A six-month hiatus ...

It got to a certain point, while I was in India, where I felt I was undergoing the effects of a process, a subtle transformation, a slow, intense burn.

The yoga was definitely instrumental in that process, but the experience of India itself, and the slash-and-burn method in which I'd closed up shop on my Western life and identity, were also key.

As a result of that process, at a certain point during my stay in Mysore, probably the three-month mark, with the vehemence and burning clarity of someone in the throes of culture shock as well as dealing with the process of the yoga, I thought, "Fuck it."

What I was experiencing was for me, and was not something I wanted on the Internet with the tens and hundreds of other Mysore blogs floating in e-space.

I got back from India mid-September. It's taken more than four months for the cabin pressure to equalize inside and out, for me to settle down and develop somewhat of a life. For Christ's sake, I've even gone out and purchased a mattress! A mattress is some hardcore roots.

I've decided I want to continue posting because there are friends out there with whom I wish to communicate more than the usual daily pleasantries. And of course, Mom deserves something more to read from her son than terse telegram-style e-mails.

To end, let me sum up my advice about Mysore: Go.

Cobble the money together, demand time off work, buy a ticket for you and your kids---they'll be fine---and just fucking go.

It's cheaper than you think, it's more fun than you expect, and if you let it, it'll be more profound than you imagine.

It will be hard to let go, I know. You'll ask a million questions and try to have every picosecond of your trip reserved, planned, and secured, but trust me on this: let go of it all, get your ticket, and go.

Don't worry about hotel reservations, sitar lessons, or how you'll maintain your sugar-free, raw food diet. It'll all work out once you're there.

And if I may add a post-script on this:
To the garish, worrisome woman I practiced next to last Saturday, the one freshly returned from a month trip to India: Mysore is not at all like Southern California. This is something you would have discovered had you visited there.

Mysore, population (roughly): 500,000.
Maximum number of AYRI students at any one time: let's be generous and say 250.

I don't know. You figure it out. Mysore is definitely India, man.