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.