India: wooo!

Imagine a warm sunny spring day in April; bring lots of farm animals, plants and noises and all things country in the forefront of your mind. A little baby chicken in an egg has been ready to burst from the delicate orb that it's protected by. Bitty sounds of a tiny beak cracking open the brittle and smooth container echo in your skull. Louder, louder, louder and then tweet tweet tweet. Yay! little baby chick! You did it. It thinks, "Wow, I did something important just then, I can tell. Because I feel different than I did a second ago. Really different. Huh. What- a- what's going on here?" Upon one or two glances around at this gigantic situation, the little chicken decides..."um, hell no. Big mistake. I'm going back." So the little chick starts gathering the scattered porcelain like pieces of a former self, a different life. The tiny birdie desperately attempts to rebuild the egg up around itself. "Oh, pleeease let me back in!" it chirps. You're kind of sad for the chicken now, watching in your minds eye as it tries rolling around on the egg shell to cover itself back up; it uses it's ill-equipped wings to try and re-shape the egg over it's body, like a mime in a mimed box; it plops, so small, to the straw covered bed in which it was born and weeps little chicken-baby tears. "Ay Dios Mio!" it bawks. "What have I done?!" You think, "It's too late now baby, once you're born, you're born. Not even death reverses that shit."

But you really feel for the fluffy little fluff ball, you really do. Because you get it...you've been there. Many times, so many times, you were stuck in your own little comfortable egg, but suddenly, it was too small and you needed to get out. You had no choice. And now that you're out, you kind of wish you could shrink back to whatever size you need to be in order to live inside that shell again, but it's not gonna happen. And that is the the way of life. We want to be ourselves, but it just is really uncomfortable sometimes getting used to it.

So now, let's get back to the chicken, and now let's make the chicken like a duck or a blue jay; someone that can fly. (chickens are just the cutest of the baby birds, so it works for the story better to start there...you understand I'm sure) Little Jay, the bird that will fly someday, is moping around the nest, confused and agitated, and suddenly, it occurs to Jay, "hey, maybe...it's better this way." And soon enough, Jay comes around, learns to do it's thing, be free, soar far, eat grubs, poop on cars; essentially, Jay begins to enjoy being a Jay.

That's what I'm doing these days, learning how to live outside the numbness of my little shell, to be as big as I can be, and to fly as far and clever as I can. Why not? If the little birdies can do it, then so can I. And so can you, by the way.

I'm leaving for India in a few days! Holy Cow. There are so many Holy Cows where I'm headed and I'd love to tell you all about them.