The Testicles of Ramsses

Even the parrot is rude. I lean over to look at him through the open door of his cage and he will not even condescend to look back. So I poke my finger in and he makes as if to bite it. But he won't bite. It's an act. It's your tough guy image, I tell him. If you were nice to me, just think how happy you would be. Think how happy I would be. I would feed you nuts all day long and we would be best friends. Does your darling Loreli ever do that for you? You know she doesn't. She would never even consider it. Instead, whenever I do break down and buy you a bag of your favorite roasted macadamias lightly salted in fine Hawaiian sea salt, you snatch them from me contemptuously and, after you have had your fill, drop them in the shit at the bottom of your cage. I can only take that for so long before I decide to eat them myself. Come to think of it, there are only two occasions that I have ever splurged on macadamias, both times for you, and both times I got sick of being insulted. But I enjoyed the nuts. I'll have to get you some more.

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I've died. Gone through the tunnel, entered the light, angelic choirs, the whole nine yards. It's not like I expected. I'm standing in front of a black guy with a Mohawk haircut seated at a desk before what seems to be the Pearly Gates. Very ornate. Pearly. I'm feeling fine. A gentle sense of euphoria like being mildly stoned. Rainbow lights. He is alternating a quizzical look between me and a sheaf of papers. Suddenly it dawns on me that he's new at the job. What a terrible responsibility. If he screws up, he's in big trouble. I try to make it easy for him. “Take your time,” I say. “I don't care where you send me.” He laughs. “Pull up a chair,” he says. I notice that there is in fact a comfortable chair and I lean back in it. I want to make this easy for him. “I still have desires,” I say. “Or, to put it more exactly, desire. You know what I mean?” He giggles and looks embarrassed. He's reading through my papers. “In the end it always seems to come down to a question of God or orgasm, but in the presence of a beautiful woman the idea of God seems rather irrelevant. Don't you agree?” Now he's laughing. He waves me through the Gates. “Get out of here before I change my mind.”

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This piece is  funny, and the visual details are great, they pulled me into the story; like I was in a deep daydream. I like the end, in which you wrote a thoughtful foray, into one of those judeo-chirstian and buddhist, religious deep questions about judgment or karma.  Are we really punished for being human, by giving into our physical desires, desires that we were born with,  instincts that feel natural without reason; I mean without doing harm of course.
  I read somewhere, that a student asked a Tibetan monk, if we really go to the hell realms when we do bad things.  The monks answer was “no ! we just say that to make you behave yourself”.  I think the main concern is social order.
I agree with the monk. Of course, I could be wrong, I guess I'll find out. 

                       Peter

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I think the monk was joking.

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As befits a strange story, it begins strangely. An Indian air force pilot on a routine reconnaissance flight over the Himalayas espies an antique monastery clinging to a peak in the middle of nowhere and comes in close for a better view. The moment is soon forgotten but has been recorded in a quick succession of shots that so fascinates the military brass the pilot is called in for questioning. Did he have any idea what he had photographed? He is handed photos of a yogi meditating in lotus, so oblivious to the world he takes no notice of a jet streaking by on a strafing run. All around him at a distance of some feet the ice and snow has been melted away from the sheer heat he is generating. This is high altitude Himalayas. Brutal cold. Unimaginable heat. For all that this implies, defense has a vested interest in that sort of power. The military brass would like to learn a thing or two from that yogi.

They never did, but the story got out. And so it was that I found myself trekking through the Himalayas.

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i feel tentative looking in here and reading
like i am seeing something intimate

there is an extension to your writing here Ramsses, a depth that hints of volumes
i will be patient and return to look again and again :)

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If I ever walk again. That was what she told herself, convalescing from whatever  accident it was that she had had. If she ever walked again, she would go to the Himalayas. And she did. And got samadhi, too, I am quite sure, although she did not lay claim to it in the beautiful description she wrote of it for me in the letter that mysteriously returned after my anonymous gift of Yogananda's book, Autobiography of a Yogi. I was recovering from a little accident of my own. I had been infatuated with her for years and my injury had shaken me. If I thought she was so great, why wouldn't I pass this little treasure along? I wasn't sure she wanted to hear from me. She found the book very interesting, but I believe she was rather shocked by Yogananda's unabashed delight to sleep with his guru. That sort of thing doesn't translate well. Since my only wish those many years had been to sleep with her, I believe my response was nothing short of hysterical, although I have wiped it from my mind. I never heard from her again. Samadhi in the Himalayas would have to wait.

