Price for Free

This is unusual. I do not wake up on a day suddenly feeling the need to acknowledge the price of whatever we mean when we think of freedom. If I do feel this need, it awakens around August 15, India's Independence Day, an inevitable programming for someone who grew up in the often hysterical jingoistic patriotism that super-scripted the Emergency years of Indira Gandhi. Furthermore, I come from a family of doctors, not freedom fighters, so it is challenging to excavate genuine sympathy at the many ways in which the human body is deliberately harmed by others of its own species. I must also confess that I am spoiled. I have always thought of myself as a product of all that the brave sought to preserve, and like all such products, I take many kinds of freedoms for granted; I mean, doesn't everybody?

I do not need to count the ways in which we are free for my patient reader; it might smack of unimaginable boasting at worst, and will be unimaginably boring at best. I will also not tell bravery tales of battle heroes; that belongs in a classroom somewhere. What I do want to acknowledge is home courage, the kind seen at home, not on battle lines.

A discussion I invest a part of course time to every quarter I teach Greek Mythology, revolves around what happens to women in a war, not women soldiers, but other leftovers, like Hecuba and Cassandra. I tell of their plight, my material derived from a tragedy (Women of Troy) millenia old. I know this resonates with all of us because we know that nothing has changed. Often, the heaviest price for freedom is paid by those who did not choose the war, did not fight in it, and were not free enough or fast enough or resourceful enough to run away from it.

I do not mean to say, of course, that wars are bad and that we should not indulge in them. I know that wars have many benefits, like a rich cultural exchange, a forced open-mindedness, expanded gene pools, and profitable trade and travel opportunities. After all, my grandmother was lucky and resourceful enough to run away from Hitler's Dresden, all the way to the shores of Gujarat, an event I think of a great deal every time I think of my daughter away at college. We are also, it would seem, a family of globe trotters and think of all the countries we call our own as Our Country, rather than choosing one. I remember when I was in college, I made sure to Read what I loved, pursue my passions, live as fully as I could manage, because SO MUCH had gone into the making of me! All the angst of history, all the terror of immigrating to a place where no one speaks one's language, the horrors of wars, all culminating into one moment that was my life: it was an awareness I carried on my shoulders at all times.

When I think of freedom, I think of my maternal great grandfather in World War I, who chose to step out of his trench after being confined there for over three days, insisting on his need for air and a smoke, even at the cost of possibly being gunned down. When he returned from his smoke, he found himself the sole survivor of his unit, the trench bombed in his short absence.

When I think of freedom, I think of my grandmother telling us of the importance of answering door knocks in Mumbai during the Partition, with chili powder in hand, of instructing children to hide behind gas cylinders (we cook with those) and not emerge, no matter what they see or hear.

When I think of freedom, I think of my paternal grandfather, choosing to travel six villages away (by boat), because his village did not have a school offering studies higher than 6th Standard. I think of my father studying beneath street lights (his house did not have enough light after sunset).

And this is only my family. All our families have willingly paid, continue to pay the price for all flavors and sizes of freedoms, even bartering some other freedoms in exchange. None of us is an accident, I like to think, but a deliberate movement of history, that sentient river which hold in its depths the uneasy, sludgy, slippery, stinky muds, some of the richest fertilizers that can foster life.

Today is my day off. I have the freedom to chart it as I will. As I navigate it, I will try to remember what an expensive moment of history I am.



 

Open House

The rains are early this year, and ferocious. This spring-monsoon adds to my discombobulation, since I have felt stretched too thin these past weeks. I've added mileage to my life and car, neglecting parts of my life that have needed tending, juggling, settling, changing, cleaning, picking up and putting it all down in a different place. One of the most important parts that I've had to ignore is, of course, my writing: I've not written a single word in these past weeks, not a poem, not a story, nothing. I must confess I am feeling snarly, often tempted to spread a few hisses all around. Even as I write this, I know it is an indulgence, a sudden thunder storm that has forced me to settle on the sofa, to calm the cats.

Ever since I've moved back to my house, people have been asking me how I am settling down. Honestly, I don't know! My patient reader knows that I lost a cat in the fire and that the two surviving felines had to be well-nigh homeless for a few weeks. I am still reeling with the fallout from those two circumstances. So I don't know exactly how well I am settling down. I have been trying to reclaim my house from the cats inch by inch, with a great deal of help from the fragrance spitters and body sprays.

