Shantivanam means forest of peace , it’s a Christian ashram that sits by the river Cauvery. Before you get to the river you will see a funeral pyre , beyond that, the forest , beyond that all of India. At the small village the bus driver stops not far from the canal. Opposite is a […]
3. I had come to find God to become a monk and live the rest of my life as someone in search of the holy. Hey, someone hit the rewind button please. Who am I kidding. I was broken when I was a boy and I was still broken as a man and I held […]
2. You have to surrender to the madness, to the constant cacophony of sound that assails you night and day. You have to surrender to the extremes of human existence. Death and life dance down the same avenue of trees like in a Woody Allen movie. You walk past patched up hovels and a mother […]
Gripped by uncertainty I fled to India shambolic and desperate seeking light to deliver me from the dark horrors of Melbourne life. I wanted God in a hurry and India had over thirty million of them , I wasn’t greedy, one would do, as there sure as hell wasn’t one back in the jungle of […]
I think of Whitman, Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement, the heady days of folk music as action, old Abe, troubadours like Dylan and others, of Miles and Trane, Pollock and the writers from the lonely cafe to Plath’s Bell jar, and the writer of the snow leopard , the Paris Review, the great […]
I should have seen the signs that kept hitting me in the face. Five years ago I was living on a Tibetan Buddhist property , working, praying, meditating . An idyllic hideaway in my state’s north country. The place teemed with roos, wallabies, wombats, royal size huntsman, rats, and snakes plus the giant lizard that […]
I miss the innocence of time my first train ride on the red rattler smokes and farts , looking out the window to a landscape as strange as the moon I was there with my father as he umpired his last game to screams of you white maggot , you piece of white shit what […]
Staying at the youth hostel in Monterey was special in so many ways. I was there as a holding point for Big Sur. I was headed for a monastery about an hour past the Henry Miller library. At the hostel there was something surreal about it more than your usual run of the mill joint. […]
Last night I watched Inside Llewyn Davis. A wonderful film from another time when things seemed alive . I am clouded over by age but I remember sitting on the floor at the Dan McConnell pub in Carlton listen to Eric Bogle singing And the band played Waltzing Matilda. It bought back memories from the […]
we wore pork pie hats we listened to Patti Smith rage we made love on your old milk crate bed my blood in your veins I bought you a book of love poems by Neruda you gave me your mouth bending into morning my tongue trailed along your back you quivering in the soft light […]
BillyPilgrim 