I see the moon and the moon sees me...

...the moon sees the ones that I want to see.
God bless the moon and God bless me
and God bless the ones that I want to see.

Last night was the Full Moon.

I know that my amma likes to go to the Vidyaparameswari Temple for their Full Moon celebration. It is a small temple, mostly outside, tucked away in a quiet little neighborhood on the other side of Madurai. I've never met anyone else who has heard of it. I tried to research the deity one time in the USA but found nothing on Her - even talked to a number of scholars, none of whom had heard anything of Her. The temple is usually very quiet - no one there exept perhaps one of the priest who will come running out of his nearby house upon seeing us arrive. Maybe one or two women sitting silently on the platform. But on Full Moon days...the temple is packed.

My amma is a loyal devotee of this rarely known Goddess. Whenever there are troubles, she goes to the Vidyaparameswari Temple and asks for help. She attributes most good things in her life to this goddess.

Whenever one goes to the temple, one is suppossed to circle the main shrine and platform 12 times.

I've circled that shrine more times than I can count. Have asked for a number of things that have in fact later come true. I have a small photo of the deity, given to me as a gift from the proprieters of the temple. I always make sure to go with my amma and appa when I am in Madurai. I don't know whether I "believe" in this deity, or in any one particular deity as such. It isn't a question of that for me, really. I believe in power: the power of ritual, the power of the individual, the power of stories, the power of belief, and the power of awe. The power of possibility, the power of something beyond me that I cannot even hope to understand.

It was here that I witnessed all of these.

It was here, that on my last night in Madurai as a student, I witnessed a woman I knew very well get possessed by the Goddess. I had seen possession before - studied it intently at a different temple for most of my semester. But this was different, for this time I knew the possessed. And I knew that whatever was in her body as she danced spasmatically on the temple floor was not her. It was different because I was processing this, at the time, in the midst of a crowd of about 10 little Tamil girls who were thrilled to be asking me a million questions in Tamil (Hi. What's your name, where are you from, how are you?) while the drummers drummed and the women chanted and the priests let their voices ring out above the others'. It was a Full Moon ritual, the last that I had been to here - that was in December, 2 years ago.

No one got possessed last night, though the drumming and chanting and music are enough to send anyone into a sort of trance. On the way home, my nephew (age 2) kept pointing at the moon and saying in English "Moon. Circle."

I gazed up at the moon through the window of the car. The Full Moon which has come to mean so much to me after one year of writing a senior thesis on Wicca. The Goddess. The Mother. Fertility. Wholeness. Being in a certain temple in Princeton, Massachusetts, casting a circle. Standing in a certain backyard in a circle of bodies around a fire, cold in the Massachusetts October air, staring upwards at a giant red moon. Being in awe.

And I never made the connection between the Full Moon rituals in Princeton and the Full Moon rituals at the Vidyaparameswari Temple. Perhaps there is none. But last night, the Moon I saw overhead carried all the meanings that it came to have for me over the past year. I see the moon, and I see the Goddess. Last night I saw it, and it grounded me. Perhaps, without my knowing it, the moon had grounded me in Princeton last fall too - had grounded me with a familiarity of another Full Moon ritual, had grounded me with the power I once had witnessed - the power of a different Goddess, a Goddess many thousands of miles away. Perhaps while I had stood in that yard in Princeton, my amma had stood in front of Vidyaparameswari. Perhaps last night while I drank blessed milk and had kumkum powder dabbed on my head, my Wiccan teacher had stood out under the moon and worshipped Her.

The thought grounded me, and I smiled. I turned to my nephew, who was still pointing, impatiently waiting for my attention. "Yes," I said. "The moon. A perfect circle."

He was satisfied.

"No one sees the fuel that feeds you." ~Naomi Shihab Nye

Every day I go to bed and think "tomorrow I will blog" - cause I know that all of you are DYING to read my updates (Hi Mom and Dad.) And then I don't. One reason is that I am incredibly busy here - every night when Lauren and I finally slump back to our apartments, well past dinner time, we collapse and talk about how the events of that morning seem to have happened ages ago. But it is a good busy - a fulfilling busy.

