What a great feeling, to tend to yourself. Each time you go closer to the earth, or closer to the source of the things that are needed, the sense of security and self-sufficiency grows. When we are safe, when we are fed well, we are not as susceptible to the kinds of negative whispering so prevalent on the Internet and cultivated in the news. Hope! And pass that hope on to others.

I am attracted to new languages. Not for the reasons one might imagine – desire to visit another nation, or make some kind of business, or win a language stamp, like an “I’ve been there” label plastered proudly on my luggage. No, I love languages because they allow me into a previously-unimaginable part of myself, which is a previously-unimagined facet of my (or our common) humanity. Some dive into the sea, some fly into space: I mine myself for the ore of my Self, and the more words you know, the easier it is to name emotions and ideas that were always whispered, never said. When I discover something new, I discover a new me.

We ate little at Ramana Maharshi’s ashram: certainly little compared to the standard American Diet. Steamed, fermented rice cake (which I grew to adore and now make at home); a splash of some pulse - a lentil or a dal; a dusting of some spice, poured over a plate of sewn leaves. That was breakfast, that was lunch. I think it was dinner, too, or something similar.

It was wonderful. I have never been overweight, and yet the weight of all those calories flowing through me was palpable in its sudden absence. My mind was lighter (yes, India and jet-lag had something to do with that; but the affects continued for a month at least), and my physical frame was lighter.

Every day should surrender a small jewel, something new and intriguing for the body or the mind. Every day does, unless you have been sleeping. I woke today to page 122 of the hardcover edition of Silk Road Cooking, by Najmieh Batmanglij:

Saffron
Long treasured as a medicine, perfume, dye, and seasoning,saffron consists of the golden stigmas of the autumn-flowering purple crocus, Crocus Sativus. It takes the stigmas of 75,000 blossoms – an acre of flowers – to produce one pound of the spice. These must be picked from the crocus by hand, making saffron, currently selling for about $55 an ounce, the most expensive spice in the world…

The grace of going away is that your eyes are refreshed for when you return. What you see once in your daily, then see again and again, gains a transparency, loses its edges, so that after a time it is no longer visible at all. This is to be expected: our senses are used to protect us and to bring us to food, and stimuli which have been identified, processed and cataloged need no longer occupy the mind, and are let go. Background noise that needn’t be listened to.