The Pilgrim

I thought that growing a beard would make me wiser. In fact, it just made me hairier (and hotter and itchier). I also wanted to grow long flowing locks – the kind of hair that would make portraits of Jesus weep! But I just came out looking like a bearish Axl Rose, without the rock and roll charisma (or crotch-cradling bicycle shorts).

I’m in Varanasi, making one of the holiest cities in Hinduism slightly more profane. I’m surrounded by pilgrims in their colourful saris who have come to pay respect to their Hindu deities or to cremate their dead. I’m trudging along in worn sandals, my face smeared with dirt and my heart filled with the unholy thought of impressing the pretty girl walking next to me. She turns towards me and I gamely put on my best smile. It comes out looking more like I’m bearing my fangs.
“Is everything alright?” she asks in a lilting accent her eyes concerned.
“Don’t be alarmed, I’m just smiling.”
Damn, that went well!

This was only the latest episode in my prolonged history of terrible awkwardness around attractive women. The origins of this phenomenon can be traced back at least to grade six and Miranda Bentley Fisher but two real examples from the past six months should suffice as damning contemporary evidence (all identities have been anonymised to protect the innocent):
Example 1
Kjell: “Do you think I’m flirting with you now?”
Madame X, doubtfully: “I’m not really too sure”
Kjell: “I am…I’m flirting with you.”
Madame X: “Ok”
Kjell (about 20 minutes later via text message): “You were the prettiest girl in that entire cave!”
Madame X: “well…that’s a start I guess”

Example 2 - First real conversation and attempt at flirtation with Dutch Lawyer
Double Dutch: “What do Canadians think of The Netherlands?”
Kjell, breathlessly: “That it’s full of dope-smoking whores.”
Double Dutch: “umm…thanks”

In the present, I find myself exhausted by the endless coquettishness of Indian women. It’s all averted eyes, coy looks and giggles – it feels like I’m the hero in a Bollywood film. If only I could dance I might have a chance!
…………
Advance apologia for this aside, but it’s important that all of you understand that I’m not the only man in the world with well developed neuroses in response to women. My sister and my mom recently saw Woody Allen performing with his klezmer band at the Montréal Jazz Festival. The first notes of his clarinet were weak, off-key squawks. The female half of my family, sitting near the front, began to giggle thinking this was part of Woody’s ‘comedy’ routine. But the squeaks continued and so did the giggles. Between songs Woody sheepishly responded, “I’m doing my best!” I may not be a 72 year old Jew from Brooklyn but I know exactly how he felt.

………..
I’m now in Bodhgaya, the place where the Buddha attained enlightenment sitting under the Bodhi Tree. I’m also under the Bodhi tree, but I don’t quite have it all figured out yet. I’m in the half lotus position. This is really nothing but a half-assed lotus for those whose limbs are slightly less flexible and quite a bit more fundamentalist. None the less, it still seems as though my hips might dislocate at any moment. I was always old before my time – senility is surely only months away! My mind is racing but my butt is painfully still. It brings me back to my days doing Buddhist meditation in Silver Springs Maryland. It was a long metro ride from my cubicle near the White House to the Shambhala Centre (a squat building also containing the parole board). I was usually so focussed on not accidentally getting off at the Fort Totten station that nothing else registered. Yet, I’ll never forget the time a slightly off-kilter man lurched towards me and, in one sickening moment, grabbed me by the shoulders and exhorted: “THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX!!!”

Buddhists are taught to be mindful of their own mortality, to consider their own deaths. In effect, Buddhists are supposed to think inside the box. Being Buddha-curious I wonder how I will die, and what will happen to my body? If I’m lucky I’ll be defenestrated from a Baroque tower onto the cobblestones of Prague. More probably it will be an anonymous microbe (the seed of a strange disease), or perhaps I will fall down at old age and be unable to get back up on account of my fundamentally inflexible limbs. Whatever it is, it ought to be suitably ignoble and ridiculous (perhaps a heart-attack in the nursing home after an acutely embarrassing attempt at flirtation with a golden girl).

When I am dead, when my punctuation changes from comma to period, I don’t want to donate my body to science, but I wouldn’t mind donating it to a kid so he could poke it with a stick. I hope that they bury me standing like the gypsies used to do. On second thought, my left foot isn’t so good: maybe they could still bury me standing but kind of lean me to the right side to take a bit of the pressure off? They could prop me up with an algebra text like many a wobbly old desk. I’ll take those fecking quadratic equations with me to the grave!

For now I’ll just keep limping along…