[Back and forth from Silchar to Shillong] Of all the little creatures, snakes perish most often on the road. Then once I saw a snake crossing a Burmese road and I understood. On the dust on either side of the road, it would slither quite expectedly. But once on the asphalt it would slither diagonally, as surf waves coming to shore, slithering backwards almost as fully as it would slither forwards. The morning after we left Silchar I found myself on mountain roads that snake back and forth, spiraling around the outcrops of mountains and hills that divide the northeast from Bangladesh. Here as before, She dances in Her sari of deathless dust; every time She hisses dust abandon their tombs, and when She cries She commands them to be as deathless moult upon all things...that they might know renewal. On the day we left Silchar, I separate from the group in walking, foolishly or otherwise, and in minutes am offered a ride several kilometres ahead that made reunion an uncertain thing. #justtakingawalk and being alone provides a solitude to understand a battle in my mind against expressions in the group that I cannot yet unite with my own walking philosophy and the purposes of my journey. Nightfall; I set up my first tent next to a picketed cropfield at the toes of the mountains that was hidden behind a thin wall of scrub and bamboo. And as I spend the night huddled in the cold and nervous about every sound and light, I thought about how the universe had brought us together again earlier in Imphal. It could be coincidence, had there been a moment of uncertain hesitation in thought. My heart was so graciously and immediately filled with joy and recognition that the concept of coincidence strikes hollow. Hollow as a dense shadow that usurps its missing form like the shadow of water at certain angles with the light - it quenches no thirst. On form - a vehicle relatively invisible, immediate and uplifting; the chariots of the universe. That was how Ben had arrived. Alone that night in the tent, I had promised that should Ben again arrive without any doubt of coincidence, I would on all curses learn how to be a patient man. If he would not, then I am delusional. Dusty roads the next day begin to clear late morning. I am picked up after the first summit by a kind taxi (for free) and later amid a bout of green-faced stomach to-froing, we enter a deep mountain tunnel and into the light, I see the meandering turquoise river. Stop, please. Shukuryah. Perhaps I could not have done any differently for the weight of thought demands cleansing, as vomit demands to be expelled. What is a journey without resolution but lost? So it is that after the tunnel I should find on this journey a verse that allowed the rusty weight of thought in my head to soak into a soft turquoise solution: O POWERFUL WATERS // I MIGHT HAVE VIOLATED, THE LAWS OF NATURE // KNOWINGLY OR UNKNOWINGLY // FOOLISHLY OR IMPUDENTLY // TAKE A WAY WHATEVER IS WRONG AND DEFICIENT IN ME I continue walking by Christian ghost towns until late afternoon. Then a small white car pulls up along the snaking mountain path even higher. The boys! Yet, in me was a conflict of gladness and hesitation. It was a full car, with not enough space for another limb much less me. Its not going to happen, I said. Abruptly, the doors shut and they ride away until the forest is again silent. Now there were uncertainties upon uncertainties in reunion, for they couldve been given a ride 20kms up to Jowai, or even farther to Shillong. And in this silence, it, the unspecific pronoun I had vomited just moments ago started to haunt me. Did I just irrevocably alter my journey with a word I now wish I had been more specific about? What is it to be sabotaged by ones own mouth! And what cruelty was this to have seen Ben again, only for him to be whisked away by silent tauntings? How cruel it is to witness ones fellow travellers ride without space for each other! That evening I pitch my tent in the only space left: a desolate dirt field of a disused construction site along the winds of the downslope. Lessons given cruelly is to cry so hard that one begins to laugh, it is as punishment for snakes to be pointless on the asphalt, to griplessly to and fro until it is steamrollered or it crosses the road. All I had wanted was only to be tempered and to understand. And even that was withheld from me. My tent was damp with the dew of the night before and I slept with a heavy heart, freezing feet and a hungry belly. I woke up after four alarms to a two-streamed emptying of endless steaming piss and liquid shit after dawn. And then as I have been doing since the beginning, I walk. I was as a kite, now light and now flung toward the sun not knowing if the winds would catch me, yet feeling a calm not unlike cruise speed. I arrive in a small town and I hear running footsteps approaching behind. I turned around when he was too near and saw in the rising sun only blue eyes and fiery hair, and on his face was a smile kept softly in check. Benedict. My heart fills and we hug. All the weight of thought disappeared as pigeons scared by a silent gunshot. He had woken up to wash his face at the moment I walked by, and had seen the locals pointing to the road and to him it immediately came: Daniel. A truck had blocked his view, but when it passed and he saw that it was indeed me he came running. Dima and Daan were still asleep. They had all stopped and waited for me last night, but I did not appear. In the rising sun, we talked and ate breakfast. It turned out we were never too far from each other, and last evening their ride was in a hurry. I dried my damp gear, took a cold shower, brushed my teeth; on the morning of the third day, I moulted Her womb dust and felt new again. And I waited patiently for them to wake up and get ready. In my head I recalled three girls Id met as I rested in a village yesterday. They were young and their voices were clear and angelic: Jesus loves me this I know For the Bible tells me so And there was new life in my memory, for I sang with them: Little ones to You belong We are weak, But You are strong. They smiled at me as I at them, and they ran into the evening.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 09:51:03 +0000
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