But there is another reason, I think, that I have not blogged in a while. I feel like I don't have very much to say. When I was a student here, every single day was an exercise in having my world shaken, having the rug ripped out from under me. Every day was one more inch on a roller coaster of emotions, feelings, and thoughts. I had a lot to say. But this time life is, well, routine - if you can imagine that, in India. And I'm not saying any of this in a bad way - I actually really have come to appreciate my ability to live here. No, not appreciate. Be in awe of. It never ceases to amaze me that Lauren and I go through our day-to-day lives without so much as a thought as to the fact that our lives here are worlds different than our lives at home. The human's capacity to adapt and change is pretty remarkable - and every once in a while, I remember that. Every once in a while I have a moment where I stop and think "wow, I'm in India." But those moments get more and more rare - and the time in between them passes with as little thought as to the location as time in Natick or in Amherst or in any other place in the USA.

It is why I love my job, I think. My job is to help first-timers adjust to being here. And they notice things that I long ago stopped noticing - they are struck by inequalities that to me have become routine, they are fascinated by sights that I no longer bat an eye at. In a way, it must be like being "grown up" and having children - being constantly reminded of the little things that one takes for granted, the little things that one has glossed over as being normal. One of the students commented that being here was like resorting to being a small child - you must learn to read, to speak, to dress yourself, to eat. All fundamental actions are suddenly different. And yet slowly, they become normal.

But if normality changes, and so too every fundamental action - your speech, your body movements, your dress, your food, your day-to-day activities - what is left that is you? Where does identity lie, if not in all the outward manifestations of such? Is it really possible that there is something that is inside me, unchanging, that can withstand all these outward changes, that can go on living as it always has when every single thing is different? I mean, there has to be. I know that. I can feel it. I'm still me. Will be me no matter how many times I dye my hair, how many different costumes I wear, how many different jobs I have, how many different cultures I identify with, how many different names I am called. But isn't that remarkable?

Pepe

I bought a scooter.
Lauren named it Pepe.
(pronounced PEH-PAY)
I am beyond thrilled.

What is it about a place?

Take me to the places on the earth that teach you how to dance, the places where you can risk letting the world break your heart. And I will take you to the places where the ground beneath my feet and the stars overhead make my heart whole again and again. ~Oriah Mountain Dreamer

What is unique about a place? Is it the way it smells, the way it looks, the way it sounds? The way your skin feels when you are there? Is it something tangible? Is it the trees, or the dirt, or the temperature of the water? What makes a place the place that it is? For places, I think, can become like people to us. They can make us hurt, make us feel angry, make us feel used. They can make us feel safe, or loved, or wonderfully alive. They can challenge us. Like people, they bring out different parts of ourselves - they reveal different aspects of our character. But what makes that happen? What makes an inanimate location transform into something living, breathing, soul-stealing or soul-fulfilling? It isn't tangible. It isn't the trees, or the dirt, or the temperature of the water. What is it? What is unique about a place?

Is it memory? Is it the memories that we attach somewhere? Being back here, now, is a strange strange experience. For no matter how many times I come back to India, for me this place will always be associated with those I first shared it with. To me, to my experience of India, my friends who stood beside me when I first negotiated these streets are as much a part of this place as the red-brown dirt or the colorful sarees flapping in store windows. But they are not here this time - it is all different. But does that mean this place has changed? No. Not in that way, at least - but to no one else is the ground beside that certain temple alive with memories of Kara laughing, to no one else is the essence of a Kathakali dance performance Jenny's smile, to no one else does a blue mosquito net over a bed hang beside an image of Miriam, to no one else is the Yannimalai face imprinted with Katie's and Nermalraj's footprints.

