In Goa...

In Goa I watch families of pigs led by sandy snouts nibble on roots and bathe in the mud moat that separates "Galaxy Beach Resorts", where I stay, from the wide baked beaches that line the sea. Piglets are quickly startled, their short curled tails swish back and forth with excitement and move far quicker than one would ever imagine. Some of the black pigs are shaggy and their wild wet hair reminds me of my mother towel drying my brother’s thick head after baths when we were children.
Dogs roam free, sleeping in the sand or beneath a beachside table. They are mostly thin and docile, coming in different shades, but all the same solemn lightless expression, mouths set like stone. Except of course for the most charming brown pup who visits me like clockwork during my sunset yoga practice. Timely he is, he will primarily produce himself just as I have entered into a headstand and proceed to rub his pink nose with mine, undoubtedly aware of what a loving gesture this is, but unaware of the glee it brings me in such a sober moment. A reminder that laughter and joy can be had in the most unexpected positions.
The sun commands the day, charting the path we walk, our activities, energy and comfort. The night is lamp lit, wide black solace. The insects sing to the moon and to the soft candle lights, and dogs howl, and boys holler from dirty old Portuguese homes and sheet metal shacks, and the ocean pushes out waves of offering over and over...
A motorcycle rips along the road and a chicken squawks near the lady with the big belly who sits outside her home with a sign reading "LOUNDRY", her pigs and loquacious dog tied to the tree beside her.
Tonight I eat hot Dal Fry and fluffy white rice with garlic naan and pineapple juice. I am spent from the sun and a wild week with two lovely German friends (Matthias and Matthias)...riding scooters over hot pavement and loose orange dirt roads, watching fishermen with long bamboo rods unload dirt into great piles outside their palm covered homes, their bodies so lean, veins rising from their hands and forearms, their dark legs hard and flexible like wires. They watch me watching them...We rode by canyons of red clay- which they use to make pots and dishes, the tiny bowls that hold the cold fresh yogurt I so delighted in on my train trip to Goa (which by the way when you finish, you are to throw the bowl out the window of the train because it is someone’s job to collect the broken pieces and make new ones...you'd be doing them a disservice if you did not), we rode by cows and bulls barging down the road beside wobbling toddlers and ladies with baskets and parasols and waving children in uniforms.
When you swim far out in the sea and look back on the beach there are big white mansions and modest palmfroned huts, open bars and restaurants, footbridges made of driftwood and rope, and just beyond are burnt hills and heaps of clustered palms nestling the tiny beach town, much the same way I imagine Goa is nestled in India, sheltered from so much of the strife outside this rich state.
The beach ladies and boys with armfuls of jewels and dresses seek shelter behind fishing boats patched with thick rope like we might repair a pant seem. The nets rest beside them, gigantic silver hair balls not to be moved till the next 4am run. These ladies, beach ladies greet you day in, tirelessly..."Hello Madame!...Remember me?....I am your friend, best friend...come take a look...I give to you for cheap....what color you like...you pay me tomorrow...you promise-you look..." , their incantations like the insects, the waves, the howls...
So quiet here. So much time to think. I think of my Mother, her thick dirty blonde mass atop her delicate face. I used to tell her she had Tina Turner hair. Her wide green eyes, the lovely arch of her upper lip always amplified by a sassy red. I see her with a book, under a blanket lit by flower scented candles, the television flickering, my tummy to the carpet, legs dancing in the air, eyes gleaming with the reflection of some film undoubtedly not suitable for my age by most parents standards. My brother’s long skinny legs draped across the coffee table, plucking at his gameboy. Would she ever have come here to India? Would she even have fantasized it? I suppose she never needed it the way I do. It was not until she was gone that I realized what a mystery she was to me. When my questions could no longer be quieted with those wide, esoteric answers, not meant to deride or confuse like some Zen humor, but it seems now, perhaps to exclude…something. She found peace in the home and I admire that above all. She did not need to leave to understand what I seek half way across the world….hmmm, but I suppose someone has to tell the stories.
I am off to Panjim on Monday, Goa’s charming state capitol and a perfect stepping stone to Old Goa, the all but deserted former capitol said to have once been as rich and flourishing as Lisbon. Then on to Kerala, where I hope to find myself in tranquil little Ayurvedic Spa by the 4th of February, to treat myself:>