India—The Land of Mu

Ahoy my soporific land-lubbers (I double-dawg dare you to track down the Stith-Thompson Index etymology of that there phrase),

The sun went down about a week ago, somewhere north of Mauritius:

There it is, preparing for the green flash that didn't materialize that night...

Right now as you sleep, the full moon is brightening above grey clouds and a pink horizon on the Bay of Bengal. I'm talking to Jack Daniels II in the fac-staff lounge, and wondering again over the chiaroscuro of this shadowy planet, tipping over the equator and listing on the paper sea. Increasingly I believe that Loren Eiseley was right: "If there is any mystery on this planet, it has to do with water." The way it can flatten itself, and still swell enough to tip the boat. The pin-pricks that look like rain under a cloudless sky are as miraculous as the tears that run down the ski slope of smiling face.

I'm letting India affect me, reflect me—a wicked Rod Laver psychic backhand that has me running past the baseline, as fast as I can, while standing still...

Here's what I want you to know (even you who, like Mz Plattner, have been to both India and Indiana): this sub-continent comes back upon you, as if re-incarnation were indigestion (e.g. my dreams last night, that that tried to integrate moi and India, triggered by your photo that I've always loved, Astie, with all three of you hijos/hijas there, side-by-side, musical siblings, with Spendoo the Magnificent playing the toy sax that made Bella howl, all her border-collie instincts saying that sax was coyote:



But to provide an example. About five years after I had been in India the first time, I was making an X-mas eggnog in a bemoth bowl. It was the same brown color as the Ganges, and when I poured in the rum convection currents brought the ice cubes roiling up like bloated cows, still sacred in death. Here's the poem:

Christmas in Benares

"come into my kitchen…" traditional blues lyric

Late afternoon—bright sun through cold glass
winter's twilight in the warm kitchen

Pouring dark rum into the crystal bowl of eggnog
currents of convection surface

until I am shrinking, far away
into the old boat of memory

Square yellow sail, weathered
on the brown glassy expanse—

evening on the Ganges in Benares
Hopeful corpses wrapped by an orange sun

burning ghats the horizon of the bank
Suddenly a roiling vortex

erupts, bumps the boat
Sacred cow, a bloated white stone

floats in the current
refusing gravity, singing rebirth

Epigraph, Sort Of:

Wiki Take One (hot links only work when ON Wikipedia):

Mu is the name of a hypothetical continent that allegedly existed in one of Earth's oceans, but disappeared at the dawn of human history.

The concept and the name were proposed by 19th century traveler and writer Augustus Le Plongeon, who claimed that several ancient civilizations, such as those of Egypt and Mesoamerica, were created by refugees from Mu — which he located in the Atlantic Ocean.^[1] This concept was popularized and expanded by James Churchward (1851–1936), who asserted that Mu was once located in the Pacific.^[2]

The existence of Mu was disputed already in Le Plongeon's time. Today, scientists dismiss the concept of Mu (and of other lost continents like Lemuria) as physically impossible, since a continent can neither sink nor be destroyed by any conceivable catastrophe, especially not in the short period of time required by this premise.^[3][4] Moreover, the weight of all archaeological, linguistic and genetic evidence is contrary to the claim that the ancient civilizations of the New and Old Worlds have a common origin. So, the very "facts" that the theory was conceived to explain are now seen to be false. Mu is today considered to be a fictional place.^{[5] [6]}

Wiki Take Two:

Mu (Japanese/Korean), and Wu (Chinese traditional: 無, simplified: 无 pinyin: wú Jyutping: mou2) is a word which has been roughly translated as "no", "none", "without", "no meaning". While used in Japanese and Chinese mainly as a prefix to imply the absence of something (e.g., 無線/无线 musen/wúxiàn for "wireless"), in English it is more famously used as a response to certain koans and other questions in Zen Buddhism, intending to indicate that the question itself was wrong.

The Mu koan is as follows: A monk asked Zhaozhou, a Chinese Zen master (known as Jōshū in Japanese): "Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?", Zhaozhou answered: "Wú" (in Japanese, Mu).

