Finding completeness in the incomplete: Ryoanji Zen garden

Some months ago, I decide to suspend the blog for a bit. I doubt its authenticity. Even if everything is honest, I edit, or rather, remove big chunks before posting.  

I am interested in those big deleted chunks. The raw and real bits that disappear into the abyss of computer memory. Bits and bytes that hold the soul, the true soul, that which is best kept hidden and hence deleted.

Suddenly, everything feels inauthentic. The same honest blog, the exercise in sorting things out, in trying to make sense of the world (I do believe that is what we’re all trying to do from the moment we are born) feels only half true. I decide I need to look closer at the deleted chunks.

I stop posting. Slowly, for whatever reason, I stop writing. No I don’t turn to other languishing projects, I don’t create fictional characters who could resolve/express the “deleted chunks” (since we’re giving them their own personality now).

I miss the writing process. I may not have any talent, but it feels right. It settles me.

Reluctantly, I decide to start writing the blog again. Simply because a blog post is something that I have to end, to round up before posting. It doesn’t remain a stray, unfinished thought (there is that half-baked attempt to complete a thought). I decide that tying up loose ends may be a good thing.  

I decide to write again. I have scribbles from a recent travel.

My breath stops. I know exactly what I must write.

A few weeks ago, I sit in front of fifteen rocks at the Ryoanji Zen temple garden in Kyoto. Fifteen is a symbol of completeness in Buddhism. Yet, the rocks are arranged such that from no angle, can you see all fifteen at a time.

Yes, there is completeness. We know it. Yet we can never see it.

Simple. Elegant. True. Harsh. Beautiful.

Or perhaps it suggests completeness in everything. And we must have faith in that completeness. Even when we can’t see it. So much power would lie in that believing. In that faith.  

Perhaps my deleted chunks are the rocks that continue to exist, even when I take them out. They are part of the fifteen – the complete. The blog post with the deleted chunks is still complete. Even if I can’t see it. Even when I doubt it.

Such simple elegance. Evidently, I don’t have the enlightenment to see all fifteen – in the garden, in my edited blog post. And yes, the belief is that all fifteen stones are visible once you attain enlightenment. And yes, did I mention my eleven-year-old claims she can see all fifteen. But I digress.

We sit on the verandah and stare at the karesansui (dry garden) with its white pebbles, raked neatly into linear patterns, and the carefully arranged fifteen stones. Everything is fitted neatly in the walled courtyard and visitors sit on the verandah and gaze.

I wonder how many are trying to see the fifteenth stone. I wonder how many are surrendering to the incompleteness in the complete. I wonder how many find it easy to have faith in the completeness.

Such a simple garden. So complex. Such simple lessons. So profound. If only all learning could be so. If only we could apply these learnings to our daily life. Would our life be so too?

Simple. Profound. True. Beautiful.

You may have to crook your neck - I was either being arty or clumsy :)

 

Ryoanji rock garden

 

Moss garden at Ryoanji

The essence of the place we travel to…

We walk on the glacier in awe. Sheets of ice beneath our feet. We feel humble before the splendor of nature.

We hear a thunderous roar. Hmm... An unsettling sound when you’re standing on ice. A glacial avalanche in the adjoining mountains. Silvery ice rocks shine as they crumble down, sparkling in the sun, a sprinkling of diamonds – fiercer, far more beautiful than any diamond.

The pristine air, imposing mountains, aquamarine waters of the Canadian Rockies inspires awe… and hordes of tourists. Lines for the gondolas are winding, we ditch a canyon hike because we can’t find parking, we wait in a loooong line for ice-cream (but wait, don’t we do that in Portland too? Hmm…).

In all fairness, it is not as busy as say, Rome or Paris, and other than Banff, we are not caught in the touristy rush. But over and over, I remember my Spaniard friend, who fiercely avoided all touristy hubs.

I remember my wonder as he tells me how he explored France and Italy, without ever hanging around in Paris or Venice or Rome, how he explored Morocco, but without Marrakech or Casablanca.

“So you never want to see the Leaning tower of Pisa?” I ask in amazement. He tells me he wants to get a feel for the place, to know it, not if it comes with tourists or cheesy souvenir stores.

I am surprised, even if I understand.

More than a decade later, I wonder why I am reminded of his travel strategy over and over again on this trip.

I wonder if it because these mountains and glaciers remind me of Himalayan treks. None of these were very difficult treks, yet, they took us away from the bustle of towns into the wilderness of the mountains.

These mountains and glaciers make me feel close to nature too – but they come with souvenir stores, selfie sticks and far more tourists - nicely dressed tourists, not unshowered, unkempt youngsters trekking.

I wonder if a plethora of tourists keeps us in a certain bubble – not allowing us to truly experience the essence of the place. We experience the place, and its wonders, but do we really get the true feel for the place?

I am no longer an off-the-beaten-path traveler. I want direct fights, easy commutes, clean, comfortable accommodation, ahem… wifi (my family mostly – for we need to catch the Canadian Pokemon, of course).

Or maybe I'm just getting old.

In these mountains, I remember other mountain treks. The Rohtang Pass summit climb - where somehow, three of us had broken off from the group. I no longer would want to break off from the group.

I no longer would make fun of my then-hypochondriac friend each time she announced shortness of breath and even more dramatically that she was dying. Well… maybe… just a little?

