This idea that time is only linear is a misconception , a construct, an idea , not a reality. I’ve heard of a tribe living in the Amazon that have no words for time. Yesterday, today, tomorrow all one river in the big soup, life and death are not two things but the same , one consistent movement , and the stars and earth and creatures are all part of the magic, and everything is full of wonder , and the child grows into the phases and then disappears, snuffed out pieces of light that are still there and you and them are part of the one movement and the shaman flys off into the mysteries and returns and everything is sacred , the animal killed is worshipped, the mushroom digested is holy, the trees and mountains and everything alive is talking to everything else , and there is no suggestion of time and everything is now and there is no you or mine or I we are all part of the one and life is beautiful even if it appears like shit, and you who suffers is only thinking of I and don’t you know that all is shunyata and Winnie the Pooh is a God and all is good or God with the world. That’s how India is if you surrender to the madness , nothing is outside the sacred. I’ve seen a computer given puja by the owner just opening up, a mountain is Shiva and you prostrate yourself on the ground before the great fire, that cleaning your arse is made holy by wiping away with your left hand and only eating with your right, and that a river called Sarasvati exists in the interstellar space , and that bathing in the Cauvery means you are bathing in the Ganges , and Varanasi or the city of light known as Kashi is not just a city built by academic architects and stonemasons. No, it’s a city that floats above the earth as if in a spiritual bubble , and the great cock is Shiva Lingham and milk is poured over its penis eye , and the great Yoni dance and fuck and your semen a cosmic river , and the cow is mother to all , and the naga baba stands naked in the ash of the dead , and people do their yoga asanas early morning by the great Mother, and people bath, brush their teeth , do their ablutions , and the dead float down the river in bits and pieces, and the bizarre is normal and normal is seen as weird , and you drink the bhang lassi laced with hash and your hands no longer understand each other playing cards and the girl at one table talks about the erotic art on the temples at Khajuraho and you begin to feel the heat of shakti in your bones and while she talks erotically as lighting strikes the river , and a woman who is older than time, whispers in your ear and says, ‘can you feel the sacredness here?’. I think of the death of my father, mother, grandparents, and brother is missing somewhere from Sunshine to Hervey Bay. All the anger that consumed me from childhood till now what a waste of energy, and the forever melancholy , and sadness, and guilt carried on your back like armour climbing a waterfall , only to fall back , and begin again. The sex, drugs , and alcohol , the wildness , the wanting, always the wanting, searching for Bohemia. Lost nights at the Albion hotel drinking in all the pain of strangeness till you want to scream. The constant reflection on oneself the looking at art as if that is part of me , photography calls you , poetry calls you, music calls you, politics calls you , and finally it’s God who has always been looking for me calling to me to come out of the wilderness, it was only I with my back turned against the Sun, only after been broken a thousand times and a thousand times more to come do I turn around and then you see , but it’s hard , fucking hard and life ain’t a bowl of cherries and you know Japhy Ryder was right when he said ‘you can’t fall off a mountain’, so you hurtle down that mountain like a locomotive hollering and jumping saying the most goddamn things , and everything is good even in the dark.

And I’m reading freedom of the known , and I can hear the muezzin call for prayer, and church bells chime , and a Hare Krishna’s are clapping their cymbals and not far away is a qawwali happening, with tablas and sitars , and the singer is in trance swaying back and forth, and I am lost in Nizzamuddin district trying to locate this ecstatic singing , and the bus driver covers his bus with a mass of golden marigolds to pray for a safe journey , and a man by a shit stained sea tells me , that you think you can see but you are blind, and that you think you can hear but you are deaf, but in the end your blindness and deafness will be transformed and you too will feel the light , and you lose your composure because the weight of a billion people and you go berserk at a bank because you haven’t understood and suddenly you know your a westerner and you haven’t let go because science tells you this can’t be happening.