mama older

It’s my mother’s birthday, and I am

a continent away. I often tell the people I love

that I will instantly, entirely           cease to exist

when my mother dies. It is mostly to shock them

but also because I cannot imagine what the skin

of my life would look like without her.

difficulties

so many difficulties, so hard a life simply by virtue of being a life. and I don't pretend to do it justice. trying to inhabit a corner of the internet quietly, quietly.

*

it is frustrating to me to be in a library again, except this one is wide and bright and has elaborate ceilings, it isn't glassy and cold and dusty grey outside, isn't in a past life, doesn't give me a feeling of total possibility. i hated the library that did, but i miss it today. it is frustrating to me to be feeling full of nostalgia and still have to go to class. it is frustrating to want to write, to feel a belly-fizz again, but still be unable. what would it do to the world if i wrote down a feeling, trying to explain its context, shared it?

*

H and Z and i talked today at our favourite korean place about writing for the self vs writing for the world. they feel like they hardly ever write just for themselves, while i feel like i often, often write to myself, for myself, and what remains for the world is afterthoughts, outtakes, corners in which somebody else might fit a toe or a heart. i often have trouble figuring out what is Worthy to write about for the world. not this, these notes-before-the-notes, this art-before-the-art.

*

i read Jia Tolentino's essay about the internet and trembled. i went away from all social media: again. each time i'm depressed. i don't know what the result will be, this time around. i like to throw some things out to the world, paper wound inside a bottle, an ocean of possibility. as though somebody somewhere is listening. all artwork for ears, some ears somewhere.

begin

i must begin by writing about writing, of course, and hopefully do that in a manner that is true and raw, and if i do then maybe i can write about more than writing. the words are not here right now, i have not heard the right ones in so long. why aren’t they put together in those ways anymore, the ways that i think they used to be put together in. they used to scrape and gnaw, but right now they are harmless. i hate it when the words are harmless. the world seems stripped of magic, of meaning, of purpose. there’s no reasons anyway, so at least words should come together to make new things, to explain something unexplainable, to cast new shadows, to change colours, to make me feel my skin stripped over my bones differently. i am trying to be true and raw, trying to peel away each pretension i have gathered over the years, but in order to do that i must write through it. that means i must write for days. there was a period of drought, it was so painful, but at least the want is coming back, the want to make, to learn, to figure out how the fuck to put things together so that inside of my cupped fingers there is a light, even if small. i must always have this want. i must trust this want. it is the only thing i am willing to trust in this life — everything else, every love, will be temporary. every body will leave me. every comfort might be stripped away, and new ones will always come. every street i love will be taken away and made strange again. the want for words is mine, the need to make is mine. if my brain doesn’t work good, ok. i don’t know if all people feel it as bad as i do, the space under my ribs that’s hollow and tight and grey, that tells me that all of this is not for any reason, that to be alive is strange, that going from day to day is, on some base level, foolish. i feel it bad, and right now i feel it very bad. but that’s ok, because i can make things, and then there’s something new in the world, and it takes away the fear. that is the only reason: oranges in the sun, shadows under dancing leaves, green stalks needling through the surface of the lake and bowing their heads. to see something beautiful and mark it. to make something that make somebody else, or even just me, say brrrr and shake my spine out because i felt something there, for a second.

walker library at hennepin

public libraries in america

like temples in india:

the homeless swarm outside smoking

eating from yellow paper

inside a baby howls

and all the books are quiet

i have forgotten words.

how to use them, how to love them.

if nothing else, this i will relearn.

deep breathe away other anxieties:

other people have other journeys,

books they will write, books they will read.

you have only your own journey. all you can do

is walk it, watch everybody with love, be honest.

more honest than you have been before.

mid-year resolutions: do the right thing

even

when nobody is watching, especially then.

it is important to have these times of total chaos,

all script concerning you as a person suddenly smashed

to nothing and you must begin again. many past scripts.

many other scripts and possible scripts. but you get to decide

this time around. who are you, who you want to be. there are

few walls here, you get to be new, you get to be you, nobody cares.

