myself – that’s how far out of Dodge I had to get to find out who I really am.  It’s like all along I was never allowed to show my true colors, but now I can, and do, excitedly . . . because, all in the self-same moment, every day here is still part of the living out of a dream: I am here in Mexico in the first place to learn to speak Espanol Mexicano, in a city and a world I couldn’t have imagined.  In this dream I even have a new body, my heart on the outside, and a new name, Mandala (and Clark Kent glasses and a nose ring like a pirate!)  I feel that I live now in my own futuretense, pues tambien in the future, because it’s 2010, and it’s only possible for anyone to read this via a spaceless worldwide global network from the future and futureboxes – you can even read this on a handheld wireless futurebox in an airport or on an underground  train!

Anyway changos, remember where you are, and when.  Time to sign off.  If there’s anything I can say to everyone in the world via the future, it’s to risk everything and follow your heart.

Think of the countless billions who have lived in the thousands of years before right now, 2010; what trace is there of their lives?  Of all the moments shared, all the injustices and the joys, all the laundry and upset and echoes of laughter and shiny tears.  What trace is there?  What trace will be left of you in that future of which you are not a part?

And yet, we run to hold on to things, to find traces to hold us down, to negate the constant urgings of the heart, our own independently operating compasses in this morass of a world.  The heart knows where it wants, but in this upsidedown world, we have to unlearn how not to follow it, that is, we have to learn how to be so simple as to act natural and speak the truth.

Remember, it’s not the stuff that matters.  You can’t take any of it with you.  The only thing that sticks is experience, and if you see clearly, the only risk is to be so afraid to risk as to miss your chance.  Time passes either way, and a future without you beckons in every moment, death possible at any breath.  Somebody said recently, “sometimes your whole life boils down to one insane move.”  I like that.  Makes me feel alive.

. . . anyway, that’s what I’d say today.  Ask me again some other time. . .

I flew into Mexico City a week ago, intending to start Spanish classes this past Monday.  I hit the ground and suddenly the world spun me around again.  I had been feeling so anxious before getting on the plane, not wanting to leave home again, feeling scared to leave home, but like the dream I had in Santiago, each time I jump, no matter how high I fly, landing on my feet is always the same.

I passed a few days there in D.F. (Distrito Federal = Mexico City) and before I knew it I had an invite to come visit some friends in Playa, an invite with an expiration date of this coming Sunday, so I jumped.  Plans changed, I postponed school one week, and I been chilling with the Bradgelina of Pune 2010 (Shiva & Sitara = Shivara); swimming, lazin’ around, and you know, sharing feelings and stuff.

I’m trying to get my blog-legs back, so I’m just gonna write.  I got blocked up, backlogged, and then I couldn’t write about the present moment cause I felt like I hadn’t yet processed the ones that came before – that’s my particular writer’s insanity.  Maybe too I haven’t written because I haven’t been sure how to carry on.  This blog started out as one thing, and it has served its purpose.  It’s a loose chronicle of my year of traveling abroad, and now? . . .

Exactly.  Now it’s time to keep it going . . .

So I find myself in Mexico.  Why Mexico, you ask?  It’s a story with a good number of details, and it started back in January.  In January I was in Pune, in India, and when I asked myself if I wanted to make some New Year’s resolutions, the answer I got back was twofold:

GOALS FOR 2010

1. Uncover my heart.
2. Speak Spanish.

In Pune, I did uncover my heart.  Through Path of Love and the deepest longing I have ever felt to breakthrough, I found what had been there all along.  A month ago, and with the help of two very dear and talented friends (yeah Kumie and Meta!!!), I tattooed it on my chest.  And speaking Spanish?  I’m working on it.  I came to Mexico City to take advantage of my ongoing opportunity: no job, no address, nothing holding me back, and a chunk of change big enough to make some risks with.

With some small luck, by the end of the year I’ll be completely broke, confident in Spanish, and with flames shooting up out the top of my heart.

