Spin

With shadows so dark and thick I'm certain the light blazes bright and strong and close behind. But there is no turning time back, is there? I must hold faith instead that the earth spins and spins, and so must spin back into the light. If only I could feel the slightest shove, a little give as the path dips forward into deepening night.

Faith like water

Faith in the divine is not a flag to be hoisted at every opportunity with the expectation that all bow to your definitions of divinity. My faith is quiet like water. For starters, it's fluid. And secondly, I don't often discuss it. It's a small molecule with not much to be said for it.

It's more obvious at some times than others. Sometimes I get thirsty and want more. Too much faith makes my stomach bloat uncomfortably, with no room to hold other sustenance. Divinity, like water, is everywhere: in every cell, most soils, even on other planets. There's a big giant ocean of it around us. But still there are places where it is not -- and yes, this is okay too. Not everything must be divine or contain water.

The best food has water, and the worst. But it's not what we speak about when we discuss flavor, or texture, or the way some foods comfort and delight. There is no need to discuss the water, is there?

Unless you have discovered for the first time that water is in your vegetables. Like a child with a new word or toy, some who have "found" divinity tout it everywhere: Look what I know! Hey, did you know water is everywhere? Did you know that love is God, and kindness to all men is God, and .... is God? To some it is excitement, to others a need for validation. It's as though they can't fully believe that everything has water unless someone else does too. But just because vegetables have water, doesn't mean they are nothing but it. Just as all love is a bit of a miracle -- but it's also just a bit foolish, funny, mad, and more.

Faith, like water, comforts me. I swallow big gulps of it when I'm hurt and stressed. I stand under a steaming spray of it to sort out tricky questions. Once in a while, I dunk my head deep under until it leaves me breathless. Faith, like water, can drown everything else out. Including reason, and love, and logic. Too much water will kill you for lack of air. As can too much faith, when it cuts you off from the dust and heat and trappings of life.

There are variants of water: sparkling, iced, flavored, sourced from mountain streams. Pick your favorite kind of divinity. But here's the most important courtesy you can afford others: Sip quietly.

And in my view of faith as water, these are the simple rules:

Don't push your preferred brand or style on others. Don't claim they are all the same. Don't argue over the differences. Don't hold someone else's head underwater. Don't expect others to see the water in food. Some like to focus on the flavors and colors and other wonders -- let them be. Don't interrupt to demand they spot the water. In focusing on the divine, don't forget the rest of who a person or thing or place or emotion is.

You are water. But you are more than just water. Accept it as you will. Remember it. Hold it close. And stop talking about it.

On wanting

(You who never arrived/ Rainer Maria Rilke)

You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of
the next moment. All the immense
images in me -- the far-off, deeply-felt
landscape, cities, towers, and bridges, and
unsuspected turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods--
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.

You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house-- , and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me.
Streets that I chanced upon,--
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and,
startled, gave back my too-sudden image.
Who knows? Perhaps the same
bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening...

Hear no prophets

When considering a partner -- whether it's a college crush-turned-boyfriend or a traditional arranged-marriage type scenario -- we try to answer certain questions. How does this person fit into my life? Is he kind? Is she funny? Do we value education/financial security/hobbies about equally? And so on.

Then we leave a little room for uncertainties. Markets may crash so jobs are lost, people fall sick without warning. Life happens. The future is uncertain, and so we hedge our options in the here and now. My boyfriend cares for his grandmother, so he's probably going to be kind to our parents as they age. She volunteers to read to the blind, she'll probably be a good mother to a disabled child. And so on.

The future is a mystery. There are risks. Etc. And so we make our choices in the present with these things in mind. Some assume that our actions now are a good karma stockpile for the future. Others say that all we have is the here and now.

To quote the cliche: Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why we call it the present. Break that down some more, and the present turns from this day to this hour, this second, this moment. Only now.

And so we choose a lover or a spouse to share our life based on moments.

I wish more of us would do the same when we choose a religious leader to follow. Does my faith distance me from the people I love? Is my religion disconnected from the life I live as a regular human being in the world today? If I had to choose, at this moment, between my family and my faith, which would I pick?

Recently, a 17 year old girl with a highly curable form of cancer refused chemotherapy because her religious faith forbade her from filling her body with toxins. In another context, this same girl might say her God placed all life on earth with a purpose. So was her purpose to die at 17, or was it to cure cancer at 45? We might never know, because a court overruled her decision and she's receiving treatment.

The trouble with such faith is that it drowns out the possibilities. Life emerged from randomness -- a beautiful, miraculous coming forth of molecules in perfect harmony. When we focus single-minded on a certain faith/ religion/ guru, we lose the diversity that comes from seeing the big picture.

Serendipity -- and yes, miracles -- stem from remaining in the infinite potential of now. Stick your head too far into the clouds, fill your ears with the ringing of a prophet's voice, and you might miss the soft strength of the earth you stand on, the very earth that lifts you high enough to reach the clouds in the first place.

That earth is ground reality -- the people that tend your basic Maslow-ian needs. Just for today -- for this moment, NOW -- try this: Feel the ground beneath your feet. Drown your beliefs. Hear no prophets.

They promise that their voices will ring through all eternity. But the earth slips away.

Walking without wizards

Middle Earth is littered with orcs, demons, giant man-hating trees, and power-hungry kings. But my teen self was more terrified by one character's death. Years after I read the books, I'd wake night after night from a recurring nightmare of being Frodo, knowing Gandalf was dead, and having to walk on anyway.

With a wizard around, you can be fairly sure that no matter how many monsters attack, the world will sort itself out at the end. The lack of certainty that haunted my nightmares was, as I'm beginning to realize, excellent preparation for being a grown up. Being an adult is essentially an act of embracing uncertainty.

Unlike the stuff of childhood, there aren't any grades or peers to tell you how cute you look, or how good or terrible you are at a certain subject. There's no grading curve to simplify the hard bits, and no parents to swipe away hurt with a hug. There is no binary outcome to most of life's tests, and several come with no guaranteed returns for the work you put in. Every once in a while there really is no version of the story where the good guys win. And no, there certainly aren't any dashing princes -- or wizards (who seem more useful anyway) -- charging up on shining white horses to rescue either hobbit or helpless human.

Sometimes you know the wizard is dead, but you walk into the scary dark places anyway, because there's a job to be done. If you're lucky, you'll have a friend to hold your hand. Maybe it'll even be someone who will carry and drag you through the hardest parts. Be certain there will be armies and giant spiders and trolls to throw you off your mission. If you're lucky, you'll hold something precious, and have someone dear to remind you of why you're in this mess.

Some  of us might get to go home at journey's end: to hillside hobbit-holes, or palaces with elvish queens, or more eternal dwellings. Maybe, just maybe, the walk will be worth it. But however it ends, we'll all have a story to tell.

And so, this year, a wish to remember the good parts: I hope you remember the precious things you carry. I hope you love the story you tell yourself when it's all done. And when magic is sparse, I hope you find your own light to shine through the darkest places.

glimmer

Just another interview today, like any other. We talked about signaling pathways and molecular biology. But her voice was all yours. Its deep sincerity, accent and tone, the firm roundness of her syllables, a hint of caring, unafraid to question, to laugh, eager in its understanding of the subject -- it was so fully yours that my note-taking faltered as your face filled my mind. The idea of you, who might have soon have had your own lab, as she does. You who I might have called for an opinion on a paper. You who faltered, but still --always -- glow at the edges of memory.

Worth it

Thinking about words is what I do for a living. It's also what I do when I'm not working. And I never tire of asking people to choose their words carefully.

Mean what you say. Intent, I find, is easy. Most people don't intend to be hurtful, thoughtless, silly, etc. However, most of us also don't make sure that our words reflect our true intent, which is often caring, affection or simply a friendly exchange.

Here's an example:

"That's expensive! What do you get for [that much money]?" -- asking for information about the object.

"That's expensive! Is it worth it?" -- asking for an opinion; open to the idea that maybe it is worth the expense.

"That's expensive! Do you really think it's worth it?" -- asking for an opinion; the "really" inserts a hint that the questioner's opinion is perhaps that it's too much money.

"That's expensive! I don't think it's worth it."  -- expresses an opinion

Have you ever used one when you really meant another?

Before you pick an option, know whether you want to know the features of a pricey purchase, or whether you merely want to express your view that it's too expensive.

The words you choose are worth it. As a corollary, the words you hear matter just as much. Take the time to know what they mean. Is the other person requesting information or dissing your choices? Ask, listen, understand.

And if this seems like too much work for a casual chat, create -- or find -- a conversation that deserves the effort. That might mean changing how or what you communicate, or it might mean finding someone else to talk to. Either way, it's worth it.

Just some words

Excuse me while I rant a little. If you've read or otherwise cared to learn the basics of communication in any relationship perhaps you can help. How many communication errors can you spot in the following line?