nobody cares. it is scary how free you can be here. your life only yours. 

your legs lonely or tangled. your head bare again and nobody cares.

you can eat or not. you can sleep or not. your life a little package, compact,

fitting only in your hands. you can share but nobody will come knocking

if you fuck up, or if you don’t sleep, or if you don’t wake. it’s just you.

enjoy it, i suppose. what else can we do? outside, people are smoking

a hookah next to my precious bike. a woman in blue has a chain

around her hips, she is waltzing in the sun. her arms are full of meaning,

such emphatic gestures. inside, i try to work, and work. i must

deserve this life. i must live it. i must unlearn the anger towards myself

that has been building, building. i surprise myself by the vitriol

in my mind-voice these days. what the fuck what the fuck what the

fuck are you doing. such thin patience for my own mistakes.

for good reason. but still it hurts. tomorrow i must be honest.

must make the right choices this time around. i must be alone

if i must be alone. it is hard and ugly but i know it is right.

must be grateful for the love i munched on. it was deep love,

naval-full love, nourishing love, hard love. there will be time

in my life for a long love, but now is not the time. sometime

if not now you will have to relearn aloneness, its silences, its hurt.

learn it now, now is good. other people are marching on but you

owe nobody a thing. you can do your journey slow if you do it well.

step by step: ride your bike, climb a wall, paint a tree, read a book.

this is living, and you must step into it lusciously, your skin must

feel its water. enough numb living and unfeeling. you are new 

and you don’t know who you are again: this is life. this is not

the first time. this is not the last time. there will be many moments

when you forget everything, when you must, in order to bake 

apple pie, create the universe. it is taxing on your bones. but

the freedom of it! the wild limitless possibility, the undoneness

of you! what you can make of yourself. who you can love.

how. how you can live. everything is bare and blue and you

get to build. things will feel less bad. things will feel

less bad. 

a sent email

Dear K and V,
I'm in bed after a long day; I am tired but too buzzed up to fall asleep; my hands are dusty from organising books on my shelves yet again. There are so many particularly sensory feelings about being back, and even though I talk to both of you frequently, it is these things that are hard to share. I forgot just how hot it is, how hot and dusty and how my room has a particularly smell, sometimes musty, sometimes earthy, the air full from all the books that swelled up in monsoon from the damp walls. I want to say it's 'strange' to be back (my favourite word, yes, and one that should be banned from my writing), but the only thing strange is how normal it is to be back.

I'm astounded by how life moves. No matter what happens, no matter how much changes, it just goes on, new systems are made, we just figure out how to keep on keeping on. B-ma and B-pa are not around, and once in a while we remember, my parents read Waterlog and cry, I walk down the stairs in mama's new kurta and somewhere expect that B-ma will meet me out the door, will make a big fuss about how lovely I look. She makes no fuss, and I sigh a small sigh when I reach the driveway and remember -- but it feels like a small grief this time around. Mostly, it feels okay that they aren't around, that the front yard is bare and the backyard is portioned out into a vegetable garden, the rusting swing they used to drink chai on has been given away somewhere. It feels okay. When we have the strength, we all go downstairs, start cleaning portions of the big, dust-filled, cobwebbed house, remove a lamp, a table, a painting, find objects that still smell like them, have traces too strong to be dead objects, and then we have to go back up. This time, I found a lipstick of B-ma's that still seems to work, the glossy pink-brown she used. I found a sheet of paper on which B-pa wrote out a conversion chart between Celcius and Fahrenheit for B-ma on some travel abroad. Dad found a paperweight, a dark round bird that he remembered from his childhood. Mom found a ceramic bowl, blue and white, in a style B-ma loved but found too precious to ever display outside; it was still wrapped in paper, kept in a box. Mom has put it on one of our shelves now.

