Hugging trees since 1988.

And then I celebrated the completion of my life story by drinking a scotch and riding the banister like a horsie because banister horsies make me feel funny inside.

I Resolve to not SUCK

Resolutions. I resolutely believe in resolving stuff... in reflecting, rummaging, ruminating, and realizing that another 365 went by and I'm still a ridiculous retard. And in recognizing what a remarkable retard I remain, I can now resolve to get my shit together, whatever that shit may be, and whatever "together" is. Which means to stop writing that I'm resolving to get my shit together and actually get my shit together... which I resort to do, relentlessly, at some point, soon. (Really.)

I resolve to resume that one thing, refuse that other thing, redo that other crap, rewind that one time... to revamp, rebuild, reject, rescind, refuse, resign, react, and revive... and reassemble until I resemble someone respectable.

I'm on it, yo. After this exquisite lychee martini, these delectable slabs of kielbasa, and this riveting episode of Kourtney and Kim Take New York.

In 2011 I did do a ton of reflecting and, after starting the year beat down and broken, and after sweeping up my debri and tossing it to the wind, after meeting new creatures and reconnecting with old crazies, after work, concerts, festivals and long coastal hikes, and 900-page books, Indie dramas and god-awful make outs, with tons of food, booze, tears, laughter and g-chat convos, after leaving SF and roaming about NY, Wisconsin, and INDIA!... after turning another year older... with all that music, art, travel and unemployment - with all those feelings, actions, emotions and relations - I'm only reminded that, at best, I'm still slightly lost, totally confused, a little restless, and completely contradictory.

Yep. I thought about some stuff. And with sage-like wisdom I realized I get off on being lost, confused, restless and contradictory. It's all that nagging little nipping within me that keeps me moving, that fuels my creativity, sparks my desires, ignites my spontaneity, makes me try that weird rubbery shit with the six flailing limbs, and pushes me towards that which keeps me flowing, and that which keeps me fresh (despite my propensity to not shower).

And so, now that I've polished off my lychee martini, slab of salami, riveting episode of K&K Take NY, and after having reflected on 2011 after still not having showered, I'm ready to get my 2012 resolve on.

I resolve to go beyond form, or what I'm fed, and continuously think outside of the box:

I resolve to be the most amazing first date, providing that you provide me with surf and turf and a bottle of vodka to make you the most interesting man in the world!

I resolve to drown in brewed arabica beans on the daily and:

I resolve to strengthen my financial, analytical and critical thinking skillz and present things more clearly to people at work:

I resolve to be less stupid by exercising my cognitive skillz the morning after downing a bottle of cab sav:

I resolve to practice my skillz more often from the comfort of my own "home":

I resolve to, one day, not write "home" in quotation marks:

I resolve to continue drifting this year, but 100% more physically:

I resolve to wander. With wanderlust. Till the sweat drops from my balls:

In my wandering, I resolve to only meet "weirdos". Because it's always been the "weirdos" in my life who have been the most vulnerable and honest and thus the most interesting and inspiring:

What better way to meet a weirdo than having their ass in my face?

I resolve to get more bendy, breathy, stretchy and connecty with my chakras, chi and inner me:

I resolve to keep it scientific and observe humans objectively, with utter fascination, in the same way one would study orangutans who drink their own pee:

I resolve to fuck science and:

I resolve to smash broken records, choke the chihuahua, break free of pointless cycles and use "meh" more often in sentences:

I resolve to do only that which fulfills my Maslowvian and Lennonesque needs:

I resolve to make every day a good day:

And ultimately, as a Libra, as the only astrological / pathological sign represented by a cold, steel, inatimate object, as the titter and totter between the material and the spiritual, between beet burgers and deep-dish pizza, between organic kale drinks and 13.5% wine, between prancing about in 3-inch heels and being barefoot on the blades, between traveling abroad in tuk tuks and planting my sedentary ass on the couch in spandex, between auditing financial statements and birthing bizarre blogs, I resolve to find my fuckin' balance already.

(Or not. Meh.)

Please join me, dear cretins, in a toast.