I would no longer find it hilarious that she and I somehow tumbled over each other and went rolling down the snowy mountain, quite close to a precipice.   

So what is it that I am finding so hard to acknowledge? That this may be my permanent reality now? That I want places with beauty and wonder and the ease and convenience – a combination that brings tons of tourists. So does that mean I must make peace with experiencing a place without truly experiencing the essence of a place?

Hmm… Might as well get that selfie stick too... sigh…

September

September is a tricky month. I have thought so for many years. Summer slips away. A new school year begins. I have another birthday. Leaves begin to turn color, slowly losing their grip on trees, drifting midair, touching the earth to a quiet burial.

It all seems connected. As I sit here and write, in a house that seems so suddenly shoved into stillness, the walls look shocked – by the lack of noise and the occasional flying ball/frisbee… I look outside at the grey skies – summer, where did you go? Another coughing spate. I make a cup of tea. I often manage to get sick around this time – which is why, I have the time to mull this over, in the first place. And no, I’m not like a friend’s kid who gets sick around her birthday – just from the excitement of it all.

The birthday adds to it - even if the getting old part doesn’t seem to bother me, I do seem to question what I have done with my time here. Did it simply slip away like the summer?

This September, I am constantly reminded of a book I read a few months ago, Ruth Ozeki’s, A Tale for the Time Being. She refers to a “time being” as

…someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.*
…all moments are the time being, they are your time being.*

I love the concept of a time being. I love the impermanence it offers to our existence. Why then do we make such a big deal of it? For we are only time beings. Perhaps, that is not how Ozeki intends for it to be understood. The author draws on Buddhist philosopher, Dogen’s concept of time, the flow of it, and that all beings in the world are time, and connected by it.  

…Everything in the universe was constantly changing, and nothing stays the same, and we must understand how quickly time flows by if we are to wake up and truly live our lives.*

One can hardly talk about time, without talking about it passing. Which is why I think of it every September. This summer will never come back. There will be next summer – but my kid will be a different age, a different person – as will I.

That’s what I feel like when I write, like I have this beautiful world in my head, but when I try to remember it to write it down, I change it, and I can’t ever get it back.*

Towards the end of the summer we complain that the vacation is faaaar too long, the kids need to be back in school. This week, I will attend: “The Kids Are Back In School, We Made It Through The Summer Mimosa Party”. Someone told me of how her sister and a group of friends drop the kids off, on the first day of school, and pop open a bottle of champagne, in a minivan, in the school parking lot.

For all the bickering and fighting… a parent says, “I know they’re (siblings) ready for school when the fighting begins…”

Another says, “They’ve (siblings) spent so much time, in such close proximity, they’ve formed a close bond, but can barely tolerate each other, either”.

I understand both comment. No, my kid does not have a sibling. She does however have a mother… (sigh… when there is no sibling… why does mom have to be the adult, grrr….? Not always successfully either… sigh…)

Yes. Despite it all, the joys of back to school, of the end of summer, of another birthday… are all bittersweet.

I have a pretty good memory. But memories are time beings too, like cherry blossoms or ginko leaves; for a while they are beautiful, and then they fade and die.*

Is that the source of the twinge? That something so precious, so dear, so sweet will crumble away and be forgotten? Is it this realization, the inability to hold on, the futility of trying to hold on?

Perhaps it is simply a reminder to be present.
Life is fleeting. Don’t waste a single moment of your precious life. Wake up now. And now. And now.*

(yikes, even if the above quote seems like a lot of pressure...)

Perhaps, we can all learn to be more like the grandmother in the book… even if it seems impossible…

Old Jiko is supercareful about her time. She does everything really really slowly, even when she’s just sitting on the veranda, looking out at dragonflies spinning lazily around the garden pond. She says she does everything really really slowly in order to spread time out so that she’ll have more of it and live longer…*

For the time being

Words scatter

Are they fallen leaves?*

* All italicized quotes are from Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being.

Rock flour

Waters swirl. The senses take them in. All the senses. The senses seem satisfied, even if somewhat inundated.  

The sound – deafening rushing in the canyons, against stony mountain walls, roaring waterfalls – contrasting the soft soothing ripples, the gentle lapping waves in lakes.
The taste of the cold blue glacier water, an aquamarine stream at the mouth of an imposing glacier. I bend down in awe, greedily filling our bottles, wishing I could have somehow carried a barrel. 

The touch – so cold, so pure, so fierce. I look at the swirly walls of canyons. Water that has created swirls in the stone, so easily, so effortlessly, like fingers running through sand.

The sight – brilliant colors set against imposing mountains and glaciers - the aquamarines, the blues, the turquoises, the milky-whites… My breath stops several times, as we turn a corner in the mountains, or suddenly come face to face with the waters, startled by the iridescence. 

The waters of the Canadian Rockies…

The glacier tour guide explains the colors. Rock flour, he tells us, is the fine silt caused by glacial erosion and grinding of rocks. Glaciers grind up the stone. Fiercely, minutely, permanently. This rock flour is then either carried by wind or flows into meltwater. It is through this glacial milk and sedimentation, that the ground up stone lends color to the waters.

And what resplendent colors. Turquoise, aquamarine, blues, greens, whites… so beautiful… so entwined in their interactions with their surroundings, they take on their colors. Permanently.

The intertwining of nature…  

glacier spring

So, if we are part of nature, are there rock flours in our surroundings? Ground up in our being?  

