Goa and cousins

I have just returned from a memorable trip to Goa. It has been so nice to reconnect with all my cousins after so many years. We're all young adults now, all forging our own paths through the dense fog that is life. Meeting them again brought back many nostalgic memories. It's funny, we don't really know each other very well, yet we have met each other for short periods throughout our lives and there is this sense that we are in it together (or at least that is my sense of things). There is a feeling of kinship among siblings and cousins that supersedes other relations because we have grown up together, we have seen each other change, evolve, and grow in to the people that we are today. Even so, we are all so different now, we have our own lives and sometimes I am overcome by a great sadness; sad that I haven't spent more time with them, that we are on such diverging paths. It is a loneliness that perhaps we all feel at some point - the need to share our life with others. All the power and wealth in the world is unable to quench this loneliness. Yet so many family relations are made sour by material issues, I have seen it happen within my own family. But family addresses an emptiness in every individual that we cannot fill alone.

I really enjoyed the time with my cousins and I decided to just "go with the flow"; let my cousins take the lead. After all, I just wanted to spend time with them, it didn't matter how. Night as it turns out was the most "active" time of day. Sunday night (11/12/2011) saw the four of us ( 2 cousin bros, my cousin sis and I) go clubbing in North Goa. They drank, I remained sober as usual; I guess I may come across as judgmental in such situations - but I'm really not, I was just glad to be there with them and to be honest throughout this trip I was hoping that the alcohol would push them in to revealing their deeper thoughts and beliefs. My cousins seem to be quite protective of their deeper selves, and I am not one who believes in trying to pry it out. There is a certain level of comfort a person needs to feel before he/she starts to reveal what really means a lot to him/her, what is often thought about, and the principles by which he/she lives. I don't think we got to that level, although the conversation did deepen for a period that Sunday night when my cousin sister began to question my abstinence to alcohol and why I tried to maintain a certain level of self discipline in my life. My reply was that I had some "strange notions" - not terribly revealing I know, but what is my answer ? I don't really know anymore. In the past, it might have been because I felt like I was destined to do something "great" - that the world would need me, but so much has changed now and perhaps I do it to convince myself that I am true and sincere in my mission to help people ( somehow !).

A cousin bro joined us on Monday, again I was very happy to see him. There were now 5 of us, and we hung out together on Tuesday night. We broke through our curfew in style when we went out to a swanky club on top of a hill, Club Cubana; let me describe it succinctly; play boy mansion - pretty amazing place. But before that and the jungle jeep ride to it, we hung out at a shack by the beach and witnessed a truly unique hippie trance beach party ! A night to remember, and one that made it all the more sad to bid my cousin bro and sis farewell on Wednesday. Once again we met for a short episode in the saga of our lives. Sometimes I wish the tape would just get stuck on one of these episodes.