autumn is officially here (i prefer to call it “autumn” and not “fall,” “fall” being entirely too inelegant a word for this most regal of seasons – spring is too adolescent, summer too self-assured and cocky, and winter is like the incontinent older relative, who shits himself embarrassingly, all white, powdery profusion).
october means halloween, which i love and which the rest of my family hates. i grew up reading all the books that eventually became horror movies, letting the genre play tricks with my already overactive imagination in ways that the movies never could (though a viewing of “pet sematary” at the tender age of 8 freaked me out for years…i saw it again this past weekend, and it was just ridiculous). novels of choice during the adolescent years were christopher pikes and r.l. stine’s “fear street” series. in high school, i graduated to stephen king, and classic gothic novels like “jane eyre” and “rebecca.” my favorite halloween book (and subsequent animated movie) is ray bradbury’s “the halloween tree.”
so the theme for this month’s reading was horror. i read stephen king’s “the shining” and "salem's lot" (and couldn't sleep for two nights straight afterwards because i kept hearing scratching at my window). i reread bradbury’s “halloween tree” and “from the dust returned” and “something wicked this way comes” (funny, most people see him as only a sci fi novelist – read the sentimentality of “dandelion wine” and you’ll see much more). i've still to read henry james’ “the turn of the screw," neil gaiman’s new book “the graveyard book,” the unfiltered “grimm’s fairy tales” (which are horrific in their pure form), and john connolly’s “the book of lost things.”
autumn also means i need to change my phone again (my plan always comes due in september), which is depressing to the extreme. there's a blog post on cell phone systems in america vs. germany in my brain somewhere, i just have to shake it out. also need to write about tv (which i've been watching way too much of recently...well, more than usual).
also need to catch up on my 30-day timeline for NaNoWriMo (november 1st!).
24 October 2008
23 September 2008
expat syndrome, take 487
one of the most debilitating side effects of the expat syndrome is trying to reconcile oneself to the fact that the people you love are spread out over countries, over continents. that’s the thing that makes you most restless, no matter which place you’re in – there’s always going to be someone missing.
lying in bed last night, going through a “what if” in my mind: what if i had never attended that very first fachschafts meeting? what if i were one of the many foreign students who never really got involved in german university life? what if i hadn’t spoken to that other american girl in my history class? thinking back even further, how was it that i ended up hearing about the first fachschafts meeting with my (at the time) limited and somewhat nervous understanding of german, or picking an obscure class on british royalty, or making friends with a Romanian during my international students orientation? without these happenings, i would have been a lost soul.
that first day, i was confused out of my mind – in the american university system, classes are chosen months in advance, with priority given according to seniority. as freshmen and sophomores, we got the bottom-of-the-barrel pickings, and had to scramble even for those. it meant that the day before our registration could officially begin, we stayed up until midnight so as to be the first ones online, clogging up the online registration system in order to get the classes of our choice. so the day of the ersti einfuehrung, i kept asking people how we would pick our classes, frantic that i would miss out on the good ones. it took three explanations from the people explaining the course selection booklet to us for me to finally get that in heidelberg, you picked the classes you wanted and just showed up. and precisely at that moment, when the foreigner fog in my brain cleared away to yield some semblance of sanity, i heard one of the tutors mention that there would be a “fachschaftstreff” that night, and anyone interested should stop by the fachschafts café at 6 pm.
i went to the café, a small room with sofas and wild political posters and one sole computer, windows which looked out onto the building right next door, a few chairs, and no sign of coffee. the sofas were old and soft, worn, with a particular smell (not a bad one), bright orange and knobbly. it was a new place for me at the time, but would become so familiar, my second home in between classes when my apartment was too far to walk to. it was too hot in the summer, just right in the winter because of the small white baseboard heaters along the wall. if you were the first one that day to go to the café, and it was locked, you made your way upstairs to the pforte (a small reception room), right in front of the political science library and handed over your student id in exchange for the key to the café. others would trickle in, always the same crowd, most of us part of the either the fachschaftsrat (the 7 elected student board members of the council) or the fachschaftssumpf (i never did figure out what sumpf meant, but knew somehow that it was a.) slang and b.) meant something like “the rest of us” or “the mass, the crowd”). we’d use the computer, take naps, read newspapers, eat, meet, gossip, and goof off. it became for us a small point of commonality within the swirl of a mid-sized city. everyone knew everything about everyone else – word traveled like wildfire amongst the sumpf, and because of it, we (some of us fondly, others in aggravation) called heidelberg a small dorf.
