It's pinks and tiles with magazines and puzzle pieces strewn. There's an immense fish tank on the side. Bright, lively. I suppose meant to distract from the radiating elephant in the room. The woman across the way led a crusade to clean it. She doesn't say the reason why, but we all know it's because the last thing you want to gaze upon is a reminder of life turned to death.
People come in pairs, in twos. It takes both feet to move forward, both souls to move through. Mothers and sons, daughters and fathers, couples and sisters and friends. An elderly couple from Nebraska, a middle-aged woman and her Caucasian son; three women come together with the red cooler of 1:20pm treats; the Asian man and his brownie-bearing mother.
There's only one woman who comes alone. The nurses meet her before she reaches half-way. Because it takes a pair to move forward, to move through.
My week-day pair colleagues make this their space in different ways. Some's shoulders are drawn in with their own waiting room burden; others dose with ease. Fingers leaf through magazines and Wooden's words, frustrated hands fumble at puzzles. There are those that chat.... brain prostate pancreas..... And a hand-full are just happy to wait. I like to think that they are basking in the comfort that those nice little radiation beams will keep the other half of their pair from meeting the dirty fish-tank fate, shoulders drawn open.
And so the four legs (or six if you are the red box treat-bearing trio) sit. A lifetime of people divided by two. A room of anxious, sick, hopeful pairs. Equally awaiting.
I find this unspeakably beautiful: that you can't guess which one until their name is called.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Mo(u)rnings and Beginnings
Here, at the beginning of days.
Beginnings, morning dew, another chance at compassion.
I am discovering that sometimes just doing is an act of loving. It is not clever, it is not large in scope or depth or reach. It is not even beautiful.
But it is a subtle act of love. Bearing each morning, reaching out fingertips to shaky anxiety-ridden hands.
It is harder to hear peace when your mornings are clouded by traffic instead of calls to prayer; it is more difficult to find silence when you don’t have the peace of mind to close your ears; it is more challenging to mend when you feel cracked (not broken); it is so much easier to admit what makes you happy when it is already within your grasp.
And somehow it is surprising that it doesn’t ever not suck. Like new mothers we’re conditioned to forget the labor pains, the growing pains. Awestruck by the beauty of our creation, of our babies and friendships and perfectly sculpted dreams, we forget the months beforehand. We forget the swelling feet, the swollen hearts, the rashes of body and soul. We forget what it feels like to have your skin on fire, knowing that only the birth of what you most desire will give reprieve.
Because tear-glistened eyes of joy wash the burden of growing away.
Until you’re back cradling labor pains, remembering the consequences of what it is to build and grow.
Beginnings, morning dew, another chance at compassion.
I am discovering that sometimes just doing is an act of loving. It is not clever, it is not large in scope or depth or reach. It is not even beautiful.
But it is a subtle act of love. Bearing each morning, reaching out fingertips to shaky anxiety-ridden hands.
It is harder to hear peace when your mornings are clouded by traffic instead of calls to prayer; it is more difficult to find silence when you don’t have the peace of mind to close your ears; it is more challenging to mend when you feel cracked (not broken); it is so much easier to admit what makes you happy when it is already within your grasp.
And somehow it is surprising that it doesn’t ever not suck. Like new mothers we’re conditioned to forget the labor pains, the growing pains. Awestruck by the beauty of our creation, of our babies and friendships and perfectly sculpted dreams, we forget the months beforehand. We forget the swelling feet, the swollen hearts, the rashes of body and soul. We forget what it feels like to have your skin on fire, knowing that only the birth of what you most desire will give reprieve.
Because tear-glistened eyes of joy wash the burden of growing away.
Until you’re back cradling labor pains, remembering the consequences of what it is to build and grow.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Heathrow Marks a Change
Two thirds of the way back to Los Angeles living, belly full of anti-diarrheals and a soy chai tea late (because you didn’t think that a major case of Delhi belly could keep me away from Starbucks after 9 and a half months, did you?), and heart brimming with… who knows what. Pick an emotion, chances are it’s swirling around somewhere in the upper left cavity of my chest.
