to be really honest...you can do it, but you have to be really honest...
...that's what sadhya told me at the cafe a few days back, before the full moon, before i walked over rooftops, 10000 feet above aluminum buildings in a thrash-metal ekg skyline, and sang notes as idealistic as 19 and 22...are you 19? 22?
...gurrukal told me as well, a few months back, during our weekly meetings, when i'd come to meet her at 8am, n she did the same for me, both of us merging in a room without a window, disciple and guru...
you can be a vaidya, but the only way to be so is to be completely honest. count the number of times you find yourself lying, partially lying, or not telling the truth.
i did. it felt like a lot. i am at the age of prophecy. i am the skin of immigration and the tongue of assimilation. i am bangladesh. i am pre-partition india, where my father was born. i am illegal, an alien, belonging to the religion that those who tell the news - who govern what we see hear read - say is of the brand of terror, say is synonymous with uncouth, uncivilized, backward, savage, oppressive, violent...the hunters, they tell the story, n we parrot it
the new agers have answers. they've come up with a new yoga, new spiritualism that is somehow deeper, just the way those who came up with jamestown and d.c. and baltimore and nyc knew something the savage natives didn't.
to be honest, i am the native kid that was sent away to boarding school by the civilized world, to be re-trained, and i have forgotten the tongue of my ancestry, and have learned to view my parents and tribe as superstitious and old-world...but pluck from what suits me, like dhal bhat and ek tara and re-assemble it to fit my concoction...new age imperialism...
i've been learning, in being honest with myself, that what those, like myself, were seeking, already exists/existed. thing is, it's being bombed out of existence. has been for the past five centuries. from one indigenous decimation, to the next. we are on the next one, on to the next one...
honestly, i aspire to live in a village where we have meaningful relations with one another and the land, and take care of one another, and be accountable, and get through things as a family. i know it's easier to leave, to be unaccountable, james dean, jay z, kanye, hollywood, us, me...
the theme has been repeating - honesty - being honest...so much of my life has been a quilt of lies...even today, even these clothes i wear, this language i write in...
so this month, in manifesting entrepreneurship, in building this traceless monument to a path, i let go of lies, and embrace honesty...with love and compassion...
in the name of ALLAH, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful
