Baby, it doesn't get any better than this. Bussed up here to Rishikesh pretty painlessly and met an irish brother and sister traveling in India since Xmas. They were fun. Then we got to Laxman Jula, which was mostly closed because it was Holi, the holiday where they throw colored dye on each other and hit you with water balloons. This is good because when the shops are open it looks like any other indian tourist trap, but with them closed, its paradise. Mountains all around, the Ganges flows by under a great suspension bridge, where monkeys play on the wires, some with monkey babies on their backs. that's how confident monkeys are. Everyone threw dye on me and I was covered like everyone else. They rub it on your face, clothes, whatever, its all very jolly. The ganga beach cafe is one of those places that is just- you just can't beat it. It's great. Overlooking the water, they built it of bamboo, like something in bali or thailand or something. You sit on cushions on the floor and check out the view and sip lassi and mango juice and meet people from all over the world. Fabulous. Just fabulous. Of course we're all on vacation here, so what could be better? A little oldies mix plays in the background, it's just great. So far, no beggars. I mean what's India without beggars? But they just aren't around. Go figure. Up at 5 am this morning went for a sunrise walk and checked out the whole town. Its gorgeous when its closed, in a haphazard, cobbled-together way. Saw a homeless man sleeping on the sidewalk, covered with a blanket, his prosthetic leg lying by his side. Standing on the bridge is glorious. The wind just blasts you, attacks you, makes you feel small. Then I come to sit on the bank of the Ganges, where the water is cold cold cold and bits of marigolds wash up and make a line in the sand. I never heard of a river with a sandy beach, but that's what we have here. A dog that looks like my own comes up and says hello, takes his morning dip, then trots off. I go sip my mango juice at the cafe above and a group of ladies in their saris come for their morning dip. They pour it all over themselves. It looks clean enough, I'm just amazed they do this. Its awfully cold. Brave! Some even take their tops off, discretely behind a rock. The men on the rocks above pretend they aren't looking.

Okay, so let's talk hotels. And by hotels I mean hotels, not restaurants,which are also called hotels. What you want to look for, if you are me, for instance, or anyone else traveling with a computer, is a working electrical outlet. The cheaper places don't necessarily have one, so you can't recharge your stuff. Now, by cheap, I mean 100 to 150 rupees, which is 3 to 5 bucks. For this number, in Paharganj, you can stay in Navganj, which is down a back alley past a mini garbage dump where cows graze and also an open urinal. You get a room whose filth is difficult to describe. Now, there isn't trash lying around or anything, it's just the walls. They haven't been painted since, I'd say, 1955, and backpackers from all over the world have done graffiti all over them, which is amusing. Here's some of it: 

• This is Major Tom to ground control . . . (followed by the entire song written in stanzas)
• Trahit Sua Quemque Voluptas (anyone help me with that one?)
• man is a bird without wings, and a bird is a man without sorrows . . . 
• I love you! Don't cry!
• Free Tibet! Free Flandres! Free Bretagne! Free Corse!

There is a lot of stuff about overcoming sorrow, giving the impression this is a place of last resort. A nasty gray blanket covers the window. As per standard,there is one bare flourescent tube and one bare light bulb. If I ever see a lamp shade in India I'll drop dead of shock. There is a bathroom, however, and it's as clean as can be expected. No bugs, and that's the main thing. Okay, now when I say wall, you aren't picturing what I mean. A wall is an ancient thing that's been there since before time began and it is not a decoration, it is a tool. If one needs to drill a hole for a light socket, then remove the socket and leave the wires hanging out, then whatever. If something gets splashed on there and drips down and leaves drip marks . . . whatever. It will be that way until the end of time. If you have to tape a lot of stuff up there and then leave the little rectangular tape marks all over, whatever. Never wash a wall, never touch a wall if you can help it. A wall is a vertical receptacle for dirt of all kinds. It's not a big deal, you just get used to not touching things. I learned that on my first trip. Don't touch things you don't need to touch and none of this should bother you.

