It is almost erotic, this dance of boy and jeep, man and machine. The reach and wrap of these lithe bodies and lean limbs as they clean every inch of this vehicle, the focus and almost tenderness with which they wash, scrub, polish, rinse… From here it seems such an intimate communion; a lover’s touch and such a hungry attention, as the boys watch every move Dinesh makes and hang on his every word. He is a good and patient teacher, passing on his obsessively meticulous jeep stewardship to this, the next generation of safari drivers. This is, after all, how it begins, the apprenticeship to The Dream.
The boys have been with us like shadows, almost 24/7, since we arrived. They come first thing in the morning and just sit in the jeep, hands tentative and yearning on the wheel. It can be another hour before Dinesh has risen and had his tea, but no matter, the boys have an infinite capacity for waiting, if it means mere proximity to the jeep and promises even more. Dineth, the younger of the two, is so earnest it hurts to behold - he is quiet, gentle, and his smile will most certainly break a thousand hearts in time. They also helped make the Palace, and Dineth, the older boy, has been conscripted to help collect fish heads and other nasty bits from the fishmonger to make Tissa’s dinners while we are gone!
0 Comments
First light . D’s mother, the monks, the birds and geckos, and me. These monks are the most tuneful I’ve heard in Sri Lanka. D’s mother, a goddess among women. She is almost completely round, like a Skittle with legs, and has 2 front teeth. She has a heart the size of a mack truck, a smile that could charm the pants off of Stalin*, and this light in her eyes - twinkling like the stars but deep and lasting like the earth’s own molten core. Basically, she rocks. She all but had a heart attack when I tried to help her with the laundry at 4:30 this morning. An hour later, when I failed to sneakily sweep the kitchen floor (still can’t sleep) and bring on the 2nd heart attack, I finally acquiesce to her insistent offers to make me tea, and now I sit in the jeep covered in bug spray, and write. In front of me, the 5 fur-worms sleep in the Puppy Palace, and Tissa sleeps in a big pile of sand just beyond that. She seems to have accepted domesticity quite readily - I think she knows her name already, and recognizes my special whistle, coming and going happily in & out of the Palace to feed the pups and then be free of them. Back to the vet today to buy some nutritional supplement and try desperately to put some meat on her bones. She is a terribly sweet girl. Lion, one of the 2 pups i have “claimed”, is not so sweet, but kind of an incestuous pervert - she has this nasty habit of fellating her 3 brothers, thinking (I hope) that their penises are teats… I try not to project human morality on her, but I must confess it strikes me as Deeply WRONG and makes me ever so slightly uncomfortable!!! Today will be another day that we do not leave for Arugam Bay, & I’m fine with that. Anxious as I am to get the Hot Flash ( my 7”5 hull) in the water at l-o-n-g last, I want to make sure the dogs are settled and Dinesh’s parents are completely ok with temporary guardianship. We’ll be back before the puppies become trouble, so it should be fine. * i have no idea how hard it was to get Stalin’s pants off, truth be told… So very Romeo-and-Juliet, Dinesh climbing through my bedroom window in the dark of night for a brief tryst… ridiculous, on the one hand (he’s a grown man), but fun in its hushed kookiness. I think I do understand why he doesn’t want to tell his parents Who I Am until I have really “committed” to staying with him here in Sri Lanka - it is a big deal and why go through it if it’s this is a passing affair. I also kind of like that his folks get to know me without that layer of scrutiny - right now I am just a crazy white lady, charming in my love of animals, and slightly annoying in my hellbent determination to sweep the yard when no one is looking! They seem bemused by my eccentricity and delighted to have me as a guest… that’s a good start. Again the 2 mothers (Tissa, varus caninus, and Rani, varus Dineshus) and I all start the day together in the pre-dawn light. This giant-hearted woman, who gently scoops a worm up off of the path with a shovel and deposits it in the garden row along the fence, who won’t let Dinesh pour water on the thousands of poisonous ants that appeared at dusk yesterday in a ferocious linear swarm between the back doorstep and a hole 2 feet away in the middle of the path to the toilet. “That’s a lot of lives” she tells him, and the ants are given a wide berth and left to do their ant things. This morning (thankfully) they are gone. This illiterate peasant woman who knows only the town she was born in and the one she married into… by what miraculously open mind and generous capacity does she cross the vast chasm between our worlds and embrace me into the fold, tattoos and all? Safe to say we adore one another at this point. A new and significant shift, she now touches my arm, and just this morning actually reached over to pat my too flat (in her opinion - ha!!!!) belly, exhorting me for the umpteenth time to “EAT MORE!!!” (you try eating a pile of raw onions at 7:30 am, i dare you). This morning, too, with eyes gleaming, she presented me with a gold(en) bracelet (“Buddhist… from India!”) and blessed my head. [… oops…Distracted right now as a neighbor woman has come over, ostensibly to chat with Rani but she comes and stands a mere foot away from me, smiling reservedly, and just STARES AT ME. It’s a little unnerving, but in no way threatening, of course - I smile excessively, shake her hand and let fly my exceptional command of the Sinhalese language. The excitement wears off, and they soon shuffle off to look at the puppies…] Somesinder, Dinesh’s father, is more of a vapor, there one minute, and then gone for hours. 