THE MONEY SHOT --- THE "BEFORE" PHOTOS
John got me sparked, so what the hell --- these were shot on Thursday.

I went from road-kill, levered myself up until my back was against the wall, and then used my bodyweight to bear down until, if you and I may speak frankly, my muladhara chakra was on the ground.

On reflection, I wonder why I ought to go through all this trouble, as it felt good, I could hold it for a long while, and it's since been repeatable. It will still be an interesting experiment, so I'm gonna do it.

I've used the following tips during the last few months. They're from a book called Relax Into Stretch by Pavel Tsatsouline.

"From road-kill, slowly transfer your weight to your legs and assume as upright a position as you can muster. Keep your lower back arched. It is a must.

The pelvis usually gets in the way of your femurs when you try to spread them apart. Tilt your pelvis forward by making your lower spine go concave — and it gets out of the way!

Pinch the floor with your feet with one to two thirds of your maximal strength. Build up the tension gradually, over a couple of seconds.

Push the walls apart and—it is very important! — push your hips forward. Keep your lower back arched and chest open.

Hold steady, unwavering tension for twenty seconds, perhaps even longer, and do not forget to breathe. Although holding the contraction for such a long time is not always necessary to relax the muscle effectively, it helps to build strength.

Suddenly release the tension with a sigh of relief and allow yourself to sink a little deeper into the split.

You must understand that you will never, ever do a side split without positioning your pelvis in one line with your feet! Drive your hips forward at every opportunity, try to get them in line with your feet. Push your hips forward with the help of your arms.

There are three hand positions to choose from. You can push-pull with one hand in the front and one behind you; you can grip the floor in front of you with your hands and pull yourself forward; or, once you are flexible enough, you may push from behind your back.

[Italics mine] Leaving the glutes a few inches behind the heels is a fatal mistake, which keeps many very flexible people from going down all the way in a split. They either end up falling on their butts, or sitting down on the floor with their legs spread wide, but never wide enough.

[From road-kill:] [Y]ou will feel that the muscles in the front of your thighs resist the stretch more than your inner thighs. It is normal. It is time to shift your concentration from your groin to these front muscles: sartorius, psoas, etc.

Consciously contract all of the above, the muscles underneath and in the front of your hip joints, once you have driven your hips forward. Hold that tension! If your muscles start quivering and give out by themselves at some point during the stretch (a la the Clasp Knife), do not freak --- take it as a favor.

Keep at it, until you can no longer increase your stretch or you have reached your pain threshold. Carefully get out of the stretched position. Do not twist your knees and do not panic! Try to use the strength of your groin muscles to get up."

SAMAKONASANA; OR, WHO THE FUCK CARES?
Not much asana chatter on this blog --- I prefer Ambien to reading about supta kurmasana (It was hard! It was easy! Rinse, repeat). The little pill works much faster and I don't have to worry about my face hitting the keyboard. But I'm going to conduct an experiment on myself during the next 14 days, so come along for the ride, why doncha? Plus I'm gonna promise some photos with this one, which ought to prove mildly entertaining, if not downright titillating.

Samakonasana
"Sama": same
"Kona": angle

Sequence:
1. "Road-kill" Part I
Widen stance as far as possible maintaining 180-degree angle between legs. Outer edges of feet, chest and chin down on floor, arms spread at shoulder level. Ten 10-second ujjayi breaths. (10 seconds in, 10 seconds out.)

2. "Road-kill" Part II
Outer edges of feet, chest, chin and belly down, arms reach out in front. Round low back and ground as much pubic bone into floor as possible. Ten 10-second ujjayi breaths (10 seconds in, 10 seconds out.)

3. Samakonasana
Begin in "road-kill" part II, point toes and kneecaps skyward, lever spine upright to vertical position with fists or blocks, then lower sits bones to floor until asana is sthira sukkham.

Notes:
1. Do NOT sit down unless and until angle of legs is 180.
2. Mula bandha, uddiyana bandha.
3. Nasagra drishti.

Sequence Prescription:

Week 1
Monday: 1x a.m., 1x p.m.
Tuesday: 1x a.m.
Wednesday: 1x a.m., 1x p.m.
Thursday: 1x a.m.
Friday: 1x a.m., 1x p.m.
Saturday: 1x a.m.
Sunday: OFF.

Week 2
Monday–Friday: OFF.

