May you live in interesting times...

Some generous soul left laundry
 quarters at all the machines

is fabled to be a curse and one can see how. Times right now are certainly...interesting, although I think that's a poor choice of adjective, given that calamitous and destructive are more applicable to the majority of the world. It's an odd helplessness, when inaction is supposed to help. I've reduced my consumption of news even more; what do I do with the endlessly rising numbers? Instead I finish the entire season 4 of Kim's Convenience in 2 nights, and I recommend it highly to you. But of course you won't watch it -- we all have these shows friends and colleagues recommend to us as must-watch. We file them in some neglected corner, sticking to what we know and enjoy. Occasionally our preference and the recommendation overlap, and it's a happy Venn diagram for a while.

Results of my accident stockpiling

On Friday I video-chatted with dear friends from grad school. I don't think anyone has vocabulary for what is going on, and so we also use humor to cope. Of course Saturday morning I woke up at the early hour of 7:30 am (it's all subjective) and could not fall asleep again. During the day I did face masks, hair masks, nail masks. I took the trash out, did laundry, cooked chicken, organized the spice racks, finished a (lighthearted) book, ironed clothes and more. All of it felt futile and the name for the feeling fell into place then: it's futility coupled with lack of an adequate purpose. As someone in the best possible situation currently, the inaction feels inadequate and irresponsible. It isn't as far as social distancing and staying at home is concerned. My grocery trips, while a piece in staying sane during this, will be reduced. What is a helpful distraction for me is likely certain illness for someone else, and wildly impossible. I am also deeply influenced by the Lori memes and am here for them! You gotta love the folder! Also the city and state level leadership is very heartening to watch, especially in a time where folks are doubling down to demonstrate federal incompetence.

Day...Whatever

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life? 
~Mary Oliver, Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches

It's been a minute (or maybe fifty, who knows). I haven't been too stir crazy on the weekdays, there is still work, enough to be done to keep the day busy. There are phone calls and video calls and all sorts of things that give the day a purpose. But the weekend felt a bit claustrophobic, especially because the weather was gloomy with gale-like winds. But even as I whine, I still know and count all my agnostic blessings regularly. There are a lot of them.

One interesting thing I am learning about myself is that the structures which are harder for me to put in place during regular days are easier now. Not because any of it is fun but because I know that it's a slippery slope when you let that first sink-full of dishes pile up. So I've been diligent about trash and wiping things down and running the vacuum cleaner. It's not productive per se, but it's movement and action. 

In the Great Hoard of 2020, the one thing I did not stock up on are quarter rolls. This is no small thing. If the only way you can do laundry is by painstakingly inserting quarters into an unpredictable machine, you do not want to find yourself without quarters. Or close to having none. Of course, as with all things that went scarce in the Great Hoard of 2020, so did quarters. They are now being rationed. I have general anxiety about a bunch of things but I have not stopped talking about quarters for a while now. I finally have three rolls now, yay local Mariano's, but I don't think I will ever be able to stop hoarding them. Or worrying about them. I do A LOT of laundry, and I think it's partly because it's the thing that feels most in control. Things are falling apart but I have clean linen. The world has been acting a fool about toilet paper and I would just like a realistic prediction about when they will be back on the shelves. And no, September of this year is not an acceptable answer. There will be books upon books upon case studies upon interview questions about the Great American TP Shortage of 2020. History is being written, and the villains are revealing themselves (people who bought 17000 sanitizer bottles, video game companies that tried to declare themselves essential services, organizations preparing to absorb the stimulus checks their employees receive). We see you.

Weird Times

I mean, I continue to make occasional jokes but they feel more subdued for now. This isn't ending anytime soon, and the global governmental incompetence, while hardly surprising is rather sobering. I feel like there is an analogy in this piece. The intensity of work varies, which I expect. Everyone's calibrating to this new reality. It's dissonant, how a pandemic is raging outside her homes while inside maintains a steady illusion of normalcy. To be honest, I've drastically reduced my consumption of COVID news. Every article is an escalation, another (necessary and inevitable) boundary being drawn. I may not know the specifics of which borders are shut down, but I know most of them are. I do not want to see videos of people who believe their faith will protect them from the virus. 

