And A Veil to Tether

One of my colleagues says that veils fascinate her and I confess I have had veils on my mind since the past few weeks, all they reveal and represent, the hues they lend the world. Indeed, the blank canvas of the sky laughs with colors of life when seen through a veil, whether it be a flowing scarf, a dancing kite, or a twinkling paper lantern. To paraphrase a thousand Hindi songs, the unruffled dupatta changes climes and brings on Spring.

Like any South Eastern native, I can tell you what the scarves I wear represent: they supposedly represent female modesty, but if the same scarf were tied on a man's forehead, it would proclaim his pride in the tradition that birthed him. Freedom sings in the flight a girl's scarf sketches as she swings from a grandfather of a tree. The audience of a Hindi film knows the scarf well. With bated breath, we watch as the villain considers the innocent girl's scarf through a veil of cigarette smoke, and gasp as he snatches the dupatta off the terrified girl; the camera focuses on the swinging, broken lamp smashed in the ensuing struggle and we all know that she is lost.

Most salwar suits come with a matching scarf or dupatta. The material for a dupatta must be special: it cannot be as heavy as the fabrics that actually cover and protect. In fact, it must be woven of texture light enough for the air to lift, which would require something heavier, like lace or a twice rolled hem to hold it against the wind and then it acquires a fall of graceful ripples. At the same time, the dupatta must match the heavier cloth it is constructed to compliment, with an edging, with contrasting hues, or most frequently, with the same print as the salwar suit. The function of the dupatta, it seems, is to serve as the dream of the salwar suit.

I have worn through a lot of salwar suits, whose stitching has given out, whose exhausted weave has unravelled, but whose matching dupattas retain their original form. I collect them, lightly worn fabrics of numinous use, whose sole purpose seems to be to recall the varied textures our world is made of. When I tried to quilt them, I could not imagine the finished quilt, and they resisted my needle and the stodgy quilting threads, preferring to ripping to submission. Occasionally, I give them to my daughter and she uses them to make a statement of her jeans-and-t-shirt.

As I get older, I find that I need the wrapping of my scarves to protect me, to keep me warm and alive. I have begun to prefer the sky veiled in clouds, and today, on a cool day immediately following the Winter solstice, I look forward to the kite flying in January, which will welcome the sun back. Nothing says Spring like unfurled colors of insubstantial material.

I am working and my lap is not free for the cat. He paws at the laptop and looks inquiringly at me. Of course, I obey and spread my scarf. He accepts this extension of me and it is enough to envelop him, tie him to me beyond language and species. I look at the content, sleeping cat and wish for my dupatta to extend beyond my organic self and chronological life, to envelop and warm my child so that her universe may unfurl around her in weaves of many colors and textures, enriching her life, tethering her to me as she soars and flies off, like an un-achored kite, across unimaginable skies.

Well-Watered

There is a tree in the center of some of my stories. This tree stands near a well. All around these two swirl the many tales that need to be told, that once told, perch on a branch, like wish-threads, anchored, yet weaving in the passing breeze. Even though I have fastened a few, my basket of untold stories seems to be just as full as it was when I first began telling of the tree and the well.

Sometimes, this defeats me. I cannot imagine how I am to get words enough for these tales, if my life time, with its too, too many demands, will be long enough. Somehow that worries me more than availability of a receptive audience for the stories. The beings that live in, around, before and away from the tree nag me, haunt me, insist that I tell, though I don't know to what end. I don't think that these tales have any edifying value, or provide an insight about how one may improve oneself or enrich one's life. In fact, the stories are more dusky twilight than golden dawn. Worse, they offer no apologies for their dark hues.

I make a deliberate effort to help each story to stand on its own, a valid entity irrespective of the larger tapestry it helps weave. I explain to the tales that they all should be independent, as though they were my girl children and I, their concerned parent, were trying to impress upon them the importance of good grades that they may support themselves and their offspring instead of relying on their future wife-selves. However, they wish for nothing more than to gather near the well, sit cross legged beneath the spreading shade of their tree. No matter how far I have them wander, when I look behind, I find them clustered around their well, like Grimms' Twelve Months.

I hope to pass muster as I seek their guidance. I shall make an effort to be polite and offer them what poor nourishment my pockets hold. Most of all, I shall try to listen very closely to their riddles. After all, I could scarcely hope for a better map, no matter how dark or labyrinthine my wooded path!
 

The Suq at the Library

If you stood outside my door, you couldn't tell what month it was. Today, on my way to my chores, I caught myself wondering how far November was, just so the days could cool down a little! It is an awkward season caught at the wrong time of the year and all the rush to meet the holidays seems  strange and disconcerting. After all, when the sun shines so mercilessly, aren't we to prepare for the Summer vacations? Why is everyone talking of Christmas? That seems many many weather systems away! However, weather ready or not, the end of the year is almost on our threshold, almost knocking. It seems to be the right time to give little tokens, gifts to one's friends to show them how much they are appreciated, how grateful one is for all their patience and tolerance through the year. That part does not feel awkward to me because everyone else seems to feel the same way.

But here is the conundrum: what to give? What could one present that would assure a grin or a light or a smile upon first glance? In other words, where would one find a marketplace that sells objects that are as unique as they are familiar, things that are not hawked at every mall at every cross roads, but not so strange that no one understands what they are.

I wish for a global suq through which I can meander, exchanging friendly banter with the sellers, who are always in a good mood, who always have (for a pice) a cup of fresh coffee brewing for wanderers like me, a bazaar where, under a cloth shade, I'd find incredible treasures for my friends, treasures that even my meagre budget would allow.

I know what my patient reader would suggest: the Internet is one such bazaar and I would agree. In fact, this year, I put together my child's birthday gift basket solely out of things I'd bought online. However, that took me months of planning, ordering, approving, disapproving, a process that took a very very long time. And things I order online sometimes disappoint horribly and then what am I to do? So unless I KNOW the quality of my order, I avoid this particular marketplace.

However, this week, I found a wonderful suq, of all places, at my local county library. It is run solely by volunteers and boasts everything from Scottish tea chests, to scarves, to Vietnamese earrings, to purse hooks, to local art, to Spanish gold! The people at the desk are retired, do not have a personal stake in what they are selling, and at the same time, care deeply for the cause they espouse. They are always friendly, always ready to discuss the merits and demerits of the objects you are considering, and if they'd fit your friends, and yes, they have a complicated coffee machine that they are willing to fire up for a perfect cup (I could even choose my flavor!).

Patient, harried reader, compare this to the absolute incoherence that is your local mall at this time of the year. No sales personnel, no matter how their determined smile, has the time to discuss each object and determine its appropriateness, especially if they are not sure of a sale. If one sees something that looks extraordinary, one is likely to find something similar at the next kiosk. When we last went to a mall, we had to wait in a line for about 20 minutes before we could order our coffee and we definitely were NOT encouraged to choose our own flavors!

So, reader, if you find yourself overwhelmed, would rather meander among shelves of books than the exhaustingly cheerful stores, visit your local county library. You can meander to your hearts' content, maybe find some treasures, perhaps treat yourself to an armload of books, even check out an electronic reader if you are brave!

Who'd have thought that the love for reading could open even these doors!

