October 17, 2005 From London to Marbella, Spain, where the del Canto family-Leon & Eva, their children Raul Anish & Ana Mudra-served up a delightful introduction to the Costa del Sol, including an enlightening massage at the Bodhi spa, a genial meal in a villa in the hills (expertly cooked by Eva's brother Rai), the opportunity to lecture to gem aficionados in Señor Antonio Seijo's room of spectacular jewels, and walks with Shashi, the newest del Canto, a friendly Weimaraner (bluish tan)-Rhodesian Ridgeback (brown) cross who along with his littermates somehow ended up black.

I split my Marbella visit into two portions, that I might participate in the retreat that Angela Hope-Murray & Anne Green had organized about four hours north, in the hills above Sevilla near Cazalla de la Sierra. Angela & Anne were the driving forces behind the two retreats we had done, in 2001 & 2002, at the Gamirasu Cave Hotel in Cappadocia, Turkey; this year's venue was equally unique. Founded around the 12th century, but unused for the last century & a half, the old Carthusian monastery of La Cartuja de Cazalla was purchased by its current owner, the redoubtable Carmen, about thirty years ago. Since then, Carmen (who seems to be known by her first name alone) has devoted the majority of her waking hours to the property's development and upkeep. One evening Carmen arranged a flamenco concert for our retreaters in what had been the church, whose acoustics are so stellar that several CDs of medieval music played on medieval instruments have been recorded there. Carmen's water source is a perennial spring that attracted the Phoenicians to the area three millennia ago; today the spring waters the estate's olive trees and their superb fruit, and quenches the thirst of the horses (one of whom I spent an excellent hour galloping on): www.cartujadecazalla.com

Back in Marbella my weekend seminar that went superlatively well, thanks chiefly to our hosts-gracias a Eva y León, y Mercedes y Xavi, y Paloma y Rai, y todos los demas (que participaron o que ayudaron)- and to Dr. Carmen Frigerio (who co-taught & translated). Marbella is a vital locale, a cultural stew pot (our seminar's students included Britons, Spaniards, Argentines, Indians, and Americans) in which entrepreneurial types of all nations and ilks swim along with votaries of the metaphysical (nearby sits what is billed as the biggest Tibetan stupa outside the Indian Subcontinent). All too soon came the time to depart for Italy, on the morning of Oct 17, just in advance of the (invisible in Europe) lunar eclipse ...

October 3, 2005 Portents of Hurricane Rita ushered in the Pitr Paksha, the fortnight during which hundreds of millions of Indians venerate their ancestors. In the Gulf Rita developed into the third strongest hurricane ever recorded, which led my sister to forsake Houston mid-afternoon on Wednesday September 21. It took her five hours instead of the normal three to reach Floresville; her friends who left later that day took 16 hours to go a similar distance; others took a full 24 hours. In the end Rita weakened, turned away from Houston, and spent itself on the small city of Orange (which lost 80% of its houses). Rita withheld her rain from Floresville, instead increasing the heat to a daily record temperature on September 24 of 105° F.

Two nights later I embarked for England mopping sweat from my brow, and was rewarded during my flight with the splendor of the aurora borealis as viewed from 30,000 feet up. By September 27 I was hiking in Oxford along the Thames with Robert Beer & Gill Farrer-Halls & artist Khalil, the dying light just right to provide the gorgeous greensward with a glorious glow. Among his other pursuits Khalil regularly lectures to students of Architecture 101 on the Golden Mean, the mathematical constant 1.68003... which in shapes and structures is the proportion most pleasingly harmonious to the human eye. Khalil reported ruefully that his lecture is the only time that these students will hear the word "beauty" during their entire architectural education ...

At dusk on our way back from drinks at The Perch we chanced upon an older man standing on the riverbank puffing away on his pipe, tossing food to ducks, and hand-feeding a swan. Swans are usually snappish, but this one was calm, well-behaved. Robert & Gill have seen this man many times; usually he ignores their greetings, but this time he glanced at us...

Venus, low in the west, guided us back to Gill's superb baked zucchinis ("courgettes" in the UK) which we devoured as we watched the second half of No Direction Home, Martin Scorsese's documentary on Bob Dylan. Poor Bob, harassed even in the 60's by people trying to find messages in everything he wrote, even after he stopped writing songs with "messages." Time & again he told them "I'm not going to talk to you about this messages, I just write the songs, they're just songs, I don't look for messages" - and yet they continued to ask. Possibly they could see, as did one of Bob's record producers, that Bob had the "Holy Spirit" in him, the "Spirit" that was the message...

The next day, a visit to Wytham Church, and a walk through Wytham Wood, the most studied wood in England. After drinks at The Trout (enjoying the presence of trout, peacocks, ducks, and a deer), we returned to watch Don't Look Back, the 1965 film about Bob Dylan's second trip to the UK.

My own distant past was much on my mind as I strolled along the Thames on the afternoon of Saturday October 1 after a day of lecturing, a crow meandering near my feet, watching a hypervigilant wirehaired terrier doggedly retrieving sticks from the frigid water. A few strides further, I was halted in my tracks by a double rainbow, the eastern of the two a near-perfect arc. I stared there transfixed until it faded, and as I retraced my strides I saw the crow pacing slowly at water's edge. Shortly thereafter I learned that Louis Sanders, M.D., had died on Saturday, September 17 in his own emergency room in exile in Baton Rouge. Hard at work dealing with Katrina's consequences, he had caught a lethal and extremely rapid virus that rapidly ate away his white blood cells. Apparently Louis directed his treatment himself, right up to the intubation, aware of what was happening and of the risks involved.

  The shock of his death was compounded for me by the fact that Louis (who had already visited India a few times) and I were planning to rendezvous in Benaras just a few weeks later. It provided yet one further, sharply poignant reminder of the highly tenuous hold on life that we humans enjoy, and of the necessity of living each moment as if it were our last.

Mortality was much on my mind as I walked down to the Thames on the morning of October 3, near the maximum of that day's solar eclipse, to bring this year's Pitr Paksha to a close by offering my salutations to all those who have gone before ...

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