The beginnings of stir crazy are here, and it makes sense. I haven't worked from home in five years, and while my working muscle hasn't deteriorated, structuring my day outside of it to use energy has (if it was ever present). I'm not the only one. 

It does feel a little bit like there isn't much to say. What can one say, there is a pandemic raging out there, and we are not prepared for it. It's pretty leveling, no country, rich or poor, is spared. Nor are people. Some of how I feel is pretty fatalistic and I think that is culturally ingrained and resurfaces at a time like this  - it doesn't mean I don't follow all the things I must. My writing muscle has definitely withered, I haven't written formally or informally for so long. I've read some thought-provoking pieces about how to stay tethered and to an extent, not waste these days (in ways you don't want, if your wasting is intentional and serves you, go for it).

Not ready to talk

Grief is a complicated, hydra-headed beast.

Grumpy, grumpy, grumpy

Things I am grumpy about in no particular order and for no logical reason:

• How cold and blustery it was today. I came back with groceries (wine) and instantly had to bundle up in a blanket and close all windows. I now feel too cold and sort of feverish to drink said groceries.

Unclenching

Tiredness tells its own stories. Its vocabulary is vast, it knows how to reach the hidden crevices of your day. And night. Its running companion is often guilt, not a welcome friend, but never enough of a foe to be abandoned completely.

The steady, comforting bus ride to work. The walk to your desk. The gentle trickle of hot water into your mug. The polite nods and murmurs at faces not familiar enough to slow down for (and the shame of realizing you make that distinction). The exaggerated sip of your hot beverage of choice. Leaning back into your chair and being suddenly aware in that moment of the silence around you, the steady snowfall outside, the intense lighting surrounding you, almost lulling you into acquiescence for this sort of life.

Do you marvel at the slow uncoiling of your heart? Are you surprised, you who thought, it was all under control? Do you slowly feel the rushing of your blood slowing down? I sometimes look at my hands and wonder at the strangeness of it all.

The inescapable sigh in your voice, I hope you don't ignore it. The tug of gravity feels stronger, you imagine your swaying is somehow the earth's fault.

In the end, you shrug, realizing there is only so much you want to do. This is your one life. The chapter of tiredness deserves only so many words, so many pages. 

Middle of the night

It is the beginning of the week but I am at the end of a long day (and my tether?). It is 1 am and I have just finished the 11th time I did a video for a Fellowship application, that at this moment, I am convinced I will not get. Needless to say, the sound of my own voice annoys me to no end, I think my face is uneven (!), the background was crumpled, you can catch my eyes when they look down at my notes, the tripod that I own for no real reason and lugged all around the world, broke the one time I could have used it. Several of the videos have me cussing loudly after I screw up a line or a word (note to self: remember to delete)

Whether this is the voice of exhaustion, rationality or just good ol' impostor syndrome doing its bit, I do not know, and frankly at 1 am, it is hard to separate things or care. I am surprised and overwhelmed and deluged by the sheer effort this semester is taking, not because too much is going in the now and here, but because as much, if not more is going on in the FUTURE. You know, the future that is around the corner, where new lives, directions, and winter-choices will be made (Minnesota, so much snow in November does not make things look good for you). The haste at which I am being swept along in this semester makes complete sense if I realize that I am living two lives, one right now and one in the future. 

A Borrowed Imagination

One of the problems with a love for reading is that every time something sad happens, something falls apart, you are left with all the possibilities that could have been. Not just possibilities from your imagination, but from the imagination of every author you ever read. You think to yourself, I would have worn two sweaters each day so as to not feel cold, I would have cycled to work, we would have taken walks on weekend, the house would have been full of books, compliments would have been saved for birthdays and anniversaries and so on.

Perhaps that's why I dwell so much. I think of what didn't happen (fact) and then I think about the millions of things that didn't happen (fiction), and now never will. And this of course leads to a journey million miles below the surface of the truth.

I wouldn't stop reading though. I couldn't stop. But sometimes I wish I had only my imagination to deal with. Or an off button. 

