Monday, December 28, 2009

December's Endless Summer, Part 1


Patsy got to the airport soon after I arrived, but just long enough after said arrival that I thought she might not have remembered that today was the day of my arrival. Slightly shaken, I spent the car ride with her winding down, wondering what it might mean for me to be here, in Iceland, after four months in India. Was I ready? Would I be able to be what I needed to? Show enough gratitude? Engage enough with my friends here while simultaneously trying to disengage with the India that I had just left behind?

We arrived at the house, and I followed Patsy through the door.

Hello?
Hello?
Hello?!
Hello!
HELLO!
Hello!!!

Oh! home.

++++++

After crashing so hard the night before, I woke up to dusky light at 9 in the morning. The only other person home was Ivar, the budding young gallant who has taken the place of the two-year-old who left with the Thormars for colder pastures when I was 10.

Would you like some bread?
Yes please.
With cheese? Or we have patte too.
I'd love some cheese!
(young gallant presents sleepy and mussed American wanderer with a plate on which is set a piece of toast, buttered, with sliced cheese on top. The American wonders who this young man is. And how does he know where they keep the cheese slicer?)

Would you like anything to drink? Tea or juice?
I would LOVE some tea.
(mysterious young gallant makes tea)
I don't know if you like milk and sugar, so I'll just put them here on the table.
(gallant hands American a cup of tea, takes his own to his seat, and opens the paper. Did I read the paper, reflects the American, when I was 13? Do I read it NOW?)
Thank you so much Ivar!
You're welcome.

++++++

Hanna and I decided to go to the pool. It was snowing. It was SNOWING!!!! But the pool is the place to be here in Iceland. That is, the place to be besides the bar. And as it wasn't yet evening, we decided on the pool. The pools here are warm, and endlessly so, as a result of the geothermal heating which keeps the country running and in high spirits. We showered, put on our suits, and stepped out into the frigid cold. The kind of cold made up of lots and lots of tiny ice crystals which you can't see, but which sting you like I-don't-know-what. We hopped in the jacuzzi. We sat there, chatting, shoulders deep in steamy water, fat snowflakes falling on our eyelashes, just like in the "Sound of Music". Just like that, except not so real and infinitely more magical. Is this real life?

Sunday, December 27, 2009

A couple of quick notes while en route to Iceland:

I am the only female in the entire Amsterdam airport who is not wearing super-cute leather boots. Even the little Nordic girls have them. They also seem very self confident, intelligent, and like they have a good handle on career paths, sharing, and the like. Unfortunately for me, In addition to my current bootless state, my fleece jacket is covered in disgusting red fuzz and maverick strands of hair. How unfortunate, think passers-by as they walk past. Storm ji was right about her...

Also, my new favorite thing: packing suitcases! Packing, re-packing, struggling with zippers until I rise triumphant, sweaty, and (as usual) covered in fuzz, re-packing just for the heck of it, and finding out that there was no point, and that I'll have to do it all over again, the way it was before. I love it. LOVE IT.

xoxo

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Humor me...

Let's talk for a minute about what a genius J.K. Rowling is. But before we do that, I should preface our discussion:

I don't like Harry Potter, haven't even read all the books, certainly haven't read any of them multiple times. I also don't have a stuffed-animal monkey named George after George Weasley who travels the world with me. Come on folks, I'm 22; that would just be ridiculous.

Oh wait, I was just talking about some other person. Or alternatively, I was confusing the parts of speech indicating negation and affirmation. For a more accurate representation, please transpose all negative statements to the affirmative. Yes...that's better.

So, about Harry Potter... I don't want you all to worry too much about this situation; the one in which I adore Harry and the rest of the Hogwarts gang. I am not an oppressive Harry Potter fan. I'm not the type to react to the admission that you “didn't like” or “never got into” Harry Potter with the statement, “yeah, well, that's because you're crazy.” While I have no cognitive frame of reference for this point of view, I accept it as absolutely legitimate for those individuals to whom it belongs. It's just like George Lakoff says in his book, Don't Think of an Elephant: it would take years of careful consideration in order for me to develop the pathways in my brain which might allow me intellectual access to this point of view. And like the Republicans in Lakoff's example, I'm quite happy living in ignorance, or at least the familiarity of my own knowing, beating the mental paths of Harry Potter-adoration with which I am so very familiar.