Some earlier Buddhist thinkers had maintained that creatures such as dogs did have the Buddha-nature; others, that they did not. Therefore, to answer "no" is to deny their wisdom, whereas to say "yes" would appear to blindly follow their teachings. Zhaozhou's answer has subsequently been interpreted to mean that all such categorical thinking is in fact a delusion. In other words, yes and no are both right and wrong. This Koan is traditionally used by students of the Rinzai school of Zen as their initiation into Zen study.

Wiki Take Three:

Knowing that both the sacred and profane (e.g. Mircia Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane) were "all wore out," poet-scholar Charles Olson dove down through the Sumerian night in the middle of the 20th century, trying to get behind the Greek, even the Egypt that inspired it. First he rose to the surface as his "real," overlooked (and therefore not tainted) character in "Apollonius of Tyana" (cf Selected Writings). Then Maximus arrived, whose symbol was a piece of beaten tin that resembled a Chinese ideolect, swimming that Atlantic Turbine of Olson's disciple, poet Ed Dorn, and swimming to shore in his quasi-hometown of Gloucester, Massachusetts, the real/symbolic home of the three-volume Maximus Poems.

[Utopian Interlude: Take a moment to think about how you would try to remember and re-make your hometown, with everything you have learned and now know.]

For Charlie, Mu was that Sanskrit for first utterance: "down through your own throat, to that place from which all drama springs." So this place is the making of a lost continent, that "g/host continent" that Loren Eiseley speaks of on behalf of us all. Olson's Gloucester is this mu-verbing that calls into being the Lost Continent of Mu, those fragments of Gondwanaland, that split the difference between the Atlantis of the Atlantic and the Mu that could have been the Pacific; halve this and you're in the Mu (Japanese something/nothing) of...

INDIA!

First a visual incantation/evocation: our old friend, Ganesha, remover of obstacles:

As many of you know, there are only two choices for me back in Oregon when I'm having a bad day: either I pick up my Jiffy Lube Rasheed Wallace bad boy lunchbox (hair of the dog that bit me), or the one with Ganesha on the outside.

First, the Non-Tour, with a Non-Tourage: Here's where I DIDN'T go:

Why not? Well, I don't think the first visit could be improved upon, so long ago, when I felt what is part of the new scholarship on the building—that it is a Sufi Paradise, rather than a big bauble of romance. I heard religious singers perform on the spiral steps under its dome, the whole air column below the dome some group levitation (Paul Horn recorded these acoustics on his album, Inside).[Don't forget that Taj Mahal the building was created (here's that numero zero prime for world mythology again) in 22 years, while Taj Mahal the musician was created in only nine months; just ask his mama.]

So what to do?: We landed in the self-described "Detroit" of India, Chennai. There's no way to show you the carbon that is smeared into the pavement and lungs of everyone living in this city of eight million. So let's assume you'll spot that along the path of our journey. We'll head out for Nagarcoil, near the southern tip of India. There are only two basic choices to get from ship to overnight train. The first is the death-defying "took-took"—an ATV with fenders and a back seat for three Thumbelinas. It's vibrations, along with pot-holes that could hold a sacred cow, are a good way to check in on how your kidneys are working. It looks like this, after a bath:

The other one, which may look like a step up, usually has no valves, rings or gaskets left, and the exhaust is a steady blue-black:

Here we are at Egore, the train station; wasn't that easy?!:

In this quickly and carefully snapped photo, the mob is temporarily out of view. But don't be fooled: the last-minute, non-line and swarm is just outside the frame. Even the destination up ahead looks homey here (you know, like Peticoat Junction):

But, alas, to get on the train you have to take a closer look at the tracks their ownselves. So let me break you into that carbon stain slowly:

Care to join part of our group in our sleeper-car?:

That's moi, being invisible, as always...

As the jaundiced twilight came through the dirty window, the train whipped through the hour it took to move through the sprawling edge of Chennai. The countryside became the night, the round folds of brownout, electricity sparking and intermittent outside the main city.