"If you just answer the question instead of being smug and condescending all the time it would be better."

Here's what I came up with:

1. "Just answer the question" -- a poorly couched demand. Consider this conversation:

"Hi, my computer screen went purple and it makes a beeping noise. I tried pressing the power button and it didn't work. Can you tell me what to do?"

"What were you doing when the problem occurred? Is this the first time it's happening? Have you tried restarting the computer?"

"Can you just answer my question?"

As you can see, that went nowhere pretty quickly. Even experts sometimes need more information to answer a question, and non-experts such as myself often do.


2. "Smug and condescending"

I assume you asked because you wanted an answer. How does calling me smug and condescending invite a response?

3. "All the time"

If I'm smug and condescending all the time, why are we even talking? The first bit of relationship advice you'll hear from any person/book/website/wise aunt is to avoid the words always and never. They're rarely accurate and add little to the conversation. Amplifying or diminishing faults and good qualities to absolutes is also the quickest way to lose your own perspective.

4. "it would be better."

Better for whom, and why? To me, "it would be better" if you held back on nasty adjectives.

It's only one line, a few words out of the millions we have spoken with each other over the years. I hope there will be several billion more. Yes, I could overlook this, as I've done countless others. "It's just a few words," my mother might tell me. "Why do you have to analyze everything so much? Why can't you stop criticizing and just let people be?"

I could, and I have, and I probably will. But for once, I wanted to say this: It's only words, but words are how we connect, how we break apart, how wars start and relationships die. Scream enough words at a tree or a person and you can kill their spirit. Words are worthless -- try telling a depressed person to get over it, try telling them they're loved. Words are priceless -- remember feeling safe simply from the sound of your father's voice, the thrill of hearing you had won an award.

It's only words, and it was just one chat, and they're only feelings, and it's only someone I've known all my life. But knowing someone well seems, to me, like an excellent reason to nourish conversations with thought and time and affection.

They're only words, but they're the only thing we have to span distances that are physical, mental, and emotional. Why not choose with kindness and with intention?

Home thoughts

Nine years to the day since I left home to find my own. The word I've  carried most frequently close all this while is this: "Belum" -- because in a different, simpler time, I learnt that it meant "not quite yet" in a language I don't speak.

Each day is still a little discovery, and I still spend months, even years, chasing falsehoods I construct. For instance, this past year I've told more people than I care to count how I've found a home in what I do, how I learned to belong in many different cities, languages, cultures. Is a lie more honest because I believed it, thought it true while I told it? It took a professor's wish for me to realize it's reality.

"What I want for you? I want to see you belong, truly belong, in a group of people," he told me over a late lunch that we ordered off a brunch menu.

I wondered at that, how he had noticed my stranger's soul through all my words of homecoming. And wondering, I realized that perhaps some of us only truly belong as outsiders. We can never go home, because we only belong in a space that is not-home, our hearts and minds only rested when they search, constantly.

A line from Mary Oliver, a poet I've just begun to read: "They say you spend your whole life re-writing the first poem you ever loved."

This isn't the first, but it's one of the dearest:

"I live my life in growing orbits
which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.
I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years,
and I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm,
or a great song."

(Growing Orbits, by Rilke)

What I might miss

Some days are productive because stories flow seamlessly and I check everything off my to-do list (this happens approximately once a year, at best.) Others are productive because of the hours I spend removing material from stories. No-one except myself knows the work I put into removing 100 words from a little news story that will slip into internet oblivion within a few hours, assuming it ever emerges from obscurity in the first place.

It would have been easy enough to let the two quotes slide. They added a little zing to my story, weren't entirely inaccurate, and would have been easily forgiven if found, I think. After all, I'm a journalist, they're the experts, and I faithfully reported what they told me. My previous editor would have chided me for being pedantic. My current editor didn't particularly care until I brought it up. Perhaps I am being a stickler, and I'd be more productive if I wrote fast and didn't stop to think. But I did, and I probably will every time I write.

Without an organization, an instructor or a boss to back me up, I'm the only one who can convince myself it was worth the extra hours and re-writing. This, I tell myself, is why it's called my reputation, not my editors' or my sources'. There's one misleading quote less among the reams of misinformation that inundate the interwebs. I've learned to fact-check at every single stage, even after an editor I trust reads my copy, even when I quote reputable sources who mean perfectly well. Some days, being productive is about spending three hours triple-checking my facts and teaching myself how not to screw up. Hello, freelance life.

Elemental

Some books have a way of coming home to roost. This one wandered in from a box left outside a library near a park, recommended by a friend as we browsed together. I sneezed over the musty pages, snuggled into the old-fashioned language, and remembered how a simple story can feel solid as the earth beneath my feet.

"She lent herself to immemorial human attitudes which we recognize by instinct as universal and true. She was a battered woman now, not a lovely girl; but she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one's breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things. She had only to stand in the orchard, to put her hand on a little crab tree and look up at the apples, to make you feel the goodness of planting and tending and rearing and harvesting at last. All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions."

(The book: My Antonia, by Willa Cather)

Warp

I'd be happier, I think, if I could forget a little more. As it is, strands of memory slip and snag through time as I try to weave this story of us, continuous, a wholly unbroken pattern through my life. Each time leaves a little knot in my pretty picture, the unblemished version I tell people when I say we've been friends for so long that we've known each other longer than we haven't.

But remembering, I begin to see more clearly -- not the picture I was so focused on crafting -- but the pattern of these snags, how different we are. How far apart we've grown, and the impossibility of a pattern where we stayed close through nearly two decades.

Was the picture in my mind just a pretty fiction? It would be foolish to say the knots are reality and my weave wasn't. The knots only exist, after all, because I was intent on forcing the threads together. And would there be a pattern to the snags if I had forgotten where and when each one occurred? Perhaps this other picture only exists because I see it now. Perhaps if I forgot, we could simply let the threads of our lives mesh where they would, unravel where they chose. Perhaps if I forgot, I could stop seeking patterns where there's merely happenstance.

The song without the words

We fought once again last week, over something she and I have argued for years. She's held down, she says, by children and house-keeping and a husband who does not understand her. How much she'd love to let go and be like the women who work, she tells me every so often. She'd love to have a career, go out and buy her own drinks, dress up and be more than just caregiver and home-maker.

So do it, I tell her. Nothing stops you, not your two-year-old or your eight-year-old, not the house or your husband. Figure out what you want to do and make it happen. Hope and dreams are only the spirit of it all. The heft of getting what you want comes from commitment. Give it effort, set your goals firm, create the body of this life you claim you want.

We fight, and she backs into her self-righteous shell again. I don't know what it's like to be a mom, or to have an un-supportive husband. It's easier, I think, for her to believe in her helplessness than in her immense capacity to do and be everything she claims she wants. After all these years, I know better than to cry over her. Her words are as fickle as her moods, and tomorrow she'll harangue me about having kids soon, because they are so much more satisfying than anything I might do with my life.

I don't doubt her words anymore. I think, in her mind, she truly does see herself as helpless, trapped in her little house and life, unable to build anything greater than her misery.

Today, tonight, I feel her shell. I know, for perhaps the first time in my life, what it is to NOT have a way to get what I want. To be clear, I don't always achieve everything I aim for. Nine times out of ten I fall short, or it takes me three times as long as it should have, or I realize I was heading in the wrong direction and switch tracks. But in every one of those attempts, I knew what the results of my actions should be, and what I'd do if method A didn't work, or plan B fell through.

For the first time, I have no control over the outcomes of my actions. I feel completely helpless even as I work toward my goals, and know that if I fail, I must start over again at the beginning. The experience and the effort do not count, this time. There is nothing to be learnt, except perhaps how to process sorrow.

I do as I'm told, and I listen when well-meaning souls like my mother or friends tell me to take care, be strong, have faith, expect a miracle. But when there are no guarantees that hard work and following the instructions will bring me what I want, I don't know how to do this thing called hope. Without the solid presence of knowing the commitment and effort count for something, hope flops over and dies too easily. Even as I mop up the blood and check for a pulse, it is gone quicker than it flickered alive. How do you hope, when nothing you can do gives that hope a physical form?

For now, I turn to the miracles I know. The impossibility of genetics, and yet, here we are. Human flesh and form, a million species on a piece of rock hurtling around an impossible star, an improbable universe. What are the chances that life as we know it could have existed? Atoms bunched together from stardust, molecules that bumped together in a primordial ocean, clumped into a living, breathing planet. An intricate dance of chromosomes that split and recombine and keep us going. The miracle of comets, of the earth, of us. Life finds a way, as a fictitious mathematician once said. And perhaps this hope will too.

Waiting

I spend a lot of time waiting. Okay, fine, procrastinating. After a while, the lines start to blur. So much of writing is this space where I wait for sources to respond to interview requests, editors to accept my stories, or instructors to respond to questions.

