Sivaratri Options(?)

As Shivaratri, the new moon eve in the month of Maaga (sometime in February or March), increasingly I see Devi Parvati, apparitions manifest in the field of samsara, maya—illusion—yet real, the Greater Love Story flowing through layers of opacity in the theater of life moving around my perceptual venue. Mahamaya granting glimpses of Her beauty and femininity (if not in the traditional “Western guise,” quite) in lila strewn throughout my reception of the many interpersonal plays, sketches and skits portraying those archetypal tales old as humanity, and older, which inevitably unfold before my eyes and ears and other sensory organs as I sit sipping coffee and/or smoking a cigarette with some weed or hash mixed in, or sidled up to the bar at the Buckhorn or Ranger Bar sucking suds and scanning the scene for signs of life. Glimpses of Her assure me I’m not wrong, yet leave me spinnin’ sometimes. Indeed, devotion to One such as Kali, Parvati, Shakti, Durga is no Sunday drive!!



Wonderin’ whether I oughta stay in this valley, a gap between two blades of a trishul made of three mountain ranges, with a staff that is Colorado’s Front Range—certainly an auspicious place to spend Sivaratri, especially if I spend the night in a cave in a great bana linga-yoni rock formation near here which I hope someday to acquire for a temple.



Wonderin’ whether to go to Taos, NM to the Hanuman Temple for the Sivaratri show, all night chanting and chai, middle of the night feast of Indian vegetarian delights, and bowls of Taos Big Buds and maybe even some more authentic sacrament for this night’s observances, some charas, more commonly known in the English language as hashish, smoked around the fire outside, burning by a bana linga stone half buried on the edge of the earthen firepit.

In Taos at the temple t’would be sitars and mrudungam and tablas and harmonium providing the tunes, kirtan (call and response chant) led by pujaris pouring yogurt and rice on phallic stones and through a vulval chalice, beautiful hippies and other varieties of peeps chanting along.

Other option: coyotes might sing and the wind might whisper with my solitary devotional mantras, and the willows and mountain hemlock might vibrate in the breeze like the strings of sitar, to hum along as I intone AUM and words like Shakti and Parvati, Kali and Durga, remembering Ganesha and others due acknowledgement and praise as the day gives way to night and ‘til dark night gives way again to day. Hooray, I might say, covered in ashes as the sun rises to the east and seeps into my cave, else I might cry out the Sanskrit root for said word, “hari!!”



Either way, I fully intend to spend said night in fervent devotion, wildly expressing my delight in the beauty and perfection of male-female union as divine, pure and potential (and eventually certain) destination and source. Jaya Siva-Shakti, Jaya Jaya Siv-Parvati!!! Please consider observing this night, if not in devotion, in conscientious contemplation of the wonder that is being human, male and female and genderations in-between.