cosmicomedy
by lavinia plonka

“Spacetime is constructed in such a way that the distance traveled by light rays is always zero. Light rays…..travel no distance whatever in spacetime. In the world of spacetime we are in contact with the stars……..In one heartbeat one could traverse the universe.”
Edward Harrison – Masks of the Universe

Time Travel
On a wall of my office hangs an antique tapestry a friend found at a flea market. It is an intricately woven and embroidered rendition of the Taj Mahal. It hangs in what I call my magic corner.

I spent hours of my childhood staring at the magic corner. Every once in a while, the corner would disappear and become the gateway to another world. I would crawl into the opening and find myself in a medieval forest, or a Persian kingdom, or a 17th century palace. I rarely met anyone. I was like a tourist, a visitor, or sometimes, even, an unimportant inhabitant.

Perhaps these were the flights of fancy of a child fleeing the grim reality of a difficult family. But the worlds were so real, so rich in detail, that finally I asked my mother if I had possibly lived before. She fell to her knees in horror and began to pray. My perennially ancient Russian grandmother, complete with babushka and long peasant skirt demanded my mother tell her why she was praying. Sobbing, my mother wailed my question in Russian. Babcha went berserk. She grabbed a piece of tailor’s chalk from my Mom’s sewing kit and scurried all over the house muttering what sounded like incantations, drawing crucifixes over every doorway—a daunting task for a 4’8”, roly poly senior citizen. I never before or since saw her jump up and down off of chairs with such alacrity. It was terrifying.

When my voice returned, I asked Babcha why she had done this. “The devil, the devil!” she whispered in Russian. “The devil has possessed you and we must drive him out. O Boze moi!” she intoned as she marked crucifixes on the backs of the dining room chairs. I guess so the devil couldn’t sit down.

This event affected me so profoundly, I went through a fanatically devout phase—for a week I went to Mass every day, just to be sure I had all the devil out of me. And the gateway in my room closed forever. Even when possessed by a heretical desire to time travel, the corner stubbornly remained an ordinary bureau.

Almost forty years later, the devil sent me to India. At least my grandmother would have said it was the devil. In the throes of yet another career crisis, I had literally wept and shouted out loud, “What should I do with my life?” Imagine my surprise when an inner voice answered, “Go to India.”

Arriving in India was like stepping through the portal in my room. Everything was absolutely alien and fantastical. And yet I felt at home, even though I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Each morning the odor of roses and urine invaded my dreams. I’d get up from the hard pallet of straw Indian hotels call a bed. The din of auto rickshaws, chickens squawking and peasants screaming echoed through the malaria-tempting open windows.

I wandered for weeks through a world ruled by cow dung. I came face to face with a smiling young woman wrapped in a brilliant orange sari, a gold ring in her nose connected by a chain to her ear, hair glistening with coconut oil, holding a steaming pile of cow dung in her bare hands. I helped villagers slap dung on their new home, and forgot to think about getting sick. No one was worried about what they should do with their lives. Just where to get more cow dung.

Near the end of my journey, I happened upon a pilgrim town dedicated to the Jain religion. I climbed a sacred mountain whose top held ancient temples dedicated to various saints. I was immediately accosted by an enthusiastic, unofficial tour guide. He scampered like Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god, from temple to temple. “This is from 14 century, see inside, beautiful shrine to our saint. Look here! Look here! This temple very, very old, one of first, maybe from 400 BC.”

“Do pilgrims still come here?” I contemplated the hawk circling the tower bell, the spectacular sunset transporting me for a moment to fly with him, high above the earth. “Of course! Pilgrims come from all over to work on Karma. See Saint here, he has 64 curls on his head – when you have 64 curls you are free of karma. Me, I have maybe one, two.” He giggled. “Maybe in a thousand lifetimes. Plenty time.” No wonder Westerners are workaholics, I mused to myself. We think we only have one chance to do it all.

I saw my mother on her knees, my grandmother with the tailor’s chalk worrying, worrying about the afterlife. I imagined Babcha thrust into a culture where everyone had multiple lifetimes. Would she be relieved or disappointed? “What you mean I have to come back? I live long life. Work hard. Pray all the time. Carried family icon from Russia and hid it from Germans. Now you tell me it’s not enough? No devil? Just karma? Go to hell!” Maybe that’s where I inherited my lack of tact.

At that moment, the hawk landed on the temple bell. The guide pointed. “It is a sign,” he said.

“A sign of what?” I asked.

“It means the ancestors are talking to you.”

“How do you know they’re not talking to you?”

“It is all the same!”

The bell rang and the hawk looked down at me as if to say, “Don’t you get it, you idiot?”

Of course, what was I thinking? India doesn’t have the same time/space boundaries that the Western world has created. One can email an order for silicon chips from an Internet café, go next door to a 2000 year old temple to propitiate a saint to send enough money to buy a TV, then go home in an auto rickshaw that has been on the road since the 50’s. Cars give way to cows and elephants. Women wear saris to work in high rise office buildings. In India you can not only go to wherever you want, you can go to whenever you want, and of course, since Hindus believe we are all God, you can also be whoever you want. Babcha, the guide, me, my mother, we are all the same.

The same friend who gave me the tapestry once wrote a song called, “The Universe Is Down The Hall…..To Your Left.” I think it’s much closer than that. It’s hanging on my wall.

When not doing the time warp, Lavinia fills her days helping people make the most of this lifetime. She teaches the Feldenkrais Method®, an elegant approach to living life to the fullest through understanding movement habits. [ laviniaplonka.com ]