Flickering Lights

The tiny votives flicker in windows as though the flame had real heat, as though these are real flames. However, much to my peace of mind, these are LED lights and their twinkling a kind lie. Today is Diwali again, and a year has passed since last Diwali, when I came home to find my home burned away. For some reason this day has affected me without warning, with more force than I had thought. The day has been uneasy and this unease has not left my side since my dawn dream, in which I didn't want to leave but just hold my child, the cats, my quilt, a doll I had forgotten about, all of them.

Fortunately, I could indulge my unease and stay with my house, puttering around, sweeping up, picking up, so the Goddess might be tempted, that she might step in with gentle feet. The little votives, like hopes, flicker around the colorful rangoli in my porch, in the same place as last year.

This year, my Diwali is quiet, if a little uneasy, and I am grateful for the quiet little lamps who seem reassuring, as they murmur shadows, whisper gleamings, their soft glimmer giggles spill and tinkle around the floor; after all, no Diwali should be silent. I am very grateful for their kind company, as I am grateful for all who have quieted my unease today. One of the many lessons I have learned as someone who lives alone is that all undefined unease must be publicly acknowledged, that one should not be allowed to feel alone when these airs raise the hair on one's nape, when these gulps drop to the bottom of one's stomach.

Usually, I have my child at home for Diwali. Usually, there are sparklers that sketch golden shapes that linger on eyelids after they have melted away. Usually, we get the camera ready and worship a few coins, a special puja to woo the Goddess. Today, I have no sparklers, and yes, I could have gone to the temple, where a welcome is assured, and yes, they'd have sparklers and other fireworks. I could have done the puja on my own. I could have taken pictures of my little rangoli.

However, today, I want to woo my home back to me: the Goddess cannot be wooed without one's own threshold. Last Diwali was unforgettable, loud, big; I want this one to be unmemorable, quiet, contained within my comfort zone.

The festival promises lamps to aid lost footsteps back home, on dark nights when heavenly lights, the sun and moon abandon us earthbound beings for other orbits. This festival reminds us that the lights that can be most relied upon are of this earth; extra terrestrial light sources have their own agenda and may often seem indifferent. The fault, then, lies in our failure to recognize our place in the larger cosmos, not in the orbs that we imagine have abandoned us. This festival reaffirms our kinship with little lamps whose flickering lights accompany us through different nights.

The twinkling lights of my windows and I, all of us wish my patient readers a very Happy Diwali!

 

Nothing, Again Nothing

Today is a rare day off; I gave it to myself. The changing weather has wreaked its wrath on my throat and I have been squeaking and croaking all week long, much to everyone's uncomfortable sympathy. Since there is no cure for the common cold, I decided to use this day as an excuse to lounge around the house, make friends with it again, and hopefully, the lengthening darknesses and pale, cold days with their warm blood seeped out will be easier to wait out till the sun returns next year.

To the same end, today, I moved into my room on the west top of my house. However, I have no furniture other than a bed and I cannot decide the configuration that would give comfort and help me own the space between the walls. I also wish I knew what I needed. I try to visualize some chests and tables around the room but I get exhausted at the thought.

Probably, all I should do today is nothing. After all, the accident report for a fender bender I was subjected to, won't be ready for another week; everyone else is at work; all my scrabble games have been addressed; the most urgent grading has been squared away; all care packages have been mailed and received; and the dishwasher is done. I look at the napping cats, feel the cold breeze, and a familiar somnolence steals over me so I can no longer tell the difference between sleeping and waking.

I mark today as the day when nothing shall happen. Today shall be remembered as the most forgettable of days. I shall not chase each thought that begins, to its coherent completion; I shall gather scraps of images, remembered moments, imagined times, as though for a new quilt whose finished structure I cannot imagine.

If my parents were here, they would shake their heads in helpless exasperation at my insistence of wasting my precious day, a day on which all my limbs work and my mind still retains is power. However, I would contend that it is lost scraps like today that make the most colorful of quilts, and nothing warms a pale, cold day like a colorful quilt.

It has been over a year since the unforgettable day on which my house burned away, leaving behind just ashes and memories. It has been almost two decades since the memorable day on which I held my brand new daughter in my arms, and she has flown off to her future as well. The list could go on, but for every unforgettable day, there must have been about fifty forgettable days. I can't say for sure, since, of course, I have forgotten them.

This post goes out as a paean to all that is forgettable, that colors our everyday, that warms us, holds us upright, and gives a richness to all that we cannot forget.


 

Of Hanuman, Anthony Gonsalves, and Crossed Streets

It is my favorite part: the jungle chirps in joyous excitment. We feel the static in the air as the entire cosmos awaits the monkey, with bated breath, breath that hitches every time this story is told, on street corners when the year begins to die, on TV screens, echoing down the millenia, from the tree shade where the telling was probably born. The story I speak of is the Ramayana, and the character, after whose arrival in the story nothing is ever the same, is, of course, Hanuman. I cannot have enough of this story, in spite of all the annoying, jingoistic propaganda that inevitably accompanies it.

I have referred to this tale at various times in this space and it is one of my guiding metaphors. Ever since the house fire, this tale has resonated with me on a deeper level, helping me articulate questions about where I belong (if anywhere), if such belonging comes with any rights and prices, even questions about what makes me human, and the age old exploration about the nature of the divine. It fascinates me that in this epic, the apotheosis is realised by Hanuman, not the human hero, Rama, who throughout his story insists upon and defines himself solely in terms of his humanity, and who, indeed, is admired for being human more than he is for his divinity.

I am getting used to living in this house that is yet to become wholly mine. The bright colors, familiar books, the furniture that comes well-lived from my good friends' and well-wishers' lives, and the remembered spaces, of course, are helping me own it. It is almost Diwali again and I have some new designs for the Rangoli sand art that I always decorate my thresholds with, hoping to woo the goddess of prosperity. I also have some votive lights (LED; flameless, of course) but as I sit here looking around the bright walls, it feels as though someone has switched on an internal light and night never need fall in my house ever again.

The cats have found their spots and they seem as comfortable here as though they have always been here. Maybe I should look to the Ramayana for my answers: the questioning is what separates the human from animals. Hanuman never questions his place, nor is he ever confused about his apotheosis or what the right thing would be and who'd decide that. Perhaps I should stop the endless questions, stop looking for guiding lights and close my eyes to let my instincts lead. It is these questions that lead me to fear the brightness of these walls, fear that the brightness comes from hidden flames, not sunshine.

So tonight, I shall try to quiet all questions and ignore the wondering. The Ramalila is done for tonight and I shall concentrate on one of my favorite fictional characters, Anthony Gonsalves (from Amar Akbar Anthony, a movie I try to  never miss, which, thankfully is being aired today). This character's uncomplicated joy of being himself, complete lack of self-doubt, and ease with himself often reminds me of Hanuman.

I stand at the West threshold of my not-burnt home, looking to the house that was never mine, where I spent my months of displacement. I remain unbelieving that the street has finally been crossed, that the lights in this kitchen do not beckon any longer but attest to my belonging to it.

