Thoughts to Live By

Ohh city of expectations and fabulous blonde bodies, how you attempt to change my pace and steer my direction.

But no no, not so fast. Because I've got this nice little red leather book that has the more sane musings of out of Los Angeles Kristen. And damn she is good. Because she knows about the dark hole and the not so open skies and the pressing needs for one thing joyful. Each day. Just one thing joyful.

Because not all of life is a sleeper class train ride to inexplicable freedom.

When I left Ghana I wrote one of my most beautiful journal entires. I felt like I was being torn away from another world, an exotic universe in which I was able to become a beautiful version of myself.

But there are no "different worlds". Different elements, yes, different colors and rhythms and cycles of life. But just one world, and just one you. It's your own different elements and colors and rhythms that you're seeing.

It's intimacy.

So instead of spinning musings about the lifetime seemingly contained in the past 10 months (to be fair, I think "the end of Indian days" did the job) I had only simple thoughts when returning home:

I hoped to be well on my plane journey home. I hoped that my planes would arrive on time. I hoped to get home. I hoped to be able to eat when I got home.

And I hoped that in the months and years to come I remember that there is beauty in every crevice of being.

So in a month of Los Angeles living I have not found a job. I have not created a fancy-shmancy look at me go life. I have not met new people.

I have had a lot of tea. I have begun to learn how to salsa. And I have found ecstasy in the most exquisite samba class that makes your hips sing "damn, I feel like a woman."

And I wasn't sick on my plane journey home, my planes did arrive on time, I did actually arrive home (didn't believe it until I saw it) and I have been more than able to eat.

So I guess that makes for Life: 3.... Kristen: 7.

But as long as I am shaking my hips to a drum beat, who's keeping score?

The Waiting Room

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.

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.

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.