(For those of you tired of hearing Harry Potter praised, now is a good time to tune out and go read about politics or underground music or computers or something...)

So back to H.P. himself. Let's talk about how ingeniously crafted the last Harry Potter book really is. Not that I just re-read it or anything. I didn't just finish it in the Mumbai airport waiting for my plane to Delhi. Nor was I forced to wrap up extra-secretive-like in my shawl in an attempt to conceal the tears evoked by the final chapter of Harry's adventures. Hang on, it's that negative-affirmative thing again. Oh well, figure it out.

So, let's talk about how great all this stuff is. (Also, let's switch from general-unspecific-meaningless-word mode into the mode that's...the opposite of that.) Let's talk about inspiration and artistic beauty, or about how every once in a while you come across something which reminds you what life is all about, and pulls the cord which turns on the bare lightbulb right at the top of the inside of your skull and illuminates all the magnificence in there that you had forgotten about. The lightbulb is old, and a little harsh, and the room it illuminates isn't exactly tidy, but it shows you everything that's up there. A lot of its covered in dust, some of it is broken, but just look at everything you've got stored-up inside you, waiting to be used, shown off, stretched out, unfurled, taped-together and used again, no less brilliant for its scars.

Let's talk about how I should've read the last book this time around with a pencil and pack of stickies to mark all the places articulating lifeandbeyond lessons under the guise of “fiction.” Let's talk about when a certain character says with a smile, “Of course it is happening inside your head...but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

Let's talk about how deeply unfair it is that Harry should have to make the choices he does, that no person of any age should be required to do the same. How, with all the magic and metaphore and beauty of life and living, sometimes it feels like nothing more than stumbling through the semi-darkness and banging your toe, followed by cracking your head so hard that your eyes water, first from pain, then from frustration and anger, finally from some desperate sense that you are irreversibly lost. How, at the end of some days, it all just feels wrong, unfair, blatantly cruel, awkward, unromatic and devoid of anything remotely resembling art or beauty. Sometimes it is just life, the life that involves tripping and snot and using the toilet and people dying much too young or maybe not but in any case you're not ready to let them go. Let's talk about that.

Or maybe we should talk about how Harry finds love in just the right person, so maybe its possible for me too. About how, in all his glory and success and victory, he is still a human, perfect in no light, bodhisattvah but not the kind that's gotten there yet.

Let's talk about how, if Harry, in all his imperfection and humanity, is so very remarkable (and he is, I think), this means that so are we all, that we are there too, being, for that's all we can do, in a place of magnificent incompleteness, complete in that mere fact.

Let's talk about how, in the end, Harry is essentially and fearfully alone.

Monday, December 21, 2009


The program is over. My semester in India is done. I'm sitting on my bed in the ashram, roommate and fellow faffer on her way to London, and then home, other students eating at the program center and saying their last goodbyes. I was going to go, but didn't. I couldn't quite bare saying goodbye again to those I'd already spoken too, but more importantly didn't have the energy to try and make something meaningful of the relationships whose coming to a close I'll lose no sleep over.


I probably won't ever see you again. I will miss the idea of you more than the actual you. Sometimes you were funny, but mostly you just hurt my feelings. Bye.


I did say goodbye to Gwen. Her bed is messy and looks as if she just got up to go to the bathroom, a little burrow for her likewise little body to snuggle back into. But its daytime, no matter how much my body disagrees, and Gwen has vacated her bed for new shores, and I sit here on my bed, looking at hers, taking comfort in the fleecy side of the sleeping bag that has been my comforter for the past two weeks.