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It was clever Hillary Clinton who theatrically demanded of someone not long ago if he had cracked the code of the sixties. She would not have expected, nor likely have cared, for an answer to her brilliant question, and I doubt she got one. Psychedelics, Hillary. Pyschedelics. But they only took you to the gate. Very few went beyond. That was the hard part. I believe it's called spiritual practice, whatever that is. Maybe it's just the courage of taking a bloody ruthless look at yourself. Easier said than done.

It was the shock of exposure. I like to think that my true identity is a secret. Nobody really knows who I am. Nobody. Except someone did. I hadn't wanted to go up for darshan. I had gone to see her, I told myself, out of simple curiosity. A high saint from India. Yogananda visited saints, so why couldn't I? Why did my friend at the Hollywood temple give me such a disapproving look? His message was clear. Just one misstep was all it took to fall. He had fallen. He had been a minister. A woman had got him. Now he was back with his devotee wife, answering the phone and answering to a monk who had been his junior and who informed him that when he asked him to jump, he expected him to ask, “How high?” Marvellous. What a privilege to serve. It was inescapably dawning on me that I had been buried alive in a cult, but I still had far too great an investment in it to examine that horrifying revelation too carefully.

It wasn't that I was smitten with Amma at first sight, like so many are. Not at all. I could tell she was the real thing. I was already taken, that's all. I wouldn't even have gone up if it hadn't been for my troll of a wife, who only wanted the opposite of what I did. We so rarely encounter an authentic response. I was completely unprepared for it. How could she have known? How could she feel such grief on my behalf? Nor could I ever have anticipated such a divine experience from her contact. How I wish I could have dropped everything right there and then and followed her.

What was it about the curtains blowing in the open windows of the small dining room off the kitchen where I worked that spoke to me of such infinite desolation? I was there for a woman who wanted to be an actress but who would not work, would not even clean the apartment, who stayed home all day and cried, while my meagre savings vanished. She poured out her heart to the minister Yogananda had called a saint. Now it was my turn to sit down with him. “Your wife informs me that you have been physically and verbally abusive with her.” Oh, fuck. You asshole. Would that I had.

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For the benefit of those who know nothing, who have not been initiated into Kriya Yoga, the divine dispensation of the atomic age, I will condescend in my boundless compassion to offer a brief glimpse into the experience of one so fortunate as to have been initiated into this highest of meditation techniques. The fact that, so far as I am aware, it never did a thing for me, attests only to my fathomless unworthiness. I have been to the source. I have been to Babaji's cave. It was from this sacred spot in the Himalayas that he gave to the world his salvation, materializing for this grand occasion a sumptuous palace to satisfy the last remaining desires of his great disciple, Lahiri Mahasaya. That the cave is shockingly unimpressive and now borders on farmland, is protected by a gate covered in graffiti, and is not fit to be inhabited by rats are insignificant details. The other members of the tour meditated devoutly inside while I, due to a wretched cold and incessant coughing, nobly absented myself, but not before dicreetely dropping my mother's engagement ring, minus the diamonds, which I now wore in an astrological bangle, down a crevice in the back. I had left my mark, thank God. All generations, before and after, would be blessed.

I happened to meet up with one of the members at a later date back in our own hemisphere, who could not help asking what I had been doing so privately in the back of the cave. It now occurs to me that there are any number of things I might very privately have done in the back of the cave, and it is with intense regret that I confess to have done none of them. I did feel Yogananda's presence in his meditation attic in Calcutta, and that's a fact. But that's the way it always is with me. I only get a bit of it.

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Which brings me to the heart of the matter. Or not. One never knows. One is always peeling away new layers. But to think that I dropped a gold ring down a crevice in starving India out of religious fervor is obscene. Yogananda would never have done that. Nor do I blame his church for my stupidity. My contention is that his church was no better. You can't throw away countless millions of dollars on lost court cases against a rival church run by a former vice president appointed by Yogananda and subsequently convicted of sexual abuse, and credibly sustain the claim of divine guidance from an eternally youthful boy who flits around the Himalayas with his elite band of super-saints. It's a house of cards. Yogananda's gone. He's an Amma devotee.

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I agree even though I have no real idea of what you are talking about I feel like I do!  Interesting and so well written as always.  I love the First two lines. The “or not” made me giggle.  You always make me think and giggle.  Such a gift you have somehow writing about serious matter but never letting it get morbid.  Amazing.  xo

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I have no idea what I'm talking about either. But if you like it, I know it's good. Thanks, my friend.

