Monday, December 28, 2009

amazing grace

i remember singing this with jaya in her house one night

Amazing grace; How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.

'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed.

Through many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
'Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promised good to me,
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.

Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.

The world shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun refuse to shine;
But God, who called me here below,
Shall be forever mine.

When we've been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we'd first begun.

Friday, December 25, 2009

i <3...

in 2009, i visited many cities...

ahmedabad, where i became a movie star


igatpuri, where i thought and thought but then forgot

(photo by scratchpost)

kolad, where i wasn't afraid of water


atlanta, where my favorite socks tore


cincinnati, where i was quite quiet


new jersey, where i wasn't


new york, which i really, truly do heart


delhi, where i ate six cuisines in two days


ambala, which went by in a blur


amritser, where i'm convinced my mom willed me to go.


chandigarh, where i was too sleepy and hungry to take pictures.

mandi, where i lived someone else's life for a night


manali, like goa but with mountains

(photo by scratchpost)

jispa, which was cold cold cold awesome cold


leh, o leh.


bhopal, where Y got hitched at last!


some of these cities became my friends (wazzzaaaa manali), some remained a distant acquaintance (ciao amritser). some were simply like coming home (here's looking at you new york). but of all these, it was only in leh, up in the mountains, the farthest, highest i’ve ever been, where i slept a deep, sound, calm sleep. and i think how well i sleep in a place is always an accurate measure of its love for me. so thank you leh for the love, for keeping me warm and putting me to sleep with the flowers at your window and the mountains at your doorstep.

before the year is over, though, i am returning to visit an old friend i haven't seen in too long.

goa


i think i ran all around the world just so i could come back to you at the end of the year. it’s just you and me again, goa, and i have a feeling my sleep is going to be just fine.

wearing a conversation

i am in deep love with the feeling of wearing skirts
the long voluminous kind that go down to your shins, swirl around
and announce your arrival with soft swishy sounds
like shy church bells or old trees
and when you have to sit, you are involved in this sitting
and it is a grand sitting
with lengths of fabric to arrange, display
just so.
then they busy themselves, my skirts
chatting with the small bones in my ankles
dancing around my tattoos
playing with my silver anklets
these skirts of mine that are always Up To Something
sometimes get so chatty and bold
brushing up against strangers' legs when all
i am trying to do is walk away quietly.
but sometimes they fall into strange, limp silences
folds immersed one in another
many random wrinkles
going darker, falling into themselves
turning into the mere weight
of cloth
yes i do love that wearing my skirts
is like wearing a conversation
that begins, "dear world,
this is how you made me feel today..."

Thursday, December 24, 2009

o i know how hard you try

on the bus, i met a boy who tries so very hard. things get tough but he wears jeans with determined creases and a black shirt. when he sat down next to me, i said almost out loud, i understand. i know how hard things get, and i know how hard you try. but his phone rang just then and the moment belonged to he who had selected it first. his mother, i explained. she calls every two hours and he patiently tells her exactly where he is.

i adjusted the AC duct. he opened and closed a book. we were two people traveling into the city together and i held his hand. he didn't turn. he held my hand back. warm, small. behind us, cable TV wires and crows rolled past like many pictures.

his stop came a few minutes before mine. i didn't know his voice but i knew his hand. and when he turned around, my face was a silhouette framed in the sky.


(experiments with flash fiction)

Monday, December 21, 2009

pune

i've been accepted to attend the open space writing masterclass next month in pune.
looking for a cheap place to stay/couchsurf there for a few days every week for 3 weeks.
also looking for nice places to sit, eat, people watch, write!
any info, let me know!

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Ps, i love you

diti's teaching me photoshop!
my first assignment was to take this picture she shot and do "something" with it.
i used all my available skills to do this :) (you need to click for bigger version to read)
not entirely happy with it, but hopefully i'm getting there!

how to turn a human into a personal plaything

my zorro is a weird wonderful little doggie-boy
who spends pretty much his entire day either sleeping
eating
or trying to con people into letting him come up to my room
when someone does bring him up here
all he does is sit in a corner by the door as if he's been punished
and makes us feel all guilty
then we rush to open the door and he goes charging back downstairs
and repeats the whole exercise a few minutes later
i'm not sure what it all means
maybe he has goldfish memory
or maybe it's his way of keeping us on our toes
by keeping us in a constant state of self doubt
he's either completely brainless or an evil genius
three years and i haven't figured it out
o he's evil genius alright...


ladies and gentlemen, the face of evil...

Friday, December 18, 2009

collab

i've always been fascinated by collaborative projects of any kind. fascinated and trepidated, to use a big word incorrectly. they always get me happyexcited, but i must admit on some days and with certain kinds of tasks i'm not too good at working in teams. maybe that's the side of me that emerges when i edit. i kind of like the loneliness of the work. i like being able to sit in a corner and bury myself in something for days. and then i like being able to emerge from it, as if breaking water, dying to talk, share, meet people. and then go back into it when my batteries run out. that's probably also the introvert in me talking. (reminds me of this piece i found via rands on twitter. mostly true but for the "exuding calm" part. if anything introverts exude awkward restlessness, i feel).

so i felt a bit understandably shaken when i came across bite-size edits (all hyphenated and all!), a collaborative editing project. well, proofreading is the better word. but that's meant to be a solitary job, i damn near wailed when i saw this. and in the next instant thought, but that's how people used to think about writing once upon a time too. right? and about a whole lot of things that are being done in a collaborative way today.

