Below are the 7 most recent journal entries recorded in c'tina the impressive variable's LiveJournal:

Wednesday, July 25th, 2001
9:58 pm	varanassi, day 2 6-26-01 Sitting on a narrow, white-painted bench the south side of a boat shaped like a symmetrical banana. There are dozens of thin, hungry flies combing our laps, our faces, and our feet for food. The sound of the bamboo pole against its rope binding...how do I describe it? ...like a slow, wooden ache. Our boatman, with a small mustache, filled cheekbones, and a good haircut, is wearing a T-shirt that says "Peninsula Family YMCA." Two men, up to their wastes in water, splash the Ganga in two semi-circles towards their half-clothed torsos. Women, carrying part of their brightly colored sars over their arms, walk slowly, contentedly, and with purpose down the narrow steps, barefoot. I can hear the sodden slap of pants being whirled and flung against a partially submerged board, the conch addressing morning puja, and the steady, rhythmical clang of two kinds of bells --on clear and ringing coming from the temple above the river, the other (more hollow and tinnish) coming from a ghat. There are almost one hundred swallows wheeling overhead, a smooth frantic beating of boomerang-shaped bodies. There's a dead cow in the river, lying on its left side, ears flat against the skull, nose under the water, bobbing with the slow expanse of the river. The flank of its body is resting against free floating lily pads. The sun, formerly a red ball rising out of a distant, strangely Western-like forest, is now hidden in a sheet of light blue clouds. I can smell Josh Tibbe sweat, the fresh sweet algaue from the river, and half-eaten cookies. The air here feels like home. In the morning, there's no weight over my lungs...just a wet-stone smelling dampness. Not quite like Lake Michigan...more like the smell at Lake Shawnee in Jamestown Ohio. Boyd's explaining burial arrangements, our newly shirtless boatman has retained a clean, detached, content sort of look on his face, and I am trying to breathe in some sort of peace. -- [there is a dead child floating in the river. but no one else notices...i know it must be wrapped in orange...but the cloths look white...and my mind's eye is being imprinted with the image (am i dreaming this?) of a bloated, dark face peaking out from the silt-crested cloths, flies gathering at the pus...a hole in skin...an absence...a decaying...a chunk that's been bit out of her cheekbone by maggots or crows or my blurring, faulty vision] My backpack is covered with little white specks -- ash from a burning ghat was being blown on us. Walking up the flights of steps leading to the rooftop restaurant, my whole scalp just itched. It felt like some of the coals were under my bandana. Talk about psychosomatic. I feel like shaking...it's very hard to keep myself from twitching...picking at my skin...scabs of dead skin, specks of ash...as if I could get it off of me. The wood behind Manikarnika Ghat is piled higher than three indian man's height's. Bundles and bundles of chopped trunks, branches...all sorts of monsoon-darkened tree limbs stacked for stories, ready to be sold to support the wrapped body of the privileged dead. I think I could make out a head, a chest, and a pair of arms. IT's hard to tell, but I think the body doesn't burn as well as the wood...that and the "head" was a spherical shape with some sort of cloth-like remains still attached to it. A boy tried to sell me a box of colored powders, and I said no. He tried his sales pitch again and something in my head clicked and I became very angry. "How dare you try to cheat me at a holy place," I said in my most self-righteous and indignant tone of voice. "This is not a place for sale." At first, I thought I was right to do so...thinking about how sick it is that my white skin inspires him not only to cheat me but to try to do it on a site where people are going through their last holy rites. I thought that my presence, the potentiality of my money, had helped to pervert him, to cause him to go against his morals. I'm nost so sure about that now. Death is not a separate thing here. 10 feet behind the ghats are fresh-eyed children laughing as they sweep the steps outside their homes, women rolling chipotes, and holy men babbling, naked, in their shrines. _Life_ doesn't stop because one person's body is going up in flames...so why should bargaining stop? --- [____is very critical to a member of our group in front of him over a very trivial and dumb matter: the arrival of a banana pancake; I say nothing but am falling apart inside...wishing to scream and hit or run away and just curl into a fetal position...here is what I wrote when I could