++++++


I remember looking at colors when I was younger. I would look at the sky, and see all the different blues and grays and whites, and think, If I could only cut off that little tiny square of color, that would be just one color of blue. So I'd cup my hands around that tiny square, and look through at that one blue. But it's not just that one blue, I'd think. It's that blue, plus the pink of my hands. So I'd think, well, if I could just get at that one piece of sky, look at only that, it would be just one color. I would try narrowing my eyes, squinting up at the sky. That didn't work either, because I saw the fuzzy pink edges of my eyelids. I came to a conclusion in the end. There is no one color on its own; it just doesn't live in our world. There are only many colors together. I realized that, even if I did exclude everything but that tiny patch of sky from my entire field of vision, it still wouldn't be just one color. It would be different blues, subtly different but varied nonetheless. And anyway that it wasn't possible. I could never look at just one color at a time.


++++++


How do you think you've changed while being in India? Do you think you're different than when you came?


Uh, I don't know...


I suppose* we're always changing. Nothing is static. The only thing that is constant is change.

This trip has been most alarming for me in the distance between what I expected it to be, how I expected it to feel, and what I felt. When asked how I've changed, or how it has been adjusting to India, I'm always somewhat baffled.


Well, um...


The thing that has alarmed me most is how un-alarming it all has been. How it has felt so familiar, how it hasn't really felt like a change, except in the community which has become mine this semester. Why is it so surprising that we are ourselves no matter where we go?


How have you changed this semester.


I don't know. You tell me.


When you look in the mirror from day to day, you're the same. Is that true? I think so, in general anyway. It takes a time lapse to see a difference. It takes that uncle or your parents' friend to say “You're so tall!” So when you ask, how have you changed, I can only look at myself and shrug my shoulders. The implication that I ever knew who or what I was in the beginning is somewhat mystifying...


What will you miss most about India?


What?!


The idea that India could be anything less than totally overwhelming and all-encompassing is beyond my comprehension. Besides, to decide what I'll miss, I'd have to identify what exactly India is for me, where I end and where India begins. I don't know that I can do that.


What will I miss? The rickshaws? The pollution? The things that at home might make me cry which make me chuckle and roll my eyes? Gosh, I don't know.


All the “things” I could say seem superficial. And I almost feel like everything that India has been and is to me will come home with me, wadded up in between the dusty and hastily-rendered Hindi that hasn't fallen out through the cracks and all the colors.




NOTE: The photo just above was taken at the beginning of December. The photo way above was taken in mid-September. On the left is my roommate Anna, and on the right the program coordinator Dheeraj. That person in the middle though, who is that??

*Supposition is what we do. What I do here anyway. Redundancy is sometimes necessary. Or sometimes it just is.


Title on Request

Downer: Bummer, a sequel

or

How much do you think this elephant bag will cost me?

or

Lies, Lies

or

I'm sorry, did you say 300 rupees?

or

But I've already paid!

or

It's very nice, except for the cockroaches.

or

Did you say “silk coasters”?

or

No, I won't give you money for your starving baby because you probably mangled it yourself and look, it's high on dope!

or

Oh, golly, it's been fun, but I've got to go.

or

YES madame!

or

He's an asshole, just like me. You'd like him!

or

Where have all the flowers gone?

or

Sorry, did you need something? Because when you made that kissing noise, I thought maybe you needed something...No? OK, just checking.

or

Do people here use the finger?

or

Please don't spit on me.

or

I'm sorry, when I ask you a question and you bob your head from side-to-side for both yes and no, I don't know WHAT YOU'RE TRYING TO TELL ME

or

Don't forget to take care of your body, you know, by eating and sleeping...

or

Is this a legit business, or the kind that is not so...legit?

or

Mercy C+

or

It hasn't all been bad, really!

or

What did you do today?

or

No, I don't know where it is, I don't live here. But you are a taxi driver, so please figure it out and berating me in Hindi will not help as I think it's quite apparent that I have no idea what you're saying.

or

Did you know that the symbol on your bag is the same one used by a right-wing nationalist group in the area that is trying to kick all the immigrants out of Bombay?

or

Sorry, I just woke up.

or

Where are you again?

or

I have no idea.

or

Is it seven candles plus the Shamesh, or is it eight?

or

Wait, what did you say?

or

Get your “Oh, no, I don't think I'd like any of this for dinner” face ready to use in place of “Oh my gosh, is that per person?” face.

or

Are you ready to come home? Well, I don't know...

