well, i'm back. and now that the whole week long trial and tribulation of the resetting of the internal clock business is pretty much now squared away (dear mercury, is this what retrograde feels like??? good goddess, i'm so sorry!!! love, ilvs), i can return to my regularly scheduled With A Tendency Towards The Verbose program.
today's discourse shall revisit the topic of the previous discourse, The Dirty, and my particular relationship to it because i had a lot of time to think on it in India because India is/gives/has a lot of everything, including time and The Dirty, and wouldn't you know it, i have more to say about it.
as it turns out, The Dirty really only irks me when The Dirty is not my decision. por ejemplo, if i decide, for whatever unholy reason, to step into a sandbox, it is my choice and in that moment i have consciously (yet inexplicably) chosen to embrace The Dirty, thereby bypassing my deep seeded neurological cringe and reducing it to tiny dry silica particles aka Mere Sand. on the flip side, if someone pushes me into The Dirty, well, let's just say that that person best have a really good reason for griming up my fancy.
me going to India, while not exactly 100% my idea, was in fact 100% my choice. no one but i dunked myself neck deep into the cold, blessed, filthy waters of the holy Ganges while monkeys watched from the rocky beach. no one but i forced me to sit directly under where that green parrot was perched as it unabashedly relieved itself upon my trousers in front of throngs of Taj Mahal visitors. no one but i thrust my foot into piles after piles of cow manure ranging from Ancient to Maybe That Just Happened Not Too Long Before Now while hunting down the street food yam man thru impossibly populated streets. and no one but i twisted mine arm as i climbed the Never Really Swept Thoroughly In 1000+ Years steps to the top of the temple where holy persons smudged colorful powders on my third eye and i filled my lungs with the thick, borderline acrid smoke of incense and burning ghee.
all this and more, done on my own accord. and it was lovely.
in fact, i reached a level of comfort hitherto unknown to me. when my fellow travel partner person spilt their milky street chai on my travel pants that one morning, i was completely nonplussed! something about the combination of having woken up in an ashram that morning, having super sugared caffeine coursing thru my pre-breakfast veins, and really having settled into the warmth of the thin, week old cloak of The Dirty i was sporting, magically turned that capitol D Dirty into a lowercase 'namaste, my sister'.
India, it has been observed, does not give you what you want; India gives you what you need. so, thank you India, i couldn't have gotten to where i got without you. now i know that while it may take an entire village to raise a child, it only takes 1.27 billion people to change me of my peculiarities.
namaste.
dedicated to my parrot friend. 12feb15.