when dave and i were traveling in january, we took mental pictures of things that were “indicatively indian.” clocks with no arms. cues with no order. the like. after four months of cultural observation cole deemed india, “generally illogical and irresponsible.” you might think we are badmouthing this country. that we’re condescending or judgmental of a system that is effective when measured culturally. maybe so. but in a country with “conizzas”—pizza+cone— traffic signs that go completely unnoticed and no sense of order it seems accurate.
today i thought that i had won the ongoing battle between india and courtney. i would like to believe that a game of the match has gone to each team. one to courtney for a stellar first semester at woodstock, one to india for dealing ms. humm the tko via typhoid, etc. on the way to the airport, i felt like the queen. i spoke too far too soon. when i arrived at the airport, after calling to confirm that my flight was on time (an overly responsible move for me), my mind was sent into overdrive. if my flight was supposed to depart at 9 pm, what could “4:24 rescheduled” mean? had i missed the plane? no. instead, indian air (the airlines that [along with my own oversight] brought you “christmas day in bombay 2005”) has also sponsored “june 28th at the skeeziest-supposedly-nice hotel in delhi” (yes, woodstockers, the centaur—site of the “mouse over joanna’s head incident). somehow, between the 5 hours i had confirmed my flight and arriving at the airport, all had gone awry. a roadblock impeded the completion of my global iron man-- 24 hours of flight travel in 3 days, almost completely circumnavigating the globe.
judge me for badmouthing india. it’s true, i am overly cynical about this place after my last defeat. i overcame the taxi scramble last night that impelled me into a rat race for my taxi cab, including shouting accompanied by angry gestures over my fare, and concluding with requests for compensation for no reason. apparently, tonight we were supposed to get a free phone call. there is no operator in the hotel. there is no word from the airline and our re-scheduled flight is supposed to leave in an hour and a half. i am on approximately my 24th hour of shitty tv (coupled with the crappy tv from the initial layover period). i don’t know what was more of a dive, “beauty and the geek” or the part of the “amazing race” when the contestants were bitching about the “gross,” “jalopy” cars in senegal or when they passed out candy to the children because of their “sweet faces and endearing smiles” and that it “made them feel good” to give them candy (which, in some studies, has actually been proved to detrimentally affect teeth. especially those not often seen by dentists). i left my room and my key stopped working while i was gone. i tried to overlook the bugs in my cereal this morning and the mob of pushy taxi drivers at the airport. and now, the time for perspective is through. in total, in three trips to india (counting the last 24 hours as a “trip”) i have been delayed for over 28 hours on air india and have succumbed to 4 gastrointestinal diseases. dear india, you are 2 for 1. throw me a bone, here. seriously.
26 June 2006
"how she wished she could learn lightness!"*
this morning i woke up about every ½ an hour. i would have a dream, realize i was awake and then look at the clock, relieved with every hour of sleep that remained. in a way, i was thankful. unlike the previous week, i did not awake beset with anxiety (about returning to india) and foot-twitching restlessness, but full of calm. it was as if i kept waking myself up to enjoy my last morning in my bed. catching a glimpse of the rising sun. inhaling the indefinable smell of cool air entering my window and blowing the blinds against the window sill.
if i ever made decisions the morning i was supposed to depart, i would never do anything. the weight and comfort of unchanging inertia lull me into a sense of complacency. it’s the waking to the alarm at 5:45 and FORCING yourself out of bed to run because after 15 minutes of running you will be immeasurably happy. when you don’t get up, there’s an immediate pleasure coupled with a subsequent regret/ mourning for something that would have enriched your day. going back to india could be likened to returning to running after a painful injury—one that obliterates pleasant memories with those of other varieties.
i feel like the last two months have been spent gorging on the u.s. friends, food, convenience... absorbing everything like a sponge to sustain me in a land void of wine, new movies, salads, and many of my kindreds. really, part of life may be storing up moments. the feeling of laying in bed in the morning. cabin time with my mom. spinning top light riverside conversations. watching a storm roll in from a hammock. in particular, moments that can be reused and relived on darker, less remarkable days. like at funerals/ wakes and the like when the remaining reminisce about more pleasant times. (extreme example). they prepare us for any dark times to come. and though we shouldn’t spend our whole life re-living golden moments (or, for that matter, “shoulding” in general), they can be welcome lifejackets. most of that was taken from a journal entry from 2004. nothing and everything has changed between storing up moments to go on term in asia and to move back to india. living for the unquantifiable moment seems the constant.
