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Ayyappa Days

Ayyappa is the shadow child of Shiva and Visnu, consummated in their tryst of betrayal at the edge of the Tillai Forest when Bhikshatana and Mohini restored the darkness by sending the sages back to the world. Ayyappa entered the care of Vyagrahapada, became the best of friends with the other castaways and learned all śāstra, all Tantra, the hidden work of the heart. His band of brothers and sisters are at the core of Rajanaka lore, his everyone, creatures of every sort, villains and heroes, ghosts, demons, all are his treasures and teachers too. In Ayyappa we find our way into the forest of shadows to break ourselves, to put our hearts at risk, to ask each other the difficult questions, and call each others' names when the light turns to darkness. We keep Ayyappa's company because in this Lord of Ghosts we become the commingled soul and revel in his warm care of his brothers Ganapati and Murugan. We become every character in the story, again. Write what you want here. Never say anything you would not say to those who keep your confidences, whether or not they are in this corner of the forest we share.


It is an Ayyappa day. Today is Sendra's birthday and we must celebrate with poetry and poets. What would we be without them? How callow for our unseasoned desires? How jejune for our tastes and expressions of hope? What would friendship be if we could not sing together and shake our fists at death and laugh to the very end? Let us not forget even one among us, never.

'All these presences
Once they have rolled time's wheel a thousand years
Are summoned here to drink the river water

So that memories of this underworld are shed
And soul is willing to dwell in flesh and blood
Under the dome of the sky'
---from Seamus Heaney reworking lines of Virgil

A very happy birthday to the Poet. May the gods bless your task, may life prove itself kind with all its capricious indifference to hope, and may the voice inside you listen for all of the voices who muse within. Keep reminding us all who we have been and be that power of the Poet inside us.

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