you meet every person twice.
the first meeting is mostly inconsequential. sometimes, the first few meetings remain so. if the person becomes merely a friend, those first meaningless meetings remain largely forgotten. if that person becomes a beloved friend or a lover, an unexpected confidante or a surrogate family member, you strive to retain those memories of when you barely knew each other, laugh at those meetings that seemed unimportant. because somewhere in there, there is an epiphany. another inconsequential meeting from a misinterpretation which ends in a night-long conversation and general mayhem; a fully sincere and loving (and totally unexpected) bear hug during a protest; a shared double-espresso before the 7 am class you both reached after staying up all night to watch the sunrise; a class on queen elizabeth I, where you discover another expat exactly like yourself. in that first fachschaftssitzung, and in subsequent meetings and partings to follow, i met those people who make up my second family.
when i lived in germany, further apart from my parents and brothers than i had ever been, there were moments when i missed them terribly. during holidays of course, when our whole extended family would get together, certain nights after a day that had not gone well at all, that horrendous summer when it seemed like they all fell frighteningly ill (one of the boys broke his arm in june, the second was hospitalized for 2 months with a high fever which the doctors couldn’t figure out the cause of, and dad was rushed to the emergency room because of what everyone thought was a heart attack, and which ended up being a kidney stone that he needed surgery for). things reminded me of them at every turn, something which remained internalized, and unbeknownst to me, that internalization continues today, reaching out to the people who are also like my family. if they hurt, if they’re upset or lonely or scared, if they’ve had a rough summer where nothing seemed to go right, i worry about them for days on end – whether they’re in germany or israel, sri lanka, argentina, australia, or deepest africa. i know they’ll be fine, i know they’ll work through it, but there is also an underlying sense of guilt – helplessness in the fact that i can’t be there for them, even if they themselves don’t really need me to be.
expats never remain happy in one place if people are missing. but at least they can content themselves with having those people in their lives, with having met them in the first place…
lying in bed last night, going through a “what if” in my mind: what if i had never attended that very first fachschafts meeting? what if i were one of the many foreign students who never really got involved in german university life? what if i hadn’t spoken to that other american girl in my history class? thinking back even further, how was it that i ended up hearing about the first fachschafts meeting with my (at the time) limited and somewhat nervous understanding of german, or picking an obscure class on british royalty, or making friends with a Romanian during my international students orientation? without these happenings, i would have been a lost soul.
that first day, i was confused out of my mind – in the american university system, classes are chosen months in advance, with priority given according to seniority. as freshmen and sophomores, we got the bottom-of-the-barrel pickings, and had to scramble even for those. it meant that the day before our registration could officially begin, we stayed up until midnight so as to be the first ones online, clogging up the online registration system in order to get the classes of our choice. so the day of the ersti einfuehrung, i kept asking people how we would pick our classes, frantic that i would miss out on the good ones. it took three explanations from the people explaining the course selection booklet to us for me to finally get that in heidelberg, you picked the classes you wanted and just showed up. and precisely at that moment, when the foreigner fog in my brain cleared away to yield some semblance of sanity, i heard one of the tutors mention that there would be a “fachschaftstreff” that night, and anyone interested should stop by the fachschafts café at 6 pm.