I thought that being ready to leave would make it easier to go. But nothing eases the ache of bidding farewell to love. We’re not built to love and then leave, even if we know that we are not meant to stay.
And so the girls’ smiles are etched under my skin. And walking away from them (perhaps forever) leaves ever-hidden scars.
I spent my last Indian night in the New Delhi airport, skimming the lettering of my diary’s last 9 months of musings. It was time to depart, and yet when I left I could hear in the distance the chorus of my heart’s breaking strings.
April 15th, 2010
Three weeks and one day. Three weeks. Three weeks? How did this happen? Where did the time go?
Well, to summer and winter and spring and then to summer again. I suppose that that is where it went. To August and then December and then April’s mid mark. It went to friendships and Manali and Girls’ Club and heating water on an open fire outside; it traveled with Kelly to the dunes of the Thar Desert, returned back to Sotla’s brittle cold; it went, hours and months at a time, from Himalayan hills to the Gange’s flowing spirit; it found D’s frantic head nod, and suddenly time has departed.
I have been challenged and rewarded and torn and encouraged.
And I wonder how 8 months has changed me. I wonder if I am different than that terrified girl in the Dehli airport, brushing teeth in the upstairs bathroom of the domestic terminal, in disbelief at what madness awaited her.
I now know what madness.
And what joy.
I thought that being ready to leave would make it easier to go. But nothing eases the ache of bidding farewell to love. We’re not built to love and then leave, even if we know that we are not meant to stay.
And so the girls’ smiles are etched under my skin. And walking away from them (perhaps forever) leaves ever-hidden scars.
I spent my last Indian night in the New Delhi airport, skimming the lettering of my diary’s last 9 months of musings. It was time to depart, and yet when I left I could hear in the distance the chorus of my heart’s breaking strings.
April 15th, 2010
Three weeks and one day. Three weeks. Three weeks? How did this happen? Where did the time go?
Well, to summer and winter and spring and then to summer again. I suppose that that is where it went. To August and then December and then April’s mid mark. It went to friendships and Manali and Girls’ Club and heating water on an open fire outside; it traveled with Kelly to the dunes of the Thar Desert, returned back to Sotla’s brittle cold; it went, hours and months at a time, from Himalayan hills to the Gange’s flowing spirit; it found D’s frantic head nod, and suddenly time has departed.
I have been challenged and rewarded and torn and encouraged.
And I wonder how 8 months has changed me. I wonder if I am different than that terrified girl in the Dehli airport, brushing teeth in the upstairs bathroom of the domestic terminal, in disbelief at what madness awaited her.
I now know what madness.
And what joy.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
The End of Indian Days
I’ve ended out the more personal segments of this (rather long) diary, but I think it still provides the general gist of another closing cover…
May 19, 2010
Here, at the end of Indian days.
Kerala is another world of green and blue, their shades grayed by falling rain. Palms line the lake’s walls, little floating islands of sprouting greenery interlock and then move separate ways again, creating little shifting bridges that, while begging to be walked across, would sink under any approaching toe. The sky’s tears ebb and flow between trickle and storm, but with the kind of green they grow I can’t imagine they carry any drop of sorrow.
After Goa I felt almost flung back into India, completely unprepared. It was amazing how easily I slipped back into the lush life. Cocktails, beach wear, western company. Easy. Nice, even. Goa and not a care in the world. What’s there to worry about when the sea salt floats your weight and your worries. Nothing, sir-ji. It’s all a world of blue and gold.
And then after a 14 hr train ride (which turned into a 21 hr one after an unnecessary 7 hr delay) reminded me to be on guard, put my angry face on, don’t play with strangers.
I re-read the last blog I wrote but didn’t post. My eyes welled up with tears, because I remembered what immense joy India has brought me.
D and her head not of a thousand smiles.
