In a totally unexpected, thus very serendipitous conversational encounter with a casual friend while we were chatting at the Vashon Center for the Arts during an intermission I discovered we had another thread of connection in our visit to Auroville, India. See my post of last January here: https://www.grbbells.com/india-three-auroville/
We’ve enjoyed getting to know Jeannie Ernst with annual regularity at a Fourth of July potluck at a mutual friend’s home on the inner harbor before watching the Island’s fireworks from front & center on our host’s beach. Jeanne has been interesting to me in several quiet ways, but only as I mentioned that Stephen & I had visited Auroville on our recent travel did I learn about her own adventure to the founding ceremony of that new city in 1963. Although she did not recall any actual meeting, she is a contemporary of Tapas, the woman who befriended us there. Over the intervening five decades our various connections have woven cousin Anjana, the bride of the wedding we attended in 2005 , whose childhood friend connected us with his aunt Tapas, who told us the story of the ceremony which tied the connection back to our Vashon friend.
Jeanne’s story has yet another loop for me since she had been selected by a group of Sri Aurobindo’s followers in Sedona, Arizona, where I lived for 14 years in the ’70s & ’80s… being selected to bring soil from the Red Rocks to the opening dedication ceremony at the founding that new city. Every country was represented by a young person depositing their local soil into the urn… symbolically uniting all the countries on the globe together. I describe Tapas’ story on my blog. This photo from that post repeats introducing her & the urn in it’s finished setting of red sandstone very similar to the color of Sedona. Older photos in the museum show the ceremony taking place in the raw soil of the site, probably more as Jeannie would remember it.
An image found on the web kindles imagining such moments…
Jeanne has saved the clay pot in which she carried the soil & she brought it to share with me to photograph when she came to tea one afternoon last January.
This is indeed one earthy relic!
Clod… Catchment or Cloud?
Obviously functional !
Handsome in the hand.
Generously Stoic… presenting a face once broken.
Beautifully soulful.
Thus,
I return to add this experience to my earlier post… celebrating the
stories-inside-the-stories of this story… wrapping my play-therapist of
the ’70s, first informing me of Auroville just as I was beginning to
forge deep connections with Sedona; Twining our Indian cousin & her
childhood friend who, connecting us with his aunt, gifted us intimate
access to this city;
Plus… indeed!… some sort of djinn which brought together these connections during a theatrical intermission on our Island.
Such connections must be blessedly cosmic!
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