“Out of my window this morning, just before sunrise, a deer stood in a fog so dense and bright that the second one, not too far away, looked like the unfinished shadow of the first.
You can color that in. You can call it ‘The History of Memory’ “. (~Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous)
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Sometimes reading a poem or some prose is so palpable, so delicious, so stirringly moving that I want to swallow it whole, be spent listless, like after lovemaking, when I could cry with joy, the inability of a mere mortal to grasp something so beautiful. I want to be reminded of that when my life is ebbing away from this finite world.
The desire to communicate feelings is a distinctive human business. Giving expression to a complexity of emotions through art, drawing, painting, music, sculpture, photography, writing is a uniquely human trait. I am most interested in this individual and inwardly driven need; not the market-driven manufactured good. Medieval monks perfected that as they gilded manuscript pages through ritualistic calligraphic writing about the word of their god. So did the dance masters of Indian classical mudras and the geometricity and preciseness of postures. It is the manifoldness that enraptures me as I chase after these expressions in my world.
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Self-Indulgence (or lack of gratitude)
I didn’t go to war. I wasn’t in an accident. My parents died in my thirties. Not when I was a child. I wasn’t raised poor. In fact, it was the opposite. I wasn’t uneducated. I had a white-collar working life, not struggling in a literal mine. I was loved, I think, by various people, both men and women. Except for brief (a few years at best) of loneliness, I had shoulders to lean on, lips to kiss, palms to hold and stroke.
I struggle and flounder to gauge why I feel so alone, unhappy at not having a meaningful and fulfilling relationship with another human being. Why is everything surface skullduggery?
I put on my shoes and jacket, tie the scarf around my neck, collect the house and car keys from the table near the front door and step out on the porch. Within minutes, I’m at one of the local coffee shops meeting a friend. We share our individual gripes and anguishes, laugh at observations, gossip about acquaintances, talk about books and writing, critique a few films, talk about our children and our predicaments, commonly known as “pickles.”
I join the human race with almost a smile on my face.
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"If there wasn't death, I think you couldn't go on."
(~ Stevie Smith, "Observer," Nov. 9,1969)
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Another Ides of March
For 53 years I’ve noted March 15 as the day I landed in NYC from India. Actually, from London. I was a few weeks shy of my 21st birthday. It was an auspicious day in retrospect. A new beginning. Possibilities were panoramic.
I’ve usually listed my flight trajectory, a bit about my emotions, and not much else.
This year, my 53rd anniversary, I’d like to acknowledge what an unimaginable journey it’s been.
In 1971, we know a lot about what was happening in the West and the US. “Me and Bobbie McGee” and Janis Joplin was top of the charts. The release of the Pentagon Papers was a few months away and in December of that year, the Bangladesh war created a new nation.
What we don’t always remember is that in India in early 1971, the city I left, Calcutta, was trembling with political violence. The state was under military rule, called President’s Rule, where the state government had been disbanded from the Centre. Military trucks with machine guns roared down Chowringhee, the city’s central lung.
It was also a time of gasping bloodshed from the far left, the Naxals, to everyone else on the other end of the spectrum. A massacre of young Naxals in Baranagar and Cossipore, on the far edges of the city, is the kind reality old people whisper over tea . . . still. That and the killing of a university vice chancellor. And the chants that will live on for another generation. “Amar nam tomar nam, Vietnam, Vietnam” (nam = name. My name, your name is Vietnam) and “Amar bari, tomar bari , Naxalbari, Naxalbari ( bari = house. My house, your house is Naxalbari). It was a terrifying moment as I scoured the tumult looking for shore.
And I boarded that night flight to first Moscow, then Frankfurt, then London and to eventually NYC with a gilded education, immense desires to restart my hitherto short life, humanity on my sleeve and rationalizations memorized. All this before friends were jailed, some collapsed (and recovered), others died of abrupt causes, marriages, divorces, remarriages and divorces, the cycle of hope and crushing loss. Births and joyful satisfactions of work and scholarship. All before lovings, betrayals, and the inability to face the past, consider it, study it, and let go.
53 years later, this March 15, I can say that I have. I’ll never forget the past, I won’t fear it, I won’t forget that date, and what I thought about journeying to the new world. Writing has helped as has my struggles over the years with my demons.
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First Nights
I travel solo to unfamiliar places all the time, both in the country where I live and in foreign lands. The first nights are a mixture of dread and eagerness to not shy away from the adventure that is possible. I use the first twenty-four hours to wrap my arms around the adventure. In 2023, I practiced in Istanbul, Montreal, St. Petersburg, Florida, the Berkshires, and Italy.
After a challenging drive from Boston to the border crossing in Vermont, about 4 hours later, the torrential rain settled into a drizzle and the Quebec farms on either side of the two-lane highway were fresh green and laced with Queen Anne’s lace as if someone had landscaped the side of the road. I was the only car going in Canada at this crossing though there were a half dozen going to the US.
My trusty Google maps got me to Airbnb (first I had to get the key from an electronic lockbox a few streets away) and then find legal parking so I could empty out the car before garaging it. I found a garage close by. It’s completely “unmanned.” Finding my way out after parking the car felt a bit weird as I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to find the exits. Of course, not marked! Thank God there were typewritten notes in French and English on doors, so I finally exited!
The area I’m staying in, close to downtown, near Concordia University, is a bit sketchier, rough at all the edges and chock-a-block restaurants — Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Indian/Bangladeshi —-and the streets full of South Asians. I wasn’t expecting it. Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and Sri Lankans. The place I’m staying at has a distinct spicy smell in the corridors because it’s a short-stay hotel.
Thank god, my sparsely furnished bare-minimum room is free of smells as it is of any frills. Well, at $65 USD a night, I’m adjusting fast!
Dinner tonight was next door called Downtown Dhaba. Food was okay. My one and only meal of the day.
I walked around in the drizzle and got a quick sense of the surroundings. Went town to a subway stop and got a map. However, the free rides for seniors are valid only with a card that you have to apply and get for $15 (lifetime). I think for 3 days, I’ll buy the tickets.
Though I begrudge Starbucks at every corner, I’m happy there’s one only a few yards away from me. My morning is set as I plan out the day tomorrow. Supposed to be cloudy and then sun juts out at around 3.
One pleasant thing about spending money here is that the USD is fairly strong and getting a few toiletries and bottled water was surprisingly cheap. Plus, I haven’t seen $1.00 bottle of water on the US mainland!
Change is hard but without tackling change, life is a bore. I’m glad I have this routine to cope with change and anxiety.
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Justice?
Has there ever in human history been a society or nation where justice has triumphed in all its purity and goodness? Or are we, generation after generation, fighting for that very concept of good, righteousness and justice to beam bright and shiny? Nowhere, not in any corner of the world do I see pure and simple justice. Struggles for it and toward it, yes. Perhaps that is the Sisyphean task for us as humans —to strive toward an ideal.
So, my question is about the existence of a just society in the history of humankind, not scattershot ways of mitigating injustice. Is our role as humans to simply mitigate? Has there ever been a just society?
Yes, it’s a serious question. A philosophical one.
I understand that the formation of a nation is at odds with the humanistic ideals of justness and fairness. So, the organization of society is inherently unjust? What are we doing everyday ranting about unfairness and injustices piece meal? Is there no social construct about fairness in our polity?
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Parking Lot Reveries
I lurch between sadness and cheer.
I toe the closed door to dejection.
I glimpse the sunlit sky turn gray in a minute.
The swirling snowflakes are prancing everywhere.
I close the door shut and look toward the window.
Fill the kettle to boil. Will soak the tea leaves and stop the keening.
You know, it’s still winter in New England.
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