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.