Mike Viola Sings for Radha

During the Mike Viola concert that we saw in Jupiter on Saturday night, Viola asked Radha what her name was.  After about a minute of getting her name straight, he improvised a song about her which turned out to be both catchy and pretty funny.  Somebody taped it and the next day it appeared on Youtube-  "Oooo, I almost forgot her/ Oooo, I almost forgot her/ Oooo, I almost forgot her/ That girl, that girl, Radha."  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPlvN4t0dK0)

On the way there we almost crashed the rental van.  The traffic stopped in front of us and Keshi didn't notice as he was looking in the rear view mirror.  "Keshi!" I yelled and he slammed on the brakes.  The van swayed from side to side but the anti-lock brakes worked very well.  The way back was dangerous too, as we got caught in a serious storm on I-75 somewhere around Wildwood.  The lightning was frequent, intense and spectacular.  The downpour was as heavy as I've seen it in years.  Keshi just drove right through it.  I may have stopped if I was driving but it was really late and would have delayed us even more.  We got home after 4 a.m. as it was.  Of course, it's better to get home later than not get home at all.  There was no hail or exceedingly heavy winds, so fortunately we all got home in one piece, or in six individual pieces, that is.

It was a fun outing with Keshi, Mark, Kavi, Radha, Vrn and I.  We all had fun and pretty good chemistry.  Keshi and I taking turns playing songs on the car stereo, Radha and Vrn laughing in the middle (especially Vrn), Kavi continually trying to hear what was being said in front of him and Mark looking like a young Roy Orbison in the far back with his serious face and dark sunglasses.  Shyam was going to go but decided at the last minute to stay home.  After we left, he drew the Ten of Swords about our trip and called a few times to see if we were all right.  

Mike Viola and the girl he was playing with, Kelly Jones, signed autographs after the show and were very appreciative that we came all the way down there.  Viola patted Keshi on the back as he walked off for intermission and then shook his hand after the show.  My brother was in some sort of ecstasy.  We had front row seats and really enjoyed the performance by one of the most talented but unheralded swinger-songwriters out there.  Not that he's short of accolades.  He has written with Adam Schlesinger's Fountains of Wayne and formed the critically-acclaimed power-pop groups The Candy Butchers and The Major Labels.  He also performed the song "That Thing You Do" for Tom Hanks movie of the same name in 1996, which was nominated for both an Oscar and Golden Globe award.  In 2007, he wrote and performed the soundtrack for the movie Walk Hard- The Dewey Long Story.  He also produced and co-wrote Kelly Jones's new CD "She-Bang," who performed along side him at the show.  His new solo CD is called Lurch and I highly recommend it.  Personally, my favorite song by him is a song he performed under the moniker of the Candy Butchers called "She's Knows What to Do With Michael."  

Mike and Kelly had great chemistry and the show was so good I would consider seeing them again if I get the chance.  I want to see some concerts during my travels this summer.  I don't know if Dhrits, my traveling partner will be into it, so I may have to slip away from him sometimes.

Why Criticize?

This morning I crossed another milestone- this material body is now under 220; 218.5 to be exact.  I have now lost over 30 pounds as I weighed in at 249 to begin with.  When I was in the gym yesterday, one of the gossip programs had a little segment about Valerie Bertinelli.  Apparently, some women are up in arms that she now looks great after her diet and regimen and posed in a small bikini at age 47. They showed pictures and she really does look good.  The controversial case was built around the fact that they found some quote of hers from two years ago that she would never pose in a bikini.  They were almost acting like she should be prosecuted.  Perhaps she changed her mind. Has anyone ever thought of that?  People do it all the time.  Men claim women do it a lot but they still love them nonetheless.  Some people also claimed she did it just to get in those Jenny Craig commercials.  If that's so, even to an extent, then I say who cares?  So, she made a little moo-lah on the side.  I say, good for her.  If the end result is she's healthier and happier with her self-image, is that really causing a load of damage?

Now, someone may say that Valerie doesn't represent what real people look like.  That she is causing young girls to be anorexic or not eat a balanced and nutritious diet.  First of all, I would agree that Valerie doesn't represent what real people look like, especially at 47.  You know why?  Because she fucking worked hard at it and most people are too lazy or convince themselves they don't have the time.  I say why should she be criticized for working hard and getting good results?  As far as the anorexia thing or bulimia goes, I obviously agree that people should eat a healthy and balanced diet.  One mistake that Americans often make, though, is thinking that they have to consume gigantic quantities of food in order to get their nutrition.  In reality, Americans eat way too much.  They are the fattest people in the world by far.  As George Carlin said, "They are gargantuan." Well, for myself, I plan on keeping my name Gargs, but losing that part of the definition.  Besides, study after study has shown that when a person consumes less daily calories they are healthier and live longer.  Smaller portions.  What a concept.  It sounds just like Europe.  If you're very young, that's one thing.  But once you get past 30, if you don't change your ways, it's only a matter of time before it catches up with you and grows and grows and grows over time.

A more pertinent question for me was how did she do it?  Well, that's what they told us next.  First of all, she regularly hit the treadmill, at least five times a week for 45 minutes a session.  "Hey, that's cool," I thought.  "I am already doing that, except that I go for an hour."  Another thing she does is weight train every other day.  Check for me also.  Then finally, she limits her dietary intake to about 1200 calories per day.  I'm also doing the same.  At first, I didn't think I could do that part, but I just make sure I eat healthy and my stomach has shrunk.  I still have cravings but nothing like I used to have.  My appetite was formally insatiable but now I get satisfied quicker.  I get satisfied faster but I eat slower.  I'm no longer like some hyper hound wolfing down my food after a day running around in the yard.  After the segment was over I was pleasantly surprised that what worked for Valerie Bertinelli is working for me.  Let's see, eating less, cardio and weight training on a consistence basis.  Doesn't seem like such a mystery to me.  It's hard work but it works and over time you develop a taste for it. And there are many fringe benefits besides better health.  I can fit into the old shirts now.  Looking better is not a bad benefit either.  People try to make it sound like it's not spiritual or something.  That's bullshit.  I say it could be much less spiritual to be a fat slob.  Some people get fat because they don't want the opposite sex after them.  How about losing the weight and being mentally strong instead of becoming a blob.  Such a solution is much worse than the problem.  I took my shirt off this morning and am actually seeing some definition appearing in my abs.  I don't care if people say it's not spiritual or whatever.  I am happy about it.  It appears the Homer Simpson look is saying goodbye for good.

While saying all this, I don't believe that there is anything that can be objectively called an ideal weight.  My philosophy is to each his or her own.  If you're happy with your weight then go with it.  If someone else calls you fat or too skinny, it shouldn't bother you.  It's not a good idea to live our lives according to pictures in magazines, unless of course we want to.  It is not all black and white, it is not all bad or good.  We should be independently thinking intelligent people who make informed choices for ourselves and don't criticize choices other people make because it threatens or pressures us in some way.  The pressure is only in our own minds.  We should work on ourselves instead of lashing out at others.  As far as I'm concerned, the more diversity in the world the better.  It makes things so much more interesting.  The main thing is to ultimately remember we are not our bodies as we wear different types of dress while living in the material world.  

Cool

The other day in my American Government class, I started leaving the room a few minutes after the lecture started to go and get some water because I was feeling quite parched.  I thought it would be no problem as our professor Jay Maggio is generally very liberal about going in and out of class when we want.  But as I walked down the steps he stopped his talk and gave me a glare.  "Where are you going?" he said.  "I really have to get some water," I said almost defensively.  "I'm very thirsty."  "I am too," he said.  "Could you get me something?"  "Sure," I said, amused and relieved.  "What do you want?"  "A coke would be nice," he said.  The guy is so cool.