That’s all I got these days, and it’s all I want or need.  I feel lonely sometimes, and that was what I was feeling leaving Dallas and my beloved family, but I’ve changed too much to stay still just now.  Being back in the States, I learned a lot about how much I’ve changed, and it does make me feel isolated.

The first thing I found on getting back to the States was that damn, most people there live in the head not the heart.  I feel an emotional distance from some of my long-time friends for just this reason.  I cannot deny the fact that I now live in a different world.  I don’t have a job and I don’t have to cut my hair or worry about fitting in.  I don’t have to pay rent and I don’t have to worry about what pictures I post on facebook.  I don’t have to cater to anyone else’s conception of me, because I’m the one who sees me in the mirror, no one else.

Instead, because I am free of these anchors, I can continue to risk what many cannot.  You know, it was funny.  The day I landed in NYC, going through Immigration, the guy at the desk started asking me questions.  “You went to all these countries?”

“Yep.”

“Do you have family or friends there?”

“In some of them.”

“How’d you afford all that?  What’s your job?”

“I don’t have a job.  I inherited some money and I spent it all traveling.”

“You spent it all!  HAHAHAHAHAH!”

And then he stamped my passport and let me through.  That was two different worlds right there at the immigration booth.  In his world, I was a fool, an idiot who spent all he had.  In my world, I’m rich beyond compare.  But this whole thing?  How American!!!  How difficult it is to understand each other!  I can understand him, but he cannot understand me.

And you know what?  I might as well have claimed to have gone to the moon for the distance I’m talking about.  Travel itself is of course an education, but the distance I traveled has much more to do with the world of Osho than the miles I traversed.  Without Osho, I might have come back and jumped right back on the hamster wheel.  I had been thinking so long about going back to graduate school, pursuing a PhD in Education, and that’s probably what I would have done.

But now?  Now that I’ve found Osho’s world?  A world vast and mysterious, a Pandora here on Earth, in which true joy involves true risk, and also no risk at all.  Right now, the idea of finding a hamster wheel and an address is the furthest thing from my mind.  Right now it is more important to feel fulfilled than to feel safe.  If I’ve got nothing to risk, I’ve got nothing.

And so here I sit in tropical Mexico, excited as fuck to do something else I’ve never done before, my heart tingling for going to classes and traveling and speaking Spanish and meeting new people.  Like I said, a successful conclusion to 2010 will be a barely empty bank account and two small goals resolved, complete, fulfilled.  That’s the wealth I value (although as many of you know, I’ve always been a sucker for a nice pair of new jeans!)

its been more than a month that I’ve been traveling on my own again, after my rents flew back to the states from Madrid. in this last month, its like everything I’ve learned has come into play, has been needed, and used. even more so for this last week just finished; i feel that in some crucial ways, this whole year was just to prepare me for this last week, or at least that’s my story . . . how to say `yes`to the universe, go with the flow, roll with things the way they are, share emotions without being trapped by then, be honest and yet gentle, maintain perspective, allow the universe and others to care for me. the list goes on, but from my side, its all about moving from the inside, staying close to the center, and remembering to enjoy.

i can feel that I’ve come a long way from the neo-tourist jeff, shy in Kathmandu, across Asia to India, Israel to my beloved Spain, and into the mandala i now am. i have no fear for this year to end, because all things end, and yet the adventure continues. i don’t have to pretend to know what comes next, all i gotta do is put one foot in front of the other, with awareness . . . the rest will take care of itself.

tonight i say goodbye to good new friends; tomorrow i say hello to good old friends. what a life! you’d have to be secretly blessed or just plain crazy to live like this, but either way is ok with me. call me what you will . . . .my name is mandala.

some of my favorite pics from the year . . .

It feels like home here . . . I made it, once more, to this place I love.  Estoy en Santiago de Compostela! Estoy tan feliz, estoy escuchando a U2, tengo el Alquimista en Español, tengo nada mas que tiempo!

