Laxmi wasn’t ready to visit her father in Pune yet anyhow, and Chess wasn’t surprised. All good, he said. Truth being, he wanted to be alone, travel alone, the guru had bestowed the gift of propulsion and velocity, he wanted to set out by himself — like a proper man. The man he’d never had the chance to become. As had the itinerant mystic-poets, he would visit Ramana Maharshi’s 7-storied mountain (itself said to be a great guru), and go to Benares, 35-hundred year old nexus of death and rebirth. Hadn’t he come as a pilgrim? He even thought of acquiring a begging bowl. Chess knew he might not have come up with the idea if it weren’t for the security his settlement provided (plus he still had a hundred Oxy and 200 1-mg Klonopin; he was still too kultur-shocked to feel the FNF-induced pain full-bore. He heard you could get morphine tabs in Calcutta, which meant probably anywhere, and that Indian smack was rad. Opium was legal but supposedly hard to get your hands on, whatever with that, but the farmers were fucking licensed. Opium was the opium of the masses. Ha ha, who said that) but chose not to judge himself or his real/imagined cowardice, he had made a career out of that, he was casting off, on a new journey, look at him, look where he was, look where he’d been a few months ago, weeks ago, money probably wasn’t required, not in the end, wouldn’t be in the end, maybe the settlement would be abandoned, dormant in his account until turned over to some State Comptroller, maybe he would become a beggar, and that was what his teacher Time and Her daughter Space had wished for him all along.
Laxmi wanted to take the motorboat Elephanta Island (not far from her guru’s) but Chess thought it too touristy, he didn’t say as much, who was he to judge or throw cold water — let her go see the cave temples dedicated to Siva, he didn’t need to, hadn’t he already been privileged to serve as waterboy to the imperial army? Mascot to the gods! He had run with them like that boy in the Kipling story his father used to read to him at bedtime — clung in terrified ecstasy to hairy leathered backs while charging dark wet jungle Mysterium…
No, he’d hit the ashram of Sri Aurobindo at Pondicherry on the Coromandel Coast instead, where lay the grave of a woman called the Mother. A caffeine-swilling seeker mentioned having recently been, it came up in conversation during morning tea shared before satsang, a Down Under girl said something about “the Mother,” and Chester thought of his own. He wanted to honor Marj, she who brought him into this world, she to whom he’d never said a real goodbye, she whose sand was now being roughed up and returned to the Source — he wanted to honor Marjorie that way — a kind and right thing, an auspicious way to begin his real travels. She gave him a birthday card last year that said, “You don’t remember, but I’ll never forget the 1st time I saw you.” Though the ashram was in Tamil Nadu, the Tsunami hadn’t affected the city; an old seawall spared it. The Australian said that water buffalo roamed the streets. You could eat cheap and stay in an amazing 19th century sanitorium for $6 a night, rooms overlooking the Bay of Bengal, snakebirds and drongos circling overhead, and at temple the trilingual elephants (responding to English, Hindi, and Malayalam commands) blessed you with their trunks. I have already been blessed. Though I must take care to be unprideful — I must not suffer from that sin of sins. Still, it is true I have heard their sacred song, their supernatural call to battle. I have already been dusted by the earth that shakes from the stomping of columnar legs. I have had satsang and sadhana with All Who Matters: She Who Is So Righteously Guarded whispered to me there is No-Thing to guard. And yet, because, because She shared this, I must not swell with pride. For I am no sadhu…
They made love then he gathered his things.
She cried as he left but Chester said he would see her soon, on the wigged-out beaches of Goa, the ash-rammed shit- and blood-strewn alleys of Benares, the cubensic deserts of Rajasthan, in the dreammachines of Agra. (She said, “Why Agra?”—he thought she’d said something else.) He wanted to scope out Bodh Gaya and Calcutta then join the reunion with Laxmi’s Father in Pune. He knew none of this would happen. Best for her to press on alone, there was something to be said about the gravitas of aloneness, the aloneness America knew was brummagem, it was loneliness, aloneness of comfort and convenience, prideful, convenience store pride, and prejudice, no, now they would seek True Aloneness, not that of hedonists or ascetics, but Aloneness before the eyes of God. Best for her soul to be without him on this journey, he got her this far, she’d gotten Chess further, in her own way, both had done as much as they could for one another.
They would do for themselves, now — in solitaire.
That was how it should be.
He laughed out loud: “My Favorite Weekend”! I should dash something off and fax it to the Times …“I like having satsang with an avatar, after devotions to Durga. Then my girlfriend and I crap in a hole and
He was done with little mind-goofs. His goofs had ended with Maur
He walked until dusk
On a vast boulevard of whores where women stood before flimsy curtains and he thought of his camera, what an incredible location, I am a location scout still (Ramesh said that on their deathbeds, even holymen responded to their birthnames), but now I am scouting for Her, and for Time and Space. I am one of Her soldiers and mascots, waterboy in Her imperial army. He asked a passerby, a tourist, for money, and they smiled like they didn’t understand or pretended not to, maybe he wasn’t making sense, maybe he had only imagined he was talking but was really just thinking. He swallowed 3 Oxys. The sky darkened and the inkiness of the bay became like an unruly crowd and he began to beg in front of the Taj Mahal Palace and Towers Hotel but was shooed away and as he strolled toward the Gate of India he asked everyone he encountered, man, woman, or beggarchild for money, asked the beggars themselves! some of whom laughed and some got angry, that is what the guru said to expect, not from begging, but from the world and its dualism: laughter and anger, horror and joy, deformity and pulchritude, barrenness and fertility, poverty and wealth. Chester made certain to ask the poorest of the poor, the most diseased of the diseased, the most indecently scarified, made sure to ask each BardoBeing for cash because what difference did it make, all he had was Time, everything an ocean of time and space, all Hers, did not the beggars share those same radiant choppy waters? were they not created by his teacher? and if they had forgotten and washed ashore would they not return? If only everyone, both prosperous and needy, could see—from the dumb pisspoor park of the Gate of India, Chess saw — Elephanta Island and flickery boats in the harbor, and thought i will ask for money with my begging bowl, on the way to see the Mother. i have no shame nor have i pride. i am grateful. and if it is not Your plan to let Enlightenment happen to this body, let it not happen, O Lord! i am but a pilgrim He thought again of the mushrooms and remembered being brought to his knees, inadvertent posture of prayer in that small desert motel, watching intricate woof of carpet when there was none, head down, as if in a great basilica (which he was), this happened near the end of his cubensis journey, end of time with plant and planet, of voluntary conscription in Her army, divine enraptured bugle boy, end of time with Her as overseer, now he was drafted, a careering soldier, and in careening desert recalled these very words: if at least i find myself in the cathedral, i shall be honored. if in the end i am beggar or pilgrim on my knees and that is all, then i shall be honored. honored and grateful and moved. if at the end i am beggar among beggars in this cathedral, then that will surely be enough. how can i ask for more? how moved i will be. for She has said there is nothing to join nor is there anything to guard or protect, there is No-Thing