The fallout I referred to earlier is about some other stray or abandoned cats that my surviving cat seems to have befriended. Already, two of them have taken residence with us in the house and two more come at night to eat and visit. Sometimes, when I wander in during these visiting hours, I get a few causal hisses by way of greeting and warning. Sometimes, I have found "gifts" left by the visitors, namely dead birds, some even partially plucked. I wish I could tell the visitors to feel free to eat, but feel no obligation to leave behind gifts of any sort.

This has, of course, driven my cat food budget beyond the modest allowance granted to it, but that's not the worst. The worst has been the uneasy truce governing the space the cats share with me. We each have different views about how the space should be configured and inhabited. I have placed the fragrance spritzers at regular intervals around my spaces, which has kept the visitors and inhabitants away from my space, but also caused my older cat to feel ever more unwelcome and nervous. To remain fair, I have brought in some more cat furniture, to encourage the live-in cats to leave my perches alone and choose scratch-able, catnip infused, cat-friendly seats and perches.

I have spent weekends building cat shelters in my postage-stamp sized backyard, to give the old cat a place in my house, the old cat who is the only cat I can really call mine, in the sense that I had chosen her to live with me and who has, since, been driven out of my house by the other cats who have decided to cohabit with me. These shelters were meant to lure the old cat back, if not INSIDE the house then at least AROUND it, a safe place during thunderstorms.

However, both, the outside shelters as well as the cat furniture remain cat less and ignored. The old cat does come every time I call her because she has trained me to feed her, but she won't come in the house, nor will she stay. The live-in cats give my fragrance spritzed spaces a wide berth, but also ignore the perches I want them to use.  Of course, I love the cat snuggling between the back of my knees and the back-rest of the couch; after all, I HAVE been trained and conditioned well.

The first wave of thunderstorms has passed and I see three cats stretched out in their preferred spots around the room. I scarf through e-bay for inexpensive cat furniture and wonder how well I am settling down in the new house. I will have family and friends visiting the house over the Summer and I wonder how the visitors and live-in felines will react to this. Hopefully, I will be trained enough not to wonder at whatever awaits for us all this Summer!




 

Navigating the Tornado: CMS and Other Frustrations

This month has somehow taken wing and I stand here, on its exit threshold, not quite remembering how I got here. The first quarter of the year is past, my child's FAFSA updated, my CMS  (Classroom Management System) updated for next quarter that begins on Monday, and even my laundry is more or less done. So, of course, I worry about my work ethic, hopefully to re-examine the way I work, the hours I spend on it, and if I am doing too much or too little for the job that has defined my decade.

One can always argue that it is not possible to do too much: after all, this is the only job I have and the way I do it will define who I am in ways I cannot control. Do I love it? Yes, most days I honestly do. I don't love it so much on days like today, when I look back at my break week with frustration and defeat.

My patient reader would argue, of course, that all that frustration and defeat stem from within me, and that my job has little to do with it: after all, no one has mandated that I change the text book for the course no one asked me to create in the first place; no one has mandated that I construct individual, detailed rubrics for each assignment in each course; no one has suggested that my courses have insufficient assessment / evaluation tools, or that these tools need to be rephrased, re-constructed, or changed in any way. I also know that no one really likes change, and that these hours and days I have wasted on these updates are going to earn me dissatisfaction and frustration from the very people for whom I've made these changes, the students, who will not be able to use their friends' notes, books, and tests for this quarter.

I also know I am isolated in my struggle to manage and force my CMS into doing what I want it to; it resists! It seems that no one has the power to make it do my bidding, even though everyone wants it to. So I have spent most of this week constructing, breaking down, revising, adding, and subtracting the same elements repeatedly until my head is spinning and I've had to walk away to get a perspective. I have felt what the doomed Athenian youth must have felt as they blundered around the Minotaur's labyrinth, trying to get an idea about its structure and ending up lost, not knowing which way North lies.

Actually, most of this month has felt that way, like trying to navigate logically through a tornado. This week, I talked to a few people at work about our CMS and some other electronic resources available to faculty. I have been embarrassingly, foolishly enthusiastic about adding customized rubrics to my GradeMark, about the new databases our library is going to add later this year, about the new tools I am discovering, like the Prezi. I confess to waxing poetic about the wonderful free Google resources for educators.

