These stories, that have been available on
Blogspot for 10 years for free, will now only be available on Amazon at the
address above. They are contained in “Vagabon Freak”, the 1st volume
of a trilogy titled “The 7 Lives of the Punk Poofy Cats”. I have been the
archetypal starving artist in his garret, painting, drawing and writing,
writing, writing as if I were some waif crying out in the wilderness. Now I
need you, dear reader, to hear my cries and go to Amazon and buy a copy of my
book and keep me alive. There you will find my complete tale, from beginning to
end, in one place, for you to hold in your hot little hands. When you read it
straight through, I assure you, it will blow your mind.
Below are introductory paragraphs and some
pictures that I still retain to illustrate this story, hopefully to give you a
come-on to get my book. Thanks for giving me a go, TZ.
Sample:
It took an inexorably long year for his old mentor
Compassion to show his wizened face upon India’s sun-stroked shores and in the
meantime Arthur led the itinerant’s life, wandering along as many arcane byways
as he could discover, mulching down into the landscape in crusty “Ali Baba
meets Kim” fashion till he was golden brown and glittering, like a jewel in the
dust.
Playing at being Siddartha, emulating a favorite movie of
the time, he visited many sacred sites, hoping the charisma of the geni locii
would rub off on him. He was not too far off being the classic mendicant as he
had very little money, his clothes were ragged and he often slept by the side
of the road. One of his first sacred sites to visit was Bodh Gaya, the place
where Gautama Budha achieved enlightenment under the bodhi tree. Arthur caught crowded
trains and several dilapidated buses, then had to walk the last few kilometers,
arriving at a small monastery near the Grand Tree covered in dust and quite
famished.
He knocked on the door, praying they’d take him in, give
him succor and encourage him to meditate his way to Nirvana. A crotchety old
monk answered after several more knocks, looked Arthur up and down with a sneer
on his face and listened impatiently to his plea. He soon grumbled that there
was no room for an itinerant such as Arthur and sent him packing.
Arthur was crestfallen, to be rejected from Bodh Gaya was
the pits, he could fall no lower. He would read in books how famous, rich
people showed up at the same spot, flying into an airfield nearby or driving up
in brand-new four-wheel drives, and were treated as honored guests with nothing
but superlatives to recount about the place, birds singing in the Bodhi Tree.
But not so for Arthur, he was too grungy, a true wandering mendicant with nowhere
to lay his head. Such would his life always be, and he got to the point where
it never bothered him, he was at peace, even in the gutter.
For no matter what outlandish locale he found himself in,
he zealously performed yoga, meditated on his inner-light and studied esoteric
texts. He relentlessly searched out reputable Babas to ponder on the nature of
existence via their Lila, “existential game-playing”, and to get his
inspirational batteries charged in their charismatic presence. Homo-sex was
non-existent but still nagging from his subconscious, and while yoga, trekking,
drawing, music and dance joyfully soaked up his energies he longed to get over
his hang-ups by experiencing Nirvana under the guidance of a supreme guru.
During his many interludes in Shangri-la he imbibed
philosophical lectures on all the Indian sacred texts from wise old Swamis like
Chidananda and Krishnananda at the Sivananda Jungle University, concentrating on
Vedanta philosophy with its Void full of creative, blissful consciousness as
the basis of all existence. Swami Sivanada, the founder of the Divine Light
Society, was a most illustrious dude, fabled to have been illuminated by the
Master Yogi of yogis, Mahadev Babaji, who was reputed to be hundreds of years
old and to live on sunlight and water high in the glacial Himalayas near Mount
Kailash.
Sivananda entered his final Samadhi in 1963 after a life
dedicated to providing free medicine and education to all comers, and all of
Sivanada’s disciples became powerful Babas in their own right, establishing centers
of Divine Light throughout the world, including Arthur’s own mentor, Compassion.
He tried to absorb wisdom from them all when they called in at home-base in
Shangri-la to give pep-talks to the restless, celibate Brahmachari students,
the cynical Swamis and voracious Westerners.
Yet throughout this endless seminar on the Blissful Void
and the wiles of Samsara he yearned for sensual gratification and meatier myths
to sink his turbulent mind into. He would then sneak off into the city of Delhi
to the Odeon Cinema in Connaught Circle to ogle mystic movie treatises like
“Vanishing Point”, about a misfit car-driver chased into infinity, and “The
Last Valley”, some shining knights seeking Utopia against the dark forces of
ignorance in Medieval Europe.
The celluloid equivalent of his whole Indian odyssey was
the Bollywood schlock-buster, “Hare Krishna Hare Ram”, about Indian gangsters
infiltrating the dope-addled hippie scene, the music-soundtrack of which
followed Arthur to all the far-flung corners of India, from Kanyakumari to
Kathmandhu, “Dum adha dummm, mitya gaya gam, bolo subha sham, hare Krishna hare
Ram…” (Smoke, smoke, say it morning and evening, Hare Krishna, hare Ram.)
(If your curiosity is piqued please go to the WEB
address above and buy the book to read further.)
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| Muktananda Baba. |
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| Satya Sai Baba. |
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| Hare Krishnas |
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| Prabhpad. |
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| The Orange People. |
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| Ananda Mayee Ma |