I took the all night bus from Madrid, slept fitfully (as I should expect in a bus-seat), had an awesome dream this morning at dawn, a hundred kms from right here:

I dreamt I brought the whole fam here to Santiago.  Everything was awesome, awesome, awesome, everything perfect.  There were all these events going on, like in Pune, demos and meditations and dances, and everyone was having a blast doing their own thing.  But me?  Something had happened to me, and somehow despite the fact that I was still a solid body, I was also light as a feather, and the winds swept down to carry me up.  They picked me up lovingly, like I was held in a million tiny hands, filling me with immense joy and ecstasy.

I remember the first time it happened: I was standing with Ben in a plaza somewhere; for no reason at all I jumped, and the winds held me, just a few feet off the ground.  Somehow I had expected it, tho of course I had no reason to.  I felt my face light up, the full wattage of my heart pounding through my smile.  It wasn’t at all as if I were flying, it was more like swimming.  I rode the currents of the ether, still in gravity’s pull.

Over the course of the dream, I braved higher and higher, feeling sometimes out of control, worried about how high I had let the breeze carry me, but each time, I landed smooth like a cat, no problem.

The last jump I made before waking up, I remember distinctly.  I was inside a large rectangular room, stone walls and square-beamed ceiling (like in the Zendo at the ZC).  The ceiling must have been 40 ft high, but before I knew it I was almost touching it.  As I crested the arc of my trajectory there was a single moment of fear and doubt, but then I was already engaged in landing.  And as I did so, landing squarely and gracefully, a beautiful motion, I realized that each landing was like the others, no matter how high I let the currents carry me.  This was a supreme feeling and encouragement.

This feeling of being so clean, so light that small breezes could toss me in the air like a father his child, graceful as a feather – it was ecstatic.

I am so happy to be in Santiago once again, but there’s also the feeling that I never left.  Walking out of the bus station and into the crisp morning air, I just let my feet carry me.  I felt the weight of my small pack on my shoulders, and loved it.  I found my way unerringly to the Cathedral, reliving many small moments from before, enjoying each recognition.  I circled the church from the backside, coming around to the backlit Glory façade and stood basking in just being there, the sun still hidden from sight, seagulls circling the main tower.  Even tho I haven’t walked my way here, I am such a peregrino, a pilgrim.  I can’t but help walk around smiling, making eye contact with other pilgrims, engaging in silent ‘hellos’ and ‘buen camino’.  I feel that they recognize me as a fellow pilgrim too, despite my cool-kid clothes and double packs (small backpack of tech in the front, and small larger pack on my back).  Nonetheless, I couldn’t resist the urge and bought myself a scallop shell, there in the plaza, cause it makes me feel connected.

I want to share this, all of this, this  joy, this serenity, this experience, but I have no comrade at the moment.  To share I must write, I want to write, I must write, and I wonder if this solitude empowers me with even more to share.

Perhaps I am a wind-rider, as I have long aspired to be.  In this physical realm I’m not jumping 40 feet into the air, but I am riding the divine-currents, reading the omens as trail markers, allowing, allowing, allowing.

I have the feeling once more of reaching a future mile-stone, like a save point in Zelda.  This is a milestone, making it here to Santiago once again, and from this point I am different.  To mark it, I think I’ll go and have my nose done again, after losing the piercing I had done in Pune in Israel.  It’s not really a St. James kind of thing, if anything the Moors would have worn such adornments more than the Spanish, but it feels right somehow, perhaps for that very reason.

I’ve gone ahead and paid for the flat I’m in now for 4 nights.  In a little while, I hope to pass the heck out, I’m exhausted and worn thin, but in the next days I wanna keep writing, play with some photos (for which I’m always excited), go to the Cathedral a bunch, and probs take a day trip to Fisterra.

I am happy.  I am enjoying it.

