Turnings

1/30/23 Since the immersion at Sangam Mahuli, people told me: don't cry now. The general idea is that having offered reverence to the ashen remains and ritual food to the lingering soul, one should encourage that soul to disentangle from earthly connections and achieve peace or union with the divine. Too much mourning and crying tends to hold a soul back. That is one reason the ashes in the water are gently pushed out into the current. The rest of us also drifted on. Jaye and Jeff returned to Pune right after the ritual, and I went a day later. After seeing Jaye and Jeff off on their travels home, I was invited by friends to a few days' retreat at the Hotel Kailash located right next to the Ellora caves . It's a lovely place, made more peaceful by the fact that the caves were closed for a holiday, thereby reducing the inevitable ruckus of auto horns and roaring buses. The stay there was mainly in memoriam of a decades-long Pune friend lost during the covid shutdown who had

1/18/2023 After a few days in Pune to get our feet steady, we joined two long-time friends of Lee’s who drove us to his village. The drive was a story in itself, but let’s jump ahead to the village, where we were welcomed with a mix of joy at our presence and sorrow in our shared loss. I cannot fully describe the feeling of seeing dear people again after several years, knowing how much better Lee knew them than I, how he would know exactly who was cousins to whom, how he would have asked about their fields and crops and children, how he would have joked and teased with them about precious moments they had shared. Instead I stood dumb. I did feel the women’s hands on mine and their comforting touch as they sighed mournfully “what can we do anyway?” and “G-d turns our world upside down but we have no choice but to accept.” On the morning of January 14 th we placed the cremated remains – called asthi – out in front of the village temple complex (a Rama temple, a goddess temple,

 1/18/2023 After an intense sequence of days I am trying to find a pause point from which to offer you a narrative and some perspective. Whirling about are so many images and experiences, I have yet to put much into words even for myself.  In the meantime, here are some images from Pune. This city has an old, intimate core where some British-era buildings in dark stone still stand, along with just enough battered dusty trees to evoke the time when it was a city of shade and bicycles. But cement pushes in everywhere, the trees are cut for road widening, and the high-rises pitilessly march up the hills.  The snaps from my phone can't begin to evoke this city. A kind friend has put a real camera in my hands, so perhaps I shall be able to offer you better images in future posts.   From the edge of Pune, smog blurs the relentless spread of cement high-rises.  But in the city itself we stayed at a posh lodge and had some good meals.  Jeff and Jaye enjoyed most of the food. T Our lodge ha

1/9/2023 Travel, like many intense experiences, is completely absorbing in the moment. The waiting, the uncertainty about timing, negotiating security gates, airports, etc. Then afterwards in retrospect the moments merge into a simple block: air transit from Detroit via Amsterdam to Mumbai, then by car to Pune. I have mental snapshots of watching a small child explore the aisles of the huge airplane, and of a pale, drained woman who seemed to speak an Arabic language resting her feet while her equally exhausted husband went away with a despairing expression to try to find tea in the Amsterdam airport. All the glimpses don't string into a narrative but somehow merge into a palimpsest of memories and images from various periods.  That feeling of layering reassures me, but also disorients when the overlays don't match up. Every moment there is the awareness of Lee's absence, and worse, how each experience plasters over the old, covering the memories of his presence. But anyway

12/29/2022 With the thought that you might like to follow this ripple extending from Lee's last year, I am offering this travel blog.  Next week I’ll be traveling to India with Lee’s sister Jaye and his nephew Jeff. We will spend a few days in the city of Pune before driving to a village in the Satara district where Lee’s friends there hope to immerse his cremated remains the Krishna river, which is the standard practice for the Hindus in the village (as far as I know, Muslims practice burial). This week we are gathering: we are gathering the items we'll carry; we are gathering our strength; we are gathering our thoughts; and then the three of us will eventually gather with people in Pune and then in Lee's village near Satara to remember him and mourn his death. As we prepare, you might like to review my notes from the last trip Lee and I made:   https://sites.google.com/view/2020travels/home