After separating from Addison, I made my way back to Teton Valley Idaho, where the skies are endless and expansive, and you can watch weather patterns roll in from many miles away, well before they reach you.
One evening, as I was wrestling with painful feelings, I decided to step outside to get some air, and realized one of the dark, massive, churning clouds I had been watching all day had finally descended upon us.
Before I went to sleep that night, I wrote this poem:
Another Hour Has Blown Away
The heat expands over me
as the sun beats down.
Fans turn their blades to keep me cool.
My heart contracts within me
I am breathing through the pain
as the weather starts to turn.
And just as I step outside,
wondering how I’ll get through the next hour
I see a shadow growing on the horizon
as though being exorcised from the Earth by the sun’s rays.
My aunt Ros was organizing some books a couple of weeks ago, when one of them fell and opened to this poem…
For a Child Born Dead
What ceremony can we fit
You in now? If you had come
Out of a warm and noisy room
To this, there’d be an opposite
For us to know you by. We could
Imagine you in a lively mood
And then look at the other side,
The mood drawn out of you, the breath
Defeated by the power of death.
But we have never seen you stride
Ambitiously the world we know.
You could not come and yet you go.
But there is nothing now to mar
Your clear refusal of our world.
Not in our memories can we mould
You or distort your character.
Then all our consolation is
That grief can be as pure as this.
-Elizabeth Jennings (1926)
Ros typed the poem out, printed it and glued it to the back of a little chickadee painting photo, which she sent to us.
The poem struck me and brought me to tears.
Elizabeth, the author of this poem, describes the sudden death of her child as “your clear refusal of our world.”
Oh how rejected I felt by my daughter when she died.
“We created such a beautiful home for you!” I cried after her death. “We got everything ready. I dusted, cleaned, planted a garden, raked leaves; we hammered in every nail on the back porch so your soft, fat legs didn’t get scraped by them. I practiced Spanish and French so you could hear me in the womb and grow up bilingual! I meditated with you every morning, I read you books, I imagined your whole life stretched out in front of us. We were going to take you on bicycle tours, take you to France to meet your relatives, take you to India to hang out with your monk uncle! You were going to have such an awesome life! Why didn’t you want it? Why didn’t you want us? How could you leave me like this?”
But then Elizabeth says, “Not in our memories can we mould or distort your character. Then, all our consolation is that grief can be pure as this.”
Chickadee was and is the perfect child. She never grew up and became tainted by the many sorrows of this world. She never had a drug problem, or yelled at me “I hate you!”. She never became depressed.
How true are Elizabeth’s words to me.
Later, I reread the poem and examined the date on which it had been written. 1926. That was almost a hundred years ago.
Almost a hundred years ago this woman experienced a loss and grief so similar to mine that the poem she wrote is one I could have written.
Grief is universal. Joy is universal. Pain is universal. Happiness is universal. Who knew that a grief this specific could be so universal? I knew and yet I needed this poem as a reminder.
Whatever you are feeling right now, whatever pain you are experiencing, whatever longing you’re having, remember this:
You are not alone.
Somewhere in the world, and at many points in history, there is someone who has felt or is feeling what you are feeling. Someone has gone through what you’re going through. Someone is going through what you are currently experiencing. Someone will experience what you are going through in the future.
Thank you, Elizabeth Jennings, for writing that poem, and Ros for finding it and sending it to us. 🙂
P.S. We are going to be releasing an E.P. in honor of our daughter’s one year anniversary, called “Chickadee”. When you preorder the album, your name will be printed on the inside of the album cover, to memorialize you as one of the people who made the project possible. Click here to preorder: https://thelovesprockets.bandcamp.com/album/chickadee
“God is the love that moves the sun and the other stars.”
I sit at a table on a restaurant patio overlooking the ocean this morning.
I have been dreaming about eggs for days now, imagining them gliding around deliciously in a handmade tortilla, dripping with salsa.
