The stubs of cornstalks are dirty brown and decayed from the winter. I drive through the desolate fields on either side of the road on this Easter Sunday. It has snowed today again. From up out of childhood, I remember the Romanian name for this kind of snow, “the fleece of the lamb.” The snow can’t hold out forever. There is a cold wind that rattles my bones, but the limbs of the trees hardly move as if they are just bearing the last of the cold… holding out for sun and green leaves. I can feel cold weather coming on again. There is not a bit of life yet and the fields have not moved from frozen clods to mud. Yet, hardy life stirs… the catkins of the pussy willows glow furry silver… the sturdy green shoots of bulbs have begun to push up through the frozen ground… through the snow… toward the light.

 I live in this Western place for now. I get up. I go to work. The work has a certain fulfillment in an old, reduced community… young men without proper education or possibility and a mountain of woes who make their journey toward one kind of change or another. We enjoy each other. There is mutual respect. I admire them for their struggles and the green shoots that start up from their tiny places of light and grow through dark, ugly places to seek the greater light. We’ve practiced “tonglen” together recently… a breathing meditation that leads us to compassion. In the end, we can only grow through compassion… to experience the dark heart and grief of others in troubled times and breathe out relief to them… to give up illusions and accept people as they really are… not as we have constructed them to be.

 And, what of my life in the East? Will I wander through Eastern peoples of the world again? Will I look for other lives I’ve lived finding clues in this place or that? Or will I merely repose beneath the gingko trees in the Black section of stones on green that lies between the Jewish and Muslim cemeteries… the final places of segregation that will allow me to rest, empty and non-existent, among diverse lives of people who experienced a once and final life in this world? Will I be buried, my ashes scattered above my husband’s body, under a stone engraved by the grace of Pasternak…

Свеча горела на столе, Свеча горела. A candle burned on the table A candle burned.

 How can we really know what life is? What answers are there really? Someone told me recently that I had so much pain in my life, that surely I can shoulder any new pain I’ve had and go on. I was surprised by her comments and began to  think of myself dropping any pain I’ve had bit by bit like breadcrumbs behind me on a path that I do not trod again. She told me I would know how to do that very well. And, yet, in the context of other lives throughout the world, just how much pain have I really had? All of us have pain… some live through horrendous pain and tragedy beyond anything any of us have experienced. We all have a choice to allow joy in the midst of pain… to learn our lessons well so that we do not repeat what we perceive as our missteps… to cultivate the prescience to make a decision in the light of its consequences to others as well as ourselves.

 What draws us to life? I heard once that India would change me. India did indeed do that. I had a disgruntled night as I wandered through the streets of Pushkar. The sacred lake had been drained for a cleaning of garbage and filth. People still bathed in pools along the ghats, but the lake itself was a mud hole. Mysterious, sacred music coming from the lake drew me from my bed at morning to come out on the veranda and sit in the jungle of green. Strong whiffs of “bhang” arose from somewhere in the garden as I ate my breakfast lending, what I was sure was a certain euphoria to toast and coffee. I found the famous Brahma temple in Pushkar a little later. I took off my shoes. At once my socks were sodden, muddy lumps from constant purification waters and the muddy footprints that came after. I ascended to the top. Brahmin priests gave out candies to poor worshippers whose money clinked into the clay dishes. The shaded Marxist teaching of my grandfather came to the fore. I made my judgments with the down turned arc of my lips. There was a buzzing as I walked down the marble steps. I looked closely. A black cloud of flies swarmed around a wooden sconce. They were not the usual flies greedy for sweetness and garbage. They hovered in mid-air… mesmerized… completely still except for the need to keep afloat by the flap of their wings.

My inverted smile arced down further. Who would hoodwink people even more by creating a hypnotic altar for a dirty swarm of flies? Time has changed my thoughts. Eventually I would take off the Marxist glasses and ask a question instead. What draws us to life? Surely it must be more than life’s sweetness and the glitter of garbage. What quality does life have that makes us value it so highly? What is the nature of its hypnotic eminence?

I will wander on to sunny Jaisalmer. The more I walk, the sicker I get. I will walk and then stop… totter on some more and find a restaurant on a roof top where I will drink banana lassi and turn my face to the winter sun… allow my body to heal itself. Below I see my grandfather walking in the narrow street with his familiar, stooped gait… one steadied step measured slowly by the other. He has his suit jacket slung over his back and wears a straw hat against the rays of the sun. He has taken off his Marxist glasses, too. He is searching for something. I know what he is searching for, because he will have told me many years before. He is trying to find the man who charms the rope out of a basket with his flute… the long, thick rope woven of jute that ascends to heaven. He will never find that man. He will never find answers in India.  What India will offer up to him will only be the possibility of change. It will end up being too much for him… nothing will be the same for him after he returns from India.  I will be left to wonder if he saw the hypnotic swarm of flies at the Brahma temple in Pushkar on the banks of the sacred lake.  I will be left to think that perhaps he had.

What draws us to life? How can life be defined? Even though we may define ourselves by religions, politics,  bank accounts,  perceived power,  work, our egos and all the useless junk we own, can we really define ourselves? How can we define ourselves  when life itself cannot be defined?

 It is now the Sunday after Easter. It is warmer… the grass has started to green… the daffodils have fat buds that will soon burst into yellow trumpets. Will I wander again? How can I know? I can falsely hope in a world where hope is a word we have created to allow more illusions… one that gives us a sense of peace that can never be more than unreal. Life will continue on as a dominating, random force instead… sometimes chaotic… sometimes ordered no matter what our machinations. It will be left to us to chose our responses and a direction. Life will be what it will be. We will be life’s common part… a tiny speck proceeding through an unimaginable migration of souls. There is a relinquishment in that acceptance. For me, it has been a way to peace.