What color/ colors are we? Where do we get these colors from? Who/what is the source of our colors? Perhaps there are puddles of colors inside us – some dazzling, other dark. Some origins that we know of, others unknown.   

Can we choose which rock flours we want to allow to be part of us? And which we would rather not? And if they must be, maybe they can remain no more than a tiny puddle…

For staring at the waters in the Rockies, one thing is apparent - rock flours can lead to much beauty… hopefully it can be so - with humans, as well…

Hospital notes...

As a species, I believe we are completely screwed up. I am almost certain of it. Or perhaps I should not generalize. For many of you have your act together. But yet…

The reason for this conclusion? Scribbles in a small diary I find from last year. Written from a hospital bed.

My breath stops when I see the shaky, barely legible scribbles. My hand trembles as I turn pages.

Why would I even want to write? I ask myself. With all the tubes and drains poking out from different parts of my body, making me look like a Martian octopus? (And yes, I know exactly what a Martian octopus look like).

Why would I want to write? I ask myself. When everything seemed so painful and awful and discouraging? When I thought I could be dying (only for a few days).

Now I rarely reread journal entries. They are moments in time and moments pass. But I am curious. I am also apprehensive, and nervous to go down that path again.

I turn the pages. There is not a whole lot to read. The entries are short, the writing barely legible, the dates as mixed up and confused as my head. I find several entries for July 15, 2015 and one right after for June 13. Hmm… So I ready myself to read a bunch of incoherent gibberish nonsense.

I hold my breath again. To my surprise, it is not nonsense. It feels raw and vulnerable. I am able to read only a few entries.

I close my eyes and the book and put it away.

A few days later, I am in a funk. I look for the book and read a couple other entries. I feel better. The entries are raw, no doubt, but surprisingly, neither melancholic nor depressing.

There is a strange unnatural will to step out of the mess.

Yes. When I am in a funk, I reach out to a spectacularly difficult month in my life to draw inspiration. Now if that isn’t screwed up, what is?

Is it just human nature to hold it together in a crisis? But what about after? Is it easier to hold it together for a month and a half, and give it the fight you got? But what about after?

For difficult times don’t come with specific start and end dates, you see. What about for when the crisis still festers, but is a low-grade one. What does one do then? Why can’t I find journal entries then? (or maybe they are there, I literally, just can’t find them).

Perhaps it is a function of writing. For writing moves us towards the light. Okay, that may sound a little woo woo. What I mean, is that even if we start in a dark place, perhaps writing moves us away from that place to a more hopeful one, maybe just a teeny weeny more hopeful, but hopeful, nonetheless.

I spend a month and a half in the hospital. Doing the math, approximately, 1080 hours. Of these, the writing would be only a handful. The rest I probably spend glaring, scowling, being scared, staring foolishly…

Yet I go to those notes written in a minuscule minority of the time spent there.  

For they give me hope that in our worst times, we may be our better versions.

***

Here are a few... barely legible... written through the cloud of pain and drugs... 

Pain. The pudeur* of pain. A stench it ?? through a life normal. Sucking out fragrance, oozing out dishearten?? From every cell within. Smells of failure. Smells of lost dreams. Of hopes unfulfilled. 

How then do we remember it to be effacing. That hopes and optimism survive – even if they take on a sad face? How do we know to not allow that sad face to become our permanent face?   

(*pudeur - French. I know! Must be the pain meds)  

Puffy so puffy – I feel I could burst – just like the story of the green toad. The toad wants to show its pride – the bloating is showing me my humility.

It’s showing me the need to stay soft and relaxed and never bloat – for no good comes out of a good bloat. That is apparent…

This refers to a story about a vain toad who puffs up to show how big he can be -- but bursts. Ouch! 

… yes that if I put one foot in front of the other foot and keep moving in the direction away from the negativity…

For those not quite initiated or educated in art…. That is probably a picture of me on the beach with a sombrero possibly holding a glass of something-with-an-umbrella-in-it.

8/1/15
More blood tonight for this vampire. Here’s praying that this kind soul and stranger who donated blood – helps me feel stronger and healthier…

It’s night time in the ward again. Dread climbs, apprehension climbs, irritability climbs…. (griping about the night nurses – some were great, some - I was rather scared of).

...Yes, as night looms, a certain gloom looms over. But tonight I’m determined to see things different. I want to let go of the cynicism and negativity inside me that makes me gnarly – I know I’m in terrible pain. But perhaps, just for… ?? I will think of the night nurses as my friends – in the spirit of ??

It feels somewhat difficult to read and type up these notes. But there are so many more that truly surprise me. 

If only there was some way to extract the soul of the moment and hold on to it.   

Human vs Ants

The army stands in a single file. Fierce, determined, strong. In all their dark glory, the tiny black ants march into the battlefield. My kitchen floor.  

An evil giant awaits them. Waiting to quell the army.
Little do they know that the giant has horror in her eyes and fear in her heart. But enough with the drama, already.

Flashback to two weeks ago.

A young lady stands outside my door.

“Due to the construction up the hill, there has been insect and mice infestation in the neighborhood. Luckily we’re here in the neighborhood today.”

She looks at me closely. She realizes she has repeated the same lines to me before. Quickly she changes tactic.

“There’s a wasp’s nest above your garage.”