35 years as a safari driver (before the red dust took his lungs ransom), he is a bit more comfortable in French than English, so that’s our entree. Somewhat gruff and taciturn, as (to my eternal consternation) all Sri Lankan men can be, he turned to mush over the puppies, and lies on the floor cuddling with his grandchildren like a babe himself. From this man, I understand where Dinesh gets not only his nose but also his passion for snuggling and his considerable charisma and charm. For the edification of my vast readership, I would like to take and post pictures of all the mundane features and aspects of this house and the living that goes on here, but am hesitant. It is the same reticence that keeps me, by and large, from snapping photos of cute ragged children, temple rituals and the like… the “exoticizing” of other human beings and the amplication of Otherness. I keep asking myself “would I photograph an 8 yr old boy on the streets of San Francisco? Would I photograph a friend’s mother’s toilet in the US?!” - if the answer is “no”, the photos do not get taken. That said, it is really interesting to catch a glimpse of how people live, the particulars of their ingenuity in facing the basic challenges of human existence. Beyond that, even crucial, perhaps, that those on one side of the global pond appreciate the ripples of consequence that their actions and attitudes create on the other side of pond… hari hari (“ok, ok”), a picture of the toilet may not achieve all that, but for me these experiences foster deep respect and precious perspective on all the possible paths there are for walking through this world. This morning I remembered a conversation we had in the yoga training about what our “dealbreakers” were, and I had to laugh - if I had made such a list I think the deal would’ve been broken so many times over here that it might more resemble a small pile of inky rubbish… and yet, miracle of miracles, here I am! Alive and well, even without kale or a bathtub or regular “exercise” (soon, tho!!), without genmaicha, tofu, or the guarantee of toilet paper. Wonders never cease, nehe? Sunday morning and we are still in Tissa. We packed up and left yesterday, but Dinesh’s phone was stolen (off the front seat and under my very nose) at a service station, so the sweltering day was spent in a thoroughly ineffective, keystone cops kind of search for the crook, and hours of paperwork at the police station. By the time all avenues of retrieval had been exhausted, I was way too fried to endure a 3+ hour diesel-y drive to Arugam Bay, so we turned around and came back. The crappy, disappointing day was redeem by sunset, bonfire, and naked-under-god’s-black-sky sex out on a flood plain of the lake, with a chaser of monks chanting in the distance. No complaints :)
Some of Tissa’s teats appear to be drying up, and I wonder and worry if that is how Nature culls the offspring. I expected them to fill back up, by virtue of the fact that she has eaten more in the last 5 days than the last month, most likely, but perhaps we are too late to reverse the process? I really hope not - I want to come back to a fat bitch with all five of her puppies alive and kicking. There is only so much we can do, tho, after which it’s “let go and let god”. Peace out. Arugam Bay tomorrow and the million dollar question will at last be answered... needless to say, i am no fan of the Working Elephant phenomenon, but i could not pass up the offer (no money changed hands) to help wash this marvelous creature... up close and personal, tho' i have to say elephants are a little, well, creepy, to touch...especially their ears... and oh those alien life form trunks!!! ok. i know that gratitude for the exceptionally good moments of one’s life does not compare in merit with the ability to feel grateful when the shit hits the fan, but i’m going for it anyway. i am sitting in the settling dusk, coming alive with birdsong and soft warm wind. i am far inside a jungle plain, on many acres of land owned by Dinesh’s friend’s uncle, soon to eat a dinner of fresh vegetables we just bought at the market, after which i will ascend the steep stairs of one of two treehouse where i will sleep in the arms of a man i love. we just saved an abandoned calf who was stuck in the grip of thick clay mud in a slough on the way. in the distance, thunder like muffled sheet metal being shaken. right here, the wind and the birds picks up and there is NO OTHER SOUND AT ALL. if i am not yet in heaven i will never know the difference. i think about all that has delivered me to this place, this moment, and i am dumbfounded. i have stumbled into some kind of grace i probably (no, most assuredly) do not deserve, yet here i am. right now, this is my life. it’s extraordinary to me. every second of this feels worthy of a poem, a painting, a symphony, not these pale words hunt-&-pecked on a laptop. i am drinking this so deeply i feel i am subdividing the moments into ever smaller sips, with a sense of awe and deep peace, and yes, profound gratitude. halle-fucking-lujah. The next morning, 7 peahens and 1 peacock, tail in full parabolic display and doing his best dance (the hens seem have headaches, one & all... poor guy), then off to full day safari in Yala National Park. Dim view of a leopard here, the river where we lunched with monkeys, an incredible elephant encounter, Omesh (friend from Tissa who came with) crashed out on the way home, and the last photo: NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED - minutes after we rescued the calf, the accelerator cable snapped (again!!!) - that rope and stick were the solution, and Dinesh drove the whole safari like that, one hand wrangling the arduous NOT-power steering, the other holding this new "gas pedal"... impressive.
