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June 13, 2006

lying, crushes and coming home

i remember the first time i ever lied to my journal. it was after reviewing several old books i'd written, scrolling on and on about this boy and that one, when i was 11 or 12 and the center of life was my driving little hormones and the strange accompanying emergence into the part of maturity that involves selecting off into groups or in my case ranting on the misinterpretation by many of my peers of the concept "popular." popular just means well liked, i'd say. you're well liked. just not by those kids. we're all popular... in our own little circles i'd say, in answer to my friends' accusation that i was popular... (which i remember i was often accused of around that time among my closer friends in the choir, particularly. why were choir kids nerds?) or some of their insistance that they "didn't want to be popular anyway."

anyway, i found myself -- oh, maybe at the ripe age of 13 and a half -- completely embarrassed about the attention i'd given to tiny details... this one's movement with his hand. this one asking me how i was... whatever it was that made my little flesh goose-up and my mind jump circles about whether and how and did he like me? i crossed out lines and tore out pages, in an effort to show any future reader that a future more intelligent editor me had the sense to realize these little obsessions were unworthy of the page. it was after this that i started first, to question more the prospective reader i had in mind (was it all those 13 year old boys i had crushes on? or possibly my future biographer? was it god himself? ((he was definitley a "he" back then))). and i started to lie. a little. but then, i also valued the text in itself, in as honest and informative distillation of the mindspace of my time and age.

for years i have still waffled on the intention of my writings. and which writings and in which books. and how much of the truth to tell.

and then blogging, beginning with this trip to india, shortly after this website was built. seems like a good way to share photos and experiences with friends, yes. but also, i realized shortly after putting it up, turns out to be a little window on my life for anyone who happens to know i exist and feel like looking on google. i heard from (directly and indirectly) exactly 3 ex boyfriends i had not been in touch with in years, in the first few months after launching my website.

so maybe that goes to my original premise of the probable journal audience? oh holiness.
I hope not.

it's not true, though. i know for example that kate from 5b sometimes reads and other kids i know and (still) like. some who even have lingering secret crushes and whose mood changes i can feel from this million miles away. and i watch them too. all over the place.

interesting world, this is.

but this is not an online journal. mind you. and so i have felt for some time that it should be stated that though i do write and seem to write about my personal life in this blog, it is not meant to be a literal evidence of my living or a figurative blatancy of my meaning... or any other related somesuch. which is my excuse for lying about not being in love back in september, and for not getting around to to writing about all the changes in my life since then. as if i had some sort of responsibility to continuity or to elaborating on the endings to stories started, or the developments of this here plot line of mine... i do, in the sense that i wanted to make a blog with a beginning and and end. but i don't have any real loyalty to an unknowing reader, i guess i have proven. except that i had a hard time continuing until at least enough of the people that might be reading and are close enough friends to be hurt had been announced certain things. if i missed anyone, i blame the disorganization of my yahoo address book, my palm pilot (lost to a fluctuating current and the wrong timing in madurai) and the fact that i am too broke to phone.

but i did lie. and the specific thing i lied about was again, a crush.

i met Biju and then i lost my cell phone and then i lost my backpack. and then i freaked out and moved to the yoga center, telling Swami Govinda i had been searching for my husband and was thinking about giving up and becoming a monk. or something. i gave him all sorts of philosophical reasons which he agreed with heartily and sympathetically (he *is* a monk, after all), and in some ways, i feel like i was challenging the universe to make some move or i'd make mine. or something. and then i told my blog (readers) that i was love sick. but not in love. and with nobody. and i was flat out lying. i was in love all over the place. in love with the idea of love, in love long distance, in love with 2 people and one more, and then some. and then it all just boiled and rolled and poofed and cracked open, and all of it came crashing down into this mountain of feathers that is ... well, that is this terrific beginning, that is this life. which is not at all to put it as though it could have been anybody, and it was just the moment, or just the desire on my part, creating the void which created the desire, which created the person, which created the happening. which is exactly what it is, on one hand. but it should be clear that my philosophy of it is not that it could have been just anyone, as if the world were that empty, and my soul that small. it was exactly who it was at exactly the only time, following on exactly which loves it followed on and by which it was made. on purpose, and with intention... the strongest and the most painful and the most angry, firey, spiteful, grateful and (sometimes) humble intention learned to me by the nicest of friends and starlings.

my mom came to india. we had an emergency wedding (the kind where your mom's only in india for 12 days and you decide to have the wedding just 4 days before she gets on the plane; not the kind where somebody's got a shotgun and somebody's got a baby in her belly); we went through the logistics; we got legal; we got visa; and we got plane tickets home. in that order.

and i never got around to updating a goldarn thing in this little blog. (mind the joshua-like rock formations and burning in the sun with E. in my bookmark and the extended space pressing roll).

though i had plans of posting silly things like
(after Biju was granted his visa in May)
the self-portrait of him and me on the plane to Delhi
back in January, saying:

this is not a picture of myself and my new husband flying home to the U.S.

but we will be doing so on the 14th of June.

 

Anyway, tomorrow we board the flight from Delhi.

And this is concluding my little "going to India" blog. I hope that you have enjoyed it.

Now I will go upstairs to my hotel room and roam the hot dirty streets of delhi tonight, and tomorrow. and land in a little cottage on north lake, just a couple of days away.


I expect I will find some more use for blogging again soon, once I am back to my own computer and my new life. Perhaps I will need a new section. To start again. in New York.
happy endings. and new starts again --laurah

 

 

Mar 27, 2006

extended

in what remains of this silent intermission, a body

would languidly roll, twisting up in layers of thin fabric,

diagonally

across the space.

a female body, wrapped up in her clothes.

not a sari, mind you.

my clothes.

shirt, pants.

soft, stretchy layers.

pressing into the floor as if to spread out the wrinkles,

as if all intention were to press the space.

weigh it down with the generalizing numb of bones,

flesh and the weight of organs.

 

 

Feb 20, 2006

Bookmark

I am in Hampi with Emmanuel.

We spend the day exploring ruins and taking in vast scenery of granite boulders and stark desert-ish light... reminding us both of Joshua tree.

Tomorrow we are heading to see Biju in Goa.

I thought I should do some catching up with my blog but felt it strange to lap wedding announcements right up next to bladder infections.

Therefore this short and weathered page in between.
It used to be a to-do list. That's why the edges are all frayed.

and the ink is runny.

But I figure it should do.

so before the speak now and forever hold your pieces, this silent intermission.

More soon. --lk

 

 

Dec 20, 2005

I Love India

I am currently treating a bladder infection with a heavy course of antibotics I bought this morning at the train station. I am to take 2 per day, for five days. There is no box, and I don't even know the name of the medicine (should probably have written that down). And I didn't need to make an appointment with a doctor or even visit the emergency room (and there was one in the train station, too, so I could have). The antibiotics plus a real strong dose of ibuprofen cost me under 75 cents. This is my kind of place. I was so contented as I drove off with my little bundle of goods I felt like humming.

And I'm already feeling much better.

 

 

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