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This is a long story about my passionate explorations into the Chinese language, which I tried so hard to learn, and my near-ordination as a Buddhist Nun. The story also ‘outs’ me as a psychedelic stumbler-the first and last time I had the full experience of “Dragon”.
In a perfect world, my period would have started and stopped well before I left the United States for Nepal. I’d counted it out on my calendar before getting my ticket. But no, pigs can’t fly, beggars can’t ride and perhaps if it were a perfect world, women wouldn’t menstruate in the first place. Or, if they did, the periods would be less disruptive. As it was though, I was awakened at three in the morning by the worst cramps, just two days after arriving in Nepal. I was staying in a tiny room in a small monastic school in the mountains outside of Kathmandu.
I was days before my 14th birthday when Jethro Tull’s album Aqualung came out in 1971. Hearing the songs for the first time gave me full permission to raise my voice and question what I had been force fed about organized religion. The songs spoke to the religious ideals of high culture, which I felt as distrust.