Here's to reflecting, rummaging, ruminating, and inevitably realizing that another 365 went by and you're still a complete retard.

Here's to being slightly lost, totally confused, a little restless, and completely contradictory.

Here's to living simply, mindfully, fully, purposefully without purpose, and most certainly in uncertainty.

Here's to health.

To humor.

To balance.

To finding "home".

Yours truly, with tons of peace, love and genitalia,

Missile

White Mischief

"When you make a sacrifice," says the palm reader holding my hand and looking intently in my eyes, "when you do this... when you give something up... things will come back to you twofold."

I chew my lower lip as I chew this thought over. This strange North Indian man is trying to convince me that fasting on Saturdays will somehow double my odds of financial success and vaginal stimulation Sunday - Friday. Being the creature of logic that I am, I stare back at him like he's an asshole. A few weeks later, though, after having survived an overnight train from hell that I'll need electric shocks to forget, and finding myself immediately sipping an Americano and gorging on a chicken wrap at a cliff-side restaurant overlooking the Arabian sea, I realize that the asshole man was right. Sacrifice does, indeed, pay off. I am on the soaring bluffs of Varkala - all color and coast - and I'm as happy as a clam.

Varkala is the type of place in India where agitated white people go to to escape from India, as there are no actual Indians anywhere to be seen. I file no formal complaint on this as I stare at white waves, white clouds, white awnings, and white European men in tight hiphugger shorts. I implore the latter to tell me what's so fun about standing two feet apart from one another and smacking a ball back and forth on paddles. What is this tomfoolery? Sit your ridiculous tanned asses down and go chain smoke some ciggies. My white ass happens to be under a rented umbrella, on a rented chaise at latitude lazy, longitude inactive, and is sipping electrolytes directly from a freshly hacked coconut. I spend two solid days at these exact coordinates laughing at the words "penetration" and "coslopus" in all of Chelsea Handler's books and managing an extensive sunburn on my right shin (a burn so bad that Canada - a nurse in the intensive care unit in her real life - will later poke at it say, "Fuck, America, I thought for sure it was a flesh-eating disease.").

Ha-low! I'm zee white European! You vanna play me with zee paddle ball?!

White girl, wildly inactive

At night- be it Chance / Fate / Coincidence - we run into some of our favorite travel buds from our days in the North - two Kiwis and a Brit who've been eating plates of hummus and boozing their faces off since 2pm. I squeal, pull up a chair, order up more hummus with a bucket of vodka, and talk a whole mess of nonsense with them until the imported Nepalese waiters curl up on the table tops in preparation for bed. One of the waiters offers to walk us girls to our guest house, but we decline the generous offer for dark alley island rape, citing that we're sure to be back for more hummus tomorrow.

Two days later I'm on a boat in Alleppey drifting amidst palms, lily pads, houses and canoes, watching life unfold simply and beautifully along the backwaters of Kerala. And when my boat pulls up late morning to my modest home stay along the bank, I'm greeted by Grandpa Gopal and Grandma Padma who garland me with flowers and place a powdered dot on my third evil eye. I spend the day reading, strolling, sunning and canoe-riding... and slamming down Padma's home-cooking and Gopal's "White Mischief" vodka. Gramps and I grow tight - he smacks me consistently on the cheek and feeds me extras of his sweet carrot halwar dessert, and we sit together chatting along the water, amidst claps of thunder and fireflies a-glow.

The exquisitely beautiful backwaters of Kerala

"Have some more," says Grandpa Gopal after smacking me on the cheek

Typical domestic scene along the waters

WHITE MISCHIEF vodka - the very thing that sends my ass to bed before my 65-yr-old hosts

In the beautiful town of Cochin, I find out there's an actual place called "Jew Town". I can't even express how verklempt (overcome with emotion) I am to hear this ridiculous bit of news. My meshugina (crazy) ass gets up extra early to walk giddy along the colorful seaside port, past the fish markets and Chinese fishing nets, through the spice markets and along "Jew Town Road", in front of shops named "Shalom"and and straight to the historical synagogue. I run into and strike up a conversation with a short white jew boy in a yarmulke who - shockingly - is from New York and majoring in entrepreneurial studies. This day could not have been more amazing and I rush back to write home.

