POSTCARD #192: VASANT VIHAR, NEW DELHI: An extraordinary battle with uncompromising traffic to get here on time for Head-ache’s appointment with the doctor at 5pm. Shrill penetrating, sharp horns blast, push, persist, insist on the direction we take, and suddenly we slice through the evening rush-hour, arriving at the place too early by half an hour. It’s like that sometimes; tumble into a parking slot by the park, uneven ground and the car tilts over and slightly back. Open all the doors to allow the fresh air and warm wind to blow through.
Things are suddenly rustled in the quietness here in the tilted back seat and I get loose papers weighted down or they will fly out the doors. It’s like we’ve always been here and any memory of the journey to get to this place has been somehow displaced by the wind passing through the interior of the car; a quick investigation here-and-there, then out among the trees, rustling the leaves in a great sigh of high frequency leaf-whisper sounds, masses of individual notes played in cluster upon cluster, swishing and swooshing foliage branches – a sound that seems to crash like waves on the shores of a sandy beach.
The first wind of its kind for many months comes at the end of the cold season. Its warmth enters everywhere, into every thing; blows out gusts, sucks in voids and spins everything around. Swooping down, so inquisitive, and filling up all the places and spaces, then out and up in the sky where only birds engage with it. A wind that’s present everywhere at the same time, a wind that enters into and out of all things as if it were something autonomous, an invisible entity. Where’d it go… have you seen the wind? How can that be possible, isn’t it formlessness? We know it’s here only by the sound of it, in the leaves and seeing the swaying of branches in a succession of movements, an expression of the air displacement itself; a manifestation of the wind – I can become the wind, the space where it goes.
Now this – now that, long tree branches drifting and swaying patterns of light and shade over my clothing, look up at the sun and get pleasantly blinded by it in a twinkle. This wind blows through the mind, my awareness of it rises as it rises; I become more alert when it’s very loud, feel at ease when it’s still and quiet. It becomes the thought flow, gently restless in the swooping shadows plunging deep into foliage pattern. The oneness of it all includes everything seen and unseen. Better not be late for our doctor’s-appointment, we spill out of the car, hair-whiplash on forehead, gather myself up with my companion Head-ache and together we stumble across the road to see the neurologist witch-doctor, amazed by this persistent wind. Sunlight and shadow-shapes of foliage sweeping over the roadway and path, all around…
But do not ask me where I am going,
As I travel in this limitless world,
Where every step I take is my home.
[Dogen]
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dhamma footsteps 
A great piece, Tiramit. I felt the forces of the stationary car, the echo of motion, and the arrival of the wind that tumbles through the environment like an invisible hand playing along the beads of a doorway, or the strings of a harp. The way it takes you away in an instant. You look for it, but see the sun instead. Then gathering up your headache. Come on then, if you’re gonna’ be here with me… The weight of an extra companion. The strange places you take your companion. The strange places your companion takes you. There and back again through the city…
Peace
Michael
Thanks Michael. Yes interesting how it feels when you stop the car after a journey and don’t immediately get out of the car… that silence, a few creaks and clicks as the car engine cools off and the local wind gently brings your attention to this place that was here before you arrived; the action of it like an invisible hand playing along the beads of a doorway. The thing is of course I could have written this and not said anything about ‘my companion’. It’s a story about the wind and Head-ache doesn’t have a speaking part in it, but I like to include him (I think it’s a ‘him’), and also we were there in fact because Head-ache needs attention – a bit demanding in that way.
The wind, Headache, traffic noise, the light, your own thoughts – all whipping at your head. Trying to get in or out?
So did the witch-doctor give you another bottle of voodoo to try to muffle the cacophony with its beat?
Don’t know if it’s trying to get in or get out, there’s a lot I don’t know these days. Yes another magic remedy that’ll not cure but prolong the dependency, so that when I reduce the dosage, the symptoms return or is it the withdrawl from the remedy… it’s a chicken-or-egg situation. The voodoo cacophony is a good analogy…
Just try to give yourself at least a month once or twice a year to get reasonably clean. Otherwise you’ll never again know whether you’re ill or addicted.
Good advice. I have a table drawn in my papers; columns with date/ time/ dosage as headers, and can keep a record of the intake. One thing I notice is that it’s now possible to endure the headaches that occur during the times of reduced dosage by having the doses in a box in the room upstairs, rather than in an immediately accessible place on the table. Time to consider the nature of the beast a little, before swallowing tabs indiscriminately. Applied structure wherever possible.
I love the naming of things and treating them as characters, as you have done with Head-ache. I often speak of my layers of self as Me and Me Two, sometimes Not Me.
Personification at its best when referring to Wind, Tree, Star, Moon, as if they were persons.
Be at peace,
Paz