“there’s just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined (though everyone but children [and perhaps even they] know these hours will be inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult) still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.” (MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM, THE HOURS)
as i drove home from minneapolis saturday night i justified the windows-down heat-full-blast coldplay driving with the brevity of my time in minnesota. actually, i might have done it anyway. as i rounded the slow curve on 35w south, for some reason my favorite driving venue, i wondered if i would chose at that moment to return to asia. why must i urge myself to return to a place that i actually like?
today i cried for the first time as i departed from the minneapolis/ st. paul airport, a coupling of sadness for what was and hesitance toward the unknown.
“everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine… the brain appears to possess a special area which records everything that charms or touches us which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful… and therein lies the whole of man’s plight. human time does not turn a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. that is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.” (MILAN KUNDERA, THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING).
i fancy the idea of storing moments and remembering the past. in a way, it is the weight of my life, the thing i use to center who i am. i only hope this love for what was does not blind me to what is to come. that i have not made lightness impossible with my yearning for permanence and comfort.
(*title from the unbearable lightness of being)
if i ever made decisions the morning i was supposed to depart, i would never do anything. the weight and comfort of unchanging inertia lull me into a sense of complacency. it’s the waking to the alarm at 5:45 and FORCING yourself out of bed to run because after 15 minutes of running you will be immeasurably happy. when you don’t get up, there’s an immediate pleasure coupled with a subsequent regret/ mourning for something that would have enriched your day. going back to india could be likened to returning to running after a painful injury—one that obliterates pleasant memories with those of other varieties.
i feel like the last two months have been spent gorging on the u.s. friends, food, convenience... absorbing everything like a sponge to sustain me in a land void of wine, new movies, salads, and many of my kindreds. really, part of life may be storing up moments. the feeling of laying in bed in the morning. cabin time with my mom. spinning top light riverside conversations. watching a storm roll in from a hammock. in particular, moments that can be reused and relived on darker, less remarkable days. like at funerals/ wakes and the like when the remaining reminisce about more pleasant times. (extreme example). they prepare us for any dark times to come. and though we shouldn’t spend our whole life re-living golden moments (or, for that matter, “shoulding” in general), they can be welcome lifejackets. most of that was taken from a journal entry from 2004. nothing and everything has changed between storing up moments to go on term in asia and to move back to india. living for the unquantifiable moment seems the constant.“there’s just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined (though everyone but children [and perhaps even they] know these hours will be inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult) still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.” (MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM, THE HOURS)
as i drove home from minneapolis saturday night i justified the windows-down heat-full-blast coldplay driving with the brevity of my time in minnesota. actually, i might have done it anyway. as i rounded the slow curve on 35w south, for some reason my favorite driving venue, i wondered if i would chose at that moment to return to asia. why must i urge myself to return to a place that i actually like?
today i cried for the first time as i departed from the minneapolis/ st. paul airport, a coupling of sadness for what was and hesitance toward the unknown. “everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine… the brain appears to possess a special area which records everything that charms or touches us which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful… and therein lies the whole of man’s plight. human time does not turn a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. that is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.” (MILAN KUNDERA, THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING).
i fancy the idea of storing moments and remembering the past. in a way, it is the weight of my life, the thing i use to center who i am. i only hope this love for what was does not blind me to what is to come. that i have not made lightness impossible with my yearning for permanence and comfort.