I fit into a shirt today that I haven't been able to fit into for six years or so.  This is, I think,  one of the best perks of losing weight.  When I found it at the back of my closet this morning, I thought "I'll try it, what the heck?"  To my surprise, I slipped into it with no problem.  It is a John Lennon shirt that I got from Brazil over eight years ago.  It says in Portuguese, "Living is easy with eyes closed.  Misunderstanding all you see."  Of course, that is a quote from "Strawberry Fields Forever."  On the front is a huge head of John Lennon that could be seen as rather loud if it wasn't for the fact that it is in black and white.  About a half dozen people came up to me that I never talk to and said they liked the shirt.  It was definitely cool.

I weighed in this morning at 222 pounds.  I have now officially lost 27 pounds.  I like the regimen I now have down- lifting weights every other day, walking fast at least four miles everyday and eating much less.  My stomach has shrunk and I am full more easily.  I have not slept much for the last few months.  I'm probably averaging about four hours of sleep per 24. I'm honestly not feeling too tired, though.  I think that's kind of cool.

I can really feel the drive in my calf muscles.  I'm bounding up stairs like I was a teenager again. I always had strong calves but now I am feeling the surge of power.  I think I was letting the obvious truth that the body eventually dies and grows old, psyche me out  make me age prematurely.  Yes, the body will fall but it should be taken care of properly for a longer life of better quality.  I can now run for an extended period on the tread mill without my knee hurting anymore.  Double Garga power.  It's so cool.

 

Getting Over the Flu

I had a little case of the flu, which it appears I'm getting over.  So, for the last couple of days, I stayed away from the gym to give my body recovery time. The nurse at Santa Fe College told me to be careful lifting dead weights as the straining could adversely affect my blood pressure. There are so many benefits that I am going to keep lifting and just keep an eye on the pressure regularly.  Haven't been getting much sleep for a while, perhaps three or four hours a day.  For the most part, though, I haven't felt that tired.  I just go to sleep when I'm tired and wake up when it comes naturally.  The good news was on the scale this morning.  I continue to lose weight.  Now I'm down to 223 pounds, making it now 26 pounds that I have shed.  I'm assuming it's because I'm eating less and exercising more and that it's not because of some kind of curse like in the Stephen King movie "Thinner" or something.  I plan on resuming my regimen at the gym today.

In terms of the eating, I made kichari yesterday morning and ate about a modest-sized bowl and a half with a couple of tortillas and plain yogurt.  I overcooked the vegetables and didn't spice it too much as my stomach has been on the queasy side since I got this flu.  At night, I ate nothing except a little leftover popcorn.  My stomach has shrunk and I can much more easily now control my hunger episodes.  Normally, I would have ate more during the day but I am trying to get this illness out of me early.

I saw the film "Watchmen" with Radha and Vrn on Friday night.  Not my general genre of movie (I have never been your typical alpha-male action movie guy) but I really enjoyed it.  The soundtrack was great and the movie was for the most part very well done.  It's rated "R" and deserves that rating, so be aware if you are thinking about bringing younger children.  The violence was shocking for me at first.  It is intense.  At first, we were planning to see the movie "The Reader" but got there late.  So, instead, we hung out at Walmart and waited for the 11:45 showing.  The movie lasted almost three hours and I am happy to say I only drifted off to sleep once and that was for just a split second.

I've got two major tests coming up on Friday that will have great bearing on my grades in Algebra and Geology.  I really need to get cracking on the study early this week before the anxiety of not studying starts to crack me.

Doctor, Doctor, Give Me the News

As I was checking out at Mother Earth on Thursday, Dr. Yang, an acupuncturist, called me over to his table to do a free examination on me.  I put my protein shake down and he immediately asked me if I had any pain.  I couldn't think of any, so after some time I said, "I've had acid reflux in the past."  "Ahhh, acid reflux," he said.  "Very good!" "Very good?" I thought.  "What's so good about that?"  I guess he felt he now had something to sink his teeth into.  At that moment, he started pushing on various places on my ear.  "Does this hurt?" he asked.  "No," I said.  And then again and again.  "Does this hurt?" "No." Does this hurt?" "No." "Does this hurt?" 'No."  Finally, and seemingly frustrated, the doctor started pinching my ear rather hard.  "Does this hurt?" he asked.  "Ah yeah, but only because you're pinching it,"  I said.  "Very good," he said.  At this point he took out a little tab from a sheet of tabs and stuck it to my ear.  There was a slight burning sensation.  Then he asked me to stick out my tongue.  "Oh, I see line on your tongue," he said.  "That mean problem in the digestive system."  "Okay," I said.  "What should I do?"

He then handed me a flyer entitled Home Care for Chronic Digestive Problems.  The advice seemed good- i.e. take care when eating food, eat warm, easily digestible food, not too many drinks with ice, small and frequent meals, drink ginger tea and eat healthy soup etc.  There was even a yoga exercise, a meditation, and self-massage instructions.  "If you do these things, you will get better but first you must come in for a consultation and I will prescribe for you special herbs," he said.  "Uh-huh," I said.  "How much?"  "$120 for first visit and $80 for all visits thereafter."  "Even if I was sick, which I wasn't.  How can he be sure I would get better?"  I thought.  After all, everyone eventually falls ill and doesn't recover unless they die due to violence or an accident.  The funny thing is, that night I actually started feeling a little ill.  It hit me later while I was playing basketball.  

Today, I left my Algebra class early to go seek out help from the School Health Center.  I figured perhaps they could give me a strep throat test to see if I my throat and lung irritation was being caused by a virus or a bacteria, in which case I could get some antibiotics.  After a number of steps, the nurse found nothing and said I should just get some rest and take it easy on the exercise for awhile.  My blood pressure was a little high, so she gave me the obligatory talk about the silent killer.  You know, something health care practitioners regularly say in order to help them feel useful.  After that, I was back out onto campus, feeling a little weak and wondering if the acupuncturist had pulled any tricks with his burning tabs to make me feel sick and thus compelled to fork over $120 to him for services.  

The Death of Clifford Johnson, School and the Bobster

I was talking to Vrn yesterday evening and she told me a story of how when she recently came back from New York, her mother and herself drove by Walgreens in Alachua and saw a man dead on the road who had just been run over.  Several nights ago, I was playing basketball with AV, Shyam and several of Shyam's friends including Kana, who related the following story about the same man.  Apparently, during the weekend, a drunk man in his fifties approached Kana in front of Danino's in downtown Alachua and asked him for a quarter.  When Kana said he didn't have any money the man was polite, "Next time I see you and have money, I'm going to buy you a beer," the man said.  "Sorry, I'm not old enough to legally drink yet," Kana said.  "That's all right," the man stammered.  "My name is Clifford Johnson.  What's your name, anyway, son?"  "Kana," Kana said.  "Kona?" the man said.  "No, Kana"  "Kina?" "No, Kana."  Finally the man got it.  "Kana,"  he said and kept repeating "Kana, Kana, Kana," as he walked away.  No more than a minute or two later, Kana heard a loud screech and a thud.  When he got to the accident scene, he also saw the man dead, his last words being possibly Kana, which is a nickname for baby Krishna.  It is well known in the Vedic literatures, that if one utters or hears the name of God at the time of death, one elevates their position in their next destination.

Yesterday was what I call Massive-Wednesday, referring to my heavy load of school.  I came very close to not going to my Geology class.  I sat out in my car in the Santa Fe parking lot and tried to convince myself it would be all right not to go.  I was tired from not much sleep the night before and already had a full day of school.  The rebel in me just wanted to blow it off.  After Geology class would also come a three-hour Geology lab. Radha thinks I complain too much about Geology Lab.  "What's the big deal, Dad," she says.  "You're complaining about a f_ing field trip."  First of all, I'm not big on science and second of all eight straight hours of school is not like working an eight-hour job.  It's mentally exhausting and doesn't end there.  After class there is much homework to do.  So I sat there, contemplating dropping Geology and taking another science online during the summer to finish up, thus reducing my work load, and going to journalism school in the Spring of 2010 instead.  Let's just say I was one fried puppy.  Every time I picked a Tarot card, however, it advised going to class.  I picked cards again and again.  Only positive cards came up when I asked what the result would be if I went, and only negative cards  came up when I asked what the result would be if I did not go.  The cards helped to change my mind, something that an intelligent look at the situation could have done by itself.  Still, sometimes I am confused and the cards have never steered me wrong.  "Okay, I'm going to go but only to Geology and not to the lab," I thought.    Besides, I'm feeling under the weather, anyway, and can just say I feel ill and dismiss myself."  So, I trudged toward the X-Building calculating all the possibilities inside my head.

