Days soaking in intense growth and pure magic. Being gentle with myself when I feel tender. My trip celebrates her fourth birthday. My unaltered hair turns 15-months-old.

Monthly Mood: The Universe Loves Me

life is a gift. you have not deserved it in the first place. it is not your right. it has been given to you, you have not earned it. once you understand this, many things will become clear.
if life is a gift, then all that belongs to life is going to be a gift. happiness, love, meditation—all that is beautiful is going to be a gift from the holy, from the whole. you cannot deserve it in any way and you cannot force existence to make you happy, or to make you loving, or to make you meditative.
—osho, the man who loved seagulls

Bloom + Brew, Assagao, Goa.

brief report from Day 1,462

7 February 2022

Goa, India

Four laps around the sun on a vagabond life is indeed a happy happening. The 22-year-old Vivian who boarded that one-way down to Argentina, without bothering to graduate in-person, turned 26 last month.

Relevant read: A Personal Update: Around the World in 2,190 Days

A week ago she made a brief list of inner changes that her travels have directly amplified, whether it is to better apply a life hack or to drop toxic patterns:

  • placing my drink fully behind my laptop (a drenched keyboard = a day out the window)
  • not loving myself
  • pressuring myself to make all my recipe ideas in too short a time window
  • reading Indian avocados
  • digestive health and hygiene
  • fear of pain
  • drawing boundaries
  • not sending a text that I don’t truly mean to send and to be left hanging
  • not cancelling on a friend for romantic hopes
  • self-creating drama in my head until it becomes true
  • eating less often
  • less overeating
  • not hoping, just feeling
  • less social anxiety
  • less binge/ addictive eating
  • releasing the need to criticize my body
  • releasing attachments to my hair
  • hearing the messages my body sends me
  • spending less time on instagram
  • relearning chinese from the beginning (of 3,000 most common characters)
  • relearning spanish from the beginning (of duolingo spanish)

Every one of the items in this list is a constant work in progress. Some days are better than others, nothing fully goes away. The changes are subtle, but they are there. After four years they have built up in a significant way.

Relevant read: Three Years Of Solo Female Travel: Five Nevers And A Know

Out of the last 48 months, 25 of them have been spent in India. It’s been a while that I don’t consider myself to be traveling. I am indulging in a high standard of living in a country with special powers. Where doing the opposite of what makes sense helps you get exactly what you want. Where there’s a massive market for any industry. Where I can laugh at everyday things, every day.

Like the timid piglets foraging on the path to my house, tails in a row, ticking like grandfather clocks.

Like speeding away from the police after they’ve spent ten minutes asking your friend to turn the bike into the police station for no good reason using their creepy, monotone speech.

Like the mom on her front porch hand-feeding her son his dinner through the right corner of his mouth while he didn’t miss a pixel of the contents playing on the smartphone screen gripped by his chubby fingers. She looked as if she couldn’t take another minute of the task but that she also knew this would be the reality of her evenings for years to come.

Like a couple squatting on the floor in the dark fanning a fire offering chapatis, presumably not for free, to you and your friend walking by and when you politely decline, the tirade of “arrey paisa do paagal ho kya” rained down on you. Me hollering back “ham nahin paagal aap paagal hain” only flared their ador in cussing us out.

Let it be clear that I am aware of their unfortunate economic condition and likely unsatisfying arranged marriage; I do not find amusement in that. It is the sweet mask feigning an offer to people who so obviously do not want floor chapatis at that particular moment in their lives, people targeted just for being foreigners, and then using the decline to justify insults and demands for money the foreigners surely don’t understand Hindi—it is that concept making me laugh every time I think back on it.

On a global scale, four years away from a traditional concept of ‘home’ has highlighted how much poison the mass media shoves down our throats, and how few people truly care about anyone who not him/herself. How no matter how much of a battered refugee or victim of abuse or privileged or sheltered soul we may be, no matter what language we speak and what food we eat and how vegetarian we are or what utensils we habitually use, we spend most of our day thinking about 1. the person we like and 2. how to get more money and what we could do with it.

Real issues that have been around for centuries or decades don’t get our attention. Conditions are horrific for many of those we share the planet with. Most people living in a stable environment do not care about these issues or avoid looking into these stories so they won’t feel extra sadness.