The year has changed again and even though the darkness marched in before evening was done, night is taking a long time in falling. The cats sit around me, studying the grass behind our house and I wish for their non-wondering, their acceptance of shortened days, an acceptance that does not flow from the comfort and reassurance of old and new stories.

I remain acutely aware of my humanity, my helpless reliance on the tales. For me, turning of these seasons is never an easy thing and I shall need many stories to brighten these darknesses, even as I remain here, sick with relief that the light across the street has nothing to do with me. 

Journey Home: The Beginning

At last, at last, finally, I have crossed the street and can again call this house mine. My salvaged possessions perch at the edges of rooms trying to fit in with the sofas and bookcases and chairs my friends' generosity has adorned the empty floors with. I have comfortable seats, windows the cats routinely navigate through, a busy, crowded alter, my own victuals, even some fire extinguishers standing guard over the kitchen (where the fire had begun and the damage worst).

My soul-felt, heart-true gratitude goes out to the world at large, to the incredible support structure which I had not realised had grounded me so solidly, and to all powers and wishes that have enabled and culminated in this hour, on this seat, in a house that resounds with these languages, cadences, and rhythms, which does not belong as much to me as I do to it. I have known a self without this house and all it is, and I know her to be a lesser self; I feel as though I have acquired comfortable girth, the extra invisible limbs that connected me to walls and teacups and tables.

Today, the one image that hovers over this post is from John Donne's poetry, and I thank him for giving it. Of course, patient reader, I allude to the comparison between a pair of lovers and a pair of compasses that ends his "Valediction." Ever since the house fire last October, I have been rudderless, directionless, unable to stand upright, my fix'd foot broken. Today, the fix'd foot leans and hearkens, and even though sometimes it runs obliquely, it certainly makes my circle just, merely by being here, by standing so firmly.

It took me almost 11 months to cross the street, but now that it's done, I can't believe that I was displaced in this manner. I am thinking of a few lessons I've learned:

The first lesson I've learned is that nothing and no one is ague-proof. I should have spent a little more of my soul when I was Reading Lear. However, this comes with the realisation that one's being does not reside anywhere but within, and that the essential self is salvageable.

However, the most important thing that has happened is that I've seen the face of divinity in the deliberate kindness of people. This burning has changed every part of my internal being and compass and I shall always carry this fire within myself.

It is through these eyes that I consider this house I inhabit, that I am told is mine. However, it still doesn't recognize me and everything about the space is unfamiliar. I look for a space that can never be, like the house called Horizon, where I learned of my first self, the house that is no more. I look around me and without meaning or wanting to, I look for the house that is gone, but I only see it as a shadow behind these brand new walls, my salvaged books, the newly configured living spaces and I do see an extra shadow beneath them. I suppose the shadows are behind my eyes.

I must leave this seat now, continue my journey to distant spaces, for numinous goals I cannot yet imagine. I shall re-equip myself with my oars, texts like The Odyssey, Mahabharata and Ramayana, that tell of endless journeys that begin when the travellers reach what they remember as Home, lands that banish native beings, then call them back, and forever test their worthiness to perch on spaces that define them.

The Journey Home: Un-willed

Finally, finally, the day has arrived: I am allowed to move into the new house whenever I want to, and I want to right now!

However.

Today has been a lesson in an uneasy, forced patience. I rushed home from work with images of moving in my unpacked boxes, my kitchen, the closets, even a few books, and hopefully the mattress, that I may at last, at last sleep there. I have been up since 4:30am in a frenzy of packing that is not really needed since I have not really unpacked. As I began lifting, pushing, lugging, pulling, I recognized that I would not be moving today: something has strained too hard in my back and I had to concede defeat.

Today, the sytem that betrays is within me; I have been betrayed by my own body, the primary house.

I have been forced into an inaction that refuses to negotiate with the large anxiety squatting in my throat. I await estimates, appointments that could help me cross the street. I sit supine, once again, unable.

I have heard of, read about incredible feats accomplished by a mere will to have it so. I wonder that my will is not propelled by a wind strong enough to cross this street. If the body is the first home, and it fails, where does one go to get a will strong enough to supercede the body's decisions?

I suppose it IS the mind that puzzles the will and makes cowards of us all: I know that once I do move, I will be faced with the gargantuan task of unpacking, something for which I have had reasons and excuses plenty to evade. What awaits me after I move is a great deal of sorting, building, more appointments, estimates, and the insurmountable charge for finding a place for all that must not be misplaced. I will spend most of my nerves and patience trying to hold on to myself as a feline war rages constantly, an inevitable accompaniment of changing living spaces while sharing life with cats, the plural deliberate.

Is that what my body is trying to remind me, as I watch all the cats busy with their individual meals in personally chosen corners? This truce among the cats has been expensively won. And it would be so much easier to chase the pain away with some ibuprofen, to lose anxiety in dreams of strategizing for better truces in better spaces, to easily solve all the heartache with the mind, since it seems to have all solutions. It would be so much easier to just internalize this landscape, get absolutely and irrevocably used to this not-mine space, with its boxes, the single book shelf, the slightly ashy mattress and the unassuming table, the bulk of all that must be moved.

The late evening rains beat urgently on the panes and doors, and the insistent wind weaves through the street that needs to be crossed. When I open the door to let the cats in, I see the new house waiting, its windows dark with night, all lamps doused, and I wonder what it must dream of, what truces it must resolve in its sleep.

 

The Journey Home: To Seek Out New Worlds

Ah the optimism of desperation! Contrary to my last post, I still await; I have not reached home yet, and a myriad of oceans lie between my diminishing baggage and that house across the street I remember as mine in a previous life. If I sat down to catalogue all I have lost since almost a year ago, when my wish for a new kitchen began to get granted, I would be left with even less, not even my desperate optimism! Instead of counting losses (which are inevitable, no matter what journey one reads about), it might be more meaningful to acknowledge the lighthouses, perched on unreachable shores, on unassailable heights, that light up many darknesses.

One such lighthouse is celebrating its half century today, the television series, Star Trek. I know I have blogged about this previously. But today, I have been thinking about the theme of loss as a necessity in the discovery process.

Of late, and wherefore, (unlike the Prince) I do know, I have lost all my mirth, and my stories reflect this: I have been purging my darkness in stories the hue and, often, the texture of tar. My protagonists die to express losses I cannot express, catalogue, or even acknowledge. My lovers are left bereft, my houses haunt and devour, and my dusty-shady lands deny and bury. There remains an ageless, timeless part of me that questions all this dark matter splattered over my stories: am I (shudder, shudder) wallowing? Being lost myself, should I not, rather, write of self, home, love found? To what end all these tantrum tales?

However, my Trekkie self has quick answers: Dark Matter is dark not with absence but with a teeming presence, and that too, of a cosmic make up, the design and music of the Universe! I think of the various losses in I see in Star Trek series, and none of those losses is permanent, not even the deaths! Sometimes, what the crew thinks of as dead is merely their failure to recognize what is very much alive. Sometimes, they find the definition of Life in a Borg graveyard. The very basic, underlying premise of the Star Trek universe is that nothing gets destroyed; matter is forever changing, so what is lost still surrounds the crew and impels them onwards to whatever their mission is, diplomacy, exploration, holding peace at the edge of a stable worm hole, or the most archetypal of all, the way home.