Scatter

I sit here, waiting for the words that won't come. Magic becomes even more elusive on these busy days. It is difficult to see the beauty in a shelf neatly lined with lunchboxes and clothes laid out for the entire week, although I believe in the beauty of efficiency. My childhood self almost can't believe where we are at these days and the weeks are full of moments of redemption.  Winter is coming, to paraphrase Game of Thrones. It turns dark early, the last of the light starts filtering away at five pm, and sometimes it takes with it my will to be anywhere but home. So many exciting projects are underway, it almost explains my inclination to do nothing this evening.

Winter is coming

Winter is coming. I wish it could wait a while. If winter is coming, it must mean the first month back has flown by fast. If winter is coming, it must mean Diwali, Thanksgiving and December holidays are also coming. It means the leaves will soon be replaced by intensely twinkling lights. It means that the blur of assignments, work, exams and proposals, of the weeks of hurriedly wrapped lunchboxes and hastily combed hair, have taken away a month and some of this year. If winter is coming, it means the end of 2014 will also come, and the earth and all of us will be older (except those who won't be). If winter is coming, then it makes me sad, because I just put the final shelf and blanket in my room, making sure the colors and coziness are always there to comfort me. How can winter be almost here, I haven't take enough naps in the sun, I haven't looked at the flowers and trees with the intensity I need to make them memories. I have so many books left to read. I have visits to plan. None of it matters (just as everything does). Winter is coming.

Reflections

I accept all the affection everyone is giving me at home with caution. Somehow, there is so much care and thoughtfulness, I am only a few minutes away from tears most of the time. I laugh to my family about my ability to cry-on-demand but it runs a little deeper than that. But I know that when I leave this bubble of familial love and foibles and hopes and hurts carried together for years, I will be back to my reality. Friends ask me to articulate my reluctance to give into my new life, to embrace it for what it is, and I am not able to do that well. I do enjoy it, it has made my world much richer and full of more hope and repair than it ever was. But I don't know if this is my eventual life. I am only just realizing that I am actually traveling through life. I used to wake up in Vietnam and realize with a surge of excitement, always tinged with incredulous wonder that this is my life, the one in which I get to explore.

***

Adulthood has meant making peace with occasionally cutting corners. There was a time when everything had to be just so (for me, for folks at home, in general in life). It was all full of discontent, irritation and the opposite of calm days. Now picking one’s battles feels like the right philosophy for life. Some things are more charming when worn out. I tell myself the smaller disasters, like the things I left behind or lost, are better than the bigger ones. Who is to know what is true.

***

Emails have in them so much power to affect  us. Just like letters did I suppose but I have never received an important message in my life via letters. I remind myself that even as I feel old (and remember dial-up modems with nostalgia tinged with relief at not having to use them any more), I am relatively young. I am happy to be in the 21^st century. Some people have other eras, decades they would like to go back to. None of that for me. In which world could I have traveled and built the life that I have now.

***

On some days, it feels incredibly hard to be away from home. I am not one for rose-tinting my view when looking at life or people. I have had strange conversations about how much I love my country where I have had to explain: I cannot be absolute in my affections, but to my mind that does not make them any less valid. But I remind myself of the moment I made the decision to leave, a beautiful light-filled Diwali evening, where I sat waiting and realizing that this could not be the life I will live any longer. Who is to say I chose rightly or not, only time will tell.

Where I mime for a towel and forget what wearing shoes feels like

Miming is our primary method of communication here. My favorite one was enacting a towel in the aisle of a supermarket to a confused and possibly slightly embarrassed salesgirl. When the face towel gestures didn't do it, I pretended to take a bath and rub myself vigorously. She then figured it out and led me to the stack of towels. Which was great except the entire team was standing there and I am pretty sure she thought I was the biggest idiot ever.

***

It feels like my feet have forgotten how to wear shoes. I blame being encased in lined boots for months in the Minnesota winter. I have three pair of shoes and have almost gone through one whole roll of medical tape. At least thirty Band-Aids. I switched from shoes to slippers today and got blisters on my feet, because why not.

***

I have been told (not asked but told) at least six times between the time I left Minneapolis and got here that I am Indian. I have always known that I am Indian but I have not been reminded about it in this way. This  reminds me what a quintessentially Indian face I have.