Week 3
Saturday: 1x a.m.

Strategies
1. Ujjayi-assisted total-body contract/release.
2. To be contracted: heels into floor, quads, glutes, ashwini, vajroli, mula and uddiyana bandhas, clench floor with hands, clench jaw, kechari mudra variation.
3. Gravity-assisted clasp-knife stretching, i.e. exhausting inhibitor muscles and stretch reflex through lengthy contraction while related tissues are bearing body weight. Google and practice this at your own risk. It is not for the faint-hearted.

Photographs
Before and after photos are coming soon.

Half Cat, Half Amazing

We got a new lil' homie for the house. His name is Haku and Pete Rock is one of his favorite emcees. It said "American short hair" at the animal shelter, but c'mon --- lil' homie has got to have mad Abyssinian blood coursing through his veins: gigantic radar dishes, almond eyes, lil' triangle head. Jealous? Don't be. We stay winning.

Tangentially to the Previous Post
What would be the incidence of amenorrhea among female ashtangis?

Does Ashtanga Vinyasa Cause Miscarriage?
Let's just open with the fact that Pattabhi Jois suggests pregnant women not practice for the first three months of pregnancy.

Is there a correlation between an ashtanga vinyasa practice and miscarriage?

Purported statistics, of which I will track down sources later, report a frequency as high as one in four in the general population.

How do those statistics transfer to the yoga asana practice? Can we draw a correlation between the rate of miscarriages by women who practice similarly physically demanding activities, say, ballet, gymnastics, dance?

Anecdotal evidence, on my end at least, is thin --- the vast majority of women I know who have miscarried --- a number that grew quite large last year --- were, to put it politely, rather sedentary, and practiced no yoga at all. I have also known several women with third-series practices who have several children. Anecdotal evidence in this case is absolutely worthless.

What does any of this mean to you, a woman with a vigorous daily asana practice who is considering pregnancy? What certitude or assurances or peace of mind can any such statistics provide? I wish I could end this with more than a question.

LEAPING LANKA ON BLACKOUT
We've gone silent running.

I'm gonna be flapping about on this thing for a hot minute, getting the puja room up to speed, so bear with me.

Also, perhaps you need some Talking Heads in your life? I think you do.

Thank God for Boredom
The novelty will wear off. That is, the tyranny of the novelty of the yoga asana will and should exhaust itself. Then the grim slog to the yoga studio will become the most terrific aspect of the practice.

The days to treasure are the days of seemingly overwhelming inertia--- the days when you have to manually lift one leg at a time in order to climb the stairs to the studio, only to unroll the same old mat in an empty, drafty room to practice the same sequence of poses you've been doing for years. Gah!

The inertia is a sign of something --- of what? Usually when the twitchy boredom arises, when my mind demands novelty and spectacle, grand inspiration and technicolor stimulation, the quietness that arises during practice is deeper, richer, more resonant ... utterly boring and mundane and brilliant.

To paraphrase the rishi Leonard Cohen, when you give up the idea of creating your own masterpiece, the real masterpiece arises.

What I'm up on at this Very Moment
My man Rodford C. is going to laugh 'cause I used to mock him for liking dubstep, but Christ, have you people copped Benga's full-length, Diary of an Afro Warrior? I've been freebasing it of late, all iPod chambers cocked and loaded with the Burial album, the Benga album, and any Skream mix.

Do people even use iPods anymore? Have we all gone Shuffle and Mini?

Moon Day!
For those who practice the ashtanga vinyasa yoga, that means it's time to loosen your white-knuckle grip from your yoga mat and unclench your butt cheeks to take the day off. Remember, the sphincter is ashwini mudra, not mula bandha. Anyways, the practice isn't going anywhere.

My favorite Chuck Miller story of late: Sri Miller mentioned to a friend that 2-hour practices used to be maintenance practices. Four hours per day was the norm. As Sri Freeman said in the execrably titled Yogi Bare, they used to pray for days off.

My Siddhis
After a score of years of daily practice, I've finally found the time to compile a list of all the siddhis I have recently developed as a result. For those of you unfamiliar with yogic terminology, "siddhis" here refers to the paranormal powers available to very advanced yogis such as myself. For example, the venerable Sai Baba can materialize vibhuti, holy ash, as well as various faux-gold trinkets such as pens and pocketwatches, and he can also make disappear inquiries into his relations with underage boys. Well, here are some of my abilities.