(*title from the unbearable lightness of being)
19 June 2006
it has a good beat and it's easy to dance to
it seems i have gone off the reservation with posting. well, at least posting about actual time versus that illuminated by nostalgia. jenell recently commented that she checks her email more frequently from ghana than i do in the united states. and so it goes.
this is the deck at my cabin. it's raining and is completely sunny, something indiscernable in the photo. that's the thing about photos, i guess. sometimes they fail to capture the very thing you were trying to encapsulate. "it has a good beat and it's easy to dance to" is a robyn-topic-hummism revealed on the pontoon. well, she says it's actually from american bandstand. either way. 
sidenote: my mom used to dress up to watch american bandstand because she believed they could see her through the tv. that rocks. my mom have spent a lot of time at the cabin, just the two of us. during this period, we have consumed substantial amounts of wine. she is obsessed with toasts. even when we are only drinking soda. here is a toast that impelled me to bust a gut, probably because she said it with a straight face. "first of all let’s toast to motherhood, daughterhood, and the love between us.” maybe it isn't funny in the retelling. and maybe i am a jerk for saying something heartfelt is funny. so it goes. either way, my love for my mom is only heightened during this sojourn.
here are some feet. specifically, mine and elizabeth's. i love feet. but not in a weird, creepy way.
and here are elizabeth and i.
funny how a glass of wine becomes two bottles without really noticing. moments after this photo was taken we began dancing around the kitchen. impromptu dancing is one of my interests, remember. and, who can't love the friendships that never suffer with time and distance? i feel lucky to have a few of what brian deems "love pockets." traveling sans jet lag is friendship in a love pocket. if only the analogies on the sat were so comprehensible...
and here's a shot out of the sunroof in maverick, a.k.a. my car (named after tom cruise's character in top gun... hey, i was 16), taken on the drive back from milwaukee. taking pictures while driving? unsafe. but driving with the windows down and the radio blaring is priceless. funny how things that were once commonplace become more special since living in india made them rare...
wouldn't it be fabulous if "it has a good beat and it's easy to dance to" could sum up an entire life?
this is the deck at my cabin. it's raining and is completely sunny, something indiscernable in the photo. that's the thing about photos, i guess. sometimes they fail to capture the very thing you were trying to encapsulate. "it has a good beat and it's easy to dance to" is a robyn-topic-hummism revealed on the pontoon. well, she says it's actually from american bandstand. either way. 
sidenote: my mom used to dress up to watch american bandstand because she believed they could see her through the tv. that rocks. my mom have spent a lot of time at the cabin, just the two of us. during this period, we have consumed substantial amounts of wine. she is obsessed with toasts. even when we are only drinking soda. here is a toast that impelled me to bust a gut, probably because she said it with a straight face. "first of all let’s toast to motherhood, daughterhood, and the love between us.” maybe it isn't funny in the retelling. and maybe i am a jerk for saying something heartfelt is funny. so it goes. either way, my love for my mom is only heightened during this sojourn. 
here are some feet. specifically, mine and elizabeth's. i love feet. but not in a weird, creepy way. and here are elizabeth and i.
funny how a glass of wine becomes two bottles without really noticing. moments after this photo was taken we began dancing around the kitchen. impromptu dancing is one of my interests, remember. and, who can't love the friendships that never suffer with time and distance? i feel lucky to have a few of what brian deems "love pockets." traveling sans jet lag is friendship in a love pocket. if only the analogies on the sat were so comprehensible... and here's a shot out of the sunroof in maverick, a.k.a. my car (named after tom cruise's character in top gun... hey, i was 16), taken on the drive back from milwaukee. taking pictures while driving? unsafe. but driving with the windows down and the radio blaring is priceless. funny how things that were once commonplace become more special since living in india made them rare...
wouldn't it be fabulous if "it has a good beat and it's easy to dance to" could sum up an entire life?