i went to the café, a small room with sofas and wild political posters and one sole computer, windows which looked out onto the building right next door, a few chairs, and no sign of coffee. the sofas were old and soft, worn, with a particular smell (not a bad one), bright orange and knobbly. it was a new place for me at the time, but would become so familiar, my second home in between classes when my apartment was too far to walk to. it was too hot in the summer, just right in the winter because of the small white baseboard heaters along the wall. if you were the first one that day to go to the café, and it was locked, you made your way upstairs to the pforte (a small reception room), right in front of the political science library and handed over your student id in exchange for the key to the café. others would trickle in, always the same crowd, most of us part of the either the fachschaftsrat (the 7 elected student board members of the council) or the fachschaftssumpf (i never did figure out what sumpf meant, but knew somehow that it was a.) slang and b.) meant something like “the rest of us” or “the mass, the crowd”). we’d use the computer, take naps, read newspapers, eat, meet, gossip, and goof off. it became for us a small point of commonality within the swirl of a mid-sized city. everyone knew everything about everyone else – word traveled like wildfire amongst the sumpf, and because of it, we (some of us fondly, others in aggravation) called heidelberg a small dorf.
you meet every person twice.
the first meeting is mostly inconsequential. sometimes, the first few meetings remain so. if the person becomes merely a friend, those first meaningless meetings remain largely forgotten. if that person becomes a beloved friend or a lover, an unexpected confidante or a surrogate family member, you strive to retain those memories of when you barely knew each other, laugh at those meetings that seemed unimportant. because somewhere in there, there is an epiphany. another inconsequential meeting from a misinterpretation which ends in a night-long conversation and general mayhem; a fully sincere and loving (and totally unexpected) bear hug during a protest; a shared double-espresso before the 7 am class you both reached after staying up all night to watch the sunrise; a class on queen elizabeth I, where you discover another expat exactly like yourself. in that first fachschaftssitzung, and in subsequent meetings and partings to follow, i met those people who make up my second family.
when i lived in germany, further apart from my parents and brothers than i had ever been, there were moments when i missed them terribly. during holidays of course, when our whole extended family would get together, certain nights after a day that had not gone well at all, that horrendous summer when it seemed like they all fell frighteningly ill (one of the boys broke his arm in june, the second was hospitalized for 2 months with a high fever which the doctors couldn’t figure out the cause of, and dad was rushed to the emergency room because of what everyone thought was a heart attack, and which ended up being a kidney stone that he needed surgery for). things reminded me of them at every turn, something which remained internalized, and unbeknownst to me, that internalization continues today, reaching out to the people who are also like my family. if they hurt, if they’re upset or lonely or scared, if they’ve had a rough summer where nothing seemed to go right, i worry about them for days on end – whether they’re in germany or israel, sri lanka, argentina, australia, or deepest africa. i know they’ll be fine, i know they’ll work through it, but there is also an underlying sense of guilt – helplessness in the fact that i can’t be there for them, even if they themselves don’t really need me to be.
expats never remain happy in one place if people are missing. but at least they can content themselves with having those people in their lives, with having met them in the first place…
22 August 2008
misanthrope
in my line of work, you learn that people lie. they cheat and deceive. they're miserable and rude, without recourse or consequence. they hold in their heads simultaneous hypocrisy, claiming open-mindedness and whispering bigotry.
some people are just stupid fuckers.
but other people - the rare, the few - can be absolute angels.
it's nice when you find one of those other people. just saying.
some people are just stupid fuckers.
but other people - the rare, the few - can be absolute angels.
it's nice when you find one of those other people. just saying.
20 August 2008
distance and proximity
recently, i tried to get together for dinner or a movie with one of my oldest friends. she lives in town a, which is a 30-minute drive from me in town b. distances have never been an issue - far-flung pastures are part of the american way of life. that's why we drive suv's and use up a large chunk of the earth's natural oil supply. but given that i work in town c, which is about 45 minutes away from her in town a, this is how our conversation went:
me: "hey, we need to get together."
her: "definitely! it's been waaaaay too long."
me: "we need a break!"
her: "we need to get together and vent!!"
me: (excited) "oh, by the way, they're playing 'brideshead revisited' not far from where i work! we both wanted to see that right?"
her: (pausing) "well, i was thinking we could meet at the bookstore near my house."
me: (calculating mileage in my head) "oh. hmmmm. maybe we could meet halfway?"
her: "yeah, how about the applebees in the middle?"
me and her, simultaneously after a silent pause: "still too far."
me: (sigh)
her: "yeah. damn gas prices."