In the mornings, before light, and in the dark of night, you will see the dogs, alone, or in 2’s & 3’s, trotting up or down the roads, full of purpose, as if they are off to do their dog work. Whether they are fit, or cadaverous bags of mange-ravaged, flea-bitten flesh on bones, they look determined, self-possessed, and yes… “happy”. I am reminded of something Ric O’Barry once wrote, of dolphins - that theirs is a peculiar and particular curse; that of looking “happy” all the time, like they are smiling, as they swim neurotic laps in too small tanks and perform inane and degrading tricks for dead fish doled out by their “trainers”. So, too, these dogs - panting incessantly in the crushing heat, their mouths curled in what for all intents and purposes looks like a grin, their tails “wagging” as a natural extension of the movements of their spine as they jog along the baking road. I save food to feed them, and wonder if it is actually mercy to keep them alive another day.
Here elephants “dance” and take mincing steps in processions that last 6 hours, their legs hobbled by thick chains like super max convicts, which connect to more chains, around their necks, and mahouts wield long staffs with a sharp point at one end. Monkeys on leashes wear stupid little suits and beg, holding a tin cup out to the surrounding crowds, in the service of a man at the other end of the leash. Though the practice is illegal now, calves in the north are still branded with huge crude brands that cover their entire torsos and leave chunks of hide peeling off and festering. Oxen pull carts with rings and ropes through their noses, colorful birds flap about in wire cages in the courtyard of a house surrounded by jungle, fish bump and bounce off one another in murky tanks just meters from the ocean… … just what is it with humans…? Halfway back down to sea level, we are back in Ella, where we got together 7 months ago. Brief spasms of thunder and rain in the land of waterfalls (Ella means waterfall in Sinhala). Tonight we lucked into a raucous Hindu ceremony parading up and down the main drag - a “private” ceremony for 2 men who are giving thanks for some successful venture in their lives by engaging in these extreme acts of mortification of the flesh. There is a bellowing street band of horns and drums, throngs of dancers, and 3 trucks - the first 2 have entire palm trunks lashed to their chassis from which the 2 men are suspended by hooks that pierce their flesh. the 3rd truck tows the technicolor shrine to Murugan, the peacock god, and is followed by throngs of women who clap and sing and ring little bells at the foot of the shrine. I got some fantastic video footage, but alas, these photos and your imagination will have to suffice…
From Sigiriya to Nuwara Eliya today, the Hill Country. “Mac”-this and “Loch”-that Tea Estates and little towns one building deep on each side of the clogged “highway”, one side wedged into the red hills, the other side teetering precariously at the edge of steep ravines that sweep down into meticulously maintained raised vegetable beds, laundry on bushes, hindu temples, stands of pines, and tea, tea, tea. Roadside vegetable stands everywhere and children despondently plying their trade in brilliant bouquets of carnations to largely unromantic traffic as it passes.
The roads today make previous curves seem like an airport conveyor belt. They are a bowel-rearranging, full-body affair; 2 feet bracing on the dash, 2 claws gripping the roof struts, trying to share the force through the whole of my spine to minimize whiplash… More hairpins than your granny's vanity drawer. The sprawling grandeur of the tea estates, dinosaurs out of time, stands in sharp contrast to the scrappy shanties of the tamils who work said estates. I have learned that, unlike the Northern Tamils who have a long standing history in Sri Lanka, money, and education, the Tamils of this area were brought here by the British to work the tea hills. They are ragged and desperately poor, clothed in scraps, and their work impossibly back-breaking (& probably quite poisonous - who knows what kind of chemicals keeps the pristine veneer)…jesus, and I’m drinking a cup of tea right now as i write this… : /// Tonight we stay in Nuwara Eliya, over the valley below clouds of purple grey and rose white, as if out out by a knife in relief against the not-yet sunset pale blue. For one moment, a perfect elephant head, curling trunk and deep soulful eye etched within, but by the time i can direct the boys’ attention (D and the hotel “boy”), the elephant, like any wild thing, is gone. The evening unfurls and I watch the sky morph continuously - all one need do is blink and a new watercolor spills forth and seeps into the wet paper of this Sri Lankan sky… it’s better than the puppy channel. 5 am the next morning it’s just me and the monks chanting across the valley and the frogs, whose chorus wafts unevenly through the still dark air, like an orchestra of bamboo bells warming up for performance. Off to Ella today. Well, it's over. 10 days of ever multiplying processions, elephants, fire dancers, musicians, the most revered religious relics from 5 temples (featuring, of course, the Sacred Tooth Relic). The festival culminates on the full moon poya (last night), but includes, for some reason, a day time procession (today). We saw an hour or two last night (of the 6 + possible!!!), but from quite a distance... still, it was exciting to be out under the full moon, with the fire and smoke and whining horns, the drums, and with a million people (spread over the whole route) - the more devout praying as elephants carried the relics by, or rushing in to offer the elephants pineapples, watermelons, coconuts (which they smash violently on the street as the elephants approach) and canes of sugar...
