Mysore Market, Part 1

I met with my advisor the other morning and it was, strangely, the most I've even gotten out of an advisor meeting. After I told her what I was doing and what I wanted to do and where I'd been, she seemed very interested in India.

Her: "Have you written about it?"
Me: "Uh, well, I had a blog about it, but I didn't get to write in it much. Internet was spotty, and you know..."
Her: "So you haven't written it all down?"
Me: "No."

--5 minutes later--

Her: "What are you doing over spring break?"
Me: "I'm thinking of maybe visiting my sister in Colorado... why?"
Her: "You really should write it down."

Needless to say, her insistence on my writing about what happened over there has made me feel a little guilty, and therefore, every time I don't have something imminent to write about, I am going to post about something that happened in India.

Like now.

Sometime in mid-November...

I am in Mysore, a city both extremely dry and paradoxically green. It is after a rather extravagant lunch with the group (extravagant in the name of saying goodbye to our Hindi teacher, Sudhir, who appreciates only the finest things in life and chooses such upon given the choice) that Arvind, Taylor, Clara and I are met by a car from the hotel (in the name of apparently continuing extravagance, but at a rate comparable to using auto-rickshaws for the rest of the day). Our first destination is the Mysore market, where we had been only earlier that day.

Immediately after leaving the car, of course, we are bombarded with the usual entrepreneurials, but we find a way into the market where they don't follow.

Everything about this market is a feast for the senses. It is in the old-style of open bazaars that have been in use for centuries--walking down the narrow lane that's been covered over through the middle, you absorb on either side of you brilliant colors and scents. A long pathway of only fruits (hundreds of pounds of bananas, apples, pomegranates, pineapples, coconuts) bleeds into a market for vegetables and herbs, but then you turn a corner and there are great piles of brightly-colored dye in bowls, and across the way are men selling scented oils. The sheer life in the Mysore bazaar is overwhelming, moreso because you can't just senerely peruse the displays or take a moment to pause without becoming the target of the man selling apples or incense; he begins yelling at you, not unkindly but with definite insistence. If you stand in one place a second too long, you become a goal, and there is no creature more persistant than the Indian seller.


We have split up and agreed to meet in twenty minutes, which is all the boys will allow. I dodge the individuals that rush by me and look as determined and focused as I can (which, I am proud to report, is a pretty well-acted look for me at this point). My mission is bangles. Not a hard mission to fulfill in India, but a mission nonetheless amid the bazaar chaos. Luckily I had spotted a place selling some bangles amongst other girly paraphanalia at an intersection meeting the fruit lane, and I had--earlier that day and in a moment of impulsive longing for self-improvement by way of glitz--purchased from the man behind the counter 1) a little bottle of red nail polish, 2) a little glass bottle of nail polish remover, and 3) a small set of glass bangles as a belated birthday gift for Clara. All at a very reasonable price.

I now wanted some glass bangles for myself. But here's the thing about being a big-handed American shopping for bangles in India--Indian women either have or are presumed to have tiny little hands and wrists. My hands are feminine enough but certainly not tiny, and I continually have to convince the bangle sellers of this phenomenon. My size is a 206 to a 208; most bangles max out at 208. My chosen seller doesn't have bangles small enough to fit me, and I end up on the other side of the intersection with a younger seller who is far less cooperative.

"I need a big size," I explain. He nods and selects a few bangles from the box, but I am skeptical. "The biggest. Big American Hands," I indicate my hand and wiggle my fingers. I am speaking in Hindi, which can sometimes piss off non-Hindi speaking South Indians. He takes my extended hand and folds it to prepare it for the bangle fitting. He then tries, with impressive patience, to force the selected bangles over my hand. When they eventually get down to my wrist, my hand is beat red and scratched up and the guy behind the counter seems exhausted. Embarrassed, I point at my hand again and announce that I will not buy these bangles; they are too small.

In his haste in pulling them back over my hand, one of the bangles breaks in one spot and the glass cuts into my hand. The seller is too distracted to notice this, and I walk away with blood noticeably welling up and draining down my hand. This has been unsuccessful and awkward.