make my fingers move] God...why do I react so strongly to other people's individual displeasures? Why can't I swallow my concern and take things as they come? Or, better yet, why can't I ignore the banal trivialities like ___ getting pissed at our stupidities? There are millions of people around me. I should be attempting to _see_ them. This world (a winged locust flew into my ear. I jumped. It fell in my lap. I fear I'm going to fall apart) has so many more important things in it. How can I be so arrogant and self-focused to think that ____'s opinion matters when there are dead babies, bloated and stretching their dirty white cloths, floating next to lilypads? --- Sitting on the soiled white cloth at Ajeet's with two ceiling fans blowing away our sweat and stray flies. Vijay, in a navy blue polyester sports suit is reclined against several bolts of silk while Ajeet himself is seated half like a yoga master with one 80 degree bent leg on top of another. In the last few minutes, Vijay has noticed a tear at the crotch of KT's red pyjama pants and Blair has asked Ajeet if he can get his bag repaired. Blair's emptying it now, as Ben laughs to himself, patting his curls, and KT twists her hair into a bun. Linda is seated cautiously next to Jeff, her ankles crossed and her face a study of self-control. Ajeet is throwing out silk table cloths. They're all piling up in loose, soft, shimmering rectangles over my cleanish looking striped feet. Boyd has one veined leg stretched out and the other one tucked beneath his dhoti. His hands are folded in his lap and his back, supported by a striped pink cushion until his shoulder blades, is up against a pepto-bismal colored concrete pillar. He's napping now, his burnt head tilted to the right, his glasses an odd-shaped lump in his left breast pocket. --- He's awake now. Head erect, eyes looking owl-like at the steadily increasing pile. --- Many rupees...2 saris, 2 wall hangings, 2 table cloths, 2 vials of perfume, 100 grams of spices, and one incense box later, I am back at the hotel. There's a red and white Shiva bracelet around my left wrist. It was tied, whilte I knelt, by the strong, knuckled hands of a pale Brahmin priest that the silk merchant had brought to us. While Blair was bartering on his $320 stash of silk goods, the rest of us went, one by one, to be blessed. I also went to use the bathroom, a narrow refrigerator-like box with no lights coming out of the hallway into the merchant's family compound. I could hear cows moving as I pissed, one hand against the slimy concrete wall, one hand holding my voluminous punjabi pants away from my crotch and the locust-urine infested floor. The bathroom was really not bad. Mud, yes. Slime, yes. Strong smell of urine, yes. But that's what waste facilities are for: waste. We Americans put up so many different masks in our attempt to conceal the fact that novious substances exit our bodies. Some of it is hygiene, but most of it is just ridiculousness mixed with consumerism mixed with a denial of what it actually means to be human. I got to hold Vijay's baby today. Younger than 6 months, she is nameless...but she is loved. Oh my God she is loved. Holding her was like holding something holy...she was so full of potential and beauty and perfection. "A god." That's what the silk merchant explained to us when Vijay left with her after she peed on KT, Linda, and 2 table cloths (child urine is good luck). Children under 6 months are considered to be incarnations of the gods. Then why the infanticide? But I shouldn't go there...not now. Anyway, I think the infanticide has more to do with the expansion of Western-influenced materialism than anything else. It manifests itself in uniquely Indian ways (we do our killing in sterile plastic clinics with needles and paperwork, they do it in a mud hut using a root or a fruit that's poisonous)...but the disease (and the results) are still the same. The symptoms of discontent, lust, pride, and greed may be different on this side of the world, but the root of the disease doesn't change -- no matter its manifestation. Sorry, self, I didn't mean to go and start drawing conclusions again. (Boyd's pet peeve.) I promise, I will keep attempting to hold my analyses and abstain from judgments. --- I got to go swimming today. After KT got back from the Sitar place with Ben (I left via rickshaw after lunch to obey my lustings to rid myself of breakfast/lunch in a Western toilet), she convinced me to go down to the pool with her. I wasn't planning on going, but I could see the signs of heavy rain through our privacy-coated windows and watned to find out what swimming in a pool was like in a monsoon. It was glorious. Heated water, lukewarm sheets of