Twelve - Ocean Chaos
That’s when I recognized that chaos is light in darkness, and darkness is a womb.
Destruction is the work of wisdom.
Nothing is doomed even if much is destroyed.
The pieces have to re-arrange. Which means they must come apart. Or even dissolve.
Think of the ocean.
Think of the ocean from the beginning of ocean until now.
What if the waves crashing on the shore never returned to the waters?
The ocean would become a vast, dry geography. That in itself is thrilling to imagine.
Humans fear impermanence, but it has its exhilarating aspect.
No, say the waves behave.
They form. They travel to the shore. They crash and dissolve. They return.
New waves swell, each one a unique, collaborative expression of the ocean, sun, moon, and earth.
In that moment of initiation, I was brought into chaos. I was crashed and set in a new direction.
Thirteen - Sonali
There was a girl of eight years. She was called Sonali. She lived in the hills of Uttarkashi at the middle of the end of the arc of destruction.
Earlier in this arc, the Uttarkashi portion of the river Bhagirathi had been known for pristine waters that flowed from Gangotri glacier at Gomukh and from springs even higher up in the Himalayas.
The Bhagirathi was one of two rivers descending from the mountains that converged to form the once-mighty Ganga.
The Alakananda succumbed to landslides after monsoon season commandeered an entire year.
You could say that the Alakananda’s burial was due to rising groundwaters and the loss of stability in the soil, but really it was the loss of devotion.
Early in the morning, each day before the sun had risen above the hills, Sonali followed a narrow, switchback path down from her village.
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