Imagine your life as a novel. 21-year-old woman, fresh out of college. BA in her backpack, world at her feet, one-way plane ticket in hand. Hers is a world of courage and dreams and possibilities. Everything beyond that first plane-ride to Seoul is an unknown.
And then she makes it through the first leg of an unending journey, and throws it all to the wind. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. But it is, really, so daring? To do what you love, to live honestly with yourself, to take chances.
Or is it simply as it should be? This one way journey forward. This eager wide-eyed FRIGHTENED 21-year-old girl. Because in my mind she is. She’s too terrified of what comes after what next to think about it. So she focuses on next, and then next, and then next.
All the way to a sweltering Punjabi village.
Maybe this is a mark of wisdom. Just focus on what comes next. Because what comes next changes everything thereafter.
And everything thereafter was of but a dream. But not. The dust roads, the constant greetings, the trial and error and failure of foreign living. Intimate living. Because there is nothing left to hid from yourself. Not when it is 44 C with 32% humidity and every stable force in your life is gone.
Movement, movement forward and sideways and backwards again. We do not grow in linear fashion.
21 does not become 22 and a half overnight. There are seasons, crushes and loses. A floor is constructed, yellow paint is splattered over walls and bodies, girls begin to come. Real life and poetry intertwine between trials and triumphs………
.
Usually the 1st of the calendar year marks new beginnings. Before for her it is February’s dawn. The sun reappears after months of hiding. Maybe, actually, the world is not so very cold.
The days and weeks and memories that pass are colored by the people that shade them......
And then there is joy in the different shades and shapes of 5 adolescent girls. One with the slight chub of puberty, white stains on her chin, high class and English with a little mini attached to her hips. There is the fair one, long braids a light brown with village boys peering from afar. She is the coy one, the Jane Bennett of them all, always smiles but without an accompanying tale. There is the lean pretty one, name of 3 and smile of pearls. Sometimes there, sometimes not but always joyful. There is the one who is a little slower, a little younger, but full of kind surprises and her “is” English is a joy to hear. And then there is the rascal, the bottomless pit of curiosity, the one so brimming with life that you can’t decide if this is her first or fortieth time alive. She is either desperately excited for living because she doesn’t know what comes next, or indescribably joyful because she does.
And so the weather’s brutality is kept somewhat at bay by these characters and their voices, their stories overlapping to create a bizarre wall hanging of Rajasthan’s colors and Sotla’s morning call to prayer.
And this living, what was meant to be an adventure becomes… life. Days come and go, doctors trips and blood tests, calls hope and open-ended prayers. Highs and lows, just like the rest of the time zones.
But the clock and the motor keep moving, and August morphs into April and 21 becomes 22 and a half overnight, the passing between them but a mirage, save for the pages and memories that document their belonging.
Train rides lead southward and, at the end of it all, there is nothing left to prove. The self-competition is done, starved off with the last giardia strain. When you search for your limits and find that they cannot be found, that they are more vast than you’d ever hoped you live in the comfort of their open space. A little to the left or the right, it doesn’t matter. You are still in the grasp of possibility.
Possibility is everything. It is enchanting. The possibility that, when we allow it, reality surpasses our fantasy.
Eventually all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the hands of time…
Green, green, green, and then blue.
From green to green to blue again go the colors and days, until August becomes 22 and a half and bags have been packed and flights have been bought and then threatened with cancelation and then prayed over.
2 suitcases, Goa’s brown tan, and D’s head nod with the tilt of a thousand smiles.
May 19, 2010
Here, at the end of Indian days.
Kerala is another world of green and blue, their shades grayed by falling rain. Palms line the lake’s walls, little floating islands of sprouting greenery interlock and then move separate ways again, creating little shifting bridges that, while begging to be walked across, would sink under any approaching toe. The sky’s tears ebb and flow between trickle and storm, but with the kind of green they grow I can’t imagine they carry any drop of sorrow.
