JET LAG AND BRUSHING TEETH

Will begin gently, unobtrusively, to slide into my American skin that always feels a bit tight in the re-beginning. But begin I must, as always, to give structure to my days, gainful engagement, activity. Two nights ago in dream I go to a garage sale where the lady is selling all sorts of junky stuff including stained, old towels which the woman I go with (who?) buys; I only pick up a few wooden rulers with lovely patterns on them, some etched. I thought about them all day yesterday and wondered what they meant, but I think now that I have to begin to measure my time again. I have been back since the 31^st of Oct, had a weepy evening missing everything Indian, and then just allowed myself to rest and sleep. Felt the old depression surfacing yesterday evening after a walk to downtown Del Mar and a walk back along the cliffs, and it is very essential for me not to tire myself out beyond my endurance. I have not recovered from my lung infection. 

As always, before leaving and after returning from both India and the US, I feel the presence of death very strongly. Each time and each way it feels like a return to a different lifetime. Humans were not meant to live like this but like plants, in their respective pots. They cannot take too much uprooting, each one being a mini death. Each time I return to Southern California I am struck by its aridity, both physical and metaphysical. Because I am looking at it through the eyes of my jet lag, it looks tired and barren to me, if not dead. My moldy (living near the ocean has its drawbacks) clothes, shoes, handbags, books, disenchant me from possessions, but then it doesn’t take long for me to get into them. I ordered black gore-tex boots yesterday! I reprimanded myself for two hours for doing it, but then walking on the cliffs the tread from my old boots came off and I was amazed that ordering boots made absolute sense. Intuition applies as much to shopping as divine things! 

Walking about aimlessly, staring at things that need to be done, hoping something will draw and suck me in, something will make me forget that I am utterly aimless. It is the hardest thing to deal with – not being tired enough to sleep, nor tireless enough to do something – anything; when doing nothing doesn’t feel right and neither does doing.; when the thought of brushing one’s teeth presents itself like an absolutely ingenious idea and the ability to really get into brushing them, the way one can only do with a manual brush, is the greatest gift the universe can offer.

Yes, it is direction one loses above all during jet lag, having been spun around in space over different spaces and times. The body/mind doesn’t know where it is, and the soul has taken wings to some spaceless space where it can be at rest.