And now, here they are with me, huevos rancheros, gazing solemnly up from my plate in their warm bath of red salsa and fresh, crumbled cheese.
The tortillas that my waiter presents me in a basket wrapped in cloth are, indeed, handmade and very hot.
Before diving into my breakfast, I sip my cafe ollo (coffee brewed with cinnamon) and look out at the three cormorants (badass birds that can swim underwater) who have set themselves up on the three available wooden posts that stick out above the ocean tide.
These three birds are facing the sun, which rose about an hour earlier, and are sitting silent and still, in worshipful reverence of the source of warmth and light for the entire Earth.
I stare at them, appreciation swelling in my heart.
Without water, I would die, I think, looking out at the vast body of lapping waves in front of me, and so would these three birds.
Without the sun, I would die, I continue in my head, looking at their peaceful, beaked faces pointed at the sun, and so would these three birds.
I feel my connection to the water, the sun, the birds and… without food, I would die. I gaze down at my breakfast.
I imagine the man or woman inside the kitchen who has carefully prepared my tortillas and huevos rancheros for me.
I feel gratitude filling my chest for this stranger who is making sure I have a delicious meal to give me energy for my day.
And I think about the chicken who has laid the eggs I am about to eat, and wonder where she is right now. Most likely she is scratching around in the dirt next door, chasing bugs with that vacant look in her eye that all chickens seem to have.
I take a sip of the freshly squeezed orange juice waiting in a tall glass in front of me, and imagine the orange tree reaching towards the sun, drinking in his rays and fattening up her crop of bright, sweet orbs of fruit.
After these contemplations, I promptly begin eating.
The waiter approaches a little while later, smiling at me good naturedly with his haggard teeth, and I thank him as he takes away my used napkins.
“Donde vienes?” he asks me (meaning, ‘where do you come from?’).
“Austin,” I reply.
“Austria?”
“Austin Texas,” I clarify, silencing the ‘x’ in Texas so he can be sure where it is I’m talking about. “Voy a Brazil con mi bici,” I explain with a smile.
His eyes widen. “Con su bici?”
“Si.”
He wanders away, clearly needing some time to digest this information before his next question.
I have been traveling from Austin, TX by bicycle, bus and car for 2 months now, and in the last week it has now been solely by bicycle.
When I left Austin, headed for Mexico, I didn’t really have a way to prepare myself for the endless highways running through the endless desert, broken up only by cities that are barely navigable by bicycle.
I soon found that my comfort level allowed me only some short stints by bicycle, and then many more by bus and car.
The waiter returned, this time with a new question:
“No tienes miedo a viajar sola?” (‘aren’t you afraid to travel alone?’)
It took me a minute to decipher this question, because I wasn’t familiar with the word ‘miedo’ (‘fear’). But after repeating the unknown word aloud a few times, I understood.
I shrugged. “Un poco. Pero, esta bien.” (‘a little, but it’s okay’)
He laughed and walked away again.
I have come to know Fear over these past 2 months, more intimately than I had ever hoped.
Rarely have I actually been in any ‘real danger’. The fear I have been experiencing is mostly hand-made. 😉
After arriving in Mexico City in the car of a friend, I met Mestre Acordeon for the first time, practiced capoeira with Profesor Nao Veio, spent 5 days with Addison who came to visit me, got a new tattoo, and then finally got on a bus to a town in Tabasco called Villahermosa.
View from inside the bus. 10 minutes after we pulled out of the station in Mexico City, someone decided to drive right in front of the bus and get their fender nearly bent off.
In Villahermosa I spent my first night sleeping in a hammock, something I’ve never done before. It was very hot and muggy, but after being bitten by mosquitoes I eventually pulled out my sleeping bag and somehow managed to wrap it around myself while not falling sideways out of the hammock.
I was at a Warmshowers host’s house. His name is Juan, and he was expecting two more cyclists the next day.