(And actually, to be fair, that last memory mentioned wasn't the FIRST time I was here, it was from last winter, when I brought my childhood best friend to India with me, and I took her to climb Yannimalai, as I never had the opportunity to do so as a student, for I was sick the morning we were all to cycle there. But that's another memory attached to the place, that didn't even happen in the physical space - the memory of me coming downstairs in my pajamas at 4:30 am and standing on the stairs and holding my side and crying and telling my amma that I can't go, that she must call my Program Assistants, that I'm sick and I feel like I might die. And that memory is part of Yannimalai in my head - but I wasn't at Yannimalai, that was the whole point, I was 15 km away in the dark stairway of a suburban house.)

And now I am doing the same things again. I'm literally repeating my semester as a student, only this time, I'm here to help new students, rather than be a new student myself. So I'm actually going back to all the places I went two years ago. Lauren and I took the students to Yannimalai on Saturday. (Yannimalai - "elephant hill" - is a large rock hill outside of Madurai - from the top there is a spectacular view of the country, the villages, and way off in the distance, the Meenakshi Temple.) And now I have hundreds of new memories of the physical space - of Rachel missing the turn and cycling off by herself for a good hour, and Lauren chasing madly after her. Of Brendan exclaiming "ah! there are bones in here!" while crawling through one of the little caves. Of Mark taking in the view from the top. Of Karen, Cori, and Ambika posing for a photo, seemingly standing on air. Of three pairs of shoes sitting on the rock face, the exact point where Nermalraj had called out to Katie and I, instructing us of the correct route to go.

So has the place changed, now, for me? Perhaps, as maybe next semester, when I take a new group of students there to climb up at sunrise, the ground will be filled with memories of this semester's students, of Katie, and of the young women who were students with me. Memories, stacked upon each other like clothes in a drawer. Swirling together, mixing, jumping out at the strangest of times.

But the uniqueness of a place can't just be memory. For I had no memories of India before I came here. But from the moment I set foot on this subcontinent, something in me changed. And it happened again when I came back in December, and again this time. Something is different here. I don't know if it is me - if I have a different mindset when I come here, if I'm more patient with life in general, if I am committed to feeling more alive, if I am prepared to be constantly humbled, if i am ready to be open to whatever comes my way, if I have somehow decided that I will be content. But it must be more than me, it must be something about the place itself that resonates within whatever it is that is me, something that is here, and stays here, something I tap into when I come here. Maybe we all have places like this - places we are inexplicably drawn to, places that makes us feel whole.

I really don't know. Maybe it is a combination of all these things. Maybe I'm drawn here by something beyond my capacity to understand, and therefore I change myself to let that in. Maybe the physical place is made richer to me by my living in it, by my memories, by the stories I have lived and the stories I have been told. Maybe it is none of these things. Maybe it is all of them.

All I know is this place teaches me how to dance, in this place I can risk letting the world break my heart, and in this place my heart is made whole again and again.

Rainy Season, Blood, and Life in General.

When I was a student on SITA two years ago, I remember sending out a mass email saying "the smell of rain is the same all over the world." Rainy season is starting. Every night, around now, the clouds gather and it gets a little cooler and the air has that unique sensation that you can smell and taste and feel that can only mean the rain is coming. Yesterday, one of the SITA students came up to me and said, "It was so strange. I was out in the country last night with my [host] father and I was walking outside as it was about to rain and it smelled just like home [Arkansas.]"

*

I went to Pandikoil today, I brought 3 of the SITA students with me. Pandikoil is the place that I spent most of my semester studying two years ago. It is a village temple a little outside Madurai, and it is unique because on Tuesdays and Fridays (auspicious days,) some women (and once in a while men) get possessed by Pandi, the deity of the temple. Seeing as today is Friday, life at Pandikoil was its usual hectic, loud, chaotic self. Women screaming with possession, little boys running around with sandalwood paste smeared on their heads after offering their hair to Pandi, possessed fortune-tellers telling the future, hundreds of people milling about, having darshan of the ferocious god. And, of course, the fires blazing in the cooking area, cooking the dozens of fresh animal sacrifices. When I was a student, I was in Madurai during the brief period that animal sacrifice had been banned in Tamil Nadu (this state.) It had caused an uproar, sure, as suddenly thousands of villagers who had made promised to various gods could not fulfill those promises. But other than a hushed event in which I witnessed (somewhat to my shock, I must admit) the talons being pulled out of a chicken to offer some animal blood to the god in secrecy, I had never seen an animal sacrifice.

