Tonight was nice.
Kristin, who is back, and I decided to go to Grand Rapids and buy things from an Indian grocery store we'd Googled. We both have connections to the food now, given that I was just in India and she (to be brief) is engaged to a Pakistani.
After the soul-crushing (that's the second use of that term in two consecutive posts--coincidence?) and endless parade of expansive chain stores that is 28th Street, we turned onto Division, drove a mile or so, and ended up outside the address of a small and generally unremarkable little Indian market. Outside, a bored, preteenish brown boy and his younger brother were playing on a snow mound. "You can use that door," the boy kindly pointed out, gesturing at the discreet back door. As we walked inside, a turbaned and aproned man behind the counter looked at us skeptically before coming forward.
"You're from Punjab?" I asked.
He brightened immediately. "How did you know?"
"I just came back from six months in India. I was in Punjab for a short while. Amritsar--"
"Amritsar!" He looked overjoyed.
"I really liked the Golden Temple."
At this, he became very passionate. "The Golden Temple--" (pause), "--is the best place in all the world."
The next 10 or 15 minutes we were there were a little emotionally compacted, with strangely complex-feeling cultural truths and sentiments clawing at me. I feel like I've become trained in --1) the true chasm of cultural differences --2) the meaning of home --3) understanding what it means to be who I am where I am. In this little grocery, we silently shared our reflections of India, and his appreciation that I knew something of his home was apparent in his quick and persistent change of attitude. He put on Bollywood music. He showed us different products he was especially proud to carry. He asked questions. After we paid at the counter, he produced two apparently illegally burned soundtracks from behind the counter and placed them in our hands. "For free?" I asked. He nodded--"Some good, some not so good."
It was a tiny taste of India again, in the little shop. Touching interactions and hospitable behavior, the kind of communication that makes you want to seal it up immediately and walk out, for fear something (a realization you're being cheated, as happens on occasion) will break the unexpected intimacy of the moment.
I got home and placed my red dal and powdered coconut milk on the counter for tomorrow. In the living room with the tree, I started a Nick Hornby book about reading books I bought today (post-Hesse, light and funny is the prescription of the moment). I poured a glass of red wine that, well into 9PM and without dinner, rushed into my bloodstream quickly and gave me that feeling of vague and easygoing warmth. I put out 100 pages and felt good about it, and followed it with a bowl of French onion soup (made with vegetable broth, even).
Yes, it was enough for today.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
big jumps
It's been snowing all night and it looks pretty outside, dark and white and frosty.
I lack the patience to write much of anything really, I just promised A. I'd post. Maybe this takes a long time to become natural again.
I turned 21 a couple days ago. I have literally no friends here, and with the addition of a family Christmas party, it was shaping up to be a pretty depressing day. My extended family on my dad's side are a bunch of strangers. They enjoy and feel comfortable in this town; I find it soul-crushing. I am pretty sure I know how I appear to them: the antisocial and stuck-up, hyperserious city liberal. They communicate. I sit down and pull out a book. I know it looks bad, but as my mother has said, "You can't make a family close if it isn't close." We don't get each other and that's okay.
Anyway, luckily Marla extended a hand and I ended up in a bar in East Lansing with her and her friends and consumed throughout the course of the short night two gin and tonics, one delicious beer, and one amaretto sour. With the jetlag (still!), I was pretty much falling asleep by 12:30am, and I crashed on her couch with a very antsy cat and was up at 7:30am the next morning and reading. This sleep schedule is not very good for the nightlife.
My birthday could have sucked but it didn't. I guess it depends on what you do with yourself.
One of my goals for next year (always wait for the completely arbitrary date of January 1st!) is to become far more assertive than I already am. Assertive enough to do the things I want to do--get to know the people I want to know, go the places I want to go, and be involved the way I want to be involved. If you're curious about the person you sit next to in class, ask that person to coffee. If your birthday appears destined to suck, step in and make it not suck.
Just... be involved in your life. Don't wait to be pushed. Push yourself.
I say this wishing I'd been a lot more productive today. Ah well. Looking out the window, the snow is burying today.
I lack the patience to write much of anything really, I just promised A. I'd post. Maybe this takes a long time to become natural again.
I turned 21 a couple days ago. I have literally no friends here, and with the addition of a family Christmas party, it was shaping up to be a pretty depressing day. My extended family on my dad's side are a bunch of strangers. They enjoy and feel comfortable in this town; I find it soul-crushing. I am pretty sure I know how I appear to them: the antisocial and stuck-up, hyperserious city liberal. They communicate. I sit down and pull out a book. I know it looks bad, but as my mother has said, "You can't make a family close if it isn't close." We don't get each other and that's okay.
Anyway, luckily Marla extended a hand and I ended up in a bar in East Lansing with her and her friends and consumed throughout the course of the short night two gin and tonics, one delicious beer, and one amaretto sour. With the jetlag (still!), I was pretty much falling asleep by 12:30am, and I crashed on her couch with a very antsy cat and was up at 7:30am the next morning and reading. This sleep schedule is not very good for the nightlife.
My birthday could have sucked but it didn't. I guess it depends on what you do with yourself.
One of my goals for next year (always wait for the completely arbitrary date of January 1st!) is to become far more assertive than I already am. Assertive enough to do the things I want to do--get to know the people I want to know, go the places I want to go, and be involved the way I want to be involved. If you're curious about the person you sit next to in class, ask that person to coffee. If your birthday appears destined to suck, step in and make it not suck.
Just... be involved in your life. Don't wait to be pushed. Push yourself.
I say this wishing I'd been a lot more productive today. Ah well. Looking out the window, the snow is burying today.