i know this discussion is very old school web, circa 2005, but having been in such situations before, i can't help thinking editing is something best done by a single person, or at least a select group of people carefully coordinating with each other. and proofreading even more so. should the compound adjectives be hyphenated? is it british or american grammar? is there an oxford comma? these are the kind of answers style guides offer, the kinds of decisions arrived at after some amount of discussion. and some might argue readers don't care about this stuff being inconsistent, only editors do, but truth is a reader will notice inconsistent punctuation and poor formatting. no not consciously. very few will say, "o this semicolon is incorrect and look no indent before this one paragraph!" but these inconsistencies make an overall impression on the reader's mind that he can't quite specify but simply feels.

reminds me of when i first started working in digital and would often find myself saying things to designers like, "i'm not sure, there's something about this page, it just doesn't work," and only later learned to say, "well the form fields are all different sizes and the text isn't aligned and the footer's position changes from page to page by a few pixels." i couldn't quantify it, but i knew something wasn't quite right.

so my worry with collaborative projects is with these not-quite-rights.

but there are two things here. one, the collaborative model lends itself to to some projects very well. crowd sourcing is sufficient proof of this and i don't need to editorialize. and two, no collaboration is 100% collaborative. the line's usually always drawn somewhere. there is often clarity between the input of different participants. and someone usually cracks the whip. and that's all i'm asking.

rant complete.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

mnml

i've become addicted to these three new tools literally within minutes of discovering them. loving the new minimalistic wave of software and tools appearing everywhere (all slightly apple-y in nature, and that is in no way a complaint). they're usable, pretty, and also free, which always helps. sorry, i'm poor.

the first is a software i've been aggressively selling on twitter for a few weeks now. ommwriter is currently a mac-only (but soon coming to pc) writing software. i know, such an abused term that is. but this seriously works. you don't even have to use it to know it works, just watch this video. so simple and pretty i almost cried.

Ommwriter from Herraiz Soto on Vimeo.

favorite feature: ambient key clicks that give all the pleasure of a typewriter with all the beauty of a mac. i love number 5 the most.

next is a browser-based app (yay for cloud) with a very clever name. teuxdeux is everything i was looking for. everything in the to-do tool category that is. again, just watching the demo is enough to know i'm right. i'm right.

TeuxDeux Demo from TeuxDeux on Vimeo.

favorite feature: the "someday" bucket :)

lastest (and i'm afraid to say leastest but definitely worth a mention) is scribbles. i heard of this through sam brown, mister exploding dog, who apparently uses it to make some of those scaryamazing characters. this one has fewer features than ms paint, but the ones it has are the ones it needs.

psst. teuxdeux was designed by swissmiss who's threatening to turn it paid soon. at which point i'll go back to covering my desk in post its.

and when ommwriter becomes unaffordable i think i'll just have to switch careers.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

broke my phone :(

but look how pretty it looks!

Monday, November 30, 2009

found

my tweetcloud + line breaks + punctuation = found poem!

writing = awesome
trying/using print
delhi time, wondering...
wrong times?
ipod love
love publishing,
movie song,
pretty writer,
digital word.
hahaha: news, music
write cool
reading day's tweet
editing, thanks
live tweeting
life = read
home = books
india, "facebook idea? amazing!"
makes bombay; haha
kindle + apple = girl, happy
people, stop
public, what's itunes?
hope? woah.
online book
google story.

sunday poetry: shaadi season

because it's full-on shaadi season and the shopping never ends...

Loud brayed an ass. Quoth Kate, ‘My dear,
(To spouse, with scornful carriage,)
One of your relatives I hear.’
‘Yes, love,’ said he, ‘by marriage.’

– I.J. Reeve, The Wild Garland; or, Curiosities of Poetry, 1866

(via the awesome futilitycloset.com)

Sunday, November 29, 2009

140

it struck me today most things i want to say don't need more than 140 characters. if blogger had a smaller window, my posts would be shorter. and that's why i guess i took to twitter.
so it has a silly name, but it isn't silly. it's this simple (not simplistic) way of telling your stories as they happen. of building the narrative of your life.
i've always been a fan of 'short' literature
haiku, flash fiction, six-word stories
never read lydia davis but interviews tell me i'll like her
and twitter is just this na. a whole mood/story communicated all concise, concentrated and combined with that other wonderful thing--immediacy.
@MelvinBurgess, @robinsloan, @AVARY, @rands do this so nicely.

tweetcloud is wordle for twitter. it said...

my top 3 words tweeted this year: book, love, story


so funny, those are also my three favorite words ever.

and this kind of aggregation makes sense on twitter because it's such few words. if you aggregate a blog or a book, the little words you get don't really add up to the whole, do they? longer pieces of writing need manymany words that on their own don't necessarily represent the whole piece. but short literature isn't the piece, it's only the representation. how awesome! so maybe a writer/artist/etc's twitter feed (or suchlike) tells you more about him/what goes through his head than his books. maybe it's a magical thing that lets us build our stories, narrate our legacies, track who we are at any given time. and if moments are like words, maybe who we are is best expressed as a sum total of the smaller fragments rather than a single, emphatic, defining point in time. maybe twitter is this fun mirror that exaggerates only the important parts (good and bad). and maybe, maybe we should learn to see each other like that as well.

so the point, within 140 characters, is this. stories matter. and anything that lets you tell yours is important. no matter how silly its name.

