#17 - The bicycle ride (first published 11/16/20)

As I bicycled away from my younger self some fifty years ago, I wondered what impact I may have had on my younger self that day.  Was it a dream or can we really move in our consciousness through time?  Are we a continuous living soul that regenerates ourselves over and over through time and can influence ourselves through our consciousness as we travel the road?  

I arrive in Katmandu and on the first full day there I visit Pashupatinath Temple, an ancient religious complex in the hills above the city, holy to  Hindus.  I arrive there with my fellow group of trekkers, whom I just met,  by bicycle.  The fragrances are mysterious and both inviting and repulsive at the same time.  There are monkies all over the place.  Cows walk freely around the grounds.  The colors are bright with oranges, reds, and blues, there are prayer flags and prayer wheels at every turn.    I hear chanting, see monks, a chicken that appears to be part of a sacrificial ritual, and people offering spiritual services to those you want.  I came to Katmandu and Nepal without a lot of real research as to where I was going.  I had just separated and had a four-year-old.  An acquiescence was going with a long-time travel friend and suggested I might like the experience.  A spur of the moment decision.


I see this woman, whose face is hardened with age but has this special look of compassion.  She asks if I would go like a palm reading and then do some chanting.  I say yes and the next moment I find myself in a small temple, one of over five hundred on the grounds.  She looks at my hands and tells me accurately about my life’s past history and gives her projection on my future life and longevity.  We then chant together for a very long time.  It is an experience I have never had before or since.  I return to the courtyard and all of the trekkers and our two guides that brought us to this sacred place are gone.  The route we had taken to Pashupatinath and even the name of the hostel where I am staying is unknown.  


I get on the bicycle and I ride.  Down a hill and back into what appears to be the City and not the temple grounds.  I ride by instinct alone.  While riding I am thinking bout my life before and my life to come.  I pass street vendors, a public market, and outside hashish dens with young tourists around giant water pipes.  The smells of the place are overwhelming more than anything else I can remember.  And the sounds of people yelling, whistles blowing, and record shops with foreign music to my ears blaring as to out attract the next shop for customers.  I keep peddling and gazing, smelling, and hearing but all the time transfixed on that sacred palm reader.  I pedal and pedal.  Somehow I miraculously find my way back to the hostile and at the same time transform my life, or at least my life’s journey.


So I am left wondering where that bicycle ride from Santa Monica to see my younger self and that bicycle ride through the streets of Katmandu begins and ends.  I am still riding.  

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