1. Radio Station Presets
When I rent a car, the radio station will come preset to the best radio stations that area has to offer --- no matter which area I am in! Remember, I do not ask for these gifts --- they have simply manifested.

2. Parking Spot Ability
The rest of you may circle the 17th and Valencia block in San Francisco perhaps 10 or 15 times as you look for a parking spot. Me, two times --- tops.

3. Supermarket Discount
While most people have to sign up to get supermarket rewards and club cards, this discount mysteriously manifests itself for me, unasked, at the time I check out.

4. Lint and Cat-hair Repellant
Despite now having two cats, my hip black clothing radiates a paranormal magnetic charge that repels cat hair and lint.

5. Movie Theater Preview Avoidance
No matter what time I leave the house, I enter the movie theater seconds before the main feature begins. I am an eminently desirable companion on any movie-going experience.

6. Book Absorption
When I am reading a book, you can speak, shout or scream at me --- in fact, my wife has often attempted to speak directly into my ear-hole from mere millimeters away --- and I will not even know you are there! It's not that I'm ignoring you --- it's just that, as my gift operates, you do not exist!

7. Party Invisibility
When it's time to leave a party or social gathering, usually at the 20-minute mark, I have the uncanny ability to find and use the nearest exit without saying goodbye to a single person!

Roughage, Randomage
In Encinitas at the moment, but only for a few more hours. The sky so wide and blue and big that it will wring forth a tear from even my cast-iron testosterone-laden he-man eyeball.

I'm gonna get switch up the mix here on Leaping Lanka in a few days' time, so look for a new look.

What else? There are some posts percolating, don't get your Lululemons twisted.

Meanwhile, do yourself a favor and track down some Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra. I don't know how he did it, whether he added reverb to the echo or echo to the reverb, but his voice on "Some Velvet Morning" is the voice of God, capital-G, if God was taking muscle relaxers to help Him with an icepick-in-the-temple hangover. Open up your gates and tell me about Phaedra, indeed.

Speaking of Liberating Systems
From the Edge of the American West blog:
"[T]he great and good Volker Berghahn discussed, in painstaking detail, his note-taking methods. Upon finishing his explanation, Volker smiled and said, “I find my system liberating.” At the time I couldn’t get beyond the irony. But now, I think Berghahn meant what A White Bear means: familiarity with a complex but flexible system is not about circumscribing options but creating new ones.

Complex, yet flexible. The infinite within the finite. Discipline as ultimate freedom. To look at everything, we must look at just one thing.

I Hate Nature
The heading of this post is a response to both my hometown of Portland as well as old queries from ex-coworkers at Megalithic Shoe Co., Inc., who, when they discovered I had traveled to India on multiple occasions for reasons relating to yoga, suddenly assumed I preferred patchouli, Phish, and seventies-era VW buses or Toyota Priuses.

"Nature" includes forests, mountains, the woods, creeks, trees in general, babbling brooks, leaves, bushes. Flowers are okay as long as they're safely in a vase.

It's not so much nature itself that I hate --- and here I refuse to anthropomorphize the savage and meaningless and insistent ruthless urge for life to propagate --- it's the recreational activities that surround it: hiking, camping, hunting, fishing, bird-watching, tracking. Pretty much anything involving brown boots, a puffy jacket, and a stout oak staff for support.

All good hatred, if pure and true, stems from deep fear. As an impressionable young lad, I happened to see about 20 minutes of Super-8 film footage taken on a tourist safari in Africa in the seventies. The clip depicted some hapless tourist opting out of the gene pool by leaping from his Volkswagen Thing to shoot a closer photo of a pride of lions.

The lions --- being fucking lions! --- in turn promptly leapt on the guy and ate him.

They didn't kill him and then eat him. They ate him, starting with his stomach, in a process that didn't end before the camera ran out of film. A lion sat on the man's chest and occasionally took bites from his stomach and chest; the man twitched and kicked and ineffectually swatted at the big cat.

Despite the bars, fences and cages, a shoulder-high tiger switching out of the darkness at the Mysore zoo is enough to inspire a change of underwear. And don't get me started on my fear of bears.