Monday, November 23, 2009

sunday poetry: "aggressively inarticulate"

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

old photographs

of palm leaves,
like stars,
reflected in
our eyes.

of palm leaves
reflected
in our eyes
like stars.

Friday, November 20, 2009

coincidence_boy





this is me and my lotus at pangong-tso, rocking back and forth, just like this song...



coincidence_boy visits me sometimes when i can't sleep at strange hours between night and morning when it looks like twilight. he worms his way inside my ear and speaks of big flat lakes and dust and towers of stones that will topple over tomorrow with no witnesses. i like him, this boy. he keeps me amused mostly, and sometimes gives hope. if there's a hole anywhere in the ground filled with blue stars, he'll find it you know, and take you there by the hand. let him talk to you sometimes, he's sweet. makes nice pictures and sticks them to his wall in pairs. and if you touch his pictures, a song starts to play whose name you can't remember. he's very earnest, that's one. reallytrulybelieves, you know? two, he never dances. don't ask him to ok. he won't say no and he won't say yes and then you'll just feel all bad because you'll think he's forgotten all the nice things you said about him, but he hasn't, don't worry. blink. he's trying to remember where your lost purple sock with the cows on it is, that's all. let coincidence_boy find your sock, your laserbeam... you sleep. he'll whisper it into your palm when your eyes are closed. close your fist now.

(pictures by j and v)

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

the day's singalong folks



i like singalong songs better than all other kinds of songs. singalong songs are the most special, fun kind of songs. i usually have one song everyday that i sing along to all day. this was today's.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

budge

been buried in manuscript for weeks; just keeps going.
so demanding manuscript is. wants commitment commitment.
1% i don't put in screams me thin.
everyday all the time, yelling for attention.

i just want to say, "manuscript, shhh. calm down. listen to this. let's play solitaire."

manuscript has arms crossed, lips pursed.
manuscript won't budge.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

sunday poetry: tao lin

tao lin is this strange little creature who is a self-promotion god and eats insanely healthy food and writes books and he bought a genre and spawned hundreds of copy cats and i have this theory that anyone who reads his blog for more than three minutes at a stretch will automatically start writing like tao lin and thinking all their thoughts in their heads in a steady monotone akin to his public readings with background slideshows of doodles of hamster-like creatures. this is just a random post of his from his blog heheheheheheheeheheheehehe.com and it's not even one of those that like really "captures his essence" or whatever. he writes a lot so you'll eventually find something that does.

if i keep 'acting retarded' on the internet will i die

i know i will die at some point, that isn't the question i'm asking in this blog post, i think

i think i feel already not sure what this blog post is 'about'

i think i'm interested in whether or not i will 'wither' and then die, in my chair, in the library, if i type certain sentences

will my heart shrivel, inside my body, causing me to 'die,' as i type certain words in certain combinations onto this blog

seems like i can do anything on the internet, which seems weird

i've censored myself 'so much' in my life, even on this blog, i think, not sure actually

not sure what is happening right now, as i sit here, typing onto this blog

does each sentence i type onto this blog cause 95% of prizes/grants/reviewers to 'move away from me' (i have images of them, like, rolling away awkwardly, due to their shapes; for the reviewers i have images of them putting their forefinger/thumb on their forehead/cheek and then sort of 'swiveling' their head away from me), does that seem funny to me or not

i have images of people staring at their computer screens feeling confused

tens of thousands of people in a giant stadium staring at computer screens feeling confused

'hm'

if i have any friends, can you (if you want to) bid on my myspace account to increase the price to like $80000, so that it 'becomes news,' i think this requires at least 2 friends (just experienced a moment of uncertainty re '2 friends,' seemed good)

this was suggested in the comments section of the post below this post

i have a tumblr

brandon is having a short story contest

i'm probably going to enter under several fake names

i'm excited

i'm also afraid

will brandon choose me

or will he choose someone else

will i cry if i lose

or will i just eat carbohydrates

i think galleys of 'shoplifting from american apparel' will exist somewhere within 3-4 weeks

the distributor will have a number of copies of the galleys, i believe

i feel neutral

i feel like the thing in middle school that tests whether a solution in chemistry class has been neutralized or not; i feel like the moment when the thing is seen to be neutralized, using a tab or something, with numbers on it

i feel like the moment when an 8th grader looks at the tab, feeling no interest in whatever 'lab experiment' it is for, and sees that it has been neutralized, and thinks 'neutralized' or something

not sure what i'm trying to describe, might be less an emotion than a 'tableau' or something

sort of can't believe i blogged again, 'so soon' after the previous blog post, with no real new news

should perhaps have consolidated these three 'myspace-ebay posts' into one post, to maximize comments and other reasons, yet i keep typing

is this what mike tyson felt like when he bit evander holyfield the second time

i feel highly aware that what i am doing right now isn't the ideal blogging technique to achieve my goals, 'though, what are my goals, hehe'

i keep having images of doors closing

just had an image of a window closing, seemed 'slightly abberant'

Sunday, November 8, 2009

sunday poetry: hoax!

