This is going to be short and sweet, because the house is filling up fast and we're going to make a birthday dinner...for me!! I'd like to invite all of you to dinner, at least in spirit and intention. Wherever you are on the planet, do something you really love to do (smoke a cigarette, write a poem, read a book, whatever), and do one for me if you'd be so kind.
I'm turning 40 years old while staying in the city of Auroville, in Tamil Nadu state in the sub-continent of India. You'll need to google Auroville I'm afraid, as I have no such time on hand to tell you all about it just now. It's an intentional city, a human experiment, and Auroville's 41st birthday is...tomorrow. I am not kidding. And I didn't plan all this. At least I don't think so :)
This morning I woke to feet tickling. My hostess Renata (who is Russian, an artist, and I found her through Couchsurfing) and her daughter Masha (who is 10) woke me up with flowers! (I shot upright in bed though...ever since that rat ran over me in my tent at Buddha Smiles I'm a little skittish) Drupad, Renata's sweetie, gave me a flower and a big hug after I trundled out onto the porch.
Katarina, who is a friend of Renata's and is staying for a few days, fixed us a yummy eggs and tomato breakfast...with coffee! And toast! Wow!
Then I went to Matrimandir. How can I explain that?! I was deeply moved, unexpectedly so. It deserves its own blogpost and I hope to do that in the very near future. Matrimandir is the soul of Auroville. It's a physical structure too.
I met my new German friend, Herbert, at the Terrasse restaurant for lunch but they weren't serving any Indian food so I suggested going downstairs to the Solar Cafe (where I hope to volunteer soon...they are 100% solar powered, yes, and serve up no less than four hundred meals at a time, three days a week, delicious). Herbert gave me a garland of flowers...sweet. After lunch, on the way to the beach, we stopped at a temple amid banyan trees and I gave the garland over to the forest.
We're all going to cook up something good to eat shortly....lots of sweets! And coffee! Fresh salad, who knows what-all else. It's been a really wonderful birthday. I haven't swam in an ocean since I was about twelve years old. It wasn't scorchingly, meltingly stickily hot today either. Perfect.
Some pictures of the beautiful home I'm staying in for a couple more days (it's already been a week!) before I go to a guest house in another community:
One side, with two bedrooms and the bathroom (where I am sleeping):
Panning to the left, standing outside on the other side of the bigger pond:
This side is where the kitchen and living are downstairs, and Renata's studio is upstairs (she's a ceramacist, by the way):
View of the back
and the front
And the puja I made this morning with flowers and sand and other items from around the place.....the flowers that the girls gave me are on the other side though :)
Okay now it's really heating up...Katarina came in and gave me some aromatherapy from the ashram (New Creation...she is SO SWEET) and some incense which I will light forthwith. Masha is home and so on and on and on...I love her....salut, one and all, from India, with my love and all my newly acquired microbes :)
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