Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

Exiting the City of Familiar

Maybe it was the talk last night on the 8 limbs of Ashtanga Yoga.  Maybe it’s the fact that I’m leaping into the unknown in multiple areas of my life these days.

For whatever reason, this morning I’m flashing back 10 years ago to my solo sojourn through India and Nepal.

I was twenty-seven with a mini-disc recorder, my camera and a backpack.  I had friends in Delhi but wasn’t sure they’d gotten my email about when I’d be arriving.  I had no itinerary.  No particular destination in mind.  My idea had been to go to India for two months and see what happened.

I remember looking out the window of the plane as we approached the city.  Shacks and tents and railroad tracks came closer and closer into view as we descended.  The realization that our landing was inevitable ran through my body with pulsing electricity.  I would have to disembark.  The chances were slim my friends would be at the airport. I would have to make my way through customs, fumble through a money exchange and find a ride.  There was no turning back.  We were touching down.

To my amazement and surprise, my friends were there to greet me, guiding me to an auto rickshaw and taking me to a place to sleep for the night.  It was wonderful to travel with them for a few days as we made our way out of Delhi and into the foothills of the Himalayas.  Our paths diverged in the hill station of Mussoorie, and I traveled on alone to Rishikesh and eventually into Nepal.

Jessica Dofflemyer ~ all rights reserved

These days, I face fears that don’t require a passport.  No foreign languages or exotic scents.  But it’s unknown territory all the same.

Looking back at these photographs I’m reminded of the courage (with a bit of blissful ignorance) that carried me along an epic adventure.  Through cobra snakes and midnight car rides with strangers, illnesses and pit toilets, there was always some sort of safety net.  Some miracle of circumstance that guided me and provided exactly what was needed in each moment.

Jessica Dofflemyer ~ all rights reserved
Jessica Dofflemyer ~ all rights reserved

We’re all travelers of sorts, and sometimes we book trips to new lands.  When we look outside the window of our plane and see the ground getting closer, we know we’ve reached a destination.  The only way out is through that exit door.  We don’t know what will be discovered in foreign territory.  But it is invigorating to step outside our City of Familiar and take a walk amidst the new.

Here’s to the adventure…

Jessica Dofflemyer ~ all rights reserved
Jessica Dofflemyer ~ all rights reserved
Jessica Dofflemyer ~ all rights reserved
Jessica Dofflemyer ~ all rights reserved
Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 2 Comments

November 4, 2010

Jeb woke in the middle of the night asking to crawl into my bed.  In the morning I wondered what woke him.  He told me that he had a nightmare about a cobra snake that was chasing both of us.  With a smirk he said, “you were crying and screaming, Mom…but I wasn’t.”

“Oh, really…”  I smiled too.  “Do you remember the story I told you of my encounter with a cobra snake in India?”

He doesn’t, so I proceed to recount my reptilian initiation into the land of saints and sadhus while Jeb sips his smoothie.

I tell him how I’d been traveling in India alone and taken a Trekker to Rishikesh.  As soon as the driver stopped to let passengers out, I felt a nudge on my arm.  I looked down to see a basket pressing into me and inside was a snake slowly moving beneath coins and bills.  A woman was holding the basket and she bumped it into my arm again, further agitating the snake as she hissed at me, “Cobra!”  All of the Indians in the Trekker tossed coins in her basket and I did as well.

Jeb liked the story.  Though he went on to discuss the potentials of having a cobra as a pet – once it was trained, of course.

Without realizing it, I was recounting my snake tale to Jeb while wearing the shirt I’d had tailor-made in Mussoorie on that very trip.  I had spent 8 days in that little-known hill station before heading for Rishikesh.  I’d walked for miles in Mussoorie, exploring the narrow streets that led up and down rolling terrain – the foothills of the Himalayas.

Tailor-made. photo by Jessica Dofflemyer

After dropping Jeb at school, my shirt and I walked the outer rim of Crater Hill.  The sky was overcast and the winds whipped off the ocean streaming up the asphalt corridor that  leads to the hilltop.  The gusts, the chill, the shirt, the hills.  India was in the air.

India still shapes me, even though I left that land nine years ago.  There, I was lost, found, abandoned and embraced.  Here, that place still bears gifts to me:  my son, a lover, stories, saints.

India mysteriously weaves through my life.  Challenging me to be stronger.  Calling me to trust more deeply.  Asking me to love more truly.  I may never return there but I feel it in the wind.  Sense its essence in the fabric of my shirt.

Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

October 11, 2010

Monday morning started poorly as we readied ourselves for another day of first grade.

There was my son’s refusal to eat breakfast, his insistence on wearing an armful of Silly Bands (the equivalent of elementary school bling), and the cutting and spewing of glow-in-the-dark bracelets (“mom, is my eye yellow?  some of it splashed on my face?” !!!).  All before 8am.

Getting my drama out of the way by 8, however, left room for the rest of an uneventful day (thankfully), which culminated in the evening with the sweetness of music.  All non-toxic (but potentially skin-irritating) day glow goo was forgotten as I watched my son sit on a stool and play Baby.

When Jeb’s father, Rex, emailed me from India in 2002 that he had bought a guitar in Varanasi with the word “Baby” in the headstock, I tried not to take it as a sign of our potential fate.  But I couldn’t help wonder, as his email coincided with a vivid dream I’d had of a child in my womb.

Rex described sitting with sadhus by the Ganges  among the bones and smoking pyres.  The holy men strumming Baby til their fingers bled, leaving stains still visible on its wooden face.

The day after Rex’s return from his mystical India tour, Baby’s portent was realized.  Jeb was born into the world nine months later.

Jeb says, “This guitar has been a lot of places.  It’s pretty powerful…”

Indeed.