deja vu

some things I'm coming across so frequently these days, its eerie. as if they are following me around.

1. the mention of 'Echo park'. what's with it. I stayed not far from it when in LA, but didn't visit it. now suddenly everyone is talking, writing about it. so much so I had to check where it was, and then remembered its mention on the LA map when I was there. and I found a breaking news of a dead body found floating in the lake in echo park recently, of a man gone missing sometime ago.

2. dead squirrels. rather squirrels killed by cars. probably one lil kitten too (was difficult to tell in the brief glimpse I got yesterday driving past). is this an unavoidable consequence of the abundance of spring in spaces where the urban borders on the wild (the wild that doesn't threaten us that is, or you know how that would go). in fact, this is getting so bad, that the remains are no longer being removed and are being left (sometimes in the middle of the road) to change color, become dull, and slowly decay(?). I try to both avert my eyes from the splayed innards, and try to look at it with respect for the life that it was and regret for how it was probably killed.

3. recipients of voluntary contributions (public goods that I consume non-rivaling), or charity. this is the first time in my life that I can probably afford to contribute, if my job stays.


aside: the faculty member in the office next door to mine is trying to explain (arguing with a lot of agitation) to a very calm student why he gives points for questions left blank and why the student got less points for a question he attempted to answer than he would have had if he had left it blank. I am with the student on this one, in his words, "this discourages one from trying to answer the question". the logic of penalties for wrong answers should only be relative to a perfect answer; or if relative to a 'no-answer', should only be applicable to multiple choice questions where an answer could be a totally random guess that may strike lucky (and therefore to discourage such 'answers'). I'm judging, again.

long alone phase again. makes me terribly introspective. and hence, the over-exploitation of this blog's presence.

school is one of those commuter universities. people drive long distances, both students and faculty and staff. neighborhood around not too desirable, with news of robberies, etc. etc. as a result, unlike my phd department, here people don't socialize with each other. random lunches on weekdays sometimes, if schedules permit. but other than that, everyone else has a spouse and kids (or maybe grandkids) tucked away somewhere far away in this huge urban metroplex. other than me. and yeah this other guy too, next door to me, who still lives with roommates. well technically, flatmates I presume but that's what you call them all here. I mean come on, who lives with roommates past 30, that too in texas, where you have abundant space, cheap(ish) rent, the works. I mean, maybe NYC would need one to compromise on space, privacy, etc. but not in the lone star state.

anyway, so I'm left to my own devices. I found this cafe lately, a place run by Italian American brothers, really chilled out and cool. been going there a bit, now and then, to sit and work, or to really quench that evening tea desire, even took parents there, and sis. and yesterday, Sunday afternoon I found a crowd of people like me there. I mean there always are some people there sitting alone and working, but on Sunday afternoon at about 1:30pm this whole place was full, including the chairs outside (given that it was kinda hot and muggy, maybe not intolerably so), and most people were sitting alone with a laptop or otherwise and seemed to be working. for a minute I thought I needed to go somewhere else cos I couldn't see a single table available. but of course, I squeezed in at a running window counter-space with barstools alongside. and I had to. this is the only place that gives lovingly brewed tea in this goddamn coffee world. in a proper kettle clothed in one of those kettle-sweaters. and proper tea, various choices, sri lankan, darjeeling, etc. etc. the kettle thing is super nice because one can often have two three cups of tea in the one that one ordered. of course the price is such that that doesn't hurt them.

plus they have these amazing croissants and other baked stuff. yesterday I got some raisin stuff that had all this powdered milk sprinkled on it. like, I dunno what it really was, but it so reminded me of when I was a kid and I loved eating powdered milk, and it was similarly sticky in my teeth and gums such that the guilty pleasure lasts for a while after.

I sat there for a couple of hours, working on editing and correcting my paper, noticing the differences between the men and the women sharing the space around me, each alone. the counter/bar was a lil high for each of us women, who preferred the laptop where it belongs, in the lap. whereas the men to either side of me had theirs up on the wooden surface. their feet rested on the ground whereas ours was mostly up on this lil ledge under the bar. have so often wondered how/why women are so creative and contortive in their sitting positions. like this one that often relaxes me - one leg up on my chair in a half cross-legged-ness such that the knee points right out forward and the other crossed over it really close-knit and then dangling down from the chair on the opposite side. and then after a half and hour, switch the legs.

..

there was this guy who lived in my building, probably till December, in the floor above me somewhere. a violinist. used to be beautiful to hear him play sometimes, especially on quiet weekday afternoons. and then some days he would give us a special treat, probably liked practicing there, by playing in the parking garage, on its first level a lil inside the entrance to the left. so when you entered driving, you were met with this beautiful, sonorous, echoing, sound of music. the garage is a brilliant place for that, with its interconnected levels that trap and empower the sound before releasing it back again. a lil bit like the space in the arches under the Bethesda terrace near that popular fountain in central park in NYC, where you often see and hear musicians.