My first morning in Villahermosa I was awoken at 7:30 am by the sound of someone bashing a wall in across the street with a sledgehammer. I shifted around in my hammock, and then eventually sat up to greet my host and his friend.
They both left to work for the day, and I greeted my fear, who was waiting for my undivided attention. I meditated, journaled, cried, called friends, and cried some more.
During my walking meditation, I saw a little statue of Jesus Christ in Juan’s hallway. And I began to say to myself, over and over, “The Kingdom of Heaven is inside of me.”
Finally, I heard a knock during mid-afternoon and opened the door for the two cyclists Juan had been expecting.
Their names are Charles and Denise, and they are retired french canadians who have been cycling in South and Central America now for a year. They started in Peru, cycled down to the tip of South America (Chile), than back up into Peru where they spent four months, after which they continued north and eventually ended up at Juan’s house with me, in Villahermosa.
I was glad for their company, and Denise and I walked together to a nearby supermarket to buy food. I had a strange sense of feeling like a child again, wanting her to be my mommy, not wanting to lose her in the huge supermarket.
This kind of fear I experience is the strongest when I am transitioning into a new, unknown situation. This time it was the transition from Mexico City to now actually cycle touring again, and not knowing what it would be like to spend days on my own, sleeping at hotels in towns I knew nothing about.
But at the moment, I was safe, and I had a wonderful couple to spend the evening with. They made a pasta dinner for all of us, and drew me a route through the Yucatan on my map of Mexico, since they had just come from the area I was headed. This brought me some relief, as the unknown began to feel less ‘un’ and more ‘known’.
That night we pulled the hammock out of the way, and the three of us lined up on the tile floor and slept side by side with our sleeping bags and earplugs.
Sleeping with strangers has never felt so comforting.
Me, Charles, Denise and Juan
The next morning we all packed up and made our procession out to the sidewalk. Juan was chatting with us amiably and helping us out the door.
Charles, Denise and I navigated through the city, and then, after a few blocks of riding together, they turned left and I went straight.
I took a deep breath. Here I go… I thought, watching the highway take shape out in front of me. I would be on Highway 180 for the next week or so.
After sitting and gazing out over the ocean some more, the waiter arrived to take my plate away. I was left with my coffee and orange juice (probably not the best combo for my digestion, but who cares), which I took as long as I wanted to sip and savor.
In Mexico they NEVER rush you in a restaurant. You can sit at your table for hours, maybe even days, and they’ll just smile and offer you more coffee.
But eventually I did raise my hand for the waiter. “La cuenta por favor.”
He bustled away to count up my order.
I’m doing it, I thought, watching a large, blue-black grackle making a ruckus in the tree next to me. I’m enjoying being alone.
It’s so hard for me to go to a nice restaurant, or hang out in a beautiful place and not be filled with the desire to share it with someone.
It’s not that I don’t feel like I deserve it, but I love sharing the world with other people. And maybe I’m afraid it’s as if none of this actually happened, if there wasn’t someone to witness it.
‘If Jahnavi hangs out in a fancy hotel and meditates by the gurgling pool in the garden out back and no one else witnesses it, did it really happen?’ 😛
I say good bye to the waiter, who wishes me luck and ‘cuidado’ (‘be careful’), and make my way back to my hotel room.
I’m taking a day off at this hotel, because since I left Villahermosa that morning with the french cyclists, I have been pulling 7-8 hour days, fighting a headwind as I travel alongside the Gulf of Mexico. My body wants a bicycle, wind and sun free day.
My first day back on the bicycle, from Villahermosa to Frontera, was 82 km and so easy, I was confused. It only took me 4 ½ hours, and there I was, in Frontera, booking a room at a cheap hotel at 2 pm.
I figured the next day, 99 km, shouldn’t be so bad.
There’s a whole lot more water in Tabasco and Yucatan compared to the deserts I’ve been traveling through for the past 2 months!