Petit Testament - Ern Malley

In the twenty-fifth year of my age
I find myself to be a dromedary
That has run short of water between
One oasis and the next mirage
And having despaired of ever
Making my obsessions intelligible
I am content at last to be
The sole clerk of my metamorphoses.
Begin here:

In the year 1943
I resigned to the living all collateral images
Reserving to myself a man’s
Inalienable right to be sad
At his own funeral.
(Here the peacock blinks the eyes
of his multipennate tail.)
In the same year
I said to my love (who is living)
Dear we shall never be that verb
Perched on the sole Arabian Tree
Not having learnt in our green age to forget
The sins that flow between the hands and feet
(Here the Tree weep gum tears
Which are also real: I tell you
These things are real)
So I forced a parting
Scrubbing my few dingy words to brightness.

Where I have lived
The bed-bug sleeps in the seam, the cockroach
Inhabits the crack and the careful spider
Spins his aphorisms in the comer.
I have heard them shout in the streets
The chiliasms of the Socialist Reich
And in the magazines I have read
The Popular Front-to-Back.
But where I have lived
Spain weeps in the gutters of Footscray
Guernica is the ticking of the clock
The nightmare has become real, not as belief
But in the scrub-typhus of Mubo.

It is something to be at last speaking
Though in this No-Man’s-language appropriate
Only to No-Man’s-Land.
Set this down too:
I have pursued rhyme, image, and metre,
Known all the clefts in which the foot may stick,
Stumbled often, stammered,
But in time the fading voice grows wise
And seizing the co-ordinates of all existence
Traces the inevitable graph
And in conclusion:
There is a moment when the pelvis
Explodes like a grenade. I
Who have lived in the shadow that each act
Casts on the next act now emerge
As loyal as the thistle that in session
Puffs its full seed upon the indicative air.
I have split the infinite. Beyond is anything.

this is a fun sunday poetry.

the poem you've just read is one part of what is considered to be the twentieth century's greatest literary hoax. the poems were written by a couple of soldiers, writers themselves, who hated the modern poetry being published in australia at the time (the 1940s). so these two sat down one afternoon and made up a poet. they called him ern malley (because "mal" in french means "bad"), gave him a sufficiently tragic back story, found old photos and said they were his. then within a few hours they wrote 16 pages of incoherent poetry with vague hints at meaning and quotes from all over and sent them in to a publication they really hated. the editor loved the writing and published it all. and everyone else loved it too. and even today ern malley is supposed to be one of the faces of modern poetry. ha. ha. ha. art really has nothing to do with its creator, does it.

this is a good story to remember especially these days.

read the whole story here (it's very entertaining) and all of ern malley's mal poems here!

Saturday, November 7, 2009

alma maaaaaater

jaya posted her school song on her blog and i loved reading it like that, out of context, without a conception of a tune, but just being able to imagine what it must have sounded like when a few hundred kids sang it together.

i was in st. anne's. and they made us call ourselves "annites". i learned the term "alma mater" from my school song. here it is :)

come annites gather now
with faith unshaken
let deep integrity
our heaaaaarts awaken
life's journey starts from you
we lift our hearts anew
all striving to be true
our alma maaaaaater

knowledge and love trust
daily engendered
and pace of mind from duty
noooobly rendered
the lives we lead will be
symbols of harmony
and truth we learn from thee
our alma maaaaaater

lead us o light from heaven
brighten our pathway
strength from within give us
to choooose the right way
where in the world we go
let hope and courage show
that we will always know
our alma maaaaaaater

Monday, November 2, 2009

lini_ment

you know you've been around pain killers too long when you start appreciating the art work on the labels, but i've got to say this bottle of sloan's liniment has a gorgeous old world charm. it's a bad picture so you can't tell but in person (in bottle) it looks awesome with its rough matt paper label and mr earl sloan's o-so-manly portrait (and the word "liniment"!). it's been around since the seventeenth century and it really looks like it. plus the simple, straightforward "kills pain" is great messaging. no?



ok i know this is sort of sick. i'm going to go now.

but ps: nash, it contains capsicum extract!

Sunday, November 1, 2009

sunday poetry: rives - kite

rives is one of the best slam poets out there. this is a clip of his from an hbo show called def poetry jam that should really really air in india. this poem's called "kite".



another one of his i love is dirty talk.

he's even got four ted talks! the emoticons one is my favorite.

ps: i just discovered he also makes crazy complex pop-up books. wah!

Friday, October 30, 2009

nerf

just picked up my book and found someone had slipped this fern inside it!
what a pretty surprise.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

van gogh in a taxi to mahim

we had to transport a framed print of van gogh's self portrait to mahim by taxi. milann took pictures.



Paul Gauguin: All I see when I look at your paintings is just that you paint too fast.
Vincent Van Gogh: You look too fast!

Monday, October 26, 2009

train song - feist + ben gibbard

i'm crazily loving the vibe of this song right now.



(it's teeny tiny because it's audio only)

Sunday, October 25, 2009

ephelant


milann puts together things i say and do in strange ways sometimes and i just stare like an intoxicated elephant.

ps: there's a secret link to some mad-ass music. why? don't ask me why.

sunday ke sunday

i get so caught up with work, weeks can go by and i won't have read a single poem. so i'm setting a reminder for myself to at least read (and post) one poem every sunday. at least. last sunday's was here, and this is today's.

The Palestinians Have Given Up Parties by Naomi Shihab Nye

Once singing would rise
in sweet sirens over the hills
and even if you were working
with your trees or books
or cooking something simple
for your own family,
you washed your hands,
combed water through your hair.

Mountains of rice, shiny shoes,
a hurricane of dancing.
Children wearing little suitcoats
and velvet dresses fell asleep in circles
after eating 47 Jordan almonds.