I usually look for my compasses in the eyes of the people around me, to get  my bearings, to figure out if I am headed the right way or at least the way I want to go. But I have received mixed signals: half the people give me thumbs up and seem to cheer me on, promising to call me if they get lost; equal number of people have looked away, vowing to have little to do with me or my ways, shaking their heads over how lost I've allowed myself to become. A friend suggested that I should learn to curb my excitement a bit, for if I indulge it, I am likely to spend hours, days, weeks in learning about these resources, helping whoever wants my help and that to realise that I am not going to get paid for all those hours, days, and weeks. A respected, well-meaning colleague, only half in jest, showed me a pencil and asked me if I'd forgotten how to use it. I remain shell shocked and lost.

The form and idea of higher education are changing at Warp Speed. I realise that. I also understand that institutions like the one I am with presently might either not survive this change or might metamorphose into something completely different. So my enthusiasm and excitement do sound pointless and foolish, even to  myself. I stand here at the end of my break week, and I must confess to an undeniable strain of guilt and indulgence that run through my enjoyment in learning little things I didn't know before, things that are little more than clicks and links and a few taps on my keyboard, when everything is said and done.

A very good friend, one of the few people whose opinion I value highly, one of my Axis Mundi, wondered at my excitement at the saw that is cutting away the branch I perch upon. I feel unwarranted in pointing out that there would be no other way for me to fly, unless that comfortable branch were sawed off. Most probably, I will have to leave my body behind in this flight. So this post goes out as a hope and prayer that the skies are worth it, that the wings are strong enough, and that my eyes are keen and wise enough to absorb the views.

 

Lumos: of MOOCs and LMS

I must confess to a largely cursory interest in the future of Higher Education until this week. I know, I know, patient reader; this is the business that keeps me in cat food and samosas: how could I not be more aware, involved, curious? However, there you have it: I have been apologetically, blatantly incurious. I've had plenty of excuses for this, of course, and all of them quite, quite valid, all tinged with only an obligatory tinge of apology.

All that changed this week, when I attended a conference (Cengage & SXSWedu) that shook me awake and forced me to turn my head and look out of the window. The landscape has completely changed, and what is more, is rushing fast, faster than my eye can keep up. It is a veritable stampede!

Before I address the changes, I want to first validate what remains reassuringly unchanged. All reliance on a keyboard is not always the best thing, yet. Everywhere I looked, attendees were plugged in (for lack of a better epithet): they all (with probably less than 1% exceptions) had ipads or tablets which were busily buzzing along, talking to them and their phones, and a variety of other devices. I cannot express the strangeness I felt as I whipped out a pen and notebook to take notes during sessions. But then I realized that no matter how much I type, and how fast I've learned to type, I still write much, much faster, with greater coherence, since my hand doesn't require me to press the shift button, or do anything extra when I want to change languages or use symbols instead of words. A part of me feels reassured to know that I am still the most efficient and fastest note taker for me.

At the same time, however, the material I was taking notes on has widened my eyes, popped my inner ears, and lighted up unexplored corridors in my brain! Ah brave new world! I learned of the very real impact of MOOCs, of Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Multi dimensional interface, and Analytical feedback (like the recommendations one sees when shopping on Amazon, for instance).  It was really like an instructor's dream: we were treated to lunch as publishers and authors of textbooks asked what our perfect texts would look like! I know I am not alone in feeling the isolation behind the desk, and I have often wondered about the value of what I do. I have often dreamed of "if only" and "by now, we should be able to" scenarios; well, those scenarios are already here, it would seem.

One of the sessions used the trope of Peter Pan's shadow to point out the impact that Web 2.0 has on our sense of self. This has resonated to me and at last, at last, I have a clearer understanding of why we all prefer Facebook to PDF's of texts (a pointless thing, if you ask me; if students don't read the hard copy, why would they read the PDF of the same?). However, now, I understand why students (and, I confess, the instructor in me) are so attracted to our LMS (which is neither the best, nor the worst) and I plan to exploit it to its fullest capacity.

I do not, of course, mean to indicate that I shall be completely reliant on my LMS: if it goes away, I will not be lost, since I have found  many compasses. I learned how to use completely free resources if one has no LMS. In fact, one of the fascinating lounges I visited was the Google lounge, which offered a wonderful respite from the crowded sessions, provided time and space to explore how to use free resources to teach and learn, even try out the new technology to be released later on this year.

I have heard a great deal of doom saying when conversations meander towards the future of Higher Education, especially during the last year, with its stampede of MOOCs. The sessions I attended, however, have reassured me: learning is not becoming obsolete and the value of the educator in this maelstrom of changing technologies, is unshakable and central. I have a clearer idea of what I'd like my absolute dream job to be (though this job, of course doesn't exist yet, I don't think).