Even though I have taken on a heavy load this semester, I have to look at it like it's a job.  If I don't show up, my pay is going to get docked, pure and simple.  Some classes I can skip once in a while where the work load and subject matter are not so difficult.  I walked out of American Government class yesterday, for example, because the teacher didn't show up for the first half-an-hour of class. Whether or not he showed later, I will eventually find out, but I knew it didn't matter because I have a high "A" in the class and he is very light on student work load.  My Geology teacher, on the other hand, announced that the exam would be pushed a class back and then tried to compensate the good news by saying "We'll have to make the test extra hard to make sure you guys don't get complacent.  The sad thing is, I don't think he was joking.  He is probably going to take what was an already difficult test and tweak it to an even higher degree of difficulty.

For all you Bob Dylan fans out there, there is great news.  On April 28th, the Bobster releases the new studio album Together Through Life.  About it, Mojo journalist Michael Simmons writes, "Yet what I heard [on the album] offered ample proof of an artist steeped in the past but throughly living in the present, cognizant of everything, not afraid to point fingers or laugh at fools or fall in love."  As to how it all came about, Uncut's Allan Jones writes, "Dylan had been asked by the French film director Olivier Dahan, who made the Edith Piaf biopic, La Vie En Rose, which Dylan had apparently liked, to write songs for his new movie My Own Love Song.

Dylan duly cam up with a ballad called "Life is Hard," and was so inspired that the next thing anyone knew he'd written nine more new songs, and not long after that- bingo!- here's Together Through Life in all its rowdy glory."

By my count, this is the 54th album to released by Dylan and the fourth studio album in the last 12 years.  His latest release, the double c.d. Tell Tale Signs in 2008, was a collection of rare and unreleased gems dusted off from the vault over the last 20 years.  One particular song, entitled Red River Shore been played very heavily on my iPod since its release.  The song is an adaptation of the Kingston Trio's song of the same name but revamped with completely different lyrics. Dylan performs the song hauntingly and in it poignantly captures the wrenching human experience of lost love.  

Recently, a friend unfamiliar with the Bobster, asked me to recommend a Dylan album for him to listen to from beginning to end first.  "It depends on your mood," I said.  There are not just so many good ones, there are so many worthy ones, so many great ones.  If I tried to name a Dylan top ten album list in no particular order, I'm sure I would change my mind soon thereafter.  I'm going to try to anyway:  The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, Bringing it All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisted, Blonde on Blonde, Desire, Blood On the Tracks, Oh Mercy, Time Out of Mind, Love And Theft, and Modern Times.  

Dylan has to be the single greatest inspiration in my own poetry writing.  Now, that I am going through a heavy Saturn transit, I find myself returning to his music again and again.

  

When I Met Krishna

It was 1981 and early in my senior year of high school.  I was walking out of the East Brook Mall in Willimantic, Connecticut with two friends named Steve Walton and Clyde Hall.  In my hand, I was holding a bag with Jimmy Hendrix's  "Axis Bold As Love" album in it, that I had just purchased at Music World.  I had loved Hendrix's "Are You Experienced," and had played it again and again over the summer as I delved deeply into the world of marijuana and LSD.  Though, by this time, I was burning out on drugs, so to speak,  I was still anxious to get into this next taste of Hendrix. On the cover, was a picture of Krishna's Universal Form (I had never seen it before) but with Hendrix's head super-imposed on the bodies. 

We had skipped last period and gone to the mall that only a few months before Steve had escaped from security after trying to steal a music cassette.  The security guard had grabbed him and was calling the police when Steve, a member of the football team, broke free with a snap of his wrist and ran out into the parking lot, over a stream and through the woods to get away.  Considering this, Steve was understandingly paranoid when an official looking person approached us in the parking lot just as we got to our car.  He said he was doing a survey for Yale and starting naming subject matters and asked us what we felt about them. When he got to science I said I didn't care for it because I thought their conclusions were too close-minded and excluded the possibility of a metaphysical world.

Upon hearing that, the man's eyes lit up and he presented us a glossy book entitled "Life Comes From Life." Steve immediately acted indifferent but told the man to show it to me because I was into "weird stuff" like witchcraft and out of body experiences.  Clyde and I felt drawn, though, and gazed down at the cover. I was instantly interested in its other-worldly look.  There was a picture of an elderly Indian man walking with a cane.  I immediately wanted to know what the book had to say. When the man asked us for money, Clyde and I pooled about $3 together in mostly change.  The man said thanks and walked away towards his next car.  Little did he or I know how much that two minute exchange would alter my life forever.  

Later, I would meet him in Boston.  His name was Vrajendra-nandana, a veteran book distributor.  To this day, wherever he is, I thank him for the spiritual bomb he dropped on my life that afternoon.  A few years later, I would go out to distribute books and understand the great sacrfice involved and the immense fortune that results from giving others the gift of transcendental literature.  But now, I was riding home from school in the back of Steve's car, passing a joint around, listening to Rush's 2112, and flipping through the new book with the far out paintings in it.

Both Clyde and I took turns with the book and both of us were affected.  The first thing I read when I opened it up was Srila Prabhupada saying something that sounded a little too far out for my spirtually virgin ears to comprehend.  He was explaining the logistics of how residents of the higher planets descended to earth via reincarnation to take a human form.  There is a similar statement in the Bhagavad-gita As it is, 8.3 purport,  where Srila Prabhupada explains:

      In the process of sacrifice, the living entity makes specific sacrifices to attain           specific heavenly planets and consequently reaches them.  When the merit of         sacrifice is exhausted, then the living entity descends to earth in the form of           rain, then takes on the form of grains, and the grains are eaten by man and         transformed into semen, which impregnates a woman, and thus the living             entity once again attains the human form to perform sacrifice and so repeat           the same cycle.

"Incredible," I thought. As I read on, the main thing that I noticed is how 100-percent Srila Prabhupada was convinced that Darwin was wrong.  His arguments were the best I had ever heard against the concept that life generates from dead matter.  "What's the difference between a living body and a dead body?" he asked.  The answer was that matter could not move unless it was touched by spirit.  He also pointed out the fact that when the soul leaves, the body is no longer animate.  He challenged the scientists to create life in the labratory, even a single blade of grass.  He then boldly referred to them as rascals for bluffing the innocent populace. How could something so organized as the universe and nature come into being by some accident or big bang?  His presentation was heavy, but it seemed without anger or personal animosity. 

Another factor that attracted me was that although he was totally convinced (and convincing I might add) he didn't come off as a fanatic like a Born-again Christian or something. His arguments were based in logic although he kept quoting the Vedic scriptures. He seemed to have access to some ancient knowledge that was just as relevant today as it ever was in the past.  From reading his words, I got the immediate feeling that he was the living example of this knowledge.  At the time, I was a practicing Rosicrucian to some extent and had dabbled in white witchcraft and different types of meditation.  I had been a vegetarian of sorts for a little while as well.  I had always dreamed of finding some source of ancient knowledge that would delve deeply into all my questions about life and transform me into some mystical wizard or something living in an enchanted forest.  Perhaps this was it.  