Who's getting married? Who's come home
from the far place over the seas?

Sometimes you didn't even know.
You ate all of that food without knowing.
Kissed both cheeks of anyone who passed,
slapping the drum, reddening your palm.
Later you were full, rich,
with a party in your skin.

Where does fighting
come into this story?

Fighting got lost from somewhere else.
It is not what we like: to eat, to drink, to fight.

Now when the students gather quietly
inside their own classroom
to celebrate the last day of school,
the door to the building
gets blasted off.
Empty chairs where laughter used to sit.
Laughter lived here
jiggling its pocket of thin coins
and now it is hiding.

It will not come to the door dressed as a soapseller,
a peddler of matches, the old Italian
from the factory in Nablus
with his magic sack of sticks.

They have told us we are not here
when we were always here.
The eraser does not work.

See the hand-tinted photos of young men:
too perfect, too still.
The bombs break everyone's
sentences in half.
Who made them? Do you know anyone
who makes them? The ancient taxi driver
shakes his head back and forth
from Jerusalem to Jericho.
They will not see, he says slowly,
the story behind the story,
they are always looking for the story after the story
which means they will never understand the story.

Which means it will go on and on.

How can we stand it if it goes on and on?
It is too long already.
No one even gets a small bent postcard
from the far place over the seas anymore.

No one hears the soldiers come at night
to pluck the olive tree from its cool sleep.

Ripping up roots. This is not a headline
in your country or mine.
No one hears the tiny sobbing
of the velvet in the drawer.

(thank you i eat poetry.)

Friday, October 23, 2009

i had this idea but i don't know if it'll work, what do you think?

i used to have this driver, and we discovered that he dropped out of the 8th grade in nepal, where he comes from, started working, got married, and is now working as a driver to support his wife's dream to complete her graduation. when we checked it out, it turned out he has fantastic vocabulary, spelling, and handwriting. the only thing he's weak at is grammar. i told him the best way to improve that is to read a lot. when i asked him if he likes reading, he said he really really does, but he only reads hindi books, never english, because english books are too expensive and he's too intimidated to enter bookstores.

i realized there must be hundreds of people who are literate, could possibly enjoy reading, and want to gain access to books, but just don't know how. they work as maids, drivers, watchmen, and they have neither the money nor access to books.

so what can be done about it?

my idea is to start a free public library that exists in the form of a carton or plastic drum full of books kept at easily accessible public locations. in my opinion, the best location would be next to the watchmen in buildings around bombay because that's where everyone usually congregates. i get people to donate books they don't want (like if they're moving home, or just getting rid of them) and fill up these cartons. anyone can pick a book from this carton for free, read it, and then they must drop it back in any carton around the city. in fact it's better not to drop it back in the same carton where you got it from so that the books keep getting circulated. you get to be a member of this library purely by virtue of living in the city.

there are some problems to this idea.

1. people may feel having a drum or carton in which anyone can drop/pick up anything is a security threat
2. most buildings have societies full of stodgy old men who may not approve the idea
3. we could find other locations to keep the cartons (offices, schools, houses), but it shouldn't become a nuisance for whoever lives there + the whole point is to be very local, public, easily accessible, and self regulated

so does anyone think it could work? if yes, can you think of a good location to place my first carton? would you like to donate some books?

Monday, October 19, 2009

time traveler's dramaqueen

went back in time on this blog a bit.

and found the amazing colors over at this post. what inexplicable hair i had. which book was i reading? who was i? what a time that was. a perfect slice of life as i thought it'd be forever.

and to think just a little before that, i got these words in my mail. it really has been mountain after valley after molehill hasn't it.

think it would all work out ok if i'd just remember this!

in the meantime, this just continues to be true.

just.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

i read a poem today after nearly a month and it was this one and i liked it

A History of Origami
by Bob Hicok
Source: the new yorker

two women in three days
cried on the green bench in the park
where i found a dollar
folded into a boat.

i thought it was the crying bench and cried
on the crying bench
when it became available.

i cried
by thinking of all the people
who’ve never broken a shop window, not the baker’s
window, the bead-seller’s,
who sells beads for purposes
i find hard to list: necklaces,
the hanging of strings of beads
in doorways, the owning of beads
just in case.

breaking a shop window with a piece of shale
the size of my heart, a piece of shale
on which i’ve drawn my heart, not my actual heart
but my feelings of my heart,
since i’ve never seen my heart,
would set something free.

i don’t know what that something is
but it would be free.

and my heart would have survived its travels
through glass, its jagged voyage
through my reflection.

you see now why i cried: none of this is real.

until i can answer yes to the cop who asks, is this your heart
among the ruins of your reflection?
i won’t be a man, despite what my anatomy
insists.

it insists
that i overcome a sense of resistance when i move,
that i move
as long as i am able to move, and when i am unable
to move, that i stop.

it would be free and look like a bird, an actual bird
or a dollar folded into a bird, a dollar bird
in a dollar boat.

which is to say
i believe origami arrives
when we need it most.

i can’t prove this but i can’t prove
you’re a good person though i suspect
you’re a good person.

you who opened the door.

you who tipped your hat.