For a minute or so I walk around the bazaar, hoping to find the others. I am preoccupied with how to treat my bleeding hand--there is nothing in the bursting market that seems the least bit helpful. And then a little boy runs up, maybe nine years old, holding something he wants to sell. But when he sees my hand, his eyes widen and he looks into my face. "Water!" he says and points at my hand. I nod and then I am following him through the gaps in people and the narrow paths between makeshift shops to a shop he is particularly acquainted with. He communicates rapidly with another boy--maybe fourteen--who seems to be holding down the fort. Then a plastic jug appears and water is poured over my hand. The older boy looks at me and suggests, "A bandage." I nod, and now I am following the older boy back through the jungle of the bazaar until we reach the outside and he somehow navigates across the busy street to a Chemist's at the opposite side. He emerges a moment later with Band-aid, opens it, and puts in over my cut.

I am not sure how to thank him but I must know in my heart that the inevitable is coming: "My brother owns a shop, he makes incense, you come and look."

I am taken to a new location and brought behind the counter and made to sit in a chair as the boy explains to a fellow (perhaps 25, this one) about my epic wound and its maintenance. The brother shows me a bag of powder and shows me the little workshop set up on the floor. "He makes incense," he says. "I will show you how to make it. First you take water, then you roll it in the powder,"--this he does, creating a small brownish paste--"then you roll around the stick. This one is sandalwood." He hands me the finished product.

At this point it is past the meeting time, but I feel bad leaving after getting a private lesson in incense-rolling. I explain my predicament, but the boy is already ahead of me. "I have seen them! One girl, two boys. I will bring them." He is gone.

Sure enough, the three others, all looking confused, are herded into place in front of me as I am in the process of buying a few boxes of 10-rupee Jasmine and White Rose insense.

"I'll explain it later," I tell them as we walk away.

lonely sentences.

This has inspired me to be more resourceful with my writing. It has also made me starkly self-conscious about writing this.

Today has been surprisingly productive, I've gone so far as to finish things that are due Tuesday. I haven't finished things that are due tomorrow, but I'm getting there.

I started this weekend overwhelmed with my workload, of both the academic and extracurricular variety, but between the baking of a cake and the pub-hopping... well, a soft sense of calm has settled over me.

We take steps forward. No need to worry.

a pitcher or two later.

Tonight was Kyle's birthday and I'm 21, so I got to experience two Hyde Park haunts I'd never seen before; the pub in the basement of Ida Noyes, and Jimmy's. Both have their regulars and their reputations, and it all felt very novel, as though I were in a completely different city, as though I were suddenly a quasi-adult with the right to be sitting in a worn wooden booth with a pitcher of foamy beer in front of me. Not that I feel too young for it, no--this is the perfect time for it, all things are running on schedule.

Sitting there, though, listening to a New Person talk about Antarctica (where he's been) and around-the-world plane tickets and all the rest, I just kept walking back to a main point, inside my head: dating. Those I should date, I do not want to; I want to date those I should not. It's a common theme. I am beginning to grow seriously skeptical of my own ability to decide who I should and should not date. I wrestle with myself for long and drawn-out periods, confusing certain people with my alternating warmth and distance. I decide I will catch certain others, who end up being otherwise engaged and responding coolly. And then there's a friend who seems inwardly terrified of the prospect of my re-falling in love, that's a fun dynamic. There's some really unbalanced stuff going on. I suppose my only hope is that this world balances itself out while I concentrate on different things.. and there's a lot to concentrate on.

Tomorrow I'm going somewhere else in the city, alone, with some homework and my self and I'll hit up some tea. Not coffee, tea. Not bad company.

meme me, mimi

(I don't know if five people read this blog/would admit to reading this blog, especially since I deleted the link from my profile. But I'm intrigued by this. And in the mood for this sort of thing lately. I be all about creatin'. [Also I incurred this moral obligation upon responding to Connie.])