The colorful residentials of Cochin

Chinese fishing nets along the port

The Chosen One on Jew Street in Jew Town, India

Really, India?! You never cease to be ridiculous.

The fifth overnight sleeper train is without incident. Unless, of course, you count the time I went to go pee and forgot to lock the door of the squat toilet and a strange man walks in on me as I'm watching my stream hits the tracks. Webster immediately sends over a carrier goat with a note to announce they've redefined the word "awkward" on my behalf:

awkward |ˈôkwərd|adjective1 when a girl is walked in on by an Indian man in the middle of a squat pee and goes from cozy and concentrated to startled and horrified and leaps up like a bare-assed ninja with the bottom of her skirt tucked into the top of her tank and a bottle of hand sanitizer in her mouth : Missile is 31 years old, a CPA, and an awkward fuck. Would you like to penetrate her coslopus?

Other than being mortified out of my mind - and laying there for about twenty minutes convinced that I had head lice (unrelated to squats and false alarm), the rest of the train ride is peaceful and without incident.

The squat toilet: functional, ergonomic, and excellent for a solid thigh stretch

Arriving to the bus station and no longer interested in "living like the locals", I'm thrilled when we upgrade to a deluxe bus in which I can actually put up my leg - the one with the flesh-eating disease on it. At one of the rest stops a ratty girl boards and asks me for money. I look at her cold and say, "Tell me the name of your mafia don first." She's loyal and refuses, but comes back a minute later, leans over my shoulder, pokes at my Kindle with a dirt-encrusted nail, and sends New York Times bestselling Shantaram skidding seven chapters ahead. Rather than bitch slap her across the face, I let her jab and stab to her heart's content because, in that pure and innocent moment, this child creature melts my heart. She reminds me of me: curious, sassy, surprisingly sweet under her layer of filth, and completely eight years old. I want to stuff her in an over-sized Bloomies satchel and keep her as my chihuahua.

No pic of the ratty girl, but here's a delightful vignette of my flesh-eating disease

I arrive to the city of Mysore without child or chihuahua and instead, enjoy the cool reprieve that the ankle-deep monsoon rain brings. It's also Diwali - the festival of lights - and one of the most important, crazy, cracked-out Indian holidays, which Indians celebrate by being extra, EXTRA obnoxious and blowing shit up. I celebrate by drinking wine, eating sweets and amazing street food, marveling at the Mysore Palace that's been specially lit, drinking more wine, then blasting firecrackers out of empty wine bottles off the roof like limbs aint no thang.

Look at the shiny lights!

Let's blow this bitch up!

And then, dear friends, there is Goa. And who to thank - Shiva? Jesus? Allah? - for its bountiful beaches, ravishing Russian hookers and plethora of Indian penis.

When I get to my hotel, the first thing I see from the vantage point of check-in is a white girl in a teeny weeny bikini gyrating to techno on her balcony while waving a rum and coke. Below her, down at the pool, respectable Indian families are swimming and having lunch. She is also the vision I get when I swing open the doors of my own balcony. "Hallllooooo!" she says, excitedly bouncing up and down. "I am from Russiiiiaaaa!!!! Vere are you from?!!!!"

"I'm from America, I just turned 31, and if that isn't enough of a deterrent and you still want to talk to me, I for sure have a tapeworm and gastroenteritis, so really, I'm no fun."

"Oh comes on," says her boyfriend Vlad appearing on the balcony with his blond crew cut and strong exposed thighs. "Vat is dis - how you say - bitch a moan about. You come and you drink and you make orgy now." I proceed to pop open the cheap bottle of red I bought from across the street, order up Domino's thick crust (delivered hot and fresh within thirty) and stare at these Soviets - how you say - make the stupid fools of themselves.