I just realized it today while I drove into the garage that this guy probably lived here no more, cos I hadn't heard him in a long time. that's the thing with one-two bedroom apartments in a place like TX where everyone eventually wants a house. no matter how nice the apartments, it will only have young people, even a lot of students (sometimes sharing, to normalize the rent), mostly people who have yet not 'settled' in life. I hate that. that idea of settling.

words are haunting me today. so I add words to my header as well.

on the day osama bin laden's death was announced, hubby quoted this to me:
"One is still what one is going to cease to be, and already what one is going to become
one lives one's death, one dies one's life"
it was apt. since then, every news of death reminds me of it. it is always apt. moreover, I see it as something that connects abstraction with life. its simply a description of continuity, from one moment to the next, from living to dying, or backward from death to life. its almost like a math statement or a proof. because there is continuity from one moment to the next, therefore there is continuity in the wholes too - of life and death. people die the lives they lived, they live the deaths that will come to them. because when they die they're still who they were, until they're no more.

strangely, I found different people interpret that quote above differently. to me there seems to be no other meaning. but that's me, my life, my death.
oh btw, Jean Paul Sartre said that above.

someone (JC) posted something on fb today that had another quote that will haunt me a long time. and unlike the above that haunts me in a pleasant comforting way, this fills me with dread:
"Men don't get knocked out, or I mean they can fight back against big things. What kills them is erosion; they get nudged into failure. They get slowly scared." - John Steinbeck

I so know what that means. I so remember those times when I have dusted myself up from a big fall and started again. and yet I also so feel like I'm eroding. aaarghh. its so scary. or maybe even worse, maybe I only imagined my ability and brilliance etc. etc. and in reality I'm a nothing. like Shreeram Lagoo in this movie I once saw, 'Ek Din Achanak'. it was a strange questioning of the celebrated versus the ordinary, of ambition and routine, of suspense and meaning and triviality, of pretense and self conviction and family awe and respect for the ordinary, and everyone's denial to see the ordinary for what it was, almost bordering on sacrilege when one of the daughters puts it into words that maybe her dad was just a plain ordinary man. (sorry for the spoiler if anyone was going to see it)
or maybe I was wrong in how I read it. but it filled me with similar dread.

and then these words in the book I'm reading (that I didn't want to start reading because lately I've read a lot of depressing and real stuff; but also I'd been wanting to read this for a long time and I finally bought it when its kindle price fell; I rarely buy a book for more than $9.99):
"We want to be loved; failing that, admired; failing that, feared; failing that, hated and despised. At all costs we want to stir up some sort of feeling in others. Our soul abhors a vacuum. At all costs it longs for contact." - Hjalmar Soderberg

a lighter thought: facebook cashes in well on this above.

reading my older posts I realize I'm becoming more verbose and less spontaneous.

I fucked up my earth day today. drove a lot more, and used a lot of the fuel to cool the car. it was hot today. went to school to meet a student (Friday mornings its difficult to get me out otherwise), student decided to change plans and ditched me. I sat in my office grading for a couple of hours with my door wide open. people were surprised I was there, and more. I hardly wear sleevelesses in school, what with not trying to attract too much attention, trying to look the role of a teacher, and when I do its usually more formal stuff. today I was in a 'ganjee' as we would call it, suddenly found these 100% cotton shells from loft that fit me! of course its petite xxs. plus I was playing some music very soft. this department is a greying place, I'm probably the youngest, plus I look younger than my age even. people stopped by today, to chat, or just to grin. it was nice. I felt like I was the spring/summer in this grey grave place.

framing shop didn't have my custom mats ready, not all of them at least. I feel stupid and yet didn't say anything; paying some $40 for just having someone cut some thermocol(?) (per piece) for framing maa's paintings, and yet having to pay with more waiting time.

the last two deepika movies have been nicer than usual - piku and finding fanny - saw them recently, one after another.

I've been wondering too much these days. and last night. went to bed well past my age. throbbing headache right now.

wondering whether to start on second grading set (TAs are useless (a lil harsh that)), or to frame the paitings, do laundry, cook (nah), read past blogposts, work on paper, stand in balcony waiting for the horses, nap (too late now), stop wondering.

I've been indulgently lazy today, it felt really good. already celebrating the yet to arrive summer vacation.
and here's a lazy post to commemorate today, spent at home. the first two below are lil things I got back from NM (quite proud of the printed cards of a local artist there that I framed up) and the last is simply a play of sunlight on my slightly ignored corner (don't know why I've stopped sitting at my dining table since parents and hubby last visited).

I'm trying, these days, to try and listen. to other people. especially those, who I don't want to listen to. or rather those I want to interrupt badly, with opposition, with passionately felt opposition. at a recent faculty (teachers only) meeting I realized I sometimes became what I would otherwise call 'militant' (if I wasn't myself doing it then or if I saw or believed in the opposite at that moment) in voicing my opinion. and I am not proud of that realization, or rather I'm proud of having realized it but not of what I realized about myself. and it is then no wonder, that I've had people glare at me in some such conversations, not wanting to ever talk to me again, especially when such militancy was expressed in opposition to what they were saying.

so after reading Teju Cole about the European-Muslim identity and integration crisis in Brussels (waking up after the first night of reading this as the narrator moves to Brussels from NYC, to news of the Brussels attack recently), and sympathizing with the underdogs in the story as I have a general bias toward them, I decided to give eyes to the opposite opinion. to another side of the story. and Flemming Rose so came in. after reading about a fifth or so of his book, I was shaking my head in vehemence again, almost yelling to make his one-sided story stop, dying to tell him he did not understand. that he was wrong.

and I wrote him a long letter. one of those, with links and examples to express what I was trying to say, to bring home the meaning to him, to help him see the only truth in this story. that he was wrong.

and I almost emailed him the letter. almost - I stopped only because I was hesitant to use my email address to send it, in some ways to use my identity to sign off with. I didn't know what that would entail, in the future. and yet creating a virtual identity or in other words to use anonymity to send it would be cowardice, preposterous to even think of. so I settled for middle ground, and procrastinated, leaving to a wiser future me to know better what to do here.

the very next picking up of his book that night took a sudden turn. he started explaining the why, of what he had done. the history behind the event. and isn't that where all meaning lies. I suddenly realized he was not so wrong, nor was I so sure of what was right or wrong here. it wasn't so simple anymore. and I understood a little bit.