Saturday, December 12, 2009

A Word from this Author


Everybody at SIT was given an award, most of them silly. I was given the award "Most Likely to Write a Book about Study Abroad." This, in my estimation, was a thinly veiled award for "Most Unfortunate Person, Generally Speaking." Why, you ask, do I say this? Because it is so, and more than that I cannot go into at this time, not with the powers that be and homeland security breathing down my neck and my grades for this semester still looming in the not-too-distant future. Mmmmmm. So, after my presentation had gone on for about an hour longer than it should've, I ended with this journal. I wrote it. It would've been more effective, I feel, had it followed a brilliantly stunning and mind-blowing performance of intellectual and artistic genius. Oh well. Things sometimes turn out a little more bumpy than we had expected.

++++++

Maybe we depict because it soothes, softens, pets, calms, cools. Grrr, hush now, child. Say what's on your mind, spew it in angry sparks and scorch everything within spitting distance. We won't hold the burn marks against you. Vomit it all over, in the most messy, smelly, awkward, acid, unapologetically vile way you know how. Breathe it out, in a chilly whisper, covering the leaves with icy diamonds, frosty fairies jumping down the collars of unsuspecting strollers, tickling their spines and causing those who are walking in pairs to draw unconsciously towards their companions for heat and something like closeness. Send it out in a jet of hard air, shooting far above our heads and finally dispersing into the atmosphere when it runs out of the energy to shoot, rustling the feathers of lackadaisically-winging birds. Say it straight, let it fall with a thud. Or crawl its way through the black tunnels of our pupils, resting finally just behind our eyes. We won't mind.

++++++

Of all the ways we can say, things we can say, colors and textures and FahrenheitCelsius degrees we can say, I can only think of one thing that is true. Find your inspiration; in that, lies your perfect life. Go find it. You've no time to wait. Because you know boredom, and you know amazement, and there's more. Oh so much more! Imperfect magic can be seen, reflected in the eyes of those gazing up at the explosions of color- you can see itthemwhat too. Just look in their eyes. It's there, just a bit and all at once too.

Trust yourself. You're the only one you have, the best one, the one that carries you from peak to peak, whose hands in a generation look a generation older, a generation of being with you, keeping you, company and safe, tiny crinkles which make skin look like old paper wrinkled and smoothed a thousand times; they attest to its presence, your presence:

I was there, that you says. I was there for all of it, and I will be there. I promise.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

bummer.


I just did my final presentation for my Independent Study Project. A month of working, focusing, worrying, faffing, sudden urges to organize my suitcase, checking to see if my clothes had dried since fifteen minutes ago... I just finished my presentation. I bombed. Kind of. But a bomb is a bomb, generally exploding all over the place, sometimes coating everyone within exploding distance with something unsavory, potentially causing them to catch on fire immediately, see their lives flash before their eyes, and die in excruciating pain, cursing the bomb with their dying breath. So that was me. The bomb I mean. Maybe I'm being dramatic. But I promise you all, anybody who leaves a comment saying anything to the effect of "I'm sure you did fine" or "You're exaggerating, you did great, I know it," anybody who does that will be killed. Not to disregard the sanctity of life or anything... Just don't do it. After my presentation, our teacher got up and reminded us that we should be mindful of the time limit in our presentations (I had gotten through one-tenth of my presentation when I learned that my time was two-thirds gone) because this is an important part of the presentation, and that we should also be sure to contextualize our projects for the class (I didn't technically say the title or subject of my project, let alone lay out my methodology, or really explain any part of it in a way that a normal human being could potentially comprehend. I began by defining fantasy, then defining reality (as fantasy, interestingly enough) , and proceeding to spray vomit all over my classmates, explaining that this was a way in which I was depicting my fantasyrealitydesireexpectation. I suppose it wasn't really so bad. And anyway, it's over now, and I'm over it. Totally over it.

