Painted Oxen - Thomas Lloyd Qualls

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emerging from the doorway, I feel proudly initiated. An older Indian man spies me coming out of the stall and gives me a nod. I imagine it is a nod of approval. It doesn’t occur to me that there might be Western toilets around the corner. And I’m not sure I would have sought them out in any case. In my mind, I went into the restroom a sheltered Westerner and I came out a traveler of the East.

      I stand in the cattle call through customs and then find my way to the money exchange counter. The one other backpacker on the flight, an Aussie, walks past me while I’m collecting my rupees. For some reason he stops to wait on me. He gives the customary g’day, asks where I’m from and if I’ve ever been here before. Says this is his third trip here and that there are rooms at the airport we should use, because Delhi’s not a place to try to negotiate at night. Better to stay here until dawn. (Which, as it turns out, isn’t really that far away.)

      We search for these guest rooms for some time, bouncing from this airport guard to that, being ushered in different directions until finally we get the same answer from more than one source: the rooms are under reconstruction and not available. We find a lone tea stall and, sitting on the concrete floor near the stand, drink what may be the worst cup of tea in all of India. While we sit there, sipping from paper cups and considering our temporary fate, we resign ourselves to looking for a place to just wait out the night, maybe even get a nap.

      Turns out, the only place this is possible is the floor of a waiting area, where, unfortunately, a television hanging from the ceiling is playing what must be a Hindi soap opera. Actors and actresses are variously singing, screaming and crying in no certain order. The volume is set as if there were only two choices: mute and so loud someone on the other side of the airport could hear it over the din of a thousand voices.

      We sit down on the bare floor, unzip our packs and rifle through our meager belongings. I roll up a jacket for a pillow and he covers himself with a long-sleeve shirt. I follow his lead and wrap my arms through the straps of my pack before I lay down.

      ****

      Sometimes I imagine the planet is a really big art gallery and my life is an impressionist painting. If I stand too close, it’s all a blur, just smears and dots of color. To really see it, I need room enough to stand back and take it all in. I’m hoping India is far enough away to give me that perspective.

       I understand that the world is messed up. Maybe it has always been messed up. If so, this time is no different. There are school shootings, corrupt politicians, environmental disasters, and prejudices that sometimes morph into genocide. The systems are rigged by the super rich, the food is poisoned, and God tells people to kill those who don’t believe as they do. God sometimes tells their perceived enemies the same thing. Maybe God just likes to fuck with us. In any case, it does seem that lately things have sped up a bit. Maybe it’s just to match the ever-increasing speed of our computers. But the disasters appear bigger, the hate stronger, and the squeeze on the everyday man and woman a little tighter.

      I’ve asked a lot of people, read a lot of books, studied a few masters, sought the counsel of teachers, even been to a shrink, and I’ve yet to find anyone who can give me an acceptable answer to the question of why we’re here. And while I’m pretty sure it is more than just to build a decent retirement plan or to collect a fleet of digital gadgets, most days I feel no closer to a cohesive answer than when I started with these questions. Every answer can be followed by another question. For example, if the answer is we are here to evolve, then what is the purpose of evolution?

      It could be there is no universally ubiquitous right answer, of course, maybe not even any ultimate reality. It could be there is only what you believe. But how do you even know what that is? I think that’s why I’ve come all the way here, to figure this out. In a way, I needed to take myself completely out of context, to meet myself somewhere out here on the other side of the globe. And then hopefully to come to terms with myself and my relationship to everyone else, everything else, in a way that helps me get out of bed, and then keep my footing once I’m on the floor.

      I’d like to blame my sometimes dodgy footing on something concrete, like bad footwear. At least then I’d know that what I’m looking for is simply a place that sells better shoes. You don’t need a degree in subatomic physics to figure that one out, and you don’t need enough wealth to afford your own guru, either. I need something a simple guy like me can know is real, something to hold onto in the dark, a handrail for the psyche, if you will. A concrete image that won’t slip from my fingers and float away as soon as I wake up. Something that won’t dissolve in water or melt and dry up when the sun comes out.

      Like most idealists I find temporary solace in feel-good theories of redemption. But nothing lasts. Usually sooner than later the Earth shifts again. And I end up lying in bed and wondering whether everything I’ve ever been told is a lie. Lie is perhaps not the right word. When people said the world is flat, that wasn’t really a lie. Maybe people just don’t know. I’m not sure whether it scares me more to think that people just don’t know or to imagine that some of them know and are just complicit in some grand game of hide and seek. Of course, it’s also possible they don’t know and are just pretending they do. That would be lying, I suppose.

      ****

      Speaking of scrambled context, I wonder what I’ll think when I wake up here. That I’m dreaming? That’s assuming I can actually go to sleep, on this cold concrete floor, with the nonstop Hindi scream-a-thon, nervous that as soon as I’m unconscious, someone will steal my backpack, effectively hijacking the plane headed to my original high-spirited destination of Finding Myself and forcing an emergency landing in the grass field of Good Luck Finding My Way Home. If I do sleep, the dreams should be interesting.

      7

      Le Bateleur

      The first numbered card in the major arcana is called Le Bateleur, the Juggler. Also known as the Magician. He wears white robes accented by a red cloak. Before him is a table holding numerous items, including cups, coins and swords. His right hand is pointed up at the sky and his left down at the ground. In his right hand, he holds a wand. An uraeus floats like a halo over his head, a snake swallowing its tail wraps his waist, and he is surrounded by a garden of roses and lilies.

      The Magician is a master of illusion. He is the bridge between spirit and flesh. And his tools are the same as the alchemist’s: earth, wind, fire, water, and their corollaries: mind, heart, body, and soul. He teaches that what you believe is real is but a dream. Your life is a show, a juggling of elements, filled with traps for the unwary, and controlled by the wise. Only the Magician can lead the Fool out of the cave and along the first steps of his journey.

      –The Book of Mysteries

      8

      Scylla

      The monk wakes from a dream into a world of mists and thunderclouds. The clouds play children’s games with him. They show him dissolving images of yaks and sheep, serpents and hawks, angels and dragons. He closes his eyes and the clouds count to ten. He opens his eyes and they look for him. He breathes in the outside world. He breathes out the song of himself.

      A fog envelops all that he cannot see. Above and below are confused into one. The clouds are made of roots and rocks. The land is air and water. The whole universe is a kind of living foliage. One that shapeshifts from deciduous compost to dragon lizards, from a muddy terrain to a marsh of leaches, from painted flowers to poisonous frogs, from sinewy roots to slippery eel. The rain is the master of all these illusions.

      His physical body and all that it carries are rain-drenched and heavy. He has traveled for many days, protected from these elements only by the woolen clothes he wears. The long journey, filled with every hardship imaginable—swarms of insects, poisonous snakes, impossible terrain, hostile natives—has made his legs strong and his back sturdy, though it does not deter the pack he carries—an awkward appendage he has gradually grown used to—from its clumsy way of being.

      The fog mandates that he see no further than the tree just before him. He moves in deliberate, steady paces. As if only his feet know the way, and they must direct

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