Okay, anyway, moving up, a place like Traveller Guest House-- here, for Rs 450 you get enough space to sleep three, but not swing a cat. You get a western toilet, geyser with hot water, a tv, and set of glasses and a pitcher. I wouldn't watch the whining in Hindi that constitutes TV, wouldn't put my water in any receptacle but my own, and a western toilet is simply a nuisance when you are using the Indian splash-water method of cleaning yourself, so I say its a waste of money, unless you are traveling with 3 people, in which case you are golden. Best case scenario is a place called Yatri Sarai hotel, where for just 200 you get hot water, clean room, working outlet, but no window. Then you have the hotel Scot. I liked this place so much I checked in even though I wasn't planning to spend the night. Someone there actually has a sense of aesthetics. I mean, the walls are somewhat newly painted and there is a ceiling fan and some blankets on the bed and curtains and an Aircon machine that juts out into the room itself like Big Brother Watching You. It looks something like what you picture when you picture a hotel room, and just Rs 300. That's my all-time pick, so if you go, check it out. Across the alley is a cute cafe where I met an 82 year old lady doing it on her own and not exactly loving it. But was she ever spunky.

Decided to start off in Paharganj, the "seedy backpacker's nexus" according to Lonely Planet. Well its not the Hilton, but I don't think its much seedier than anyplace else reasonably priced. Anyway, took an auto rickshaw from the airport. I had been told not to do this, but did anyway. Don't ask me why, I couldn't possibly tell you. It was dark. I was indicisive. I listened to a stranger with a warm voice.

Guy tried to charge me 2000 ruppees, I bargained him down to 500, at which point he pretended he was out of gas, demanded the money to fill up, then pretended to run out of gas again and transfered me to another auto rickshaw where I only paid 35 ruppees more. I knew I'd been had but was confused as to why the second guy wanted to do the rest of the ride for only 35. I eventually learned the going rate is 200, so even the guy making 35 made out like a bandit.  Anyhow, before all this, I first approached some British backpacking girls at the airport to see if they wanted to share a taxi and they said no and ran away. I'm scary I guess. Must be the hat. Anyway, after driving me in circles all around the city the driver finally dropped me off in hell's half acre. A dirty unlit street where cycle and auto rickshaws are parked all along the streetside and one restaurant was open with lots of skinny guys milling around in the middle of the night. An old saddhu came, ate something with his hands on a curb, and wandered away with his saggy drawers and decorated stick.

Ate some biryani there and wandered in the scary darkness of 2 a.m. until I found a hotel with space. Checking into a hotel is like getting booked into prison. They laboriously write down every single thing in your passport in this giant ledger, then you have to write your home address, telephone number, everything. Sign the ledger. Sign a triplicate paper that says you swear your visa is real (or something) and sign something else you are way too sleepy to know what it is. No matter, It's nothing. Just some extraneous form. If you try to read before you sign they think you must be retarded.

"Just sign it! Don't you see the X?"

Paharganj is a no-man's land where tangled telephone wires, stray dogs, occasional cows lying in the road, and everything for sale in the world crowd the main street. Little side streets and alleys are so small and the entries so crowded with items for sale and signs for this and that and banners for Pepsi or something that you don't know if you are supposed to go down there or if it's private or what. You soon learn to push everything aside, including garments on hangers hanging from low-slung telephone wires, and go down the back alleys, where it's quieter and there are little cafes. Its holi this week, a holiday where people peg you with waterballoons. I got pegged twice this evening and I thought it'd be fun, but its not. They throw them hard and you lose your breath and nearly go into shock. Someone hiding in the crowd gets a thrill out of it anyway, and you, meaning me, just try to play it cool and pretend tears didn't just pop up in your eyes like meerkats.