The tactic works. She notices the alarm, probably apparent in my eyes. In my defense -- our friends in the neighborhood recently had a hive of twenty thousand bees. Yes. Twenty thousand.

I follow her. She points to an itty bitty hive. I seem disinterested.

“There are more, you know.” She points to others – equally itty bitty. She works her fear-inducing-spiel on me.

I ponder. It’s a busy day. There are other things I’d rather be doing. I decide she is using fear tactics she has been trained in. Considering that politicians do the same… but I digress.

I decide I spend far too much time being scared of impending doom/s and just generally being scared. Even if I’ve had reason to be scared, even if I may have always been somewhat of a scaredy cat, (no matter how well I hid it,) I decide that I am tired of being scared, of what may happen, fearful of that which has not even happened yet. Even if there are times, that my mind doesn’t want to be scared, my body goes into a guarded space…

I decide this time, however trivial, to not succumb to the fear. 

*****
Today, I decide it is an unwise choice as I look down upon the army heading in a thin trail towards the pantry counter. It’s so hot outside, they must know I have the air on.

Last week, I notice a few squirmies near the pantry and feel the made-a-wrong-choice pang. I refuse to feel bad, stay strong and sprinkle dried neem leaf powder. That seems to do the trick.

I figure they will either stay away from the bitterness or develop fantastic immune systems. For you see, an Ayurvedic doctor has suggested the neem powder (ahem.. for me). I use it in my vegetable garden instead, and now to keep away ants.
My mother would buy a year’s worth of rice, storing it in bins, crushing and sprinkling dried neem leaves to keep away bugs. I remember running my fingers through the rice, pulling out the delicate, shriveled leaves, carefully, so they wouldn’t crumble into a thousand bits, before rinsing the rice.

Today, as I kneel down and watch the army attempt to capture new lands – the counter, I stand armed with neem leaf powder.

I sprinkle some on the counter and the floor following their trail. I see the ants squirm about. I swear I see an ant conferring face to face with another ant. They’ve got to be discussing, one ant debriefing the other of the danger and the giant ahead. I swear they turn around and change course. Their system seems intelligent and very evolved. And yes, I seem to have far too much time on my hands.  

I return, a while later, to find a few more on the counter. Tenacious, refusing to retreat, they’ve found a path to circumvent the neem powder. I watch them climb the more difficult path. They know it is going to take a lot more, they refuse to give up. They remind me of me. I wonder who the giant is, in my case. But I digress.

I follow the trail, stuffing neem powder in the crevice of the wood floor, till I get to their point of entry. I seal the tiny crevice between the wood floor and floor molding, and all the way across with more neem.

Hopefully there will be no part deux of humans vs ants. If there is, I should probably look into ant baits or perhaps call the insect lady and ignore her smug look and the “I told you so” song that she will be singing in her head. Sigh…

For in the end, even if I do call her, I will have decided to use her services based on need and not fear.


 

Is limited humanity, still humanity?

The other day… I give a few dollars to a homeless person. It makes me uncomfortable. It is not something I do often.

What comes in the way, I wonder. Is it idealism, my view of how the world should be, my capacity to not want to stray from it, my inflexibility?

To some extent, this is expected, I suppose - for each of us. But does it keep us trapped?

I am reminded of a day many years ago... I walk out of a grocery store I rarely frequent. I am very pregnant and must have watermelon. I notice a woman with a little girl, in the adjoining store -- Pay Day loan or some such store.

It is closed! She exclaims, visibly distraught. By now, I am right next to her. I must waddle past her. My heart goes out to her. In tears, she clutches her girl’s hand. Damn pregnancy hormones, I seem to want to tear up. I struggle to maintain composure and ask if she’s okay.

“Do you have any cash?” she asks me. Mental sigh. This is outside my comfort zone. I really don’t like to give money when I’m worried it may go towards drug or alcohol.

My judgmental mind wonders if she is an alcoholic. I don’t know whether or not I have cash – I often don’t, but I don’t check. I seem unable to find the flexibility to stray from my dogmatic rigidity. I tell her, I don’t.

“Would you like my groceries?” I ask her. There are only a few bags with basic stuff – milk, bread, eggs, cereal, fruit… She is surprised, confused, she shrugs... I hand over the bags to her. I waddle my way back to the car, balancing the watermelon against my giant belly. I remember not parting with the watermelon. Hmm… 

I also remember not going back into the store. I remember wanting to leave the place in a hurry. I call my husband and ask him to pick up the milk.

I think of the little girl and am glad I gave her the groceries, and that her mother allowed me to. But it leaves me unsettled. What if she wanted the money for medicines, why didn’t I ask, how much did she need… I am unsettled, because I know I am trapped in my beliefs and my behaviors based on them. I don’t even know if they are truly mine or where I may have acquired them.

Who am I do decide what a person needs in a given moment? The truth is piercing. It leaves me unsettled, even if I am too young to understand it then.

Not sure I’m old or mature enough to understand it better now. Besides, in another decade, I may see the same incident yet differently.   

But is kindness, kindness if it doesn’t align with what the receiver truly wants and needs?

Another story comes to mind. But my page is up. Perhaps I will write about it, or perhaps I’m done saying what there is.

I do however, continue to wonder, that despite kind intentions, are we pigeonholed in rules that we create based on our beliefs.  Even when we want to help, are we held in a certain limited humanity? Humanity to the extent that seems right and within the boundaries possible for us?  

