I was about to step into the Hanuman Temple in Taos, New Mexico, when I sensed someone standing behind me. I turned and saw a young woman with tousled brown hair, no makeup, and three scarves loosely draped around her shoulders. On her forehead was a yellow smudge the size of a quarter.
I smiled, “Oh, hi!”
She looked right through me.
I pulled my hand away from the door, suddenly unsure if this sacred space was open to the public. I looked over at the temple rules to remind myself of the first one: “ALL ARE WELCOME”.
When she didn’t return my greeting, it was awkward, so I offered up a “How are you?” - a classic, conversational one-two punch.
Her face dropped. She looked profoundly stunned. Like the dramatic moment in a movie fight scene when the camera zooms in on the wide eyes of a beloved supporting character only for the next shot to reveal they have been stabbed in the abdomen and their guts are falling out.
I started to panic.
Turns out, when meeting someone for the first time, it’s pretty vital they use some form of greeting within the first 2 seconds otherwise your brain starts offering up random and increasingly deranged next steps, “Punch in the head? Run? KISS? Clench your fist. Find the exit! IS SHE HOLDING A KNIFE?!!! No. Drugs? What kind? METH?! Repeat the question. Deaf? Mouth the question. Nod. Unclench your fist. Laugh effortlessly. Laugh nervously. Punch in the head?!!!”
Not once did it occur to my brain that she had taken a vow of silence or was in a transcendent state that she’d rather not have interrupted by the world’s most overused rhetorical question.
After about 22 seconds she replied: “Alive.”
Her response even caught her off-guard and she marveled at the word hovering there between us like a hummingbird. Her face became perceptively 200% more serene.
“Alive” really is the most honest answer you can give.
So beautifully concise. So all-encompassing.
Trying to tell people any more than that, how you actually are, risks too much. It’s too long, too complicated. How you actually are is too weird: I’m OK. I’m enjoying the sun on the left side of my neck and I’m relieved to be waking up in a part of the world where my soft body isn’t being torn apart by blind bombs. The air feels rarefied and savory today, we’re just coming out of winter and I can almost taste the grass and twigs thawing. But I’m extremely low in iron so moving my body feels like dragging around a corpse. A mild depression is hanging around backstage and there’s a vague alert jangling around my head that will get louder the longer I go without a job. Like ignoring the “Check Oil” light on your car; totally fine until it’s really not.
Yep, sounds like being alive.
We feel all this and still reply, “Fine” - the quickest way to say nothing.
Her blissed-out zen state made me feel, by comparison, like a coiled spring. Although my body was wearing a hoodie and cargo pants (the 90s are back!), my aura was wearing a polyester suit and carrying a clipboard.
I felt ashamed for asking such a pedestrian question.
I had no idea what I was doing here. As I walked into the high-ceiled, wood-paneled room - taking in the bowls of flower petals and framed portraits of a smiling Neem Karoli Baba - I wondered if it was sacrilege to wear a high-performance insulated puffer jacket in a Hindu temple. High-performance insulated puffer jackets feel profoundly unsacred.
But who would this be sacrilege against? At the front of the room was a man-sized statue of Hanuman, a half-man-half monkey deity lying on his side. To the left, another framed photo of Neem Karoli Baba hanging above day bed, to the right, three mini shrines made up of framed pictures of deities surrounded by bowls of fruit, candles, and cut flowers.
As the young woman moved effortlessly around the temple, I shoved my puffer jacket behind a cupboard and repeated a new mantra under my breath, “All are welcome, all are welcome…” I sat down on the floor to meditate.
I crossed my legs, took a deep breath, and closed my eyes.
Noise filled my head and pain radiated throughout my body in an instant cacophony of aliveness.
Terrifying, visceral, horrible aliveness.
A barrage of feeling was catching up with me. The lower back pain I had been ignoring for a week of 10-hr work days glued to the computer remotely directing shoots in Los Angeles from a hotel room in Santa Fe, was now making itself known. A fizzing pain traveled up my neck and across my shoulders like TV static.