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
1) I make no guarantees that you will like what I make;
2) It'll be done this year;
3) You have no clue what it's going to be. It could be anything. Jewelry, knitted stuff, something sewn, a poem, a contract, a mix CD, a photograph, baked goods... anything, really; and
4) I reserve the right to make something extremely odd.

However, by responding to this post to be one of those five people, you are incurring a moral obligation to repost this and pass it on. So. Caveat emptor.

One should write daily.

I don't know if this is a uniquely American thing, or if it applies to other Western/developed/white peopled nations, but... we are a weird breed, socially speaking.

As y'all (side note: how did this Southernism work its way into my mind-vocabulary?) know, I work at the library, both monetarily speaking and homeworkily speaking. Because the entirety of my university is composed of poor, drained souls, and because the Reg is at the center of campus, I see plenty of people there, intermittently reading and walking in some direction and weeping into their coffee. This school is relatively small (5,000 undergrads) and there are many ways to meet people. In a class. At a party. Maybe you lived in the same house first year. Maybe you have a mutual friend. Whatever; the point is, as a college student, you have a lot of acquaintances.

Now here's where it gets weird. When and why does it suddenly become not only acceptable but the norm to stop acknowledging someone you've met? Are our memories so short? Because maybe I'm special and in possession of magical powers, but unless I was really drunk, I remember you. And you and you and you. I remember all of you. I remember specific things you said and did. I might remember your major and a broad outline of your likes and dislikes. I remember that time we went to dinner with the same group of people.

(This is going to be one of those times in which I say, "When I was in India...")--I really don't think this would have happened in India. Maybe it's because I had the perspective of a foreigner, and therefore I was distinct, but I think that there, if you meet someone once, you make sure to acknowledge each other from then on. If you meet someone once, the next time you see them, they're your friend, and not your acquaintance.

Maybe it's because I was gone for six months. But recently, I'm passing by lots of people without so much as a smile or a nod. I don't expect long embraces and hour-long catch-ups, but even the postman deserves a nod. It's as if people fade back into the faceless masses if you haven't spoken to them in a year. Logically, it seems like there's a social pecking order involved with this--like some people consider themselves important enough to forget a certain level of acquantanceship. But in terms of who acknowledges and who doesn't, there isn't really a detectable coolness factor.

The people toward whom I am warmest are usually those that have no discernable reason to be exceptionally kind or inclusive, but decide to be anyway--rejecting the establishment of their own personal significance.

happy ox year

Celebrated Chinese New Year by bringing Tsingtao to a dinner party and eating lots of tofu.

My regimented tomorrow:

9AM-10:20AM: Middle East/North Africa class
10:30AM-11:50AM: Russian lit class
1:30PM-2:50PM: States and War class
3PM-5PM: Work
5:30PM: Pick up my lost phone from Mr. X at Starbucks
6PM-6:30/7PM: CW Meeting
8PM-10PM: Battle of Algiers screening for M.E./N.A. class
10PM-??: Discussion of BoA

...I'll just do my homework at 3AM and become an automaton.

beautiful words.

President Obama.
President Obama.
President Obama.
President Obama.
President Obama.
President Obama.
President Obama.
President Obama.
President Obama.
President Obama.
President Obama.
President Obama.

Let's reflect on some of the headlines of the day.

"Obama to Close Foreign Prisons and Guantanamo"
"California Expects Fast Obama Move on Car Pollution"
"Obama Orders Military to Start Planning Troop Reduction in Iraq"
"Obama Blocks Some of Bush's Last Minute Environmental Decisions"
"Obama: Government Should Be Transparent"

It's like... a dream.

OK, I know that personality cults can be dangerous, I know he's not a god. But for just one second, can we just..

siiiiiiiiiiiiiiggghhh.

long weekends.

A truly lovely weekend. Long, long and lovely; never having classes on Fridays this quarter (best choice ever? maybe) means consistently having three-day weekends, and tomorrow being MLK Day means a four-day weekend even before third week.