you who ran into the fire and carried
the fire safely out.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

to ladakh, an apology



one of the things that i took the longest to get used to in ladakh, and what was also the most amazing thing about it, was that after a while, you had to get used to the idea of leaving your house every morning not simply expecting to have fights and combat with the people you were to meet that day. it was a gentle living that only after several days there i realized i've been missing and how its absence in bombay has been affecting me badly, deeply, for so many years now. mostly because of how used to it i'd become. in bombay i put on my fight face before leaving home every morning, adopt fighter stance, get that expressionless expression that says don't fucking mess with me, stick my elbows out to avoid getting jostled or groped, and practically march through the day to the sound of a really loud, awful drum beat in my head. i hate that about bombay.



in ladakh, nothing is easy, and simple things can take a while and be incredibly exhausting. just the kind of things that'd totally drive me nuts in bombay, but not in ladakh. i just couldn't lose my temper in ladakh. not at people getting in my face, not at the lack of amenities, not at unfairness, not at intolerance, not at pettiness, not at small mindedness. it all exists in ladakh of course, because ladakh in season time is ultimately full of city folk who carry their cities and their cultures with them in their backpacks. but ladakh also has these mountains. and these mountains give off this energy. and absorb all the poison that comes tumbling out of expensive city backpacks. and it has these people with their hands and their eyes and their clothes. and they speak words and sing songs that have this thing about them. and everything just feels ok.



i tried my best to carry ladakh back with me, and i managed i think, but it's been a while since i got back and it's slipped away from me. realized that only just now.

and i think we may have left behind some of our citiness in ladakh. soon after we got back, the news was full of stories of chinese incursions. and a couple of days ago a newspaper reported that the government is delighted to have commissioned a bunch of surveillance motor boats, about 40, to protect pangong-tso. i remember pangong so clean and quiet and blue and shiny and so gentle. and i don't want to imagine it with the shattering noise of 40 motor boats full of men holding guns that can kill people.



ladakh, i'm sorry you have to learn to put on your fight face now. i'm sorry this is what we gave you in return.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

urgent

does anyone have a friend/relative who is an orthopedic surgeon who will be ready to discuss my dad's condition with me on phone? he cannot move, he cannot visit a doctor himself, need someone who will LISTEN and talk ON PHONE and give honest opinion. thanks.

Monday, October 5, 2009

these are the things i lose

i've noticed, the first thing i do when i'm upset or low is stop listening to music. second thing is stop reading poetry. third is stop eating. music, poetry, food. bah. life isn't worth it without em. well, except food.

this week

really tense about my dad's health.
if you pray, please pray.
if you don't, please hope.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

but.

one thing that made me decidedly UNhappy today. blech.

happy things

the last week's been pretty bad with my dad very sick and a total of seven doctors not being able to diagnose what's wrong. with a lot of bullshit going on, i'm trying to focus on things that make me happy!


Sunday, September 27, 2009

bangkok collage

ravi apparently got inspired by me (imagine that) and made a collage of his first solo trip to bangkok. so sweet it is, no? he's threatened to replace the girl's face with his own so i quickly put it up here before that happens.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

never love a wild thing

there is this house
i own this house
but it is not mine
it has been claimed by the wild horses
who wander in and out of it
through the day
as i rest or read
or clean my body
these strange beasts
they come and go
from this house i own
at a will only they comprehend
bringing with them many things
the moors, wind, eyelashes
and i often awake
to find broken glass
glittering in a new sunshine
and the smell of wild flowers
where a mirror once was
their wildness brings them
to my house
their running-free-ness brings them
running to this house
the thing in them that makes them wild horses
which is not the fact that they are horses
who were born in the wild
some wild horses are more wild horse than others
it is them
the ones with the wild horse spirit inside them
that would have made them wild horses
even if they weren’t
even if they were blind owls
that is what brings them to my house
in their blindness, even, seeking it out
and slamming their heads against the windows
over and over and over
until they are broken
and can never be closed again




"Never love a wild thing... you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up... If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky."

— Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

four by six

i bought this digital photo frame
and it's a funny thing
now i have photo-frame ADD
i keep the photos on slide show
because i can't even decide which memory to value the most
sometimes i hate convenience

Friday, September 4, 2009

nako and me

i used to dislike all cats until i met nako.
we have a strange relationship.

she hides behind tables and watches me suspiciously.



uses my bag as her throne.



and today she decided to jump on my laptop and help me edit my manuscript.



she's a strange cat, naks, but i think she has a future in publishing.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Lit (or: to the scientist I am not speaking to any more) - Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

Don’t say you didn’t see this coming, Jason.

Don’t say you didn’t realize this would be my reaction
and that you never intended for me to get all worked up,
because if that were true, then you are dumber
than Lenny from Mice and Men, blinder than Oedipus
and Tierus put together and can feel less
than a Dalton Trumbo character.

You put the Dick in Dickens and the Boo in kowski
and are more Coward-ly then Noël.

But you don’t understand any of these references,
Do you, Jason? Because you ‘don’t read’.
You are a geology major and you once told me
That, ‘Scientists don’t read popular literature,
Cristin, we have more important things to do’.

Well, fuck you.

Be glad you don’t read, Jason,
because maybe you won’t understand this
as I scream it to you on your front lawn,
on Christmas Day, brandishing three hypodermic needles,
a ginsu knife and a letter of permission
from Bret Easton Ellis.

Jason, you are more absurd than Ionesco.
You are more abstract than Joyce,
more inconsistent than Agatha Christie
and more Satanic than Rushdie’s verses.