rain, little frogs in the water-logged grass, three black and red striped inner tubes, jumping-deep water, a comfortable shallow end, and enough space and solitude to kick my lefs out and glide forever...or at least until I wanted to quit gliding and start gripping the porcelain-tiled pool edge. Eventually, Blair (indecent in his transparent white boxers) and Josh joined us...Ben stayed in the room. He'd yelled down to us about the thunder, but, after getting out for five minutes of contented walking through the squishy soil, we decided to jump back in. After we got an audience (2 Indian men that KT and i pretneded to be blind to as they stared from the awning) and the thunder started again, we got out of the pool, dried off in the hallway, wrapped towels around our waists, adn walked the short amount of steps to the elevator. I hope it keeps raining forever. It feels like being kissed by a god...warm, clean wetness kneading into your skin, washing away the vinegar sweat and starched clothing, leaving you sleek and clean and earth-smelling. --- "The important thing is not to waste suffering. Join it with the suffering of Christ; offer it up with his suffering. Don't waste suffering." Mother Theresa --- Sitting in the Puja Guest House's rooftop restaurant. We are the only guests here, with the exception of a young man from Japan with a red bandana on his head and a cigarette in his mouth. On a low table about a meter from our brown clothed table are seated two men. One, in a chckered shirt and a balding head, is cross-legged behind two drums. The other, a 35-ish man with a red puja mark on his forehead, is seated with his left leg hidden and his right knee supporting the nexk of a sitar. His eyes are closed and his head moves rhythmically as his right arm rapidly thumps at the strings. Someone's cell phone goes off. The tune, like too many in India, is to Fur Elise (damn electronic music). The phone man leaves and the drummer starts joining in in earnest. His drumming alternates from bent-fingered light taps over the center to spread, flat-handed slaps. There are two main strings played on the Sitar and five next to each chosen for their ability to make the "drone." This sounds like the soundtrack to Dr. Zhivago...utterly foreign (no clear tones...a constant echoing drum and a low chorus of chanting strings) while also sounding strangely familiar. The style...the expression on their faces and the easy (though not technically so) shifts from tempo and dynamics while maintaining the same over-all melodic idea sort of reminds me of jazz. --- There's nothing to write. Only stories of more flying insects, a large scarob beetle (i correctly identified it!) gripping the edge of Blair's All-American sweat rag, washed-out streets, riding back to the Hindustani International next to Ben cradling his very own $130 sitar. I'm tired. Many nights without full sleep. I tried to nap today. To no avail. There are too many images in my head, too many words, and absolutely no emotions. Tou think I am lying, but I swear it is true. I am devoid of feeling. My mind is blank and there is no activity whatsoever. I don't even feel something lurking. Nothing positive or negative...and not even that "just being" feeling of calm contentment. I feel detached from my body. Separate. Distant. Perhaps that allows objectivity. KT is slapping the wall with her wet laundry. The plaster is marked with punjabi-shaped blotches from the bathroom door to the left of the TV. (Comment on this)
Saturday, July 21st, 2001
11:34 pm	6-27-01 11:20 a.m. Sitting on the stone steps next to the large ipllars left of Manikarnika Ghat. I just got a hour and a half tour/lesson from a thin, 5'3" man named Rama. He explained to me all the burial traditions, the reasons behind them, and then asked if I wanted a better view. After explaining the hostel system, he led me to the roof os the single older woman's hostel...where he explained the things going on below. He told me the story of the birth of Shiva, of the origin of the name Manikarnika (Sanskrit for diamond and earing) and then asked me if I wanted to see the place where the diamond was lost. It's a large square with steps going inwards about five meters deep at this level (just at the start of the Monsoons). Men and their wives (they all looked upper caste) were bathing in preparation for going into the Ganga. I then was taken to a holdy man ashram, the birthplace of Shica (marked by a Shiva linga many feet into the ground), the temple of the five elements (he explained all of those earlier) and then the Nepalese temple, where he took me in a circle, explaining the sexualized artwork and the stories behind it. And then...I asked a stupid questions, "Why