I suppose, then, that it's fitting I live in Portland, Oregon, which is essentially a city built among a vast forest of Ents, that is, malign trees, trees that insist on crowding into and over every street and house, building and sidewalk, casting black, pre-Cambrian shadows that whisper of a more primordial darkness. The city is also just a few miles from mountains, streams, beaches, trails, hills, valleys --- in other words, you can't throw a non-biodegradable styrofoam coffee-cup anywhere without hitting the Great Fucking Outdoors.

I prefer urban nature --- the green and yellow grown-over vacant lot en route to the coffee shop; the yellow flashbulbs of dandelions thrust between the cracks in pavement; the red flowers in a white bucket being sold on the freeway on-ramp; a rectilinear, sculpted and tamed green shrub leaning well away from the sidewalk. Acceptable wildlife include squirrels, pigeons, cats, mid-sized dogs, and any other animal I at least double in body-weight and which, were it to suddenly go rabid, I could reliably stomp to death.

Acceptable nature activities include those that do not necessitate my participation with nature; rather, the event or activity may take place in nature, but it must reduce existence to the cotton-haze of exertion and effort until the universe has dwindled to the pure pinprick of single-pointed consciousness.

Such activities may include road cycling, trail-running, rock-climbing, cross-country skiing, snow-shoeing, or an ounce of psilocybin.

It's at this point in the argument that my wife tells me to go live in an ashram.

Fred Rogers
In the documentary America's Favorite Neighbor, Rogers says, "The space between my mouth, what I say, and peoples' ears and eyes, that space is holy," and man, he walked it like he talked it. Fred appeared on The Tonight Show twice, both times with comedienne Joan Rivers guest-hosting, in 1980 and 1983, and my god! The man's intense and overwhelming presence! Rivers, visibly shaken by his unwavering attention and soft-spoken message of love, falls back on her requisite schtick, that of self-deprecation and sarcasm. But even that wilted under the man's insistent presence, and you could see, no, you could feel that to Fred Rogers, the space between he and Joan Rivers was in fact holy, and no matter how much she wavered or fluctuated, he was absolutely pure, present awareness.

Books on the Filing Cabinet Next to My Desk
Ultimate X-Men, Volumes One and Two
The Persian Wars, Herodotus
The Anvil of the World, Kage Baker
Count Zero, William Gibson
DMT: The Spirit Molecule, Rick Strassman
The Mexican Tree Duck, James Crumley

Music on Steady Repeat
Hercules and Love Affair, S/T
David Bowie, the Berlin Triptych
Kool Keith, Sex Style
Cut Copy, FABRICLIVE 29
MGMT, Oracular Spectacular

Dogen!
To study yourself is to forget yourself.

The practice itself is enlightenment.

Cf. Mark Whitwell's Heart of Yoga.

Ramesh in Mumbai
The taxi ride from our hotel, near Bombay Hospital, to Ramesh’s flat, off Poddar Road, costs 40 Rupees. It’s hard to tell if that means it’s near or far ‘cause prices in Mumbai are hyper-jacked. We find the building easy, though, because we spot a bronzed-tan Westerner wearing an Om T-shirt entering one of the anonymous buildings on Gamadia Road.

We barge into the living room about 5 minutes after the talk has begun; Ramesh holds them every morning from 9 to 10:30, and today, a Saturday, there are perhaps 30 people gathered, mostly Westerners, in the large but not ostentatious living room. The windows are open, so we’re getting a nice breeze, and it’s still too early for the sweltering Mumbai heat to render all movement, all thought, all speech superfluous at best and impossible at worst. On the wall next to us are several portraits of Ramana Maharshi and one of Nisargdaj Maharaj. Among them is a portrait of Ramesh himself.

Ramesh is much thinner, much older than I anticipated. He’s frail, birdlike, with translucent, paper-thin skin that seems to be falling in on itself. I don’t know if he’s lost his top teeth or if, as he’s aged --- the guy’s gotta be in his eighties --- his upper palate has receded. He sits in a low-slung chair and is dressed all in white. As he talks, he produces small amounts of spittle, which he dabs away with a carefully folded white cloth he keeps on his lap for that purpose.

Despite his age, Ramesh’s intellect is tack-sharp. When we come in, he’s grilling a middle-aged Westerner who’s sitting in one of today’s two “hot seats,” the seats those with questions for Ramesh are asked to take.

