October 8-10, 2004

Scores of birds, ravens, and hawks, floating lazily on the wind currents, not caring where they are taken…just enjoying life and the aftermath of the storm. Entire valley and distant Himalayas spread out clean and freash for all to enjoy looking at. The rays of sun shining down through the parting clouds… which are being pulled apart in different directions and scattered by the wind - to illuminate patches of mountain and valley with bright sunlight….a powerful contrast to the dark clouds still hanging high overhead above the mountain. The lake off to the right past the valley is almost luminous as well with sunlight…seems as if the worst of the fury of the storm, which woke me this morning at 6 with a trememdous clap of thunder, has died down and we may even have another beautiful day today in the end.


Hi all,
It is now sunday morning and I think I have not written since Wednesday....could that be????

avik arrived on Wednesday, him and abdellah get on quite well, we've figured out a "territory" system in the room which seems to be working well...and mostly things seem to be ok...but I am not used to traveling with someone...or maybe it is just Avik...We'll leave it at that for now and I will try and not make any judgements this early...We had a fabulous day yesterday...the weather was wonderful...first time since I arrived that it was nice ALL day....and today it is rainign all over again… I will write more about yesterday as I now get everyone caught up with the past few days…..

Friday, October 8th

I had brought 2 books with me from home for “working on” here but up until now have not been inclined to looking at them. Perhhaps I needed a 3 week respite from ALL responsibility and obligation. Even to myself…but yesterday I felt a pull towards one of them…actually found them both in a bookshop in London/ This one is on “Mindfulness meditation” which in its pure form is a very high form of Buddhis meditation. But the author, who has written in depths books on Buddhist meditation, is also a medical doctor and has clinics which deal in stress control, disease etc….don’t rmember everything…has now written a book for the western mind to use. Many quotes from Thoreau, Einstein, even Martha Graham! In effect, although I am still at the beginning, he is sllwly showing any western person, even those who have no experience whatsoever with any form of meditation, how to begin, and the point is way before actually sitting down “to meditate”…and at the end of each section he has little things to try doin during the day in regular everyday life.

One, which I already have been trying even before this book, is to “be” in the moment and just savor everything as it occurs each second without looking past the moment…Here it is very easy, just sitting here up on the roof watching the crows hawks and parrots…listening to their calls, watching them glide on the currents, feeling the warmth of the sun and the whisper of the wind, seeing the slight gentle movements of the trees etc. If you are sitting alone in a room, and really start to experience the moment, mostly you hear car horns, dogs barking, refrigerator humming, etc., but that is the general idea and it is quite interesting the amount of things we are unaware of completely during the day…that we simply don’t take the time to notice etc.

Today is Avik’s birthday and Abdellah has taken him out for he whole morning so I can make a small surprise for him. But nothing is simple here…had to go to many shops to ge what I needed and up and back to the room, make up the sign, balloons,….find a small present, cake, beer etc. etc. But it’s all done now and he should be up soon. Hope he is pleased. I’ve done what I felt like doing…whatever happens from here is not dependent on me.

Saturday…9th
Party was great! Ashish came up when I was hanging the sign and balloons and thought it all very silly but at the mention of beer he was quite pleased to be invited. The 4 of us had a really fun tijme. Ashish also supplied (he is so sweet) cashews and after the first bottle of beer was taken care of by him and avik (this is Indian bottle of beer, about 2 ½ times what we are used to in size) he went down to his secret cache of things people give him for presents when they leave and brought up a precious can of gunnes draught…I actually liked it! Finally found out how old (appx) ashish is…between 25-29…his mother is not sure what year he was born because they were refugees in Bengladesh then…But his date is the same as shira’s… Feb 3rd!