is there so much sexual imagery here?" (if you want to see similar images, check out the illustrated kama sutra...and then throw in a couple of more women and even more unrealistic penis depictions) He answered, "Nepal is cold. People in cold countries need heat, no? That is why a woman, say from Germany, she always hugging husband. She's looking for warmth." Rama spoke excellent English and established early on that he would treat me (and call me) "sister." With that understanding (and the realization that I had at least 30 pounds onhim), I felt comfortable following him through the narrow streets, up catwalks, and through tunnel-like paths under the streets (very dark, damp, ledge on the right side, pile of sand to the left, faint shapes of bent over women picking up pieces of washed-out trash). I think it's starting to rain. People have stopped asking me if I want a boat ride, the flies are getting more desperate, the cats have disappeared, and all the goats (except for a black male waddling behind me) have gone under awnings. -- Sitting in the lobby of the Hindustan International (a ridiculously high-class hotel that I wouldn't feel comfortable in even in the US), ___ came in. For almost three seconds, I believed he was sincerely interested in something I had to say. Thankfull, before I chose to actually _talk_ to him (which I had the overwhelming impulse to do in those three seconds), he interrupted my third word with a declation that he was going upstairs since "no one" was here. I remember observing him before the trip last year...sitting silently in the corner, relaxed, a half-smile on his face. He seemed to truly _occupy_ his space, and, whenever I heard him speak, he impressed upon me this image of wisdom, thoughtfulness, peace, and _caring_. First impressions can be deceiving. -- I just sucked on what I thought was a dead pen.... Actually, it still _is_ a dead pen, even more dead with all of the rest of its ink in my mouth. I am not only gullible but pretty remarkably incompetant. -- "Is there any such thing as a religious faith which in quality of texture is definitely not Christian, but in the approach to which one ought to put the shoes off the feet, recognizing that one is on the holy ground of a two-sided commerce between God and Man?" -- A.G. Hogg God...I wish I had read Diana Eck a while ago. Her answer to the query, "Is Christ the only way to salvation?" was perfect: "I am only a professor at Harvard; I will have to leave the question of salvation up to God." Reading her makes me want to, even more, become a Quaker. To sit in silence instead of echoe creeds or sing out repetitive choruses being projected on giant white screens. (Comment on this)
12:30 pm	6-28-01 On the train: My butt is gently rolling with my seat as the morning world slides past the windows of my seat. Number 29. Ben woke me up with the sunrise, apologizing as he slid to the end of my seat to crouch (as he hasdone for almost two hous now) with his knees tucked to his chest and his head half-covered by his crossed arms. His glass-enwrapped eyes, blue and wide, rise up from the pruple lines on his Kadhi Kurta. There's a family across the aisle...the one's I gave the rejected Vijay presents to last night (horribly sweet Indian pastries with suspcious nuts and a horrible aftertaste). I think they must not have thrown them out because the kids are full ofsugar -- crawling, jumping, running, banging their little shorn heads against the window and screaming out "Agara!" or "Train!" and many words I cannot recognize...though I pretended that I could decipher them this morning at 5 a.m. when they woke me up. Ben's reading E.M. Forster: _A Passage to India_. He jsut asked me if I had a dictionary in my backpack. He wanted to find out what "unwonted" meant. I told him "undesirable," and he disagrees with me...but it doesn't matter. One of the children is burping. another one is making sharp humming noises...like my dad did when he played "airplane" with me at the dinner table. -- The Taj Mahal is as beautiful as they say it is. Clean, bright symmetry. White marble with crisp flowers overlaid on it is semi-precious stones -- lattice work and scripts in black marble that would take years to complete. A monument of love...though I don't see what kind of good this 17th century Moghul ruler's love did for his people. Yes, his wife is entombed in a mausoleum that even the most ignorant of conquering countries would be hesitant to destroy...but what about the people? Where's the beauty in having hundreds of workers hands chopped off? [and then I succombed to sleep on the tan blanketed bed of our afternoon-rest hotel, Hotel Sidharta, about two blocks south of the Taj. it was a