I'm so glad I didn't send that email already. someone once told me, when you're really angry about something go ahead and write it all down, as clearly as possible, explaining as much. and then lock it up, and try reading it some days later, or maybe even better, just crumple it or tear it up and throw it away. it served its purpose while it was being written in fact, and there's nothing more sometimes that it can do.

and we are told that yoga originates from some concept of meditation. I always liked to think of it more as self-control, and of the body rather than the mind. but of course the two affect each other. but somehow I've been unable to meditate ever. so yoga does calm me down but only when it tires me, only when my mind's wanderings cease, and focus on how that stretch feels in those muscles, in trying to gauge and argue and reason with the body in how much more I can stretch it, how much longer. and this works best if I'm in a class with other people around me. or if at least I have one other person virtually there on video, so that I'm doing it with someone. in short, despite the alleged ascetic origins of yoga, I respond to it best in society.

moreover, very often I fail to do yoga well if I don't begin with somewhat a calm mind. especially when I'm doing it by myself. so, having learned enough to not have to pay for classes or an instructor does not help a lot.

on the other hand is running. even dressing and preparing for a run sends a rush of adrenaline to my head, which although excites me, also calms my anxieties about life and people and the inanities. running truly cures my maladies of thought.

I remember when I started running when I was about 24 I think. before buying a nice pair of nikes, I actually wanted to ascertain that I would use them, and therefore I ran for a few mornings in my red all star sneakers. really bad for my feet, but who thought about that then. I was kind of immediately addicted to it, but there were lots of mornings when my laziness would overcome that addiction. the one thing if I remember right that kept me continuing was the thought that I didn't know how many years I could actually run without having age become a barrier. in fact, I remember thinking that I had about 10 years that looked safe for running, after which I may or may not be able to do it too long. and that thought got me jumping out of my bed those mornings because I realized that 10 years were made up of so many mornings, bit by bit.

last two-three years I started having a lot of trouble with my knees whenever I ran, and I reduced the frequency and then just gave it up. my knees would kinda lock up while running and would then hurt even after I stopped, and especially when I climbed down any stairs. I think I partly over-stressed my knees because some years I started running with hubby, who is much faster than I like to be.

this last week I started running again, now by the river, alone again. new shoes, asics rather than nike this time to see if these understand the 'pronation' of my feet better and keep my knees healthier. no socks though, because I bought these online and they are tight with socks! and I'm taking it slow and soft and steady. and because I'm about 10 years older than when I started running, I can't somehow get up at the wee hours anymore. (I used to love running before sunrise, partly because it was cooler then, partly because I didn't have to bother seeing too many people, and partly because I hated running in sunlight even if it was cold). but now I'm allowing myself these deviations, and its just as well, because much of that river trail is shaded by these trees and the sun is still so low in its climb that I can't see much of it. until I come to the point in the trail where the trees end, and that's where I'd been stopping to look around and breathe the morning in, and then to turn back and run my return home. but today the clouds gave me an alibi to not stop and despite no-trees the sun was banished, and I kept on and on, and reached today again after a long time, that state where the legs run by themselves.

anticipation, desperation, denial, jubilation, and hope...

if only students realized that faculty members are often just as looking forward to those holidays as they themselves, or maybe even more, because after all a student can skip a class here or there with a self-declared holiday but a faculty member must wait for only officially announced ones.

I so wish I was (back) on the other side of this teacher-learner divide. why couldn't there be a profession of a student, someone who keeps learning different things, of interest of course, and maybe makes that learning available to others with least cost to herself. but I guess that is the idea of an academic, except that the cost is not small, and it keeps growing with competition for academia. and there are rungs on the ladder, and you find yourself in a place based on where you went to school essentially, and you keep dreaming of climbing up. but if you are in the lower rungs, the lower rungs being the slipperiest, their precise function is to keep you tired maintaining your position so nothing is left in you to climb. plus, there is a growing crowd for those waiting below to even get a hold of that ladder, and those far higher ups are not troubled by this because for them they are specks of dirt, but you can see better, you can see that it could be worse for you, you could be down there. or yet worse, you can still go down (rather than up) and then what?

or, on the other hand, given that you have in your life made only one or two choices ever, for the rest - simply either embracing what you found or rejecting it to meet the next thing you bump into, maybe something rejecting you would be a blessing in disguise (if you are still in denial of the more than partial rejection already from those upper rungs).

there was once in my life before that I was resoundingly rejected. from all the top Indian MBA schools. I was good but not 'good enough'. this is also the time, when I was dying to leave home, and an MBA education seemed like the only recourse that would take me away from the city that seemed to have all possible options of education on the face of it, but none too-good MBA schools. I remember those days, when I cleared the CAT and XAT cutoffs for some interviews, although not the IIMs. After each of those interviews I would come back home feeling scared and anxious, only to be met with questions and accusations from my dad of how I was doing it all wrong, and how I was inherently a 'slow' person; unlike my sis apparently who was 'unlike me so much quicker and brighter because she ate raw green chilies as meal accompaniment'. I'm not joking. and ironically this sis of mine grew up throughout her childhood and teenage being judged against me and some cousins by those very respected parents and adults because we were class-toppers while she wasn't. I'll leave you to decide how convoluted this is.

anyway, now it is an understatement how thankful I feel for having been rejected then. oh and btw, I'm still slow, and yes I admit that bit had truth in it, but I no longer see why its always a bad thing, in fact it soothes me quite a bit, I feel its often my strength.

maybe, ten years down the line I will feel the same about these current rejections and defeats (both those denied and those conceded).

on that note, most people I know can give a more than vague idea of where they will be ten years down the line from now, if they are then alive and not ailing. I do hope this one thing, I do fervently hope that right now I have no idea where I will be ten years later.

and yes, academic life, even the low academic life has its charms and freedoms. I technically go to work twice a week these days, although the other 5 days its working at home and not in the sense in which non-academics use that phrase as a euphemism for taking a day off. that still gives me a lot of time, to read, to cook (these occasions are getting rarer though simply because of living alone), and to be slow.

and yet I haven't gone for a morning run in about a year now. nor do I get out in the mornings at all, unless my teaching schedule forces me to. I have a feeling this has something to do with the strange constant state of a stuffed and running nose that I have now cos it sort of started when the running stopped or got rarer. anyway, so today after putting to good use some of the extra time gained due to an earlier than usual opening of these eyes calling up my sis and speaking at length with her, I decided to get out, but not to run. and I had good reason, there wasn't anything to eat in my fridge.

it was raining, then drizzling, then gave way; plus spring has settled in. my car got (an otherwise denied) wash and my mind got an overdose of green.
it was beautiful all around, like an exaggeration of the youth of green. there's a very clear difference between the darker green of the mature and tired leaves, and this green, a metaphor of birth, youthfulness, of energy and anticipation.