Clyde liked the book as well; but of everyone my brother got into it the most. He started adopting the philosophy immediately and we would talk about it often.  Soon other books started to appear.  My friend Mike found a softback Gita in an abanoned gym locker.  Another friend gave me a copy of "Search for Liberation" which was a conversation between John Lennon, George Harrison and Srila Prabhupada.  "Wow, the Beatles met Srila Prabhupada and they were into him.  Amazing!" I thought.  Being a huge fan of the Beatles, I thought if they were into Hare Krishna then it was definitely something I should further investigate.  After sometime, I realized that the song "My Sweet Lord" had the Hare Krishna mantra.  I had been hearing it all these years and hadn't even noticed it.  My interest gradualy became more than just casual.  

From the back of the books, we contacted a store on the west coast and started ordering more books and beads for chanting.  When they arrived, we started chanting Hare Krishna in circle groups, getting many of our friends involved.  There was my brother Kevin and I, Phil, Mark, Clyde, Randy, Donna, John and whoever else would chant with us from time to time. Chanting the maha-mantra became quite infectious for me.  It was truly amazing how it changed my way of looking at things.  Daily, I was getting profound realizations about life.  Krishna was obviously giving me a taste.   I remember an edited yellow paperback Gita that arrived in the mail.  I started making it my nightly practice to chant a round and then relax by smoking marijuana and finally reading an hour from Prabhupada's Gita.  I remember looking through the glossary and index to try to find the definition of illicit sex.  Sex can be spiritual, I thought, so what is this illicit sex that is prohibited?  

I vividly recall the scare I got one night when Prabhupada warned in a purport not to copy the isvaras or controllers like Lord Shiva by smoking ganja, like some of Shiva's followers do.  He wrote that Shiva drank an ocean of poison, but if we drink one such drop we would die immediately.  Similarly, those who imitate Shiva by smoking ganja regularly, he said, are actually drawing death very near.  I got the hebee-gebees when I read that one. I had been smoking everyday for four years. Marijuana already can make you paranoid enough, but reading this while on the stuff... it was quite spooky.   It didn't take long after that, before I gave up the drugs for good.  I also became frightened when I saw a painting by Jadurani of the half-man half-tiger face (a reincarnation promise for those who eat meat).

It startled me. "This is uncut reality," I thought.

Through Another Threshold and Man- Dates

This morning I stepped on the bathroom scale after not having looked at my weight for a few days and received the good news that I now weigh 226.5 pounds.  Woo-hoo, I was ecstatic.  I had been impatient with the fact that I had been stuck at 230 for a while and now it seems I have finally made it down through to the next level.  As I started at 249 pounds, that's a total of 22.5 pounds lost since I began this program a couple of months ago.  Because of the weight-lifting, I'm feeling stronger everyday as well and quite pleased with my progress.  I now have to use this as an incentive to work harder rather than rest on my laurels.  It is the hard work that has paid off and left me feeling better and with so much more energy.  Now, I have to think there are more good things to come.

One of the adjustments I made that I think helped me get to this level is added exercise at night and refusal to eat anymore after about five 'o' clock.  On certain occasions I will eat at night but only something light and in small quantities.   I feel like I'm really on a roll now and I don't mean a jelly roll.  Last night, I played basketball with AV and fared better than our last game.  Although I lost 52-46, I played well and my skills are returning.  I shot the bell sharply but still have a hard time posting up against him, although I am taller than him.  On offense, he has a great burst with a low center of gravity.  I keep telling him he missed his calling and should have been a running back.

School has restarted its engines and I'm now in for the kick-run of my Santa Fe life.  I'd like to improve in all six classes in the weeks that remain and hope that I'm admitted to UF Journalism College for the fall semester.  I would be wise to buckle down and study the subjects gradually and as they are taught to me instead of waiting until the end to cram for the exams.  That is my challenge now.  I hope I am up to the task.  I have the ability but time will tell whether I follow through on what I know I have to do.  I have this incredible wait-to-the last-minute-because-I think-I'm-smart-enough tendency. The problem is when I get home after so many classes, I don't want to study anymore.  I guess I believe in the adage that all work and no play makes Gargs a dull boy. 

I stopped at Fresh Market after school today.  Radha stayed in the car while I went in.  The classical music and specialty foods puts me in a pretty good mood almost every time I go in there.  I picked up some veggie sushi and a loaf of freshly baked bread.  

Okay, I think it's hilarious that some women feel it so necessary to take the initiative to cohort with their female friends in order to get their men together on what I call man-dates.  What the hell is that? Boring, that's what it is.  Groveling to get along with someone you barely know and have not much inclination to know either.  And these women are standing around peering in as if you're behind the glass and expecting you to bond like you're different breeds of canines or something.  I say, if a grown man can't make friends on their own then they're probably anti-social and not so interesting to be around anyway.  A little free advice to women: let your man be on this one. No self-respecting man wants to feel coerced to have more of his already dwindling time taken up in some extra-curricular activity you consider "nice,"  "healthy" or "cute."

 

Falling Asleep at the Wheel

I left Miami at 8 p.m. last night for the long journey home by myself.  I have driven this route at night many times before but usually with Glani.  Once, in a daze, I was driving around 1 a.m. in the middle lane on I-75 North as Glani slept.  Suddenly, headlights appeared from around the corner and before I could say "What the hell is that?" a wrong-way car going at least 100 miles an hour narrowly missed me.  How's that for a wake-up call from my zombie-like stupor?

Another time, when on our way back from Atlanta, I was driving in the passing lane on I-75 South just before the I-475 connection.  Up ahead, I noticed a bunch of people standing around a stopped-car in my lane.  I swerved at the last second and continued on.  As soon as I looked in my rearview mirror, I saw a van behind me that didn't swerve.  Next, there were flames shooting into the sky and a host of fast moving cars careening off the freeway into the woods.

Once, while crossing Alligator Alley, I saw an SUV just two cars ahead of me start going off the road onto the grassy curb.  The lady driving jerked the wheel and got her vehicle back onto the highway. Heading then to the other side, she jerked the wheel again in an effort to compensate.  In a flash, the SUV was airborne and flipped over landing on its roof.  I pulled to the side with some other cars to see what the fate of the occupants were.  I feared the worse as I saw kid's sneakers and clothes strewn out on the highway.  Fortunately, only the driver occupied the vehicle and she sustained at worse a broken collarbone.  

In 1999, Glani and I were stuck in a very annoying traffic jam on I-85 just south of Commerce, Georgia.  When I saw an RV rolling backwards toward me, I wasn't worried.  Glani was, though, and started freaking.  As it got closer, I became concerned too and started beeping my horn. The RV kept on rolling and ended up hitting us and settling on our trunk.  At that point, the RV moved forward.  I thought it was going to pull over but it didn't.  Next time the jam stopped, I got out of my car and knocked on the man's window, convincing him after some struggle to get off the highway so we could call the police.  When we got to a gas station he looked at me and said, "No need to call the police.  Here's my card.  My wife and I are going to a flower show.  When I get home I'll take care of the damages.  You can trust me, I'm a strong Christian."

I smiled and said "praise Jesus" but called the police anyway.  Later, the man tried to claim it never happened and refused to pay.  My insurance company didn't believe me but when I contacted his, they went out and took pictures of both the back of his RV and the front of my vehicle.  My damage and his protruding metal matched.  I was awarded a check and the strong Christian's insurance went up.

In 1992, I was driving off an exit on a newly snow-covered road in Connecticut.  By the time I saw the 18-Wheeler in front of me, it was too late to stop without sliding out of control.  So, slide I did, luckily coming to a stop just before the Jan and Dean-style impact.

In 1982, I was in the back seat of my friend Phil's car after losing shotgun in a fight with my brother.  We were driving on an old windy road called Jared Sparks in the winter with snow banks plowed up to each side of us in Willington, Connecticut.  When a car pulled out in front of us, Phil had to swerve to avoid it.  I was chanting Hare Krishna on my beads intently but as soon as I saw we were going to hit the tree, I dropped by beads and screamed "AAAAHHHGGGG!!!"  After the impact, I was okay but my brother and Phil both hit their heads pretty hard.  I picked up my beads and went back to my "sincere" chanting.

