How I came to (almost) believe in alien abduction
Against my better judgement, and with full sincerity.
I almost believe in alien abduction.
Enough that I went to India, even though I swore I never would, for fear that if I didn’t go of my own volition, aliens would scoop me up and take me there.
(True story).
In the fall of 2017, my employer requested that I accompany him on a trip to India, which was - in fact - my job. But it is true that it was a request more than an assignment, and that I had more autonomy in the decision than most people feel, and for that I am grateful.
My title was Director of Journeys, and I was responsible for recruiting participants to go on trips, then evaluating those who applied, and then accompanying them and concierge-ing their experience with an extra layer of logistical support and compassion. I’m really good at logistics, and an expert at pivoting when circumstances dictate. I had supported other international retreats (one hurricane, one earthquake, one apocryphal election, and one gas line explosion under my belt), and he felt it was time. That not only would it be helpful to have an added layer of support with the travel logistics of the participants, coming from and through various countries with a destination inside the complexity of India, but also that it would aid in my personal development. Like, my spiritual evolution, not my résumé.
I politely declined.
In spite of what you might first imagine, given my degree in Anthropology, I’m petrified of tropical diseases. While I truly was fascinated by birth research and the heinous and strange climate of birth in the United States, I was equally terrified by the stories upper classmen brought back from their semesters in the tropical world: malaria, various fevers, poxes, and fucking parasites. It is not in fact a requirement, but is a rite of passage that to get a degree in anthropology you must mail your own feces to a lab, but nearly everyone does at least once.
I had escaped (graduated) with no tropical travel or illness. Hadn’t gotten a passport until I turned 33, and promptly went to Canada, the land of dispersed populations, cold temperatures, and relatively few mosquito borne illnesses, despite the voracious hoards of tiny beasts that do exist in the summer.
Because I teach the yoga, I have a lot of friends who teach the yoga, and most of them had either been to India or desperately wanted to go. Those who had been all - universally - had personal stories of every possible thing that could go wrong. Diseases of skin and colon, and some worse. The Bone Crusher (Dengue Fever), for example. Many of whom offered the same advice - eat nothing, touch nothing, take ample antibiotics.
No, thank you.
My friend and colleague DJ prodded me a bit. He was going to photograph the trip, and wouldn’t it be fun for us to travel there together, early? To see some sites? Some sights? Grab some images of the richness of Delhi?
I mean, sure. Maybe? I was less compelled by the tourism than I was by the possibility of making the flight with a known and safe person. I feel strange about cultural tourism, if you must know. Never have I felt comfortable with asking you to widen my perspective at the cost of me contaminating yours. I know in my bones that I carry something toxic within me - a culture capable of unspeakable inequity, disparity, and toxicity. Nothing like a degree in anthropology - a career that prepares one for both understanding and grave robbery - to help you know this.
But the invitation stopped me a bit. Made me consider.
A month or so later, on a ride from one shoot to the next, DJ and I stopped for dinner at the only place I know of in Colorado Springs that has gluten free fare after 8pm on a Sunday - Shugas [I make logistical magic, remember?]. As we arrived, I recognized another party sitting on the patio, laughing and clearly just starting their evening - it was my former boss, Dick Celeste, the former US Ambassador to India.
I froze, and whispered to DJ, “Oh my gosh - that’s Dick Celeste!”
We had spoken about him before, given the nature of our work, and India, and my bizarre history of wrangling Unforseen Circumstances for the men for whom I worked. I learned a lot about authenticity from staffing him in a previous role. He was a career politician, but came by it honestly. He could work a crowd, making each person feel seen and known, including the driver of the Hertz shuttle.
”Hi, I’m Dick Celeste - thanks for the ride.”
His work ethic was profound, even in his quasi-retirement role of college president. He worked early and late, without complaint, and never on planes. On airplanes, he read books. Not books about presidenting, or being a better leader, but paperbacks. Fiction.
He read for enjoyment.
Even though Dick and I had traveled together for four years, it had been awhile, and he has shaken hands with at minimum one sixth of the humans on earth. He introduced me to Walter Mondale once (as “Fritz” because they are pals), and another time we had dinner at a table In LA where everyone present was relating their most recent direct and personal encounters with Shirley MacLaine (mine was a pirated VHS of Steel Magnolias, everyone else was speaking about an actual, live encounter, in the flesh, in the recent decade).
DJ nudged me to go and say hi, and I less-than-politely declined. Who knew who else could be sitting at that table?! Is that another former almost president up your sleeve? How awkward for him if I just showed up all yoga garbed at 8pm on a Sunday in July all “howdy, how ya been?!”
Instead, he ran to me.
“Oh my goodness, Kari Kwinn! I read everything you post on Facebook. You’re a great writer.”
Wut?
Not only did he recognize me, he correctly identified me by all of my names AND had kept up with my writing?
On purpose?
He pulled us over to the table and introduced us to the group, and DJ mentioned that we would be traveling to India later that fall.
“You must call me, Kari. Let’s connect before you go. I know people.”