Here in Amsterdam, on my layover, I’ve made the decision to consume one of those sketchy 5-hour energy drinks-- in order to stay up for what would be my night but will soon be my day---that claims to be full of b vitamins. Vitamins my ass. The second guessing and American-cultural-awareness thing has begun, as with hours to kill I spent 12 bucks on a cup of yoghurt and a hot tea, then later asked the hip, blonde, Dutch-language speaking barrista to refill my water. Suddenly wondered if that was one of those “casual American” things that Europeans consider gouche. Her reaction and the fact that she put about 12 drops of hot water in my cup told me it was. Or else she’s just lazy. Or doesn’t like my hat. Some American man with a baby mistook me for a local and asked me where to buy a phone card. I credit my Jennifer Lopez hat with giving me such enormous first-impression cache. It’s fun being in weird in-between places like this where there are still lots of American accents around as well as languages being spoken that I can honestly say I’ve never heard before whatsoever. But of course its Europe because everyone is drinking capuccino from impossibly small cups that would be recognized, of course, in my home country as rip-offs-- Americans being as volume conscious as we are. Anyhow, you can pick out the Americans for a mile because they are all either fat and round in a very specifically American way or having intellectual or possibly pseudo-intellectual conversations about “the world marketplace” and their “work in Africa,” and extremely fit and organic looking, like they personally own sheep or perhaps a llama or two.

Although I despise "work" as such, I also hate leisure. I am a workaholic who is lazy and an adventurer who can't relax. Thus, the Indian government's prohibition on my doing anything other than tourist activity while visiting India—which my original intent had been to work on a book—has caused me to have to post any and every thing of interest in this public communiqué. Why? Chalk it up to pathological verbosity. A better person could keep it all to herself, but without an audience, I'm sunk. The pen screeches to a halt, and there I am, standing in a foreign land amid a bunch of people who don't believe in love, as a cultural construct, with no purpose or reason for being there.

So, I am today considering it the first day of the journey, although I haven't yet left Santa Fe, simply because today I finally feel like writing about the thing. I see the end of the prep period approaching and the beginning of the actual thing looming, and I seem to be surrendering gradually to fate. It has begun. Having spent the last couple of weeks telling tall tales about luxury living in honeymoon destinations that are nothing nothing nothing at all like the insanity I am about to experience, I am getting ready for complete cultural overload. I remember last time it took 3 weeks just to feel like I was human again and able to do things like catch a tuk-tuk without a general Robinson-Crusoe-ish feeling of strandedness about it all.

This time around I hope it all just falls into place lickety split and I actually have fun. Fun? Well, fun for a lazy workaholic, whatever kind of fun that is. I can't quite tell you what that would look like, but that's why blogs were invented.

See you on the flip side.

A lot of people find, when they set out to write their life story, that they are likely to hurt someone—parents, friends, associates, old army buddies, and so forth. That's simply because the whole point of writing a book is to (finally) tell the truth. We go through life easing the feelings of people around us, trying to be a good friend, trying to be supportive, and so forth. We're mothers, father, daughters, sons, spouses, employees, bosses. We play so many roles in life that we sometimes forget who we really are and what we really believe. So yes, when you write an honest book about your life and the people in it, sometimes someone is liable to get their feelings hurt. I've seen clients struggle over the exact wording of certain sentences only to finally give up and say, "To hell with it! It's the truth and I'm saying it!" And in the end, readers respect your candor. When they take the whole book into perspective, they get to know you better and don't mind the odd sentence here or there that jogs them out of their comfortable illusions.

You writing a memoir or autobiography is a departure from playing the roles you've played all your life. It is a moment to stand apart from all that and be yourself. The writing of it makes you realize how far you've come in life, whether or not you have been true to your convictions, and what you have yet to give. Whether or not you want to actually publish the thing is up to you. Will it put you at risk? Will the truth (your truth) hurt too many people? Only you can say, but whether or not you publish has no bearing on the fact that writing that memoir is a life-altering experience. It is a summation of who you are, what you believe, what you have learned. It is the non-role-playing honesty that everyone deserves to experience at some point in life.