others find the occasion a good excuse to get drunk... I can't post videos here, but below are some photos - the crowds in the rain before it started, the dancers and musicians, etc. The elephant thing was difficult for me - I felt ashamed to be human, and could not look them in the eye any of the numerous times I had the opportunity to do so... ... not knowing the answer, i will not push my luck (i have tried very hard to be judicious). a few photos, then, from the Dambulla area (known for it's fascinating cave temples and also enormous wholesale vegetable market), and also 3 from a visit to my dream land...which, sadly-but-maybe-just-as-well, sold only a month ago... you can eat those lotus seeds, btw, and they are yummy!
... no sunsets, as promised... Cows stand knee deep in lotus-choked lakes against a backdrop of shadowy mountain ranges that lay like sleeping giant fantastical creatures, shaped by what forces i do not know. Elsewhere rice and onion and tobacco and raw red earth where gems have recently been discovered and so now earthmovers tear at the earth like ravenous beasts. Deep jungle roads carve nauseating curves and valleys between groves of rubber and cacao and teak and the looming black hills behind them. The rubber trees, i quickly learned, can be identified (@high speed and distance, that is) by the scars on their ravaged trunks where they have been bled for their bouncy white blood. This is deep country here, a road not travelled by tourists (for its perceived lack of attractions, which of course makes it all the more attractive). We are here on an insane, if not a fool’s, errand - a favor for Sampath, Dinesh’s semi-ex boss and the owner of the Lion Rock Hotel where we have stayed the last 7 nights. A 5+ hour drive from Sigiriya here to Thissamaharama (D’s home village, incidentally) to pick up parts for the hotel’s generator and bring them back…tonight…! We have just arrived in Thissa’ and have semi-scammed our way into hotel courtyard with a pool, so that Madam can cool her wilting Northern core (&, apparently, fulfill a 2 drink minimum!) while Sir catches up with his homies. The pool is a bit sketchy, but i dunked and thrashed for a bit to wake up my numb ass and stretch my terminally folded legs, and the beer? Well, it’s almost cold and since the Lion Lager plant shut down Sri Lanka has been suffering a near complete beer drought, so i’m thankful to have it, a cool drink that is not sweet. Perhaps, too, it will put me to sleep for some of the return journey if i’m lucky? One can hope… For all the heat (no A/C in Sampath’s truck - could’ve been a deal-breaker had i known before heading out!) & the seemingly crazy choice to spend an entire day driving when i could be doing yoga, swimming in the pool, and studying Sinhala, i am very glad i came along. we have laughed so much along the way, AND i believe him when he says i would never see this part of the country otherwise. It is distinctly beautiful, quite unlike the main roads, and with everything to offer - verdant farmlands, jungle plains with the mountains of Kandy off in the distance, and these glorious thick and humming jungle valleys. The villages are beautiful, and feel enchanted; self-contained, and blissfully unsullied by the desire to serve anyone’s needs but their own. Really heartening to behold. PS after a sunset boat ride on the lake in Thissa’, we crammed back into the truck, picked up the parts, and headed back. The road passes through 2 parts of the rear of Yala National Park, so we had a mini night safari on the way home, encountering elephants, a jackal, and the rare mouse deer ( btw, i misunderstood the name for the small deer in Wilpattu at the beginning of my travels here - it was a barking deer. the mouse deer is smaller still, like a spotted, fawn-colored jack russell with short ears and long legs!!). Home by 1:30 am, delirious and with fur growing on teeth. “Slept” (-ish) ’til 11:30am, then watched a monitor lizard explore the poolside while i had a long slow practice. ahh… rivers, nonplussed buddha and elephants en route. sunset over Thissa' rice field and lake.
|
Author
Write something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2016
Categories |