If the expanse outside the window is not earth-bound, then why seek the achingly familiar? Perhaps, then, the losses are to be re-catalogued among the changed, and the mission, then, is to recognize, not reach. What is to be recognized, though? I cannot imagine the crew of the Enterprise or the Voyager without their ship anymore than I can imagine Deep Space 9 without its merchants, rogues, peace-keepers and idealists.

I went to my newly built, not-burnt house today, and it did not recognize me. My voice sounded hollow and my footsteps felt intrusive. The walls and their outlets watched me cautiously as I moved through the rooms, switching on unfamiliar lights, testing footholds and banisters. As in a dream or palimpsest, I remember the forgotten ease with which I had bounded among these spaces, unthinking in my familiarity of their exact shape and texture,  but these are not those walls or floors, even though they too, with me, occupy the same space.

For all captains of the star-ships of Star Trek, some of the most tenuous grounds are the ones on which they stand to encounter first contact with new species. My hope, after all these seasons of loss, is for the wisdom, the willingness, the gumption to begin a meaningful, mutually profitable dialogue that both, the Ferengis and the Vulcans would be proud of.

The Journey Home: Of Porch Lights and Quenchings

The gray cat is spooked and has taken refuge on a strange roof; she sits atop this house-that-is-not-mine and considers the activity across the street, marveling at my crossing the street and allowing all the noise, all the activity, exhibiting baffling congeniality instead of protecting and shooing the strangers away.

Yes, my patient reader, the light on my back porch has finally lit and beckons me to come back home. It has been a harrowing Odyssey, the last week being the most awfully hectic and demanding, the past month the most unreasonably unreal, when I spent most of my waking blinks at Lowes and Home Depot, cajoling, shouting, reasoning, insisting, bullying.

This stormy morning and afternoon witnessed the last installation by Lowes. Yet the house does not seem ready to receive inhabitants, what with all the construction debris, gargantuan cardboard boxes, the detritus of unidentifiable building and packing material, left-over tile boxes and concrete sacks. I don't know how to work the air conditioning, or which switch controls which lights; in fact, there ARE no lights yet, everyone relying on a portable lamp that is carried and plugged in wherever needed.

Actually, this week has tested my faith and patience almost to the breaking point. I have dropped my child off to her university, more than 300 miles away, and the enormity of this shift is just sinking in. There has been a great deal of drastic re-structuring at my work that might (gods forbid, but it might) require me to rebuild my navigational systems. And to top it off, the soon-to-be-hurricane, Isaac rages and fumes outside the window. It all does seem apocalyptic, especially now that the cats are skittish with the booms and flashes of the hysterical storm lashing away at their territory.

However, I have a thought that centers my shifting world, a feeling of being properly quenched that I hold on to as the storm swirls and changes the winds.

Friday was a scorcher of a day and I had spent the larger part of it running to different stores, carrying things to and fro, most of it at my house. It was already afternoon when I stood in my just-installed kitchen and realised that I hadn't eaten or drunk anything. I dismissed the empty fridge and drank water from my kitchen faucet, cupping my hands beneath the water stream, the way I used to as a school girl, when cups were an unnecessary hindering between a stream and a person bowed over it. This drinking has quenched a thirst I had not realised I'd been nursing.

The night outside is darker than usual, and the lightening illuminates empty streets and hunched over wet cars. I cannot even see my house across the street. But for once, I do not blink and squint with need to see it. The porch light is switched off, of course. But I know that the brass frame twinkles in welcome.

There is a tiny mandir, an alter on my kitchen wall, and it is bright and filled with hopes: my long abandoned home, my burned house is no longer uninhabited.

I hope to be properly quenched and whole when I finally cross the threshold I have been thirsting for. I hope to recognize it all as mine, as I hope to be recognized and owned by it.
 

Blasting Stars

It is the 4th of July again and this year, the fireworks are spooking me. I wish for a respite from the booms that seem to resound from just behind me, from just beneath my ground, and I am afraid I am rather too worn out and skittish for loud celebrations. I love the idea of people celebrating together an ideal that many centuries and generations fought and died for; I have nothing against patriotism (though I lean towards a more global citizenship) and many a ditty has caused warm fuzziness in my ribs. So no, it is not the celebration of the ideals this country stands for that annoys me.

I have been trying to lure my ghost cat to her dinner for the past couple of hours. But I am afraid she just might not come today! We are leaving town and I worry about her dinner for the next couple of days. I worry about my other cats. I worry that I am leaving my undone house for a family party. I worry that I might not finish the ten hour drive in less than twenty hours. The fireworks are not helping; it sounds as though each worry is compounded, exaggerated, hyperbolized (if such a word exists) and blasted around my head, so I can't tell if I am sitting down or standing up.

I wonder if this annoyance I feel is caused by my displacement, my age, or both. I also wonder at what exactly is being celebrated. The only circumstance that justifies such a celebration is a beloved person home from a war, all whole and all smiles, a circumstance that is not as common as I'd like. I have friends whose children, spouses, parents, and extended families are on active duty or veterans. For them, patriotism is not a firework, but an expensive extra limb they've deliberately grown and wear with equal proportions of pain and pride. I cannot imagine them exploding fireworks for extended evenings; I can only imagine them in lawn chairs, contemplating the exploding skies and colors, and I cannot imagine what they wonder about.

I do this every year on July 4th and New Years' Eve (unless I am traveling then): I try to ignore my annoyance at the loud blasts. They make me think of wars, though I've never really seen one. I imagine a war would have these loud explosions and one would never know if one will ever hear anything beyond the last boom. The idea frightens and saddens me and I wonder who on earth thought of emulating the crash and boom of cannons and gunfire as a means of celebration.

My neighbor's nephew's eyes dance in feverish excitement in anticipation of an evening filled with sparkles, booms, and crashes, as he looks uncomprehendingly at me and exclaims, "We are celebrating Freedom, of course! Oh, yes! And All Things American!"

 I am unable to find a response to this and can only offer a smile that turns into a grimace as the world suddenly explodes behind me, showering the horizon in colored stars that diffuse and burn out before they reach the earth.

The Journey Home: The Nightmare

There should have been plaster, there should have been Progress, there should have been people working, but my forgotten little ashen house sits across from where I sit, trying to occupy as little material space as possible, dreaming of a time when it was, desparing of ever being again. It had looked more occupied, more inhabited when it had no windows, than it does now, when the windows yawn black and reflect back whoever looks at them, denying their own existence.

I was promised that no matter what, this house would be done by June; I should have asked for specifics, like year and decade. I believe the house has been forgotten by those contracted to save it; it waits there, half its walls up, half the floor gouged out, the stairs cracked, vents opening onto empty spaces. No one comes to tend it for longer than a couple of hours a week in a good week. I visit it every day, dropping thoughts of well being on the ashes in the downstairs bathroom, on the cracks on the stairs, in the empty closet that is supposed to house the a/c. However, I don't need to be told that  my good wishes are impotent, like the dust that gathers on the untended windows and pipes of my house.

