Free Children of the New World: Stories by Alexander Weinstein Page B

in the mountains.”
    “And they have M at the temple?”
    “No, it’s just an old temple. But find the Muktinath Guesthouse. Amazing M, much cheaper than here. Good masala tea, too,” the Dutchman promised. And Abe, who had begun to sense a kind of spiritual emptiness, felt hopeful again.
    To get to the fabled city of Muktinath proved difficult. It required a ten-hour bus ride, followed by an early morning flight into the Annapurna mountains. From there it was another three-hour jeep ride and finally a half-mile walk through the dusty mountain village to the Muktinath Guesthouse—a damp, rotting wood hostel filled with stoned backpackers carrying ukuleles.
    Up here, far from the watchful eye of the CIA and Kathmandu police, things were more lax. The Moksha Room was full of computer stations, where old and young alike reclined day and night, getting data shot through their crown chakras for five thousand rupees a pop. The guesthouse had upgraded its equipment, allowing users to add music to their enlightenment sessions. Abe could choose from acid jazz, Afrobeat, and dub reggae, the music crescendoing as his ego was peeled away, and he would emerge onto the upstairs balcony, beneath the starry sky, to find fellow Moksha-fueled backpackers giving impromptu lectures on the Bardo realms of reincarnation and the benefits of coconut water.
    The guesthouse proved to be the kind of communal ashram that Abe had always imagined. He, who had read a contraband, alligator-clipped, Egyptian Book of the Dead beneath bedcovers in high school, was now lounging with international backpackers and smoking hashish on the outside deck; drawing diagrams of the chi meridian system in the back of Lonely Planet guidebooks; and singing devotional songs to Shiva.
    It was true, Abe admitted to a beautiful young woman from Santa Cruz, Moksha was the best. “Have you heard of Satori?” she asked. Abe hadn’t. “You can only get it in Tokyo. You use goggles and totally perceive nothingness. Kind of like Moksha but black-hole style, if you know what I mean.”
    “Cool,” Abe said, though he wondered if he fully understood. While most of the guests at the lodge spoke about nothingness, Abe increasingly found himself returning to a deep something he couldn’t shake. Perhaps it was the spotty connection.
    “Moksha’s fun but kinda boring. I mean, compared to Sufi Trance, there’s no comparison. I would do Trance any night. You just spin and spin and spin,” she said.
    “Wow.”
    “Yeah, it’s super sexy.” She took a drag of her cigarette, the wetness of her lips catching the moonlight.
    “You know, I really like you,” Abe said.
    She kept her gaze focused on the moon. “That’s sweet,” she said, “but I only go for saints and sadhus. It’s nothing personal. You’ve just still got a long path to walk.”
    Abe wished she’d say more, but she didn’t. They were in the post-Moksha space, where words were superfluous and creation reverberated in his ears with the echoes of dial-up. So Abe consoled himself with the knowledge that they didn’t need to have sex to be eternally connected as sacred partners, and this turned out for the best, as she left the next morning to catch a plane to Goa, where she’d heard there were really amazing Trance raves.
    III.
    ON THE DAY of his departure, Abe had precisely enough to pay for his lodging, the travel back to Kathmandu, and finally a taxi to the airport. It was clear: there’d be no more Moksha. He folded his dirty laundry into his backpack and bowed namaste to the bedroom with its itchy sheets and spotty electricity, then went to pay his bill.
    Besides the clerk at the desk, the guesthouse was silent, and Abe emerged onto the dusty street without a farewell. Looking up the road, he could see the temple high above. It was said there were 108 spouts at the highest peak of the temple, which poured mountain water upon the heads of willing pilgrims. You could undress and pass beneath the rushing