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Okay y'all. I'm off. The last month has been... well, unusual. 

Hell, all of the last year has been unusual, this past month was the icing on the cake, in a manner of speaking. (What cake? This one from smitten kitchen, if you must know.)

I am thinking So Many Things, Y'all. And I'm feeling So Many Feelings. 

I need downtime. And there's none in the visible future. 

So fuck this. I'm off. 

To clear my head... or something. 

I will still be posting for the South Asian Women Writers' Challenge. And you can read those reviews on my wordpress blog, here. 

As for everything else: 

A personal reflection

The sibling posted about change and coping with. I'm a fairly large fan of change (the sibling, who has seen my Banjara self in action, will testify). But lately, the universe seems to have decided to test said fandom.
And thanks to the flood on new-things-which-weren't-before, there are now things for which I no longer have time : Guessing Games, Drama, Hour-long phone conversations, sleep, hour-long yoga sessions, and general-overall-sanity.
For some of these, of course, I don't have the patience; for others, I no longer have the time.
Some of these, I don't care for that much (guess which ones?) and the others, I miss insanely.
Good times.

Things to Be Thankful For

* Reassuring Conversations (with very, very specific people)
* Yoga
* Sleep

Now, back to taking stock of this semester. 

Giving Thanks

Despite being warned that in thanking (or was it over-thanking?) I weaken myself, I open this week with gratitude.
I'm blown away,
And terribly uncertain,
And restless
But 'neath it all, I'm still okay
(and quietly, very very quietly watching for a rustle, some sound, or scent of the change to come).

And now, the poem that started it all

I've been thirsty for poems since, on the Atumnal Equinox, I had this poem read out to me. Mark Strand's The Night, The Porch

To stare at nothing is to learn by heart
What all of us will be swept into, and baring oneself
To the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by.
Trees can sway or be still. Day or night can be what they wish.
What we desire, more than a season or weather, is the comfort
Of being strangers, at least to ourselves. This is the crux
Of the matter. Even now we seem to be waiting for something
Whose appearance would be its vanishing--the sound, say,
Of a few leaves falling, or just one leaf, or less.
There is no end to what we can learn. The book out there
Tells as much, and was never written with us in mind.

The poem for change

Sita, over at head start fed my soul with this poem by Pablo Neruda:

What hope to consider, what pure foreboding,
what definitive kiss to bury the heart,
to submit to the origins of homelessness and intelligence,
smooth and sure over the eternally troubled waters?

What vital, speedy wings of a new dream angel
to install on my sleeping shoulders for perpetual security,
in such a way that the path through the stars of death
be a violent flight begun many days and months and centuries ago?

Suppose the natural weakness of suspicious, anxious creatures
all of a sudden seeks permanence in time and limits on earth,
suppose the accumulated age and fatigues implacably
spread like the lunar wave of a just-created ocean
over lands and shorelines tormentedly deserted.

Oh, let what I am keep on existing and ceasing to exist,
and let my obedience align itself with such iron conditions
that the quaking of deaths and of births doesn’t shake
the deep place I want to reserve for myself eternally.

Let me, then, be what I am, wherever and in whatever weather,
rooted and certain and ardent witness,
carefully, unstoppably, destroying and saving himself
openly engaged in his original obligation.

And I leave you with this, dear folk who remain reading, as I take off to read for class.

Affections,
FD

Day 18: Reflections on growing old

No, no. It's not my birthday or anything.
I was thinking about my younger self this morning. And how she was able to contain her Rage.
Yes, yes - angry outbursts, indignation, all that, yes. But she could deal with it - allow it come to her, consume her and still be resurrected.

Now, only a few years later, I crumple at the first spark. I'm tired and feel like I have no strength left at all.
Sigh.

Or maybe I was so much older then and I'm younger than that now.

Day 17: Personal reflections

The voices in my head told me that I have Rage- a very personal, forceful Rage which has dropped in for a visit.
I'm feeding it pumpkin loaf bread and some coffee right now and reading to calm it down. 

...the way a fool would do, madly.

(To quote that little ditty)

I pirouette between anger, frustration and an eerie calm every time this happens.

"This" being that coldness and rudeness that borders on racism.

I'm brown.

I teach. I learn. I live.

I earn. I pay for my coffee.

I also wear horse blinders and brush off these borderline cases of racist behaviour from the white man, because every good Indian - heck, every good foreigner, knows that she does not need the extra baggage.

And every sensible foreigner knows that not all white people are like that.

In a recent discussion, a friend and I concluded that borderline racial slurs and sexual advances are probably the hardest things to fight off in this day and age, because they are so hard to prove. How, for instance, could one prove a "bad vibe" from the guy I bought my coffee from this morning, without being accused of paranoia or over-sensitivity? How can one prove that the "accidental" brush of that stranger on the bus was anything but?

Even as I write this, I can hear my mother say, poni le - anni alaga seriousga teesukuntay pani jaragadu. And so I let it go. Because, as mom says, if one starts to seriously dwell on these things, we're not going to get any work done.

And every brown-skinned girl in a white bread world wants to get their work done and get out of it, right?