Suddenly, one day, I was told to call my cable company because the house was almost ready to receive such services. In a hurricane of fumbling, orders were sorted and appointments made, promising imminent livening up of my burnt life. However, all appointments and orders are cancelled and on hold now, since no one remembers making that call to me, especially not yet, since the hosue is so far from being "done."

Maybe I dreamt it, though people who inhabit this reality assure me otherwise. When I use all my spine to pose questions about possible completion of The Project, I get shocked, vacant stares at my audacity in asking such questions, which smack of blatant greed of squatting on the house. Patience, which I do not posses, is called for, as no one can estimate any longer how long This Thing is likely to take. In fact, it seems farther away from completion than it was two months ago. Maybe six months? Maybe more?

I know there has to be a lesson in all this; however, all thinking, computing, analysis elude me. I wonder if Rama, Odysseus, Sita, or any of my guiding metaphors ever felt this way; inevitably they did. They have had to. So, patient Reader, it seems what I complain of is merely my humanity; there is no fix for this.

I just returned from my daily stroll to my abandoned home; I wanted to check if the plaster on the walls was ready to be painted. There is no plaster; as I step out in the soft rain, I wonder at my grasp on reality, especially instead of the plasatering crew, I met the plumber in my house, doing mysterious tasks that are none of my business and anyways, beyond my understanding.

I have a recurring nightmare: a gnome, or a man sits in a dark corner under a cloud of foreboding and is busy with something I cannot see. My unchanging dream-fear is that he will turn around.

Maybe the lesson is from my nightmare? Maybe I ask too many questions. Maybe I quest and thirst too much. I have alluded to her before, but today, again, I am the woman from Garcia-Marquez's short story, who has run out of heartbeats to count and the man bothered by the noise of the wheeling stars.

The only resolution to my problems is that the unreal shift definitely away from the real. After all, that is how all nightmares are resolved.

The Journey Home: Waiting for Godot

In a few days, I will have been without my home for eight months. I am afraid I am losing larger chunks of myself, more frequently now, than I did when my loss was new. This indefinite, indeterminate, interminable waiting is eating up my beating heart even as I live and try to shift to a comfortable position which would allow my breath to sigh in, to exhale expansively.

I remain in awe of those who bear their losses with grace and patience. I know there are mothers who look for their lost offspring for years, decades even, if their life span allows. I wonder at the Cosmic mechanism that regulates their heart beats, syncs up their body functions so that they can place one thought in front of another.

People offer me platitudes: I am advised to look back at how much I have already endured; I don't have a choice (or many rights) so I must endure patiently; I should teach myself to look forward to new things I will undoubtedly surround myself with and anticipate the joy of shopping, setting up, designing my abode. Worst of all is when I can see people actually sigh in exasperation and look away when they think I am going to begin my same old litany.

I am afraid I sigh and look away too, but I can't seem to stop the litany.

I am also afraid that the contractor, association, City, all are rather tired of me and wish me gone to a place from where I cannot find my way to their tired ears; they have stopped acknowledging my desparate pleas for an estimate on a finish date.

These are Cosmic Processes and I should know better than to expect mere humans to know anything.

In a couple of months, my child leaves for College. We have a couple of shorter trips coming up next month. In a couple of weeks, I am going to have to begin another quarter.

We are making all sorts of plans for all these journeys and deadlines. However, it seems to smack of inappropriate, inexcusable, unbecoming hubris of the worst kind to even begin thinking of what we might like in our home, to ask when, if my home will be finished.

In fact, today, it seems improbable that we will ever find our way across the street.

Today, it seems that my family will soon end its Summer visitation and go their own ways, and I shall still be sitting here, in this not-mine space, trying to exude undying, genuine gratitude I do not feel for having a roof of sorts over my head, still waiting for six more months before anyone can tell me anything about Progress on the Cosmic Process.

Logos

I hope my patient reader forgives my rather long silence on this blog. I won't bore with excuses or reasons, only that we have passed many milestones between the last time this blog was updated and now; although I am not home yet, my child is officially an adult and no longer a school going day scholar, an adjustment we haven't yet digested, a milestone greater than can be imagined.

However, what drives me to this space, to break through the internal torpor that inevitably accompanies the whirlwind of my child's bildungsroman, is the story.

My friend once said that my stories don't have dialogue. I told her that that was because dialogue exhausts me. I feel I must explain a little; maybe you, my reader, might suggest something?

I confess I have been taking the easy way out when I write my short stories, concentrating on plot and setting, even when the plot is character-driven. It is so much easier to describe, to sketch images, let gestures, moments, flashes of recognition speak, rather than trying to have the characters open their mouths.

After all, one can't just have the character spout any words! The character comes from a specific place, geographical, historical, social, and is subject to the spice that flavors that place; hence what she says must reflect both, her topography as well as her place in it. So as the writer, one must create an entire world behind her: construct syntax, decide on diction choices, imply inflections, work in syllable-stress, tone.

That is not all. Dialogue implies two people, and a large part of that is what is not said, the many miscommunications, the cadence of unspoken language, the rhythm of thought process, and most important of all, the coherence, since the reader must not be lost in the exchange between two characters operating from different frames of reference.

To that end, I have been trying to observe the way that people speak to each other, especially two people. Rarely do we complete sentences; rarely do we compose; mostly, we try to just catch the moment, hook it with a thought, a turn of phrase, a change in syllable-stress, so that the hooked moment can lead to what comes next. And so I see a chain of half-spoken sentences, expletives, and a whole lot of unsaid language underlining what is said, making the dialogue heavy, gravid with meaning.

And all this time, the one thing we seek to do is to convince.

How can I, as the story teller, weave all this in? How can I hope to convince my unseen reader, when most of what convinces cannot, should not be deliberately designed or composed?

Am I the only one who feels this way?

Fallow Season

This weekend has been one of the quieter ones, the kind of quiet imposed on the centers of storms, the kind that is needed to sustain, the mandatory opposite of action. I do understand the balance such days provide, the kind that force me to just sit still and wait.

Now I don't presume to evoke ghosts of Milton, where the waiting has some cosmic significance or divine directive. On the contrary, actually, this waiting has been forced on me because my constant worrying over trifles, the various, varying demands made upon my conscious mind, and the fast pace of our disjointed lives has caused a system failure of sorts in the primary circuitry of my being.

I have been primarily couch-bound for the past few days, weighed down by a fever and an exhaustion that looms by 2pm, and I have spent hours, supine beside my computer with stacks of ungraded work, surrounded by floors that need cleaning and a house that needs picking up. I have had to take many, many naps, each feeling like an infinite stretch of time, where the world outside the door shifts axis while I am held captive by whirlwinds of unresolvable worries that clutch me in their nightmare jaws.

I acknowledge the necessity of this fallow season. It reminds me of other fallow seasons which have changed my inner landscape irrefutably. The one that comes to mind is the long three weeks of enforced bed rest when I was on the brink of puberty. It was ages ago, from where I stand today, of course. But that was the season during which I realised that my true love was going to be, had always been the fictional word. My students today ask me when I had the time to read all the mythology and tales I teach and I know I have my fallow season to thank.  My inner self had used that season to adjust, fit, evaluate, and compensate for the being I was growing into, while the stories of the past ages whispered important input and sketched indelible patterns on the basic structure of the self as it moved towards a stable, crystallized form.