In altruism then, is there sometimes, discrepancy between the giver’s giving and the receiver’s receiving? I suppose limited humanity is still humanity since it stems from good, kind intentions.

Why then, does it leave me unsettled?

Ha! I’ll come back more beautiful…

My computer does its best to warn me. 20% battery left. I ignore the message. 12% battery left. I ignore the message. 6% battery left. I ignore the message agaain – arrogantly, foolishly, detrimentally.

The computer screen goes dark.

I stare at the black rectangle. Silence stares back at me.

Row and rows of lines swallowed by the dark void. I gulp. I had been typing away furiously. I had no time to get up and plug the cord in. For who in their right mind, would disturb the stream of thought – especially when on a roll.

Yeah right...  that’s what I tell myself. Too lazy to get up, seems more like the truth. But oh well, let’s not challenge muse and her/his (?) mysterious ways. Hmm…

I get up dejectedly and plug the cord in. Sigh… this is the second such instance in the past few weeks. Am certain the other piece I lost was the most brilliant piece of writing, ever. Yeah yeah…

I continue to mentally chide myself for the clumsiness.
Then suddenly I am tired of being disheartened. I’m tired of being tired. I’m tired of being discouraged – by this and everything else.

I turn back, look at the computer and say, “Ha! I’ll come back even more beautiful! Prose like you’ve never seen before!”

I laugh at my confidence that doesn’t generally abound these days. I am very amused and even impressed by this confident, and even somewhat arrogant stranger living inside me.

I like this stranger. I wish she would stay.  I wish she could stay.

I wonder how many of life’s drubbings I can say that to. I wonder how many of life’s drubbings I may have already said that too. Unknowingly. Unnoticed.

I wonder how many comebacks remain in store. I wonder how many comebacks I may have made. Unknowingly. Unnoticed.     

Highly unlikely, that I come out of them, “even more beautiful” (indignant, arrogant air notwithstanding). But looks like the intention is to comeback. And that may be a good enough start.  

In the meantime however, it may be simply more prudent to plug the computer in when it tells me to.

p.s. I was writing something altogether different. Funny thing is, I have no intention of returning to it. This seems just right.

 

Language: part deux

“When the language one identifies with is far away, one does everything possible to keep it alive. Because words bring back everything: the place, the people, the streets, the life, the sky, the flowers, the sounds.”
~ Jhumpa Lahiri

This is where I left off yesterday, this is where I begin today. Taking you on a tour, inside our home, on the clunky, colorful vehicle with things dangling out – the metaphor for my language. 

I speak to my kid mostly in Marathi. She replies back only in English. She has done so for the past several years.

Yet in all her English sentences, there are certain words that she uses only in Marathi. She never uses their English counterparts (when speaking to us). She sticks them in English sentences with a happy effortless ease, even if they jut out forcibly – awkward and strange in the English sentence, grammar and context.

“After I do angol (bathe), will you get the zatta (tangles) out of my hair?”

I remember her at a year and a half old, mixing the two languages - adding “ing” to Marathi verbs or taking English verbs and adding Marathi grammatical suffixes to them.

A friend shares how her mother, a non-native English speaker, never spoke to her in her native tongue. She wonders if there remains a missing piece in their relationship since she never spoke her mother’s language. I sense her emotion and feel much empathy for a dear friend, who may have felt like an outsider to this part of her mother’s language (and identity?).

Determinedly, I continue speaking to my kid in Marathi, for most part. She is embarrassed when I speak to her in Marathi in front of her friends. I explain it is simply force of habit. I am ever so slightly hurt. Till she shushes me, takes me in confidence, and whispers, “they will think we’re talking about them”.

I grin in surprise. For I realize we do talk about people in Marathi. When a server bangs the plates, or seems grouchy, I may on occasion, have said, “Hmm… someone’s having a bad day…” not outside earshot, not in English, of course.

Tsk tsk… I suppose Marathi has sometimes been evidence of bad parenting. Since my kid does not always have volume control, or ahem… tact, I have sometimes whispered to her, “speak in Marathi, if you are going to make personal comments about people”.

Bad parenting or not, it does seem a safer bet when your kid is about to utter, “Is that guy wearing a wig?” Full volume, of course.

My husband and I sometimes wonder how monolingual parents parent without a secret language. She speaks and understands English and Marathi. But my husband and I also speak Hindi, which is our secret language to say things we do not want her to hear. It backfires quickly and we notice she is extra alert when we speak in Hindi. She understands the gist of the conversation, if not every word. Moreover it annoys her, so we drop it. There really is no outsmarting our kids.

There is no dearth of stories and instances about language, for we evolve, language evolves, circumstances around us change constantly. For most part, we continue obliviously, in our personal “evolved language”, sometimes we take notice.

The other day, my friend says deluge, as rain and hail rattle the car top. She pronounces it de’luge (day-luje) as in French. “Oh it’s not deluge (de-luje) in English?” I ask.

I laugh as I realize that I probably learnt the word first in French. Bringing it to English, I decide to pronounce it in what I consider the more American pronunciation. “How messed up, is that?” I ask laughing. I don’t want to sound too ooh la la…  and all francais and pronounce it the way I believe Americans would.

My kid corrects my pronunciations, she sighs and gives up – for it is a lost cause.
I find sentences here and there, which could be written better in English. At times I correct them, at times, I let them be. They are often literal translations from Marathi.

