Just a moment.

The date of today is January 5, though by the time I finish writing and post this the number will have turned to 6. A fast has been finished, a Vipassana session cancelled; a massage course completed, a new yoga undertaken.

Today has been a revelry of a day, but I’m currently at a loss for any earth shattering expositories or heartrending revelations. The mist has been sitting low on the foothills with what we in LA would refer to as ‘intermittent drizzle’ drifting in and out of focus. I’m currently sitting in my spacious lower floor hotel room, watching the candle light flicker off the peeling light blue paint- the walls have acquired the splotched melancholic beauty that only years of cheap paint and water damage poured in equal amounts over cold concrete can lend. It is, in each moment that passes, quintessential Northern India.

So as I sit here in the damp chill, said candlelight aflicker, I’m rather unmotivated to rouse my inner faculties and deliver a rousing story. I’ve had a day of quiet reflection, replete with meditation, and am as such feeling rather calm and quiet. I’d hoped you’d walk over the unfinished construction site outside my balcony, hop the little fence and rap at my bolted door, but alas. You’re a bit far for those kind of antics, aren’t you? I’ll be enjoying this candlelight alone, just me and my yoga, me and my tea, me and my small stone Buddha.

[If I could paint you a picture, I would. What I would paint, I do not know, and what insight the 1,000 words captured in said picture would grant, I cannot guarantee. I can’t guarantee that 1,000 words would be enough- in matters such as this you’re often left with two options; a tome of a treatise, or the subtle communication of bittersweet silence.]

This is the way that India makes me feel.

(It makes me feel.)