I’m sitting here in the park, having deep thoughts.  Earlier today I dropped off the rents at the airport aqui en Madrid.  Just before we got here, pulling into the last toll booth, the transmission slipped (or something) and the car died – a 5 minute drive from the terminal, but too far to hoof it.  Anyway, we waited for an hour for a taxi to get there, and I waited another hour for the tow – I put los padres in the cab to catch the plane back to the States; my only plan for the day to hop a bus to Santiago de Compostela.

From the airport I snagged the metro to the bus station.  Walking in there, I realized I’d been there before, literally, that this was exactly what Trae and I did 4 years ago – we took the subway to the bus station from the airport, bought tickets, ate scratchy chorizo bocadillos, found a plaza and hung out, then caught the bus to Santiago at midnight, arriving exhausted the next day.

These memories were washing over me with such force, so many details rushing back, remembering before I got outside exactly what the city would look like beyond the glass doors.  I got a sandwich at the same shop, ate it outside in the sun, went to the same ticket counter, bought a ticket for the midnight express (thereby also hitting two birds with one stone: transport and sleepspot for the night).

Anyways, I left my new orange pack at the bus station and rode the metro to el parque.  I found a spot, half-shade half-sun, lay down in the grass, started thinking.  I have The Alchemist with me, in Spanish, so I can work on my vocab, but instead of opening it up and reading, I let these thinkings wash over me, something about One Tongue One People . . . .

The story starts in one place, and comes to right here.  It starts at the beginning.  It’s not an original story, something I made up, but a correlation of all stories, where stuff we know from one story influences another, each story shedding a new ray of light on the story at the center.  The story at the center is us.

One of the stories I’ve heard is about a time when there was only one language, and only one people.  The story goes that in that time, everyone banded together to build something magnificent, a tower to heaven, but a Jealous God kicked it over, and feeling threatened, he divided them, causing one to speak one language and another, another.  Divided, they spread, and in time, they fought amongst themselves, become competitors for resources and prestige, having forgotten that they were all once the self-same family.

Without a common tongue people have a hard time seeing eye to eye (to say the least), preferring to war and rape, and that was the point: threatened by the power of united humanity, that’s the curse of the Jealous God.  It’s been the same story ever since . . .

Only that today my name is Mandala, and right now I’m chillin’ in a park in Madrid.  It’s 2010.  I’ve traveled across the world, East to West, crossing continents in hours, hurtling through the clouds, and besides Spanish, I speak only one language: English.  In Nepal and Tibet and China and Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, India, Israel, Turkey, and Portugal (to name a couple) I’ve gotten by with One Tongue.  This is the future, and the old story is flipping over; there is no Jealous God, only a god of jealousy, demon of division.

In Barcelona there’s a new Tower being built, a structure completely unique and original to its time.  It’s a new tower, and it’s the future – with my own eyes I’ve seen that every day brings us closer to the reality of an universal language once again: one tongue, a second time around . . . it’s 2010; anything’s possible.

One Tongue, One People!!!

Hey buddy,

I’ve been crafting a long email that I’ve been saving as a draft for a while now.  But I realize that I’ll probably never send it, so here are the high notes:

1. I was worried you had gone off the deep end, esp. with the name change – another white man falls prey to India.
2. Worried that you were trying to reinvent yourself in order to not deal with some issue about yourself that you were unable or unwilling to face.
3. Decided that that was pessimistic thinking and maybe you were actually just becoming the person you wanted to be.
4. Still unsure about your motives.  It seems to me that this new persona may never be a complete one.  I assume that Dala’s actions are based on “what would Jeff have done” and then choosing what you see as the better, less encumbered choice.  But then Dala is simply a shadow of Jeff; forever compared to/defined by another and dimensional without – is this tenable indefinitely?
5. I will try and appreciate the choices you’ve made without my personal ethics getting in the way.  I’ll try to address you as Dala and laugh less at your hippiness.
6. I hope you at least consider the possibility of some of my statement before completely dismissing them as errant.
7. Love you buddy.  Hope you’re having a great time.