This fallow season is no exception. The difference is in the stories I am feeding this self. These are newer tales (though it is the same Story), woven in different hues and textures. On the one hand, I am going through the Puranas (the most ancient, contemporary, changing, iconoclastic of Hindu literature), and on the other hand, I watch all the television series that I never usually have the time to catch up on, as I nap. Squeezed between the cracks are the occassionals, like the books my book club is reading and the latest Umberto Eco I just stumbled upon at the public library.

I do not hope to have a firm grasp on why this season has been necessary, or what it is supposed to give my inner landscape. Those thoughts are nebulous and will wisp away if examined. All I know is that some sort of regeneration has been required. My house is being worked on (for the time being), my child is fluffing up her wings and checking her compasses to begin her first flight into adulthood, and even my usually clueless conscious self can clearly see that a stage of our lives is closing up.

Today is the first day that I have been able to stay up this late after 3pm, and I've had only one nap, so I know that the time for me to get up is very near. Unlike the end of the earlier fallow season, however, I do not find myself particularly looking forward to the new season that awaits around the bend; I am afraid I might not have the energy for it. These past months have, I fear, broken something in me, re-wired something essential. I am afraid I might be proven unable, lacking in whatever the new stage demands of me, that this fallow season might be sown in dry earth, incapable of bringing forth all that it used to.

I lie here, shivering, the napping cats my main heat source. I hope and pray that I find the new stage a recognizable setting, with familiar choices and realised hopes. I invoke the kind gods I read of to rudder and steer my ship; I invoke the stars to guide my compass; I invoke the fallow season to sow enough for me to recognize the axis mundi from mirages; I invoke the Story to map understandable directives; and I invoke the true horizon to steady my course.

Tales from Battlefields

My child talked of playing a game of "if only" with a friend, of things they'd do if only they had enough resources to serve their whim. Of course, cats were the first on that list, but a close second was a house for me. I am always surprised, affected, and overwhelmed when she unwittingly lets slip how much regard she holds for me. The last few disastrous months that have robbed our home have not served to bring us closer. In fact, like it happens with small families, each of us has tried to hold together separate parts of our common life, stretching our bond thin, a very logical effect of the strained circumstances we are dealing with. So every moment that reminds us of our affection feels like a gift, one of the more appreciated effects of my burnt house, like these stories I have lately found myself writing.

I have often wondered if my house burning will prove to be a blessing in retrospect. I cannot imagine it will, considering the devastation we have experienced and the constant loss that won't shift, no matter how much we toss and turn. However, I must confess that this burning has brought me an unexpected gift. My very good friend and one of my prime saviors came up with the mandate ( I will not call it a plan or suggestion, for fear that my other self might be listening and refuse to take it seriously!) that each of us would meet every 4 to 6 weeks with a new short story.

I have been writing and that has helped me maintain a recognizable mask for my day world. This writing has provided an outlet for my desolation so that it keeps away from clouding my aspect and is shut away from the routine dealings of everyday life. I am able to use coherent syntax, can update a syllabus, recognize a joke and even occasionally crack one, and everyone congratulates me on my courage and spirit in face of my circumstances, all to my amazement (don't they hear me complain all the time? Aren't they annoyed, like I am, with my unceasing desperation?).

Earlier on this blog, I have bemoaned my lack of control over my stories. Now, this doesn't seem to bother me as much: I do not have much control over anything anyways, so I am not surprised or annoyed when my stories run away from me and serve their own agendas. I do not have to think of a plot, or a theme, or a character when I begin a story anymore; it is not as deliberate a process as it used to be. I let go of my chisel and let the stories tell themselves, with minimal interference from me. Also, when one is done, I feel a kind of exhausted relief, a catharsis the ancient Greek thespians promised their audiences.

Certainly, my stories are black, like regurgitated tar, and they come from the unsettled, unhealed places that I have been consciously trying to build scabs over, but they ARE stories. They all have a plot, some characters, and most components that constitute one.

And whoever said that only bright and beautiful things should be celebrated?  After all, I have imagined my Sita most at home, most defined by her exile, and Odysseus is best known for his voyages. It is the singular unhappinesses that isolate us from our happier neighbors and friends, that make our stories interesting and worthy of a telling. In Tolstoy's tale, Anna's spiritual dismemberment is better told than Kitty's ordinary stability. Of course, unlike what Shelley points out, my saddest thoughts do not tell the sweetest songs, but I wonder if my songs would be insipid if this huge grief were not propelling them.

When I first began this blog, I had imagined it as some kind of a journal or documentation of the process of writing and all the influences that operate on the journey of the word till it is born on a blank screen.

This blog was to be one of the many paeans and celebrations of the written word, and this entry serves as my attempt to reach back towards that imperative. It goes out in gratitude to an inward self that I have long denied, a locked up, dark self that still lives in spite of me, a thriving Mrs. Rochester of a self, liberated, dancing above the flames of a burnt house, a primordial Kali in her element among corpses.

Unkindness of Hope

The thing of feathers has been playing unkind games. The idea of hope has no connotations of cruelty, except when it is accompanied by border less, undefined waiting. The greatest challenge of this month has been to escape this thing of feathers. But how does one keep it from alighting, from digging its claws into the very soul?

The electrician working on my burnt house has very kind eyes that urged me to believe when he said that they'd begin working on the walls in a week, so I'd better hurry up and buy the water heater and kitchen lights. That was three weeks ago and the cold debris in my demolished house remains undisturbed. In spite of numerous calls, no one seems to know anything about the house. I remain amazed at the unconcern my stars have for the being whose lot they decide as they whirl and spin about their celestial play grounds. Maybe there IS no design to their playing and dancing; maybe my perception of a design was my own hubris, my own need to believe in the kindness the universe must extend to me.

The hardest lesson this month has foisted on me has been the questions my mirror poses, questions to which, I find that I can fathom no position or response for. The most difficult of these questions are about all the emotional and moral frameworks I have tried to impress upon my child through nearly two decades of parenting: the importance of a long term vision, the reliable nature of a sound work ethic, the extent to which logic and planning reduce and control frightening variables. I have believed in these virtues but upon reflection, have been defeated by forces beyond imagination, and lately, by my very human nature with its tendency to give in to meaningless hopes, a false sense of control over circumstances.

So I wait still and resist the roots I tend to grow. I buy no more spoons, or safety pins, or slippers. I ration my victuals sparsely. I visit home improvement stores all over town, chase down each recommendation, each hint dropped in casual conversations, make elaborate, meticulous notes of all I see, but I buy nothing; it is too soon and these notes and researches might very well prove to be a colossal waste.

My patient reader must think of me in terms of the worst epithet my child can conceive of, a whiner, and I must confess I, too, lose patience with me. Complaining of loss can get old really fast, especially if there is no new disaster or interesting dimensions to the same loss.

The only apology I offer is my agreement of this and an acknowledgment of my awareness of how pathetic complaining sounds; however, I plead that I have been in the same limbo, stuck in the same mire that just sucks in larger parts of me, trapped under the same blinding sky whose clouds and rains bring no relief or change, in the same twilight clutching my unchanging horizon. I am unable to move on, and so, inevitably, my thoughts chase each other on an endless carousel.

