And so it was, the wheels came out of the plane with the busted tray table that the Indian kid next to me broke that together we patched with Star Wars stickers. The wheels popped out like they’d been forced, and they slammed down and truly the rubber burned and the cabin earthquaked and centrifugal force had us, but then she released and together we all inhaled the air of relief. As it is in humans minds, all us had likely thought a few times about the plane crashing, yet here were were, 30 degrees cooler than overheating Delhi, in Dharamshala, where it would take decades for Global Warming to get us.

When I left the airport I was met by a a retinue of monks and regular folk whose hands smiled to heartcenter as drums were drummed and conches blown as masked dancers jitterbugged in precise unison across the pavement. Or perhaps they were they had no idea who I was and all of this was for the Lama who had ridden the plane and upon whose neck everyone in the greeting partner was placing white scarves over. The universe is strange and causality something I’ve learned to keep at a safe awe.

Ten Phun met me at the cafeteria where I’d hunkered down after the cab driver informed me that it was too steep for the car to continue.

The Car Cannot Sir

“But I have to walked and pull it up that hill,” I countered. “Very heavy,” I pantomimed picking up something large and gave a little head wiggle. That might be the reason I came back to India—the head wiggle. Just to have the opportunity to do it all day long without people having one of three reactions to you—none congenial.

“The car cannot go further Sir,” my driver doubled down and so it was decided, where cars fail people triumph because both people and cars have no choice. Having learned long ago that useless struggle was as advertised, I didn’t go far with my bag. I stopped at the first place that seemed they’d give a WIFi password if I ordered a chai.

Reconnected to the web, I called Ten to inform him his fellow poet and birthday buddy had arrived and ready to be shown to his $8/night guest house between Dharamkot and Bagsu he had found.

Of course, Ten doesn’t know for sure if that’s his real birthday. He was smuggled out of Llasa when he was 11, where he was being raised by his aunt. In Dharamshala he was raised by the displaced Tibetan community. Here he’d be a refugee, but he’d grow up free. And that’s something interesting, to be a refugee and yet freer than your people who aren’t. Freedom of expression is important for a poet, which he turned out to be. That’s how I met Ten four years ago, when I came to India for the the first time. I’d found his book of poetry “Sweet Butter Tea” at a café and read it cover to cover. I found him on Facebook and just like that we were hanging out, sharing notes about life as a poet. He was an entry point into a the contemporary Tibetan art scene. That might have played into why I’d come back to India, but remember that that thing about causality? Who really knows why I’d really come back or been boarding planes as often as a could to walk amongst the diverse people of earth, intrigued by them and enjoying the intrigue I offered just by being strange.

Ten in ten

Ten appeared in ten (oh yes he did!) and we were off to view the guest house he’d found for me to stay in and it was clean and priced like an expensive loaf of bread. So without the ado of the search for a room I’d experienced four years ago, I set down my bags and Ten and I went roaming.

Roaming means walking around town, hanging out with friends he met along the way. Ten calls it roaming, and when he’s not writing he’s roaming or playing the guitar, or both and we’ve so much in common I start to believe that they got his birthday right in his refugee documents.

And yet, read his poetry and somehow he takes the pain of growing up an orphan refugee and turns it into something so searingly beautiful that as soon as I read a few stanzas I was in—knew I’d be reading that book for years to come and in sweet serendipity became friends with someone who seemed my Tibetan foil.

And that’s another reason perhaps I came back—to be amongst my soul’s kin. Already Ten and I are plotting out creating a poetry event we will undertake as the finale of my visit. And I’m going to guide Ten in self-publishing a new collection of his verse. And that means we have work to do, finding a venue and enlisting musicians and pulling off something elaborate and magnificent from that strange impulse of causality that drives poets to pick up pens.

And it seems I’m blogging again, and that’s something I’ve always loved and let remain faded when a big fall in life put all my toys away for a while.

But I feel myself here again, as able as ever, with a full heart, doing with joy things I once carried like tasks.

An hour and a half ago I sat on the terrace with cup of blue lotus tea. looking down at the humans lights, waiting for the first minute of my birthday. On the terrace I read a missive from this page from four years ago.

Free to Learn, Grow and Create, Without the need to Heal, Deal, and cCarry.

And I remembered something, of the four weeks I was here in Dharamshala before, I was in teachings, trainings, and intense clearings (pancha karma if you know what that means [are enemas involved? Yes but so much more!]).

The blog post of four years ago I re-read reminded me that I’d only had one week to roam—so that’s maybe another reason I came back—to be here under healed and relaxed circumstances. That’s when creativity creeps up and crafts with your hands and mind what you couldn’t have dreamed of if you were grinding away with a milestone around your neck in fear for your finances. I was feeling free to learn, grow and create, not heal, deal, and carry.

And that feels pretty great. And now we’re 1:32 minutes into my 37th birthday as I write this and I’d say things are going great. Starting off 37 writing a blog post to a neglected blog seems like a good way to bring in the new while holding onto something cherished of the old.

And after a sleep, for my birthday I’m going to buy myself a musical instrument—something knew I’ve never played before—and I’m going to learn it because that seems like a good way to start this revolution around the sun. And I tip my hat to the impulsive nature of that past version of self that’s brought me to such a soaring set of present circumstances.

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