I let them be, because I am growingly beginning to understand my clunky colorful messy vehicle. For in the end, I need to write, and I need language to write. And if language is identity, why mess with the individuality – no matter how messy?

 

Language

Our words are our emotions, our thoughts, our fears, our motivations, and so many more things, so many more feelings… language is all but a vehicle.

Sometimes, I attempt to figure out my language. I don’t see clear lines – it seems messy, clunky, mixed-up – a strange vehicle of many colors, with stranger things dangling about. Okay, some people have vivid imagination, and see things in images.

Hmm… Matter of dismay for an erstwhile journalist, and a ‘maybe-writer’? Now which writer, in their right mind, would want to be a clunky colorful awkward vehicle, when they could be a zippy little mainstream car? For language is a sharp tool in the toolbox – chiseling out beautiful creations…

But coming out of the images, to explanations…

English is not my first language. Yet, I read and write more easily in English. I often think in my first language, Marathi and often find literal translations from Marathi in my English sentences. Sometimes I notice them, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes, I repair them. Sometimes I notice them, yet leave them the way they are.

A few books I read recently are translations. As I start the one translated from Swedish, I am very aware that it is a translation. Yet, the many characters and the rapid chain of events keeps my attention on the story and soon, I forget it is a translation.  

I read a brilliant Neapolitan series.  I don’t know any Italian. Yet, in the English lines, I hear the melodious slur of the Italian accent.

I sense the ferocity of emotion and truth in the writing. I also sense that the translated lines do not carry the full breadth of emotion and beauty. The characters move to dialect in intense moments. The writer gives the gist, but points it out. I search for gaps, the areas I do not have access to, the entirety I will never be able to experience, the completeness that is elusive. I feel like an outsider.

Or perhaps, that is art in general. Perhaps, we are never able to absorb completely what the artiste intended.

The scope to which we are able to access what the artiste intended may depend on our state of mind, our personal experiences, knowledge, interests, emotions. Certain words leap at us, others go unnoticed, depending on our thought process, experiences, interests, emotions, on a given day.

No two people can read a page the same way.

I find an old French novel by Maupassant that we studied in college. I read a few pages. The language is difficult. I see my fading scribbles in the margins – explanations, in English and French and even Marathi. I don’t want to look at the scribbles. I don’t want to be explained. I want to feel the language. Even if I may not get too far.

I notice what I am doing. I wonder if it is simply stubbornness and inflexibility of old age creeping in. hmmm…

I notice it again. I realize I don’t want to break the movement of his words, the ebb and flow of emotions, settings, the starkness of humanity, woven into nature.

I want to read it as he wrote it, in the language he wrote. I don’t want my notes, my explanations, my teacher’s explanation, to break this Naturalist’s stream of words. Even if there is much I will miss from not knowing vocabulary or context, I feel I have more to gain. Or that is my frame of mind, that day.

My page is up. I realize I haven’t even started what I meant to write. I will have to return tomorrow and write more about the clunky vehicle in my day to day.

I will simply end with this quote I found the other day, scribbled in my journal:

“When the language one identifies with is far away, one does everything possible to keep it alive. Because words bring back everything: the place, the people, the streets, the life, the sky, the flowers, the sounds.”      ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

 

The one that got away…

Every spring, I see a little sapling by the Japanese maple in our yard. Every year, it makes me happy in a:
Oh! My tree is having a baby, way.
I am hopeful for this little offspring – so fragile, so pretty, so full of possibility.

Every year, it withers away and dies in the mulch.

I feel a twinge, a sadness, now familiar, when I remember to look for it. Maybe next year, I think, and my fickle mind moves on to other matters.

 

Nature has its reasons, I tell myself. Darwin and the survival of the fittest, and all that good stuff.

This year again, I have hopes for the miniscule Japanese maple. I wonder if I should transplant it. I should look online, I should talk to someone about it. I should find out what to do.

I don’t. I remain preoccupied with other matters.

This morning I walk into the yard and look for the sapling. Still there. Withered. Tired. Its neck droops in defeat. It has given up. It is not going to make it.

Nature is cruel.

I remember my sorrow when as a child, I find out that a mother dog may sometimes eat some of its newborn (in the world of strays).

I remember us, a group of kids, pouring over a litter of adorable pups. I remember refusing to believe the words that come out of the neighbor kid’s mouth.

He claims the mother has eaten a couple of its newborn. He has seen it, himself or so he brags. I refuse to believe it. Brag mouth. Liar.  

Later, more facts, and grown-up words, corroborate the evidence. I have my doubts. I don’t want to believe it. I still don’t want to believe it.

It was the probably the weakest one. Something may have been wrong with it. The mother may not have had enough milk for the entire litter. Stray dogs are exhausted and hungry and tired after the birthing process. There are many explanations. Yet, my heart ached. My heart still aches.

It was probably the weakest link. Ah… the weakest link...

I suddenly wonder, if nature is real and cruel and survival is for the fittest, how the heck did I get away? How is it that I am still here?

Is there a reason for my being here? Is it simply evolution and modern medical techniques?

As always, I try to make sense of things. As always, I don’t quite succeed.

What is the reason for my making it? I wonder if it is for a reason. There must be. Maybe I am not the weakest link after all. Who’s to decide? Have we taken it out of Nature’s hands? Is this all simply nature-defiance?  

