Sofia

I clutched my Summer books and puja texts as the train roared past the yellow Hungarian plains towards the border with Serbia. Throughout the entire train odyssey in Europe, passport inspectors from each country joined their fellow brothers on the opposite side of the border, often many kilometers inside, in an atmosphere of familiar and clubby camaraderie. Not here. The Hungarians stamped my passport with a frown and hopped off the train before it reached the border. I was alone. The passenger cars were almost empty. The train conductor was a Czech, but all the passengers seemed to be Serbs. Few people seemed to be interested in going to Serbia even in transit.

Mars as seen from somewhere in Serbia:
There is no rain on Mars. The air is thin and dry. Signs of an extensive drainage system have been sighted and there are large deposits of water ice and wind-blown dust. Most of this stuff was carried by something from somewhere. These mysteries have not been solved. The white line in the middle of the highway unrolled and hugged the left front tire as if glued to the road.

What was on the road:
The Serbs were dressed in camouflage uniforms. They saw my visa, stamped it and left. This was in Subotica. Somewhere past Novi Sad the shooting started. From my window everything Serbian looked drab and unappealing. Soldiers entered the train and knocked on my door. At gunpoint they demanded to see my passport and ordered me to unlock my bags. The Serbs were curious about everything: my snaps of Poland, my dictionary, but when they found a picture of the Buddha, the Serb faces crinkled into confusion. I could hear echoes of "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT?" reverberating in the repressed and empty minds of my new Serb friends. After a long pause of endless silence, the soldiers politely excused themselves. They failed to find my typewriter and even smiled at me as they ushered themselves out. Had I witnessed a miracle? I wasn't sure. I now started to barricade the door to prevent further inconvenient intrusions.

All night tired and anxious mobs besieged the train doors at every station. There were dark and sinister energies everywhere. Belgrade looked dilapidated and grungy. The economic squeeze was definitely turning Serbia into a drab place. A young soldier tried to get into my compartment, but all the lights were out and the doors were locked. I did my pujas in the dark. BLACK STRESS was thick and heavy in the air. Blessings were needed in this tense and unfriendly place. The conductor finally let some worn-out Serbs into my private bomb-shelter.

When the morning arrived the harsh and rugged Serbian mountains looked intense and beautiful through the window of my compartment. The Serbs spoke no English and were chain-smoking nervously. They almost seemed embarrassed to be alive at all. My train-mates were polite and looked at me from the corners of their eyes with intense and exhausted curiosity. The train stopped for three hours at the Bulgarian border where I found the security quite lax. The Bulgarians casually boarded the train and didn't even wear uniforms. The train was packed with Serbs desperately trying to get out of Serbia or those making quick mad-dash smuggling runs as an extra source of profitable income; people littered and slept on the floors of the cars. It was all one big saga of mist-like misery. The Serbs didn't even bother to stamp me out. Nobody cared anymore. We were all leaving the war zone. Everyone sighed with relief as the train crossed into Bulgaria.

Bulgaria. Dusty yellow fields and dull brown mountains gave the landscape a haunting and beautiful look. Gray haze added mystery to the strange and unfamiliar land. I was in the Balkans .... another Universe. Criminals and con-men were crawling everywhere around the train-station. I felt disoriented and afraid. This new home seemed to have unstable energies. My new host was named Andre, a chubby and bubbly mathematician turned spiritual net-worker. Andre was an iconoclast Universalist whose intellectual interests covered a wide range of areas. The Grand Wizard was just a casual contact. Andre was not even a Buddhist. I realized immediately that I had found a lost brother and was going to have an interesting time in this weird place.
Sofia was all sunshine and bustle. I no longer felt I was in Central Europe. It felt more like the Middle East. Like feeling lost in some spy movie. Like being in a dream. I struggled to understand my new surroundings and to keep up with Andre's rapid-fire intellectual chatter. "You must understand, Michael, that the Balkans are quite dangerous. You must be on guard at all times," Andre warned. Sofia oozed with intrigue. Andre and I climbed up the stairs to his tiny apartment, but we didn't stay in Sofia for long. It was the weekend and Andre wanted to go visit his children in Dospej, a tiny hamlet, out in the countryside.
We got to Dospej late in the evening. Andre introduced me to his wife and family. They were thrilled to have an American as a guest. Andre's kids were cute and intelligent. I felt great kindness everywhere despite the primitive rural conditions. There was no toilet inside the house and the rooms were terribly chilly, but I was content. The powerful Rila mountain range was behind me. There was powerful energy everywhere. The full moon beamed down on me, and my pujas buzzed in this quick and electric atmosphere.

