This is late (apologies!): I needed more time...but at least I'm only a few hours late... I can't explain why I wrote this for Tara's birthday: I heard it from a dear friend from the heart of India, who'd marveled at the teeming pageant of her world, of the throngs of the ancient Hindu world and the mysticism so deep at its center... I always felt Tara had deep ties to that world: If you hear her well enough, you'll hear it in her...a sense of the transcendent, of invisible connections, and a light beyond the horizon that connects us all... Tara (auntietk) met me here; and from the start, she saw worlds in my work that I didn't see. She supported it constantly, and eventually, me; and helped me make my way through many difficult times. She's been like a sister (as she has to others): In fact, she's become a kind of 'institution' here: Working with others to save this place; working on the Forum as one of its lights; working in the galleries as one of its lights...and her photography, as many know, is wholly superb; her blends and paintings are equally superb; and (jewels on the crown) she's a marvelous poet: with pearl-rhythmic utterances which carry the world, melodic, poignant and always deep. But above all, she's very dear to me; so I decided to re-tell a very old tale: I've utterly re-written it in the hope that I caught the teeming, massive culture of that extraordinary place, with a sense of the 'fairy tale'---which is how it was told---as I reach for the light inside Tara... For your years of light and love, Tara, and all the beauty that you bring to our world, and your words and support which bring dance to our world, a wonderful birthday of 59 years (!), with lots love and lots of light and gratitude for all you are. Happy Birthday, dear friend, and many many more, with the greatest of light and health! Mark And Tara: I heard it from Chandra. And to everyone else: It begins with the teeming heat of the place, but the 'pageant' soon unfolds. If some of you don't read it, it's totally fine: Just join in my wishes for Tara! * * * A Very Old Tale, for Tara Morning descended like a fever today, sweating, jaundiced, heavy and slow; creeping through the streets like a slow-moving cloud, seeping into cracks and settling into sewers while the cobblestones oozed a kind of sticky film and the sun spread-out through the pea-soup-haze, turning our city into an insufferable oven in the pall of these late spring days... People overflow into the streets, these days, spilling out of doorways and gathering in a mass like a great rolling dust-ball rolling down a hill...and they walk down the roads with perfumed gowns, leaving carpets of lotus-flowers trailing behind, leaving trails of sweet-scents from their incense and oils, gliding, in sweet silence, to prayer... When they reached the ghats---the steps to the river---they formed a great beehive of prayers down there, buzzing and whispering in mellifluous tones, and chanting the Gita---the Bhagavad Gita---as bodies bobbed-past in the heaving waves, from the funeral pyres floating in these waves: bodies of humans and bodies of cows, which float through the waters in breathtaking peace while the worshipers wade in their sacred waves, as they pray for redemption in these sacred waves: In the plumes and parasols of unspeakable perfection, which heave in the caverns of this holy place, they pray that the waters will bring them to rest on the shores of sweet, silent nirvana... And the ghats---all crumbled---seem vomited there, spewed from the jaws of some gigantic god, and adorned in the raiments of sacred silks: the shimmering seaweeds and sparkling slime all radiating in sunlight like emerald jewels and draped down the stones like tassels of light---the ageless afghans which we truly believe were worn by the goddess, Kali... And who was to say they didn't come from her? What else could motivate such a stunning mass while the sweet-tongued kisses of waves against rocks mingled with their whispers and joined with their prayers to form a great prayer-soup, a sacred-Wind-speech, a seared-heart-pageant of the eternal call to bathe in the most fetid waters in the world and receive a spark of the divine... The Cow A cow appeared at my doorpost today:It was young and orange---a dusty orange---with hollow cheeks and angular bones, and you'd have thought---from her face---she'd walked on the Path, meditating, fasting, immersed in deep peace...with a cumbersome gait like sods of earth, she moved like a buddha, without a care: She was peaceful and slow, so much a cow, as she barely acknowledged the world... But she was tied there---why? Who left her there? What if she were suffering, in need of help? Or a child who'd died young in a previous life, and came back to this place to be freed at last? Or what if she were someone