One last anecdote: Another time in Willington, around 1992 I think, I was stopped at a light when a young UConn student smashed into me from behind with his porsche.  It was at that same light around 11 years earlier that someone else had hit me from behind.  This time, I got out of the car and said I was all right to the paramedics when some strange liquid started oozing out of my nose.  They strapped me down in a gurney and transported me to the hospital.  Later, I was awarded $15,000 for my inconvenience.  

All of these thoughts and more crossed my mind around midnight after I dozed off and started crossing lanes only to be awakened by the fact that I had fortuitously leaned forward into the horn.  I felt perfectly awake and suddenly I was out like a light.  I had risen at six a.m. and by the time midnight rolled around I had driven almost nine hours and worked at least six.  I was Garg-xhausted and reminded that there is indeed danger at every step.

Old Age Hurts

 My sisters Linda and Patty are here at my father's home in St. Cloud, Florida taking care of my father's situation as he tries to recover from his recent surgery.  They were going over his diet according to a pamphlet called "2200 Calorie Diabetic Cardiac Diet."  Just hearing all the do's and don'ts' made me dizzy.  My sisters are so nice and dedicated to drop their lives in Connecticut to come down here and take care of him.  My Dad will be 85 this July and is recovering from the double-by-pass surgery he had a couple of months ago.  He finds walking difficult but he refuses to use the walker.  As I wrote in a poem tonight, he wobbled into the kitchen where I was on my MacBook to get some chocolate pudding on two occasions.  Each time, taking the lid off was difficult for him but you could see in his eyes that he didn't want any help with it.

My step-mother Jenny just turned 88 and has been in the hospital for some time with digestive problems.  My father said she has "down-syndrome"- meaning everything she eats immediately goes down and out of her.  She has developed some digestive-related staff infection and is fighting that off now to the best of her ability.  She is very skinny- perhaps under 80 pounds.  It is difficult to see their lives slowly slipping away.

They are both strong-willed.  About ten years ago, Jenny had a kidney and much of her intestines removed, along with a grapefruit-sized malignant tumor.  About five years ago, she broke her hip during a hurricane.  Someone knocked on the door in the middle of the night to see if my Dad and her were all right.  They both got up in the dark and my father accidently knocked her over while walking to answer the door.  "Thanks for being so concerned," my father sarcastically told the neighbors.  She had already had one hip replaced years before and was a long time sufferer of osteoporosis.   Somehow she has trudged on.  

My Dad must be very strong to survive the kind of surgery he got at his progressed age. I couldn't believe they were giving a man of that advanced age such invasive surgery.  They basically saw your chest open, stop your heart and do the procedure before sewing you back up again.  I knew a man who had the same procedure in his forties and said it felt like an elephant was on top of him when he woke up.  

Dad has been stubborn about rehab.  It must be very depressing for him to not be able to work in his workshop and build the "dummies" that used to "work" in his yard at tasks like climbing a ladder or mowing the lawn.  They were a hit of the neighborhood.  He usually is a million laughs a minute but now he doesn't have much to say.  It's a very difficult time of life for him.  When I first went into his room, he asked me how me and the family was doing and then became transfixed in WWE (Wrestling).  I have to leave at seven tomorrow morning and feel bad I can't spend any more time with him. 

The material world is a painful place.  I am really committed to getting fit and taking care of my health because I want to avoid as many complications as possible when I get older.  I want to live to a healthy, productive and ripe old age, man.  Of course, there are no guarantees for the material body other than the fact that it will eventually get old and die.  That is assured.  

Long Walk, Basketball, Veggie Sausage and Chocolate-Covered Strawberries

Writing this blog regularly kind of makes me bored with myself sometimes but I'm still glad I'm doing it.  Life is an adventure and life is a bore.  The energy flows in drips and drabs or sometimes it feels like Grand Central Station, or in other words, coming from all directions.  This vacation has been nice but I really have to hit the road tomorrow to make a little moo-lah.

Today, I walked all the way to the 13th Street Walmart and back.  In the process, I snapped over 100 pictures.  Lots of them were boring but there were a few keepers.  I met Kalakantha somewhere on 13th Street and was able to take a couple pictures of him, for instance.  Sometimes, I see nice potential pictures but I don't take them because I'm concerned that people will protest.  Whatever the case, I posted almost all of the ones I did take on my Facebook account.  You can be the judge.  I'm one of those completists.  I want it all and I want to show it all.  I can't help myself.  

I played Shyam in basketball today and beat him two out of three games.  It was cool.  I beat him barely in game one and game three, while he killed me in game two.  In that game he put on a burst of energy and played at a whole other level.  He's an athlete and I'm a crafty veteran.  Luckily for me, I was hitting my outside shots and free throws.

I bought another batch of veggie sausages from Devadeva today then met Chakradhara between Alachua and Gainesville and sold him two of them.  As I am going out of town, I figured I could spare two.  She joked that I was selling them on the black market.

The good news is that this morning I weighed in at 230 pounds.  I have now officially lost 19 pounds. Hooray.  The bad news is, well there isn't any bad news, at least I don't choose to acknowledge it if there is.   I'm really hoping that the scale will read below 230 in the morning.  That would be so awesome to dip below 230.  Hopefully I don't gain any wait on this damn trip.  I really want to get below 200 pounds by the time the summer comes and goes but that is going to take a lot of work.  I hope Raghavendhu will show me some exercises I can do in the hotels because I am dependent on my gym routine right now.

Radha took the car out by herself today to get the ingredients for chocolate covered strawberries.  I remember when Leela (Woodham) made them here once.  They've become a hit in the house ever since.  I think Vrn and Jahnavi were also here and we all played Apples to Apples, if I am not mistaken.  I think I also turned them onto flight of the Conchords that day.  I don't have much of a sweet tooth, so I don't generally eat the chocolate strawberries but they sure looked good after Radha made them. Glani has made them for Hridayananda Maharaja once or twice in the past to rave reviews.

Let's see, where do I find the balance?  I'm losing weight, getting in shape and feeling great but I still could sure use some money.  At the same time, I have to get ready for the kick run of this final semester at Santa Fe.  I'm going to feel sad when I graduate from the place.  It's actually been fun.

Lift Outrageous Weights

It seems like it's going to take forever to get my body back into decent shape.  Although I have lost 18 pounds, I have been hovering around at the 231 mark and its frustrating.  Today, for example, I went to the gym, worked out on weights on about 15 machines and ran on the tread mill for an hour.  In the evening, I drove to Alachua and played basketball with AV for another hour-and-a-half or so.  When I got home, however, my weight appeared to be the same.

I know, I know; I just have to somehow be simultaneously patient and enthusiastic.  But it's hard.  Now, one of the things I should remember, and I have mentioned this before, is that muscle weighs more than fat and I have been converting fat to muscle via the weight training.  I feel more burst in my calves and thighs and more strength in my arms.  Of course, if I keep changing fat into muscle and stay at this weight, I'll eventually look like a heavy-weight prize fighter, and that's not really the look I'm looking for.  

The weight training is getting tough.  Before, I breezed right through the line and then went up in weight exponentially in the next session.  Now, I can only go up a little at a time if any and I really struggle.  It's like I can feel and hear my body ripping as I go on.  And I don't mean "ripping" in the positive sense like "he's ripped." I have to take deep breaths and get an insane look in my eye before I lift, like one of those guys I used to see on ABC's Wide World of Sports. I want to start doing some yoga and stretching to balance this shit out.  When I was a teenager I once wrote a poem against weight lifting that went:

Lift outrageous weights

All day until that

You excite all the girls

With stretched flesh of no fat

Then 20 years later

Dead you'll be found

Heart-attacked

Cramped

Couldn't move

Muscle bound

I don't really believe that stuff nowadays but I still can't stand those over-testosteroned monstrosities of human-existence who are always walking around all goo-goo eyed and ramped up on 'roids as their brains gradually shrink even smaller than it was to begin with.

