whereof, thereof.

i spent yesterday wandering the streets near sri ramanasramam, looking for a new place to stay. i rode on the backs of several pink motorcycles to too-far-off concrete compounds being worked on by old women with angry eyes and cushions on their heads for brick-carrying. i was rebuffed at several ashrams. searching for a place i had looked at before i found the big street apartment, i walked down a road the center of which was, at the slow behest of a earth-moving machine, becoming a deep brown trench. it felt like the world was coming to pieces, and a man was following me at my heels, telling me about the death, via brain-tumor, of a sadhu i’d apparently given money to earlier. he wanted more money for the funeral. his tale was sad and suspicious. i told him no, clutching at my headache. thinking only of getting away from this death profiteer, i got a little lost in the back streets for an hour.

then i rounded a corner and came face-to-face with the man who ran the english bookshop. directly behind me, 10 minutes’ walk from the ashram it turns out, his friend rented rooms for $4 per night. it has a bed. it has screens on the windows. it has windows. it has a desk. i moved in. it’s fantastic. 

i wrote a little note to the swami and promised i’d visit him at the temple sometime. i feel a little badly that life doesn’t have love in store for him right now; his young disciple, the one who taught me how to do the puja rounds at the temple and whose house we travelled to bless, is leaving him to find a job. one gets the sense that the swami is unused to lonesomeness. i would never have been able to make him understand. 

i haven’t smoked a cigarette in 12 days. it’s awful when i think about it or try to draw, otherwise it’s okay. there’s a very perverse part of my mind that keeps running luxurious movies in my head of myself languorously spread on the sofa at flo’s house, pulling drag upon drag of mentholated nicotine into my lungs. it has the smack of an eagerly-awaited future about it. i try to remind myself how stupid it would be. i also remember how it wouldn’t really matter either way.

today, sitting with my sketchbook at the tea stall, surrounded by the usual throng of looky-loos, a chubby guy in a teal shirt thumbed through the full pages and invited me back to his place to see his work. hopping on his (green) motorbike, it took 2 minutes and 2 turns to determine that he lived directly above my new room. his art is amazing. there are at least 16 Bs in his name, which is hard for me to remember. we are mutually invited to hang out in each others’ room to draw whenever we like. as my friend ethan says, “the universe tends to fellate me.” things are going well.

i can feel myself settling in a bit, the ego sending out aerial roots towards the friendly faces who are more and more popping up around me(petals on a wet black bough). i have almost learned not to think about the future. i have almost learned not to think about the past. i have almost. i.