I am trying to make sense of all this, it is still big and not completely tangible yet, but I feel some kind of peace I did not have before.  All around me at home, in my room, are things I made at some point and forgot. There are paintings, prints, journals. I just found a sheaf of stories from eleventh and twelfth grade. It is both calming and scary to see this stuff. It is exciting because it makes me feel like this is what I do, this is who I am, no matter how stressed or tired or confused, I will be making, I will be writing, I will figure out ways to do this right someday. I have been doing this so long. I want this so bad. It is the surface on which I stand, on which I walk. But it is scary, too, to see piles and piles of it, so many moments from my life which I carefully recorded and then completely forgot -- it makes me think of all the others, everything I have forgotten and not even written down. Time passes by so quickly now, and I keep trying to make sense of the past, find stories I want to hold on to, draw lines from one moment to the next. All of it will pass by, though. Even this; being home and laughing in my mama's lap, my dad's skin that is starting to have that extra-soft feel of an old person, Susan didi's calm gait as she puts chai on my table, the same old plants on my terrace, the corner in which I have smoked and cried under the looming mango tree. Today, I am grateful that even though I was far, even though everything was different, all of this is here now that I am back. In some ways, it is the same. It is comforting. I feel new and old and safe, as though this will always protect me, as though I can always return here. I hate that this is not true. Someday this will break. I am grateful that even when it has cracked, even when so many parts have changed, so much is still here, waiting for me, my drawers full of the same things I left here a year ago.

Mostly, I am feeling good. Somewhere inside of me I am still wound up, still having terrible dreams and cannot sleep and back full of ache. My body will take a few days to unwind. I must be good, perhaps from tomorrow -- I must stretch, do yoga, get on the bike and get out of this house, must start writing, must start reading, must work on the paintings, get into a good work routine before the familiar complacency of this city grabs me by the neck and leaves me crying in the afternoons again. I am hopeful. I will do it all.

My body remembers this place better than my mind did. I am not surprised at any turn the car makes; every street is familiar here, even though I have spent most of my life running away from this place. It is even familiar to open the door of dad's giant Innova and climb in to a burning hot seat, the AC slowly cooling my skin by the time we reach the end of the lane. It is familiar to bathe with cool water from my mug and bucket, turn on the fan when I am in my towel so I do not sweat already. I wear the palest, lightest cotton clothes I find when I leave the house. Today, dad and I spent many hours at a government office for my learner's license, and my body remembered that too -- the grimy buildings, the suffocating heat, the rudeness and kindness of people, the systems that make sense only here. My dad was renewing his license, and we heard different instructions from each counter, new forms to fill each time, new rules that could change if he was insistent enough. The man outside the driving-rules test I had to give was pale and had arms full of tattoos; I would have been afraid of him on the road, but he was great fun, he sat with me and gave me a mini lecture on traffic signals, everything I would need to know to pass the small test on the computer I was going to take. My hindi is just fine, and thank god. I am going to start working on it; I want to be able to read better in hindi, want to start practising urdu again. It is a great relief to know that no matter how far I go, how long I am away, this is my place, and my body will remember it. It feels so familiar, like I have been here all along, like I can return at any point. I have loved the streets of dilli so hard that they will not reject me anymore, I think. I am so excited to go to Bangalore, to Goa, everywhere. Before that, I am excited to be here, in this house, and try yet another summer to be home and not be depressed, to work hard, to relax. I am excited to spend each night on the sofa looking at my shining ma, her hair in tendrils against her shoulders, her eyes the brightest things I know. I am so grateful for each day I get to hug my pa home from work, so grateful for every hour alone that I am getting here, wandering the old-new brick floors on my room, taking out a book from one shelf and placing it on another, my hands getting endlessly dusty.

I am sorry for this long, sappy email full of meandering sentences. Perhaps there will be another one later. I love you, and I love you, and thank you for listening.

april 2019

march 2019

Picture

You send me a picture

            and I suppose this is always

                        how we speak with other:

one of us on this side

            of the world, the other on that;

                        miles of cables pulsing light

between us, buried low

            undersea; a picture popping up

                        on my screen of a single tree

split into two, three, ten

            trunks, old arms and new arms

                        tangled like ours are not.

For long seconds I look.

            Monochrome and angled grace.

                        Leaves scatter the ground.

I am alone here, and

            untangled. Send me grace.