8 January 2007

It's going to be difficult to leave this place which has become so much like home. I feel far from the pangs of disorientation I experienced on my first arrival in India. If anything, it will be good to get away just for a taste of travel again, as life here has taken on a routine almost too much like home.

Daily drum classes and weekly performances, flute lessons and practice, weekend parties, regular editing work, swimming and long walks each day . . . with quite a familiar type of "alternative community" feeling, except for the fact that everyone smokes cigarettes constantly.

On the subject of fun, and New Year's resolutions, I will interject here a lovely quote about John Steinbeck's lifelong friend and boating companion, biologist Ed Ricketts (from The Log from the Sea of Cortez):

I think he set down his whole code and procedure once in a time of stress. He found himself quite poor and with three children to take care of. In a very scholarly manner, he told the children how they must proceed.

“We must remember three things,” he said to them. “I will tell them to you in the order of their importance. Number one and first in importance, we must have as much fun as we can with what we have. Number two, we must eat as well as we can, because if we don’t we won’t have the health and strength to have as much fun as we might. And number three and third and last in importance, we must keep the house reasonably in order, wash the dishes, and such things. But we will not let the last interfere with the other two.”

So it's on to Hampi (temple ruins) and Goa (more beaches) next week. In the meantime, there's not much new to report, but plenty of photos to share, which is after all a more efficient way to communicate this rich experience.

Varkala Photo Album

posted by Nowick Gray  # 2:16 AM