The one thing I'm much better at is not waiting for inspiration to strike. Feeling creative, I've learned, is 99% about refusing to look up from the page until I get the damn thing written. Sometimes the "not looking up" takes the form of a run, or a long shower, or cooking up a week's worth of food. But through it all the words fester and somehow, at the end of whatever process a piece takes, a story appears. I don't wait for words as often as I used to. This isn't to say there isn't panic, desperation, horrible first drafts and much worse. But I can make them happen. There's little waiting.

It's easy to wait, people say, when you distract yourself and keep busy. I have no dearth of things that must be done. Some are time-sensitive, others less so. I have hard deadlines, even in these last few days of spring break. Appointments, reading, research for new projects, prepping my house and life for another ten-week sprint of classes, assignments and other madness. There's so much to occupy my mind. This waiting should be easy. Instead, it balloons effortlessly to fill every crevice in my brain.

The list  lies untended, while the waiting blossoms into a life of its own. It weighs my limbs down, lifts my fluttering heart into my throat, reduces words to meaninglessness. This waiting, it has grown into my whole self until I cannot give shape to what it is I am waiting for. An email. A phone call. A test result. A feeling. A life. The little delays meld into a formless whole, a waiting presence in the midst of what should be a mad rush to get the rest done. Distractions, work  -- even sleep -- fall to the wayside as this grows, this waiting. I lie awake, and when I dream I hold a talisman, bright blue and cats-eye to ward off some unknown evil. I could not tell you why it is I held it to my lips as I dreamed last night. When I woke I remembered the colors, the feel of the cold stone against my fingers, as though the cold and bright would hasten the end of the wait.

And all of this when I know full well there isn't an end. There will always be another editor, another story, another medicine. It's called being alive and a grown-up. In my brain, I know this. And still, I
struggle as though somehow, the world will be different at the end of my watch.

A little like rain

Rain's been on my mind, as it has for most people in California. But the lack of each drop hits my consciousness a little harder as I drive to my current workplace, 60 miles south of Silicon Valley. Surrounded by farmland, priorities for what a local newspaper should cover shift.

And as I write my "big" climate change story for them, my mind shifts too, now noticing fields turning grey-brown with dust, lands that lie fallow and parched. I am more careful than ever with my showers, with the dishes. As if my turning a tap off could bring prosperity back to these spaces.

The few sprinkles of rain so far have tinged the roadsides and hills a pale green. The air is fresh, the views gentler as I drive. It isn't enough to quench the land, but at least it refreshes our eyes, so tired of brown.

These little things -- struggling farmers, a lack of rain -- they'd skim so easily off international science journals, or editors' plates. Hardly anyone would pay attention to my little story. 1800 words in a daily newspaper with a circulation of 6000. A blog post about cats grabs more eyes than that.

But the story mattered to me, perhaps more than any I've written so far. And I said so, loud and clear, to editors at the two biggest journals there are. I said it's the best thing I've written, and look, this matters. Perhaps not to your impact factor, but to that salad you're eating as you read this.

I was selected for internships at both places, perhaps based on that pitch. For the span of one lovely, too-short day, editors from both publications stopped me in the hallways at a conference to ask if I'd be joining their magazine. I've spent three years waiting to gather my confidence/experience/wits enough to speak to them. For a brief while, I had some measure of all three.

For the span of a few days, I had no uncertainty about my place in this business, or calling myself a writer. For a little while, I was a small fraction ahead of the hundreds of other writers starting out in this game. For that small time, I was soaring, at peace with my choices and potential to make a living.

To be clear, this is only a ten-week internship, not an actual job that pays a living wage. But I'm fickle enough to be driven to tears or rants by one assignment. And a sprinkle of rain can lift my spirits, even if it doesn't quench deeper thirsts.

Light in dark places

So many voices lend themselves to fear. Gladly they clamor in my head, swooping in dark noisy crowds. There the voice of the award-winning journalist who will read my essay, and laugh of course. There the voice of my classmate, surprised at my ineptitude. There my editors waiting for my overdue draft. There the other who cannot be bothered to edit such poor work. There my instructor who doubted me from the first. There myself afraid of being labelled trite, silly, cliched. There my doctors, screeching against my sleepless nights. There myself trying to plan three things at once. They bounce and echo in mocking delight as I duck and cover. 

Their squawks grab words out of my throat before I can voice them. My silence cannot compete with the voices. I duck and cover, and fail to write. 

This time, the charm I struggle to remember isn't one of light, but a different darkness. On a deserted campus, near the one gate to the football field. My room lay at the other end of that unlit swath, in a building deserted as only a college can feel during the summer break. The tree by the gate filled with a silent swarm of fluttering bats. Without a light, without a friend, I closed my eyes and walked through, untouched. If only I could muster up a similar quiet in my mind today. 

Ordinary

There's a smudge on the grainy black and white screen. It shifts in and out of focus as we feel our way around it.

"It's shaped like a cat," I say. The doctor laughs and agrees as she traces its outlines. She tells me how big it is, which half familiar-looking and which part new. One part that's hung around harmlessly, the other inching out fingers for food.

She isn't as talkative as she usually is. I feel more pain than usual from this now-routine procedure. We both fall silent as the sound waves bounce around within, pinging off organs as she marks them off for size, weight, shape. We don't know any more than this, for now: This is not usual. How unusual, she's not sure.

We won't do anything just yet, she says, but wait and watch. Nothing's wrong enough to warrant more invasive measures. But it's not quite fine either. For now, we pick the lesser of two evils.

For a while we talk of what might happen with surgery, and what comes next. She mentions the risks and it's my turn to probe. It is easier to be in journalist mode here, ask what might happen. What does it look like, when a shell designed to bear life rips apart in the process? At what stage is it a problem, how much blood spills over, does it harm mother or child and when?

I want to know how much blood a "2-5% risk" can spill. How far it can seep into my life, how permanently it can scar.

We've had these conversations before, she and I. She's one of the brightest doctors I know, and we talk, often, of her PhD and mine, of my science writing and her conferences. So it's normal for her to begin to draw charts and tell me what happens to such children. Until she stops herself short: This isn't a side of things you should be thinking about right now. Why were you reading about second-trimester miscarriages anyway? For work, I answer. I was reading feature stories and personal essays as I try to write my own assignments.

But we cut this short, and agree we will wait and watch. Another month, perhaps two. These things die on their own sometimes. They choke when they can't feed, then twist and blacken on their stalks until they're small enough to lurk once more.

I'm not good with odds, though. I'm the kid who reacted to fluorescent dye. The girl who was sick for two days after tooth surgery. The woman who over-reacted to the less harmless drug, that fewer than 5% of women react to. So I really would like to know what 2-5% means for me and any future child, even if it is a small risk.

A month, perhaps two, which I will fill with proving, over and over again, that I am extraordinary. I will attend networking events, meet deadlines through sleepless nights, establish my fine command of journalism and science. Over and over again, in thousands of words and smiles, I will proclaim I am not their usual candidate. I'm one of the top candidates they'll have, as my program director (and tireless mentor) will remind me and them. I take edits seriously, and can bring abstract concepts to life with vivid language, he says.

The growth is shaped like a small black cat, its ears perked high, mouth puckered as it sips blood.

All my life, I wanted to be in that top 5%. I tried to excel, ride the rare wave that's always ahead of the curve, stand out from the rest. Except now, when I want nothing more than to be ordinary. Just another woman who has a child, like people have always had them. For this grainy, black and white smudge to dissolve into snipped off tissue and clot, as such things are supposed to do. Be gone the next time we look, little cat.


(This isn't cause for worry. I'm not having a child, or seriously ill, or even in physical pain. It's just something in my life that's been on my mind, and in my body, for a while. I'm figuring out how to deal with it, as I usually am when I write here.)

Of cooking and answers.

Her inability to cook was, for the longest time, a pointed, personal attack. Against me the independent woman supporting myself. Me the girl who taught herself to cook. Me who learned to cook for myself, not to feed my husband or because my parents expected me to. It was an affront to this grand version of "me" -- a person who had never meant to learn to be domestic but pulled it off anyway.

She, on the other hand, was brought up in the traditional ways. She drew kolams and married early, followed her husband obediently, did as her parents asked. But she'd never learned to cook. More, she hadn't learned to live on salads, bread and the many kinds of food that do not require anyone to cook. She wanted elaborate Indian food, and I was the one stuck providing it.

I complained and blogged, and eventually moved far enough away that I'm no longer concerned with what, or if, she eats. It's been five years, and I never figured out why she was in my life.

Until today, when I was forced to come up with a sharp moment of clarity that changed the way I do things.

Because of her, I don't think of cooking as a domestic chore. It's about having fun, taking care of yourself, and enjoying what you create. It's also about getting over grandiose notions of who I am, and just turning the heat on under the rice cooker, which anyone -- even she -- can do. Because of her, I now have a story to tell.

