a shout out to the world before i go meditate or something

in the past week, two very knowledgeable people in my reality have asked if iran has oil. so i want to make it clear to whoever reads this thing, YES.

and if you have been hesitating about doing anything, now is the time. do it now, please.

and if you have any better ideas of what i can do, other than picking carrots and crying, please write me at neilunaini@gmail.com.

may you all know that god is with you always and forever. fuck, fuck, fuck.

eyes in america: in the JFK airport

[ from a domestic correspondent ]

in the JFK airport

I rode the train here and that was nice. but did a horrible pump-fake
to my brain because JFK is like the last stop right before the stop on
the same train that I take out to Far Rockaway to surf in the early
AM, like it was this morning. so a rude awakening for the bodybrain
when the 80's-stained post-industrial with passed-out homeless didn't
cross the blue water through mist at Broad Channel and become curling
waves at the end of the world with me in them, but instead let out
just one stop away, like some horrible mistake, into a subway JFK from
the future -- probably the only one in NYC where everything is
machined brushed steel and Kinkos lighting -- you could eat off the
concrete ground. it seemed like a metaphor for our time, especially
when not one, not two, but _four_ guys in desert (desert!!) camo
rolled onto the shuttle train with automatic rifles and body armor. I
tried to think of any, any scenario that has ever happened
historically in an airport that would require that kind of firepower
to stop, and drew a blank.

it's all happening very fast. all confidence and jocular banter and I
tried not to say something smart about 'why all the guns?' these guys
are younger than me for christsakes, when did that happen? we all
stopped to wait for the elevator to take us down to the terminal. the
door to the stairway to our left says "Emergency Exit Only. No
Reentry." I pondered an essay I've been thinking of writing about the
demise of stairs in contemporary society.... Stairs experienced a
brief resurgence in late 80s early 90s urban amerikan subculture with
the emergence of a mainstream (upper-class) fitness movement -- "get
some exercise, take the stairs!" -- a resurgence that however quickly
faded in the later 90s, apparently co-incident with the invention and
mass-proliferation of the Stair Master. It would never fly, I
decided....no way to get traction with that sort of thing. so we
waited by the elevator, seconds ticking by.

at some point the space marines from Dune noticed a black dude
standing there whose luggage included a backpack made of the same
desert material as them.

"you military?" one of them asked. the black dude didn't answer right
away, but finally.... "yeah".

a kind of locker-room tension entered the air, like freshman meeting
for the first time from different junior highs -- we all play the same
game, but who has the big nuts here. the guys with the machine guns
were all white. "you being deployed?"

he never looked at them. "I'm on leave....just got back from
deployment in [Iraqi city]"

slight discomfort now and shifting of feet. "uh.... what company"

he never looked at them. "XXX CFA -- field artilery"

he's been to the ragged edge. and here it's four of them to one senior
citizen in the shuttle train from the future, with the big guns and
body armor.

more shifting of feet and he never meets their eye -- any of their
eyes, even though they're all around him, talking at him; just stands
there like a statue staring into the distance. many people crowded in
the line are listening to the exchange in silence and pick up the
vibe. discomfort becoming extreme now. finally, brusquely, the leader
of the four:

"uh...this elevator's taking too long, come on"

they march through the door with the "Emergency Exit Only. No Reentry"
to take the stairs. Some people can still take the stairs apparently.

now I sit crouched between the Oasis Day Spa and Gourmet Sushi in the
terminal waiting for my flight after being x-rayed every which way and
checked repeatedly for fluids. at one point, immediately preceding the
pre-check line for the security checkpoint I passed a (apparently
pre-pre-check!) security guy sitting at a table off to the side of the
hall whose only job as far as I could tell was to repeat "no fluids.
no fluids? no fluids. no fluids?" over and over, in a voice dull and
empty to the endless press of people passing him by, apparently for
hours, maybe days....forever, neither expecting nor really receiving a
response and it freaked me out more than anything so far. more than
the automatic rifles by far, this man, reduced to a broken record, a
skipping CD that says two words:

"no fluids"

but fluids are a prerequisite for waves, as well as life. so I
supposed it fit the vibe all too well.

*

gandhiji on sanitation

"When there is both inner and outer cleanliness, it becomes next to godliness."
- Jan 8, 1948

"He who is truly clean within, cannot remain unclean without."

"Cleanliness is next to godliness. We can no more gain God's blessings
with an unclean body than with and unclean mind. A clean body cannot
reside in an unclean city."
- Nov 19, 1925

"Everyone must be his own scavenger. Evacuation is as necessary as
eating; and the best thing would be for every one to dispose of his
own waste. If this is impossible, each family should see to its own
scavenging."

"Man becomes what he eats. Your water and food and air must be clean
and you will not be satisfied with mere personal cleanliness, but you
will infect your surroundings with the same cleanliness that you will
desire for yourselves."

"Corporate cleanliness can only be ensured if there is a corporate
conscience and a corporate insistence on cleanliness in public
places."

"Poverty is no bar to perfect sanitation."

ps

please note my feat itch im covered in mosquito bites i work in the
venice of open sewers and am compulsively cutting my nails. among a
million other projects that happen majestically and mysteriously i
will be feeding and bathing 100 meters of roadside slum children. its
on monday if you want to come and they are lovely human beings and
mothers not at all spiteful that they once were farmers and now beg on
the street because the city appropriated their land to build a (large)
road and some apartment buildings.

whatever. the whole area is a swampy sewer now, fifteen years later,
anyhow. i would advise those friends and lovers who happen to read
this to imagine the last farm you've worked on or visited. now imagine
that land converted into a filthy human sewer.