As always, I try to make sense of things. As always, I don’t quite succeed.

Nature-defying, or not, weakest link or not, all questions don’t necessarily have answers. And even if at times, I feel like the maple sapling – droopy, withered, ready to give up, I know I won’t. There is a secret stash of strength and faith and who knows, possibly a secret purpose even (which quite honestly evades me). Not sure where the strength comes from… from within or from outside, from those who care...

As always, I try to make sense of things. This time however, I’m quite okay with not succeeding.   

 

 

 

Magnetic links… of pain and joy

We all carry hurt and pain inside us. Tiny wounds, big hurts, some closed up, some raw – new ones, old ones – since childhood perhaps. Some heal, some are ignored, some fester within.

There are things on the inside – our inside. Hidden, closed, forgotten. We know they are wounds from the past, we assume they have closed up. We no longer pay attention to them.

There are things on the outside. Things happening to us and around us. In short. Life.

The two seem unrelated, yet seem inextricably connected.

For when there is pain on the outside - physical or emotional, it quickly connects to the pain inside. Pain that we imagine is long gone and buried.

Like a chain of magnetic links that connect swiftly and tightly to other links of pain – going down a well of the past – gripping other loops of pain. The chain becomes long, heavy, lugubrious, achy…

Dragging us down a faceless past - one forgotten or purportedly forgotten, we get embroiled in the links of pain, even if the episodes may be long erased.

The powerful magnets seem to extract every last bit of peskiest annoyance or hurt, buried deep within. The deadweight bears us down… like an albatross…

Shoo…shoo Baudelaire, shoo fleurs du mal. Just peachy huh? Exactly what we needed to uplift ourselves today?

Some years ago, (five to be precise), I decide to make a quilt of my daughter’s embroidery pieces and buy a quilting mat. A self-healing mat. Each time I use it, (And yes, it may be another good ten years that I use it, for that quilt to be done) I am amazed by it.

The blade roller or whatever it is called (tsk tsk… phony quilter), will often slice into the mat as it slices the fabric. In the time that I notice the paper-thin cut, put away the fabric, the slash in the mat closes up, right before my eyes. Quietly. Peacefully. Completely.

I marvel at it. I long to be it. To heal up so easily and simply. To be whole so effortlessly. To feel the pain, yet heal, despite the memory of the pain, without the memory of the pain. I wonder if it is the memory of the pain that drags us down – through the magnetic links of panic and fear. I wonder if it keeps us paralyzed in our future.

But again, just as there are loops of pain from the past, there are the links of joy. Especially with a magnet for metaphor, opposites should attract, right? So, in an ideal world, when there is pain on the outside, these magnetic links should bring out all the good from the past and ease the pain of the present.

I don’t know if that happens. But perhaps we can train our magnets to do so. Just don’t ask me how. And if you find out, do let me too.

For a start, however, when we are in a funk, it may help to know that these magnetic links exist (now that it is all a proven theory (sic.)). And maybe over time, we will recognize the links we make, and will learn to gently break the connections, and allow some of the links to dissolve and crumble into the abyss of the past, holding on to the joyous ones, believing in the joyous ones, refusing to be clutched by the painful ones.

Allowing the past to crumble, allowing us to be free in the present.

The Cat’s out of the Bag…

Some things are best kept under wraps. Mostly for us. The “things”, probably don’t care, and would rather be out there, breathing freely. 

We keep them under wraps, shrouded in doubt, uncertainty, insecurity, lack of faith… questioning the need, the sincerity.

Now, I don’t like secrets. Not to say, I like to shout out from the rooftops either. Yet, that is exactly what I do - a few weeks ago. From our generation’s equivalent of rooftop – the social media.

I belong to a small writers group and we have a ‘secret’ group on Facebook. Now instead of posting something to our ‘seeecret’ group, I post it such that anyone with access to my facebook page can see it. Of course, it is the very thing I don’t want anyone to know about (other than the five members of my group).

Ahem… that is exactly why I choose to write about it, here?? Oh well… And since I feel particularly reckless, here it is:

Yikes! The meeting minutes and monthly goals are going to haunt me! A’s in Japan, A’s away at camp, and I am supposed to be working on that novel.
Haven’t written a single line…no, not a single word. If Rick Riordan, or someone else writes MY novel before I do, hope you ladies will hand me tissues for the sea of tears…Sigh…

Ha! Now, before you admire my courage, be aware that only my facebook friends read this, the blog does not have metadata and other fancy things to make it pop on searches. Why, I just realized, it doesn’t even mention my name. Hmm… but let's not digress...

Funny how that happens. The very thing we guard, holding tightly, not allowing to escape, slides out of our hands, like it is nothing…  sticky clicky fingers, social media, or not.

Mortified, I gasp, delete it. By now, some folks have already commented on the post. More mortification. I write a flurried message to only the closed group. I check fifty times before I click ‘post’. My kind friends assuage the faux pas.

It is kind of funny, I tell myself. Surely I will have a good laugh later. I do. Yet, I don’t go near the computer. I don’t write at all. Not the novel, not even my silly blog. Maybe I am busy. I am. Or so, I tell myself, convince myself.

Now this book is not a life’s dream or anything like that. I am too old and curmudgeonly for dreamy-eyed visions or the accompanying fervor.

