I found this necklace last month in dewy morning grass next to a bright green lighter beside this boulder.
Since I seem to be in a lost and found theme, I figured I post this photo of my find and see if anyone is familiar with the symbols on the pendant.
The necklace itself is so short, I don’t see how anyone could get it over their head. I wonder if it’s intended as some sort of hand-held mala where the beads pass through your fingers to keep count. However these beads are metal, not wood or crystal.
The minute I saw the necklace I was intrigued. More mysteries surfacing from the Big Sur coastline.
If you have a lead on cracking this code, clue me in!
School started yesterday and I’m back on familiar roads, driving between the post office, the gas station and the local market. As I traverse routes fourteen years familiar, I try to remind myself to see these pathways with fresh eyes. Not just fall asleep at the wheel and move through turns and side streets with unconscious habit.
It’s a constant practice of stirring myself awake.
photo by Jeb - all rights reserved
I reach for reminders of what it’s like to feel the new. To experience each moment, wide open. Just a month ago I wandered through the village of Big Sur, watching mountain sentries of that river valley reveal themselves at first daylight. Curiosity lead me to a courtyard full of statues and alters, where the nearby gas station attendant opened the padlock gate to let me inside.
“You just want to look around?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I can open the gate for you.”
photo by Jessica Dofflemyer - all rights reserved
Later that same morning I settled in at the Big Sur River Inn for a cup of coffee by the fire. Three leathered bikers were eating breakfast and the one with the bandana tied around his forehead boldly invited me to join them on their weekend tour.
“Who knows!” he said, “It could be the most incredible day of your life. It’s beautiful today!”
I was heading in the opposite direction, not fated for a ride on the back of a Harley that morning. But what may have begun as a classic guy-tries-to-pick-up-girl scenario, actually blossomed. Once it was established that I would certainly not be joining them but that I was interested to hear about their trip while I finished my coffee, Enthusiastic Biker’s friend joined in. He was more quiet and about 175 pounds bigger.
I don’t know exactly how it happened, but within twenty minutes a genuine conversation unfolded between us. Topics spanned our children (“they grow up so fast!”), Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” (“I just saw my daughter dance this production at her university”), to the Salem witch trials (“Can you imagine living in those times?” ).
Though we all may have been different ages and had different interests, we shared one thing in common: a curiosity to experience something new. A willingness to share about ourselves. And it seemed easier to do since we all were out of our familiar elements.
So, as I make my way through that same cereal aisle at the grocery store back home – the one I’ve perused plenty of times – how do I keep my experience with the Cheerios as fresh as my fireside chat with the bikers?
I guess for now, step one is just asking the question.
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.
I found this necklace last month in dewy morning grass next to a bright green lighter beside this boulder.
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