This simple thing

You say you are afraid, like no-one else. You are more unsure than you have ever been. You are depressed, like never before. You turn to me with these things: fear. lack of confidence. mistrust. sadness. anger. doubt. unhappiness.

I think, in these conversations you seek: comfort. reassurance. healing. confidence.

And here I think to myself, perhaps you want to hear that you are not so alone. That countless others have felt this way, even though you feel like the first. I could whip my own angst-ridden words out, the ones I never hit publish on. I could tell you I know what it is like to hear dark voices in your mind all day long. I could tell you of the way this darkness coats my mind even as I smile and network and write, through days and nights and weeks.

In my impatience, all I want to tell you is -- none of the above. Just this, what I tell myself: Get over it. You're not the first or the last to have felt this way. And there are better things you could do than coddle these emotions.

But I'm trying, instead to remember this: Perhaps you are not the first to be in this space. But perhaps this is not what you want to hear. Perhaps you like being alone in your fear, cradling it like the only thing you can feel close to. Perhaps you do not seek comfort or healing. Perhaps you do. I'm not you, and don't know.

But this know for sure: For me, this moment is a time to learn to be kind. To listen softly, in the now, to how you feel. If only I can learn to silence the voice in my head that says: Been there done that. Move on. If only I could move on too, from these simple lessons.

Between the words

This long absence has been a different presence. In the real world, there are names, identities, responsibilities, deadlines. Even if I'd rather be exploring experiences in self-reflective words, flights land and drafts are due and the world, my real world, spins on by. For a while, it's easier to just spin along and see what we churn up together, the real world and I. So far, there's this:

Quit my job for a degree in writing.

Learning that I get annoyed -- extremely, justifiably, so -- when people come up and talk to me about this blog.

I don't care who you are. This blog is not a communication from me to you. It is not a means to solicit your opinion of my life or actions. It is a collection of personal reflections, some more foolish than others. If you'd like to discuss them, leave me a comment. Don't, under any circumstances, say -- "Hey, I read your website and here's what I think!" If I wanted to initiate a real-world conversation with you on the subject, I would have.

The difference between a hyphen and an em- dash. Yay grammar!

Realized that I still think of grammar and finances only in French. I can't explain English tenses, but I'm your person if you want to learn about plus-que-parfait. Ou la bourse.

And most of all, this:

Accepting that this blog is probably going to stay quiet for a while longer. As I transition to a full-time career as a writer, work and life aren't as separate as they once were. Words distinct to each are sparser, and I'm still thinking through where the common ones should go.







  

Dream a dream

In the dream I stood by a beach in what was a bit of an adventure. After classes at college that day I'd taken a walk to the beach, a short walk to a famous place. I lived in a land where I knew the language well enough to speak it, be heard and understood, but not well enough to call it my own, my mother tongue. The beach was everything promised. Fabled pillars of ancient stone, steps down to the crashing waves. I stood for hours, watching the stones turn to rose and gold, the beach turn dark and the steps recede to grey echoes in the dusk. As I climbed back up, the waves were already washing over the lowest few.

I walked through the tall pillars, up and down flights of stone stairs, past huge doors bolted many years ago to block out wanderers from the present (I'm not sure such a ruin exists at the beach in reality, since I've never been there). And I was lost. I couldn't find the short walk from the campus that I'd taken, and the unfamiliar roads were deserted. Not a soul on the streets, no transportation, only locked doors. This is where the dream gets a little fuzzy. I could speak this unfamiliar language to the people I met, but no one understood me. I managed to find a rickshaw who offered to take me home for an exorbitant amount of money. I got in, only to find the driver had other plans. I'm not sure quite how I managed to get him to take me back to the ruins. Somewhere there I thought I might find a safer alternative. It was a popular landmark, and I could call someone to come pick me up, at least.

So I called him, the person I had moved to this city for. Terrible cell phone reception, and he didn't hear or understand anything beyond that I had gone out, and would be late getting home. He wasn't curious or concerned. After a long while of fidgeting with the phone, I called my mother, and she could barely hear me. It was even later, and I was sobbing-screaming by now. "I don't know if you can hear me. If you can, please call a cab to get me home and let _ know I'm okay."

I don't know how the dream ended, if she heard me or the cab came. I don't know if in my sleep, I found home. I do know that I didn't understand this yesterday, though it has lingered and weighed me down since I woke. Since I woke, I'm still not home. I have not been for a long time. And only now do I have the words to voice this.

Our conversation this morning makes it clear. I live in your world. Even this far from tradition and native tongues, I stepped into your world five years ago. I don't know if you are aware of this. But I live in a world where the only resolution is what I think your father's way was- one of non-communication, unilateral decisions, wall-building, hurt fostered by an absence of words, an unwillingness to work past hurt to heal.

This is not a world where my words will help. I can speak the words of this unfamiliar language, but should not expect to be heard or understood. I can try to find help, even pay exorbitant amounts of money for it. But this help will not take me past the ruins. I will find myself here, time and time again, in space framed by locked doors and formidable pillars that have stood for years. Make no mistake, it is a beautiful place. One where the waves crash over weathering steps and water, light and wind make a world of wonder every sunset and sunrise. It is paradise, for a few minutes each day. The rest is dark, towering, walls I crash into  when I try to feel my way through or out.

Only after our conversation do I understand yesterday's dream. And here is my solution of sorts. While in limbo, trapped in your childhood, I revert to mine. Write down fights verbatim in an effort to logic them out. Listen to the other person without judgment. Use words to understand first, not express. Don't change things you don't understand. Do these things and insight will come, as sure as wind and night sky.

There's a somewhat silly poem in a children's book I particularly love. It's a little reminiscent of the Alchemist to me, the part where the boy calls on the sun and wind and cloud and they answer. But they are only to be used when you know, completely, who you stand with, and what you stand against.

"With _ in this fateful hour,
I place all heaven with its power,
And the sun with its brightness,
And the snow with its whiteness,
And the fire with all the strength it hath,
And the lightning with its rapid wrath,
And the winds with their swiftness along their path, 
And the sea with its deepness, 
And the rocks with their steepness, 
And the earth with its starkness,
All these I place,
Between myself and the powers of darkness." 

(A swiftly tilting planet, Madeline L'Engle)

A few silly words, yes. But they give me comfort as I live this dream. Perhaps there will be others when I wake.

The promise of yesterday

Tomorrow is ethereal and familiar. It shines on horizons, shimmers just past fingertips, glows in morning light and casts pearly sparkles of future bliss in your eyes today. Tomorrow's promise is flimsy as air, vanishing like mist as the sun rises over the ocean.

Yesterday is what remains. Like stubble that leaves your skin raw, like the warm smell of a lover's skin that rises up in your mind the next day. Like thorns prickling in the crook of your elbow, like old aches that stab your flesh when it rains. Like the feel of an old gift against your skin, like healing bruises that catch the nip in the air today a little harder. Like breath catching in your throat as you remember. Yesterday is forever, regrets and all. Yesterday promises that you will remember pain, know fear, be fearless. Yesterday promises to remind you that you are wiser, and you may even be braver by tomorrow.

Get the coffee to go

Show me a person who's good at "networking", and at least half the time you can be sure you're looking at someone who has learnt how to talk to themselves in private- In parking lots, restroom stalls, broom closets and for those lucky enough to have them, office with doors that close (and aren't made of glass).

What they say to themselves you may never know, and it would be rather self-defeating to spend this post telling you what I tell myself before I must do this thing called being nice to people I don't know very well. Instead, for my own reference and possibly yours, a list of things to remember (this may or may not be the list you read to yourself before you open that door) about networking, in no particular order:

• Note from an incredibly wise person, read by twelve-year-old-me, paraphrased from memory: "Introversion is a form of a vanity. It means you spend more time thinking about yourself and your reactions than you do about other things/people."  
• Networking isn't about "putting yourself out there". It's about opening the doors so other people can step in if they choose. 
• Most people love to talk about themselves (introverts included. We're often the worst offenders). Ask about them. Learn who they are. Genuinely want to know this other person.
• Just for a while, forget your frame of reference. Know them from their shoes. When they offer a bit of themselves, receive it gracefully. Graciously. Not with, "Oh, interesting, because I feel the same way/disagree/think that..". Just "Interesting, tell me more about.."
• When they feel comfortable, they will want to know you too, this person they have let in. Then you have a connection that works- a "network" of two, if you will. 
• Networking is about believing that just for a little while, you have a dream that is strong enough to push you past the limits you've set for yourself. You have to "want to fly so much that you're willing to give up being a caterpillar." Yes, it hurts, and so what? And yes, your dream may crash and die tomorrow. But for now, it is here and alive, so give it a chance.
• Networking is about knowing that you, the you that wants whatever it is you're reaching for, is (most likely) going to be in a better place than the you that would rather curl up on the couch with the ice-cream. 
• Sometimes, before you take that call/ pick up the phone/ answer that email/ open the door to the meeting room, networking is just about telling yourself to just do this now, and tomorrow, tomorrow you can get the coffee to go and not speak to a soul, and today will be just fine.  