But nothing and no one could have prepared me for what I beheld on Baga Beach in Goa for the three days I shacked up on its sands. Pure ridiculous preposterousness is WHAT, preposterousness in the form of Indian men in Jockey briefs going into a very wet ocean - and then emerging from this very wet ocean - and then walking in front of me after having been submerged in that very wet ocean - with their Indian dongs now hugged tight by very wet cotton. Some of these banana hammocks are so old that they've lost their elastic and sag... and so, in addition to shlong, I see butt cheek and clunks of sand hiding out like stalagmites in caverns and cavities. The only thing that can make this situation any more excellent is alcohol. I roll up to the beachfront restaurant - past the cool Indian guy in the "Cancel My Subscription, I Don't Want Your Issues" t-shirt - and order up a Kingfisher and some chicken fingers and forgo my plans of visiting the spice gardens, flea markets, waterfalls, and the other beaches of Goa. I'm good with this goldmine right here.

Tight wet explanations of the very thing responsible for India's 1.2 billion babies!

On my very last day in India I watch the sun melt into the ocean, then walk back alone to my hotel. I order another large Domino's, pour myself some wine and head out on the balcony as Goa pours itself another monsoon. The rain beats down thick, but this doesn't stop some Indian man under an awning by the pool to put his slim fingers to the tips of a keyboard, his passionate lips to the mouth of a mic, and to belt out an excellent, accented rendition of Hotel California.

I smile.

India, Fate, Chance, or Coincidence has dedicated this song to me here on my last night, to my white Californian ass that can check out any time it wants, but can never really leave. I hold my wine high in the rain and I cheers the sky. I say thank you to India. Thank you for the madness of the North, for the ridiculousness of the South, for all of the trials, tribulations, tortures and triumphs on the trains, tuks tuks and alleyways in between. You have shocked me, mocked me, infuriated me, humbled me, tested me, and completely won me over (you crazy sick bastard of a country). And what else can I say.... I love you.

L'Chaim! (To life!)

Take it away, Eagles

Dirty in the Dirty South

Arriving to Calcutta in the early morning, I'm completely weirded out. There's, like, paved roads, and stuff. And traffic lights. And cute bubble-shaped British taxis, and drivers within those taxis that ride within the lanes and obey the changing signals. This makes me squirmy, uneasy. I mean, what the hell is this, India? Where are the cows, the tuk tuks, the honks, the stares? I can move, I can breathe, I can hear shit, and I panic. I run straight to my hotel bar and order up Kingfisher beers and plates of pakora and proceed to drink away the day. And when night falls - that cold lonely night devoid of light and meaning - I drink buckets of Gorbatschow vodka. I past out cold and half naked and forget to take my malaria pill and in my dreams I cry out, Oh North India, it'll never be the same! How will I, how CAN I go on without you?

In Calcutta, I visited this drink menu many times. And I was ok with this.

But I do go on, because my flight's going on, and I'm pleasantly surprised upon landing in Chennai to see that the south still looks like someone exploded a mass of bombs in the streets... limbs, shrapnel, and excrement everywhere. This gives me hope that, even with its fresh air and puffy clouds and palm-studded beaches and coconut groves, South India will still be bizarre and contradicting.

I'm happy to note that my my hotel smells of urinal pucks.... and delighted when the concierge cringes his nose at me when I tell him, "That's right, sir, I am over 30 and no, I'm not married, and thank you ever so much for asking." I light up the sight of the track-side slums, at the scent of stagnant sewage ponds, at the dilapidated metro system that runs on MacGyvered mechanics. The men still pee on everything, the women are still sassy little bitches that shove sardines in my face as I walk through their fishing village, and there's goat. Loads of goats. And god knows I love me some god-damn goats.

Look at our ridiculous goat faces!

In the morning, after slamming down chutneys and walking to collect our travel humps, Canada says casually, "'Ey America - over there - by your bag - are those your panties on the counter?" I look to the pile of black lace bunched in open view of the dining foyer, just paces from the O.J. "Fuck!" I say, reddening and rushing to throw my body over my delicates. As a tuk tuk ride takes us to the bus station, I can't shake loose the sudden and haunting appearance of my thongs at breakfast. As though checking to see if they are but an apparition of the mind - but really checking to see if they're clean so I can go another day without busting out Woolite - I dig them out of my bag and hold them to the light. And just then, in a land where I'm already a slutfaced whore for exposing my shoulders, my tuk tuk rolls up beside a jam-packed, over-flowing bus full of Indian eyes, 90 pairs of which fall upon mine.

