Eagalic Music

Can you be 23 already?

It seems like only yesterday
I held you in my arms
Your tiny blue hat perched
Atop the innocent face
A baby’s face but already
Oh so wise.

You were born at home
On a mattress in the living room
Without any respirators,
Incubators or the trappings
Of a hospital maternity ward.

There was only me,
Lillian our midwife,
Your mom and a friend with a camera
Who was so amazed and worried
She forgot to take pictures.

You refused to be born at first
Your shoulder wedged on a bone
In your mothers pelvis
“Dystocia” they call it,
As if the weight of the world
Was something you had not yet
Decided you wanted to carry.

When Lillian reached inside and
Moved your shoulder, out you came
But refused to breathe.
It was only when you heard
Your mother crying “Talk to him
Karen, talk to him”
That you took your first breath
Very like a deep breath taken
Before a dive.

You were diving into being.

And once you decided to make
That dive, you did so with
Incredible grace. I did not know then
What an amazing swimmer
You would become.

Hi All,

Two years ago I made the commitment to publish my book Eagalic Music on line without any conditions attached. I wanted to leave a legacy for my children, family and friends so that they would be able to track my journey.

With the help of my good friend Danny Dang, we lauched eagalicmusic.com and I began to publish the chapters of my book already written. I had completed the book as written up until Karen and I returned from India in 1986. The final chapter is my intitiation into the Sufi lineage in India.

I have kept detailed journals over all the years since but I am, as I “Tweeted” recently, standing at a crossroad waiting for the wind to blow.

I have not yet decided whether to continue this post, as most of my respondents have been friends, family and old band members. And so I am taking a brief hiatus, while I weigh the situation to date.

I am going to put out a question to my readers so far…

“Do you want to hear more?”

I am waiting to hear from you. Please respond via the “Contact” link in my post or via comments with any suggestions, and I will weigh them carefully before continuing on.

In the meantime, thanks for sharing my journey with me.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Love, baba

9 a.m. and we are gratefully back in Delhi’s Marina Hotel. The last twenty-four hours seems like a dream. We had arrived in Gaya yesterday after a tearful farewell with the Lodge staff who had all lined up, including the manager’s mother, to have their picture taken with us.

Gaya seemed even more filthy than it had before and the heat was so intense that we consumed 10 orange soda pops in the space of a half hour. We couldn’t bear to spend a night in what felt to us like a den of thieves after our last experience and so using plenty of baksheesh to grease the wheels we obtained tickets for a 3 a.m. train to Delhi. This meant a 12 hour wait in Gaya and we used it to explore and do a little shopping.

We hired a bicycle rickshaw to ferry us through the streets, all four of us piled on the torn plush of the seat and navigated through this area of intense poverty. We purchased some scarves to wrap our newly shaved heads and protect our scalps from the sun and we felt quite rakish in them, looking perhaps like extras in “Lawrence of Arabia” I thought or real life characters from “Journey to the East”.

The hours dragged by and we spent the last of them waiting for the train, trying to sleep on benches in the station waiting areas with many other travelers who were also attempting a restless, uncomfortable sleep while awaiting the arrival of the midnight train.

more…

Karen is amazing. I return to the lodge to find that once again she has the whole staff in an uproar but this time they are moving furniture and cleaning.  First it was our room, where everything was shifted, swept, washed, disinfected and put back and now she has them in the kitchen doing the same thing. 

In the center of the courtyard is a huge pile of refuse that has been cleaned out of the kitchen and they are still at it.  Karen is in there herself, with a hose, washing down the walls.  They are literally overhauling the kitchen. 

Karen comes outside for a moment to tell me, “There was a rat in there!  They are willing to clean but they don’t know how to do it and so I’m showing them.”  If what they suffer is a lack of motivation, then Karen is supplying the lion’s share.  She is determined to clean the filth from the kitchen so that no one else will suffer the same fate as she did.

more…

It’s the evening before holi and in the surrounding fields, celebrations are already underway with the pounding of drums and the ululations of many voices. It seems to me that we have come through a great ordeal successfully and the sounds of the coming celebration echo the feelings of happiness in my heart. Yesterday, for a while, I was afraid my wife might die. Today, all that has vanished.

I am reading the booklet from the Ramakrishna Mission on “The Science of Mantra” and am having a few thoughts of my own. In my journal I write:

“The idea is that a manta is a Devata, or a form of the God-head which is invoked by its reciter. And mantra also means “that which protects” a feeling I have often got while chanting as though it creates around one some kind of invisible shield which wards off negative influences. I prefer, rather than the imagery of a shield which might also block out other, more beneficial influences, the image of an electrical transformer that is able to step up or step down the power to the necessary strength of current and also literally to be able to transform negative influences into positive ones.”

more…