I ended up driving much farther, to never before roads, through a park bursting with greenery. I saw the duck pond drained of water (probably being cleaned out) and because this was a week-day, there were very few people around. it felt like it all belonged to me. somehow 'green' doesn't say it half as well as 'verde' does, the latter gives the sense of lush-ness that I'm talking about.

my 42

I woke up today, earlier than usual, wondering whether I should jump out of my bed and onto my yoga mat or should I laze around a lil more. I chose the latter and lay there, with the morning fighting through the upturned blinds to reach me, and the sounds of the early-birds dropping off their kids to school across the street from my window.

there were all these thoughts swimming in my mind then. I did not remember what dreams had come, but consciousness came thinking about my plants, and about how two of those pots now contained three different pieces of a mother plant in the department office at school.

my home has evolved somewhat like the earth did, if you subtract me since I am the observer. it started barren, collected some inanimate objects and then some little microbes probably, and slowly one by one - the plants. first came the cactus or the one that needed the littlest care, then the money-plant-look-alikes that just needed water (and have since been replanted in potted earth), and then a succulent and then a flower plant (cyclamen; its having trouble, its yellowing, feeding some parasites at the moment).

there can be no 'soul' to earthly life, no 'god' other than the laws of physics/nature, nothing beyond the vast universe because it ends nowhere.

when I cut a plant and put the cut stem in water, it roots out, for many crotons and money-plant-types. for others, they need soil directly to root out. but many many plants root out from cuttings. do all these cuttings share a 'soul' with the original plant? what is the boundary of one life from another, and what houses the 'soul' then? its not very different if you think of animals and other living things. a female human, when pregnant houses the baby within. are the two the same 'soul' then? or is one within the other, like Russian dolls? the only difference compared with plants is, the 'cutting' happens after the baby has been delivered out, as a separate individual, after having stored enough energy to grow and survive, with its physical boundaries defined away from the mother, only the umbilical cord still connecting, and so it is snapped, free.

the 'soul' and 'god' theory of life refutes logic. but so some would argue, its meant to. because you have to be blinded by belief to believe.

its not like this morning was a sudden epiphany or something. these thoughts have been in my head at least many months now. it all started with that 'energy theory' of life. according to which life is nothing but the evolution of inanimate natural objects in the path of the goal of everything to better capture, store, and use energy. rocks, sand, earth, and water warm up under the sun but cool down in the dark. life preserves the heat better, uses it, to grow and recreate, even exports it by becoming food for other beings higher up and lower down in the energy/food cycle. its pretty amazing.

but think about the flip-side of this argument. if so, what is the big difference between breaking a rock, cutting a tree, killing an insect, killing a pig, and murdering a human? its all killing, starting from the inanimate, going up the evolutionary chain, to the species that has conquered this earth by managing to group together, coordinate, cooperate, communicate, record, and imagine; and of course use hands to use other things, both living and non-living.

why is manslaughter so heinous, compared with every other kind of killing/destruction?

why, of course, because of all those years it took to evolve to reach a human. the highest-up in the chain. to achieve the kind of consciousness that beguiles the human herself to believe in a higher source and a higher purpose of/for her consciousness; to want to give it supernatural status and call it a 'soul', a piece of 'god'. but I am not contradicting. we each are a piece of god because god is nothing but nature.

some days ago I was watching a documentary about Jackson Pollock, after seeing his drawing/paintings in ink and oil and canvas and Japanese paper. apparently another artist once criticized Pollock saying he wouldn't go far because he "drew from his heart, not from nature", and Pollock replied, "I am nature".

strangers

sleeping in a stranger's bed at an airbnb, with torn sheets, and wondering whose hair is on the covers. oh yes, not a pleasant thought; I've usually been fortunate with airbnbs but these last two were uncomfortable in different ways - this one should have at least pretended to be clean, and the one before had a cozy and clean bed and bath but with the strangest empty rest-of-the-house (such that hubby just didn't want to step out of our room and not go straight out the house). two other strangers visiting/living there, and me one morning coming across another stranger in the kitchen gathering food and walking straight out the back door, leaving me wondering if he was a thief (he wasn't).

travelling in some ways means getting out of your personal zone. but its not just travelling, these last two weeks have left me sensing to an elevated extent my contacts with people (and animals) I know I will probably never see again.

