October 31Halloween coincided this year with Sharad Purnima, the "Autumn Full Moon" that marks the moment when the moon is at her most succulent. This concurrence of a night dedicated to the unquiet spirits of the dead with the brightest and juiciest night of the year seems an appropriate moment to recommence regular postings to this site. So much of note has transpired since the last chapter of this journal, and so much remains to come to pass, that it is no easy task to decide what to add, and what to subtract. Since September 11 a new context has been tacked on to every comment.

Even as I am pleased to report that I finally completed my tome on Vastu, India's system of arrangements in space that is its equivalent of feng shui, I remain simultaneously cognizant of how difficult it is to rearrange certain spaces, such as those that have hosted great violence. When I think of recounting my latest trip to Toronto, what comes to mind is not the unseasonably sunny, mild weather that greeted me, or the many pleasures that that genial city again afforded me, but rather how Kandahar, Iranian filmmaker Mohammed Makmalbaf's adaptation of a true story of an Afghan woman, long settled in Canada, who tries desperately to get to the city of Kandahar to prevent a loved one's despairing suicide, punctuated my stay.

Two stage shows typified this fortnight for me: Inherit the Wind, the story of how religion tried to suppress evolution 75 years ago in Tennessee, smartly staged at the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario; and a virtuoso performance by my high school colleague Laurie McCants as Serafina, the lead in Tennessee Williams' The Rose Tattoo, the story of how a grieving woman arises from her sorrow, in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. Religion and loss - a potentially heartbreaking combination when ancient and modern worlds collide. The fortnight that culminates in the "Autumn Full Moon" begins with Navaratri, the Nine Nights during which the Great Goddess receives salutations for how well She plays Her part in the cosmic drama. This year She materialized for us in bloody panoply, dazzling the world with Her portrayal of Divinity as Destroyer. May She, the Terminatrix, She Who Ends, be well-disposed to us all!

October 15/16I passed the first half of October in the Northeast: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. Two among the salient highlights: a week of studying yoga in Boston with Shandor Remete, and a trip to where the World Trade Center once stood. I've known Shandor for many years, but have only recently began to study with him. His style folds prana awareness and qi gong into yoga, creating a vigorous practice that is enjoyably effective. www.shandor.com.au From Boston to Manhattans' Ground Zero, which I visited with five companions (two being New Yorkers who hadn't yet ventured down). Sobriety was the norm there, all round. While we stood transfixed before the ruin, watching smoke rising slowly from the rubble, one particularly wretched woman wandered up to us, dazed and softly sobbing, powerless to cope, the life draining slowly out of her. She was wearing a button with a photo on it of her lovely three-months-pregnant daughter, now entombed there. Two of our number hugged her tightly, but there was no comforting her. It felt as if the collected anguish of the attacks had embodied in her, that we might view it with our own eyes.

Just near the site of the devastation sits the Woolworth Building, built nearly 90 years back as the "Cathedral of Commerce," the many elements of its interior inspired by elements from more hallowed churches. Not far from that paean to trade, that speaks to the piety of those Gilded Age captains of industry for whom America's business was indeed business, sits a building that still displays the scars of a long-ago anarchist's blast, an anti-capitalist "cart bomb" directed against the bank that J. P. Morgan developed. That juxtaposition of devotion to capitalism with its furious rejection made the most recent attacks become for me somehow more comprehensible, more an intensification of a pre-existing, on-going dispute than a wholly new affair.

The night before the excursion I dined in the back garden of an Egyptian restaurant on First Avenue with Dr. Fred Smith and his wife Dr. Wendi Adamek. We all enjoyed the food and the unique ambiance, and I enjoyed a hookah. Musing as I puffed on it over the deep Arabness of that enclave, I thought of how this City that can be so cold and unforgiving also shelters so many who, by dint of hard work and lucky breaks, include themselves firmly in its mosaic. Ma'as selama!

October 1On September 19, just after the beginning of the fortnight that ended with the Oct 1 full moon, my mother & I flew to Los Angeles, on a plane that could hold 137 people but had but 38 on it. Air travel had only been recommenced a few days earlier, and uneasiness was the norm. My sister followed the next day, and we then visited a more relaxed, but still somber, Disneyland. I proceeded from L.A. to Estes Park, Colorado, for Yoga Journal's Annual Convention. Though tempted under the circumstances to cancel the event, YJ persevered, and the result seemed beneficial for all concerned. One of my first acts on returning to L.A. was to proceed to Kali Mandir, in Laguna Beach www.kalimandir.org , to thank Kali for her grace and magnanimity, in every way. Jai Ma Kali!