Barry grumbled a bit last night about maybe coming down with something, but didn’t make a big deal of it. We joked that he just needed a stiff drink or three. This morning, he woke up feeling very ill, but since this was our first school, he really wanted to go, even if he couldn’t fully participate. He looked like hell, but trudged along. He stayed in the jeep and tried to sleep a bit (in full, beating sun). We found out this next bit later.
At some point while we were doing our thing with the kids, he needed to get up, feeling nauseous, so he hobbled around behind the school building to pee…and only remembers waking up on the ground in a small pool of his own blood. He grappled his
way back around to the front of the building, and, luckily, was first spotted by Charlene (the ER doctor in our group) who takes him into a dark classroom where several people attend to him. Most of us had no idea, including Susan, his wife. It is a while, too long, before she is told what has happened. Barry develops, over the next few days, two black eyes and a very cut up, probably broken, nose. Evidently he fainted and fell face first. His flu and massive dehydration pass by the next day, but he spends the next many hours back at camp with Susan in the calm shade alongside of the Thakur’s house. Charlene goes over to check on him several times, and a doctor is summoned from another village, who wants very much to give him an injection that Susan doesn’t allow (which is best, since Charlene discovers it was a diuretic—exactly the opposite of what a dehydrated man needs).
Later that day, we will relocate to a new camp, and Manisha runs away with me again—not far this time, but I’ve definitely lost my mojo—not enough confidence to hold her and correct her. I’m not having fun. When our Zen group catches up to the others, I’m planning to hop off and go in the jeep, but it becomes a big deal. Everybody in the group has a suggestion or solution. I’ll trade with you. You ride my horse. You can ride my horse, and on and on. It is sort of how it felt like I had 14 riding lessons from 14 experts after the first break. I feel guilty, but finally Alexander and I trade and I ride Sonia, his beautiful white horse. She is magnificent, and smooth as can be. She, like every horse, wants to be out front, but she is so responsive to the reins, it may well be another species of creature entirely. When we canter, it is lovely and like riding a cloud. OK, that’s right—riding is awesome!
Since things haven’t been dramatic enough—our group comes over a hillock to find the fast group gathered in a bit of a state. A dog had charged one of the guides, Dilip. His horse reared and threw him, coming down and landing on his leg. It seemed likely the leg was fractured, and eventually he was trucked to a doctor then sent home to Dundlod. It turned out not to be fractured, but when we saw him many days later, he still had a pronounced limp. While both groups were gathered, waiting for some word, or plan to form, darkness came. When Dilip was put in the jeep and driven away, we finally were allowed to continue on to camp, by moonlight. It was amazing and ethereal as the moon was so bright we could see our shadows. It seemed, in spite of the enormous drama factor, all was right. Several more dogs charged the group, barking and yipping in the darkness, but none of our horses had as extreme a reaction. We finally saw the campfires in the distance, and had an exhausted but inspired night.
We have several nights of rapidly waxing moon, fast approaching full and shaming the stars. What we give up in the myriad of stars, we gain in that gorgeous, so-bright-it-creates-shadows, blue light. Lighting designers for movies and the stage always over-blue it, trying to achieve this exact effect, this perfect, pristine light. Flashlights become redundant. The horses, especially white Sonia, glow behind the tents. While the desert days made me feel tiny, dwarfed by the sheer magnitude of open space (especially after claustrophobic Delhi), the night sky was not overwhelming. As the moon’s light brightened, the dark in the rest of the sky took on an opaque, almost textured look, more like black velvet than inky and infinite, a blanket more than a void, comforting and close enough to touch.
The nighttime sounds of camp are an odd lullaby. The munching and snorting exhalations of the horses tied to their iron stakes, an occasional hoof pawing at the ground and the billowing blow of air through nostrils while a head tosses side to side. Laughter from another tent…the distant metal clangs from the kitchen tent. Crackle of the dying campfire. As the trip goes on, the sound of coughing in various timbres and tones—all of us fighting some ailment or another if not just the dust in our noses, throats, lungs. Always laughter, though…and distant dogs barking, fighting…laughing themselves.
I had a lot of internal wrestling matches with myself at night. I’d go to bed in my tent frustrated and disappointed with myself, gritting my teeth, clenching my jaw at what an ass I was being and I seemed unable to stop. I had this know-it-all attitude, familiar, no doubt, to those who know me, and it drove me crazy with shame in immediate hindsight. Seconds after letting some idiotic, worldly, professiorial crap escape my lips, my brain would erupt with a silent groan. I seemed unable to control this selfish desire to teach, to correct people about facts I thought I knew or learned about culture, or whatever inane insight they NEVER asked for. After a campfire night of chatting, I’d rinse the toothpaste from my mouth by moonlight, spit into the desert sand behind my tent, then go to bed, read for a few minutes, blow out the candle, and stare into the darkness cursing my arrogance. Why can’t I just shut up? Be the guy who maybe knows stuff when asked, but stop lecturing. Keep my freaking pearls of wisdom to myself—nobody cares.
At some point that is not well-defined in my memory—probably half way through the trip—much of this fell away. I think as I penetrated the skin of this huge experience, and more importantly, as this huge experience penetrated the skin of me, it became enough. Just doing and being was enough. Enough without saying. Discussing. Analyzing. Interpreting. It was enough. Occasionally, it was too much. My mind finally calmed a bit. I became more hungry for the experiences than I was for figuring out the experiences. I was ravenous for it, actually. It was a huge lesson I wish I could say I took home into my world, but at least I touched it. I had it for a while so I can reference that feeling. It is enough to do it, to be it, and NOT have to tell it…(he says, writing it all down for others to read…) I am hopeless, and simultaneously hopeful that the other riders figured out a way to forgive my bloviation.
...and with the sun, the scream of the peacocks, more effective than any rooster.
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