My mind was flooded with judgement and alarm bells “What are you doing? You can’t afford to rest, you have too much to do! You’re not even Hindu. This is offensive. Should you be filming this? Is this interesting? Where’s the dog’s medication? You can’t even meditate, you’re horrible at this. It’s too painful to sit, you should be stretching, you should be moving your body. When was the last time you exercised? You’re going to lose muscle definition, you’re going to become weak. You’re getting old. When was the last time you ate a vegetable? Oh my God, you didn’t send the follow-up email to the client! You’re bad at your job. One day you will die. It’s mid-week at 4pm and you’re sat on your arse in a random temple in Taos and you’ll stay here for another 30 mins because you’re too embarrassed to admit you’re in agony.”
I opened one eye to check on my new friend. She was gliding across the floor singing, lighting things on fire, and performing small acts of tschotske worship. I closed my eyes and repeated “All are welcome, all are welcome”.
But I couldn’t let go. My mind and body were on fire. I was having a horrible time in an extremely beautiful place.
I want you to understand, I am so much better than I was.
I used to be so much more uptight.
When I first moved to New York, one of my first trips away was to a small artist community up in Vermont. I was in dire need of a break from the city. I had been working a stressful job in Midtown Manhattan, where my only duties seemed to be replying to emails, Slacks, and texts, and running from meeting to meeting all day; forever playing catch up. It was the definition of busy work.
Early one Saturday morning, four friends and I piled into a car, bunched and restricted between bags of groceries, bedding, and bodies. I was both physically and mentally unprepared for the 7-hour journey. As the city, then countryside, rolled by, I was still deep in the problem-solving mind of my work week; penning emails I was late in sending, regretting the ones I’d already sent. When someone sparked up a joint, my brain switched to Telekinesis Mode, attempting to restrict the speed of the car with my mind and apply the brakes by bracing and clenching my body for 3-hours straight.
My friends laughed and sang around me in a haze of marijuana and joy.
The sun was setting as we pulled up to the quaint riverside homestead. As we spilled out of the car, we were greeted by our host, Raffi, running towards us completely naked, pale dick swinging in the warm summer breeze - a 6ft tall river nymph beckoning us to join him for a skinny dip. My friends immediately whipped off their tops and began running towards the water as my brain instantly invented a brand new phobia: Something in that river is going to crawl up your vagina.
On the same trip, I remember feeling profoundly unchill whilst lying down in a barn. Every time we sat by the bonfire, I worried one of us would fall in and explode. When I finally joined the girls in smoking a joint, Hannah said she could literally see the concern drain from my face, and, of course, as soon as she walked away, my face fixed into a crazed and paranoid grimace, such was the strength of the THC and my shame at having unknowingly been walking around with resting British face.
In short - homegirl was ANXIOUS.
But that was 7 years ago and I really do feel like a different person. Thanks to a few years of practicing transcendental meditation and almost a decade of humiliating dating defeats, my once taut and sinewy ego is as supple and melty as shredded beef. I quit drinking, I’ve been looking after my body, and as a result I feel more attuned to its needs and warning signs.
And before heading to the Hanuman temple that day, I had been living a relatively calm and serene life with Nadav, a brand new friend-of-a-friend/ complete stranger who was letting me crash with him in a little adobe bungalow in Arroyo Seco, just outside of Taos.
When Nadav and I met, we instantly fell into the domestic routine of two empty nesters who had been married for 60 years. We talked about books, film and philosophy, about past loves, past lives, and how beautiful the sunrise, sunset, or stars had been that day. We made each other coffee in the morning and tea at night, and had small unspoken power struggles over the light switches and thermostat. Every night, we lit a candle and dedicated the flame to a person we had been talking about that day ( Introducing: The Gossip Absolver Candle™!)
We would drift about the house in the evenings before settling on the sofa to read, hands shielding our eyes from the sunset cutting lines across the living room. The only sounds to punctuate the stillness were the popping fire and our satisfied sighs. There was not a flicker of sexual tension between us.
To be clear, both Nadav and I are still very young, vital, and attractive. He is classic sparkly-eyed, old-fashioned handsome. Dark features. Exceptional eyebrows. Insanely correct teeth. Like a straight, Jewish Rock Hudson. I have lovely long hair, fantastic boobs, and a large butt, so even if you don’t like any aspect of my personality, it’s generally fair to say that given the right circumstances ( being the only single woman within a 100 mile radius) I’m pretty much any man’s type.
