Dog Blogs Travel Trips

  ‘One must have freedom, sunshine and a little flower.’ ~ Hans Christian Anderson CyberDragon’s Psychedelic Trips are perfect for staring at chickens in the sunshine.  I'm ensconced in a wholly different world as I sit in the balcony, watching Flirty-Chicken mince around, fluffing her tail, while the two roosters flap and squawk, ripping each other to bloodied ribbons. I occasionally run through the yard, reluctantly flapping my arms, calling up childhood phrases (‘fighter-cocks’) to break up the fight. Pichkoo watches from under my chair, covered in her resident cloud of mosquitoes hovering around her little nose. (Pichkoo is very generous, she always shares her various bugs with me, often leaving a fat tick at my doorstep.)  She’s watching the fight, hawk-eyed, probably hoping one rooster will flop over and die. She's also oblivious to Dove-White-Chicken greedily golumphing at her pet mosquitoes. [1] Usually friendly, Fatootie-Chicken is grumpily glaring at...

In conversation with the Believer a few weeks ago, he said to me, "Whenever something bad happens, everybody keeps saying 'God is watching'. There's this assumption that God will 'fix' everything. What if I am meant to be God's warrior? Maybe I'm the one meant to avenge all the bad shit in this world." His anger wasn’t misplaced. He’d just finished working on a horrific, disturbing story, and this inclination to begin believing that violence might be the best way to ‘punish’ violence seemed to be his only source of salvation. What was disturbing was a gentle, happy-go-lucky, God-loving soul gnashing his teeth in rage and frustration. Destroy the demons. A few days later, I found myself standing on the other side of a glass door, squinting at a 150 strong crowd of social activists crammed into a conference room. Sickening curls of claustrophobia. So many people. Such a small space. Deep breath, step inside. Walk past the crowd. Slowly,...

Now, moving on from my pitch to be 'goanese', the wish-I-were-Goan breed peppered across the state, I’m not really claiming to be deeply knowledgeable about Goa. I’m only falling back on certain experiences to make this childish claim for citizenship. A few years in the same villages here has earned a morning ‘hi’ from many households I pass on the way to work. I’ve developed a deep respect for the local lifestyle, with a few years with Rose & Peter, at their Addams Family-esq estate in North Goa. Meet Morticia Addams: Rose. Rose is an enigma, smooth faced and soft spoken. She rules her male dominated empire with a sweet smile and gentle grace...I've known Rose a few years now, and really enjoy being her neighbour/tenant. Peter is her perfect Gomez, he refers to her as the ‘Boss’. I see him every evening, banging a thick bamboo cane along as he walks barefoot across the estate. Once he promised he wouldn’t ‘hurt’ the scorpion we found, and proceeded to break it into...

I’ve been living in Goa a few years now, lost in my languid love for the place, the people, magic & solitude, the occasional restlessness that tugs at my toes… the perfect peace to play out favorite personas of the socially awkward person: something we call the chameleon complex - situations where you seek out similarly awkward social ‘misfits’ aka Space Cadets. "Everything is so Green"  Urbandictionary .com describes a Space Cadet as “one who is so easily lost in reverie that he or she loses all awareness of the surrounding physical world”. I say, we’re lost in the search of spirituality in the physical world. Ever find yourself rushing into a room only to halt abruptly, struggling to recall why you barged in in the first place? Ever found your self lost in the green of your garden, staring into the trees or the prayer flags fluttering in the breeze? Basically, your mind is always miles away. I find Goa to be somewhat like Space Cadet Central, each stran...

Who am I? What am I doing on the planet? Am I living the life I came here to live …? I’m thinking about psytrance & psycho-puppies as I amble along, entranced in my Sillie Millie world. We walk a long path at least once a day, an enhanced insight into the world we live in. Every day is a new experience, as we explore the bushes and listen for the birds together, equally curious about the scuffling in the bushes, equally wary to go explore… she sniffs & I sigh at the fresh neon leaves blinging our brains in the bright morning sunlight, and keep an watchful eye out for the inevitable fresh dollops of multi-creature poop she always discovers just the second I turn my back! From our earliest memories, we’ve been marinating in the mantra…. It’s the pursuit of happiness! A few months ago, I found myself marinating in my mind…lost in my thoughts, always a million miles away from here & now, struggling to overcome horrific writer’s block, and g...