CLEAN.

They see London, they see France!

Boarding my own local bus, I'm curious as to why the driver has pink nail polish on, but find it best to sit still and not say anything so nothing else stupid happens. When I arrive to the beach-side town of Mamallapuram, I rejoin society by renting a rickety-ass, rusty bike that looks like it's been marinating in swamp fungus. I ride by intricate carvings and world heritage temples and, despite a relentless heat that curls my scalp like wallpaper under a blow torch, all is going well. And then it happens. In the exact same way that love just happens (or crawls out of the earthen core with its red eyes and claw hands), I step in cow shit. And just like love, I'm trapped ankle-deep in that shit, in the unbearable stink and slime of it. I scrape my flip-flop on the stony road and move the hell on. Walking past firecrackers exploding in the street for no reason other than to make me think I'm under siege, I end up on the rooftop of a restaurant gorging on calamari and curry, mixing Kingfishers with seven-up, then peeling my pants from my soaked-to-the-coslopus body so I can roast on my hotel room bed.

Option 1: Hang out here. Option 2: Lay in your hotel room with your pants off in front of your Canadian roommate

An hour later some idiot lets this idiot into an all-boy orphanage. Rolling up on a tuk tuk I'm greeted and swept inside my a mass of little boys who relieve of my purse, and slip off my poo shoes, and sit me down on a stool, and introduce themselves one-by-one. "Hi, I'm Crackhead!" "And I'm Psycho!" "And I'm WHOA!" "And I'm COOL IT." They're ridiculous, and they're everywhere, so I do what one should never do with already rambunctious children - I feed them two chocolate bars each so they won't hurt me. It's a giant mistake and the little Gremlins swell on sugar and yank me off the seat and shove me in the yard. "Auntie, Auntie, swing me!" says Suicidal, and soon he's hanging from my arm as I threaten to slam his skull into stucco. "Auntie! Aunite! Come snap your back in half!" And soon its limbo, and jump rope, and sweat, and scoliosis.

"Auntie" has just been terrorized by coke-addicted pre-teens

Some people hate day trains. Not this lazy sack of shit! Especially if you hand her a blanket, a pillow, and the top berth in the sleeper compartment, and then get out of her face so she can nap for 8 hours. I nap, then wake up to eat deep-fried chilis. I nap, then wake to sip some chai. I nap, then wake to explain to the Indian man on the other top berth that yes, I'm over 30, and no, I'm not married, and yep, it was awesome of him to ask. Eat, sleep, chill, read, and watch the world roll by... and end up in Madurai....

In Maduarai, I'm Invited inside an Indian home for the first time. And when you're a first generation white Russian American agnostic Jewish wanna-be Buddhist, sometimes you don't know how to act. And so I do what I do best when I'm trying to be proper - I sit on a day bed that doubles as a table and I stuff my damn piehole. I eat like a motherfucker. I slam curries and flatbreads and chutneys and, when everyone else is cross-eyed and bloated, I insist on another helping of lamb and chicken curry and rose essence cake. And as I cram like some disgusting hormonal cretin, I drink in the house itself - the two-burner stove in the tiny kitchen, the plastic chairs that serve as living room furniture, the out-dated antennae TV set, the calendars that mark the festivals, the incensed shrine to Jesus. And right as I'm out the door, my mother host clasps her hands tight and she bows her head low and BY GOD does she pray. And she doesn't ask for health and happiness and for the well being of her family, but that I, her porky little guest, will somehow act more feminine in the future. I walk off her monstrous meal in the markets of Madurai, past a schizophrenic old woman selling melons with her saggy melons hanging out the sides of her sari.

The next day I visit a temple and watch people worship, perform ceremonies, bless the born and unborn, and already being born and blessed myself, I get me some of this:

Jealous of my steez? You should be, amateurs.