I have spent the greater part of this weekend trying to catch up on the grading that has loomed large in my absence. But today, I don't resent it like I used to. My attitude towards the endless grading (the lot of every writing instructor) has been similar to the unnamed Maiden's attitude to her endless spinning in Grimms' "Mother Holle." However, like the Maiden, I have glimpsed at the alternate world beneath the well, a world that coexists with mine, where meaningless, repetitive chores have cosmic impact and all work is meaningful, relevant, and rewarded.

Primeval Forest of Stories

Deep in the center of the forest called blinks-of -the-eye, the Boar tells the Earth all about the creation of the world, its destruction, the various dynasties, the families derived for the Sun and the Moon, and the many eras that have been, are, and will be: yes, my patient reader, I am held by the Puranas. The one that I am in right now, is, of course, the Varaha Purana. I amazes me how the stories compiled over a millenia ago, still hold their magic. Even though these are attributed to Ved Vyasa, reading them, their contradictions, their unwillingness to support each other's contentions, the very nature Ved Vyasa, all of it reminds me of nothing as much as the Vulgate Cycles through which the stories of Arthuriana come down to us.

It is true that I first turned to the Puranas as I tried to heal from the absolute loss of my home back in 2011. However, this need to heal goes beyond my individual loss and I find, as I drown in the labyrinthine interpolations, that these stories address the very nature of humanity and seek to articulate questions about the validity of a cosmos that is continually being destroyed and created. From this larger perspective, my individual losses, lacks, complaints, whittle away into nonentities, fade away into normalcy of losses, lacks, and complaints of all humanity, nothing unusual. For some reason, this is reassuring: there is comfort in knowledge that all previous and present generations have more or less the same problems, which makes me part of a teeming whole that has survived.

Beyond that, there is the sheer magic of these stories, and I hear the crusty, gruff voice of the very land telling them. There are the stories of cities submerged into the ocean, destroyed by random pieces of unthinkingly discarded metal. Serpents coil around mountains to churn the ocean, which yields unimaginable poisons, riches, nectars, and muses. Gods and demons emerge from the same family, and there are as many admirable demons as there are petty gods. The many levels of heavens, underworlds, the various islands, the ending and unending worlds, all assure that the cosmos is a very balanced structure, with a proper designation for everything in it: the serpents, for example, argue that their venom is no reflection of malice or fault; they insist on a proper allocation of their own place in the world, and their suit is honored.

Along my trek through the Naimisharanyak (Nimesh = blink of an eye; aranyak = forest), I have often found that my sympathies lie with the demons and the gods seem unreasonable; often, the rightful remain unrewarded, not because they were being tested for patience, but because they wished for improbable things. The stories point out that neither the store of merit, nor the hoard of faults is inexhaustible. Sometimes, nothing is lost, not even a blade of grass, a drop of blood, or a grain of rice; sometimes, the very Earth is lost and she has to be sought after, rescued, and healed, that life may be sustained.

I no longer look to be healed by the Puranas, though I find many catalogs of medicinals, curing rituals, and herb lore in them. Without my asking them, these stories have grounded me, and after all, the only way that finds us when we are lost, is the path through the darkest of forests that lie between the blinks of the eye.

 

To My Father (In All His Forms)

Today is my late father's birthday, a day my family remembers as we all feel his absence most poignantly. Along with my family, I miss him terribly as well. People tell me that he and I have the same smile.

The myth of Orpheus (my students well know where I am going with this; I can feel them roll their eyes and say to themselves, "Here she goes again!") cautions us against looking backwards. Orpheus, the musician, convinced the gods of the Underworld to let his dead wife's soul to follow him out of the Shadows; the gods agreed, with the condition that he not look back until both of them are out of the Underworld. Orpheus agrees and somehow holds his patience until he is out of the Underworld, waits a bit, and turns around, hoping to see his beloved smiling at him. However, she is not out yet and he loses her all over again and spends his days mourning him, unable to do anything else, until he is torn apart. This myth resonates heavily with me. I have tried very hard to avoid looking back, no matter how strong the lure. The myth cautions that every time we look back, we lose that which we love the most, all over again; who can afford any more losses?

There have been many days when all I've wanted to do is submit to debilitating grief, rage against the most basic principles of existence, and I am ashamed to say, I have indulged in this. When I was young, this was my nightmare, a world without my father. Then I grew up, made choices, and it turned out that I never saw my father once I immigrated.