My child gears up for one of the most drastic and memorable changes of her life, but I stand on the brink with her, unable to promise her anything, shaking my head at her plans for prom, graduation, and dorm visits.

I am afraid to share in her excitement and I am afraid that I concentrate too hard on maintaining a shifty status quo, that we be surrounded by the recognizable.

But most of all, I fear that thing with feathers, always fluttering and worrying the air around my head, always threatening to settle in my being and I shall find all devoured when it inevitably flies off.

The Journey Home: The Day of Demolishing

The seasons are changing, as evidenced by the falling leaves outside the door of the house I sit in, across the street from my burnt house. I have been so afraid that the past season would refuse to budge, that I would be stuck in a downward spiral of catch-22's, of hopeless self recriminations and endless "what if"s and "if only"s. However, I am reassured that that is not so: that the earth turns, and finally, at last, the truck is parked at my burnt house; it is being demolished, with a promise of a sparkling new house in its place. The vague "they," the promised people who would work on my house to heal it, finally have faces.

Of course, this has spooked the poor grey cat who was beginning to get used to the settled soot and ashes, among the debris. Her safe house is yet again invaded by strangers and noise. I do not have the language to reassure her, and she glares uncomprehendingly at the lack of any alarm as I talk to the noise-making strangers wielding hammers and masks.

Some of my village people shake their heads at my inexplicable joy at seeing my house being brought down. They know what is to come: unimaginable bureaucracy, onerous, meaningless, repititive, defeating. They tell me that I have no idea that what lies ahead is going to be much worse, much more taxing that what is past, that this journey is not going to be smooth sailing, now that work has started; it is but the beginning.

I think of Odysseus sitting at the edge of Calypso's island in the light of the setting sun, looking out to the sea, towards where he imagines Ithaca awaits. I know that he is farther from home than he thinks, that the Universe has decreed that he has miles to go before he is allowed sleep in the bed he dreams of constantly, the one he carved out of live trees. I think of Odysseus taking stock of his assets (the arguments he would use to persuade Calypso into letting him go), arranging them, sharpening his position and pleas. I wonder if his planning is marred by all that he has lost. I wonder if he will ever find the promised, reviving sleep when he reaches his bed. I remember that his trials by no means end when he reaches home: he has to convince his home to accept him again.

I think of Rama in the Dandaka Forest, sitting on the steps of the rude cottage carved out of wilderness, contemplating the moon since it reminds him of his family, the dynasty he belongs to. He deliberately avoids looking towards Ayodhya, for fear that his brothers and mothers would sense it and miss him more acutely. He is homesick and sighs his longing, but he has no idea how much farther he shall have to go, of the monstrous unknown of his lurking destiny, which awaits for him like a demon in the darkness. He knows his home awaits him with bated breath, that it, too, will not exhale until he is gathered to its bosom. I wonder if he senses the unreasonable, unimaginable demands this home will make of him.

The moon shines very brightly tonight, so brightly that sleep seems improbable, not made for a night like this. It shines right through my burnt house, which has no walls, so one can walk from west to east in the moonlight. In fact, I can see right through the house, to the street on its other side.

I wonder at the joy I had felt earlier today, when I saw the men with hammers crashing down the blackened walls, ripping off the plywood from holes in the concrete where doors and windows used to be. How could I have felt this way while my house was being demolished? But then, I remember. The house did not look as insubstantial in the day light as it does now. As I wonder at it from across the street in the light of a sickle moon, it looks like somebody's left-over dream, transparent like a grocery store bag, a hollowed husk that will blow away in the night breeze, which will melt in the morning sun.

Tonight, I shall call the grey cat out, tempt  her with treats, so she will emerge from the shadows and run towards the little front door light, the lamps of her eyes dancing bulbs, reminding me that I have not lived the house alone. I am hopeful, tonight, that my rose bush, buried as it has been these past months under debris and ashes, shall revive: I hang my hopes on a branch sporting green thorns and leaves on an otherwise browned, drooping trunk. Tonight, I shall wend my way through the epics and borrow their hope, that the sun and the moon shall guide the path of this journey.

Laxman's Everywoman

I have Laxman's Common Man on my mind. Ever since my house burned and I have been smashing my head against a variety of Systems, I have a recognized his face in my mirrors, with my pointless umbrella that cannot shelter and my incurable myopia that the desperate glasses perched on my nose fail to fix.

It has been more than 15 weeks since my house burned, and I have been given the roundabout twice as many times, and no end in sight. I am a common person, and as a common person, am never allowed to forget how little I account for.

The mortgage company, no matter how many times I try to reason with it, reiterates that since there is no house, it cannot address or acknowledge the desperation of my situation: the computer won't recognize it and the System has no gears for such an uncommon state of the common mortgagee. The City tells me that ultimately, the burnt, uninhabitable hole in this verdant, organized town continues to be my house and expresses amazement at my willingness to drag my feet in fixing it: most uncommon response in its estimation of the responsible, common citizen.

The Association, wherein lie most of my hopes of my house's healing, made up, as it is, of common men, has transformed into yet another System devised to deflate the incurably hopeful. It has shown me documented hours spent on discussion of my Situation, of revisions of Plans, of Decisions taken, but all to no avail. Days have turned to weeks, and my queries about an estimation of when the work is to begin (which, I have been repeatedly assured, is Imminent) has joined the junk pile of never-to-be-answered emails.

My neighbors, the truly patient people, bring me little nuggets of hope: they saw a truck and could be almost sure that it was supposed to come to my place; men who looked like they knew were seen measuring and making notes; two uncommon people had a tape measure when they opened my door and disappeared from view. They too, of late, have begun avoiding my ever-questioning gaze, and shake their heads, claiming their Common Man status and its attendant cluelessnesses and helplessnesses. We find boxes of donuts, little encouragement notes, and cat treats from them, and I am conscious of the silent solidarity of my ilk.

All through my growing years, I remember R. K. Laxman's Common Man cartoons in the Times of India we used to get delivered, back when people still read newspapers as a matter of course. I now wonder what the Common Woman would look like, if Laxman were to sketch her. Would she wear that vertical wrinkle in the middle of her forehead (dislocating her bindi)? Would the upturned U of her mouth resign itself to squatting on her her chin? Would her eye sight dim with searching and scrolling through the vast Web for a dusty gear forgotten by the System? Would her hair be thinned and frazzled with desperate, impotent worry? I have placed a rolling pin in her hand, to match the Common Man's umbrella, a weapon as pointless as his.

The rains have started and the ground has thrown up its insects. I avoid going near the backyard of my burnt house, as it stinks of strange smells and has a constant cloud of little gnats. As I sit here in the not-mine place and consider my house from across the street, I wonder if I will ever forget that I lived there for so long, if it will ever heal, how long I can cling to this precipice, if I will be soon persuaded to abandon the place I'd bought and made my own, if I can ever heal with this burnt, gaping, raw hole in the center of who I am, if I am even capable of abandoning.

After all, what new beginning can empower the Common Man? He is destined to trudge along the same dusty, weary roads that run among the many Systems that control them. I better put on my bi-focal glasses, and armed with a broken umbrella and an old rolling pin, begin to scour and trample the old long road on whose side I had rested awhile to write this post.