13 June 2006
on reading a good book
when you read a truly good book, you savor each moment. you do not speed ahead toward completion, the moment when another book erases the futility of the present journey. words and phrases are underlined, starred, impelling you to gaze into the distance, working to wrap your mind around something amazing.
you pace yourself. when you are too tired, you look at a magazine so as not to waste the book on inattentiveness. as you near the end, you orchestrate the “place in which you will complete the good book.” in thailand you will go to bed earlier than usual, leaving the dinner table and showering to allow enough time to pour over white teeth. in india you will move your bed outside, laying in the sun, to complete the way of the peaceful warrior. today, in perham, you will lounge on the porch, preventing your eyes from darting ahead to the next sentence, preventing them from skimming to savor one hundred years of solitude as the wind causes the trees to impersonate the sound of rain.
when it’s over, there’s a period of mourning. you flip through the book, mentally revisiting the tale, re-reading starred and underlined passages. you read the notes you took about phone conversations, songs on the radio, quotes from movies, advice from friends stored on the back flap of the book, wedding this novel to a specific time and place in life. you sit for a moment, unmoving, fully experiencing the rare novel that draws a dot-to-dot between your favorite song, the movie you were watching, the conversation you had with your best friend on the phone and the topic of your thoughts in the car this morning.
you will tell the people you love they must read the book or you will call the person who recommended it to you to highlight the kinship the book created. you might loan this well-loved, written on copy to a loved one, but they must be a kindred of a certain quality. one with whom you wouldn’t mind sharing your musings. one you would welcome to add their marks to the notes in the columns. the book will become part of your everyday. acquaintances and loved ones will have the tenacity of ursula or the dedication of aureliano. butterflies fluttering in the air will assume a heftier weight. when you are down you will put on heavy boots and feeling jubilant will feel like one hundred dollars.
this book could have been sitting on your shelf for years. you might have read the first page multiple times, in the book store, off a friend’s desk, returning it to it’s place after deciding the tone, diction, topic didn’t suit the moment. but this time, you chose it. and this time, it was the perfect accompaniment to your reality.
04 June 2006
here's to the class of 2006
since i haven't fully recovered from typhoid (after 2 months) i am not returning to woodstock for graduation or to india to travel with my friends in ladakh. thus, i must say my farewells via the most sincere method of communication, email. it's funny, because i never realized how much i avoid goodbyes. i knew that i might not be able to return, but yet i put off my goodbyes to friends and students until graduation, later, etc. so i decided i had to send an email to my students, how proud i am, how much i learned from them, wishing them well in the future. i wanted it to have some wisdom imbedded, some words to live by.
in retrospect, it is impossible as a teacher not to sound corny writing things like that to students. impossible not to sound like the cards in the hallmark "graduation" aisle or the placards about achieving your dreams. i wrote about their potential, being proud of their accomplishments, telling them to take risks and make the most of things. thanking them for teaching me, being glad to have been their teacher, etc. i always complain this time of year about the corny pop songs released, tugging on the emotional chords of every graduate. "friends forever (the graduation song)" by vitamin c, "here's to the night" by eve 6, and the like. but, ultimately, it is impossible not taking on a tone full of sapp at times like these. we build these moments up to mean something, creating an end and beginning to demarcate childhood from adulthood, creating a nostalgia for a place (look at how damn nostalgic i am, i am like the queen of nostalgia). my students, upon receiving their goodbye email, will now have their fill of hallmark emotion and corny phrases (which i REALLY meant!) this is sappy mcsappstra, herself, signing out.
in retrospect, it is impossible as a teacher not to sound corny writing things like that to students. impossible not to sound like the cards in the hallmark "graduation" aisle or the placards about achieving your dreams. i wrote about their potential, being proud of their accomplishments, telling them to take risks and make the most of things. thanking them for teaching me, being glad to have been their teacher, etc. i always complain this time of year about the corny pop songs released, tugging on the emotional chords of every graduate. "friends forever (the graduation song)" by vitamin c, "here's to the night" by eve 6, and the like. but, ultimately, it is impossible not taking on a tone full of sapp at times like these. we build these moments up to mean something, creating an end and beginning to demarcate childhood from adulthood, creating a nostalgia for a place (look at how damn nostalgic i am, i am like the queen of nostalgia). my students, upon receiving their goodbye email, will now have their fill of hallmark emotion and corny phrases (which i REALLY meant!) this is sappy mcsappstra, herself, signing out.
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