sticky-hot day, and I'd taken off my silk sari and was lying on the bed, limbs spread, in my light blue petticoat and unhooked grey-blue sari blouse.] --post lunch (which we'd had at this strange, empty, wooden-stick-like, over-priced place with great aloo something or other) sitting in a chair watching my co-travelers amuse themselves in Moghul carpets. Boyd is in a good mood...though he was just given Thums-Up instead of Pepsi. This small shop is awash with Western-clothed Indian men in ugly white tennis shoes, spread carpets, and barefoot, kadhi-clad Westerners. I'm sipping CHai...and have the distinction of being the only one in the group not interested in buying a carpet. It's peaceful here..partly because this is one handicraft shop in which our auto rickshaw drivers will actually earn their commission. -- [post 2nd class, no ac train ride from Agra to delhi] Things to remember: Dead cows in bushes near tracks...about 10 feet away from my petticoat-covered knees. The flesh was sunbaked black...no skin...abotu a dozen large black crows perched on the carcass, tearing away at the body. The echoes in our temporary room (120) at the Sidharta Hotel in Afra as KT and I tried to match our voices and harmonize. The semi-precious stones dug out from the face of the marble-inlaid flowers at the Taj Mahal. The jagged, rough, strange dips in the surface their absence made. The sadness of it. The little boy on the traid who crawled on to the luggage rack to listen to Blair sing, smiled at me when I have him a pen, and stared at us, wide-eyed, for two hours. His mother, PhD in Hindi, gave me a pen of my own...and packets of bindis. She was gracious, intelligent, and kind. Sitting next toKT in the space of the open train door in the monsoon rain, her hands wiping water over my face, the normalcy of having a hip squished next to my own, a wall on one side, and five random men (one masturbating according to the vivid account by Blair) staring at the backs of our modest heads. Walking on the red stone paths from the Taj in my gray-blue silk sari, having a group of women start guffawing at me. Feeling strange and paranoid and stupid. Looking over my shoulder at the YMCA while washing gum off my shirt in the sink, seeing KT's face open and wide and pale and vulnerable. Wondering what the hell I should do...deciding (once again) to respect her mental/social/personal space. Buying ice water (a literal block of ice in a sealed Bailey's H2O bottle) and stale Milk Bikis from the Sikh on the street to the Taj. Looking at the sewer river and peaked grass huts while leaning against the side of the Taj. Staring, unabashedly, at the spread, damp form of the an Australian just inside the monument. His red-white-wet face, fleshy, filled kakhis. 6-29-01 (New Delhi, Old City) On the marble stpes on the second floor of the wholesale brass shop. I bought a Buddha for Sandra and a Sariswati for Charlie. This world...this city...it seems so clean now...and so familiar. Walking into the South Indian temple, I felt as if I was going into my backyard. Nothing seemed exotic or strange...and the images, garlanded and in their marble shrines, seemed familiar. Shiva. Parvati. Hanuman The trident. The bull. The Shiva linga. The fat elephant. The smell of sandalwood incense, rotting fruit, and sweetened ghee...I had to think abotu smelling it to notice its presence. (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 19th, 2001
10:49 pm	more india journal entires... 6-30-01 I dreamed about Katie last night, and I woke up wanting to cry. I wanted to curp up next to her upright, reading form, and just weep. She told me the whole of one of her stories yesterday, and the thought of how this has changed her, hardened her, broken her... [edited for reasons of respect and melodrama] 7-1-01 (in dorm room at the YMCA on Jai Sing road, room 206) I have a callous on my writing finger -- a pale bubble from chopping at too many raw vegetables with a dull knife. -- Yesterday: Thoughts/images/circumstances/memories 50 extra dollars from Boyd. Sitting on my butt in the dirt of the Sikh's frame shop. Hearing KT tell me how she felt when she was looking at me sleeping. Dinner at the Kwality Restaurant ("catering to rich Indians and G.I.s"). Spinach Mushroom Lasagna. 