Avik really enjoyed the studies at the Buddhist library, although I again found nothing very original or revealing in what he explained….it’s stuff that I am familiear with from many other sources, mostly in Judaism but also in spiritual , “going inside” type things I’ve been working on for years, …but I’m glad he enjoyed it and will either be continuing with abdellah or perhaps finding something at tushita which he wants to learn….he is also checking out a teacher for Hindi…he feels uncomfortable just “doing nothing” as he feels I do here….so, I imagine we will spend some lovely days together as we did yesterday, but also have much time apart…
We saw three more movies alos…Under the Tuscan Sky/ Howard’s End and last night Sidewalks of New york….Avik tries to be very “intellectual when discussing athem afterwards with Abdellah…I’ve kind of had my fill of movies…and certainly don’t find them a particularly “intellectual” pursuit…..

Avik also pulled one of those getting lost things again like he did in London (turns out he also did the same thing in Dor last week when he was there with other people and without telling anyone decided to swim around some island and was gone for over an hour…everyone thought he drowned and were all furious when he came back…but of course he couldn’t see anything wrong with what he had done and just ignored everyone and their worries and feelings)….what he did here was to decide to check out the back path going up from the guesthouse to the road to dharamkot but it was already beginning to get dark and that is not a good place to be alone in the dark, even if you are familiear with it. I told him so but he said he would just go up to the road and come right back down…and agreed to do us a favor and take a flashlight. Should have taken 5 minutes…he was gone 1 hour and 10 minutes!!! He decided to go alittle further, got lost etc. We were of course frantic, thinking he may have fallen, hurt himsleft, who knows what and beginning to think perhaps we should go look, but where?…and I was trying to be very calm and not worry and not get angry and really working hard at it…Well, sure enough, he wawlked in just in time for dinner with a big smile on his face as if nothing was wrong…and again, just like in London, could not understand my reaction….after dinner and movie, we had a long discussion and he said he really doesn’t care if people are stupid enough to worry about him…it’s all nonsense in his mind and can’t see that there is some amount of selfishness in his attitude…enough…let’s leave it at this….

We spent the rest of the day Friday doing some shopping for avik…and just giving him a really full tour of town and some idea of places to go and see, shops, bookshops, restaurants, etc., etc., for when he is on his own…and that brings us to yesterday.

It was such a perfect day and we did so much…we were out from 10 AM until 7 in the evening…but the truth is I am tired now and think I will end this with just one quick mention of this morning….I promise to write about yesterday’s day out in the next e-mail

Now it is Sunday….and I am here writing, but just before I left the room I wrote something which I will put down now…

Stareted actually last week when I checked the weather for the area and they said thunderstorms and rain on Sunday and I figured that couldn’t be right. Well, it WAS right!!! And this is what I wrote after finally putting myself together this morning and the rain and wind had died down for awhile…

Scores of birds, ravens, and hawks, floating lazily on the wind currents, not caring where they are taken…just enjoying life and the aftermath of the storm. Entire valley and distant Himalayas spread out clean and freash for all to enjoy looking at. The rays of sun shining down through the parting clouds… which are being pulled apart in different directions and scattered by the wind - to illuminate patches of mountain and valley with bright sunlight….a powerful contrast to the dark clouds still hanging high overhead above the mountain. The lake off to the right past the valley is almost luminous as well with sunlight…seems as if the worst of the fury of the storm, which woke me this morning at 6 with a trememdous clap of thunder, has died down and we may even have another beautiful day today in the end.

I will end for now….Ah, one last thing, just to show you can never REALLY get away….I called Elisheva’s house on Friday to talk to them after I had spoken to the other kids before, but shai answered. And then he told me about what was happening in Sinai….now, you would think that if I hadn’t by chance spoken to him I would not know, but no such luck….I have my cellphone with me in case someone needs to send me a message in an emergency by SMS and check it in the evening and the morning…well, there was a message from my folkdance instructor that despite the tragic events the dancing would still go on on Friday night as planned…So, no matter how, we always seem to find out about these things one way or another. Of course yesterday morning as well as today we have been checking the newspapaer to keep up ….don’t even want to talk about it, just wanted to comment on the impossibility of REALLY getting away from it all in today’s world.

My love to all….Let me hear from you…..