I love you too, buddy, and I’m glad you shot me straight.  But it’s . . . how to get at the essence?  I was gonna say I’m still the same guy, but that’s not quite right.  Or, that it’s not that this trip has changed me, but that I’ve been open to the change afforded by this trip . . . but really?

I’m just not Jeff anymore.  That name doesn’t fit me, though for many of you it’s how you know me, it’s what you’re habituated to, but it’s not me.  My name is Mandala.  I don’t really know how to explain it.  I don’t know how to get closer to the truth of it.  It’s impossible to explain in a sentence, in a few words . . . it’s the feeling of who I am.  In Spanish, we say me llamo, in other words, I call myself.  I don’t call myself ‘Jeff’.  I call myself Mandala.  Maybe ‘Jeff’ is who I was, but it feels like it’s the name of someone I once knew, so my life today is not at all about ‘what would Jeff have done.’  Jeff was the shell, not the whole.  Mandala is the essence, larger, not choosing the less encumbered, but in actuality, less encumbered.

Sometimes I look at the photos I’ve taken on this trip, from Tibet and China, Japan and Cambodia, India, Israel, Turkey, Spain, and it’s like I’m really looking at myself, trying to piece it all together, to answer the question, the only question that really matters in life, the koan that all Zen masters keep close to home: “WHO AM I?” That’s the mirror we all face in the dark moments of aloneness at night, silent specs in the crowd . . . and I can’t find it.  I can’t find the answer.  I can’t find the handhold, the something to hold onto, to prove to myself that I really exist, you know, that one thing that will make me different, that ineffable substance that we can see in others but not in ourselves.

I can’t tell anyone who I am, but I know it myself.  I know it.  I know my habits, my tendencies, my gullabilities and mood swings.  I know my beauty, my style, my ease, my center.  I know who I used to be – I can see that guy in my mind’s eye, but he’s not me.  I love what you say, “that you were trying to reinvent yourself in order to not deal with some issue about yourself that you were unable or unwilling to face,” because it’s compelling, and it fits the story.  I mean, most people reading this know the story: dumped by the woman I was willing to grovel for, debasing myself completely, unthinkingly, but perhaps everyone doesn’t know the innercore:

I’m not talking about her; I’m talking about me.  That death was a gift, a chance to die completely, and thus, be reborn.  They say that whenever a door closes, another opens, but even I am only beginning to understand how completely I was destroyed and reforged in the fires of my own suffering.  That girl left me like a brokedown rusted-through heap on the side of the highway, so if ever there was something to run away from, to be unwilling to face, there it is, out in the open.

It happened to me, to Jeff, to Mandala, to this me without a name, like a nuclear bomb on the horizon, mushroom cloud blossoming in the sky.  That same week, September ’08, my grandma died: double buck-shot to the chest, left for dead in a dark empty alley.  Breaking down I didn’t know which way was up, which up was down.  The pain I felt was a scalding brand, unbearable and yet I was forced to bear it.  Unable to run away, unable to escape, I cried a thousand tears, and yet, in those moments of absolute willingness to surrender, to give up and disappear, I met someone else, the dragon of my own soul, an ancient strength that commanded me, took hold of me, sat firm and said ‘no’.

In November of that year, I found out I inherited $30,000.  It didn’t mean much to me.  I went and bought a new pair of jeans.  And then this thing inside me, it grew.  I don’t know what happened.  The shell cracked open: all my hopes for reunion dashed, my reasons for scheming unveiled for the empty tumbleweeds they were, and yet, AND YET!!!!  And yet, suddenly new dreams took root in my rotted soul, the color seeped back into the world, saturated-bold, contrast-heightened, and I was dreaming about leaving, about traveling the world, blowing all the cash down to the last cent in a no-holds-barred kind of way.  I wasn’t running away; I was finally living again.

That was last spring, a year ago.  In July, a few days after my 29^th, I flew one-way to Kathmandu.  Even looking back on that self, I see he was bold, but green-in-the-gills, pale, unsure.  I never left on this trip expecting to change my name.  I could never have foreseen something like that, never in a million years.  All I knew was that I was on the hunt – traveling in the only way I knew how, as a pilgrim, opening myself to experience, willing to sweat and burn and cry, to try something new and rely on myself, to risk everything and lose it all.