How you read me

I'm reading a book about how we, as readers and writers, read stories. The writer describes the process of reading in metaphors of painting, moving through landscapes physical and emotional. He recounts Anna Karenina sitting on a train with her book, how she jostles back and forth between the world of her moving train and her book until the book story grows strong enough to pull her into it, away from her own. I, of course, read this on my own jostling, moving train ride.

He writes as a writer who reads, weaving words through classic essays and novels to tell a tale of how we write. He tells of his own journey from naive writer to sentimental and finding equilibrium between the two. Somewhere, this swing of his narrative echoes my own. Reading this is a bit like walking a long trail and finding a little pile of stones that says someone else was here.

And somewhere in this arc it is no longer I who read the book, but the words that find a part of my journey. They name this road and its travelers with their meaning, and in this naming we are read, and we are known. In this knowing I read, and find a self in the words.

 (the book: 'The naive and the sentimental novelist', Orhan Pamuk)

Success

"To leave the world a better place/ Whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition (...) this is to have succeeded." -Emerson

I firmly believe that each of us can (and perhaps even should) aim to do all three. The important thing to remember, however, is not to try to do all three at once.

Life is a little confused right now. Usually, I'd come here and attempt to write the dilemmas to a solution, but this one time, there is no clear single road. The decisions are all mine as are the consequences. For the first time, I'm struck by how little free will I've exerted in my career choices thus far. Voiced preference and attempts to go certain places, of course. But never before have I placed one definitive step before another, knowing that there can be no going back, not entirely knowing what lies ahead. (or perhaps I have, and only did not have quite as much riding on my shoulders as I pushed my feet  off the ground.)

In any case, there is confusion, unrest. I visit this space often to find the second sight I named this blog after. And I visit, and read, and feel a little more at peace. The only decision I can try to make is to do less harm, with every step and every choice. Less harm in every way. To relationships, to family, to people unknown. To myself, physically, emotionally, intellectually. To the earth, in this 50 miles of it that I cross twice each day. Less harm  and more peace, with every action. So I read this little prayer for peace below and need no other words, just for a little while.

Pray for peace

Pray for Peace (- Ellen Bass)

Pray to whomever you kneel down to

Jesus nailed to his wooden or marble or plastic cross,
His suffering face bent to kiss you,
Buddha still under the Bo tree in the scorching heat,
Adonai, Allah. Raise your arms to Mary
That she may lay her palm on our brows,
To Shekinah, Queen of Heaven and Earth,
To Inanna in her stripped descent.

Hawk or Wolf, or the Great Whale Record Keeper
Of time before, time now, time ahead,
To terriers and shepherds and Siamese cats.
Fields of artichokes and elegant strawberries.

Pray to the bus driver who takes you to work,
pray on the bus, pray for everyone riding that bus
and for everyone riding buses all over the world.
If you haven't been on a bus in a long time,
climb the few steps, drop some silver, and pray.

Waiting in line for the movies, for the ATM,
for your latte and croissant, offer your plea.
Make your eating and drinking a supplication.
Make your slicing of carrots a holy act,
each translucent layer of the onion, a deeper prayer.

Make the brushing of your hair
a prayer, every strand its own voice
singing in the choir on your head.
As you wash your face, the water slipping
through your fingers, a prayer: water,
softest thing in earth, gentleness
that wears away rock.

Making love, of course, is already a prayer.
Skin and open mouths worshipping that skin,
The fragile case we are poured into,
each caress a season of peace.

If you're hungry, pray. If you're tired.

Pray to Gandhi and Dorothy Day
Shakespeare, Sappho, Sojourner Truth.
Pray to the angels and the ghost of your grandfather.

When you walk to your car to the mailbox,
to the video store, let each step
be a prayer that we all keep our legs,
that we do not blow off anyone else's legs
or crush their skulls.
And if you are riding on a bicycle
or a skateboard, in a wheelchair, each revolution
of the wheels a prayer that as the earth revolves
we will do less harm, less harm, less harm.

And as you work, typing with a new manicure
a tiny palm tree painted on one pearlescent nail,
or delivering soda, or drawing good blood
into rubber-capped vials, writing on a blackboard
with yellow chalk, twirling pizzas, pray for peace.

With each breath in, take in the faith of those
who have believed when belief seemed foolish,
who persevered. With each breath out, cherish.

Pull weeds for peace, turn over in your sleep for peace,
feed the birds for peace, each shining seed
that spills onto the earth another second of peace.
Wash your dishes, call your mother, drink wine.

Shovel leaves or snow or trash from your sidewalk.
Make a path. Fold a photo of a dead child
around your Visa card. Gnaw your crust
of prayer, scoop your prayer water from the gutter.
Mumble along like a crazy person, stumbling
your prayer through the streets.

As it begins

This year began for me with a sunrise hike up a mountain- one that is only about ten miles away from where we live, with a gentle yet unrelenting incline up winding paths that lead a little over 2500 feet over the bay. A hot breakfast and an unexpected dessert, as the restaurant handed out freebies to mark the day. Follow that up with a relaxed day of long naps and lazy reading.

And I wish the rest of the year is marked like this day - small challenges to keep us active, unexpected sweetness,  much rest and many good words.

Perfectly irrational

Be warned, this post is a several years-overdue rant about a book I hated the first time I read it. There, now it's out.

I'm an indiscriminate lover of words, and I will read anything, almost. Even as I crib about a horribly written novel, I will finish reading it- its an instinct something like being unable to take your eyes away from a train wreck or a massacre. Given this, it takes quite a bit to make me stop reading an award-winning book that comes highly recommended by several people with impeccable taste.

It's got a fantastic story. A boy and a little zoo adrift in the Pacific in a  tiny lifeboat. You know the one, don't you?

A completely unbelievable story, of a boy and a tiger and their strange names and even stranger relationship. That I found completely plausible. But I've never heard a government official or a hotel concierge in India use the word 'bamboozle'. In fact, I've only ever heard it used in the most amused contexts, always with implied humor. Never met a Muslim man or woman with the name Kumar. Never, ever met a child of less than ten who "loved religion". Loved God? Possibly. Loved temples, or churches, or rituals? Certainly. But "I loved religion", coming from an eight or twelve year old? No.

Add to that a semi-traditional mother and a liberal/ atheist father in South India. Expect that these parents will be accepting of their ten year old running off to namaz or confession or pray endlessly to the deities of three religions. Once again, no and no. Add to this the thirty chapters of introducing animal behavior, which are essentially a schoolboy's essay version of Gerald Durrell's theories on zoos.

And even if I were to believe it all, pretending it part of some magical adventure, there is no narrative spell strong enough to pull these incongruous threads into that little boat. Even with my meager editorial skills, I could have cut every reference of religion out of the book, and it would still be an amazing story.

That is to me the part that hurts the most. If the unneccessary words hadn't gotten in the way, this would be an even greater story than it is. The book, as a whole, feels like an attempt to make a perfect line through a perfect circle in an even hundred chapters just went terribly wrong, adrift on choppy detail that nearly drowns a story that really will make you believe in God.

Just this once, watch the movie instead.

(In case it wasn't clear from the annoyed introduction, I did actually, finally finish reading the book this week, on the third try.)

Tourist

Screaming at someone who doesn't understand what I say is rather like being the annoying tourist who thinks if he/she just speaks loud enough, the locals will understand.

Raising my voice doesn't automagically improve the way my words reach you. A different communication must stem from training my words to find a path through the landscape of your experience and understanding. Screaming is hacking a path through the woods with fire and wood choppers, communicating might be hands gently pressing the undergrowth apart to make contact with the understanding earth beneath.

But so heavily and intensely, this relies on the faith that you, the local, are in this with me, trying to figure out this path together with the least destruction to whatever's blocking us. I have to trust that you aren't smirking at my dumbness in your world, understanding my words but pretending not to because it suits you, not because if you pretend to not understand then I'll stop trying, stop forcing paths that you don't particularly like.

Death

Don't worry, this isn't the start of a sixteen year old's poem with a Big Noun title. It's a simpler question.

Suddenly death seems to loom larger in my life- people around me are growing older, and bad things tend to happen to grown-ups rather often, it seems. There are accidents and cancer and scary diseases that go undetected, and in the last two years, five people I shared different parts of my life with are gone. Relatives, teachers, friends, acquaintances. And there are those that count their lives in the ticking clock of chemotherapy.

And I'm curious, how do you deal with it? Do you hold the ones near you closer, do you feel icy fingers slipping over your own time on the planet? Do you race faster to the end, since you don't know quite when it will be? Do you belittle your own problems in the light of these bigger ones? How do you honor their memory and make them count without losing a little of yourself in this slip-sliding count-up or down or whatever it is you call the march of time?

