Waiting is.

It feels incredibly good to be sitting still inside a guest house today, the sounds of the city pouring in through the open windows but not encroaching completely in this space. Tucked in the alleys of Varanasi's Old City, I've been listening to the everyday haggling of the market, preparations for Holi, motorbikes precariously slipping between humans and cows, cell phones with Bollywood hits at ridiculous volumes, and mothers screaming after their kids, glad to be here but also glad to be set apart for a moment.

Traveling can be exhausting, and it's good to remember that there is no hurry. As Michael, the Man from Mars in Heinlien's Stranger in a Strange Land would say, "waiting grokks fullness". I've been sitting here, shifting between reading, writing, and thinking, considering with all seriousness the word "grok".

"Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed - to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science - and it means as little to us (because of our Earthling assumptions) as colour means to a blind man."

Being in India has been a constant assault on all my senses and sensibilities, and it's not a matter of understanding, coming to terms with, learning, or making sense of everything. So instead, I'm trying to figure out if I grok it. It feels like I don't - like I said a few days ago, I am constantly finding myself dizzy. But then I have moments where I'm so immersed in my surroundings that I must grok it - it's just that the English language (or maybe language in general) is insufficient. Like Jon and I keep finding ourselves saying to each other, there are no words. And since we think it language, it comes as no surprise to me that I find myself thinking that I am at a complete loss.

We rely to much on language, I think. Not just in communicating with one another, but in communicating with ourselves. If we give ourselves a chance, I'll bet we will realize that we grok each other a lot more than we think we do. After all, we're all human.

It feels good to know that, somehow.