Before my patient reader resigns to a litany of self-pity, let me stop. This post is about celebrating all those we miss, not a list of all things we miss about them. Yes, I miss my father's voice, his laughter, the way he said my name, his fingers circling my wrist in protection and comfort, even his silent rage. Then, I went back to visit my home town after over a decade of having left it, imagining that my father's absence will yawn at me and I was apprehensive.

What happened, however, was the absolute opposite. I saw my family alive and well, his favorite foliage swinging in the breeze in our backyard, his favorite knick-knacks on many, many shelves, even the cadence of his speech and pitch of his laughter every time I talked to anyone in the family.

The time away from my father during the first years of my immigration taught me to seek him in the world around me. I learned to recognize my father's voice when I heard his favorite songs; I learned to enjoy the sunrise and sunset for him; I learned to remember the maxims he repeated and use them as guiding metaphors. I was pleasantly surprised when my daughter picked up the violin in middle school for her music credit; I was happiest when she would practice, since my father used to love his violin and played all the time.

Now, even though I miss my father's presence all the time, I do not feel his absence any more. Every time I see my sibling and cousins, every time I meet my uncles and aunts, every time I get an email or message from my mother, every time I see my child smiling, every time I see my niece concentrating, every time I see my nephews laughing, I feel my father's presence. The nightmare world of my youth does not seem nightmarish at all!

Today is his birthday and we all have greeted each other in his name. I raise my tea cup in his name, on this warm, silvery day, as I look forward to enjoying my Sunday afternoon, stretching out infinitely before me. I know that somehow, somewhere, I will meet my father in many many forms and I only pray that when I do, I recognize him as we share our smile.

To Explore Brave New Worlds: A Boston Weekend

Vacationing is most effective when it doesn't just offer an escape from the debilitating regularity of a routine, but goes beyond to open a window to a completely new reality. I do not mean an alternate reality, like a visit to the land of What If; I mean a world that has gone on inexorably, crossing unimaginable horizons and thresholds, one that redefines our very reality. My trip to Boston did that for me: it showed me a brave new world, so that even the railroad tracks in the middle of the street looked incredibly cool instead of impractical.

I spent a couple of days getting to know all about Paul Revere and Beacon Hill. But then, across one of the bridges, lay the cobblestones to another time, more Star Trek than Revolution. I walked past places that were as exotic and improbable as any that the Starship Enterprise could boast knowing; I walked past 100 Technology Square, with MIT buildings owning all horizons all around; Microsoft proclaimed its newest generations on a live billboard in Kendall Square; next to a crepe place, a large window advertised the map of the human genome; across the street were the MIT center for cancer research and center for brain research. Really, I felt like I was perched on the edge of human civilisation. My worries about the cats' feeding times, my child's dorm bill, and the price of gas seemed embarrassingly trivial, even outdated.

There are some cities that just call to me to own them, invite me to explore their labyrinthine alleys, discover new worlds in their roofs and skylines, and through it all, a river runs, lending a touch of the archetypal, cities that, for lack of a better descriptor, simply sing to me. I can barely resist this song, and the fusion that Boston is, with its stately architectures that dream of London and Florence, with the red vein of Freedom Trail that runs through it, with the little ducks all in a row, it hums with a heady aria. People who know me often mistake me for a history buff, but I can barely aspire to be one. My personal touchstones for European history are based on the most unreliable of all historical sources, Shakespeare, Malory, Gildas! So it would be safer to say that I am passionate about and attracted to the drama of human experience that history promises, rather than to a commitment to keeping a chronological string of events untangled in my head. So it was with Boston, which spoke hauntingly of Paule Revere's lanterns, and in the same breath, claimed Leonard Nimoy as its own.

In Cambridge, we passed by this really beautiful local college. There was snow on the ground and the sky looked like a desert with tree skeletons scratching at its cold, grey expanse. But students skipped and strode purposefully and all but danced the extremely serious nature of their excitement at returning to their Alma Mater after a winter fortnight away. This local institution proclaimed its universal appeal with an insignia that summed up its mission in a word, Veritas. Here, as I witnessed the active pursuit of ancient truths, I inhaled and knew the thin, cold air that stratifies the very pinnacle of the highest achievements of our species, from the mundane concerns of lay visitors, awarded a glimpse of the busyness of the business of being human.

I return humbled and enriched to my blue-gold skies and lands of eternal summer, back to my trivial routine. My hope is that this entry shall remind me of this sweet air that I had once breathed, sauntering around in one of the Coops, buying a fridge magnet in exchange of a promise to these cobblestones of many future tramplings.

 

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.