We both have muscles and talked about our workout routines regularly. The fact that we made it through five days without punching each other in the abs is a small miracle. Had Nadav and I been born 10 years earlier and graduated from the same class at Juilliard, we would have undoubtedly become an early 2000s Hollywood “It” couple and given Bennifer and Brangelina a run for their money. (Unfortunately, we would have to forgo a mashup nickname since Kadav is only a couple letters off the medical word for a dead body)
In summary: WE ARE BABES!
But if there was any inkling that we might fall into bed together it was incredibly well-disguised by 9pm bedtimes and conversations about tea that helps digestion. If anyone was making eyes at anyone, no one could see thanks to the kind of low-lighting not seen since Victorian times. Nadav liked to keep the lights off in order to be more in tune with the natural flow of the day outside and so the only drama likely to happen was me tripping over the dog or up one of the many subtle and pointless steps scattered around the house.
It is extremely rare for me to spend an extended period of one-on-one time with a single, straight man my age, a stranger I met virtually, and it not be a date. In fact, it’s very rare for me to spend time with a single, straight man my age period. My poor, Hinge-exhausted, cynical New York brain did not know how to compartmentalize this experience. The quality of our connection was a testament to Nadav’s ability to make me feel instantly safe by being curious about me; my life, my experiences, the things I’m passionate and knowledgeable about. My inner world. And my finding this a novelty is an indictment on the quality of conversation offered by the single straight men I usually come into contact with. The bar really is on the floor.
However, despite this lovely and uncomplicated domestic set-up, I was overwhelmed with multiple work commitments that were all converging on the same week. December Me had thought it would be a good idea to front-load two months worth of projects for January Me, so that February Me could continue my road trip unencumbered by work commitments. But then I discovered that most of Taos and Arroyo Seco have weak, or almost no wifi, and so had to cancel multiple remote filming sessions and delay a big project until dangerously close to the delivery date.
Work was piling up but on hold. And I was being forced to do nothing.
This is what brought me to the Taos Hanuman Temple.
I come from a Christian country, and so, whilst not religious, I know the rules when entering a church or cathedral. Sing the hymns in a joyless drone, listen to the man at the front, close your eyes, bow your head, and act like the seating isn’t murdering your glutes.
But the only rule I knew at the temple was, “All are welcome.” No pastor. No vicar. No one telling me what to do, who I am, the sins I have, or the virtues I lack. No need to repent or pray. It was self-directed free time.
If Christianity says “Sit down and listen” then the dharma says “Sit down and be”.
And that’s quite hard for a person.
Humans: we need so much distraction. If aliens, or gods, are looking down on us they’re definitely saying, “Oh, this whole species has ADD. They cannot tolerate repetition. They fill their lives with unnecessary novelty to distract them from anything close to boredom or presence. They’re constantly inventing, entertaining, consuming, translating, and transmitting. They’re forever making things anew and even if the new thing is worse or more complicated, dangerous, or stupid than the thing that preceded it, they still go with it and call it progress. They were given paradise and thought they could do better. They even think there’s another, more superior paradise coming after this one. Oh, and they walk castrated wolves around on pieces of rope and call them their fur babies - fuckin’ weird”
As a result, when we’re left alone, with nothing to do but rest our bodies, that is when we start to notice that our bodies are living mortal things. With their in-out breath, aching muscles, and aging skin.
I just watched a brilliant short documentary at SXSW about a 99-year-old defense lawyer from New Jersey. He cannot stop working. He feels guilty for staying home despite the fact that he can barely walk, see, or hear. He is in pain all the time. When asked if he should retire he replies, “No. I just wish a good murder trial would come in so I wouldn’t have to think about these legs”
Christianity had a solution in the form of “Jesus Take the Wheel!” to focus the mind on scripture and outsource decision-making to the man upstairs. Live a life in service of the Lord. Become a tool of God. Be useful.
Once religion lost its grip on the masses, it became “Entertainment Take the Wheel!” and humans switched from sitting down facing the pulpit to sitting down facing the sports pitch, theatre stage, TV screen, and smartphone.
