You Are Beautiful in Rishikesh

That's right, YOU. Actually, you are beautiful no matter where I am. 'Cause that's where I am- Rishikesh. You can be beautiful just about anywhere, except maybe places where the law of gravity is different because then your body im/explodes and your mind- well, none of us really knows where that goes, but that is the beautiful part and something tells me it doesn't remain in its cohesive and beautiful state. But maybe one of you out there is bound to prove me wrong (Adam Wollenberg).
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I love my toothpaste. For $3 a tube I can look forward to months of squeaky teeth. Dr. Burt really has his shit together, actually, because when I was in Laos suffering from poison oak carried from California, little dabs of this toothpaste saved my hands and feet from further itchy infestation. Thanks also to the inspiration of a very beauty-savvy Vanessa Charles, many a pimple have been dessimated by applying Dr. Burt's as well. What's his secret? I venture a guess with bentonite clay. And lavender- you can be sure lavender plays her part. I feel good about Burt's Bees as a company, too- as good as one might feel about a corporate entity. Their products- my toothpaste included, of course- are packaged in mostly-recycled materials, and encourage people to recycle (in rich countries where recycling facilities actually exist)... and as a company they can be credited with pioneering the spread of "natural", crapless body products into the far corners of drug stores, gift shops, and supermarkets across America.

You can imagine my dismay when, on day 2 or 3 of a 10-day Vipassana course in Jaipur, India, I realized the last squirts of toothpaste were fast approaching and I would need to request that management provide me with a new toothpaste. Having not used "regular" toothpaste, i.e. Crest/Colgate sugar-fluoride-teeth-rotting-cocktail for a decade, I assumed writing on my request form "herbal toothpaste" would suffice to guarantee a decent Ayurvedic brand of some sort. My confusion was apparent when, later that day, a server brought me a tube of Colgate Herbal Toothpaste, combining the best of the natural world with the healing technologies of Colgate/Palmolive: for 50 rupees (just over $1) I had in front of me a massive tube of fluoridated, sugared, colored chamomile-myrrh-eucalyptus toothpaste. I wondered to myself how this could be possible. And then quickly the answer came: This is India... A country where people still place high value on the power of herbs, who inherently revere the Natural World. And this is a major multi-national corporation, Colgate. A defining characteristic of any multi-national company is the ability to shapeshift. They adjust price and product to reflect the nature of the people they sell to, to successfully compete in the market. Pizza Huts across India offer traditional Indian floor seating. Frito-Lay manufactures snacks made from rice meal and cheap, rancid vegetable oil that I'm sure they would deem "authentic", in flavors like "Punjab Spice", "Hyderabadi Hot", and "Delhi Mix". Coca-Cola produces a mango-flavored "juice" that school children prefer over the real thing. Somehow corporations caught on that India is a BIG market, and they're flooding it.

So there I was in Jaipur, sitting the Vipassana course as the heat was getting hotter and more unbearable everyday and the monkeys came to take refuge in the shade of the trees and guest rooms and the birds screeched and hollered in daily symphonies of deafening crescendos and my mind boiled and bubbled to bursting points. For the first 6 days I wanted to leave, and okay let's be honest, pretty much every day after that, too. For some reason I was having an incredibly difficult course and it was all I could do just to stay put and keep sitting, not to mention the sorry state of disorder and chaos occupying my mind. Finally day 10 came and I saw the change in Matti's face and met lovely people and got a bit freed-up from the cage of the mind. The next day Matti and I got spit out into Jaipur, a city of 2+ million, rough and tough and very stereotypically-Indian with aggressive beggars and rickshaw drivers and noise and dirty, dirty air etc. We passed the afternoon eating pasta and pizza in an Americanized joint geared towards rich young Indians that looped the same CD over and over again and then BAM!!!!! I have a temperature of 103.

One day passes as we try somewhat urgently to get the hell out of Jaipur... the train is booked up for a week so Matti gets his wish of taking a sleeper bus to Haridwar and then I get my wish of going to an Ayurvedic hospital where I'm told I have sensitivity to heat and climate, and they give me Ayurvedic medicines to help with the discomfort and send me on my way. A bus to Rishikesh... two days, three days, four days, to a hospital in Rishikesh and I get hooked up to an IV with antibiotics and fever-reducers, sent home and that night have intense sweats and chills and wake up with a temp of 105 feeling like I'm dying. Matti serves again and calls the doctor and fetches a Jeep and I'm at the hospital again getting hooked up to an IV in a hazy-but-irritable daze between waking and sleeping. Three days in the hospital and a blood test later, finally my exact sickness is determined when the Typhoid test comes back positive. I have Typhoid. By the time I finally leave the hospital, I'm going crazy from laying in a bed in the waiting room and being around people and flies and eating kitcheri and chai and having a needle stuck in my arm and I feel like I've just lost a week of my life.

I'm recovering nicely now and everyday I feel stronger, more human. Where would I be without Matti? Probably stuck in Jaipur breathing toxic air and recovering much more slowly than here at the base of the mighty Himalayas alongside the great Ganga where people come to evolve spirit. I've never had someone serve me so selflessly, except of course for my parents, and there have been many excellent lessons accompanying this sickness. How does one who has been conditioned not to let people help her, allow love and support and HELP in? Well, having a high fever helps speed up the process and help becomes more of a necessity and less of a luxury. Not to mention the challenge of vulnerability and asking for things I need- true signs of emotional maturity that have illuded me throughout life but I'm now creating more and more opportunity for practice.

Give thanks, you beautiful people, for within every moment awaits the opportunity for growth and expansion, for reaching nearer and nearer peace and happiness... and not just superficial happiness that comes from outside, but the real ooey gooey stuff that comes from deep inside, in
fact the only kind that will sustain us, liberate us. I'm grateful that so many of you have been writing to me, however randomly, travel is a great gift because it motivates people to write where they might not otherwise, and I love hearing about the daily lives that all of you maintain in whatever format, nomadic or sedentary, quiet or tumultuous, happy or sad... all are part of the global web we're all weaving together all the time, a big fat vuluptuous web of being...

loving light
Pix