I followed Andre out into the Dospej countryside the next morning. It was his turn to shepherd the entire village's goats. The shepherd fields were awesome. Andre and I walked through a dry and hazy wasteland right out of King Lear. The air was cold and winds were strong in this harsh and beautiful landscape. There was a deep resonance here. I felt transported back into the past. I could hear a twinkle of sheep bells in the distance. This was also IT. The IT of deep existence. The IT of the saints and masters.
Andre was on a quest. He was looking for the big spiritual picture, looking for the hidden order. Andre wanted to turn Bulgaria into a spiritual laboratory. Andre felt that the Grand Wizard was rejecting the very tradition that had given him his spiritual training. In the history of religion this was not something new. There was a contradiction here. The Grand Wizard was seeking legitimacy and since he was rejecting the lineage of his teachers he had no choice but to side with the rebel regent who had rejected the little boy in Tibet. It was a kind of Vatican war.
Andre had been involved with the Moonies and had been hosted in Korea with full honors. To him Christ's second coming was a symbolic triumph of spiritual values over material ones. Andre understood what I was doing. My mandala was greater than its parts. The unique visual arrangement of my photographs transformed and elevated the viewer. It integrated psychic energy and made it useable for spiritual purposes. There were no brats in Bulgaria. People appreciated me here.
Andre's neighbor was a strange French guy who had once been a race-car driver. Now he was a rustic poet with a wife and a very cute little daughter. The French guy had gotten into some crash and been in a coma for months. During this coma some kind of saint with a long beard had entered the French guy's head and saved him. The French guy woke up and followed the saint to Bulgaria. The saint indeed was Bulgarian. He had also been dead for a long time, but that didn't seem to matter. The French guy gave me his picture, and I gave him, and his wife, a photo of Summer and myself. They really dug her. So did the Bulgarians. Summer was an icon now and she gave me a lot of strength.

I left Dospej and took a four-hour bus ride through bewitching countryside. I could see Mahakala's mouth devouring all. It was great. My next stop was Rila monastery. It was a nasty and oppressive place. It was also huge. The locals here demanded tribute and lots of it. I felt disconnected and homesick. I missed Summer terribly and felt seemingly lost without her. I found a black puppy and felt overwhelmed by a deep and powerful sadness. It consumed me and I felt helpless and afraid. It was time to surrender to higher forces. Rila was a dense and massive place.

I hitched a ride back with an Australian engineer who revealed Bulgaria's dark under-belly to me. "Oh, this place is run by the Mafia. It's totally corrupt and lawless. Everybody's on the take here. It stinks," my new friend warned. "I've had my car stolen twice and my house has been broken into three times. I'm only here cuz my girlfriend's here. You can't trust anybody here, mate. The Mafia, the police, the government, they're all in this together." A gruesome feeling started to take hold of me. A police car stopped us. The police wanted to see the Aussie's papers. They were looking for any excuse to get a little extra money. Bulgaria was turning into a blur. We stopped at the only Shell station in Bulgaria. The Aussie had helped in its creation. The was an oasis of luxury and efficiency, but the government was blocking permits for more of them. Yeah, Bulgaria was a dope addict rolling under the stars.
The Aussie dropped me off near an underground cafe, where I hooked up with Andre again. He introduced me to the local Buddhist club that met once a week there. There were some Zen people, a few Tibetans, and Andre was the only "Theravadan" in the group. A crazy lady reporter called Zori crashed the party with a photographer and interviewed me for the daily she worked at. It was a trashy tabloid which harnessed her manic-depressive energy rather efficiently. Zori had a dragon protector which visited her in her dreams often and had sex with her. She was a woman looking for peace inside a tornado mind.

I could sense doubt and fear in every Bulgarian. Andre took me back to his apartment and introduced me to his neighbor, Elka, a retired science editor. This old crone was into Zen and was pretty attuned and grounded. I was now her guest. Elka had a mischievous basset-hound named Milan, who demanded constant attention and howled murderously when there wasn't enough of it. Elka desperately wanted OUT of Bulgaria. "Eet eez getting very dangerous heere .... there are many cree .... mee .... nels," she lamented.