Friday, December 12, 2008
achin'
Debilitating headaches. Always. Since last year. In this town. The headaches. Pounding right through two Aleves. And three Ibuprofens. Can't even think. Past tiny phrase sentences.
Good news:
1. Today I got my driver's license renewed as the letter that came in the mail instructed. Very short process involving my height, weight, corrective lenses requirement, signature and two photos--the second looking exactly like the first, not horrible, but I guess I just always have a tilted smile.
2. Bought vegetarian food. This concept (food not involving meat) eludes my father, who approached me a few days ago looking confused and said, "You're going to have to help with this whole vegetarian cooking thing." The first day home, his attempt to adapt to my diet resulted in fried fish, which, of course, doesn't exactly fit. But having given over my refusal to eat seafood on the Indian coasts (the breaking of the seafood rule being an interesting story for later), I bent one more time and ate the perch, because my family had tried, and it was already cooked. The next day I gently explained that fish was meat.
3. Bought a Teach Yourself German book. I've been vaguely wanting to start German for a while now (chalk it up to ancestor sentimentality), and now I've got a resource. Hallo!
4. Got a new keyboard installed. One with a functioning 'a' key.
5. Got work for tomorrow: 8am-3pm, back in the one place I like in this town, brewing coffee and baking muffins and making money and making time go away.
Good news:
1. Today I got my driver's license renewed as the letter that came in the mail instructed. Very short process involving my height, weight, corrective lenses requirement, signature and two photos--the second looking exactly like the first, not horrible, but I guess I just always have a tilted smile.
2. Bought vegetarian food. This concept (food not involving meat) eludes my father, who approached me a few days ago looking confused and said, "You're going to have to help with this whole vegetarian cooking thing." The first day home, his attempt to adapt to my diet resulted in fried fish, which, of course, doesn't exactly fit. But having given over my refusal to eat seafood on the Indian coasts (the breaking of the seafood rule being an interesting story for later), I bent one more time and ate the perch, because my family had tried, and it was already cooked. The next day I gently explained that fish was meat.
3. Bought a Teach Yourself German book. I've been vaguely wanting to start German for a while now (chalk it up to ancestor sentimentality), and now I've got a resource. Hallo!
4. Got a new keyboard installed. One with a functioning 'a' key.
5. Got work for tomorrow: 8am-3pm, back in the one place I like in this town, brewing coffee and baking muffins and making money and making time go away.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
begin again
Hello, blog. And whoever might be reading this. And self.
Today is the day I continue my blog. Blog blog blog, blog. At this point the word seems kind of silly to me, and the idea seems kind of silly to me. The way I've been thinking about it lately, it seems self-absorbed in a way that's funny... like those people who take lots of pictures of themselves, and then post the albums online. But I think, more important than looking embarrassingly self-absorbed is the value of having my life recorded before I forget it. And strangely, perhaps, I have trouble keeping a journalesque documentation that is private and purely for myself. I'm not sure quite how to address myself. I address myself with thoughts. To put that into writing, for myself, just seems redundant. I need to at least feel that I'm explaining things to some form of audience. Hence: blog. All the better if people have a response.
Anyway, if there is a value to something, it's stupid to think about appearing vain. Or appearing much else. Because really, who the hell cares?
So. If you didn't catch on, I just spent six months in India. I tried to keep a record, but lack of time coupled with a lack of internet--further crippled by general weariness at the idea of even beginning to capture the enormity of everythingness, from experience to perspective-shifting--meant I didn't write much. I kind of regret that, but I can't think of much time I wasted, so I don't regret it too much. India's already got a strong grip on how I'm seeing everything now, so I'm sure it'll be bleeding into what I write for a while.
Jetlag is still very much a reality for me now, and I'm working it to my benefit--I'm going in to the coffee shop tomorrow morning to help open at 5AM. 'Cause that's when I'm up. Also means that now--at 8:15PM--I'm exhausted and ready for bed. I don't know how long it'll last, but I'm not forcing any changes. I'm lady zen, at ease with the ebb of the universe.
Until tomorrow.
Today is the day I continue my blog. Blog blog blog, blog. At this point the word seems kind of silly to me, and the idea seems kind of silly to me. The way I've been thinking about it lately, it seems self-absorbed in a way that's funny... like those people who take lots of pictures of themselves, and then post the albums online. But I think, more important than looking embarrassingly self-absorbed is the value of having my life recorded before I forget it. And strangely, perhaps, I have trouble keeping a journalesque documentation that is private and purely for myself. I'm not sure quite how to address myself. I address myself with thoughts. To put that into writing, for myself, just seems redundant. I need to at least feel that I'm explaining things to some form of audience. Hence: blog. All the better if people have a response.
Anyway, if there is a value to something, it's stupid to think about appearing vain. Or appearing much else. Because really, who the hell cares?
So. If you didn't catch on, I just spent six months in India. I tried to keep a record, but lack of time coupled with a lack of internet--further crippled by general weariness at the idea of even beginning to capture the enormity of everythingness, from experience to perspective-shifting--meant I didn't write much. I kind of regret that, but I can't think of much time I wasted, so I don't regret it too much. India's already got a strong grip on how I'm seeing everything now, so I'm sure it'll be bleeding into what I write for a while.
Jetlag is still very much a reality for me now, and I'm working it to my benefit--I'm going in to the coffee shop tomorrow morning to help open at 5AM. 'Cause that's when I'm up. Also means that now--at 8:15PM--I'm exhausted and ready for bed. I don't know how long it'll last, but I'm not forcing any changes. I'm lady zen, at ease with the ebb of the universe.
Until tomorrow.
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