After being pried from my man harem, it's all aboard my fourth overnight sleeper train. And not just an sleeper train, mind you, but the downgraded class, the one with no pillows or blankets or A.C. The one that smells of urine and stinkweed. The one in which the poor shirtless pilgrim who has nothing to begin with has chained his bag to his foot and looped that foot through the rung of his bunk because he doesn't trust his fellow brethren. The one that has me seizing in nervous fits of laughter and screaming, "Holy mother of god, I'm going to effin' DIE." I wrap my passport and electronics in a sheet I've stolen off another train and, combined with my bag of dirty laundry, create a Kindle and panty-stuffed pillow. I shmeer all 2.7 oz of my Secret Clearly Tropical antiperspirant gel all over my body and bury my face in my forearm. And all through that night, I stare deep into Canada's eyes, and once she's finished gurgling in neurotic baby talk, she stares back into mine.

Champagne wishes. Caviar dreams.

The Sacred City of Varanasi

I wake up on the overnight train to the sight of a machine gun, to the sound of Indians belting loud in Hindi, to arms gesticulating in wild swoops.

It's 7:30am and peering down confused from the top berth, I see my beloved Canadian travel buddy propped in her compartment looking distant, like a koala overdosed on eucalyptus. She's been talking in translated tangles to the train police all morning, relaying how a hand reached over her head in the blurred hours of the night, how the padlock on her day pack was snipped off like foreskin, how she was sniped of her camera and cash.

I sit up in half sleep, head clunking against the metal roof, mind struggling free of cough suppressant grogginess. As the sitch slowly seeps in, as the sobering weight of the theft hits my guts, I feel the sad sting of loss, a creepy sense of violation, and bitter disappointment that I let this go down without notice under my knocked-out-on-NyQuil nose.

What if they'd stolen more, I think. Like a peak at my lady bits?

Climbing down the rungs and shimmying my own hump from out under the seat, I squeeze Canada's knee in heartfelt sympathy. I then give a big "ahhhhh" and check my mouth for crushed cockroaches, swallow the thick taste of this unpleasant and toothpaste-less morning, elbow my way onto the platform, and find my squinty self - at long last - in the holy city of Varanasi.

It's as if I'm seeing the wonders of India for the first time - studded with markets, teeming with temples, dripping with the dirty, the desperate, the devout. Pilgrims shuffle barefoot along the earthen ground, foreheads marked with the powders and sandalwood of their faith. Beggars reach out with frail and exhausted hands. Children dance and jerk about and cows flank the street, jutting snouts into endless buffets of trash.

And then there's me. Dumb... dumbfounded... ricocheting on a rickshaw ride to the market... sipping sweet chai on the cushions of a silk shop... sampling savory samosas from a street stand (thrown by a hand that's been Shiva-knows-where).

As evening falls I pass a woman with boils all over her body and a wild-eyed man exposing a twisted cobra in a woven basket and I flow, along with the town's own throngs, up the narrow lanes, through the crowded streets, and down to one of the city's 100 sets of ghats (steps) that line the Ganges.

I come upon the river as the sun takes a low seat on a cushion of sky, shedding a crimson glow over its shimmering spine. Crescent-shaped boats line its bank. Swarms of the pious in saris and lungis linger along its edge in preparation for pooja, for prayer. I stare out breathlessly over this blessed bank of bacteria... this sacred sea of sewage.... this revered reservoir of remains...

"This city's fuckin' cool," says Kiwi, swinging by my side with the remains of a mohawk that once was. "Twenty minutes till this prayer stuff. Wanna go check out the burning ghats?"

We set out along the banks, darting in the mud, scudding over slopes, slipping through the sludge. A bullfrog croaks from its bowels and from the bowels a man croaks, "You want opium? I sell to you. Is my business." I skid and I dip, I leap and I trip, and as my ass starts warning of an awkward skid mark slip, my eyes fall to the silver tip of river.

I freeze in sudden horror. There's something...drifting... floating...

"What IS that?" Breaths Wales.

"Are those... LIMBS?!" Exclaims England.

"OH-MY-GOD-IT'S-A-BODY!" Cries Kiwi, sending us girls into a united nation of screams. "Or a tangled mess of rope, you dumb twits. Keep moving."

