I have this thing about dying in a foreign country

 lost and broke down, empty and that’s  what this feels like sometimes, the opening scenes, all is well as jack striker begins a four month sojourn toward spiritual enlightenment in India. the movie starts in a four star

hotel, then a friends house and finally a miasmic  decline into ashrams, hovels and street life, ending in a desperate swim across a deadly river, and the iconic collapse of the immune system. somewhere along the line, it all happens but jack isn’t there anymore. it’s a beautiful evening in tiruvannamalai, the snake bugs are shushing  sibilating, the motor bikes and rickshaws rattling popping, trucks and buses pretty quiet this saturday night. im alone in my room the head guru sits on the bed in the living room, taking up the high spiritual ground to work his nightly magic in samadhiland. he keeps all his clothes in my room and the bathroom is in my room also, so we pretty much live in each others rooms, he has the kitchen in his so it’s a stay away kind of thing and im glad I have the  bathroom as that’s my biggest deal since my illness doesn’t allow much leeway in that regard. the learning to use the no toilet paper system is not really flying for me but I try to get some expertise there, especially  considering the raw bark nature of the local tissue. as the mind explodes from the overload of the cosmic energy, often so does the colon, so im glad like I said to have the bathroom door right next to me. india has had a strange affect im gaining weight, which seems totally unbelievable, but my daily 3 hour walks have fallen off as I struggle to get even an hour in each day, and I have been spending an inordinate amount of time with my soulmate and we seem to spend a lot of time in restaurants where we love to chat and eat of course. she leaves in  4 days so I resolve to start a heartier walking program on the inner trail of mount arunachala, the Om sivaya namah presence that is starting to eat through my consciousness. I have no real life here, I get to go to breakfast at tasty in the 7am after meditation, then its take the master on his errands, then a late lunch somewhere, usually the house, then more twaddle and strum until 7pm when the night ends with more meditation and then he goes into Samadhi and I basically become a prisoner in my room. so here I type and wonder if I should start my spiritual autolysis here on these pages, just write what is true. that’s difficult since as you know, everything is false, but truth does exist but not in a form that is describable, more you can only say what it is not, the actual experience of truth is indescribable, since there is no one there to experience it. is that confusing enough, well it should be if you have a head and two shoulders, you’re probably wondering what im talking about and so am i. it’s a pretty hefty way of putting out the trash and theres always the baby with the bathwater thing. all the good with the bad, and whatever you were with whatever you think you are and going to be. let that all dribble down the drain too. even at 61 im not ready to shuffle off this stupid train im on, cause its been a great ride so far and I thought we were just getting to the good part, but it seems theres some dissension about whats the good and the better of spiritual exploration. wake up, or nod out, enjoy or work, seek or just sit, im not a real fan of any of these as I wander aimlessly trying that perfect method of being unaimed and always finding the mark, or whoever at the other end. inside I’m a diamond in the rough, but somewhere I’m a piece of coal and its Christmas all over the world. what does it all mean, or is that even a question, I think not but I still got a ways to go to get here. thanks for the memories which I’ve forgotten and don’t let the wind blow where the good lord split ya.