Moving, Goddesses, and Weavers

Goodbye red velvet table cloth and long tables where we ate museli, milk, chocolate croissants, and digestive biscuits every morning and read books and asked questions, like, what is memory?, how do we remember? What is progress? Enlightenment? Faith? India? Goodbye green grassy hilltop where soccer balls disappear forever into the pine forests. Goodbye huge shower spiders, goodbye pink walls, bugs stuck in the red velvet tablecloth,  goodbye sunset hikes down the mountain and moonlight hikes up the rocky trail, goodbye Stoberry hills forever. 

Moving. 

 In the Nadi weaver's shop

Other things that have happened. We went to Nadi to visit the international school, but were there on the wrong day.  The principal came out, an Indian woman, and said, no the children are taking tests.  So I asked her, “Can you tell me about your remarkably unusual school?” I had been there last week, and had met the children, who talked of miracles and meditation, as they threw their long scarves around their heads and pretended to be, I don’t know, dancing princesses. So she took us to the shrine/exhibit hall of meditation.  If I was not dreaming before, I was dreaming now. There were portraits, many portraits of the Shree Mataji, “a goddess, the goddess of all the goddesses” she said. In fact they had preserved an entire room, with a huge throne, right out of Mourdour, or the Hall of the Mountain King, with carpets, and a bed, behind a large window, bordered by many statues of Ganesh, in this case the god of innocence.  She said, “photos can show us what we cannot see” and commenced showing us the miracle photos, Shri Mataji surrounded by bright lights, Casper, sparks.  “Don’t stop meditating” we were admonished, by the mathematics teacher who had assumed the role of guide in this strange visitor center.  Clark said "bad photography makes ghosts". 

 There was a hall of the writings of the Shri Mataji,  pages from a sketchbook, with diagrams, random thoughts about evolution, eternal progression, animals.  Over the doorways were little shrines with postcard angels from Leonardo, a tableau of the last supper, symbols from Islam. This was the second goddess we had encountered in our area.   By this time most of us were a little freaked out and wanted to wake up and have a glass of milk. So we walked down to Nadi, to the weaver and felt his bolts of cloth, woven into scarves, dreamlike scarves, blankets of refuge, turbans and table clothes, dresses and vests.  And that is where I bought a Yak blanket. Then I wrote a poem about the bakery:

I am buying a croissant

 quickly.  Everyone is waiting 

Outside, the white taxis 

honk their horns

Dobku Ko is teaching someone

ardently at the table behind me

I sip my milk slowly

and learn compassion

green hilltop or busy street lined with vendors?

Cooking class, making momos. 

The Tibetan weaving guild, amazing skill, and we wandered through, like invisible ghosts, or maybe we are just from an invisible age where things move too fast.