shaved his ears wouldn’t seem to stick out so much, and in a seersucker coat or a quiet tweed he would be quite presentable.
But, my darling, you are on the other side of the world and have your own life to lead and I mustn’t be matchmaking even in my silly head. I
do
wish I had more positive associations with the Dutch, instead of clumsy wooden shoes and leaky dikes and Dutch treats and that awful way they treated the natives in Java when they had a chance, and still do in South Africa. You say Jan is lean and speaks English perfectly and plays the keyboard (is that really a musical instrument now or still just part of one?) beautifully, and if he pleases and amuses my Pearl I will find it in my heart to love him. I mustn’t love any of your gentlemen friends too much, for I expect there will be many.
The young men here are rather realer to me than the beauxwho with sneaky sheepish looks on their faces would appear at the door to carry you off in their convertibles and pickup trucks. Isolated as the ashram is, and united as we all are by our love of the Arhat, the generational barriers that at home (but this
is
my home now, I must remember!—they have a droll way here of talking about the United States, the country we after all live in, as “the Outer States”) prevent us from seeing one another except as the stereotypes that television and advertising wish upon us melt away here, the barriers, and a not-at-all-uncommon sight is to see a young sannyasin in his violet robes and running shoes walking hand in hand with a gray-haired woman in her fifties. The other combination, the one we all know about in the outer world, the young chick and the old guy, is oddly rarer—their superior shakti perhaps gives the women here the upper hand that money gives men outside. At any rate, the boys would not by and large do for my Pearl. The gay ones have that gay way of walking so there’s no up and down to their heads, just this even floating even when they’re moving along very briskly, and their voices have that just-perceptible fine-toothed homosexual edge that used to get my hackles up when I’d hear it in Boston (though of course I knew it shouldn’t) but that here I’ve become quite happily used to. They’re basically so
playful
, at least in regard to someone like me who is not quite ready to stand in for their all-powerful mothers but getting there, and goodhearted actually (they’ve suffered, after all, much as women do) and so
devoted
in their love of the Arhat, not to mention clever, truly handy at making the place run, in regard to things like electricity and irrigation and drainage and security and surveillance and counterpropaganda, which we have to put out or be
crushed
. They tend, incidentally, to be pro-Durga—she appeals to their sense of camp. Then theother type of young men, and they probably overlap but I’m never sure how much, are the thoroughly habituated—the outside world says brainwashed—adepts at yoga and detachment and biospirituality and holism, young men who when they wait on you in the Varuna Emporium or the drugstore have this ghostly sweet hollowness in their voices as though
nothing
you did would break their tranquillity or alter their karuna for you. It makes me want sometimes to throw a fit or spit in their faces to get their reaction, but I fear that’s the old devil in me—the prakriti in me, the impure transitory nature that hasn’t yet been burned away in self-realization. I sometimes feel as if I have traded being mother to one beautiful long-legged heartbreakingly intelligent and emotionally sound daughter for a tribe of shadowy, defective sons. As I write that, I sense your father’s homophobe prejudices—he sees them as all
diseased
—speaking through me, and that
is
the old me, from the Outer States, terribly unworthy of all the love and trust showered upon me in this divine place by both the sexes.
I
wish
you could meet Alinga and get to know her. Like you, she
But, my darling, you are on the other side of the world and have your own life to lead and I mustn’t be matchmaking even in my silly head. I
do
wish I had more positive associations with the Dutch, instead of clumsy wooden shoes and leaky dikes and Dutch treats and that awful way they treated the natives in Java when they had a chance, and still do in South Africa. You say Jan is lean and speaks English perfectly and plays the keyboard (is that really a musical instrument now or still just part of one?) beautifully, and if he pleases and amuses my Pearl I will find it in my heart to love him. I mustn’t love any of your gentlemen friends too much, for I expect there will be many.
The young men here are rather realer to me than the beauxwho with sneaky sheepish looks on their faces would appear at the door to carry you off in their convertibles and pickup trucks. Isolated as the ashram is, and united as we all are by our love of the Arhat, the generational barriers that at home (but this
is
my home now, I must remember!—they have a droll way here of talking about the United States, the country we after all live in, as “the Outer States”) prevent us from seeing one another except as the stereotypes that television and advertising wish upon us melt away here, the barriers, and a not-at-all-uncommon sight is to see a young sannyasin in his violet robes and running shoes walking hand in hand with a gray-haired woman in her fifties. The other combination, the one we all know about in the outer world, the young chick and the old guy, is oddly rarer—their superior shakti perhaps gives the women here the upper hand that money gives men outside. At any rate, the boys would not by and large do for my Pearl. The gay ones have that gay way of walking so there’s no up and down to their heads, just this even floating even when they’re moving along very briskly, and their voices have that just-perceptible fine-toothed homosexual edge that used to get my hackles up when I’d hear it in Boston (though of course I knew it shouldn’t) but that here I’ve become quite happily used to. They’re basically so
playful
, at least in regard to someone like me who is not quite ready to stand in for their all-powerful mothers but getting there, and goodhearted actually (they’ve suffered, after all, much as women do) and so
devoted
in their love of the Arhat, not to mention clever, truly handy at making the place run, in regard to things like electricity and irrigation and drainage and security and surveillance and counterpropaganda, which we have to put out or be
crushed
. They tend, incidentally, to be pro-Durga—she appeals to their sense of camp. Then theother type of young men, and they probably overlap but I’m never sure how much, are the thoroughly habituated—the outside world says brainwashed—adepts at yoga and detachment and biospirituality and holism, young men who when they wait on you in the Varuna Emporium or the drugstore have this ghostly sweet hollowness in their voices as though
nothing
you did would break their tranquillity or alter their karuna for you. It makes me want sometimes to throw a fit or spit in their faces to get their reaction, but I fear that’s the old devil in me—the prakriti in me, the impure transitory nature that hasn’t yet been burned away in self-realization. I sometimes feel as if I have traded being mother to one beautiful long-legged heartbreakingly intelligent and emotionally sound daughter for a tribe of shadowy, defective sons. As I write that, I sense your father’s homophobe prejudices—he sees them as all
diseased
—speaking through me, and that
is
the old me, from the Outer States, terribly unworthy of all the love and trust showered upon me in this divine place by both the sexes.
I
wish
you could meet Alinga and get to know her. Like you, she
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