netravasti - eyes on U

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netravasti is an ayurvedic treatment for the eyes, cleans your pupils like socrates did his students minds with questions. medicaided ghee, drips from the cotton of the healer onto the closed eye of the patient, of my peer, sebastian, who lays there in shiavasana, a corpse pose.

the eyes are the window to the soul, someone in a past life said. past-lives in new york can be as far back as andy warhol or the bronx's graffiti-merlins - seen and lee and lady pink - on canvas subways painted with inner-city.

a past life with my boy k who disappeared in 1999 was y2k, with my sheroe, nana, it was 9.11 with ash n the 2006 crew in la, it was 12.12.12. the past in the city of 8 million stories, could be a few years back and as near as a week or yesterday. we go through friends, diets, styles and language like karmically-challenged beings who return to the cycle of running after something, addicted to the seen, to something happening, again and again.

the eyes can be felt. they are like the zap of the green lantern, the magic ring of the hobbit, that the dwarves, the sorcerer, the lords and demons fought for. when dusted off, the ring, shone brilliant, was blinding.

you are blinded by the thick of the medicine burning your eyes in netravasti. when dr. shamna did the treatment on me, my sight was myopic, my peripheral vision walled by the vasti. i saw in blur. my eyes burned. but i felt the gaze of my peers. heard their voices,

when someone is looking at you in the train, at 2am or during, rush hour, you feel it. you feel the energy gushing out of the cavities above their nose. you'll feel gazes wherever u r, even if/when u have ur eyes closed - on a park bench in prospect park, in a plane to pondicherri, in the slums of dhaka.

eyes can have light that nourishes, like cream, like mothers, like my mother. eyes can be curious, observant, looking for meaning, like my papa and my nephew.

in north philly, eyes may make you stand a little taller.  in midnight block parties they may make you beat your chest like gorillas in the wild protecting their babies, like u might in seeing a stranger in your building lobby. eyes may make you bark like dogs sensing an alien body entering private property.

eyes can make you pop your collar, adjust your blouse and skirt and dupata, brush off your kicks and strut the dance of friday night at the oscars, knowing you may connect or miss a connection and later that night, in the seal of your room, land on craigslist's missed-connections, wondering if someone's eyes fell on you, noticed you, read the silent conversation you had in the language of eyes with that cute-thing on the bus, on your way back to astoria, crown heights, parkchester.

the eyes grow hard with time. they get used to things, people, places. they lose their awe and wonder. they lose sight, grow dry and break like skin under the winter of unemployment. netravasti reintroduces the moisture, lubricates the rust of the optic nerves, gives you the clarity you need.

when the ghee was soaked out, when the vasti taken off and rose water applied to clear his skin of oil, sebastian sat up, blinking, looked at the clock, read the time. yes! he said, a little better.