Diary Entry 10-21-2005

NOTE: My real diary has been the blog. Going to the computer often allows me to tell you what is happening, but also creates a log for me. I can go back and read over things myself, and of course, once I am back home I will put it all in a file called - THAT CRAZY 1.5 YEARS. Still when there is not internet, in my room at night, I get a chance to write a little on the beautiful diary John, Sidney and Aidan gave me.

I am in a good place. And, India has really been getting to me lately. I swear I am in the crisis/confusion/anxiety phase hopefully moving into the adjustment phase because things are madnening all of the time and I am trying to accept them. It's a bit incredible, all of it really. There is not let down of intensity here. Under so much suppression of sensuality, romance, etc, is an India altogether exploding with energy. The desires are intense and the way people live in this country mind boggling. I think I found a land crazier than my own Brazil. I think I found a land where in many ways I must suspend all disbelief and give into the greater power that is India.

India moves at its own pace and more and more I realize that we, the foreigners, are changing the story line, but not the greater narrative. These are people that survived hundreds and hundreds of years of change, thousands. A people that know inequality and have both deeply accepted it in the name of greater power and rejected it in the name of progress. They also survived the west - the French, the Portuguese and most evidently, the British. India is anything but weak. In fact, its edges are hard enough to break anything that stands too firmly against it. India stands with arms akimbo only moving when it wants - gladly for us from the outside - often moving it to place its hands in prayer and to say "Namaste" a word that poetically signifies hello/welcome and goodbye/farewell.

India is India and I am so glad it has allowed me in and in many ways sucked me into its beautiful vortex.

"Into the Woods to Find the Giant..."
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