At a conference this week, I learned it is best to use quotes from sources sparingly when one writes. Use your own voice, said this best-selling writer of sixteen books. In the particular anecdote I'd like to put down today, I am not sure whose voice echoes the strongest.

At sixteen and a half, I doubt it was mine. There were so many- friends who had got into colleges with fancy names, friends who knew precisely what their career path was going to be. Parents who distressed over what I was doing with my life. Teachers who did a double take when I said I was going to study English. I was confused, and angry, and had heard enough of other opinions and words. She called me out from where I lingered at the back of the group, and asked what I was going to do in college. She was the first person who said to me, "But of course you should be a writer."

She told me I was "confident and poised and warm"  - though which sixteen year old ever is? We reconnected fifteen years later. She was no longer teaching at my high school. She had moved, from Bombay to Delhi, and in response to my message said, "Of course I remember you, and I'm so glad you are a writer now." She was, even after all these years, the teacher who could bring out the best in her students with just a few words. Her daughter, a few years older than I, was married with a toddler.

My teacher herself was battling metastatic breast cancer. 21 infected lymph nodes. I know the odds. But still, I wasn't expecting her to be gone in these few short months. Just like that, no responses, and a message from another teacher saying she is no more.

The memory of those exchanges now weighs a little heavier on my days. Without her to share them, I must remember, all on my own, that of course I must be a writer, and I can be confident and poised and warm. And so I try to raise my voice and lift my words to match her graceful spirit.

Losing sleep.

Some tell me I push too hard, too much, too often. Remember to relax and re-charge, they tell me. Mother, husband, friend, acquaintance. There are many voices in my life that remind me to do this. To stop pushing and striving and demanding and doing, and learn to wait. To give things time, and let them take their own time.

And still there is a whisper beneath them more insistent that will not be stopped. It comes to me at night when jagged bits of un-reasoned life poke me awake, remind me that there is less time than I think, and more   I must do, and perhaps, if only I do the more, the pieces will fit. And the whisper reminds me always of those who didn't have, who couldn't, who weren't as fortunate, who fell, who died. Like this name I removed from an e-mail list today.

I had only heard it in passing, and looked him up to update his address. Freelance science writer for Scientific American and others. Author of one book. Dead by his own hand at 31 last year.

The easiest thing to take and the hardest to give: Time.

Like green

Like sun-filled trees, like the lights on a long drive home, like the parrots that shriek against the sky by the bay as you walk to the train. Like hearing what you've waited years for. Like being able to ignore opinions that wait to lunge down your throat. Like knowing that you are, that you can. Like being able, just for a day, to be anything you want to be, and anything is everything that you wanted and you can, in fact, have it all.

Like knowing that the earth you toiled and worried and broke your heart over and hoped, hoped beyond hoping that it existed is now. Like having all the answers, and all the answers are yes.

Some days can be like this. And I hold their glistening hearts against my own as a reminder that green gives way to fruition, all warmth and effort congealed in some glorious unknown yet-to-be that I must trust will come. It must, with all this green.

Friend

In a room full of people, my attention is drawn instantly, inexplicably to the one with the stories. I see it in her eyes, in the way she holds my gaze when she asks what city I come from. We are very different, she and I, but I lean into her story as she does into mine.

I ignore the girl who comes to my dance class, slightly too content with her life that is so similar to mine. I ignore the girl who sits back with a polite smile that tells me she hasn't thought of a different life. At dinner this weekend, I realized how the people I am closest to aren't those who have learned to be content with their lives and pick out the prettiest dinnerware, but those who still struggle some deep unknown internal fight to BE.

Be someone bigger/better/stronger/fuller/greater/quieter/louder. Be more than just what they are. And it is only in this particular being that they somehow are completely present, a little off balance with the awareness of this edge of something more, something waiting.

In thinking back and forth, these are the people I am drawn to. The ones with stories, who have flown through personal storms small or large, only some of which they choose to share with me. But I can tell, when limbs and smiles are curved with the strength of a survivor, when a question draws me in on a secret flight through a high desert wind and it tastes like thirst and pain and growth and just a little bit of knowing, knowing that you and I might have traveled different roads but still, we have traveled. And we remember the journey and how it changed us.

Mountainspeak

Not all mountains speak with the sun-warmed nurturing voice of the earth. Some rise up to trickle glacial fingers down your spine as you walk in their midst, reminding you that you never were truly one with them. Some speak alien mother-tongues and demand your attention. Some thread fear through every step as forest undergrowth towers over your head, scrapes your skin and leaves you with a vague, irritated itch.

We walked several miles through these mountains, a group of people who have grown together and apart and still together again. I am still figuring out how we mesh. We hold each other close in heart and geography, speaking constantly of times we were warmed by our togetherness. And some of these words turn my heart to ice as I determinedly forget the lies. And some of these words remind me of our differences. And some of them thread fear through our collective walks, as my mind turns all of our past exchanges into a forest of words that scrape just under my skin.

But still, the mountains are filled with light and color. Not all mountains speak in warm, earth tinged tones. Some speak with the voice of light filtering through wind-rippled leaves, lifting heated exchanges with a fresh take on a tired subject. Some words lie refreshing as ice against a warm palm, as I remember why I grew close to these friends. And some follow our separate ways home like echoes on the wind, in phone calls and photographs and plans for another trip.

Mountains, like people, speak like earth and ice, water and tree. None is any less a part of the mountain because I choose to perceive it more than the other, and each is only one part of the long walks we take together.

I've been meaning not to write.

Littered through my drafts folder are 7 posts between the last one and this. I've been meaning not to write about certain things, subjects I deemed too personal or too repetitive to bring up here, where I come to learn and introspect and scream, and sometimes brood over the ways events may be remembered or forgotten.

And yet, perhaps I should write about these for that same reason. Little significances, like learning the value of a good night's sleep. And a multi-vitamin, and calcium. (Really- whatever else you do or do not do, get your calcium.) Taking five minutes a day to breathe. Taking the time to be kind, rather than being impulsively truthful. (Just because someone asks for the truth doesn't mean they can handle it, particularly when your 'truth' is different from theirs.)
Facing my fears. Having difficult conversations.
Taking big leaps of faith. It will all work out in the end.

Feeling nearer resolution, of what sort I am still unclear. But it makes me stronger, and surer of my actions, and kinder with myself and others. When summer rolled around this year, it still carried the memory of an ice storm in Niagara Falls, and my uncle visiting. And the smell of cherries still takes me back to a dark highway crash in Washington, as does a certain make of car I spot far too frequently on my morning commute. And these small darknesses flicker too strongly through those seven unpublished drafts.

Though it is years since I thought of seasons or events in black or white, this summer has been unusually filled with these shadows, perhaps of change that flits between the bright and dark. Perhaps they only lurk as they wait for a different season, a season where shadows belong and can step into clear light. And when they will, perhaps they will bring explanatory, resolutionary, interesting words with them to share.

I've been meaning not to write, as I wait with open mind and blank space for these.

Haiku day

An unexpected not-quite holiday.
Short sharp bursts of experience-
On a bright day in a city by the bay
Farmers market, right on the pier-
Sun shine on street stalls of trinkets
Tin buckets of spring flowers
Red-white awnings against rippling ocean
Tasting cheeses, a few hours fresh
Smells of food-
asparagus tempura (last of the season!)
ramen, roasting meats
Blue bottle coffee.
A train to take-
but no particular time to be anywhere.
Each moment a little poem in itself.

Go West. Or East.

Considering how advanced technology is and how connected we are and all that, this question really should not be that hard to figure out. I drive a car with not one, not two, but THREE GPS units in it. There's the fancy built-in unit that came with the car. So hoity-toity that she will not respond if the car is in motion. No frantic scrolling through stored addresses as I slow to a stop at a red light. The GPS lady (as we call the female voice its set to) demands full attention- pull over and focus on every non-QWERTY letter on the remarkably insensitive screen if you want polite direction and re-direction.

Then there's the recently acquired smartphone, which deserves a whole other post (I cannot be the only person in the world who misses being able to run my fingers over the keypad to dial without looking, can I?). My smart-aleck phone rarely pays any attention to where we actually are, which makes figuring out how to get to where I'd like to go quite a task. And last of all, there's the trusty old GPS we were gifted when we first moved across the country, my personal favorite. Though she hangs out in the glove compartment mostly unused, guess which one I grab when I must find directions as I drive, or simply want an estimate of a route to jog my memory.

Yet all these devices rarely help me answer with conviction questions like which North-bound or South-bound highway to take, or whether _Expressway East or West will get me from A to B. Though I am growing quickly used to carrying a crisscrossed mental map of typical destinations and highways in my head, it does little to help me find my way home on some evenings.

Driving back from a relatively familiar geography, I pause between on-ramps, unsure which to take. Until I remember that the Sun sets behind me when I take this route on Sunday evenings, and so I go East, and homeward.