Taking a break from the rain
But that’s when I hit the waterfront, and was reminded about the joys of a nice, healthy, headwind. At first I was more focused on the fact that I was being rained on pretty thoroughly for a couple of hours, but once that cleared, I began to feel concerned.
I was traveling so SLOWLY.
After 5 hours, I had only gotten halfway to Cidudad del Carmen, the town I was intent on reaching, where a Couchsurfer named Victor Hugo was awaiting my arrival.
It was like moving in slow motion for 9 hours straight.
When I finally reached the city–after crossing a mile long bridge and weeping copiously as my speed slowed to a crawl due to the even greater wind exposure–I had to cross through the entire city to the other end, where Hugo lives.
At one point I pulled over to look at my cellphone map, and a very excited, older Mexican man approached me, eager to practice his english and find out what in the hell I was up to.
I was so tired I could barely conjure up my good manners, though I appreciated his interest in my trip. Most people just regard me as an alien here in Mexico, so when someone actually treats me like a human being and asks me about my life I feel glad.
After chatting with him and explaining that I was riding my bicycle to Brazil and yes, I am crazy, I continued on to Hugo’s apartment.
Hugo was amazed to see me and my bicycle pull up to his place, and helped me inside.
The beer I drank before we ate dinner was like an elixir of life, and we talked about travel, my sister and her husband’s 6 month excursion across half the world, my mom and my brother living in India, and his part in his family’s business.
My second night with Hugo. I made him ‘sandwiches like in the USA’. He loved them, especially the hummus which he was trying for the first time.
I had been planning on continuing on to the next place in the morning, but I had already arrived at Hugo’s much later than expected and was feeling rather knackered.
I awoke early the next morning, looked at some maps, and finally decided I would take the day off.
After a morning meditation session with Addison over the phone, I wrote this down from Thich Nhat Hanh’s book called ‘Fear’:
“If you are capable of living deeply one moment of your life, you can learn to live the same way all the other moments of your life.” -Thay
Sometimes I do need to live life moment to moment–any more than that can feel overwhelming when I am in a certain state of mind. And now I can just consider it a meditation practice, this one moment where I choose to live deeply.
“If you can dwell in one moment, you will discover eternity.” -Rene Char
Hugo took me to Walmart so I could buy supplies for my trip (and where, coincidentally, they were blasting capoeira music), and then we ate lunch under an oceanside tent restaurant.
We discussed jealousy (something Hugo struggles with, as do I and most people) and he asked me how I deal with it.
“Meditation!” I said. “It’s the only way!” I laughed.
He was intrigued, so we talked more about meditation and discussed the best way for him to get started on his own, since he’d never done it before.
That evening, my right hip and leg began to hurt so badly, that I was having trouble walking. I tried to brush it away, assuming I would feel fine in the morning and be able to ride.
I stretched, massaged the area, slathered myself with biofreeze (thanks again Diane!), drank a glass of water with arnica drops in it, drank magnesium, and then finally lay myself out to sleep. It took a while to fall asleep, because the only comfortable position for my leg was straight, so that didn’t give me many options for how I could lay down (and boy do I like to shift positions every 5 minutes).
I awoke at 6:30 am, eager to find out if my leg had magically healed overnight.
But when I stood up to walk to the bathroom, I was filled with dismay. It hurt just as badly… maybe worse.
I called Radha and Erik (who are in Thailand) and discussed the situation with them.
Finally, I decided I would have to take the day off. Even if I could manage to get on my bicycle and ride 80 km that day, getting off to walk around was agony, and probably not the safest situation to put myself in considering I’d be traveling out in the middle of nowhere, alone.
So I stayed, and spend some quality time with Fear.
I’ve been meditating so much on this trip that I told Addison, “I’m beginning to feel like a monk, like I’m in a monastery… but I’m on an epic journey at the same time… so it’s like I’m a warrior monk.”
The day off didn’t kill me, and I even got some practical things done, including making music with my mandolin.