Tara, Rowan and I sit in a swing-chair at one end of the room. I don’t know why I’m surprised, at this point and with my experience of India, but one rotund Indian man slumps in an armchair, facing Ramesh, and works a video camera set up on a tripod. He will occasionally pan from Ramesh to the questioner in the hot seat, and once or twice he pans around the room to capture the faces in the crowd.

Also facing Ramesh and sitting just in front of us is a sound guy, another Indian fellow who works the sound mixing board, adjusting the levels and volume of the clip-on microphones attached to Ramesh and, on this day, to the two people sitting in the hot seats.

Arrayed on the coffee table in front of us are stacks of DVDs of previous talks, each labeled “Anger” or “Hate” or “Desire.” After the official talk is over, but before the 10 minutes of chanting begin that will close out the day, the guy working the camera has mastered and burned copies of the day’s footage, which, the sound guy lets us know in a low-key manner, is for sale for 500 Rupees.

Ramesh has the probing, razor-sharp mind of a brilliant debater, and quickly hones in the questioners’ actual question, and in addressing the questions --- one couldn’t really say he provides an “answer,” as these are the sorts of questions that lack answers --- he espouses his ideas about reality, God, consciousness. If you want a book report on Ramesh’s take on Advaita, look elsewhere, or perhaps read Who Cares?.

(I'll give it a shot here: according to Ramesh, if one looks hard enough, long enough, one will come to realize that there is in fact no "doer"--- only Source.)

Days later, a friend asked me if I thought Ramesh had “It.” I hemmed and hawed. I must admit that I still don’t know. Based on what he was saying, I would say that he has in fact had a taste of “It.”

On the way out, I notice a wall-length rack of books by Ramesh and his protégé Wayne Liquormann for sale. I stop and browse amidst the post-talk crowd. An Indian man, the proprietor, asks me, “Yes! What books have you read?"

I indicate the Ramesh titles I've read before.

"Ah, then you need this one, this one, this one.” He puts one, two, three books in my hand.

I knee-jerk against the hard-sell, hand them back and say, “No, no thanks!” though I am interested in several of the titles.

I wrote somewhere else that India is a place where an idea and its direct opposite are both true at the same time, and Indians seem to have no dissonance holding both ideas. It is, however, a constant practice for me to remember, for example, that the cottage industry that has sprung up around Ramesh in no way detracts from his teaching.

I remember, years ago, talking to another yoga student about Tim Miller. “He’s really a great teacher, but you know,” he leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “he eats Powerbars!”

Why We Went to Goa
I first heard about Rolf Naujokat a couple years back while I was in Mysore. Many people I found interesting and enlivening, and whom I respected greatly, all had one thing in common: they had practiced with this phenomenal teacher on a jungle island in Thailand.

After looking at photos of Rolf’s jungle shala and listening to some rather brilliant stories about the man himself, I remarked to one of Rolf’s most vocal supporters, Nick Evans, that Rolf seemed absolutely phenomenal.

“Yes,” said Nick, “and please --- don’t tell anyone!” He was only half-kidding.

DJs used to cover up their record labels with black or white or even duct tape so all the other hungry DJs circling the table, craning their necks to see what was next, had no idea what rare and obscure track was about to absolutely flatten the floor.

I feel a bit like that about Rolf. Nowadays, with the Internets, we can learn about any teacher at any time, learn where they’re gonna be, what they’re like, get Podcasts from their lectures, check out photos of their shalas, and read blog entries by their students.

This is pretty brilliant for a host of reasons, chief among them, for me, is the fact that it helps one feel connected to a worldwide community as one practices in relative solitude in a mostly secular society, in which the concept of asana, pranayama, and the rest are not only fairly obscure but rather ridiculous. “Yeah, but can you make money off it?”

The loss, however, is that sense of exploration. I’m thinking here of the story of David Williams and company bumping into Manju Jois in Pondicherry strictly by chance and hopping the next train to Mysore. They had traveled around India before that and thereby also importantly knew what they were not looking for.

So anyway, the information floodgates are open and there’s really nothing we can do about that. In this instance, though, I’m not going to add to it, except to say the Rolf is the real deal.

Otherwise, I’ve no doubt that there’ll be other blog entries by other people that’ll be chock full of useful information.