The cardio is giving me good stamina.  The result is that I didn't get very tired playing basketball this evening and basketball demands a lot of energy. When AV and I were warming up, two kids came over and challenged us.  Although neither of us had played for a year and we're both over 40, we whipped them easily in both games we played them.  Later, we went one on one up to 51.  He beat me handily 52 to 30 but I just need to work on my outside shot a little and I'll be fine.  Get you next time AV.

I think another part of the frustration is when I was really fat (meaning fatter than I am now), I didn't want to look in the mirror.  It was too painful.  Now I can do it and although I see I have a long way to go, at least I see that some presentable form of human being is returning.  Don't get me wrong, I don't have a low self-image.  I just truthfully acknowledge that my body is unfit and needs some serious work.  I think it's healthy to be dissatisfied with your own state of affairs if it motivates you to improve.

To tell you the truth, I'm getting a little sick of hearing me blog about this weight issue. Still, it's an obvious part of my life right now and I am going in the positive direction, so why not write about it?  If I am being a bit redundant, I am sincerely sorry.

Odds and Evens

Toshan called me over to his table at the feast yesterday.  Sitting with his wife Madhurya-lila, he grabbed my hand and said "Gargamuni, I had a strange dream about you last night."  "Yes?" I said curiously.  I dreamed that you and I were being shot at in the street." "You mean like some kind of drug war or something?" "Something like that," he said.  "You were hit a couple of times and were taking cover lying on your belly and I was running over to save you."  "Oh my God," I said.  "You weren't hit bad," he said  "They only had 22's and you were just grazed."  

We've hit a warm spell here in Alachua County.  It was in the 80's yesterday and will continue in the low to mid-80's with almost no chance of rain through the weekend.  The weather was heavenly at the temple yesterday evening.

I'm going to go out on the road by myself in search of some doh-ray-me starting Thursday and may stay out all the way until Sunday.  This is what my Spring Break "vacation" comes down to. It's like out of the frying pan and into the fire.  I could ask someone to go with me but I think I'd rather go it alone this time.  I'm pretty much going to stay in the South Florida area and hope I can find a decent price on hotels, otherwise it will somewhat defeat the purpose.  If I go by myself, the expenses will be higher, but so will my income and freedom.  My irritation rate should thankfully be lower.  

The Gaura-Purnima program at the temple was nice.  I put on the big white diaper (dhoti) for perhaps the second time in the last year or so and hobnobbed with old friends milling about the temple midway.  Shyam had asked me permission to take the van to go to Saint Augustine and camp for a night.  Both of us had forgotten he was planning to go on Gaura Purnima.  He told me he's chanting several rounds every day, recently read "The Perfection of Yoga," and is about half-way through the Bhagavad-gita.  Although he didn't go to the evening Gaura-Purnima festivities, he did go to the morning program before he left for Saint Augustine.  I never forced Krishna consciousness on him when he was growing up and am now happy to see him becoming more serious about spiritual life.  Govinda went through a similar transformation several years ago.   Now, let's see what happens with the Shyam-man.  The coach from the South pines Club team called for him yesterday to see if he wants to play on their team as a guest-player for the State Cup soccer tournament for U-19's.

I walked to Colen's, across from Ben Hill Griffin Stadium at the Gator Plaza, to get my hair cut. This time, the oriental lady K.C. cut my hair.  As she cut, I heard the owner complain about Obama to one of his friends.  "He just gave away $400 billion more, that makes $1 trillion now," the owner said.  "Yup," said the friend.  "They have to borrow it from Korea or China," said K.C.  "Now, how do you suppose they gonna pay it all back?" the owner said.  "They'll have to hand over Alaska," he continued.  "You know that Japan already owns half of Hawaii?"  said the owner.  "Really?" said the friend.  "How do you know that?  I never read that."  "Just look it up.  It's right there on the internet," said the owner.  "I'm sure glad they don't own Florida yet," said K.C.  Later, I walked over to Mother Earth before going back home.

Radha's friend Prema spent the night last night.  She got her driver's license about a day or so after Radha did and drove Radha back from the temple.  She didn't want to show it to me at first because she didn't like her picture.  After the temple, I stopped at Kesi's and picked up two vinyl albums he bought me- John and Yoko's "Double Fantasy" and the Cars' "Candy-O."  I stopped at the new Walgreens in Alachua to buy some allergy medicine for Radha.  "I'm going in with a dhoti to buy drugs," I told Kesi.  Inside, I met Ramanya and he talked about how he became friendly again with his ex-wife Chaintanya-lila before she died.  He promised her to move back to the States to be closer to their children.

Only a Dream

I dreamed last night that I over heard a former professor talk to someone else about his recommendation of me for Journalism College.  "Say that he has a good outside shot," he said to his student-secretary, who was filling out some form.  After some silence, I couldn't help but butt in.  "Also, say I play good defense," I said, poking my head into the room.  "Yeah, that's good, write it," he said.  There was a sheet of paper with everyone's class ranking and I was somewhere in the middle.  "That isn't right," I thought, but didn't say anything because I was not suppose to be looking at it.  "I should be up much higher." Then I noticed that my religious beliefs knocked me down a few notches.  "Is vegetarian, subtract points," the professor had written in another part of the paper.  Then I remembered the guy was big-time pig-time on cooking and eating meat "gourmet."

I left the room but I wanted to go back in to protest.  When I did, the guy was lying down with his student-secretary and it looked like they were about to go at it.  He looked at me like "Shut the damn door," so I did.  Then, my dream became lucid and I realized I was only dreaming as the dream was going on. "Only a dream," I said to myself. "Only a dream."

When I was in high school I used to have nightmares that I was failing class and not going to graduate.  I would wake up and then gradually realize that it was only a dream.  When I was in middle-school, I had the common dream that I was going through the school day in my underwear, and somehow or other getting through it despite the embarrsment.  I had that dream once after I was walking through my sister's neighborhood in Willimantic, Connecticut, and I saw a kid on the sidewalk yelling to another kid standing in his doorway.  "I saw you in your underwear," he kept repeating loudly.  Finally, the kid in the doorway responded, "You don't have to tell the whole neighborhood."

When I was 19-years-old and newly living in the temple, I sometimes dreamed I had smoked marijuana again and felt awful.  Before I was a devotee, I smoked weed everyday for about four-years.  I always felt super-relieved after I woke up and realized that I was still pot-free.  

After my mother died, I used to have dreams that she had come back to see me but was on borrowed time.  She would talk to me a while or hug me then said she would have to go.  Her heart would always start pounding out of her chest until it exploded.  Those dreams always started out sweetly and ended bitterly.  I would wake up to stark reality.  

Perhaps my worst nightmares occurred when I was around five-years-old.  They were particularly bad, I think, because I was so young and they really scared me.  I used to regularly dream of a monster in my closet, like the one I had of a toy.  I would open the closet, and see the monster there.  Sometimes, I was convinced that I really got up and saw the monster standing in the closet. To this day, I'm still not sure it didn't really happen.  He looked kind of like the Creature from the Black Lagoon and would put his arms up at me and roar.  

Later, I had regular dreams of a friend of my sister's who was in her twenties named Lizzy.  She had long black hair and in a dream, for a few months straight, would come to my house, pick me up and take me away.  In the dream, my brother and I would be playing in the kitchen, and he would look at his wristwatch and say, "It's about that time."  At that point I would see the locked door slowly open and start running away.  Invariably, I would always fall and start crawling down the hallway.  Before I got to the end, Lizzy would always pick me up and carry me out the door.  She looked like a witch and I was terrified.  I told my mother and sisters about it, they showed passing interest but could do nothing.  Months later, the dream continued like a serial.  She was holding me in her bedroom, telling me she wasn't feeling good.  I had become less scared and more acclimated to her and was jumping on her bed.  