Practicing compassion expands our capacity for compassion. Whenever possible, I try to hold heart space for what is happening in Myanmar, Venezuela, Chile, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Yemen, Kashmir, Palestine, Afghanistan, North Korea, Tibet, Xinjiang, and for any refugee or fooled migrant worker stuck at unfriendly borders far away from their lands and loved ones.

The list is far from complete.

My InstagramandWeChat hiatus continues. Chinese New Year 2022 completely blew past my awareness. The existence of the Winter Olympics nearly did too.

(Happy Year of the Tiger.)

Staying put in The Greatest Country on Earth during a global pandemic is pretty up there as far as Best Life Decisions goes. But nothing lasts forever. My desi days are numbered. I feel a ripeness from within that will empower me to safely exit and continue onward.

Relevant read: COVID-19: Less Privileged and More Centered In The Universe

In the last month I visited beautiful friends in their fabulous flats and hopped aesthetic cafes that take me far away from the sensation of Asia. I gave a lot of hugs and continued to talk people’s ears off about why I don’t eat most of the world’s chocolate.

Sometimes I consider earning side money as I’ve used my savings to keep myself fed in India for 22 months beyond than the initial idea. 22 months that I had intended to ration out over three different continents.

Thankfully India is the 196th-ish most expensive country to live in, depending on your source. Another key point is that I am not broke. Recent readings remind me that money is a neutral resource and not more.

I have to do what I love. I wake up every morning to work my insides. Inner contentment, sensations, peace, being. Happy people with lots or little funds go on being happy. The unhappy, billionaires or broke, use whatever they have to go on staying miserable.

Understanding this, I focus on self-love and doing what is best for me and those around me. Such as avoiding chocolate and meat and milk and keeping a stainless steel straw or two on person at all times.

Until a fitting opportunity comes, I’m still good with my employment status/ self-granted early retirement.

In the last few days I turned down two offers because the work becomes more beautiful when all monetary incentives are removed. I offer my help with my heart at hours that are flexible and under my control. In exchange I accept coffee discounts or a homemade Indian meal.

be happy! and meditation will follow.
—osho, the man who loved seagulls

Working on my insides means that my outsides will naturally be cared for too. Physical wellness comes from staying attuned with what my body tells me, which is distinct from any other body on earth. Without a motorbike I walk heaps and continue with some asanas and meditation on most days.

I climb over unlikely ledges of my turquoise house to watch birds and find calm. I observe my thoughts and bodily sensations. I take time to pull the overheating levers of my mind to a halt. I unapologetically spoil myself with sky scraping stacks of fluffy buckwheat pancakes, sourdough loves, single origin chocolate and coffee, chilled white wine, and cheese and crackers.

Because I simply can.

february obsessions:
meatless monday
toast tuesday
wine wednesday
buckwheat pancakes
pancake sunday
g shot cortado
g shot sourdough chocolate chip cookies
g shot sourdough crackers
basmati rice
popped amaranth
rumi quatrains
hazelnut gelato
you
绿豆汤
cold-pressed sunflower seed oil
baba cheese robiola
high monks
ambrosia organic farm peanut butter
cuddles
creative people
streetside tender coconuts
goan sunsets

best of internetting:

Cocoa Barometer 2020 interactive infographics
My new friend’s single To The Moon
Another friend’s channel Meka Reacts and Reviews
Another friend’s website for her Iridescent Words
Odes of Rumi

Bird of the month: Red spurfowl

Source: Doug Cooper, eBird.

 
 

Shy members of the birds of India whom I mistook for domestic chickens for at least a week. The beautiful dark and sleek features of the first stealthy spurfowl I saw prompted me to scale around the edges of my house like a madwoman in lovestruck pursuit. The fowl met with another of her kind and opened me to a whole new species altogether.

 
 
 

Current book: Truth & Beauty: A Friendship, Ann Patchett

 

seeing your face makes my night and day.
breathing with you, fools become the guides
we need. blind pilgrims find their way.
any night now no doubt, the bald
will go to sleep and wake with hair!
—rumi, soul fury
 

Previous Monthly Moods: From Lost To Ground

 
Explore my full archive of India and Monthly Moods.
Learn more about this round-the-world solo trip.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *