The Ashram

When I was a little bit younger, I traveled around America and saw some interesting things. It was not that long ago - the late 1990's - and somehow, I kept ending up in intentional and unintentional communities where people were defining themselves as "seekers" of one kind or another. I guess I defined myself that way to some degree as well. Hindus, Muslims, Sufis, Zen Buddhists, Cultists, Trappists, Sexual Yogis, Devotees of Buckminster Fuller, Renaissance Faire Carnies, Ufologists, Conspiracy Theorists, Philosophers, Freemasons, Temp Workers, Musicians, Poets, Social Servants, Artists and so on. Some of these people were absolutely insane. Functional, but insane. Others were intelligent and empathic. Most were somewhere in between. Most had a good sense of humor.

Today, I long for the American West again. But today I want to be in a very specific place: A little ashram in Colorado's remote San Luis Valley called the Haidakhandi Universal Ashram. Right about now I'd like to be sittin' up there, cross-legged, watching the pines sway against a blue sky and the air full of the kind of positive ions that make everything you observe taste sweet in your mouth. I wanna smell that thick, perfumed Indian incense that's caked onto the stick so heavy it looks like a smoking corndog, and fills the valley with its aroma of beeswax, rose gardens, vestal virgins, deer musk, tea olives, resin from unknown trees, tiger civet, and a truckload of smoldering cardamom. I wanna have no idea where i'll sleep tonight, but know that i'll be taken care of because the Universe is electric and alive with a beneficent sentience.

Of course, I can create a lot of that here, now, and with the added benefit of knowing where I'll sleep and knowing that it is, in fact, A Very Good Home. My home. The best. Sometimes, though, I just wanna be alone & out on that mountain for a little while, in the golden sunlight, underneath the pines, which are magical pines, hanging on for dear life. It's all a nice fantasy and a way of saying "Thank you." And in that same fantasy, I'm able to condense everything and everyone that I love into one single, beautiful, lyrical thought - a thought that I can think whenever I want.

For all my pessimism about where humanity seems to be headed, I really do like existence. I love my five senses - even though they bring me pain and pleasure - and I love...well, whatever else I love. I wanna wallow and wrestle and muck around in it all, and I wanna drink up the pine trees with my eyes, because there's a clock tower in the middle of town and it's ticking down the minutes. On a bad day, that clock tower is my nemesis - the steam drill to my sledgehammer. On a good day, I know that the clock tower has as much of a right to exist as I do.