“Art is the essence of life, and the substance of art is mindfulness.” -Thay
The following two days would be a blur of oceanside cycling, granola bars, sunburn, Harry Potter audiobook, hotels, limping around, whistling Mexican men, semi trucks, gray foxes, coatis, iguanas the size of cats, swamps, mangroves, beaches, albatrosses, eagles, hawks, fish, exhaustion, alone-ness, and more meditation.
Looking out from my hotel room in Sabancuy
A bush full of coatis. How many can you see?
A lizard the size of a cat
Miles of swamps
Lunch at the only (rather fancy) restaurant between Sabancuy and Champoton
Mid-day photoshoot break (anything’s better than getting back on that bicycle seat!)
The long and winding road over more swamplands
Having spent so much time gazing at the ocean, I gleaned this thought from my reflections: “The ocean is not afraid of change. She never stops moving, never stops shifting, and changing the sands at her edges and the ocean floor beneath her.”
At another point, as I was riding past miles of mangroves and swamps and listening to Danny Malone’s album, ‘Balloons’, this question he asks stuck with me:
“They say the way to know yourself, is by yourself
But what if you’re someone you don’t really wanna know…?”
When I pulled into Champoton yesterday and saw the Hotel Posada la Regia on my right side, I didn’t care if it was cheap, expensive, new, old, had internet, or hot water… I just wanted to stop, and sleep.
My fully loaded bicycle looks a little out of place in this setting, but she doesn’t mind
But after being shown to my room and realizing it’s actually a nice place and a reasonably nice town, and taking consideration of my very unhappy right leg, I decided I was staying an extra night and that was that.
My companion for the night
“The past is not me. I am not limited by the past.
The present is not me. I am not limited by the present.
The future is not me. I am not limited by the future.”
My goal right now is to rest, write, read, and (yes, you guessed it) meditate. Than it’s another three days to Merida, where a warmshowers host is awaiting my arrival on Saturday.
A side neighborhood here in Champoton
I’m learning to relish this alone-ness, to let it sink into my skin.
Because once I get to Playa del Carmen, I may be traveling with a whole lotta people, and potentially looking back on this sweet, quiet time wistfully–and then turning back to my large group of humans and reveling in their company all the same.
I was writing in my journal this morning and flipped back to a page where I’d written a poem shortly after deciding to ride my bicycle to Brazil…
It was written on Oct. 26th, when a lot people were discouraging me from doing my trip, fearing for my life.
They were calling me, writing to me, sharing scary news reports about Mexico and Central America with me.
Now, as I stand on the brink of my adventure, I still hear the naysayers and the fearful, but I feel compassion for them, and if anything, I simply want to be safe so as to not cause undue suffering to those I love.
Regardless, it was kind of a cool poem, so I’ve shared it below:
Hey, so last week I shared some thoughts about character perspectives in books vs. movies, and a funny story from Anne Lamott’s book, ‘Bird by Bird’.
A song I wrote recently (‘By the Pale Moonlight’) has an interesting character perspective switch half-way through that I wanted to share with you. I based the song on the well-known French song “Au Claire de la Lune”.
“Au Clair de la Lune” is a common French folk song that dates back to at least the mid-18th Century. In 2008, the earliest known recording of the human voice was digitized, and the unknown singer on the recording is singing a small snippet of “Au Clair de la Lune”.
In this song, the story begins from the perspective of a lonely poet/author, who is knocking on his friend’s door so he can borrow a pen and light his candle in the middle of the night.
Back in those days, if you wanted to stay up all night with creative ideas or wake up at 3 in the morning and write something down, you’d better hope you have ink for your pen and some coals left in the fireplace to light your candle with!
A couple verses in, the perspective changes.
Is it from his friend’s perspective as he watches from his window, or just an omnipotent perspective?
Here’s how my english version of the song goes:
At your door I’m knocking
By the pale moonlight
Lend a pen I beg you
I’ve a word to write
Dark now is my candle
My fire burns no more
For the love of heaven
Open up your door
My friend cries in answer
By the pale moonlight
“In my bed I’m lying
Late and chill’s the night
Yonder at the neighbor’s
Someone is astir
Fire’s freshly kindled
Oh get a light from her.”