I hatched the idea of a dinner party in A's brain early last week, which she enthusiastically embraced and which we sort of haphazardly prepared for but still ended up with fourteen people altogether and a number of excellent dishes -- including roasted red pepper lasagna, fancy little tomatoes, asparagus with hollandaise sauce, feta-apple-walnut salad, and garlic mashed potatoes. Six bottles of wine were guzzled, including an extra-large Yellow Tail. Best of all, though, people seemed very happy with it, my musical selection was appreciated, and as I was told, the last people left at 2am. I could see hosting these more often, maybe once every couple of weeks.

After the dinner party, T., H., another friend and I went to a party where I overhead interesting gossip (such interesting gossip I've heard lately!--such is the structure of my social life right now) and got to hear H. recount the story of our meeting to an acquaintance, which could only make me smile. Come to think of it, there are always stories between two people that so often other people never know. Everyone lives in a number of secret worlds.

I went back to A.'s Saturday morning to eat leftovers for lunch and help with the cleaning; it was a cozy morning full of soft white light and hot tea and others milling around. I have fairly fallen in love with her place, as it's so conducive to dinner partying and hot tea drinking and there are usually people around. She lives with three of her friends, and all four of them have boyfriends. The atmosphere is much different from my own very quiet and frequently empty apartment.

The rest of the day was a bit lazy, though I did some work in the form of reading my current Russian novel -- Fathers and Sons, by Turgenev. Although reading Russian novels has come to feel less like work and more like being at a U of C party... discussions of nihilism, depraved romantic situations. I rather like it.

Eventually there was Thai food and I crashed in her living room, stayed for a most delicious couscous lunch this afternoon, and finally left around 2pm today. Connie came over for dinner and I went to her place for an annual watching of Pride and Prejudice ("the new one"), a movie that always gives way to wanting a Mr. Darcy who never comes. Not so intense this time, though. My theme now is all assertiveness, and I follow through. The first two weeks have been surprising enough, but certainly nothing to regret. I think a modern Lizzy would sympathize. Would laugh. The dances of her time are the parties of mine--the dancing is a little crazier, the wine is likely worse, but beyond the trends I think she'd agree that the character and the communication still exist and matter more than the style.

productivity and finding it in corners.

Today, after going back and forth for two weeks with cover letters and scheduling phone times, I have finally secured an internship position doing research with an non-profit environmental organization downtown. Next Wednesday I'm going in to scope the place out and hopefully get my first "project." And meet the people. And pick up my handy dandy "research kit."

I found my way into this organization through the university's handy dandy career networking and resources website, where you can arrange to have your resume sent to different organizations advertising positions... I cringed when T. told me about it, but did it anyway. Anyway, it was extraordinarily easy and now I have an internship and that is productive.

On the other hand, I have finished none of my readings for tomorrow (although I have been enjoying a few of them, like the one about the Peloponnesian War or Gogol) and I watched a Grey's Anatomy episode with A. tonight. One I'd already seen, even. Not so productive.

Due to my seniority, I got "promoted" at work to the less horrible position of checking things in and doing lots of tasks less repetitive than shelving. Productive.

I took the day off of work today to read and mostly danced around and then put a braid in my hair. Not productive.

I am restless, but happy. Productive. Also, important.

on again, on again

Two glasses of wine at dinner led to a mysterious bottle of whiskey led to the finishing of the whiskey led to party one led to cranberry-vodka and sitting on the kitchen floor with Connie and T. led to party two led to "dirty girl scout" led to A.'s apartment led to pictures in tights led to a walk home I don't remember and a very long day today--such alcohol consumption can only happen a few nights a year, last night was one of those.

I believe the evening is best encapsulated in A.'s and my text communication:

A: Come to our party!! (12:36am)
A: This party is we are drunk (12:55am)
Me: i am coming? will you still be tjhere in 29 mins (12:57am)
A: um i dunno i don't know (12:58am)
Me: well DECIDE or else i wont come (12:59am)
A: Come over it's fun please please. Don't even think about it (1:00am)
Me: ok STAY THERE (1:01am)

Hmm, yes. This quarter is on.