I can’t believe I used to want to Sappho you, Jason.
I used to want to Pablo Neruda you,
to Anais Nin And Henry Miller you. I used to want
to be O for you, to blow for you in ways
that even Odysseus’ sails couldn’t handle.
But self-imposed illiteracy isn’t a turn-on.

You used to make fun of me being a writer,
saying ‘Scientists cure diseases,
what do writers do?’

But of course, you wouldn’t understand, Jason.
I mean, have you ever gotten an inner thirsting
for Zora Neale Hurston?
Or heard angels herald for you
to read F Scott Fitzgerald?
Have you ever had a beat attack for Jack Kerouac?
The only Morrison you know is Jim, and you think
you’re the noble one?

Go Plath yourself.

Your heart is so dark, that even Joseph Conrad
couldn’t see it, and it is so buried under bullshit
that even Poe’s cops couldn’t hear it.

Your mind is as empty as the libraries in Fahrenheit 451.
Your mind is as empty as Silas Marner’s coffers.
Your mind is as empty as Huckleberry Finn’s wallet.

And some people might say that this poem
is just a pretentious exercise
in seeing how many literary references
I can come up with.

And some people might complain that this poem is,
at its core, shallow, expressing the same emotion again,
and again, and again. (I mean, there are only so many times
you can articulate your contempt for Jason,
before people get bored.)

But you know what, Jason? Those people would be wrong.

Because this is not the poem I am writing to express
my hatred for you.

This poem is the poem I am writing because we aren’t speaking,
and it is making my heart hurt so bad, it is all I
can do just to get up off the floor sometimes.

And this is the poem I am writing instead of writing
the ‘I miss having breakfast with you’ poem, instead of
writing the ‘Let’s walk dogs in our old schoolyard
again’ poem.

Instead of the ‘How are you doing?’ poem, the ‘I miss you’ poem,
the ‘I wish I was making fun of how much you like Garth
Brooks while sitting in front of your parents’ house
in your jeep’ poem, instead of the ‘Holidays are coming around
and you know what that means: SUICIDE!’ poem.

I am writing this so that I can stop wanting to write
the ‘I could fall in love with you again so quickly
if only you would say one more word to me’ poem.

But I am tired of loving you, Jason
cause you don’t love me right.

And if some pretentious-ass poem can stop me
From thinking about the way your laugh sounds,
about the way your skin feels in the rain,
about how I would rather be miserable with you,
then happy with anyone else in the world.

If some pretentious-ass poem can do all that?
Then I am gone with the wind, I am on the road,
I have flown over the fucking cuckoo’s nest,
I am gone, I am gone, I am gone.

I am.

one is the idol, the other the hymn



in ladakh, no matter where you want to go, even if it's at a low altitude, you always have to climb to a really great height and then come all the way down. the mountains make you climb them. and not just climb them but go all the way into them, get lost in them, wander in what seems like circles, see the roads you just crossed look like nothing but thin wrist slashes. and the mountains change color, and shape, and form. they go from brown to green to purple, flat to rounded to steep, sandy to rocky to landslide-any-second-now-y. and no matter how long you climb, there's always that one mountain peak way in the distance, standing tall with snow on it so white it's as if no one's ever touched it, and it seems to say, you'll be climbing all your life, you will. and you want to climb all your life. and one day, early at five am in the mountains, on the way to a lake that looks like someone polished the sky and laid it on the ground, with the moon on one side and the sun on another, someone turned on radiohead. and not just radiohead, but ok computer, radiohead. so i prepped myself for all the jaded non-reactionism i have with ok computer. i couldn't even remember the last time i had listened to or been affected by ok computer. those days of affection were gone.



but i obviously underestimated the mountains. because something happened in the mountains that morning. the song started. everyone fell silent (which really means something with us). three of us started singing along. the mountains stood on the sides and watched. and pressed the song like a silver fern into our mind. and deeper and deeper. gently. and we remembered all the words. we sang like we were listening to the song for the first time. the goosebumps came out under our fleece jackets. and we whispered the words. and the mountains listened and echoed them back to us. gently. i knew then i'll love them forever. the mountains and radiohead. together, they could start a fucking religion.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

lazer eyes can dance all night

i really do love the idea of words + illustration combined. and i really do love dog hates me and exploding dog (different sites, same author). they're like the little prince of the blog world. they're the digital version of that book that you can open to any page and you read any line and it makes you go, "o i was just thinking about that!" they're every lesson i've ever learnt in life condensed into a single or three-frame illustration. they're every person i've ever met depicted as a robotic creature or barnyard animal. it's how i wish i drew and wrote and combined colors and thought about life. o i really do love sam brown.

general status update

i installed google analytics
because of latent peer pressure
from all the blogs i visited
that took longer to load
because their google analytics was loading.
my statistics are droopy
and no figure on it
no matter what its category
exceeds ten.
but someone visited me from germany
and brazil
brazil! i said, when i saw it
and jumped for joy!
not really
i just sort of shifted in my seat
and gave the kind of smile
that doesn't travel from your
mind to your mouth
i'd like to visit brazil someday
but it would be one of
the last places on my list
someone also visited me from amritser
in amritser, you want to have a bath
the minute you step out from your bath
the rooms smell like carcass
and golden temple prasad is yum
all i know about brazil is the wax job
which may be about as brazilian
as french fries are french
i read an article about sushma reddy
going to a french restaurant
and asking for vegetarian food
and they gave her french fries
ha! i laughed in my head
when i read it
she didn't seem to get the joke,
though.
would my site stats look better
if i put up pictures of sushma reddy?
would i be compromising my integrity?
i think i would be compromising my integrity
i think i should uninstall google analytics
before it makes me compromise my integrity
i was quite happy being droopy
before it came along
but i like seeing the map
like a coloring book
you are filling by being here
ooh look
germany is pale green!
*jump*