Chapora Juice Bar
Head due west from the Barat Petroleum Station ("Pure For Sure!") in Anjuna toward Vagator Beach; prior to hitting the water, take a right and dive down a steep, winding canyon road to Chapora, where three roads meet under the boughs of a giant tree to form the heart of this tiny town. The tree is the ground-zero from which a density of tourist-related shops has pulsed outward, as the three streets are crammed with shops that sell the unique Goa clothing (one part military surplus, one part day-glo fluorescence, one part tie-dyed organic Nepalese hemp), the travel agencies, the tour organizers, the STD long-distance phone booths, the guest rooms.

Immediately under the tree’s base, on a small stage that rings all sides, sits a small Shiva shrine. The tree’s trunk has been painted, and is decorated with malas and garlands.

The Chapora Juice Bar is within arm’s reach of the stage. It’s small and typically Indian --- cramped, busy, dirty, utilitarian --- and for that reason is quite anomalous among Goa’s more polished and refined eateries. It’s a small square concrete building with a sliding front window through which one can order a multitude of fresh juices and milkshakes. The menu has been hand-painted on the roof above the order window. Picnic tables sit in front and to the side of the building. Armies of flies hover, drawn by the fruit and the sugar.

Friends suggested the Juice Bar as an interesting hangout, so we visited on several occasions. It’s quite a popular hangout, I think in part because it’s a Goa rarity that offers genuine Indian prices. Juices range from 10 to 30 Rupees, which is a far cry from the 70 to 100 Rupee offerings at the nearby Bean Me Up.

Sit there long enough and one watches tides of people wash in and out as the sun describes its arc overhead. One by one, as morning stretched into afternoon, sadhus arrived to take seats on the stage or at the picnic tables. Their gaunt bodies were wrapped in the traditional orange sheets, their faces painted, their dreads hung down to their waists. Curiously, all four were white Westerners.

Many frequenters were older, sun-leathered hippie ex-pats. One of whom, a Spanish gentleman, told Tara he had arrived in Goa 25 years ago and simply thrown away his passport. Many, their faces ill-used and sun-cured, looked like they’d lived hard lives under the relentless tropical sun. Many smiles were missing prominent numbers of teeth.

The actual juice at the Juice Bar is incidental to the place’s appeal, which seemed to be weed, around which all seating arrangements at the picnic tables were based. Other, younger visitors came and commingled with the older residents, and at table after table it was quickly determined who had the mota, who had the chillum, and who could pack the best bowl.

The other, darker element at the Juice Bar, though, were those visitors, younger and older, looking for more serious hook-ups. The most obvious had pale, spotty skin, dark circles under their eyes, and ceaseless sniffles. One girl who couldn’t have been out of her early twenties sat in a corner, knees in her chest, and alternated between chewing a thumbnail and scratching at her arms, neck and legs.

Goa has a very dark side, one that seems out of place in the sun and sand, and yet is inevitable given the 24-hour party scene, and, on a bigger scale, India’s overall exoticism. The exchange rate means many Westerners suddenly have vast wealth at their disposal, and to take a Westerner and unseat them from the deep structures of family, job, friends, language, and culture, and deposit them somewhere far, far away from the persona they inhabited, is to knock away any center of personal gravity, any psychic and psychological mooring.

Sprinkle on top of this the concept of “vacation” and “holiday,” or “gap year” and “spiritual journey,” and you have two recipes: the first, the anything-goes mentality in which every problem can be solved by throwing Rupees at it, or ultimately and decisively solved by simply boarding a plane home in two weeks. The second is the Holy Mother India mentality, replete with its exoticism and fetishization.

One can come to India and one can quite simply lose one’s goddamned mind, no matter if one is amongst the shrill idleness of the leafy, tree-lined streets of Gokulam, with its mansions and the incessant yoga drone, or whether it’s amongst the dispersed party-burnout transience on the sun-drenched beaches of Goa.

What Sharath has said in Mysore rang true for us in Goa: “Do the yoga --- now go home!” This is a sentiment echoed by my wife, whose pragmatism is doubtless all that keeps me from living, shoeless and soon toothless, on the concrete floor of some ashram in Hardwar, when she takes my face in her hands and says, gently, “Okay, baby, it’s time to go home. C'mon.”

Super Mega Photo Fun Time! Awesome!
Aww.


Wend your way down one of the circuitous sets of steps at Little Vagator Beach and you find yourself in a slender cove, bracketed at either end by cliffs that extend to the sea. Shiva’s is one of only a handful of restaurants on this particular stretch of beach, but perched in front of Shiva’s sits a large trampoline, a veritable kid magnet. The sun dips downward, the parents sit in Shiva’s, drinking, eating or smoking their chillums, while their children leap and tumble.


