Go Lotus Go

It’s been one year and a day since I left Africa. No turning back. Step away from old self, from old expectations, from old needs and desires and move only forward now, on the quest for more. All this (all of it!) thanks to Ethiopia’s ten thousand orphans and those particular seven smiling Italian clowns. What magical god (Karma? Krsna? Lady Luck?) arranged for the jaded and so very tired waitress to meet up with and join that volunteer circus troupe on her, and their, very first day in Ethiopia? Who do I have to thank for this? For the opportunity? For the joy? For one unforgettable, life-altering moment after another? Three whole months worth. Three short months that overtook all of my years, and when they were over, they led, more or less directly, to this. To Argentina. To the dropping of everything I thought I’d built, que ca s’écroule, je m’en fous!, and to my own personal reformation.

But one year and a day later I continue to flail dryly in the grand wake of such a perfect tsunami. How to live up to such an extraordinary experience? How, really, to live it down? It was Once In A Lifetime, obviously. But there’s no turning back now—I know what I know. So if I can’t reproduce it (and I can’t), I must at least create some circumstances where the general fantasticness of it all can be matched, or neared, or something close. Thus, Argentina. Still, every single thing since, even the most beautiful and profound, has rung of anticlimax, as I knew it would. On my way back from Africa, I actually hoped that the plane would crash before it landed in Toronto. That way, I could shirk the responsibility of living out the rest of my life knowing that nothing would ever be that good again.

Even more challenging (¡dificilísima!) after having lived the absolute time of your life is writing about it. No one wants to read about pure beauty and joy and discovery. No matter how well it’s done, it invariably ends up sounding shmaltzy and dull. D. tells me: “Write it like it was!” But it was like that—all fucking beautiful. Non-stop, time and again, moment after moment, even the three and a half bad minutes, all fucking beautiful. How do you make “all fucking beautiful” into interesting reading? With what vocabulary? And into what structure? I suppose I could contrast it all with the shite, the formerly eternal shite. But I’m sick of the shite. I want to grow out of it. I want to be the lotus that emerges from the swamp, rises above it, and flowers. See how lame that sounds: I want to be the lotus!? I can write scabies and cancer and crack babies into interesting reading until the anal tears stop pussing and finally scar over. But love? Truth? Generosity of the soul? Blah!

But, still, whether I like it or not, the bar’s been set. And the plane didn’t crash.

There’s no turning back now.

So just go, you fucking lotus! Go!