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!