May

May 2, 1964

(From Satprem to Sujata)

St-Pierre

I am in silence, gazing at the sea. In fact, I am not in Brittany, not in St-Pierre, not in France, I am in Air-India's waiting room, waiting for July 18.... I am neither happy nor unhappy - I am nothing, I am as if anesthetized, counting hours and days in my waiting room. During my japa-meditation, perhaps I exist a little

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more: instead of a nothing, it's a super-nothing - you see, Nirvana is at the door if you don't hold my string firmly in your hands.

Why do I have to write all those lines in ink when it would be so much simpler to think of you, and lo! I would be with you, I would see you.... Our human life is quite bounded and stupid. In two hundred years, in Eskimo land, we will be colored penguins; you will be sky blue and I, pomegranate red. And sometimes, I will be you and you will be me, red and blue, and we'll no longer be able to tell each other apart, or else we'll become all white like snow and no one will be able to find us again, except the great Caribou who is wise and knows love. And when the snow melts, we will be eider-penguins, of course, a new flying race, emerald, which plays among the northern fir trees on the shores of Lake Rokakitutu (pronounced "fiddledeedee" in penguin language).

S.

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