We were awakened outside Nagarcoil to the dry mountains, red soil and patchwork of fields that were heading toward brown in the second-hottest month, but still sometimes green from the rains of January (the south of India has two monsoons, one in our winter, one in our summer—the influence of being exposed to two converging oceans).

Wind power has blown in—about a 10-year investment:

Ironically, it's not the brahmin class that appropriates the brahma bull-power; two yoked cows appear:

Sometimes the countryside was still green:

Our upperclass host family had their own gated, comfy compound within the city of Nagarcoil. The professor who accompanied us led us there, to their home surrounded by birds and amphibians and flowers:

There were mynas calling out, from the top of coconut palms:

Here's an old friend, some of you will know well:

Design was everywhere, including this metal mandala above the front door:

The Greenman finally came home to mandala doodle-central, when we sought out the ever-present rangoli. For a quick gloss, go here:

http://www.kamat.com/kalranga/art/rangoli.htm

We visited a school with children ranging from elementary to high school, where the girls demonstrated rangoli:

Here's my fave artist, who I collaborated with, making ginormous rangoli, taking turns:

I had the girls teach us a children's lullaby in Tamil, which I'm still practicing. They also danced for us:

Our host in Nagarcoil took us to a rubber plantation, where it was hot and silent.

When a worker chiseled a trail around the trunk, the white latex began to move toward the wee collection pot:

Like maple syrup, it takes a few hours to fill a bowl attached to the tree with white latex:

Before it can congeal, it's taken to the shop where several machines turn it into sheets of rubber. When they're bundled, all it takes is an awl chopping into them to make the sheets stick together, as the rubber acts like nails, hammered into the skins. Then it's off to the tire companies:

While we weren't so traditional we sat on the floor, we did dine off banana leaves (don't drink the wa-wa, though):

Beyond our veggie meals, we went to an ayervetic doctor that treats a squillion folks a year. Here's what it looks like behind the scenes: "bubble, bubble, toil and trouble!":

Herbs are grown and gathered:

These decoctions and concoctions takes several days to gumbo themselves into the oil that will be sold and applied:

When you get up close and personal, these aromatic and bitter herbs smell a lot like a mouse that died inside your VW dashboard, when the heater comes on; go ahead, amigoes, and have a whiff, as it might just cure you!:

Maybe you should take a break and read Celia Lyttleton's The Scent Trail, about perfumes?

One worker turned what looked like rabbit pellets into capsules with this hand little machine:

This man, probably thinking of Gilligan's Island, sliced up Ginger:

The doctor had his own herb garden, which probably included imaginary theraputic weeds like nosedive, thistletoes, morbindoraba, gindletick and suchatrial. Of course there were real ones, some of which I recognized.

No doctor worth his (epsom) salt would risk not having a poster, so here ya go:

There. Breathe deeply. Feel better? I know you do, my pesky little beetles...

In case you care, we're just now passing the Andaman Islands, home of tsunami attack, where the pernambuco wood that makes up my mad-scientist travel guitar (soloette.com) was harvested (the last of its kind). "What's that got to do with anything?" I hear you ask. Just this: we visited the southern tip of India, where the Arabian Sea meets the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean, with waves coming from three directions. It was there that the 2004 tsunami did some of its worst damage.

When the sea receded off the beach, some of the tourists crossed a few hundred yards out to the island that holds the massive statue of the Tamil poet. Then the sea came back with a vengeance, twice. It brought a wave 140-ft high, that came up to the shoulder of this statue:

There was a Ghandi shrine right at the tip, and in the center this:

Outside, it lookey like this:

10,000 plus people were killed when they were washed out to sea in the two massive waves...

Close to Nagarcoil, we visited a rope factory. First we drink de coco-nut wahta.

Here's teeny ukulele tune I wrote for you baby mongeese readers:

Drink de coco-nut

Not de ba-NAH-na

Drink de red coco-nut

Not de ba-NAH-na

[Chorus]

Den beat it, just BEAT it!

