down the heat.
we have come to interesting juncture here in mangolandia, and i, for
one, would like to share. a crossroads of a sort.
1.
on one axis we have the typical pattern of development in the Trip:
from escape through exploration to communication, and eventually,
sharing. by Trip i mean the basic unit and form of the growth
experience, as noted in various sorts of developmental experiences,
including but not limited to international travel, road trips, jobs,
schools, non-formal learning endeavors, altered states of
consciousness (bring back our memory bring back our memory),
friendships, relationships, and any sort of dynamic interaction,
evolving itself and You in the process.
at least, that's the best definition I can give at the moment,
brownbelly full of mangos and about to faint from the exhaust. cf the
cpu.
generally, in the Trip, i first experience a phase of solitude (the
escape), during which i think i planned the trip (what a joke) and
that i planned the trip to get 'away' (as if there existed such a
place) from it all, to become a new self, to shed old identities and
patterns. i have observed myself spending more time silently working,
praying, and practicing various arts during the phase.
the second phase sees me inevitably drawn against my ego and in
concert with the true nature of the AllOneLove consciousness to a
happening social life with whatever humans, plants, and animals are
around. i am engaged in lots of work with my surroundings, organizing
and decorating, making gifts for people, building love, and generally
forgetting to meditate.
the third stage -- and I have NO IDEA if this is any way universal or
just One Ego's projection of the Trip (i suspect the latter, heartily)
-- shows itself with increased communication with past lives (read:
other people and places from previous Moments), a desire to
communicate and share in the (generally amazing) observations and
sensations and (significantly more banal) thoughts and ideas taking
place around me. it's when i write to mangolandia and when I post a
lot of aerograms, when I write the text on the back of all the
postcards i drew in the first phase.
the fourth and last phase is when the people i have been organizing
(this always seems to happen) come to visit and the life, through its
expansion into the consciousness of my dearest friends, acheives a
sort of completion and is ready to be relaxed aside (for the moment).
there is learning, connection, lack of novelty, promises about the
unknown future, sweet sorrow, and saudade.
but, as we have long known, the Road goes on Forever and the Party never ends.
this Trip, I might add, is fractal in nature, is always happening, and
is always happening many times at once, overlayed with different
time-periods, like some sort of harmonic wave conjuncture. so I am in
the latter half of phase 3 with the mango farm, but have been through
the cycle numerous times already this trip to India, and am still
crossing from two to three in terms of the general indian arc.
this Trip, I might also add, is deeply connected to the nature of the
Amazon and how we view Death. more later on that.
2.
on the other axis we have the undeniable M factor of the mangos. this
cannot be overestimated, and i'm about to explain why.
i've been trying to express something more profound than "damn there's
a lot of fruit here" in these silly posts about mangos everywhere.
yes, it is true that rather like a surrealist fruit fantasy, everyone
has a mango in hand at all times, people enter the scene to talk,
argue, or work with a mango in hand, and the only people i ever see
who are not eating mangos are the customers ("mango lovers" is how
karunaji refers to them) who are coming to by some. yes, it is true
that most people immediately comment it's the best mango they've ever
had, and that last week some sort of insectiside-factory mogul drove
here with entourage of servants and family to personally thank the
Futane's and buy more fruit, because he had never had such mangos in
his life.
but the point is elsewhere.
the point is about need and excess. fear and relaxation. contraction
and expansion. last night after a beautiful woman with a beautiful
voice taught me to play "Pyogi meine" (one of my favorite devotional
songs) on the flute, Karunaji came down with a bowl of half a dozen
plump ripe Grade A awesome Dashari's (illustrated elsewhere). halfway
through the second one it occured to me that, hunger and desire
permitting, i could have as many as wanted. i couldn't possibly eat
the number of ripe mangos we have upstairs. i've both deduced and
induced that fact. the rate at which the mangos we have already picked
are ripening vastly exceeds our (family total) capacity to consume
them, in terms of eating, juicing, and selling combined. it's
inevitable at this point that many delicious ripe mangos will go to
the cows. who like them.
there is no end. there is no end. there is no end. the road goes on forever.
something about that clicked with a deeply felt vacancy i've carried
with me for years. i still don't know what it is, but the abundance of
mangos has showed me -- like a casts shadows -- its existence. maybe
it has to do with being indian growing up in mangoless amerika or
maybe it has to do with my family or maybe it has to do with the
creation of need in late capitalism. i don't know and i've never
imagined such a deep ethereal need to exist somewhere in me. but it's
there and i know because it's being filled by mangitude.
there's more but i'll spare us. i apologize for the me nature of this
writing. i know it's supposed to be about how indian people are so
devoted that 30 people who barely know me threw me an incredible
birthday party yesterday, ripe with love and appreciation for the
little time weve shared together, and how i ate so much mango juice i
didnt need the fruit for almost two hours.
but the reason I'm writing dear mango lovers is because i sense a sort
of completion nearing, something with the end of my time in
mangolandia. maybe that means india and maybe it doesn't. maybe it's
just the Mangolandia Trip, but something is landing and something
else, selon newton's air traffic control avatar, is bound to be taking
off.