When I was a brahmacari, I occasionally dreamed about women coming to seduce me.  It wasn't one of those desirable "wet dreams" you enjoy when you're a adolescent, at the time for me it was a nightmare because I was seriously trying to be celibate.  They weren't coming to consciously seduce me either but that was the affect of them flirting with me.  I used to distribute books and an older devotee, who was now  married, told me he had a similar problem when he was a brahmacari and therefore decided to follow a vow to stop distributing books to women for one year.  If he accidentally approached a girl, he would simple curtly say, "It's a book, do you want it or not." I thought it was a little artificial and decided I just had to be humble because there were forces much greater than me in the world.  Anyway, why should women not get a book on spiritual life just because I was in the wrong ashram?

In this material world, I understand we are already living in a dream.  As this life is temporary, our memories are quite comparable to dreams.  We have dreams in the night and we have "waking" dreams in the day.  Just because the night dreams are another layer away from reality, doesn't mean that the day dreams are the real ultimate life.  Who can say we are not already sleeping somewhere else?  How many layers of dreams could we be experiencing?  These are all questions I wanted answers to from the time I was very young.  I remember watching "Horton Hears a Who," and wondering whether ants knew about the existence of humans and how there may be Gods that human beings similarly were unaware of.  I also started thinking about dreams and the nature of reality but they were difficult for me to articulate about during those times.

Sometimes, when I dream, I actually fly out of my body and it's not really a dream per se, but more like a trip into another dimension.  I float off, look around and then take off into interesting adventures. Such adventures I will not write about here today but will leave for another time "How do you know it's not just a dream?" people ask.  To that, I usually give different types of circumstantial evidence, like I saw my body laying on the bed, etc. but does it really matter that much?  I mean, I'm not trying to prove anything to anyone and ultimately we all are living in a kind of illusion as the the famous poem by Lewis Carrol goes, "Row row row your boat gently down the stream/ Merrily merrily merrily merrily, life is but a dream." 

Robot-Mode

 

I had to get up early Sunday morning and this daylight savings time thing made me have to get up even an hour earlier on top of that.  The result was that Sunday I wasn't my usual self.  There were a number of things that compounded the situation.  On Saturday evening, Purandara and I drove to Byron, Ga., which is about a three-and-a-half-hour drive.  I have to do all the driving because Purandara has occasional seizures and thus driving a plus-ton vehicle at neck-break speed down an asphalt-highway with many even heavier vehicles could be a dangerous situation. I usually like to drive all the time anyway and only generally relent when I'm really tired.

In the hotel, Purandara started shutting the lights off early.  I'm not big on early lights off but I understood as we had to get up at 5:30 a.m., which was really 4:30 because we had to set the clocks ahead.  Anyway, I was happy because it meant I was going to be alone in terms of waken people and when I'm alone I am much better-able to write anyway.  So, after about five minutes, as I lay on my stomach with my Mac-book, Purandara says, "How long are you going to have that thing on?"  "I don't know Purnadara, but I'm not going to lay here in the darkness for the next three hours twiddling my thumbs."  I was a little annoyed because he had asked to come with me and I was perfectly content on going alone.  I felt bad for him because otherwise he had no way to go.

After about another five minutes, I started thinking about how hard it is for me to sleep with any lights on in the room myself, even the glow of a laptop, so, feeling sorry for Purandara's plight, I grabbed all my stuff and moved into the bathroom for the next few hours.  It took a few minutes to adjust, but in almost no time the large countertop around the sink became my desk and the toilet bowl became my chair.  Just before I went in, I told Purandara I was going to take a shower and write in there a while.  "Oh, I was thinking about using the bathroom to take a shower also," he said, from under the covers.  I said nothing and disappeared behind the door.  After a few minutes, I heard him snoring through the walls.

Unless I write at least a poem and a blog a day, I do not feel complete, like I am neglecting my duties or something.  Several people came up to me during the Sunday feast last night and encouraged me about my writing.  One devotee said she thinks it's my dharma.  It was nice to hear.  So, anyway, being in that bathroom felt like an oasis because I was able to write in peace 

Waking up early in the morning after getting little sleep and traveling the night before, is tough on the body and the mind.  When that alarm first goes off, you have to go into robot-mode just to get through.  "Who wants to take a shower first?" Purandara asked.  "I will," I said and immediately put my feet on the floor.  Those first minutes of getting your stuff together when hours of austerity await you is not fun.  You have to remember about the temporality of it all and focus on your purpose.  If the purpose is important enough, then it becomes easier for your mind to accept and it finally stops whining.  If the mind stops whining, the body starts adjusting almost immediately. Not that the body is overjoyed or anything but it's pretty much just a machine.  Like I said before, in those situations, robot-mode always works best for me.  We still had another hour-and-a-half to drive on the pre-dawn highway before we could get to our destination.

In the hotel lobby, the girl at the desk looked like she didn't want to be there either.  "Everyone is going through austerities," I thought.  "What makes me so special?"  How about all those people who choose to get up early and go see a race?  "They're friggin' nuts," I thought.  But for them, this is one of the best times of the year, or so they hope.  As I drove in the parking lot and made my way out of the car, a tall, fat guy with a Dale Earnhardt Jr. hat, who was hanging out at his car, looked at me and asked "Where's breakfast?"  "Sorry, I already had oatmeal,"  "Oatmeal!?!" he said with a contorted look on his face.  "I'm asking where's the bacon?"  "Apparently, a lot of it has already lodged inside of you," I thought.

I had forgotten my belt at home and bought one at Walmart the night before.  I really need a belt out there, otherwise all the weight of the stickers pull my pants down.  There's no more loser-like feeling than having to regularly pull your pants up out in public.  I had bought a cheap man-made-material belt for $9.99 and as I tried to buckle it, it promptly broke in half.  "Great," I said aloud.  The bacon-eating-man looked at me and started laughing.  "That's why I wear these," he said, pulling on his suspenders.  I then proceeded to take an old plastic rain poncho and tear it into a make-shift belt.  It worked fine, holding my pants up, and no one could see it anyway because my jacket was hanging over it.

I worked for about three hours, and had another three hours to go when a offical-looking man in a golf-cart called me over to him.  He checked me out to make sure I had no Nascar paraphernalia, which I never do.  I acted at ease with him and he joked with me.  I thought all was well but when another official talked to Purandara, the P-dawg was less than cooperative.  "Let me see in your pockets," the less-than-overjoyed man repeatedly said.  Purandara kept ignoring his request.  "I told you this is all I have," Purandara said, defiantly referring to the stickers he already had in his hands.   "I want you guys off the property," the agitated official said.  "If we see you again, we'll take all your stuff."  "Great," I thought, a little annoyed, knowing Purandara may have well pushed the man over the edge and got us kicked out of there.  I had been in a rhythm, too.

As we walked back to the car, Purnadara was disturbed that I wasn't going to work anymore.  "You're the one who kept asking if you could bring Nascar hats" I said.  "If you had, they would have cleaned my car out.  I told you if you go with me you have to follow my rules." I said annoyed.  The P-dawg grumbled but could do nothing.  He just couldn't accept that it was time to go.  "Why don't we just look around?" he said.  "For what?" I asked.  There were cars parked up and down the road, which was "off the property," but there were almost no tail-gaiters. He was frustrated because he wanted to continue working but I didn't want to run into those guys again.  I was annoyed because I thought if I had come by myself, I would have kept things cool with the officials and been allowed to work another three hours.  Around noon, we stopped at Moe's for burritos and Purnadara's hunger took over his confounded mood.  He ordered so much filling, that by the time his burrito was wrapped, it looked like a big used diaper.