The family, and the family car.






There are an abundance of utterly mad people who’ve washed ashore in Goa and decided never to return to the land of their birth, and India being what it is --- a land where everything and its opposite are both true at the same time --- many of these afflicted and affected souls have carved out their own particular dreams, no matter how bizarre or off the wall. We’ve been frequenting the results of one such dream, a restaurant called Sharewood, at which every table is its own treehouse. I’ll say it again --- every table is its own treehouse. If that doesn’t stir your blood in some way, you are dead to the world and ought to climb into a coffin.

Each table is either built off the ground, up in a Swiss Family Robinson-style treehouse, or else sunk into the ground, the curved walls of the earth forming parts of the chairbacks. Sharewood also has a small, ankle-deep wading pool filled with various children’s toys, and there are usually at least one to three nude children splashing about.

The place is owned by a French couple who are cyberpunk biker nuts, and there are always several heavily modified motorcycles parked in front that have been channeled and chopped just in time for the coming apocalypse.

The ambience of slight lunacy at Sharewood is abetted by the absolutely brilliant food --- it has the best shakes, the best galettes, and the best tartines I’ve ever tasted, and their croissants are neck-and-neck with the French bakery as far as the buttery flake-factor goes.


We have no burner or stovetop at Resort Melo Rosa, so I dropped 40 Rupees (one US doller) on a “heating element” as a means to continue my caffeine addiction. I’ve procured a French press, and have accordingly switched from espresso to coffee. Drop the heating element into the glass and the water boils in less than two minutes. I am inordinately sketched out about electricity and water in such close proximity, but needs must. I also have a profoundly negative association with “heating elements” as the last time I saw one, it was in use by some junkie friends.



En route to the market area in Anjuna sits a large field, most of which has been given over to the nearby high school for cricket and football. At one end, though, a small portion is where the locals shape, press, and then dry the cow patties. I’m told cow patties make for excellent floors and walls, and are incredibly sterile.



We made the arduous 30-minute scooter ride north from our digs in Arporam to visit the beaches at Arambol and Morjem. Although the area is saturated with beach bungalows, restaurants, and of course, hundreds of shops selling the requisite fisherman pants, sequined peasant bags, and T-shirts, the beach itself is as beautiful a stretch as I’ve ever seen. Where else but India do you get cows on the beach?



We lived within blocks of the beach in Encinitas for roughly 14 years, so both Tara and I tend to have little desire to sit in the sun and sand. Which is why there aren’t too many shots like these.



The Las Vegas Market is around the corner from our old, rat-afflicted flat. It’s atypical of most Indian groceries due to both its vast selection and its overall large size.

I do love the 10 Rupee-per-pack biscuit selection, though why they don’t just call ‘em cookies and be done with it is beyond me --- must be some throwback to British rule.


This mutt lived at our old flat, and was one of the pack of dogs that used to howl and bark at the rats. All of the pack members were old, decrepit and disfigured in some way. This is Broke Face, so called because he was run over by a car as a puppy and managed to survive, though the accident left his head permanently kinked to one side.


The ankle-biter appears unhappy to have been woken from her nap on the scooter ride to Mapusa, the biggest town closest to the beaches of Goa.


We hit the Mapusa market in search of bootleg movies. Okay, in all honesty, I hit the Mapusa market in search of bootleg movies. I scored Jet Li and Chow Yun Fat bangers --- 16 movies on one DVD for the former and 12 movies on one DVD for the latter! --- and a kid’s compilation for Rowan that didn't work when I tried to play it later.


Need For Speed: Pro Street! In India! It’s an EA-produced video game I worked on last year with my man Rod Chong. Bootleg?


Scooter hair! My hair has been blown so high that it’s actually eclipsing the view of Tara and Rowan on the seat behind me. Note: although the forehead is truly giant, please remember that it is the containment unit for my monstrously oversized, incredibly virile, and hypersexy brain.


The kid’s room, or “Kids Korner,” at our favorite local vegetarian eatery, Bean Me Up. (I’d stab a stranger for their key lime pie.) Unfortunately, on this night Cartoon Network was inexplicably frozen, which devastated both Rowan and myself, because it was frozen on a fight scene from the “Cell Saga” of Dragon Ball Z.