I saw quite a few today. Three goats, beginning to end, a few swift knife strokes to the neck of each was all it took.

Blood is really really red.

Five seconds is all it took to drain all the blood of the goat, til there was nothing left to make its legs twitch or its mouth let out tiny whimpers. Two students didn't want to see it, which was ok, we walked by quickly so they wouldn't have to. But Kathleen lingered. She said she didn't want to see it, but she thought it was important, thought she should. It made sense. So I stayed with her, and we watched. Watched death. Three times over. (And three is an auspicious number.)

And while the image will stay with me, and not in a pleasant sense, there was something uniquely right about the situation, the picture, the story splayed out in front of me. Death was right there, out in the open, not hidden, not hushed, not occuring behind closed metal doors of huge factories. Something very true and painful and heartwrenching and real.

Two years ago I was in Varanasi (Benares) for a couple days. It is one of the holiest places in Hinduism - Shiva's city, on the Holy Ganges. People go there to die. And if not to die, their bodies go there to be cremated. For if one is cremated within the city limits, it is said, the soul will attain instant liberation - moksha - freedom from this endless cycle of death and rebirth - the ultimate goal of Hinduism. The funeral pyres burn on the burning ghats 24 hours a day. Right there. You are walking along the Ganges, and suddenly you arrive at a burning ghat, and there on top of a burning pile of sticks is a human corpse. Death, out in the open, not hidden, not hushed, not seperate from life but in fact part of it. I stayed at that ghat for hours. And something inside me from long ago, perhaps from generations before me - some pain at unwanted death, at hidden bodies, at horrific events - some pain was healed.

The goat sacrifice didn't heal a damn thing. That's not the point. The point is that, like Kathleen, it was something I needed to see - the last cries of a living being, the severed head, the ground painted the richest shade of red.

*

We have a remarkable group of students. As I get to know them, as I get to hear their stories, I am constantly in awe of what incredible lives these young people have led, what amazing things they have already done, and more than anything, what unimaginably difficult situations many have had to overcome. One student grew up in the foster care system. One lost her mother four years ago. One has a deceased father and a disabled mother. One grew up in El Salvador and was there during the last years of the Civil War. This student gave a lecture today at a Dutch-founded Center for Social Advocacy in Madurai. Karen, from El Salvador, on an American program, in India, giving a lecture to a bunch of Tamils, Americans, and Dutch. Makes you feel simultaneously really small and really really connected to humans everywhere. Karen did a great job - she talked of hiding in her grandfather's mud hut when she was five and the guerillas came for her grandfather. Of fleeing her family home. Of bombs.

I think of my childhood in Natick, Massachusetts, and I can't even imagine.

I've never been to El Salvador. But I imagine the rain smells the same, there, too. I know it smells the same in Mississippi, in Amherst, high up in the Canadian Rockies, in Alaska, in the Caribbean, in India, in Ghana, and in Natick.

*

By now it is raining outside this little internet cafe. I will log off this computer, get on my wet cycle outside, and bike home. I'll go into my third-floor apartment, go into my bed room, open the door to the balcony, and sit. I'll sit in the 3 ft. by 2 ft. area and watch the rain and smoke a cigarillo, picked up in the Frankfurt airport duty free shops. I'll be undetected cause of the darkness. I'll watch life happen on the streets below me. I'll watch the rain silently flooding the mud streets around me, knowing it is no doubt washing away the red color from the holy ground at Pandikoil this very minute. I will know that it - rain - is part of what has sent the southern part of my own country into complete turmoil these last few days. I will know it is something that happens in places I have never been, in situations I have never thought of, to people I have never known, over lives I cannot even begin to imagine.

But I know the smell well.