from the young girl with blue hair who gave me a haircut before my trip and chatted with me slowly and softly (so unusual compared with the over-enthusiastic and full of compliments hairdressers I often get) about her mom and her own unawareness regarding her mom's schedules and holidays, about her long distance relationship and how people didn't often get why they were so cool, about coloring and bleaching hair, about her stepdad and traveling, about avoiding questions and coming back to them. to the energetic barking dogs who scared away hubby and kept trying to frighten me and getting frightened by me in turns, when I tried to take a random worn path after stopping randomly by the roadside in a small village by the river. to finding myself sitting next to a crying girl at the airport talking into a phone, after realizing (looking up from my tablet book) that she and I had been sitting around in a near-empty airport, obviously both of us spending more time than usual waiting for a plane; having forced to overhear much of her conversation with her mom and some friends narrating her story of cancelled flights and missed opportunity and venting her frustration, between sobs and angry tears. me wondering whether I should offer her some of my Mexican chocolate (that in turn made me wonder about the hands that hand-craft chocolate, esp. when we bought some from a local shop on the highway from the man who claimed to have made them; mashed-in thoughts of the documentary I had recently seen about the fermentation of cacao and the process of chocolate being made; all those hands of strangers touching those beans, making that chocolate that is playing on my tongue, plus these Mexican & New-Mexican ones don't melt so soon - I sort of got back to liking chocolate after many many years - dark, hand-made chocolate) to cheer her up, but only wondering.

to the short one-two line conversations with fellow gawkers at an art exhibition where I would say it was the artist's intent that we talk. "what do you see?" everyone asking each other, me talking to this guy, probably the only other person there, who like me, was scribbling some stuff down, more organized than me - he had a little diary, and he like me, walked back to pieces he had already seen, studying, comparing, trying to fathom something at least of what would have been in the artist's mind. Pollock is not an easy artist to view, and I don't think I enjoyed any solo artist exhibition so much ever. strangers coming together in those halls, scratching their heads to find meaning, in life, in art, in chance meetings. me wondering if any of these past chance encounters could ever become lasting friendships if anyone tried.

watching the crowd returning with me in the evening train, drunk and happy on St. Paddy's day celebrations (I had preferred Pollock) - a couple of separate women puking it all out, a different couple of them (together and sitting next to me in the train) observing aloud how much she had enjoyed watching "all these idiots today".

me watching people, a cat on a leash at a colorful park in golden weather, noticing just one other guy alone like me, munching on my gooey-butter cake wondering again about the hands that made it. thinking back to the forest ranger who gave us his recommendations about hiking trails some days ago around petroglyphs, his smile, his "my favorite is... ", me wondering if I'd want to know him better some day, or if I'd want to be in his place - watching strangers walk in every day every hour asking to buy maps, water, chocolate, hats, and asking which is my favorite trail.

that woman on a trail when we heard those inhuman voices in the distance, shouting out to us, that they were coyotes, probably killed a rabbit, "they have to celebrate". that couple, hiking up abandoning the trail, up up on those black cooled lava rocks, to the top of the table of the black plateau, the guy giving his hand now and then to pull the girl up, me clicking them sitting up there together, kissing, against the blue and black of the sky and land, wondering if I would go up there if I was younger or if hubby was a little more adventurous (most places where I do climb up I see him as a tiny fleck down below) and yet somehow strangely satisfied (satiated) with where we were, walking in the desert, me looking out for those holes in the ground - so many of them - rabbit holes, lizard holes, or maybe rattlesnakes. so comforting that where nature finds rattlesnakes, it also grows antidote herbs that were found and known by americans long before America.

through all this, reading Teju Cole and his meanderings through NYC, mostly alone, bumping into strangers, much like me, thinking, talking, keeping and taking away.

waiting for my sister's visit around the corner of the month. I have strangely spent most of my time with her with my parents in the background. we get along pretty well I'd say and yet life came in the way, and we didn't get time alone much. I remember the last time she visited me alone, I was in dschool hostel, it was sun-less winter, with Christmas coming up. I don't remember how long she stayed in my lil one-bed room, but what stays in memory is the fright she gave me. we were in the Janpath McDonald's one afternoon cos my sis isn't too experimentative with food. and it was grey and cold and we decided to take an auto back instead of the whole-metro-rickshaw plan cos she wasn't feeling too great. and that scene is still in my head - she n I right at that corner, me trying to hail an auto, while also comforting her and worrying what was wrong with her and beating myself for having brought her far. she had just sort of blacked out inside the McD's. it was very brief but very scary. I tried to keep her warm in the auto and got her back to my room somehow. she slept all evening, I smuggled some food up for her, and we didn't really tell our parents cos we didn't want to worry them. we thought it was just the cold, and she being used to Bombay probably didn't take it too well.

I don't know when we told our parents but somehow all of that is blurry in memory. she went to a number of doctors, while I was back in delhi for my next semester. and now, in turn, my parents and sis didn't tell me every detail because they didn't want to worry me, what with my last semester and placements going on. they didn't tell me that doctors suspected cancer, its horrible to even write that word now, because it brings that horror back. anyway they told me, I think, just when I was supposed to pack up for good and go back home. the second really clear memory I have is of me reaching bombay by train one morning, and mom standing there waiting for me (usually I think I'd get home on my own or don't remember too clearly, but mom alone come to receive me was very rare). and the minute my mother saw me, she burst into tears, she was so afraid for my sister. I remember feeling shocked, helpless, guilty, lost, and yet at the same time like my mom needed me so bad. dunno how long it lasted, but that time was terrifying. we spent some days at the hospital with her. I remember I used to have a lot more faith those days, and I'd find myself praying every now and then, a very vehement kind of praying, and I don't know if these were dreams or waking prayers but I remember fighting with these snake-like structures in my head that kept growing and twisting and me hacking at them, continuously, cos apparently that was the only way to fight them. apparently docs had found some unusual muscular growth in her neck (that had sort of choked her the couple of times she blacked out) and suspected it was malignant. I remember my dad would wake up with wide eyes in the middle of the night at the slightest groan from my sister, and it scared me to see him like that (it also made me respect him so much more, seeing how much of all that was being soaked up by him). while at the same time it made me feel like I'd been spared much of this terror, and guilt is underrated compared with what I felt, specially given all that I wanted those yrs in delhi was to get away from home for good.