Gupta Jean not BE your girl, no

Gupta Jean not BE your girl, no

Then we split open de nut and eat the white fruit lining. Den we soak de coco-nut for a whole year, then whop it into fine hair. This is then spun, and dyed and woven into de booty-ful tings:

My fave producto was this Bill Wither's welcome mat: is it epitamy? irony? signifying?:

But wait, there be mo! We also visited a sweaty shop textiles mill. I can't tell you the hourly wage in 100-degree building, or you'd faint. But a few of these here pix can't hurt nobody, nest-pa? Just so you know, mis-spelling is not an "offence" here:

So the cotton bale stepped up to the bar and was carded:

A few trillion steps later, when the cotton thread has been separated from weevils, dirt, lumps and mysterious "foreign matter," the thread builds, and is spooled toward the shirt and saree companies in Varanassi:

But wait! If you continue reading and stay in this blogosphere for the next five minutes, we'll throw in an anti-climactic trip to a snake temple! Potentially interesting—as it used to be a Jain temple (and you know that means not even an insect could be bruised in the making of it)–this had the cobra statues around the temple not covered like lingams with milk, but with some eggs (to attract the snakes that probably don't live here no mo) and processed, packaged yellow muck that stands in for fresh offerings of food and flowers (the plastic wrappers spill out of a rare blue waste can). At least the tree is old enough to know better:

There's the cobra, in his hoodie from foodies:

And yet worshippers did stoop to put a finger in the curry-colored offering, dabbing it onto that meditation shakra between the eyes:

And now for something completely different, and almost as funny as the (monty) pythons: Ballywood! Beyond his other assets, our host owned a theater. It was a massive place, sans air-conditioning. We sat in a hot-box for vips, upstairs. Here's proof:

Here's the current fave movie that we watched half of, until the 100+ temp and full-tilt humidity forced us to stumble out into the parking lot, where the moto-psycle nightmare would later rev its engines:

The "star" is a Borat cross between Omar Sheriff, a gay Sly Stallone and Dave Thomas of the old Second City. His side-kick has a toupe to look just like him, except he's shorter, and is trying to combine Joe Pesci in Lethal Weapon and Jackie Chan (who's was a mega-death-star in India until his last tour, when he refused to meet people at his premiere). Anyhow, someone's trying to assassinate our hero, but they never shoot during the dance scenes, when he and the two women he is hanging with (one will no doubt turn out to be a traitor) and possibly falling for have maybe fifty costume changes per tune, which includes his and her outfits that look like those in Blazing Saddles.

After another all-night train ride from Nagarcoil to Chennai curled into fetal position on a weeny upper berth, but not sucking my dirty thumb, I had one day left. Several of us crammed ourselves into a took-took and headed for Guindry Snake Park to get some b-roll for our planned cobra film. Of course I further perfected my "cobra spit" gesture that some of you know so well:

My theory is that the Indian figure-eight yes/no is actually mimicing the swaying hood of mr cobra:

However, the only way to do it is to watch some NBA wobble-head dolls [which reminds me: which one of y'all can help me finally trade my two Mike Miller bobble-head dolls for the sacred Arvidas "Sabas" Sabonis one? and while we're on this, and in spite of my goal of either/and, let me just take a moment to remind you that Big Head Kobe and the Phil Jackson 5 were trampled by the humble Blazers; thaz right, humbled!].

I also worked on my new (until now top-secret) "Nile crocks spit!":

I also saw some kind of cross between a gar and a crock: the gharliana, which looks like its snout was bound like the feet of a Chinese princess:

And then it was over. The custom agents stamped our visas and passports, and the tugs pulled us out past the container ships and harbor sludge. The pilot ship pulled close, and he walked off our ship and sped off.

Did it happen? It felt like that Borges story I love, "Circular Ruins," where we wonder if we are the invention of someone else's consciousness. To see if I was "re-all," I took a photo of myself in my cabin mirror, at least certain I wasn't a vampire:

My cerebellum is full of so many Indians smiling, or staring solemnly or offering a peaceful "namaste" greeting; I wonder how long these auras will remain, distinct from the blur that 1.3 billion people can become?

Another chandri ("thank you")...