Sex for the first time since high school was very anticlimactic. Improved dramatically as I trusted myself and relaxed. Eileen and I had alot of fun for a short period of time before her fiancee came back. Then she was off and married in Carmel. I was half heartedly invited but as Eileen was in the habit of full disclosure and honesty and had informed her fiancee all about our time spent. He was not super happy but loved and trusted her. Out of respect for him I declined the invite, but I was sad and missed her.
I was still in the Sri Chinmoy Center and I was doing all my duties: holding center meditations twice weekly, giving public meditations, driving up to the city twice a week for center meditations, printing posters at Krishna Copy and postering. etc. I was also running alot and had recently started surfing. Joel and I were regularly going on on long ocean swims in the kelp bed in front of his place on West Cliff Dr. He would lend me a shorty wetsuit and swim way out for about an hour deep into the kelp beds. Swimming through kelp if your not wearing a shortie was a scratchy affair. But Joel use to rub it on his face and chew a bit of it. He said that the skin absorbed some vitamin or mineral on contact with the kelp and that it was super good for you. I had swum a bit in Aquatic park in San Francisco where the water was always well below nipply, and started to favor just board-shorts. From August through the famous Santa Cruz indian summer the top foot of water is sometimes 5 degrees warmer than the water below. In the kelp bed as the current is more restricted and the temp is even more choice.
Kelp beds in Santa Cruz are always teeming with life; otter, dolphin, gulls and frolicking fish. Sometimes a nice omen would come as a snowy egret walking like a sage across the kelp or a powerful osprey flying over us with a wiggling fish in it's "sharp talons." The otter are always fun. The don't have much natural fear of humans in the water. As the kelp strands would grow more than a foot a day by mid summer the kelp forest would be thick and buoyant. Joel and I would would sometimes get close to them and wrap up on a Kelp raft and watch them frolic. They would be chewing on a clam or be using a rock to smash a shellfish. Often they would have babies on their tummies or floating near and would dive with them. Otters are ridiculous when they sleep. They lye on their back with their flippy-feet in the air like a cartoon, then just pass out cold. I tried to pat a sleeping one as it just looked like a little shitzu dog. When I got about a yard away it turned its furry head and whiskers and just looked at me for a second as if to say nonchalantly: "May I help you?" Then I swear it barked at my and dove. Me and joel shrieked as we swam away with thoughts of it bitting my toes. The thick summer kelp made for great swim unders; dark and shady like big slow swaying trees in the soft current.
I moved into the apartment behind the center when the hippy guy inhabiting it moved on. He had no furniture except a professional looking home beer still. When I moved in it wasnt much more decorated. It was a one roomed sunken studio with a great garden view. I spent about a month peeling paint and repainting. I painted the old wood trim lavender, white walls and carpeted it a thick forest green. I loved it. I furnished the place with a dark blue futon Eileen gave me, and a white laced shrine. On it was my brass framed Transcendental photo of Sri Chinmoy and a photo of the Mother Kali statue at Dakshineshwar. It was a temple and I always had a stick of Red Sandalwood burning. It was simplicity itself and I loved it.
I had been in Santa Cruz more than a year or so. After a Center meditation on a night when Nirbachita was out of town, a new seeker Andrea who had meditated with us for a few months asked me to the movies with her. She was cute, cool in a nerdie hip UCSC Creskie college sort of way. She wanted to see a French film that I wanted to see so I was like: "Sure." Not really a good disciple choice but I tried not to think about it as I wanted to see the movie. It was a late show and after she wanted to see my new apartment. After about an hour of her staring me in the eyes with all the green lights I just kissed her. Not a lot of forethought in the action. Just an in the moment inspiration. Not a whole lot happened after that but she was all questions about the apparent discrepancy in philosophies. I did'nt have any answers. It was my first lesson on the complexities of women in the dating world. The "Double speak." Where the energy says one thing and the mouth says the opposite. Gets even weirder when the body says one thing and the mental says another and the mouth says yet something else.
I had crossed a boundary and made something personal. It was the sweet forbidden fruit! This was a choice of mine and I accept that, However Andrea's emotional and physical energy was all about it. The next day she called me and was all mixed up. I didn't really understand at the time but I told her that if she needed too she could call my sister and talk to her about it. I knew it would mean I would be kicked out of the center in no time but She seemed quite mixed up about it and I felt guilty. I knew I could have talked her out of it or started a secret romance but I guess I was confused by my actions apparent lack of fore thought. It felt weird to tell her how to feel or taint her perspective in a way to make it easier on me. In short it felt like an insincere act.
Also I have to address a part of my personality that I think is the Chinese Fire Horse in me. There was something in me that wanted to just take a heroic, defiant and rebellious charge into the forbidden. It is a spirit I have defined more clearly as The years have past. Almost the prompting of the soul to Shiva-like charge forward with reckless abandon.
I got a call at work the next day and it was Ashrita telling me I was out. I knew it was coming as my sister had called me the evening previous and asked me what happened. Poor Nirba, I felt bad for her as I was shouldering her with everything.
I walked out of Hobbies loosened my tie and sat in the sun for a few breaths. It was a great hot day in August. I remember I could smell the ocean which meant it was flat and a glassy swimming day. I mounted my loyal rusty steed and creeked towards the sea and home with a heavy heart.
No comments:
Post a Comment