Bulgaria was in chaos. The Commies were back. They had looted the country and privatized the booty. Now they were back in power as Capitalists! The police state was no more, and in this vacuum the Commies had to compete with new rivals. Gangsters and Yuppies, and an Opposition funded by the Commies; all kinds of petty street criminals surged and swirled through the subterranean landscape of Sofia. It was an Alice in Wonderland atmosphere. Dimitrov's forlorn mausoleum was defaced with graffiti. I walked with Andre through the Oz-like yellow brick streets of Sofia and was confronted by a maze-like psychology. It was Kafka magnified. Bulgaria was the victim of countless lies and endless confusion. A heavy and subtle BLACK STRESS was colliding with a new and not-so-subtle WHITE STRESS. The Commies had burned down their own headquarters in order to tar an opposition which they subsidized. Important police and treasury files had vanished during the fire. The Soviet war memorial was a hoax. A monument commemorating a non-event. It was now splashed with bright colors. Layers of smoke confused even the confusers. Bulgaria was in a state of disorder and bewilderment. A monstrous and indiscriminate mixing of elements plagued the land. It was tough to distinguish individual elements from each other or from the whole. The average Bulgarian was living under a fog of lies and half-truths. Bulgaria screamed to be healed.

The madness ultimately caught up with me. My wallet was stolen on the tram. Unseen hands quickly made me start hating and fearing Bulgaria. "Thereez a dangerous virus on the loose," Elka warned. "EET EEZ GETTING WOORSE." Elka's old Bulgaria was gone. The old totalitarian moorings were now replaced with a dangerous free-for-all. I felt angry and violated. The locals forced offerings in this crazy place. Elka apologized for the sad state of affairs. But all was not black. Fuji film was cheap to develop in Sofia and I developed all my film. I now had more components for my mandala. Summer's photos were impressive as always. I felt dazed and in love with her, and with all the beings I was meeting.
Andre next took me to a pizza place where I was hosted for dinner and had my spiritual saga translated to a spell-bound crowd. Bulgaria was hungry for ANYTHING spiritual. I was becoming a celebrity in a spiritual wasteland. I wrote in my diary furiously to heal myself and release blocked energies. Summer's photos were turning into psychic medicine. Our bond was being boosted even in separation. I had to get over my fear. I was getting my kicks in the vortex. And that was it. There was a strange hidden order in Sofia that nobody understood. The new complexity was novel and the accelerated pace was overwhelming. Nobody really knew the NEW RULES of the game. All was a hazy mist and everyone including me was flying blind. Surface visibility was poor.

Andre also introduced me to Beni. She was a warm and irreverent translator of Vajrayana works. The only one in Bulgaria for that matter. Beni interviewed me for a local Buddhist magazine, also the only one in Bulgaria. Her boss wanted to know more about the Old Guy in Stockton. Our interview became our puja. Great spiritual truths came out of my mouth as I felt the Old Guy helping me out. Beni loved Summer's photos and felt Summer had a clarity much like the little kid who was waiting for me in India. Our interview ended just as the tape ran out in Beni's recorder; and we both started laughing hysterically. Andre eventually returned and we all got into a taxi. The police stopped us and got their nightly bribe. The cabby said it was all business as usual. I felt radiant and healed.

On my last day in Sofia, Andre gave me a spiritual tour of the city. We visited the giant cathedral hulk of St. Sofia and stepped inside a mosque. The local Rabbi greeted me at the synagogue, a huge oriental-looking building which, like the synagogue in Budapest, was under heavy renovation. Andre whispered into my ear that he knew the Rabbi well. The Rabbi had been on the KGB's payroll. Andre knew everyone in Bulgaria, for he was the spiritual prince of Sofia. Andre wanted to come to America, but was weighed down by family obligations. He was also broke. I gave away my spiritual books and deity photographs to all who hungered for them. Sofia had been an event like Berlin, Prague, and Krakow. It wasn't a boring place! It was crazy and spell-binding. A lot of stuff was tossing in the froth.

Down in the sad and dry land:
I was tired, but happy as Andre escorted me to the train station. "EET SEEMS TO ME ...." Andre started every sentence he uttered with this amusing mantra, "That we are living in very interesting times. It is the time of the TORNADO." And indeed it was so. Bulgaria's hidden order was not yet unveiled. Perhaps, it never would be, but what I saw became yet another component for my mandala. It was all utter madness, all utter wonder. Andre waved good-bye to me as the train began to heave and move slowly; its groans masked my sadness. I felt I was leaving a part of myself behind. And in truth, I was.

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