2 alcoholic beverages. Wedding in the street lit by light sabers mounted on black, plastic, candleabra attached with extension cords to a generator held up by a scrawny man at the end of the row. Being pulled into the dance and trying to move my stiff, Western body to this strange mix of trumpet, drum, and cymbel (sp?). Being held, twisted, twirled, and jerked around by drunk men, plump middle-aged women, and getting a coin tossed at me just in time for a beggar child to pick it up. Foot massages in our room until midnight. Spilling the "Body Oil" all over the floor. PUtting Opium perfume in the warm water. Getting water and oil all over my blue petticoat. Wiping KT's, Blair's, Chet's and Josh's feet with the bottom half of my white lucknabi punjabi. Laughing at Boyd's camp jokes. Wondering if I'm going to go insane when I get back. Being scared that I cared too much about this place and this group. Being frightened that perhaps I missed everything. Today: Waking at 3, 5, and 6 to let increasingly watier crap come out of my angry body. Peeling onions for an hour while kneeling on a woven mat, bushels of soil-shrouded onions in front of me, a steadily increasing pile of dirt-red skins and thin brown wrappings in front of the beggar boy that sharing my corner. Crying and crying and crying as I cut onion after onion. Having the boy show me I was holding the knife the wrong way. Looking at the circle of blood on his thumb where he knicked off some of his skin. Blowing my nose, violently, into an increasingly snot-filled head rag. Sharing my Meijer's instant hand sanitizer with the child. Rubbing the sterilized, moist dirt on my pale blue cotton pyjama pants. Moving over to the potato section (Aloo) upon the suggestion of empathetic onion choppers. Having three women try to take my knife away (they wanted to work as well). Watching the boy struggle with a 20-something man, trying to hold on to both his knife and his right to chop vegetables next to the white lady. Getting a blister on my forefinger. Kneeling on cornflour holding a long metal stick with a small, flattened end. Flipping chipotes on the large heated iron slab, watching the flat, pale disks bubble and brown and be flown across the live wood-stoked stove. Being harassed by the man in the red turban who wouldn't take my "no" for an answer, tried to get me to go home with him, and tried to kiss me. Having the little boy follow me for three blocks asking for money. Realizing that I had none, that I was out of water, that I hadn't eaten breakfast, and that I really wanted to go to the Quaker meeting. Going to the wrong YWCA where a church srevice was just getting out. Shaking hands with a thin little girl named Elise and listening to her father speak to me about the power of revival, his experiences working in a Christian relief hospital, and giving my directions to the South Indian Free Church. Getting lost on my way to the church and winding up at the right YWCA where I met the guy from Michigan that I met in the Bahil shop yesterday and was shown into a small supply room with a long table and six chairs spread around it that were 2/3 full by the time the silence started. Blowing my nose during the silence. Trying to be furtive abotu it...then being advise, by Mrs. Henema (whom I hadn't "met" yet) to just blow. Slowing my breathing. Realizing that I was very sick. Going back to the Y...finding out that my three days of serious diarrhea=sickness, that my period came 1.5 weeks early, that I had a fever and aches from dehydration, and that I was not going to have a wonderful ending to this trip. Rodeo Restaurant. Pads. Tea Strainers. Pizza Crusts. Gatorade-coated teeth. Boyd's farewell speech. And now I'm alone...I don't know where KT is...and I've been alone for an hour. My neck is aching and hot and swollen and there is pressure on the top front half of my face. Whenever I stand up, I feel as if my joints aren't going to obey my mental controlds. I wrote a letter to Boyd...and slid it under his door. He may not ever give me written responses (though I'll hate him if that's the case), but that's the only way I see to communicate with him right now. There's not enough time for anything else. 7-2-01 (en route, in KLM flight over the Atlantic) Is it possible that I can stand television even less? I just lasted through maybe 40 seconds of "Mad About You," and I'm ready to throw something. Situational comedy. Situations that only hold our interest and our enjoyment because they are built upon separations and social constructions and our damned senses of insecurity and unfulfillment. What the hell does Mark McGuire and the heimlich maneuver and four adults making fauning fools out of themsevles matter? What does it have to do with life? (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 10th, 2001