I fought off sleep on the ride home by listening to George Carlin and Chris Rock.  Puranadara kept hinting that he wanted to put his Ipod on but I largely ignored him.  "I have an Ipod," he said.  "I know, you showed me yesterday." I said.  "He took it out again and started playing with it. He kept looking at me, like he wanted to say something but kept hesitating.  "Want to hear some of my songs?" he finally said.  "I'm not big on hip-hop and R& B." I answered.  "Anyway, I have to drive and I'm really trying to just stay awake here."  After we stopped for gas, he hooked up his Ipod, or thought he did.  Really he just hooked up my charger to his Ipod.  When he turned the stereo on he was baffled because one of my songs were coming out of the speakers.  He looked down at his Ipod and squinted.  "You didn't plug it in properly."  I said.  "All right, you can listen to one of your songs." "Just one?" he asked.  "That's it," I said firmly.  He put on a Bob Marley song with UB40.  When it was over "Paint it Black" by the Rolling Stones came on and I told him he could play it because I liked the song.  He smiled.  

I did a couple of makeshift tarot readings for him as we drove home.  

After I dropped him off at his house and said our good byes, I called Radha.  She told me she was going to the temple with Govinda.  I asked if they would wait for me to get home.  I was so tired by the time I got there that I had her drive us.  I laid on my back in the passenger seat with my car-bumper stained shorts still on and my japa beads in hand.  Radha drove mostly quiet and serious, while Govinda humored my almost incoherent stories and ramblings from his seat in the back.  I was glad to be home, back in my stomping grounds and on the way to the Sunday Feast.

Keep On Truckin'

I've concluded that my mind spends so much time dreading some of the things that I have to do, to the point that the very quality of my life is sapped even when I'm not doing them.  Generally, I have found that the so-called austerities end up not being so bad after all.  One of my problems is that I'm a perpetual thinker.  I have to learn to just do it.  People with strong Virgo influences do tend to think too much.  Stop that Gargs.

At the gym today, the trainer-girl told me that even though I'm working out regularly, I should still try to cut down on my eating a little if I want to lose significant weight.  As I have noticed things leveling off the last few days, I will try to be more mindful and cut down at least a little bit more.  Good luck Gargs.

The good news is I am getting stronger from lifting the weights.  I beat Shyam in arm wrestling today for the first time in about a year.  He had passed me out but now I'm back on top.  I had mixed feelings about it as he is my son.  I want him to do well.  Perhaps, he shold start hitting the gym with me more.  Still, good job Gargs.

I drove up into Georgia today with Purandara.  We stopped at Subway and I ordered only half a sub.  It's Ekadasi today but I did not follow having forgot about it in the morning.  Also, eating potatoes on the road all day is a bit damaging to my health.  Anyway, enough of the excuses and on with my anecdote.   So, when the skinny Indian boy tried to put tomatoes slices with all this seedy green larva on my sandwich, I told him no.  "But they are very good," he said.  "If they are so good, then you eat them," I said.  "Now please give me some healthy-looking tomato slices."

When he tried to give me just a few strands of lettuce, I asked for more.  When he then added only a few more strands, I specifically told him, "Look, put your entire hand into the lettuce and now squeeze, that's it.  Now, lift your hand up like a crane and drop all that lettuce onto my sandwich.  Thank you very much."  He tried to use a mayonnaise-stained knife to push all my fixings better into my sandwich and I clearly told him no.  "I'm a vegetarian," I explained.  "And the knife is tainted."  "I'm a vegetarian too," he said with a smile.  I had a new smiling Indian friend.  Good going Gargs.

The road often feels hard and lonely, even when another person is traveling with me.   The austerities I'm performing, however, are necessary.  There are so many things I'd rather be doing but as John Lennon once said, "There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.  It's easy."  I need to have the mentality to make the best of each day no matter how distasteful it may seem on the surface.  I have to keep my goals in mind and keep on truckin'. Good thinking Gargs.

Turning Back the Hyper Clock

Spring Break officially started for me at 2 p.m. yesterday.  It was a bit surreal as I got into my car and turned the radio on to hear Deep Purple's "Highway Star." As I heard the words flow out of the speakers, "Nobody's gonna take my car, I'm gonna race it to the ground/ Nobody gonna beat my car, it's gonna break the speed of sound," I started getting pumped.   While breaking the speed of sound is a little ridiculous to think about my Toyota Yaris, hearing that song after I got out on break, made me feel like I was 17 again with the whole vacation in front of me.  Back then, I had no responsibilities but school; now, I could only pretend that was true. Whatever the case, in that playful spirit, I turned the speakers up full blast and began speeding down the highway.  By the time I was in the high 80's or maybe it was low 90's, I saw that a cop had pulled a similar celebrator over on I-75.  He looked like he was about 19.  I'm sure he wasn't listening to Deep Purple, probably more like Lil' Wayne or something, but you get the picture.  I quickly came back to my senses. Point of fact, young males get more speeding tickets than anyone does.  There's a good reason for that- They've got so much testosterone pumping through their bodies that they become stupid.  I thought it was interesting, though, that as soon as I tried to turn back the clock to those old days, even if it was just make believe, I almost got zapped just like those old days.  

It's not that I'm saying I shouldn't act young; it's just that I'm saying I shouldn't act stupid.  There is a balance between becoming complacent as you grow older by letting everything go to pot and going to the other extreme of not taking advantage of the maturity the years have given you.  My age is perfect in many ways because I can still have lots of energy and vigor while getting the benefit of my experience and maturity.  One may say that I'm wearing rose-colored glasses and that I'm choosing to look at it in that way because I have no other choice.  While there is a grain of truth in that, I say it's mostly bullshit.  Albeit, I may have to work a little harder at having the energy, but it's still there for the taking.  My lack of energy in the past was because I was fucking fat and I identified with that body as the self.  I don't want to get neurotic and apply the philosophy that you're not you're body to the extent of not taking care of the machine because I'm thinking that it ultimately doesn't matter anyway.  It's that misapplication of "the philosophy" that can make neophyte devotees think old.  What it really should be is that first of all, I'm not my body, and second of all, the body should be taken care of.  This is especially important because in the conditional stage of life we identify with our body to an extent anyway, and if we let it get unfit and unhealthy then we can only get depressed and "grow old" before our time.  

Lately, I have developed a taste for working out.  I actually burn to do it and this is, I think, for several reasons.  In fact, after I write this blog and before I sail off to Atlanta for a couple of days, I'm going to put in a couple of hours at the Gainesville health and Fitness Center.  First of all, I have got into the routine and it feels great while I'm doing it.  I have got past the initial difficulty of getting started and feel I'm making a little progress almost everyday.  It has become easier for me and I am encouraged.  Second of all, I always feel great after I do it.  I have more hop in my step and more strength in my body.  Before I started my regular regimen, my knee was really hurting.  I believed that I had partially torn a ligament and was having a hard time for several months.  I started walking around the neighborhood everyday but sometimes the knee really felt bad.  Now, that I've taken to weight training, that has gradually changed for the better.  If I had started out with too much weight, it may have made matters worse.  Fortunately, I had the where-with-all to start slow and gradually build up the weight (that's where my maturity has come in).  Now, my knee feels strengthened and the botheration I felt before there is almost completely gone.

In other news, I submitted my application for the UF College of Print Journalism at the end of February and expect to hear back from them anywhere from mid to late April.  If I am accepted, I will be pumped.  If not, then I will have a choice between trying to get in for the Spring of 2010 semester or applying for the College of Broadcast Journalism for the fall term.  I am into both, so if I am not accepted for my first choice I don't want to wait around and be chomping at the bit.  I want to keep on rolling.  Of course, if I had a semester off, I could concentrate on making money, which I could sure use right now, but I'm trying to make choices for the long-term so that I will no longer be in the short-term financial situations that I am now in.  Whatever I do, I have to continue to keep thinking positive while being practical and realistic at the same time.  If I follow the ancient Vedic spiritual text by Rupa Goswami called Upadesamrita, or the Nectar of Instruction, I will be simultaneously patient and enthusiastic, which is a winning combination for anyone in any endeavor in life.