I remember the day the biopsy report came. I kept praying in my head, almost all day, and yes it was 'all clear'. apparently it was just muscular growth, unusual yes, but not malignant and hopefully not dangerous. she still has a scar from that surgery on her neck, and I remember many follow-up scans and MRIs. but the opinion turned more toward, unusual but possibly harmless growth in the years when a female body changes a lot. and the thing did slowly subside and we slowly forgot about it.

phew, I hadn't meant to write all that; for a long time I felt superstitious even talking about it, even in retrospect. even now it makes me grateful and faithful. anyway, she is visiting me without parents now, now after then. and I wonder how we will be, together. she and I are both married now, and are different people. plus she is married to someone I am not sure I know or like. but she and I are still thick, and have in some ways become more honest with each other, since we bridged the age-gap that always exists till you hit 20-ish something. I am no longer the elder one really, we are more equal, although she is still very immature (I think we agree on that) and yet more grown-up-ish (in some outwardly traditional sense) than me. She still is best buddies with my parents, which I've always felt was a worrying sign for anyone in their adult years, and yet I think she sees my point when I say that to her. plus, she is coming without the hubby and mine won't be around either. kinda a rare visit I'd say

you know too much, you must die!

when I was in junior high school probably, I once wrote an essay for English class - and I forget what the topic was - in which I used a quote from somewhere (someone): "the moment you think you have humility, it is lost". I was struck by it for very long, still am, no wonder I remember it. its almost like a conundrum, you are taught to try to be humble, but if you strive toward it, the moment you think you've done well on that front, you are in fact congratulating yourself for a supposed virtue, which effectively means you are not humble anymore. since then I've known in some ways that I was a snob and I gave up trying, as long as I wasn't overbearing.

that was ironically also the time when I knew nothing about the world around me, other than what the school books taught and what the fiction I read said. I hated what they called 'general knowledge' and the news and history and everything real outside of my life and what it bumped into. I was a sad child, but also self centered, I lived in my head, and my thoughts were about me and how everything related to me.

I am a very different person now, at least I think so. so much so that I had a dream the other day: I was in different conversations with different people, in different places, and the one common thing in all was that I managed to be the douche-bag that would wreck each conversation with a know-it-all comment that completely embarrassed the other people and their uninformed opinions. by the way, a 'douche-bag' isn't just a random word-phrase, but it is actually the name given to a vaginal pump; probably for that reason, when its used to refer to a person in a pejorative manner, its usually used for men. but yes, being a woman, I can be a douche-bag sometimes. you see, I know too much (I must die).

people hate to be shown that they are wrong. and its worse somehow if you do that with some proof such that they can no longer claim they are correct. it usually leads to awkward silences and/or glares of hatred after which they wish you would disappear or they would. I don't know if I'm saying this from memory within or outside of my dream, but somewhere I seem to remember these awkward silences and glares.

now this dream isn't far-fetched because I can be quite like that sometimes. I've noticed I love to prove things and people wrong, point out the typos and errors, in fact even my dissertation grew out of a similar need (no wonder its all lying unpublished).

however, to be fair to myself (and of course, I'm not being humble) its quite amazing the things people say and get away with, and its quite amazing how ignorant or uninformed they are sometimes. I know an aunt of mine has stopped forwarding irrelevant emails since I pointed out to her and other family members that a number of these emails were fake, and technically known as 'spam'. in fact, she took it quite well and even pointed out to others who forwarded spam. that was courageous.

I don't quite know how to go on without becoming supercilious, but it was amusing that I had this dream, and how the younger me could have never in her wildest self-centered imagination, foreseen this.

someday I'll go to NewOrleans too

B-grade(!) what?

desis do tend to compartmentalize things a lot. I'd been wanting to watch 'Aastha' for a very long time, but wasn't sure because of the reputation the movie had of steamy sex. actually I don't mind steamy sex in a movie but something about Om Puri, Rekha and steamy sex sounded either too censored or suggested that it would waste these two brilliant actors in trying to be a sensational movie. was I wrong? I'm so glad I was so off the line in my expectations. oh yes, the movie has sex. steamy? I guess you could call it that. maybe that's why the video upload on youtube was subtitled 'Bollywood B-grade movie'. huh what?! I would however say there was a very sensitive and real portrayal of not just sex but the pleasure of sex, or rather the difference between mechanical sex and the transcendental sort. hah! I said it, was wondering if I would be able to describe what I meant to say.

I'm amazed at the development of the characters and the story, given that it was made in 1997. but of course, Basu Bhattacharya was sensitive and honest beyond his times in his movies. I loved how the movie does not judge, although the character of Manasi loathes herself - and yet the loathing comes more from having betrayed rather than having prostituted herself. prostitution is so over hyped in Indian society. and this movie was literally thrown away by our society after being labelled immoral in some senses. and since 1997, not a lot has changed. even in 2014 an actress found to be selling sex was hounded by the moralists, although some women did come out against it and yet some did even that in a condescending manner.

I remember watching 'This is Life' with Lisa Ling and her coverage of the sugar babies in this country. I don't think an Indian journalist could do something similar with such sensitivity, while being so direct with her questions at the same time.

I wonder when desis, in general, will get out of their phobia of sex. and that's not even talking about sex outside of committed relationships; that's plain dishonest. but I'm talking about honest sex, the transcendental kind. in fact, probably the kind that inspired all those age-old carvings in temples and caves before 'hindus' suddenly began equating sex with sin.

I remember reading (the one and only) Shobha De novel (that I ever picked up) when I was about 13. the sex disgusted me, because it was the kind where the two people are mostly clothed, the woman more so, such that her sari is lifted for a quick mechanical marital intercourse. ugh, just thinking of it even now disgusts me. I'm not saying De was imagining it, seperated from the reality of desi marriages, but rather that the very fact that it is inspired from the reality of many marriages in the couple of generations before mine disgusts me. the covertness of the sex, its treatment similar to a sinful and shameful act that must be quick, hidden, and soon forgotten, disgusts me.