!

also walking around with jayeshbhai. one of many strange majesties is
the way he walks around and asks for people's cigarrettes and chewing
tobacco whenever he sees it. first they're like "what the fuck" and
then he explains somehow from the heart that smoking is bad and he's
their brother and concerned about their help and everyone (but i mean
everyone, of all castes and cleanlinesses) ends up giving him their
chew or snuff or bidis or whatever, that he breaks up and throws on
the ground...

smiling.

its super weird and amazing. and everytime (this happens every 20
meters or so, we walked 7 km through the city this morning) i ask in
admiring consternation "but why do they give it to you?" and he laughs
innocently, honestly, "I dont know!" and then, "I ask them from the
heart." and then, "I dont know!"

and here I am picking up fallen chew packets for the old women. ah disneyland.

just a little peace before i diet

It's past three in the afternoon and I spent the morning in the slums.
On the way home, supposedly for lunch but really to seek refuge, an
aged woman asked me for help. She was covered in dust over her sari
and carrying two heavy concrete blocks on her head and had dropped an
unopened packet of Gutka: chewing tobacco. At some point in the future
I'll develop enough moral authority to tell a grueling impoverished
woman not to chew tobacco but at this point her small solace is my
own.

The first woman we went to see figured she was 73 years old and had
been "loose" (that is, without anyone to care for her) for 30 years.
She didn't know much about dates but the Earthquake (2001), Indira
Gandhi's death, and the Independence were how she marked time. The
story of her family dissolution is too terrible for me to retell but
she sung us a beautiful bhajan after insisting on a prayer first. She
has nothing but devotion, not even a favorite color. Antjal asked for
her dreams and she told of wanting to devote her life to worshipping
the lord, and to dying quickly and in peace.

As the Dead speak from memory: "All that I ask is a little peace
before I die". The road goes on forever and I've not been here a week.
Thoroughly confused and overwhelmed but there's a strange Italian
consort of the Dalai Lama's nearby and we keep eachother entertained
in Mexican and Argentine slang. She's in the forgiveness game and
buddy-buddy with the Huicholes but more than anything it's the madonna
and risotto that keep us sane and together.

I play more than I practice the flute and my confidence and ability
levels have crossed correspondingly. To every thing there is a season.
I've been eating only fruit and nuts for only a week and may have
gained weight. This is how Jayeshbhai and Anarben are taking care of
me. Fresh bundles of coconuts grapes and papayas every evening. I am
considering stopping the fast or moving out so as to no longer
inconvenience them, and since my main point in being here is to learn
from the light of their presence, it will the fruit (along with,
always, the darkness) that has got to give.

I got a copy of Thomas Weber's tome on the Salt March -- he was the
first person (Australian, in 1983) to recreate Gandhi's candycream
voyage through Gujarat. It's interesting to read and to see the
similarities and differences between his researched journey and my
half-baked pilgrimage. People would always ask me why I did it, even
now -- it seems to have replaced my education as
introduction/qualification (ie This is Ankurbhai, respect him because
he did the Dandi Kooch) -- and I'm slowing understanding why.

I would always say something like, "out of respect for Gandhi", or "to
acquaint myself with the Spirit of India", or "I don't know", or "Marx
wasn't fulfulling me". Which are all true but here I am reading about
Thomas Weber walking around Delhi, going to Gandhiji's Samadhi
(cremation site) and seeing the poor masses touch their foreheads to
the simple stone slab (which reads, simply, "Hai Ram") and, of course,
here I am upstairs at three in the afternoon crying. When I didn't cry
when I left my mother Suhara in Kerala or my real mother Bharti in
Sequim or my lovers here or there or any project or employment. Or any
sunrise or concert or meeting any amount of poor, sick, deranged, or
otherwise troubled souls.

But there's something about Gandhiji and Vinobaji and all these old
men I'm meeting who walked five or fifteen years with either that
makes me cry every time, every day. Crossing into the ashram to get a
book and walking by the oversized postcard replica from New York,
addressed simply to "Mr. Gandhi / India", that makes me weep.

Which is probably why I went on that walk eleven months ago and
probably why I'm having such a hard time getting started on this next
work, now.

satyahimsa,
ankur

back in the smokestack

seven endless days of work and rest at a natural (read: fukuoaka) farm
in maharastra brings me through overbooked trains and hard sweet guava
to the industrial wasteland of modern gujarat with companions chanting
compassionate songs of freedom and noting the only ahimsa and navjivan
left in the land of gandhi are the names of the trains.

which isnt true because theyre all our people and all lands are the
land of gandhi. which isnt helping gujarat's case much and neither
does the billboard outside "the largest caustic lye factory in india"
which claims i am breathing clean air as i ride by, stalled into
silence at the furnace dragon spitting black bile into dusty air and
no crowds cheering MEGAWATT to make everything a dream or spectacle or
something else that we can be ironic or alright about.

manchester vs the epa: smokestacks are too dirty to be spectacular.

you can write to me for one month at:

ankurbhai shah
c/o manav sadhana
sabarmati gandhi ashram
ahmedabad
gujarat
india

and afterwards at

ankurbhai shah
83 lost meadow
sequim, wa 98382

in the intervening month (which we call march) i will be not/here
space/time body/mind and request all hard correspondence be sent to
the ashram in sequim.

one love
ankur