Naya lagta hai

My little sister is off to college in a city far from the one she's grown up in. She's started a blog. She's been visiting family, and she wrote recently of watching another cousin, just turning two, and wondering about herself at that age. Obviously, she doesn't remember much.

I can't say that I do either, since we lived in different cities then, as we have most of our lives. But she visited us when she was that age, and I was twelve or thirteen. Across the street from our house in Delhi were three eucalyptus trees planted against a red brick wall that marked the government-run market. Tall, dusky green and white against the red, I painted and sketched them many times over, the view of them from the littlest bedroom in the front of the house.

In strong winds the trees would bend and swoosh in patterns unlike any of the other trees, unlike the neem and kikar and gulmohur that lined the rest of the street. My then two year old cousin had seen nothing like this in her little life, and she ran wordlessly from the window to the back of the house, as far from the trees as she could get. When I followed her in to ask why, the only thing she would tell me was: "Naya lagta hai" (It feels new). Her mother finally coaxed out of her that she was terrified these strange tall trees would fall on the house. Her words have stayed with me all these years, that strange mixture of childish terror and the unintended depth of her words. These trees were not something to be afraid of, just something new.

I've debated with my mother several times over the last weeks why I'd rather she wasn't going so far from home. I can't articulate these fears I have for her, of her finding strange room mates or semi-psychotic classmates, the ache of long-distance heartbreak and the complications of figuring out what love and friendship and other big, strange things mean. I think she's had enough to deal with, and foolish as it is, I'd rather have her somewhere her roommate is someone sensible, like her mother. (Yes, I realize how terribly old these lines make me sound to someone like her, and how terribly young they must seem to mature mothers.) At the end of these discussions, I realize I don't really want her to not experience these things. But for me too, it feels new, to think of my kid sister grown up.

Given the distances, there is little more I can do than wish her well. And so I wish that she holds this memory of her as I do, the little child who wasn't too afraid to say something felt new. I wish her those words with new depth, to hold close to her heart if/when things seem to be too much to handle on her own. I wish her the strength to retreat into herself when needs to, but still look out the window with child-like wonder. And I wish her the faith that there are always people near when she retreats from the scary new things in the world, even if they are only in spirit.

One of these nights

"Someone to be kind to, in between the dark and light"
 
One of the more classic displays of growing older is cribbing about how things ain't how they used to be. But seriously, why does no one write lyrics like this anymore? Some of the best ways to define love and growing up in just a few phrases. Here's the rest of this one:

Catching up

"I once saw a two year old at a fair, wailing and rolling on the floor, throwing a tantrum of her life. Her mom guessed she was hungry. So, she started, “Honey, would you like a banana?” “Nooooooooooooooo”, shrieked the toddler. “Would you like apple sauce?...Would you like to have some cheese...maybe some yogurt.... how about some grapes... would you like to have some milk? Some pasta? Some french-fries? Mac and Cheese? A smoothie? A pretzel? That ice-cream over there?A nice sandwich? Some gummy bears”....
And all the while, the toddler wailed and screamed and kicked and consistently shrieked, “NOOOOOO!”

It seemed simplest to start this post as it began in my mind, with these reflections from my friend. Her words,
in the context of a different conversation with another friend, helped lay at ease several uncertain echoes in my mind. I've written of some of these here, this sudden lack of time and constant sense of being stressed out in my efforts at relaxation. These friends and others have been reminding me, in the sweetest ways possible, to stop trying to do it all. Garden, paint, write, keep a good home, work out, dress well, socialize, work, dance.. my growing list of activities that enrich and rejuvenate the soul have left me only wanting to curl up and whine for a trip home.


Home, as in India. Which I make sound idyllic when it is anything but, which more importantly, feels idyllic. I return from these trips with my soul rested and eyes refreshed, though I could never explain why. Perhaps it is as simple as my friend's observations with the two year old. India does not often give me choices. When I am hungry, there is food. When I must go out, there are a few options for clothes to wear. Rarely is a sari inappropriate, just as jeans are equally accepted (at least in the places I visit). In the absence of a million options to define myself, it is easier to find who I am.  When I can do it all and have it all, it is so much harder to find a comfortable space.

And so, I am learning to find it instead in taking the time to do less. One pot of tomatoes, one of basil. No more. Put away the weighing scale, and picked up my phone instead. Walking as I talk to a friend, counting the good memories and ignoring the calories spent. Ignoring the instructions, skipping a day of dance practice to just lie back. Saying no to contributing to a friend's blog. Eating the rice and vegetables my husband cooked for lunch. Just as satisfying and flavorful as my organic salad was yesterday.Remembering that instead of always seeking silence and time to myself, sometimes all I need is the words of friends like these.

What no-one else has

A series of minor incidents culminated in the substance of an e-mail I received last night. “You’re exceptional”, it began, then continued with a string of cumulative compliments to a group of us before ending with, “it was a tough decision, and I regret..”. As the implications of the e-mail sift through the layers of plans I’d laid out, at each level they cast a familiar echo.

I am exceptional. I am bright and talented, with international experience and a flair for language etc. I could go on for a bit like that, just as the e-mail did. But in the end, the list of adjectives ends with what is not. It fails to mention the one thing I didn’t have that someone else did.

“It’s not personal” (Yes, I know), “They don’t know what you’re capable of” (maybe they do), and “Hey, they're just saying you’re so good you didn’t need that acceptance” (No, they're saying I wasn’t accepted) are the most common rejoinders I have heard when I share this. My family is up in arms, ready to reassure my wounded ego and remind me of something I am not sure I understand- what it is I have that no-one else does.

What makes me unique must be something beyond this conglomeration of facts and compliments. I don’t know if I have an answer to what this is, or if I ever will. If there even is one such uniqueness. For now, I pick up my metaphorical pen to compose a reply. “Thank you for your kind words. And while I have your attention, could you tell me how to achieve _, and point me to resources for _?” For today, what makes me unique is only this, this capacity to reach for answers everywhere and say, “It doesn’t hurt to ask, right?” (even though it does, a little).

Exchange

When I don't speak, it does not always mean my listening is available for you.

When I listen to you, I assume you will take only as much of my attention as I give. You ask for more.

When I give you object X, I assume you will not also demand objects Y and Z.

Perhaps we should have made these rules of exchange clearer. Perhaps I should have named a higher price. Not because I think my attention is particularly priceless or in great demand. Only because I now struggle to regain what I gave thoughtlessly, assuming there was more where it came from.

Sshh

This silence of politeness and distant affection terrifies me, the way it smothers insight and voice in the mind-numbing nothingness of small talk. I feel stripped of familiarity when I hear nothing but echoes of inanity bounce around my head. This is what torture must feel like, I imagine. (cue dramatic laugh)

Forgetting the self, forgetting who I am and what I like in this listening to another's litany. All I want is to scream, to drown these voices out so I can hear my own again. Or simply hear nothing. I don't always need to listen to my own voice either. But sometimes, just sometimes, I want only to be quiet, to hear what there is to hear. And instead there is the TV, and screeching laughter, and endless chatter about what someone cooked today and why a particular kind of paper towel is better than the other.

And so I try this silent shriek. Even if I cannot hear silence perhaps I can drown out the noise. But all I am left with is a toneless arrhythmic clatter that is neither peaceful nor resolving. Even after the chatter has died and the TV is turned off, this echo of my own drowning-out screech remains. Really, all I want is a moment of quiet. To stop hearing myself scream. Perhaps this will take a moment of opening the door to let the echoes out. But I am afraid of what else might come in to take this space I guard so closely.

A little more on identity

I've wondered annoyingly long and hard at what point one stops becoming something and simply starts being it.

Some people define this in terms of education. "I have a B.E, I am an engineer."
Others define it by what they enjoy doing. "I am a singer."
And still others by relationships or circumstance. "I am a wife and mother."

For myself, the dilemma is one of both career and identity. I trained as a scientist for nearly a decade, right until I finished my Ph.D. I have written as long as I can remember. And yet, I feel like an impostor when I call myself a writer. I figured getting published would fix the insecurity. It hasn't. At what point do I stop "becoming a writer" and simply start being one?

Thinking in a quiet place

More than being troubled by the many uncertainties that come with doing grown-up things, I have been troubled by my sudden incapacity to handle them. Where is that confident child, I ask myself, searching constantly for the memory of a self-assured younger self.

Slowly, slowly, I find the answers. That self only emerges when I am quiet, truly quiet. Not just alone, but when I can watch the stillness within and without. When I can spot the symmetry of pine trees silhouetted against a sunset sky as I stand in rush hour traffic. When I remember the reflection of that symmetry in the workings of my body. Like symmetrical sand ripples marked by random waves and wind and pulls of the moon, life has a way of falling into place.

When I remember these things, I find a certain stillness, standing in a place where I know I can make things work the way I used to. Where a single quiet thought cast out, strong and sure and repeatedly, can pull the waves just as surely as the moon, despite summer storms and capricious winds.