We've been running so fast through the murk that when we round a corner and come upon Harish Chandra, the cremation ghat, I'm burned by the vision as though I've tripped face-first into the fire. Looming tall in the distance are five pyres sending mountains of flame writhing and roaring to the sky, striking at the air like the deadly darts of a snake. It's of the same staggering beauty as a boat-swallowing storm at sea.

"Is all the elements," says a short ragged man materializing from the dark. "The bodies, they burns on the earth... in fires that eats the airs... and the ash is gives to the river. To dies here, in Varanasi, it is very specials. It is to go straight to the God." Motherfucker's come out of nowhere and I get an urgent tap from my ass that says, "Listen, Missile, about those skid marks...."

"If you is the lepers, or the little childrens... or the womans with the babies in her stomachs.... or the holies man... or if the snakes - it bites you... then no cremations. These peoples are already pures and they go - plops - into the river. But other peoples... I get the sticks for the peoples to be burns on. I helps them. I ask for no monies, but you gives the donations now."

I gives no donations and I gives no damns. Instead I watch the towers of flame twist and blaze like sirens seducing the night. And with that image still burning in my mind, I walk back along the water's edge to the Dasaswamedh ghat where the entire world, it seems, has gathered for worship. I sit along the steps in sops of sticky sweat, watching five orange-clad priests swirling lanterns of incense and waving pillars of fire. They ring bells and chant hymns and weave the air with prayer.

5:30 the next morning I roll out of bed, eyelashes glued together in clumps. Wiping off with a wet one and walking groggy into the pre-dawn light, I see through blurry eyes the early-morning risers loading wooden carts and sweeping clean the the piece of street on which they plan to pop a squat. I'm startled by the sudden shriek of England who's been horned in the hip by a cow. (When I asked for one us girls to get rammed, India, that's not what I had in mind.) Under a fire-red sun that yawns up from the horizon, I descend the goat-lined steps, board a wooden boat, cover in the blanket of a cool breeze, and glide down the river Ganges. I watch silently as the morning rituals unfold, as the faithful wash, bathe, chant and pray, as the devout dunk, drink, douse and dip.

In the early afternoon I stave away the heat with an ice-cold shower, air-drying on a cycle rickshaw ride into town. I feel wildly strange as I jolt gracelessly back and forth, burdening an emaciated man who spits splotches of paan as he pulls me along. My face is a god damn shake weight, teeth clashing and flesh flying in ridiculous thrusts and, as I bounce and bob about, brain jolting against skull, I fall in line with a procession of men carrying a fabric-draped body. The body's limp head swings left and right, left and right, in perfect rhythm to the rise and fall of the plank on which it lays. The men under the plank sing and chant and throw flowers into the air. Left and right goes that head. Up and down goes mine.

I look away to concentrate on the passing areshole of a cow, on the eye wink from a shopkeeper, on the tobacco-stained, gap-toothed smile of a villager. But then I remember the little man who appeared from the dark, who, after scaring the living crap out of me, reminded me that death here is celebratory, that death means merging with the "supreme being" at best, or being reused / reduced / recycled as a donkey or another eternally-damned human at worst. And so I look back to the flow of fabric, to the march of singing men, and give homeboy a voluntarily nod, wishing him a smooth journey home.

At the cusp of night, as the sun slips low and gives way to a full-bellied moon, we board a small boat on the Ganges for evening ceremony. The power has cut out leaving the ghats and jutting temples that outline the bank in eerie silhouette. We are given ten lit candles, housed in leafy bowls, cushioned in a bed of flowers... each small flame representing a prayer, a wish to be sent into the bacteria-filled abyss.

Here, in the sacred city of Varanasi, in the spiritual heart of India, nowhere near nirvana, no more closer to enlightenment or any grander truth, but possessed with all that India's shown me, all that she's thrown at me, I lean over the edge. Wrapped under the warmth of a moonlit sky, and with fingers accidentally slipping into ripplets of e-coli, I send all kinds of good stuff into the sacred swells. For what it's worth, I dot the night with flickers of my light.

Hopped up on NyQuil or not... aint no one stealing this moment.