And We're Off!

Fire burning baby. I’ve got a time limit.

If you want to motivate me, remind me that I will soon have a plane ticket home to Los Angeles, that my village days will be behind me, that my S. time is a time bomb, that I’ve got to put both feet forward each morning and work some magic.

WHERE DID THE TIME GO?

What on earth have I been doing for 5 months?

First I was sweating, then I was sick, then I was painting, then I was sick again, and then I was in mourning for my loves leaving my village surrounding, then were the camels, then I was sick, then I was freezing (edit am still freezing), and now I am here. Mid January. Time bomb ticking.

I have only a couple months to expand the Girls’ club to the surrounding villages, create a vocational training program out of thin air with no experience or understanding whatsoever (enter MAGIC), and feel like I’ve actually done something in ten months. Ten months.

I had a moment yesterday where I decided that maybe I just wouldn’t come home. Head for Nepal. Take a summer break in Europe. Hit up Africa or the Middle East afterwards. I’M AT MY PRIME. All I need is a backpack, a couch, and a friend. Camels across Pakistan. Let’s go. I’m all in baby.

But I want to hug my sister and have a shower.

SO if I must come home at some point that means we’ve got to ready set RUN.

Hindsight is 16/20

I’ve always been a romantic. Hopeless. A hopeless romantic.

And I was a letter writer. In the worst sense of the term. We wrote scathing love letters to each other, the ones where dreams and hearts meet in pen ink on paper. Our letters, like our goodbyes, were tortured. Because love is often beautifully tragic. These letters reflect that. Nothing was safe from typing hands (because, while I may be a romantic, I’m also a savy email-er). My bursting dreams, my bursting heart, my breaking heart… it’s all there. Every line was sent for him to read. Every ache was reciprocated in turn. Typos and grammatical errors aside, these letters would lurch any heart into beating again with their brutal honesty. Two people who loved and trusted each other enough to say all the things that should never be shared.

I’ve grown up a bit. I’ve wised up a bit. And now love letters remain in my “draft box” instead of my “sent box.”

Recently some close friends shared their heartache and the letters that accompany them. They sent their love letters, but to me, and not to the hearts that should see.

Because they’ve grown up a bit. They’ve wised up a bit.

They’re exquisite. And, with each passing line, my eyes widened with tears.

They’re the “dear love, I can’t sleep without you” ones; the “dear love, I love you, but you are an ass, and right now I hate you” ones; the “dear love, I want you to be happy, but happy with me” ones. The “dear love, as much as I want to be stronger, to be better, to be the friend I would love to be, please let me lay this at my feet and walk away” ones.

These exquisite letters.

These love letters that we will never send.

I Had a Moment...

When I realized that my heart could wrap itself around the entire Thar desert, blurring outside out the window as we made our way from Jaisalmer to Jodhpur. I suddenly realized that I could wrap it around that whole desert and all the people and all the troubles clinging to their sun-stained shoulders, and even after wrapping all this in its embrace there would still be room for more. And I couldn’t image living with it any smaller, for my heart to feel any less full.

Of course my heart is a balloon, its size fluctuating with the temperature of the air inside of it. And today if feels a bit smaller. And soon enough on another train ride it will be uncomfortably large again.

I didn’t make any new years resolutions for 2010. Partly because I was distracted by ringing in the new year with the maharaja’s brother, but party because I got something right in 2009. I got a long of things wrong, but I got one very important thing right: I threw off the shackles of caring who thought what and I WENT for it.

And going for it had various consequences. I made some blunders, I fell for someone it would have been in my best interests not to, and I wound up smack dab in the middle of Punjab freezing what little is left of my butt after a 3rd trip to the H. hospital.

But I went for it. Heart first. All heart. All the time.

I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve. I fling it forward. I lay it out before passer-byers, a red carpet for their approaching footsteps. And, as a result, it is dirty and trampled and flattened and large.

I live in a world of idealism. I live in a world where a man meets a woman, flies across the country after just a weekend meeting and then marries her. I live in a world where people who shouldn’t possibly be able to keep in touch do, where people who shouldn’t be able to make it work can. I live in a world where best friends joke about riding camels together on Christmas and then DO. I live in a world where relationships of all kinds withstand weather and distance and time against every odd. I live in the world of a hopeless romantic where the bursting green blades of grass around her village dance, a world in which living is, above all else, poetic.

So I’m not ashamed of heart first living, of caring too quickly or too intensely. I’m not ashamed of laying my heart out before passer-byers, of feeling the trample when the world is unfeeling or ignorant or cold. I’m not ashamed of wanting to hold on to people when I should say goodbye, I’m not ashamed of reaching out when I should bid adieu. I embrace all this feeling that explodes within the confines of my skin.

All heart, all the time.

It’s that which has made the moments.

Living the COLD Life

I'm back. Back to village living. Back to prayers on the loud speaker.

And to be honest I'm none too pleased.

I was LIVING. Ooohhh man. Put me on a train through the Rajisthani desert. Let's ride camels for three days and sleep under the stars and wake up to a desert sunrise and be served chai in bed, and then we'll visit fortresses and live like princessess and dine in rooftop restaurants watching lights dance across water and then perhaps after that we'll ring in a new decade by crashing a lush party and chatting with the Maharaj's brother, and just to top it off we'll get sick and then visit the Taj Mahal and bask in India's beauty.

And then I had to come back to reality. Which, just FYI, is freezing. I can see my breathe in our livingroom. I haven't changed clothes (or bathed) for two and a half days. It's simply too cold.

Take me back to the camels. Take me back to open land and the desert and awaiting trains!

Or damn if nothing else at least heat Punjab up to the point where I can bear to have a hot bucket shower.