Indians need to learn about sex. maybe from their own history. people my age are thankfully growing up to it but there's still a lot of the taboo-ness, the inhibitions, the giggling, the inability to talk about it, and of course to really engage in the physical act too. I mean, sex is not just intercourse, people. go watch 'Aastha'. and not just for the sex.

all play and no work

living alone means making up your own rules. or to live without them when you want. I took time off from whiling it away to being at the local duck-pond while the sun was high up and the cold wind confused one's sense of the sun's warmth. it was a week-day, so it was pretty empty, but being fort worth that's quite usual even over the weekends. I saw two old men feeding the ducks and geese (and swans?); some even venturing close enough to them to eat out of one's hands. in fact they were the third pair of ppl I saw feeding the ducks just today. and yes, a couple of the cutie pies (not the old men, the ducks) put up a clowning show for me, literally for me, cos they came up real close to me and kept 'duck'ing into the water and playing away.

next time, I'll stop to buy a loaf of bread before heading out to see my hungry friends.

another harsh winter for parts of the country, especially after long spells of unreasonable warm weather. but I'm away from it all, and do feel kinda good about that most of the time. so its not the weather. its not even the end of the winter vacation because that usually lasts only the first week into the semester. this is worrying then. lately a strange feeling has been gripping me, over and over again, pretty often. and whenever I try to express it to myself or try to have a conversation with myself about it, you know "a talk", so that my inner self knows I don't approve, I keep formulating the word 'angst'. yeah, just that. the talk doesn't even begin. only my mind and my tongue (in my mind) collude together to produce this word and present it to me.

today is probably the second or third day this has happened. and of course, the first day, I dutifully looked it up even though I had more than a sense of what it meant. I was curious to know how it had found me. so looking it up again now, Merriam-Webster defines it as "a strong feeling of being worried or nervous; a feeling of anxiety about your life or situation". Now mark those words, its not just any feeling of worry or anxiety, it is a strong feeling and about not something trivial but about your life or as they say it about your situation. so seeing it spelled out like that made me even worse. at the same time, it was kind of shocking to realize how well some words describe the prick or stab or dead heavy weight of the emotion they so innocuously seem to simply name. angst is not just worry or anxiety or nervousness, it is - angst. nothing else can quite substitute for it alone.

and apparently there isn't an adverb associated with it. its kinda threatening in its exclusivity of use in the language. you cannot be angst-..., you can only feel (deep) angst. and from one victim to another (if you've ever known it) you know when it has found you. it lies there on the tip of your tongue, as a cloud in your mind, as a stone in your heart, as something that makes you shiver and sweat and tremble and lay inert all at the same time.

what is it in my life right now that brought it. I guess its the dread of my current days becoming my unforeseen future. they say being an educator is in many ways a service to society. and I used to think that's what my life lacked in a way, that I'd been too selfish and luxurious in my life choices so far, and that I needed to give back, to relate with people. but the last few days I have found myself thinking "I need to do something for myself, I need to do something for the pleasure it gives me in doing it, in creating, in struggling. and to hell with the world and its people." I haven't even seen a movie alone in months now. I've been waiting to find the time to go see Jackson Pollock's black paintings at the ongoing rare exhibition at the Dallas museum of art. its even been a month since I had my favorite pizza or ate at that Salvadorean place or went exploring the Southside.

this is my first time managing a heavy course load of teaching. and I wonder if this model dilutes the quality because it treats us like laborforce and treats students like the quantity of output. not just that, now labor needs to adjust to the (free) time zone of students who work full time. it leaves us not only tired but limited to our schedules and isolated because everyone is slave to their schedule and has time for nothing else. there are colleagues I haven't seen at all since this semester started just because our schedules don't coincide and neither can ever be found here at any other time than when scheduled to be here. what are we doing to that dream of education as the savior? where are we headed?

(a future post someday on the hyper-commercialization of education).

travel, cars, and coming back home

From a one day trip to DC only to visit an embassy for a visa application, to a weekend trip abroad for a conference and sightseeing, to simply visiting hubby or with him visiting his brother, travelling is quite an event in my life. even though it comes quite often these years. I do enjoy it, even the annoying bits like the cleaning up my apartment before I travel and those crazy early morning flights for which I've devised a convenient plan : bathe the night before - wake up in the middle of night - pee and brush teeth and wash face - sleep in the cab and at the boarding gate and in the plane - wake up fresh at landing with the entire day before me at my destination. but I do not like the feeling of coming back home, despite the fact that my home is beautiful and lovely in every way. its not just the coming back home that's in that feeling I'm talking about. sometimes its coming back to strenuous teaching, sometime to exciting work (when I was still doing my PhD) which has been ignored because it did not find the ambience for it, sometimes to the heat in texas, sometimes to just a busy monday night around the corner. there's apprehension, fear, excitement, loneliness, and often an unexplained panic, in coming back home. of getting back to whatever the travel had earlier been a much-longed break from.

these last two episodes of travel though - lisbon, and right now los angeles - have had a new feeling in that scramble of 'coming back emotions'. probably because these two were kinda luxurious trips in some way that I never earlier could afford (not just in terms of money). and I have myself changed a lot compared to my younger self, and I look for different things, and travel around differently. plus, airbnb has changed travel completely for me. there's no comparison between staying at a hotel in a new city and renting a lil studio or an apartment and feeling like you live there, even if very briefly.

there's more to it though, why though I don't know. these last two trips, maybe some more too, on the coming back, give me a strong epiphany-like thought/feeling that my life back home is so outlandish, so removed from the ground realities of basic life. as if my education is so much inflated, so much more than what's needed or what exists in the real world outside. so superfluous. so pretentious. and hollow? I loved every bit of my higher education. but when I travel lately, I feel its futility, or maybe that's not really the word. its more like "who cares"?