That's right, life can hurt. It's not news to anyone out there, I'm sure. But when you are writing your autobiography or memoir, this fact can come suddenly into startling relief. Going back over painful memories is the last thing a lot of people want to do, but I find that actually they usually find it quite therapeutive. Now, I'm no shrink and I don't profess to help people with their psychological hangups. (I'd be the last person!) But the memoir-writing process itself does help. I've had clients talk to me about things they've done that they're ashamed of. But when it comes down to a book, what is most interesting is not what you did but WHY you did it. This is the thing that your readers will relate to more than anything. When we look deeply into your motivations for the things you did, your life starts to come more clearly into focus for you. You start to see it in a new light and put the various puzzle pieces together into a logical whole. So, yeah, life can hurt, but memoir-writing can heal.

One of my students, Michael, gave me a perfect example, in class this week, of what writers do. He was driving along the road with his boyfriend and saw a sign, "Animal Hospice!"

"Quick! Quick!" he yelled. "Drive in there!" 

Reluctantly the boyfriend complied, resigning himself to yet another of Michael's writerly instincts.

At the animal hospice, the pair was given a tour of the facilities, where numerous dying dogs lay around on living room floors, sighing the sighs of the resigned and hopeless. Nutty old ladies periodically cornered them, wanting to give lectures on chiropractic, display their paintings, and engage the gentlemen in the worship of Sebastian, a long-dead pit bull that had been a hospice favorite. 

"We're very selective here," explained their hostess. "We only take dogs, horses, and poultry . . . and never, NEVer, NEVER a well animal. Only sick ones. As you can see."

My point is, you never know what odd adventures lie in wait when you follow that instinct to see the odd, unusual, and unwell. The characters you meet are priceless because, as everyone in Santa Fe knows all too well: truth is stranger than fiction. 

The thing to remember, writers and memoirists out there, is that if you "write what you know" you may run into a little problem. The problem is simply the fact that what we know best is how to avoid conflict. Unless we're gluttons for punishment, lawyers, or prize fighters, most of us spend most of our waking hours scheming as to how we will avoid conflict for the rest of the day. But stories are about conflict. You don't want to write your story about someone who is avoiding conflict-- this is a story's death knell. It's realistic, sure, but not very interesting. Keep in mind, when you are examining what you know for something to write about, that those moments when conflicts you've been trying to avoid finally come to a head are the moments of which stories are made. And they happen. No matter how hard we try to avoid them, they happen. Let this be your excuse to go ahead and let conflict happen. Take note of it. Observe it. Observe yourself and others. How do people deal with it? What does it mean to them? Now you're getting somewhere!

A word to the wise, or the would-be wise, out there. There is a very common pitfall that memoirists run into, so I thought I'd save everyone out there some wasted time by addressing it. I call it the Summary Syndrome. I can't tell you how many would-be memoirists out there, whose work I have read, tend to tell their stories like this:

I think life is bla bla bla. I really got in touch with this feeling during the past few years when I bla bla bla, and it's been touching. Deeply touching. I'm just immersed in the profundity of bla bla bla. I probably learned all this back when I was seventeen years old and got kidnapped by sailors, then left on a deserted island to die, then fell in a well, then was rescued by a team of geologists, then fell in love with one of them, had his baby, got cancer, got cured, and built up a fortune 500 company from scratch that distributes my famous cancer cure. Now that I recline here in my hammock on my private island it occurs to me that bla bla bla and the world is bla bla bla. I'm so glad I bla bla bla. 

What I'm saying is that folks tend to summarize the best, most eventful, parts of their lives, sometimes in a single sentence, while the rest of the book rambles on about philosophy. Philosophy is great, folks, but it needs to be incorporated into the action of the story of your life. Don't fall for Summary Syndrome!