March 28, 2002From the Jyotishical point of view, full moons and new moons begin (respectively) roughly twenty-four hours before the moments when the sun & moon create precise oppositions or conjunctions. The full moon that commenced March 27th, while I was still in Texas, thus concluded on March 28, after I had reached in Silverton, Colorado. I took advantage of that evening to incinerate a coconut in Karen Hufnagel's stove, in honor of the Indian harvest celebration of Holi. Holi, which is best known as the "festival of colors," is the one moment in traditional India's year when women, outcastes, and the other downtrodden of India (often) get a chance to poke fun at (and in some places, beat up on) society's elites. Everybody tosses colored water and powders about with gay abandon, and (often) a fine time is had by most.

Holi's full name is Holika Dahana, the night when the demoness Holika was incinerated by Vishnu in lieu of His devotee Prahlada, Holika's nephew. Prahlada's evil father Hiranyakashipu had tried to sacrifice his son in the fire, but ended up sacrificing his sister instead. Also known as Hutashani ("eaten by the fire"), Holi is bonfire night in most of North India, people reconstructing that earlier sacrifice by incinerating (usually) blander offerings.

Karen Hufnagel having lived in Benaras, her Silverton home seemed a fine place for me and my companion in Holi, Dr. Claudia Welch, to cremate a coconut, which with its three eyes, hard carapace, sweet, soft rind, and water within, so closely resembles a human head that for millennia its has served in India as a sacrificial proxy head.

After performing homa, a different variety of fire worship, on the 30th, I went out rambling late at night, as is my wont, and chanced upon a magic moment when the moon & Jupiter were together in the sky. The moon was rising behind the largest, tallest mountain near Silverton (Kenmore, I believe, being its name), reflecting brightly in the snow pool that fell away below the summit; Jupiter was setting opposite. The next morning being Easter Day, my thoughts turned again toward sacrifice, contrasting the surrender of Jesus to His fate with the ancient forfeit of Isaac by Abraham that God agreed to forgo.

I kept a midnight vigil for an hour in Silverton's cemetery, full of veterans and victims of snow slides, settled under a tree just below the tomb of Leonard A. Rance, deceased in the mid-1800s aged 20 years and 6 months, his epitaph "a native of London, England." The sentiment behind those words seemed mine as well: that poor L.A.R. had come to Silverton expressly to die. He surely assumed that he was coming to the New World to begin a new life, and probably breathed a relieved sigh when he survived his trip over. But what he found on arrival was nothing more lifelike than his death, waiting patiently for him there (for one can only die where one is destined to die). How different it must have been for Jesus, the Sacrificial Lamb, who knew just what was in store for Him when he entered Jerusalem for the last time. May we be worthy of that Your sacrifice, Fairest Lord Jesus!

March 27From Florida to two weeks in Texas, organizing tax details for my mother & myself, dining daily with mother & aunt at one of Floresville's numerous eateries. The two ladies are probably fondest of Olivia's, a friendly Mexican restaurant, just up the street from the post office, whose ever-polite staff automatically serves them with their standard orders.

In some regards, Floresville is unusually advanced for a small town. Its cinema, the two-screened Arcadia, which slept boarded up from the mid-60s through the mid-90s, now gets first-run movies as soon as they appear; "Lord of the Rings," for example, opened at the Arcadia the same day that it opened elsewhere around the country.

Floresville also boasts one of the few machines in the country that can produce dental crowns right in the dentist's office. Larry Poth, the crown machine's proud owner, has now fitted two of these prostheses into my mouth, first inputting tooth data with an optical probe into a computer, then directing the computation of a "virtual" crown within the computer's own cranium. After an 18-minute automated sculpting session featuring two burrs (one straight, one tapered) and a solid block of porcelain of the same hardness as dental enamel, out pops the crown, which is promptly fitted. No temporaries that tend to fall off without warning, or if they don't will need to be yanked on the return visit that the crown machine also obviates. An advancement indeed!

The month's most unexpected treat: finding asparagus in my father's erstwhile garden. He had planted the asparagus's crown three or maybe four years previously, and sounded resigned when last he spoke of its seeming unwillingness to send up shoots, even though it was purported to be a ariety that would tolerate the Texas heat. Last year it appears to have responded, judging by the withered growth atop its bed, but it was not noted. This year, though, its robust spears (tender and juicy) rose resolute against the surrounding carpet of volunteer bluebonnets, just south of the San Pedro stand, and east of the persimmon tree. The persimmon, and the fig trees that ring it and the asparagus, were already budding then; the pomegranate had not yet followed suit.

From Floresville to Houston, and a rendezvous with Fred Smith, in town to deliver a paper on the word "prasena/prashna" at a conference on philology. Fred stayed with our mutual friend John Coon, the noted Houston yoga teacher, who kindly gifted me an "Impermanence Rug," a Tibetan carpet whose motif of a flayed human skin does justice to its name. An excursion to the frog and toad exhibit, and to a giant drilling platform, in Galveston, and a fire-worship ritual in the backyard of John's new home, completed the Houston expedition. Soon after I returned with my mother to Floresville, I bade her farewell as I emplaned for the West.

March 13, 2002After reaching London on Feb 25 I proceeded two days later to Italy, for a PAC "Congresso" in Rimini, the larger city that borders Riccione on its north. The sun shone during much of our stay there, and promenades along the seaside boulevard offered lovely vistas, and valuable insights into how the residents of Emilia Romagna's littoral confront impending spring. As in Riccione, I tested the sea with a brief bath. The waters of the Adriatic, a shallow sea, are not perceptibly less painfully chilly at this time of year than they were in November in Riccione, though, and the intensity of the cold terminated my carefree dip within a handful of moments.

PAC's principals and I made an excursion, in Francesco's new Saab, to Vicenza, in the Veneto (the region of Italy that Venice dominates), the night before my return to England. We stumbled on an excellent restaurant there, and after a bowl of Italian-style onion soup, and a plate of warm gorgonzola on toast with fig preserves, I was well fortified for my lecture there. The organizers presented me with a coffee table book on the architectural and artistic delights of Vicenza (which, it being late night, I would be unable to view myself), and presented Maurizio with a book of local idioms, many of which (I was amazed to find) were quite unlike the translations in "standard" Italian that were provided alongside. These colorful phrases being rather too difficult for me to handle, I contented myself with a useful maxim that is apparently very popular in Naples (though I picked it up in Rimini). In Italian: "Ogni scarafone è bell'a mamma soyi"; in English, "even a beetle is beautiful to its mother." A proverb to be employed with caution.

England was windy and sunny, good weather for walks along the Thames. My five days there passed quickly, and soon enough I found myself at the Raby home in Hallandale, Florida, sitting up late two nights in a row, chanting the praises of Lord Shiva on the occasion of Maha Shiva Ratri, the "Great Shiva Night," the best night of the year on which to venerate the Lord of Destruction and Transformation. Maha Shiva Ratri falls each year on the night before the new moon during the lunar month of Magha (February or March), and this year our experiences that night were particularly sweet. May the blessed, bull-bannered Lord of Beasts aid us in our self-transmutation from animal to human, to divine. Om Namah Shivaya!

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