The parrot loves me. Yes, she does. My little sweetie. We're best friends now. She even lets me caress her. Others have won that corrupt heart in a day. Not me. It took me years to win that heart of stone. That bird hated me so much she would glare at me and tremble with rage. If she was standing in the open cage door when I came by, she would step back inside and pull it shut. She shit deliberately when I leaned in to look at her, and would snatch contemptuously at my offerings and fling them away if they weren't good enough, eat them if they were, or just keep accidentally dropping them in the shit at the bottom of the cage when she had had her fill. My devotion was unshaken. She was my beautiful bird. I told her of my love. Some day she would be mine. It mattered not how long I waited. I would wait forever.

Although there are some cynics who have have suggested that the bird is friendly now only because Loreli has been away, I know that this is not the real reason. Loreli is a witch who put nasty thoughts in that bird's head. I have found true love.

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How cute.  She was just playing hard to get all along.

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No. She's evil.

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She must be slightly off her rocker if she can resist that voice of yours.

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Wait til you look into my eyes, beautiful.

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You're such a flirt.  I kinda like it.  ;0)

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Roman, the devout Christian, has so taken me by surprise that I am laughing helplessly. He is recounting his response to Kelly, who had shown him his painting, Mary and Child. “But where is Mary?” Roman had demanded. “I see tits. I see pussy.” Roman knows that I am as much amused by his choice of words as by our shared amazement that Kelly considers himself an artist. “I have to talk to him on his level,” he explains. “He thinks everything he does is great.” Kelly had invited him to visit his apartment to see the rest of his work. “I don't need to see the rest of his work.” I'm still laughing. I had seen the rest of his work. It was so bad I could not believe it. I had just returned his typewritten account of his sexual adventures, Sexcapades, with his lavish signature scrawled across the page under the title. Roman had declined to look at it. I had been curious. It was unreadable. No disrespect to Kelly. I salute him.

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Maybe extreme pain makes you spiritual. Or is it the other way around? Do you get extreme pain for being spiritual? The last time I went to see Amma, money for the trip materialized in the form of Ingrid needing help moving to a new apartment. Her friend Debbie also contributed generously for a little work she needed in her apartment. They were both appalled at the condition I was in. I could hardly walk. I'm sick of it. Here I am again, drinking like a fish. I have completely forgotten my early morning appointment with the gallery carpet cleaner, who calls five times before I hear it. He starts a half hour late, but he's cool. I'm on it with him and he's impressed. He needs help on the weekends. There's that little bit of extra work I needed. I am just finishing up at the gallery when Debbie calls. Debbie? Ingrid's friend. Ah, yes, Debbie. She is moving back to California. She has family there. Good family. I already know from Ingrid that she got dumped from her crappy, big bucks job, and there is nothing else. I can tell she's in a state. Yes, I'd be happy to help. I'll be right over. Ingrid also comes over and talks some sense into her. People will pay her for her stuff rather than her paying to get rid of it. She offers money to me anyway. Nah. You were more than generous the last time. Anyway, the really strange thing is that my pain is gone. So is hers.

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I should have known. Cosmic Ray. We're still friends, which is nice, but we keep our distance. He called me the other day with stars in his eyes that glittered right through the sound waves. Adwa had a boat for me. She would call Sunday. Adwa being his broker, who, he assured me, sometimes came into possession of perfectly good boats that people simply wanted to unload without the bother of selling. Don't ask. Well, okay, Ray. I won't turn it down. I need a place to live. I had already gotten all excited about this once before and nothing happened. Maybe God really is a swell guy. No call from Adwa on Sunday. On Monday my cell phone erupts into its Drums in the Sun ringtone, and Adwa's name glows on the display like the lost hieroglyphic that holds the ultimate meaning of life. “Hello, Adwa,” I say, like an astronaut greeting Mission Control after a twenty-four hour transmission blackout. “Do we know each other?” she asks, ominously. I forbear to take up that challenge. If she doesn't know she's my fairy godmother, that's her problem. She describes the boat. Not too expensive, needs a lot of work, and is in two pieces. I don't miss a beat. I'm afraid there has been a misunderstanding, I say. Ray told me I was getting a Christmas present with a ribbon around it. She patiently and without condescension explains to me that boats are worth a lot of money, are not simply given away, and, moreover, are expensive to maintain. Fuck off, Ray.