Of course he did. He was the US Ambassador for 8 years. Plus with all of the hand shaking he does? Maybe he has shaken more than 6 billion hands…
As I settled into bed that night, I started to really wonder if maybe I was supposed to go to India. Here was one man urging (and funding) the trip for my spiritual growth, another eager and willing to travel and accompany me, and a third, who was going to connect us to GOD KNOWS WHO. We would not be in some culture-sucking tourist hotel, that felt certain. And then the worry set in. What if I’m supposed to go and I choose not to? Will the fates conspire louder and more forcefully to get me there?
What the hell would be louder and more forceful than this?!
I got my answer the next day, when my ex-husband called and said he’d be going to northern India for a Tibetan language immersion program for six months.
“Oh funny,” I said, “I might be there.”
We exchanged dates, and he said, “Oh, if you can come up to Dharamsala in the days before your retreat, I can make an introduction to the Dalai Lama who will be in residence.”
If you’re new to the mystery of my life story, our marriage ended peacefully for two reasons
-My blinding insanity regarding infertility and strong and obsessive desire to get pregnant and parent with another person who was not living in a cave on the other side of the world
-His desire to go live in a literal cave on the other side of the world for 3 years to become a Buddhist lama
Instead, he took up work for his spiritual teacher, who is an internationally recognized Buddhist reincarnate teacher who hangs with the high ups. Like His Holiness.
And this is when I became convinced that if I did not willingly choose to go to India, I was likely to be abducted by aliens who would take me there. The plan is bigger than my feeble and addled mind, which is one of the more universal lessons I learned on my path of spiritual evolution, precipitated by merely the threat of traveling to India.
What actually happened there is another story for another Sunday.
Thanks for reading,
K
PS: Here are two excerpts I wrote about the trip. More will follow, to be sure.
India: Before
I've been packing for weeks – five weeks – to be exact. The decision wasn't easy this time, as it may have been in other moments, as it has been, because I'm timid with self-trust in these days. Instead of the steady intuition I've had in the past, the unwavering trust of my own gut, I've had to relearn how to read the signs – how to diversify my trust, by gathering small pieces from people who seem to have nothing other than my best interest in mind.
Two days ago my suitcase was still only a third filled, and I couldn't think of what else to put in it. Full of snack bars and medications, disposable supplies and just-in-case contingency plans, the suitcase felt very much like my life.
Temporary.
Mostly empty.
Spacious.
The space has been crushing at times, so I've amped up the pace to try and fill it – untethered, I've simply kept moving to create the illusion of a full life.
And so the day before I left, a flurry of requests for things – herbs, vitamins, chocolate, batteries. Offerings for each of the people who has had a hand in this decision to go – the men who have answered my tearful calls in the past year, who have helped me recalibrate the experience of trust and not needed to consume me.
But soon my suitcase will be empty again, as these gifts fall into the hands of those who have lifted me up, as the supplies are used or gifted or abandoned, and I'll be left with all of that space.
Mother India follows the timeline and plan of no man, or so I've heard. She has her own wild ways, her own gifts. A lifetime is insufficient to explore her, as I suppose is true of any woman.
This trip is for me – a symbol, if nothing else – of what gifts I'm ready to receive, having unpacked so much of my own baggage in the past year. Having cleared emotional cobwebs and closets.
India: Lookout
It is unreasonable that my trip home took only a bit more than a day, but the date never changed. That there is so much more to do, and yet nothing to be done, now that the lesson is clear. Mother India speaks in tricks and pixies. Hitchhikers who board you like pirates and drive you home, monkeys who steal your offerings from the mouths of stone gods. Land that knows nothing of time, whose people shake their heads in such a way to mean, "anything is possible."
Chai is a sacrament with an ancient promise of bringing people together, for appreciating friendship with no common language other than wrinkles and eyelashes and a shared devotion to the cow, the sage who wanders the back steps and rests in the road.
Nothing tangible is practical in the physical world, the higher value is spirit, a sense that everyone else shares - nothing you do will matter. Your body will grow roots or wings, and the pixies in your eyes will fly off to the next world, constellations of your spirit. And India will keep on clicking her heels, spinning around the same sun, but in her own manifestation of time which refuses to be measured by Gregorians or Mayans or anything a man could conceive.
The layers of irony in the Indira Gandhi airport - solar panels in a region that has lost sight of the sun through impossible pollution. Seventeen layers of security to access the hotel juxtaposed to immigration officers who couldn't care less about where you've been or what you've been up to.
All flights depart at midnight.
I saw the Himalayas at dawn, after a silent screaming match in my head... the driver conspiring with India to make me puke one way or another. We chanted to them, from the edge of the roof, a temple to someone's left breast. And then, as the sun took the sky, they faded behind the haze, their jagged skeletons too temperamental to be bothered with daytime hours. India is all smoke and veils, and the mountains play, too.
I had found a certain peace before I left, and settled into it until everyone pulled me aside to deliver the same message.
Are you sure?
I'd like to be. I'd like to be certain about a few things, put others to bed. But I'm not in charge of fate - mine or yours or ours.
The yogis say to do your work, or sing, or stretch, or learn. Or really all of the above. And more than that, surrender.
Can you? Can I?