++++++

After school, I went out with my friends Sally and Gwen. We went shopping in a center called Dilli Haat, Delhi Marketplace for those of you non-fluent in Hindi (or without access to multiple fluent Hindi speakers). Beautiful crafts, everything so lovely. My eyes actually welled up upon seeing a particular Ikat sari (type of woven cloth from Orissa- look it up!).

We returned home to the ashram in which our group is currently residing. We were sitting on Gwen's and my bed, reading some Vogue India and and other such intellectually stimulating reading material, and the planets came into line, the stars reflected an energy not seen since the previous day when I was pretending to send instant messages to Gwen from Dheeraj's facebook. God and Shiva and Kali and Juggernaut all came together and and decided that it was a time for the pressure of the past month to spew out like steam from a teapot - pssshhhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeee! What it was that incited our amusement it's hard to say. It was technically a dance that Sally did, while positioned horizontally on the bed, in conjunction with the reddening of her face due to lack of oxygen and the thought that it was very nice to watch her participate in such foolery while she may be slowly dying... I know, it doesn't make sense. Two plus two does not equal four. However, this is what happened. The dancing was done, the comments were made, and laughter ensued. And it wasn't just laughing. It was the kind that lasted for ten minutes straight, egged on by the ridiculousness of the other's physical and vocal contortions, reaching epic proportions in length, volume, and general insanity. We laughed and laughed. And we laughed, and then cried while laughing, causing eyeliner to run amuck and saliva to be unceremoniously evacuated due to prolonged oral...openness. We laughed. Our stomachs hurt. And we laughed, and couldn't breathe, and squeaked, and rolled, and curled and twitched and coughed and laughed and laughed.

When our bodies began to run out of the calories with which to fuel our spasmodic convulsions, there was a knock on the door. A stout Indian woman was there, peering in with a mixture of suspicion and surprise and curiosity, and also with an alarming intensity.

W: What's going on?
A: We're laughing.
W: It's too loud. It is not good. Laughing is not good. Every room is full, and it is not good to be loud.
A: OK.
W: No he he ha ha hoo hoo. Not good.
A: Um...OK. Thank you.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

P.S. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

Grace eludes and angst sets in. This sucks! I hate everybody. Arrrrrg. Not in the pirate way, more in the why-doesn't-life-seem-to-fit-right-now kind of way. Over-caffinated, under-productive, not to sing the song of the co-ed...

"Set a goal. Focus. Don't go on the internet."

"Come on Alex, you're a big girl."

"200 Rupees" for the rickshaw ride that should've taken 10 minutes but in actuality took an hour.

(Sidelong glance from the woman serving breakfast when I come up for chai for the fourth time.)

F-YOU! (Head explodes and singed confetti scatters over the room, while the sound and flurry fade, the smell of burned toast lingers)

It's easy to spiral here. You know what else I remember? [Insert past or present injustice] My paper feels like it's hopelessly floundering with what turns out to be two water-logged oars I had assumed that I was working with a 50-horsepower engine. Oh crap.

Just a little note to say that I'm not capable of much more than growling at the current moment. Not very bodhicitta of me, I know. But when you share yourself with others, it's not fair to just share the oh-so-serene parts, is it? Not honest, true, not quite grimy enough. And while I have no desire to spread negative energy, because goodness knows that there's enough of that floating around, this is where I'm at. I won't be here forever. But I'm here now. "Necessary spaces," says Kate. Indeed. I am certainly inhabiting this space, and it's not so cozy in here. Hmmm...