Because I'm insane, I'm getting up at 5:30am tomorrow morning to participate in Kuviasungnerk/Kangeiko, a UChicago winter festival celebrated with freezing early morning yoga. I get a free shirt at the end.

So night.

those crazy Russian winters..

Remember the good old days, last year, when MAC overheated my apartment to the point of my donning boxers and tank tops and using a fan in mid-winter? Remember how quickly I'd shed my coat and boats for fear of sweating, and how cozy and nest-like our little apartment with its boho-sympathetic tendencies was?

We got our gas bill last week--it was ~$244.

Now... I don't consider myself to be an irrational person. But that is an absurd price. That is the price of a fancy new iPod. It's the price of a fancy new dress. It's the price of a plane ticket, all of my books for two quarters, one-quarter a month's rent.

I acknowledge that our apartment is extremely energy-inefficient. The "sun" room is lined with windows and sucks the heat out like a vacuum. My bedroom also has windows all along one side, and, in here, I almost never actually feel the heater's output. The building itself is an old Hyde Park apartment building with six apartments, two on each floor. It was probably built in 1940 or earlier, and the heating system is unlikely to have been updated recently. There are worn wooden floors in every room except the kitchen, which, while aesthetically pleasing, is not all that insulating. It may be like pouring heat into a strainer. So yes, People's Gas, I admit there is a problem with our apartment.

But I'm more than a little suspicious and angered for a number of reasons. For one thing, this bill was for the month of December, during which our apartment was only occupied for about two and a half weeks. It was completely empty by the middle of the month and I came back on the 26th. Additionally, the heat is turned off at night, and when no one is home, which is more than half of the 24-hour day. This means that the heat was actually in use for about one week of the month. Had we been here the whole month and continued turning off the heat during the night and when no one was home, we still would have gotten billed, it seems, around $500.

I understand that things cost money, even that things cost quite a bit of money (imported chocolate, for example). The difference is, I don't need imported chocolate and so I don't often buy it. U. and I do need heat. Paying my share of the bill, about $122, is almost my entire paycheck for a whole week working maximum hours (15). I work 14 hours, which is pretty decent on top of four courses and their homework. And I really don't want to see all of those hours going toward basic heat. Especially when I still need to feed myself and take care of other extraneous costs that jump out from behind the Trees of Adulthood. So far my bank account is taking heavy advantage of the up-to-$500 loan function, where you can dip into fake money as long as you pay it back in reasonable time. My parents are sending me emergency money, I owe U. for several things, and I don't get my first paycheck of the quarter until next Friday.

Despite all of this, I'm feeling zen enough. I have foregone buying books, and am using the library instead, hoping it comes through for me all quarter. I am now finally making money again and things will go back to equilibrium in a couple of weeks. But $122 is more than I am able or willing to pay each month for gas, and so we're now using it almost never, save for an hour or so in the morning and maybe for a short stint in the evening. Even so, we don't put it higher than 68.

U. and I got space heaters and we're becoming reliant on those instead. I double and triple-sock my feet, take hot baths, chain-drink hot tea. My one warm spot is in my bed, cocooned in blankets, with the space heater blowing on me. With this, and the incessant snow outside the window, and the Russian novels I'm reading for class, I get the sensation of either a Depression Era or Soviet Era hovel. I imagine myself as Kira Argounova in "We the Living", coming back to my cold little apartment out of the freezing and gusty Russian winter, taking comfort in a jacked-up social life as an escape from the bleak outside world. Well, okay, maybe not the last part.

We'll get by. We are the living, after all.

listen, plz

An album you need to listen to in order to make your life better: Leona Naess, Thirteens.

winter quarter night one: check

make yourself couscous

Today I ate couscous for dinner for the second night in a row. Most delicious.

I think six months in India managed to peel away a certain self-consciousness that clung to me for years before I left. This I realized especially tonight.

Things weigh on your mind and make you terrified and intermittently start despairing but if you keep reading the New Yorker and cutting the tomatoes and talking to people and eating the couscous, you continue to learn new things and unearth bits of wisdom. As long as you're learning, you're not going horribly wrong.