It is simply a possibility. A faint one in that. Yet, there is a certain vulnerability that goes with it. A certain holding of the breath, a certain hesitation to say it out aloud. To allow it to escape my lips. To admit it. Accept it. To allow myself to dream of it.

Is this what boring middle-aged people do to protect ourselves from disappointment? That pile can look larger than life if we choose to examine it. But again, why would we want to, right?

At what point/ stage in our life, do dreams get fitted into cynical shelves of practicality, cased no longer in rose colored glasses, but stark reality-filled ones?  

When do we stop shouting things out from rooftops, committing, admitting, allowing them to be, to float about?

Of course, there are other instances, when it may simply be hard to say it out aloud – not because we want to keep it secret, but there is some emotionality attached to it.

Does keeping it under wraps increase our vulnerability, our sensitivity towards the matter? Is this then a silly little example, a silly little experiment?

I don’t know. However, I do know this... I don’t write a single word in weeks. I write this is in twenty minutes. My thoughts move, my mind dances, my fingers fly on the keyboard - they know exactly what to do. A momentary calm prevails. Novel or not, I hope I will always give myself permission to do this.


 

Attack of the weeds

So I walk into my yard. Reluctantly, optimistically, doubtfully. Optimistic for the flowers and vegetables that could be, reluctant – given the weeds that await me, doubtful of how far I will get this year.

I walk bravely into the yard. Studying the overall unkemptness, I sigh big, tragic sighs. Think small, I tell myself. Obediently, I focus my attention on two vegetable beds. I decide to tackle the weeds and prep the soil.

I start plucking away at the weeds. Have I mentioned the therapeutic effects of weeding? Sometimes I wish I could pluck out all the problems in my life, the same way. Sometimes I imagine I am plucking away the problems in my life. Pluck…pluck…pluck…

(Now, if any of you are convinced of this therapy, I will tell you where I live, there will be plenty of therapy and meditation for you to practice. Hmm… Tom Sawyer and whitewash wall, come to mind, anyone?). Hmm… moving on…

My gloved hand reaches into a clump of weeds – to seize their last breath, to deliver the cruel kiss of death… when suddenly I am under attack! The weeds fight back!

They blast countless, minuscule green things all over me. Aphids – I think in dismay. There will be no planting this year, more dismay (some relief?). Willing and rather quick to give up, I pick the few weeds I have disturbed. Nothing springs up. I don’t see any aphids. Now most gardeners would know stuff like this, but since I’m only a phony, I am curious and peer down to see teeny tiny, green, wound up thingies (I know, I know - very eloquent and educated descriptions).

I poke another set – and right there, I’m under attack again! I sputter as tiny green things fly all over my face. What!! I’m being attacked by the weeds? Just how low am I on the food chain and how did I get here?

Determined to get to the root of this (bad pun and everything), and attempting to maintain my dignity before the weeds, I poke at the same weed (already disturbed). Nothing flies out. Ah… it’s their defense mechanism. I find a long, tall rake to outsmart them. I poke around and let things fly out wildly.

Later, as I bend down and yank away, I mentally murmur an apology for circumventing their beautiful nature-designed defense mechanism. I can’t but admire nature who equips even these frail weeds with means to defend themselves.

Defense mechanisms may be a thing of beauty. Well literally… as my mind wanders to years ago, to a balmy night in a bioluminescent bay. A guide takes our small group on a midnight kayak tour into the bay, on a near new moon night. I wonder what I have got us into (of course, this would have to have been my idea), as my muddy legs wade through the dark, marshy bog as we drag our kayaks into the bay. But the moment we climb in and oar away, all doubts dissolve into the bioluminescence.

The water around the kayak lights up, the water at the end of the oar lights up. My hand draws a line through the water. A line of light forms where my fingers have been. I revel in the disbelief of it all.  

We reach the middle of the bay, tie the kayaks together and swim in the balmy waters. We swim in speechless awe. We swim as light forms all around us, circular halos floating in the dark waters.

The marvel of the moments is from an extremely high concentration of algae in the bay. Their defense mechanism is to emit light when disturbed. Even if the light we generated by our movements in water seemed like poetry to us, it was disturbance to them.

I remember noticing the irony. I remember thanking the algae for allowing us to scare them, for allowing us to experience immense beauty in their fear, in their defense mechanism.

Till I get stung by jelly fish. Talk about defense mechanism. Only two individuals in the group get stung. And of course, one has to be – yours truly. Even if I retreat meekly to my kayak, even if my hand hurts like crazy, I remain in awe of nature, of interactions between species, of inner-programming of self-defense, of attempts to ward off the stronger species.  

What about us humans? We too have our defense mechanisms. Each of us develops uniquely our own set above and beyond what we innately possess. At times, they may be useful, at times, I suspect may come in the way of our happiness. And a few people may already know how to circumvent them with the long, tall rake they may use for us.

I suppose they are there for a reason, and we develop them for a reason, for self-protection, for guarding. But a mechanism, a learned response, may be hard to unwind from, even when we don’t need it. What are our defense mechanisms? How many of those do we need? Can we let them rest, knowing they will spring up when we really truly need them.
Can we let our guards down, knowing they will be there if and when we need them?

And perhaps there is beauty and vulnerability in these defense mechanism, just like the algae in the bioluminescent bay. And maybe it's okay to hold them in compassion and see its luminescent wonder, even if it stems from fear.