After Goa I felt almost flung back into India, completely unprepared. It was amazing how easily I slipped back into the lush life. Cocktails, beach wear, western company. Easy. Nice, even. Goa and not a care in the world. What’s there to worry about when the sea salt floats your weight and your worries. Nothing, sir-ji. It’s all a world of blue and gold.
And then after a 14 hr train ride (which turned into a 21 hr one after an unnecessary 7 hr delay) reminded me to be on guard, put my angry face on, don’t play with strangers.
I re-read the last blog I wrote but didn’t post. My eyes welled up with tears, because I remembered what immense joy India has brought me.
D and her head not of a thousand smiles.
Imagine your life as a novel. 21-year-old woman, fresh out of college. BA in her backpack, world at her feet, one-way plane ticket in hand. Hers is a world of courage and dreams and possibilities. Everything beyond that first plane-ride to Seoul is an unknown.
And then she makes it through the first leg of an unending journey, and throws it all to the wind. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. But it is, really, so daring? To do what you love, to live honestly with yourself, to take chances.
Or is it simply as it should be? This one way journey forward. This eager wide-eyed FRIGHTENED 21-year-old girl. Because in my mind she is. She’s too terrified of what comes after what next to think about it. So she focuses on next, and then next, and then next.
All the way to a sweltering Punjabi village.
Maybe this is a mark of wisdom. Just focus on what comes next. Because what comes next changes everything thereafter.
And everything thereafter was of but a dream. But not. The dust roads, the constant greetings, the trial and error and failure of foreign living. Intimate living. Because there is nothing left to hid from yourself. Not when it is 44 C with 32% humidity and every stable force in your life is gone.
Movement, movement forward and sideways and backwards again. We do not grow in linear fashion.
21 does not become 22 and a half overnight. There are seasons, crushes and loses. A floor is constructed, yellow paint is splattered over walls and bodies, girls begin to come. Real life and poetry intertwine between trials and triumphs………
.
Usually the 1st of the calendar year marks new beginnings. Before for her it is February’s dawn. The sun reappears after months of hiding. Maybe, actually, the world is not so very cold.
The days and weeks and memories that pass are colored by the people that shade them......
And then there is joy in the different shades and shapes of 5 adolescent girls. One with the slight chub of puberty, white stains on her chin, high class and English with a little mini attached to her hips. There is the fair one, long braids a light brown with village boys peering from afar. She is the coy one, the Jane Bennett of them all, always smiles but without an accompanying tale. There is the lean pretty one, name of 3 and smile of pearls. Sometimes there, sometimes not but always joyful. There is the one who is a little slower, a little younger, but full of kind surprises and her “is” English is a joy to hear. And then there is the rascal, the bottomless pit of curiosity, the one so brimming with life that you can’t decide if this is her first or fortieth time alive. She is either desperately excited for living because she doesn’t know what comes next, or indescribably joyful because she does.
And so the weather’s brutality is kept somewhat at bay by these characters and their voices, their stories overlapping to create a bizarre wall hanging of Rajasthan’s colors and Sotla’s morning call to prayer.
And this living, what was meant to be an adventure becomes… life. Days come and go, doctors trips and blood tests, calls hope and open-ended prayers. Highs and lows, just like the rest of the time zones.
But the clock and the motor keep moving, and August morphs into April and 21 becomes 22 and a half overnight, the passing between them but a mirage, save for the pages and memories that document their belonging.
Train rides lead southward and, at the end of it all, there is nothing left to prove. The self-competition is done, starved off with the last giardia strain. When you search for your limits and find that they cannot be found, that they are more vast than you’d ever hoped you live in the comfort of their open space. A little to the left or the right, it doesn’t matter. You are still in the grasp of possibility.
Possibility is everything. It is enchanting. The possibility that, when we allow it, reality surpasses our fantasy.
Eventually all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the hands of time…
Green, green, green, and then blue.
From green to green to blue again go the colors and days, until August becomes 22 and a half and bags have been packed and flights have been bought and then threatened with cancelation and then prayed over.
2 suitcases, Goa’s brown tan, and D’s head nod with the tilt of a thousand smiles.
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