And that's tonight's three-second bite.

Otherwise engaged.

A lot of people seem to be getting engaged lately.

Maybe this is largely a symptom of Facebook. Or maybe I'm actually at an age where I start to see people my age committing "for life" and then reproducing, like waiting for any reason is just too much work, and moot besides. Biology tells us this is partially the right answer--we're just about ripe for propagating the species...we have been for a while now. But biology also tends to hesitate when it sees us doing the commitment thing at twenty. Evolutionarily speaking, there should be lots of sex with lots of people, lots of wonderful gene-spreading. Culturally speaking, picking out the person whose adult diaper you're willing to change at 88 before you're legal to drink... well, if the evil statistics are any indication, it's a bad idea.

I shouldn't side with the statistics, but I'm realistic, so I do.

I just recently became okay with the idea of wearing mascara, finding a way to reconcile it with certain feminist ethics to which I'm attached. This was a big step. I don't see engagement in my near future.

But really now, just for a minute here: honestly?

freecycling

On the way from my new apartment to campus, I always pass what looks to be a free newspaper stand--you know, the kind where you lift the plastic lid out toward you and there's a stack of something. Except the stand isn't for complimentary newspapers, it's for complimentary books. It's there for anybody to leave and take books. I've been checking it every day. Usually there's either nothing or nothing very exciting. Yesterday there was a informational brochure on being black and getting a job.

But this morning the thing was full of economics books. I grabbed one on South Korea for T., shoved it in my bag, and moved on.

About a block later, I started wondering--what if that book was for somebody else? What if it's not as random as it looks, and instead it serves a function of deliberate delivery from one person to another? Was I thieving?

It's strange that the thought even crossed my mind, and stranger that it stuck with me and I started to feel like I was carting around stolen goods. Who would paint "Free Books" on a container meant for specified people? Why did I feel so implicated?

My theory is that my institutionalized mind was subconsciously anxious over the lack of capitalism involved with my completely legal book-snatching. The idea that I could take something from a willing stranger in the name of community is that alien.

U. confirmed tonight over peanut butter and tea that it is perfectly acceptable to take things from the box. You can take and not feel guilty, give and not feel deserving. It's all non-expectant, unknown relationships between people.

Tomorrow I'm going to leave a book I got free from the Reg when it was dumping its collection a year or two ago--"Men and Aggression." I think I'll start freecycling a lot more from now on.

hold your head up high, like you think I do.

I've thought about this much less in-depth than I usually do... I seem to think still keeping a New Years resolution I made in 2007 has forever excused me from the process of making more promises. But no; stagnant we are not.

Some things I could do this year:

1. Write every day. EVERY DAY.

2. One word: assertive.

3. Ten new Hindi words a day.

I enter this year far more terrified somehow than ever before. More terrified, more serious, more indecisive. One day at a time. More to come.

Golden Temple room.

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.

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.

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.

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.

why?

Bad news.

that hindustani thing

From now on I'll be here: www.pinkcityaurat.wordpress.com.

Not dead, not numb, not withering, or, I Need Your Brilliance

I fell into something of an emotional pit a couple weeks ago, but I think I've managed to crawl out. After getting Quite Happy on wine yet again at the Point on Saturday night--(I'm not, by the way, as much of a raging drunk as I realize it must seem like I am on this thing. It's just that good stories and a tendency toward wanting to write both blossom from the bottle. I'd say I usually enjoy the drink maybe twice a month [that said, I have a lot of friends with spring birthdays and a fondness for campfires])--I came home and did a little drunken investigation and review and, as vague as that sounds and shall necessarily remain, stumbled upon the usually obvious conclusion that a) I am where I should be, b) I am with the people I should be with, and c) nothing else would make as much sense.

Are you with me?

It's a nice finding. Or discovery. Or self-discovery. If I need to remind myself of these things again and again, so be it. When your life feels so static, and you all but live alone in your 3-person apartment, and you can't work up an interest in your homework, and it feels like no one's looking into your little life-window--there are dips. If I could make that sound less whiny and simply bored and exasperated, you'd get an idea.