A place of unfamiliar words

Finding writers I disagree with on how the English language *should* be used.

Discovering that in a sleep-deprived haze, I can churn out nonsense like "ask questions with questioning wonder".

And type "molecular" when I mean "molecule".

Struggling to find narrative arcs that once curved effortless as.. and what is an effortless curve? A rainbow, a moonbeam, the flight of a bird, the throw of a ball? How do I quantify what makes for great effort?

Stopping mid-sentence because I have forgotten what I wanted to say.

How did I get here, to this place of unfamiliar words? A space where bad writers tell me I am 'finally writing well', a place where I gravitate towards words that I can use to cover up a lack of substance. Where it is better that ten words are used to describe one and we like to line our sentences up in pretty matched bullet pointed columns.

"I don't write for you to read. My writing isn't meant to be a communication from me to you. It isn't meant to idealize anything or stand for anything or maybe even mean very much. It is but a fragment of a moment that changed me."

I wrote those words over fifteen years ago, and I am trying hard to fall back to them. To a place where words led me to greater insight, clarity and conviction. When I did not write by the rule of three. Or even if I did, did not cringe at the words in neat triplets. I like to think I can find my way back- to a point where I did not care who read, or who liked, or who did much of anything else with my words, without Twitter followers or blog-readers or the pressure of creating an online persona that people might like. It is a little disturbing to think that my insecure fifteen year old self had more confidence and conviction and a sense of how to use words well than the so-called adult writer who finds words unfamiliar and sometimes unpleasant.

Perhaps this is only a literary growing up, where I find not all words play well in the sandbox and learn to cross the street if I meet the nasty ones on a dark street.
And once more I leave this dangling unfinished story, an unfamiliar string of incompleteness.

Purpose

The events of the past only fall into perfect patterns when I look at them through the lens of what I want in the future. This perception is a choice. I could equally easily consider the past a random walk unconnected to the present or future.

I could consider it random and conclude there is little purpose to dreams for the future, which is going to be just as probabilistic as the past.

I could consider it random and try and identify parameters to control for the future. From personal experience, I doubt this could ever work perfectly.

And so I prefer seeing these patterns that support where I would like to go. The road ahead is long enough and hard enough without my concocting monsters or simply ignoring what has already happened. Given the odds, I might as well squeeze strength and optimism from wherever I can get it.

Rubberband

A month of not-quite:

Routine
Work
Decisions
Peace
Health
Time
Space
Dance
Food

Too much of some and not enough of others. Too much of the right kind and too little of the wrong. A month of not-quite finding balance, not-quite figuring this one out. I wish I could sit out the next month. Instead, I sneak breaks at work to take deep breaths. I take long walks at home to take deep breaths. And when I drive I watch for sky-miracles of sun ray and cloud, wait for the semi-sign of a song that plays randomly on my shuffling play list.

As if some unique conglomeration of light and shadow, some synchrony of electromagnetic impulses in my brain and my iPod could be signs that someone is, in fact, keeping the balance of the not-quites in some way I cannot fathom.

2011/2012

My husband bought me a fitness tracker for a Christmas gift this year. It marks my steps, the stairs I climb and how well I sleep. It lets me set little goals for myself and chirps out cheery messages encouraging me through the day. I've loved setting goals for myself on the log, walking 15,000 steps instead of 10, 30 floors instead of 20, earning virtual badges for my efforts. This morning, I was amused at the roundness of these numbers, how I like to track my progress in multiples of 5 or 10, preferably both. A nice sense of completion.

But turn the year at its end over in my mind, and how little of it is so smooth and simple. 365 and something days. 12 months. 7 days. 24 hours. Time runs with sharp edges, trailing odd numbers and primes that I cannot parse into quick little pockets of even-sized memory.

Some things stand out sharper than others. People who are not here to ring in the new year, most of all. Their voices bounce around these edges, popping up abruptly at times I least expect. People who may not be here for the next. Efforts too personal to be shared even in this anonymous space. Parents visiting. Being able to afford material comforts that were unthinkable two years ago. Finding, at last, a glimmer of the person I used to be. The one who listened to the small signs the universe hands out, and trusts them.

Time and memory do not come in neatly multiples of 5 and 10. And so there is no measure I can use to weigh one against the other. A dear one's passing against the birth of my friend's child. Spotting a little sign in a car against the years of evidence that something may not work. I cannot track these things, except by running memory's fingers over the uneven edges of the year that was. Treasuring the cracks, and remembering this, an old favorite quote:

"Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget the perfect offering.
There's a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in."

Wishing us all a light-filled 2012, and may the light remind us of good things :)

House guests

Now, I know the way your body relaxes into the couch, the bends of your legs and neck as you lie back to play a game. I'm aware that you're allergic to eggs, and of your firm conviction that traditional foods must be cooked with certain recipes and no other. I've watched your frenzied, last-minute style of packing, the intimate links of your togetherness cemented in these material things. One packs the other's toothbrush, the other remembers to bring the thick socks the one forgets. You, in your turn, remember my anger at being dropped off to catch a flight fifteen minutes after it departed. You remember to save some food for me when I get home, and leave me my space, respecting my home for mine.

I think you would call this familiarity. We have shared a house, shared our lives for a few weeks. Having been fed and watered by one another, our needs attended to and differences overlooked with mostly polite courtesy, we could be said to know one another.

For myself, these facts turn my mind back to other intimacies. The way I know my friend must smile when she sees my little chat window pop orange on her screen. How I know my father will respond to an article I send him. The way my husband and I know what the other thinks in a game of charades or Taboo. The depth of affection in the smallest of our connections. The way our lives resonate with one another,
even if it has been a while since we sat on a couch together, just us and no television.

If wishes were..

'Tis the season to be giving thanks. All my feeds are flooded with the Oscar speeches you wish you'd never heard- people thanking their taps for giving them water and the Tiger for not eating all the Cheetos, and much else. Of course this set me off on my own personal vote of thanks (which no, I shall not suffer anyone reading this to endure).

The list is long, and complicated, and I'm not entirely sure yet whether I am thankful for it all. No, I am not mature enough to see everything in the world as a blessing. Some things just suck, and should never have happened. (That's a pretty easy list to make, perhaps for next year though). But in the middle of it, what struck me was that I was most UN-grateful for my times of inaction.

When I had an opportunity and didn't give it my all. For fear of not having prepared enough(No, I can't pitch an editor with that!). For fear of looking like a fool (No, I will not dance). For fear of failing (What if I suck at it?). For just no reason (Never mind, I'll get to it later). Those are the times I wish I hadn't.

There is only one way to find out if you've prepared enough, if you suck at something or really have it in you to be good at it. Just doing it. And sometimes, when you take that leap of faith and pitch that big-time editor with your completely half-baked story idea, it is followed by absolute panic. But you do it anyway, because you asked for it, didn't you? You work through the half-baked pitch, the 10,000 word transcript and the even less-baked last minute draft. And then, once in a while, you hear something like this:

"We are editing your wonderful (article). Fabulous stuff!"

And it makes you wish, even more, for another chance at all those times that you didn't try.

Reprieve

I used to memorize poems when I was little. Before I knew what the words meant. John Donne and Tennyson and Browning and Keats and Santayana and Gibran. They just sounded good, even though I still don't understand some of them. Here's one, to remind me (and you, if you read the last post), that for every fearsome, loathsome, horrifying, meaningless word, there are so many perfect others.

Simple words, placed and timed effectively, that continue to dance in perfect rhythm long after their writers are gone. Like these: (The brook, by Tennyson)


I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret
by many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I wind about, and in and out,
with here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel
With many a silver water-break
Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;
And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

Jargonese

I am so tired of big, clunky words.
Some of them are horrid. Pharmacogenomic.
Others are meaningless. Actionable.
And the rest are scary.
Periventricular leukomalacia.
Pulmonary hypertension.

Words bigger than the babies that try to fight these diseases. Words so big they stretch across the country from my friends' lives to strike fear in mine. Words so strong they can make me totter in my confidence at being a writer.

The words we have to fight these things, they are so small.
Hope. Love. Prayer. Faith.
And yet we hold them so, like these butterfly winged little things could flap out all the storms, and keep these babies, these dreams alive.

Anonymous

Words sometimes arrive with long kite-tails of attachment. A second story trails behind the story they frame. The body speaks of experience and reality, while the spirit that trails behind whispers of more.

Here is my story, the spirit-story reminds you. It is a story that will carry you to the farthest shores of tears and inspiration, laughter and love. On winds of kindness and experience, some words fly in like kites from distant lands. Bright and travel-worn, as rich in their living as in the intricacy of their crafting.

Some stories live so truly I wonder how they can bear to remain untold. If they were mine, would I hide them from the world? But they are not mine, and sometimes, perhaps, stories like tired kites only look for a place to lie beyond the reach of the wind.
So I hold these stories close, as precious as the people who share them with me.