Am surprised by my trips to ashram in this period, considering this visit may have been that pivoting vacation just before taking the plunge into marriage.
Swami, after much illness, short hair: (shaved, looks like Sivananda): accentuates her features, age of wisdom.
“I thought you were married. … Is she a yogi?”
Then I head, with Swami’s son, to some mountain climbing in New Hampshire for a last round of deep consideration.
Parnelli Kid: “New England towns will freak you out”
village greens (commons)
largest houses I’ve ever seen
framed, four-stories
stretching to barns
as for your dreams?
~*~
Back in Prairie Depot:
June 29, told Kat’s dad.
June 30, talked to the grandmother and also Father Gorman.
July 1, her parents’ turn to talk to him.
Asked her brother to be my best man.
Looked at dresses (like a funeral).
Kat appointment with her dad.
So much so fast …
The gauntlet to run: good thing we didn’t stretch ours out any longer.
We undertake all of the ritual steps pretending they’re for us, rather than marrying into the family.
Somehow contrasting guru/chela, Shiva/Shakti.
Father Gorman telling Kat we should live together instead.
The priest making me feel for the first time the poverty of Sannyasa.
~*~
Service officiated by the Reverend Father Stephen Paul Cairns.
Stephen, as the martyr stoned to death.
Paul, as the principal persecutor.
Cairns, as in piles of rocks.
I see now he died in 2012.
“I don’t even know if I’ve had a virgin come down the aisle,” yet all dressed in white an acquaintance, displaying the photos. As one said, “I was getting pretty far into motherhood at that point, but I covered it up pretty well.”
And then, despite the bed and books and her possessions, there’s no claustrophobic sensation. Rather, a feeling of the luxuriousness of Swami’s room. Tea master grace of the proper casual stroke: everything looks right, only half by design.
My thoughts return to Farina’s Been Down So Long, just the funky flavor of it.
Faces on my altar not to be worshiped but to be honored as examples, guides.
Homage to the Light: let it grow within.
I was still writing Prairie with only one “i”: remember my shock in realizing I had been misspelling it all along.
~*~
From Spiralbound Flatland, with commentary from now.
Jnana's Red Barn 