los angeles was the result of weeks of deliberation. having parents visit is not all honey and roses. travelling with them even less predictable. plus my parents are like chalk and cheese, and I wanted a place that would have something for those two poles. 4 nights and 5 days may not feel like a long vacation in a gigantic city like LA, but it felt like home. probably because the one bedroom apartment was old and homely, with creaking wooden floors, a bright white and blue kitchen with a desirable kitchen table in one side, lil portable heaters, grapefruit trees in the front garden, a painted wooden staircase, and a narrow sidewalk-sized-but-steep-like-hell sudden driveway into which driving my lil rented car made me feel like I was pushing my way into a lil garden path while poinsettia and ferns brushed the car from both sides. oh yes, this was the first time in my life that I rented a car at the airport in a new city and drove around and returned it at the airport. and was I amazed at how cheap doing that is. I guess the apartment alone couldn't have made me feel as at home as I did with the car. by the time I left LA, I had a basic map of the famous streets in my head and just two days in the city I was already driving around without live navigation talking to me.

but of course, the first hour in that strange car I felt like an alien. the rental agency gave me the keys and I didn't know how to remove the thing from their driveway. papa and I both struggled to get the boot open (yeah I still don't know what they call the 'boot' in this country), panicking cos we couldn't figure out where the switch was, and me panicking and getting even more hassled cos he was interfering and panicking rather than leaving it to me. and although we somehow got it open, with papa shouting a "khul gaya" with jubilance, much to the amazed amusement of the agents nearby, we didn't know how we had opened it, and it took me a park-somewhere-and-google-nissanversa-openboot to figure it out. plus the seat was way too far for these petite legs of mine and I had to park-again-by-roadside to fix that and to raise the seat and bring the seat back ahead, etc. etc. to start communicating with the lil thing.

but there's something about cars, especially cars when you are in this car country (no wonder 'car talk' was so famous here). they say one unique thing about the US is that you can get into a car and drive away, away into the horizon, wherever you want. and that you can't quite do the same anywhere else with the same abandon. but more importantly, and anywhere in the world, a car is very different from any other durable consumer good. it becomes you and you become it. especially when you own it, but sometimes and a lil bit even when you rent it. my own car back here at home is a leased new Ford hatchback that now, after four and a half months, feels like my baby, like an extension of my own limbs, and in short, when I'm in it like I don't know where my body ends and the car begins. I feel every slightest rattle in its air conditioning, every knock in its boot when the waiting-to-be-given-for-framing poster rolls around in the boot; and it responds to the gentlest of touches of my feet and palms.

this rental though was much older, its break and accelerator both much used and needing a heavier push. all of that first drive in it and in the city, I kept feeling misplaced. the lanes in the city felt (and probably were) much narrower, the traffic was of course much heavier, left turns without protected green arrows felt like impossible feats to achieve with cars zooming on continuously. and something kept beeping intermittently (I later figured out it was my phone sounding off whenever I exceeded speed limits). but slowly the car and I both grew on each other. the second night in the city, after driving around in circles around Korea-town, not knowing where and how to park in that crowded neighborhood, I actually took the lil silver body back into Franklin village and through the narrow driveway to its lil parking spot by the apartment and uber-ed back into Korea-town. but the third and fourth day I felt more adopted by it, I parked it on a street, we picnicked inside it for two lunches - once cos it was raining horses and elephants and we had to exit the highway and even abandon our national park adventure, and the second time cos we had checked out and were on the road with our luggage for the remaining day (plus Venice beach did not look like a place where I wanted to leave all our luggage in our abandoned car), and of course drove out of the city and east into small towns in CA with rain that flash-flooded mercilessly. in fact on that rainy day, we chose to spend almost all waking hours in the car, cos it was better to drive and go places than sit home crying about the weather.

the city was a treat with the freedom of wheels. we drove to the Getty, to Griffith observatory, to Beverly hills and Santa Monica & Venice beaches, to K-town, and to foggy downtown. and also to find the best taco hole-in-the-wall in LA. it made me wonder why I don't rent cars when I visit any city in this country. I probably will from now on. we even witnessed a car crash, just in front of us. hopefully no one was hurt bad, but a car door did fly into the air and its owner careened off kinda losing control. I didn't know whether to admire it or be shocked but I guess I did both before heartlessly driving on, like others around us. LA is more like that. here in Fort Worth, people would probably stop. but I guess you can tell that even by the amount of honking in LA; until LA, I had almost forgotten cars had horns that could be sounded.

but its ok for a city to honk if it more than compensates for it with its colorful graffiti (for that I wish I weren't driving so much and could have clicked some more), with its culinary and cultural variety, with its little-so-and-so-country neighborhoods, with its hills and palms and strange trees and amazing shapes n sizes of cacti, and its beaches, and flowers (even in the winter) and history and people who walk around as if they've just stepped out of some sixtys-show. and its viewpoints.

someday, when I've traveled around enough, I will do a post on the viewpoints around the world. the Portuguese word for a viewpoint is #miradouro which literally translates as "come look far" or something. I love the word and the idea. and the views.

'looking down upon' Beverly hills from the Getty center

why oh why is the world so wrong, politically, socially, everything is messed up. how can a donald trump even be real in this world? and a ted cruz and a jeb bush and a ...

why does the rustle of drying leaves in wintry wind give a sense of the opposite
why does it calm the uproar in my head
why does it console me
why does it want to make me forget
that nothing is right

when even the cycle of such rustle and decay and renewal is affected
when the whole world has been wrecked
by us, people

what I'm hooked onto these days.. the best political and social satirist of 'em all