It’s just that in India, I stopped running.  I’m not saying just that I was running across E Asia, but that I’d always been running, and if you won’t hate me for pointing it out, that’s what we’re all doing: chasing the wind, same as it always was.  When I stopped, when I began to meet people with the courage to bare all, I recognized the longing in myself to do the same, and the more skeletons I pulled out of the closet and cast into the light, the freer I felt.  It was only when, at the behest of a woman I respect, I suddenly began to consider that ‘Jeff’ might not fit anymore.  It’s like if you’d always called me ‘Pepito’ and then one day, all grown up, I decided I wanted to be ‘Pepe’, only Mandala is bigger than that, more beautiful, richer, more detailed and elegant, the work of art we all aspire to create, the soul we hope to manifest and be remembered for.

I’m not ‘Jeff’ and I never was, just like you’re not Arun or Saeed, Tommy or Robert, Jennifer, Shiho, Maria Elisa, or Mandala.   These are all just words, pointers, signifiers we answer to, not essence.  I can’t say who I am or who I was, but I know that there’s more.  There’s the dreams that tear me apart, the heart I yearn to expose, the experiences I want to share, the learnings, investigations, questings . . . it’s all an ecstatic adventure, a riddle with a twist, a self-aware conundrum and an eye that can’t see itself though it can behold even the highlands of Tibet and giant sunken stone temples lost in the jungle, massive arboreal muscles slowly pulsing, tumbling massive blocks back into the chaos from which they came.  Beauty exposed is all there is, pointers to the infinite, majesty revealed, the sun breaking through mile-high clouds on a 360 Texas horizon.

The same friend that wrote me that email said something once that I’ve never forgotten.  He said, “there’s no reason not to believe you’re a badass.”  That made sense at the time, like yeah right, why not?!  I am a badass!  Like Batman on the skyline, Spider-Man swinging from a web, only why not make it real?  Why not live out your essence?  All I know is that I don’t care anymore.  I don’t care if I fit in, if I can make myself small enough to fit into that square hole.  Think I’m crazy or not, another hippy lost in the madness of India, it’s no wind to affect my sails – I call myself Mandala.

life in goa is really a lot of fun, it’s cool, it’s challenging; it’s also very free. it’s hard to write about goa . . . cause it’s so much, and it’s like goa has completed this paradigm shift for me, from living on the outside-in to now the inside-out. goa is goa, that’s really all there is to say; you gotta come see it for yourself.

earlier i was hanging out for sushi-lunch with some japanese friends; some russians and an israeli came over later. this morning i went to german swimclub, even tho i didn’t go swimming. everyday they swim 30 minutes straight out into the ocean and then 30 minutes back. i went swimming with them for the first time 2 weeks ago; first time i ever swam straight out into the ocean . . . been riding around on the backs of motorcycles, as i learn my way around, and how to drive my own scooter on the left side.

through a sannyas-connection i ended up staying with a guy who is completely plugged into the scene here, so through him i’ve met all kinds of people, and gone to some killer parties, from sunup to sundown and back again, and through the parties, plugging into the scene myself and meeting the coolkids, mostly japanese and russian it seems. only one other American here, that i’ve met, big girl Tiffany from Alabama who is completely continental. but that’s it. what to make of that? not many americans in pune either, and even before it seems there were more tourists than travelers. what are we doing? are we the stereotype? so hardened to the task at hand that we forget that life is to be lived? what good is money if you don’t spend it traveling, living? what good is comfort that keeps you rotten?

anyway, i head back out again in a bit. go check out a couple parties, see some friends and some girls, probably stay up all night – it is my last party in goa after all, i leave for Tel Aviv in a couple days. so i pull on my battle-wearied cons, grab the keys for my weak-batteried honda kinetic, and head out into the night.