Of Nietzche and Superman: Not so Small Ville

As I wait here in the fallow wasteland across the street from my burnt house, I find caught up, yet again, by another long tale, and this post goes out as a tribute to it. It is the television series, Smallville, that holds me the way the Star Trek and Harry Potter mythologies have done in the past. I knew I was hooked when I saw the young Clark Kent sitting in his High School cafeteria reading Nietzche, and to confirm that this was a deliberate thematic thread, a character actually comes up to ask him if he is Man or Superman!

I do not get television where I live presently, and my Hindi Serials are one of the sacrifices at the altar of what I have come to think of as my fire. In absence of the Saas-Bahu sagas that used to keep my internal World Tree thriving and populated, my thirst for the Story has led me to this back-story of the Superman mythology.

I must also confess that when Christopher Reeves was struck with paralysis, I actually felt the fabric of the kind, hopeful, logical universe tear apart with a deliberate, malicious pair of shears and I almost believed in Sisyphus' condition:  is spiritual, internal strength the only kind allowed to humanity? So it has been easy for me to fall for the promise of this extremely recognizable Hercules-tale.

However, this story is no simplistic, clear-cut good and evil tale with cool labs and loud explosions, though it has plenty of both; in fact, it examines the extremely complex nature of human morality. In one of my favorite quotes by one of my favorite characters in the show, Lex Luthor sounds this theme very eloquently when he says,  "The path to darkness is a journey, not a light switch." This show goes on to examine what it means to be human by contrasting it with what it means to be super-human and addressing archetypal themes like light vs. darkness, the conflicted self, destiny vs. free will, the father-son relationship, the idea of a family, connection between the land and the people who are defined by it, and the nature of human love and its connections to justice, hate, and death.

This show is helping me come to terms with my situation. It distills and crystallizes all that is the best, all that is worst, all that is possible as well as its many alternatives, and presents my internal struggles in an easy to digest archetypal package, very much like a good Fairytale or Myth does.

Maybe it is time to re-evaluate my definition of Home as some kind of an end to my yearning, not so much to ease or to speed up my Odyssey, rather to recognize the journey as part of Home, since that is the condition, the space I inhabit. After all, the aim of the Story is to understand the ever-changing, ever-recognizable condition of being human, not a perfect, static landscape the unchanging gods would inhabit.

The Journey Home I: The Fog

This fortnight has tested my patience, understanding, fortitude and all the little washers and screws connected to these machines. No work has begun on my burnt house and my questions about it are beginning to sound whiny. I cannot imagine how many more months upon months upon months have to be lived before the healing can begin.

It seems impossible that I should agonize thus over mapping out a journey across the street where I stand. But when one is trying to map the fourth dimension of chaos, the other familiar dimensions lose their logic and designations. The main problem that I have been grappling with is the loss of my clear perspective, one of my greatest losses in the fire that robbed me of my home. A clear vision remembers the past, understands the present, and can project a few options for the future; I, on the other hand, cannot bear to remember the past, cannot fathom the present, and am too afraid to believe that all will, indeed, be well. Every day, I find new depths in the pit I inhabit now, and the light shining far above is too bright to be anything but a gyp.

One would think that 15 weeks would provide distance and perspective, since I'd have had time to reflect. However, the machine of routine allows no such luxuries: there are papers to be graded, lectures prepped for, doctors' appointments made and honored, among all the madness of a household with a High school Senior and three cats that don't exactly get along. There is no time allowed for reflection, when all thoughts and moments are dedicated to juggling immediate necessities.

I try to snatch rare half-hours of my staring-out-into-nothing time, like this half hour before the day is born, because my daughter had to reach school at 5am and I have a few moments before the Sun peeps over the blanket of fog and begins to shout contradictory directions at me.

This entry serves as a reminder to me to navigate these dark, foggy waters with patience, for even the slightest stumble is likely to sink my ship. I must remember not to look down, since there is no way marker there. I must remember to steer true and slow through elements I cannot see, and learn to recognize, understand, and heed the strategically placed cliff lights as the only guides to harbors I can only imagine.

The Journey Home 1: The Haunting

Courage, to me, feels like a four-lettered word, something one curses one's ill-wishers to have to possess and exhibit; we wish for our loved ones the unexciting, adventure-less mediocrity which keeps them safe, predictable and found. Ever since my house burned, I have been forced to wind myself tightly, to keep all parts of my self in a knot that cannot be undone by storms, strife, disease, fires, floods, or any other avatar of apocalypse. I have wanted to destroy all backups and other paraphernalia of  my essential hard drive, so no byte of me may be lost, no loose ends may break off, ricochet and end up orbiting strange realities.

This is my attempt to log the impossible Odyssey I have set upon. Since my house burned last Fall, I find myself at a loss, with extra hands and fingers that have forgotten what it is like to be me. I have stretched my arm out in front of me in this darkness, but cannot see it any longer, the darkness being so unrelenting. So I must resolve to lift up my foot and place it somewhere other than where it seems to have rooted, hopefully, somewhere forward, wherever and whatever that means.

I went back to India for ten days, and when there, as usual, I sought subconsciously to inhabit my home here. However, I found my memories haunted by what is not there any more, from the feline I lost to the fire, down to the bunch of safety pins that used to live on my bedside table. People ask me what I need, needing to help me, but I cannot answer and end up roaming dazed through the kind, generous world full of plenty, unable to own or recognize. I have been committing to nothing, refusing all need to own, even for a cup or a bottle, for fear of adding to the burden I must keep moving with. All beds I have tried to rest on have felt un-mine; they are either too high or too hard, the pillows seeking shapes that do not fit my neck or head.

I know, if I want to retain the core of who I am, that I cannot go on like this for long. So I have been making conscious efforts to exercise my lip-stretches, blink the darkness back, choose blindness to all that is not there anymore, which is the hardest, since all that is lost glares in sharp relief every time my glance falls on what I have salvaged, tried to replace, or accepted.

So I took a very frightening step this past weekend: I bought groceries to stock the fridge and larder in the house I am staying at present, hopefully until mine is ready. This chore of buying groceries, something I used to do with such familiarity, felt like exercising the awkward vowels of a forgotten language, not having indulged in it since the house burned. The act of stocking up on my child's lunch stuff, soups, breads for ledges un-mine felt like I was trying to cheat on extra, forbidden rations in a time of famine. The ultimate step was when I brought in turmeric, hing, and cumin, and lodged them on the kitchen counter, next to the salt shaker a generous friend has given us. This has changed the very topography of the counter, and I cannot decide if the familiar spices taunt me, seem forlorn, or make a statement. Now, I have to remind my fingers to navigate that counter again.

I begin and end each day with the sight of my burnt, hurting home. No one has begun work on it, even though I have signed promises, been cited by the city for owning an unsafe dwelling, and have taken residence behind it.

My familiar, the ash colored cat, refuses to abandon it and continues to live in her burnt home, haunted by all that was, all that can never be. Kind reader, if you should pass by the broken lock and barred door, where cold shadows await, where the ghost cat sits at her vigil, hang a prayer on the dried branches, that my world be verdant soon.