who'd been saved in another life, and she'd come back today to return the gift? Or maybe we were lovers in a previous life and she'd come back to finish what death had stopped: In the heady ambrosia of our sacred world, talk of past lives was wholly accepted, so you could see an animal who'd lost its way and think, she's a messenger of god... So I whispered out my window, in a low urgent voice: "You're the Buddha," (I rasped), "the Thus Come One, the Enlightened One whom ages pray incessantly for: You've come to save us---leave your 'cow-ness' behind and show us your immeasurable powers!" Then suddenly, the owner of the cow appeared: She was barefoot and slow, padding heel-to-toe as if her feet were made of throw-pillows---a 'yogic walk': She walked to the cow and held its head---a huge clunky boulder in two tiny hands!---and she whispered in its ear and caressed its face, and this all went on for a very long time...and I couldn't hear a word, yet the cow was enrapt, then the woman stepped back and said "now!" She untied it from the post and tugged on its leash: It moved like granite, lumbering and slow, dragging behind like a slab of stone: I threw down my bread and ran to the street---the stones now treacly with ooze-y slime: "She's the Buddha," I cried (they paid no mind): "She's come to this place to redeem us!" They ignored me completely ("who was that man?"), lumbering away until they reached the ghats where the woman tied her cow to an old wooden post: Then she slipped into the waters, submerged in prayer---her gown bubbling up like a great ochre tent---and she sang from the Gita---my favorite words, of the 'indestructible self', of our innermost light: Weapons cannot cut it, nor fire burn it, water cannot wet it, nor wind dry it, it is eternal, all present...ancient and immovable...therefore, knowing this to be true, you should not grieve... She sang the words with exquisite calm, while the pyres floated by in ambrosial clouds, and the morning had become a peacock's tail: an open umbrella of mellifluous song which surrounded the devout like swirling scarves, the whirling, swirling dervishes of Kali... * * * Then she left the water, her gowns dripping wet, and she whispered to her cow---inaudible again---then freed it by shoving it to the center of the crowd: It disappeared---a flash---and was gone. Then the woman followed and plunged in the crowd like a stone swallowed-up by quicksand... I can't explain it, but I looked for the cow: I looked and looked, I couldn't stop, when the woman suddenly appeared, standing at the shore, and said, "it's not her that you're seeking..." I've come here to tell you that the woman was right: She saw me, she nodded, then submerged in the waters, and the waves took the patterns of her flowered gown, and the patterns filled the river with her flowered gown, and the waves sang, suddenly, those Gita words---you could hear them in the spray that now circled the shore. Who was her cow---I never found out---just that everywhere she goes, the cow's always there: Maybe it's her messenger who, one distant day, will deliver her teachings like jeweled milk...Or maybe it's someone she's owed this to, paying-off-a-debt from a previous life...Or maybe it was just what she said it was: A cow, an animal who'd lost its way: One who has compassion can't ignore such ones; to love humans but not animals is not real love...But if you listen to the water, you'll hear it say---in the sounds of spraying water, you'll hear it say: "We've traveled countless lives to reach these shores, and come here to show you that, nestled in these shores, rest countless water-droplets that speak for these shores: That, inside a single droplet, whole universes sit; and, inside those droplets, more universes sit: They spiral to the far-distant reaches of space; and if you call them out, they will dance for you: Like Kali in her silk-gowns, they will dance for you: Take this and keep it---It contains all things---and you will know that all life is never-ending..." Then they cast the droplet as high as the clouds, and it soared so high it was lost in the clouds; then it zoomed back and fell on a child (who barely noticed), and it splattered and swept across the entire land; and you could see all the stars and the galaxies inside, and if you touched its surface, it was silken and hot; and there was no end to its reach... Then it folded to a ball and flew away: It splashed in the trees across distant hills, forming rainbows and light-shows on the Indian plain, while the night gently settled below... * * * I returned and meditated much of the night, and I dreamt of droplets painting roses in the sky and writing ancient poems in the caverns in the sky, while the hordes---who, earlier, were singing by the ghats---were now resting on radiant stars... ---------