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.