Many of us are addicted to escapism and alternate realities. Proof of our inability to be where we are is that every hotel room has a TV in it. You’ve traveled to a new location - a far-flung paradise to escape your everyday reality back home - and when you get there, you sit on the bed facing a giant, ugly, black void, and mindlessly pick up the remote.
Like bad coffee, I’ll usually take bad tech over nothing. Most hotels I’ve stayed at have invested in high-tech and offensively huge Samsung televisions but none of them know how to set up the display correctly. So, most evenings I would find myself watching a Seinfeld rerun with the lighting so blown out and everyone’s skin tone so sickly green, that it was as if the show was set in Chernobyl, 1986 rather than New York, 1995.
Still, better than nothing.
Side rant: How is it that, in the year of Our Lord 2024, a time when cars can be started with the press of just one button, it is still impossible to operate an unfamiliar television? Why are there always two remotes and if you don't caress them in the right order you’ll be staring at a screen that says “SOURCE INPUT” for 45 mins quietly sobbing, “But whyyyyyyy?”
So, it’s understandable that I went to the temple searching for something - peace, solitude, some kind of spiritual silver bullet - and understandable that I was unable to find it.
I left the temple shortly after a second worshipper came in and picked up a bongo drum. Sitting in silent, all-consuming agony to the insufferably irregular patter of a bongo drum is a brand of masochism even I draw the line at.
I drove back to the house feeling more stressed-out and overwhelmed than I’d left it, with the special bonus shame of “doing relaxing wrong”. When I got home, Nadav was in the kitchen cooking dinner, excited to hear all about my adventures with Hinduism.
He asked me how it was.
I didn’t know him that well, at all really, so I considered saying “Fine.” I actually considered lying, making out that I had had a gorgeous, transcendent experience meditating amongst strangers. I wanted to impress him with how zen, relaxed, and unBritish I was.
But instead I told him I felt weird. And a little sad. And like I had failed at something.
When I told him about the strange experience with the alive woman he laughed generously. And when I told him about my harsh inner judge, he asked if it would be helpful if he gave me a pass; an unofficial, Get Out of Judgement Free Card that would allow me to let it go.
I said “OK”. And then we ate some spatchcock chicken.
And with that, it instantly became so unserious. So manageable. Actually fine.
It was a gift, this little interaction. This totally pedestrian, domestic exchange the likes of which have been happening every single day, at around the same time, in households all over the planet, since homes and the concept of leaving them were invented.
Hi, honey, I’m home. How was your day?
Human connection is a form of exercise, ritual, and medicine. We are social creatures, we move in herds. Of cities, towns, and villages. And whilst it seems like we are more separate than ever, the photos, movies, novels, plays, shows, essays, and games that we spend much of our time engrossed in, are usually about other humans.
We are obsessed with each other.
I recently read Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan, (SPOILER ALERT)
In this absurd and sprawling sci-fi epic, Vonnegut explores religion, free will, AI, and the meaning of human existence. The plot culminates in the revelation that all human enterprise and activity was invented by a superior alien race as a sort of complex organic circuit system to deliver a spare part to a broken robot stranded in another dimension. The robot, Salo, needs to be fixed so that he can deliver what he is told is a profoundly important message across the universe.
At the end of the book, Salo goes against his programming to read the message. The message that he has spent 11 million years protecting. The message he has been stranded with for over 200,000 years. The message that instigated the invention of the entire human race so that he might continue on to deliver it.
He opens it. It contains one dot, which translated means, “Greetings”.
Salo is so depressed by the simplicity of the message that he disassembles himself, effectively committing robot suicide.
But of course tech wouldn’t get it.
If life is just a brief coming up for air in an ocean of infinite before and afterlife, then surely our greatest comfort would come from simply waving at all the other heads we see bobbing up with us.
No grand meaning. No need to perform or prove ourselves.
Just a simple, “Hi, how are you?”
“Alive.”
“Me too!”
Oh KM, your wisdom sparkles. “We are babes!!!!” Feeling intrigued, alive and grateful from your words.
They fill their lives with unnecessary novelty to distract them from anything close to boredom or presence - this line really got me. I think more than ever people seek comfort, distraction, and rules / routines (myself included) out of fear of facing themselves / reality.