Sunday, August 30, 2009

3

i want to buy ev. ry. thing. sold at this site (so whimsical!)



and this site (so clever!)



speaking of donkettes, i fell in love with this one in leh. we had a nice heart to heart. then he went back to the herd and i couldn't recognize him later. story of my life.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

when i flunk fiction at university, i'll show them this poem

A Poet Recalls Fiction - Norm Sacuta

I have trouble with friends who want to know what happened.
And no, I'm not missing the forest for the trees -
the genus, size and shape,
even when the author cares enough,
will escape me later, become a forgotten shadow
at the edge of the moors.

I am the worst witness of another witness,
read pages and pages without memory
of a character's features.
My rhythmic eyes remember little,
move away from that tape by the door
where I should measure the criminal's height.
What difference does that make?
He robbed me, I might tell the officer.
Isn't that enough?

What's a character? It's every fear of every name
ever introduced to at parties,
crammed into The Tenant of Windfell Hall.
Thank god for Anna Karenina and Jane Eyre.
The title and name the same.

Let me tell you about Jane Eyre:

there's lightning that cleaves a tree directly in two
on the night she decides to marry. That man. The dark one
who talks roughly and has dark eyes so dark his first born
reflects back out of them. That's Jane Eyre.
That's all.

Don't ask me for more. I don't know
once the book is down. But open it again:
I know that point in the forest -
breadcrumbs lead home in all directions. There is no place
lost quite like it. I read pages and pages, enthralled,
then forget my way as the moon sets.

And isn't it glorious to know every word will rush at me,
like that mad woman from the attic,
when I read again tomorrow night.

Monday, August 24, 2009

on reading too much "i eat poetry"

let me explain to you
what this has been
the night i had to use the toilet seven times
before i could fall asleep
or the dreams i’ve had
of picking food out of your teeth with my fingernails
these are my dreams.
nothing has been orange since
though plenty has been yellow
do you see how this has been?
horses, pails, grass just cut
dropping like axes in right angles
it has been
watching my ipod die with my life’s worth of music
and “the feeling” coming over
once every six minutes
or so
or imagine, if you can, typing
very, very fast
gibberish
line upon line, hour upon hour
hair madly falling, a mad diligence
strange colored tears swimming out of the boundaries of your face
and in the background, bagpipes
unrehearsed, a band performs
along with it, nonsense poetry readers
road rollers
and heat rising in wet, swishy waves.
pick a point on your forehead
a single spot
and drill a hole with someone else’s eyes
into the one secret you’re hoping to keep
do you see now
how this has been?
fellow dancer, you do not know
we are still dancing with each other
today, tomorrow, unnecessarily
i gave myself a hearty stomach ache
i have eaten a big breakfast
and now i eat poetry

(eat poetry at http://community.livejournal.com/greatpoets/)

the water tastes different here, doesn't quite quench my thirst

there is a particular kind of weary
reserved for the traveler
who has not felt a familiar bed under his body
nor arm around it
for too long;
who has adapted to the water that tastes
more foreign with each mile
and the many colored dusts that line his throat
are his mementos
the things that change his voice
when he speaks of his extremes:
home
and motion;
there is a particular kind of weary
that is not weary at all
but a celebration, a dash, a victory
that is the traveler's wealth
that is the traveler's death

Saturday, August 22, 2009

find your 90 degrees N. if just for a few seconds.

echoes i heard in ladakh

the morning after i was left in ladakh to my own defences
i finally decided to buy a copy of the little prince
it's in every book store in leh, the official book of the leh trip, i joked,
but when i read it for the first time as an adult (last read at age 9 when i thought it was just another amusing fairy tale), i understood why it is the perfect book for ladakh
especially when i came across...

"...the little prince climbed a high mountain. the only mountains he had ever known were the three volcanoes, which came up to his knees. and he used the extinct volcano as a foot-stool. 'from a mountain as high as this one,' he said to himself, 'i shall be able to see the whole planet at one glance, and all the people...'

but he saw nothing save peaks of rocks that were sharpened like needles.

'good morning,' he said courteously.

'good morning--good morning-- good morning,' answered the echo.

'who are you?' said the little prince.

'who are you--who are you--who are you,' answered the echo.

'be my friends, i am all alone,' he said.

'i am all alone--all alone--all alone,' answered the echo."

the tibetan culture believes in shunya as the sum of all totals. if the little prince had known this, he'd know that the question 'who are you?' should never be asked in the mountains. and 'i am all alone' will only echo back at you from a hundred surfaces, each a different color and shape. welcome to ladakh, prince. where what is past gets left behind on its very own because you cannot carry much extra weight here. and what is to come is always hiding behind the endless peaks. the mountains will say to you what you say to them, so take care what you say to them.

excuse me while it all tumbles out in random order. it was just that kind of trip.

back from ladakh

so many places
so many faces

i was devout in amritser


chilling in manali


freezing between jispa and sarchu


sick at pang


enchanted in leh


and sad to come back

(thanks scratchpost for the pho-tos.)