To the neighbor’s house then
By the pale moonlight
Goes our lonely author
To beg a pen to write
“Who knocks there so softly?”
Calls a voice above
“Open wide your door now
It is the God of Love.”
Seek they pen and candle
By the pale moonlight
They can see so little
Dark is now the night
What they find in seeking
That is not revealed
All behind her door
Is carefully concealed
And in my version of this song, I finish up by singing the first line in French (what they are saying in French is a bit different from the English version):
Au clair de la lune Mon ami Pierrot Prete-moi ta plume Pour écrire un mot
Ma chandelle est morte Je n’ai plus de feu Ouvre-moi ta porte Pour l’amour de Dieu
If you want to hear me play the full song, just click here! (the song starts at around 4:40 in the video)
I hope you enjoyed reading this post. 🙂
Please comment below to share your thoughts about writing, characters, or song-writing (or anything else this topic made you think of!)…
You know, when your hormones are so jacked you can’t see straight, and just the thought of the other person sends you into state of unencumbered bliss?
I’m guessing this has probably happened to you, even if you don’t want to admit it. 😉
What I always find interesting about falling in love and about human beings in general (‘interesting’ is a nice way of saying ‘really fucking annoying’) is that when something is happening to us that we perceive to be really good, we can’t help but dread the potential end of it.
As always, we fear death.
The death of relationships, the death of the life we know now.
Even when we can recognize how healthy and normal change is, we can’t help but fear it subconsciously.
Well, at least I do, anyways. 🙂
So during the last bout of falling in love I did (which was about three years ago, thank God), the song Dark Angel was born.
This song asks alot of questions…
But does not provide any answers.
Here’s how it goes:
Dark Angel
“I’ll be your innocence if you’ll be my sex appeal
Yes, I’ll be your innocence if you’ll be my sex appeal
You’ve got everything it takes to drive this situation wild
I saw you first, I saw you first
I saw you first and now you are mine
But I’m losing control of this situation all of the time
And are you the best thing that’s ever happened to me?
Are you the one to make my blind eyes see?
Or are you my dark angel of death?
Are you my terminal breath?
I’ll be your calling if you’ll be my answering
Yes I’ll be your calling if you’ll be my answering
You’ve got everything it takes to make a murderer of me
And are you the best thing that’s ever happened to me?
You know, when your hormones are so jacked you can’t see straight, and just the thought of the other person sends you into state of unencumbered bliss?
I’m guessing this has probably happened to you, even if you don’t want to admit it. 😉
What I always find interesting about falling in love and about human beings in general (‘interesting’ is a nice way of saying ‘really fucking annoying’) is that when something is happening to us that we perceive to be really good, we can’t help but dread the potential end of it.
As always, we fear death.
The death of relationships, the death of the life we know now.
Even when we can recognize how healthy and normal change is, we can’t help but fear it subconsciously.
Well, at least I do, anyways. 🙂
So during the last bout of falling in love I did (which was about three years ago, thank God), the song Dark Angel was born.
This song asks alot of questions…
But does not provide any answers.
Here’s how it goes:
Dark Angel
“I’ll be your innocence if you’ll be my sex appeal
Yes, I’ll be your innocence if you’ll be my sex appeal
You’ve got everything it takes to drive this situation wild
I saw you first, I saw you first
I saw you first and now you are mine
But I’m losing control of this situation all of the time
And are you the best thing that’s ever happened to me?
Are you the one to make my blind eyes see?
Or are you my dark angel of death?
Are you my terminal breath?
I’ll be your calling if you’ll be my answering
Yes I’ll be your calling if you’ll be my answering
You’ve got everything it takes to make a murderer of me
And are you the best thing that’s ever happened to me?
Though we long for glory