10:54 pm	7-7-01 I just noticed that KT wrote ["i love ya tina ~ kt"]..and nearly felt like crying. But I didn't. Tears don't belong in a world of plastic...in a place separated from any sign that humans excrete things: from shit to salt water. My parents are home. They are sleeping now. My little brother is playing on the computer, a brownie-stained ceramic bowl next to the keyboard. Dad managed to finish the last piece of cherry pie while telling me about getting lost in Vienna, about going to see 2/3 of La Traviotta, about working too strenuously for his body to handle at the construction site in Kosovo. I showed him the silk table runner I bought them...and felt very foolish. This is not what they understand or treasure. 7-8-01 (very early) Well, I have succeeded in avoiding drowning myself in stimulants...though I have spent too many hours playing free cell solitaire and organizing things for me to feel extremely self-like. I'm in our living room now, curled up on the edge of our seven-year-old couch in my grandma's quilt in flannel pajamas, watching the red digital bars on the kitchen clock shift location as the time changes. It's now 3:14 and the very dead red rose in the middle of the kitchen table (#2 from David this week) is looking rather superior and lofty in its whithering state--rising a good five inches above the other items surrounding it: a 12 pack of squirt, meijers vegetable oil, peanut butter, a large bottle of lubriderm, elmers glue, packing tape, an empty plastic bag, broken blue-handled scissors, a canning jar with daisies and carnations from D and W in it. --- It's so horrible. I hate how quickly I have moved into this life. My concerns now are so trivial: milk for my cereal, keeping track of my needy friends' psychoses, trying to figure out what to do about David. There are people _dying_. And worse than dying, there are people "living." There are people with glassed-over eyes and twisted limbs and crippled hearts -- sitting pseudo-contentedly in armchairs or lying precariously against barbed wire fences. Poor...rich...destitute each and every one of them. I can't write what I'm thinking very clearly (obviously), but what breaks my heart and is rendering me physically immobile (and I haven't really moved in a week) is this half-realization that there _is_ a sickness, but the sickness has nothing to do with poverty. It can't be fixed with a hand-out...no donation is going to cure it. ___'s sick with it. ___'s already drowned in it. I think even ____ might have it...though I think my eyes will never be skilled enough to dissect what's going on in that head of his. HIs gauntness. His sickly, fragile smile when half-drunk. That look of wild vulnerability when he confesses to have hurt some time in his past lives...he must have blood pouring from his soul sometimes...and I wonder if even then he could admit that something felt wrong. But how do you describe this self-cage? Is there a metaphor or adjective created that correctly describes the pain you get when you realized you're trapped in your own skin? ...that every inch of your real self is being gnawed at, thinly and furtively, by your physical body. I'm tired. My hand is weighted and my stomach is fattened and my eyes hurt. Being in the park today was confusing...what kind of world is this? Clover beds and rain-washed docks all willing to support my back. Charcoal grates for use by any stranger. Swings and stars and tree branches. And the arms. Ready to hold me...to assure me that I'm not going to disappear. But perhaps I'm going to disappear anyway. I'm not sure how much I fit into this reality any more...it is so...disconnected. Yes, people die, are born, lie, have children, and lust in this country too. But there are doors here...and backyards...and awnings...and toilet seats...and hand towels...all here to help separate ourselves from the fact that we have bodies...in one way or another. [sorry for the elipses dots. i used to use a lot of double dashes, but i'm regressing even further than that] (Comment on this)
10:37 pm	It was a strange day today...I think I'm finally over the jet lag, but I'm not over India. After cooking chicken fajitas with David for my parents, I changed from my non-sweatshop-made dress with the turtle prints on it to my tailored luknabi punjabi. Made of cotton and large enough so I could get comfortably pregnant, I felt like I was wearing pajamas at Tunnel Park today. I wrapped up in my Ecuadorian wool blanket...not because of the Lake Michigan wind, but because of the people...the fat, pasty, white people, walking by in their Old Navy capri pants and flesh-hugging synthetic blouses. They had no idea what I was wearing, and if I told them they wouldn't care...at least I wouldn't have cared a couple of months ago. My blue night-suit was made in Madurai. Under the decaying stone carvings of a shopping district near the north gate of the Meenakshi temple, over an open sewage line (I jumped the gap with my fingers crossed), and amongst the cramped stalls of fabric merchants and men with sewing machines, was the tailor who took my metric measurements and changed a couple of bolts of cloth into this outfit. He's probably still there...go see him if you can...and slip him some money when he's not asking for it. I should have given him more. His hands, gnarled and brown, can still thread a needle through their silent shakings, but his eyes are thickened and whitening. His shirt has been beat against the rocks one too many times, and his neatly combed grey hair hasn't seen shampoo in a long time. (Comment on this)
