On Pilgrimages

There was a time when I found pilgrimages to be an unnecessary exertion. One could find all that is to see within one's self. And perhaps that may be true.

But I have found myself to be going on pilgrimages. Sometimes, I know I am going on one. Sometimes, I am at the shrine through some divine will.
If one has to walk towards death, then every walk must be a pilgrimage. What else must any walk be?

Jungles of India have been such pilgrimages for me. It's the silence. Even with my tinnitus, the silence of the jungle is cosmic. I once heard an Indian Cuckoo giving a call during the dark just after dusk. The whistle rang through the jungle like a scream of the day, imploring the dark to hold on for a bit. Or perhaps it was a call to the beasts and ghouls of the night to wake up from their slumber.

Once I found myself at Assistens Cemetery in Copenhagen, Denmark. Søren Kierkegaard lay there, with a gravestone like a sentinel for those of us befallen with the malaise of anxiety (and her other friends).

He stole the experience that I had nearly two centuries later. The experience of getting old.

On a Sunday afternoon in 1834, a young Dane sat in a cafe smoking a cigar and mused upon the fact that he was on his way to becoming an old man without having made a contribution to the world.

Some years later, I was in Konya - the place where my master, Mevlana Rumi, now rests. At his tomb, I was asked to pray, and I said yes. I prayed to the dervishes and their song. I was then called a lover. Seeker of the swirl. A lover.

He taught me the way of the Semazen, and I wrote a poem for him.

"In anger and fury be like the dead"
Said the master from Konya.
You ask me to be the grey of the domes
While I am the fiery turquoise Iznik
Of your own shrine, Semazen
I will lose
I will wither
As I have
And I shall rest then
For 700 years.

Some more years later, I walked to the Cimetière des Rois - Cemenetary of Kings - in Geneva. A moment in my life that will forever be hard to write about or think about. It felt surreal, untrue. I stood, and then kneeled, at the grave of Jorge Luis Borges. I did see it. I did pray there.

A day soaked in rain. In gloom of grey and silver. The long walk, the rain, all had to happen. I did not notice the tree above the grave. I do not know the trees of other lands as much as I know mine. Perhaps Borges would have been upset with me for not knowing the history and the botany of that garden of souls.

I said to him
May I get your dreams
And your labyrinths
And your mirrors
But above all
May I get your word.