And so I welcome India, which I leave for in a barely comprehensible ten days. That's within reach, but I've yet to really understand that. In ten days I'll stumble off a plane into a world of Devanagari. In ten days I'll be surrounded in fast-paced, incomprehensible Hindi. In ten days it'll be chai and rice and chutney. It'll be saris and auto-rickshaws and beggars and Muslims and Hindus and indigestion and sand and heat and elephants and camels and uncomfortable beds and no skin showing and sudden minority status and bottled water.

Really? In ten days? And in between now and then I've got to write three papers and take a Hindi final? And take a trip to Michigan and pay a visit to my grandfather in the nursing home? And come back again? And buy what I need, and pack for six months?

But it's all so perfectly timed, you see.

I want to write when I'm there, but I'm not sure about the accessibility of internet cafes. I've heard they're numerous and cheap, though. I'll see what I can do. Regardless of the blawg, I'll be recording every breath and piece of naan and monkey siting in my wonderful, beautiful journals. Which I have yet to buy, but soon.... the beautiful journals will abound.

NOW, here's where you, dear readers (I know there are at least ten of you, I counted), come to my aid. When meeting your host family, it is considered polite and decent behavior to bring a gift. Because I am quite obviously a polite and decent person, I need a gift. I have ten days to acquire said gift. Some facts: 1) I have no idea how many people are in my host family, and it could range from a young couple with 15 chil'n to an old couple to an old Panjabi woman who always cooks rice and burnt lentils and collects study abroad students (this last one being a real example from last year), HENCE, 2) I have no idea the AGES, SIZES, or PREFERENCES of my host family. It is likely, however, that they will be an older couple (extra rooms). Nevertheless,

I need a completely inoffensive, not sizest, not ageist gift. And I want it to represent the best of America. My mind clings to what I would consider to be the strikingly awesome power of music, but when I pitch the "OMG A MIX CD" idea to people, they tend to squirm and say, "How about a Sox cap?" ...and I submit that maybe the gift of music violates the whole "preferences" quotient of this exercise.

So help! Gimme some suggestions, before I have to withstand the lasting humiliation of sitting in an aged Indian woman's apartment kitchen, watching her furrow her brows to the sound of Laura Veirs.

Quit. Whining.

Dear Americans:

Poor you. With all of the myriad problems You have to worry about, like missing American Idol because You were sent to the grocery store, and not being able to purchase everything You want all of the time because of the generally dismal state of wages/inflation, certainly You don't need to deal with the agony of rising gas prices. Certainly that's just unfair and You deserve better.

(Now, ignoring the fact that gasoline already costs nearly twice as much in Europe--)

Listen: Petroleum is used for more than Your sports utility vehicle. It runs much larger, more communal forms of transportation (like trains and airplanes). It is used in plastic--just think of how much plastic there is in the world, and how quickly it gets turned to waste. Oil is necessary to ship items all over the world--currently, it is absolutely essential for capitalism and globalization and chain stores and animal production and general material usage.

And listen: There is enough oil left in the world to sustain about 30 years more use. The end of petroleum use is near. And with it, our current way of life. Nothing has been even marginally developed to replace oil, and if there is sufficient funding in research to develop an alternative, there is still going to be the chaos of transitioning the entire economic infrastructure to deal with the changes that will take place. The longer the oil crisis is ignored, the more chaotic it will be to radically change.

And listen: As capitalism spreads, and people rise from poverty--as has happened monumentally in recent years, especially in places like China and India--there is a greater demand on oil. People are not only able to afford cars and traveling prices, but they have more expendable income with which to consume. They can buy more products--which tend to be steeped in oil. Can you blame them?

And listen: If you have any belief at all in global warming... than there's that whole global warming thing.

Think. A greater demand. A finite and dwindling supply. Pitiful research into alternatives. Crippling issues that are global in scope.

Do you really deserve lower gas prices?

Really?