12:37 pm	india journal excerpts... Calcutta: I was walking back from a Chinese Restaurant with the group when I saw a sign for a Cybercafe...so...I'm writing again. It's 9:07 p.m. here off the streets of Calcutta, and I'm doing very well. Physically, I'm back up to par, as far as the other "ally's" go (mentally, spiritually, intellectually...), I think I have gone someplace I've never been before. I can't explain it now... The goat sacrifice was disgusting...revealing...and interesting. The goats scream like children when their wet forelimbs are twisted up so their upper bodies can fit between the stone blocks. The blood...is on the bottom of my feet still. I did not do puja (pooja) at the Kalighat...or perform any signs of respect other than those I would give at a stranger's house. It helped me realize, in a way I'd never thought of before, the similarities between the Christian, the Jewish, and the Hindu ideas of spirituality. Blood sacrifice, while we may not practice it, is drenched in our imagery. I'm glad I actually got to see one. It gives a whole new meaning to both the Old Testament stories, the concept of Christ as the "Lamb of God," and Micah 6. In the afternoon, we took a 1.5 hour long busride (I prayed for most of it: for David, for my family, for myself, for the world...it was squished to the gills with people and was conducive to being spiritual in a way that the most lonely room could never be) to the farthest tip of Calcutta to the other Kali temple, the one Sri Ramakrishna (considered by some to be an incarnation of God, teacher of Vivekenanda, responsible in many ways for the Western expansion of Hinduism, proponent of the unity of religions) spent most of his life within. It was great. No children with diarrhea squatting in the corner. No pools of blood trickling down the dirty steps, no blood stains smeared on the forehead. Instead, there was group singing (sort of like a hymn sing, sort of like folk singing, sort of like a family picnic separated by gender), a jugernaut (can't spell) celebration (it's quite the festival -- I got more sugar balls than I could handle by little kids...sort of a reverse trick or treat featuring Hindu gods in a cart pulled by ropes), smiles up the wazoo, and a wonderful, windy, fresh-smelling sort of peace. I've become very silent during this whole trip. I think that's a good thing. I have less of a need to talk or express. Perhaps it's just that there's so much to absorb here, but I think it's also a sign that I'm growing up. 6-24-01 My hands smell like urine and my clothes are spattered in gruel, curried rice, and baby snot. I'm at the orphanage, sitting on a narrow, pain-chipped bench, listening to the sound of crying babies, cawing crows, and the gentle Bengali words of a volunteer trying to convince Sonia to swallow her food. There are only two children left out here on the porch, being spoonfed from wide stainless steel bowls. The rest are inside sleeping. Things to remember: The feel of tiny hands grasping the strings of my pink-checkered apron; the little voices crying "Auntie" as they stumbled into my leg, my back, my armpit, my breasts, my lap; the little pools of clear, water-like urine on the concrete; the dampened magenta skirts; the naked bottoms writhing on the seats; teh screams; the white cleeth clinging to the spoon; the feeling of a small mouth gripped to the cloth on my arm. -- 6-27-01 from a cybercafe in the bowels of Varanassi: This city is alive. Warning honks, skittering rats, 6 kinds of visible insect life in the bathtup, mildewing carpet..yes, even the carpet is alive in this city. Uhoh...the power's out. I can still see the computer screen, but the fan has stopped, and i'm not sure if this can still send. A little boy just peered in through the window. "Helllo. Helllo." The fan's on again...let's see if this sends. More water dripping on my arm...God, I love the monsoon. The rain is so holy and voluminous. The macarena is playing on the radio. This room smells like sweat, decaying concrete, and fried samosas. at night i remember the dead bodies and the shrunken children and the deadened eyes and the leprous, grasping limbs...and i feel very alone. (Comment on this)