i miss personal contact. i miss my cafe coffees and hot chocolates with friends in the highly accesible town square. i miss riding the bus or the bahn or the metro. i miss seeing a different country after taking two meager steps out of my own. i'm sure my european friends and relatives are feeling rather smug right now, about their wonderful public transportation systems and the cleverness of town planning by their european ancestors. yeah well, we've got purple mountains majesty and amber waves of grain - i've never seen 'em, but i hear we've got 'em. and they're great for making ethanol.
me: "hey, we need to get together."
her: "definitely! it's been waaaaay too long."
me: "we need a break!"
her: "we need to get together and vent!!"
me: (excited) "oh, by the way, they're playing 'brideshead revisited' not far from where i work! we both wanted to see that right?"
her: (pausing) "well, i was thinking we could meet at the bookstore near my house."
me: (calculating mileage in my head) "oh. hmmmm. maybe we could meet halfway?"
her: "yeah, how about the applebees in the middle?"
me and her, simultaneously after a silent pause: "still too far."
me: (sigh)
her: "yeah. damn gas prices."
i miss personal contact. i miss my cafe coffees and hot chocolates with friends in the highly accesible town square. i miss riding the bus or the bahn or the metro. i miss seeing a different country after taking two meager steps out of my own. i'm sure my european friends and relatives are feeling rather smug right now, about their wonderful public transportation systems and the cleverness of town planning by their european ancestors. yeah well, we've got purple mountains majesty and amber waves of grain - i've never seen 'em, but i hear we've got 'em. and they're great for making ethanol.
25 July 2008
we always went at night. during the day, we dreamed...
it's been almost 10 years since my last visit to my uncle in jeddah - 10 years also since i last went to mecca. i was there in the summer of '99, so my memories may no longer be accurate, and since saudi is usually at its most alive at night, the things i've seen can't be trusted either. images and people and places become blurred at night, their harsher edges photoshopped out by the darkness.
any stray warm breeze will remind me of saudi - as will palm trees and monuments and highway centerpieces at roundabouts. like most of the surrounding area, saudi is scorching hot in the summer, and contrary to popular belief, those all-concealing abayas (the black shapeless robes that saudi women wear over their clothing...or in some cases, over next to nothing...) are great at deflecting the sun's rays. i don't wear the hijab (the tradtional female muslim head covering) but unlike many of my contemporaries who find it beneath them or hypocritical to wear one while in a country that dictates it as mandatory, or at a muslim gathering where it is simply a token of respect, i'm comfortable with putting it on when the situation calls for it. after all, i put it on to pray five times a day - what harm could there possibly be in wearing it out of respect for the sensibilities of an entire people?
rarely would we venture out during the day - when we did, we walked a few streets down from my uncle's house to the line of shops selling cloth, and then to the tailor's, to get clothes made out of that cloth. my mother and my aunt would usually buy some snack from the street vendors - i'm a firm believer that lack of hygiene is actually what gives those street foods in countries like pakistan and saudi arabia the certain indescribable and irresistible flavor which cannot be duplicated. you KNOW it'll probably give you an upset stomach afterwards, but you have to eat it anyway.
most of our outings are at night, when the desert air is cooler and more forgiving. out to the huge mall in jeddah's city center, or for dinner at a favorite restaurant, ice cream afterwards. all over the city there are constant reminders that this is a muslim country: the many street roundabouts are adorned with monuments of arabic calligraphy, verses from the quran and sayings from arab tradition. men with their white robes and checkered red or black head coverings, women in their abayas and burqas and hijabs, all in fluttering black, their eyes expressive and twinkling. yet despite the traditional context, jeddah is still unmistakably cosmopolitan. mecca is a different story.
one night out of our trip will be planned for ummrah, the shortened pilgrimage to mecca. we'll try to sleep during the day, and if we doze off in the darkened family room that serves as a quasi-guest room during our stay, we dream. my aunt would wake us at 8 or 9 pm, and we would eat the amazing food she would have silently and swiftly prepared before preparing for the night. for the men, a single unstitched piece of white cloth to cover their whole body (i still don't know how they managed to get them to stay - my uncle is an expert at wrapping and securing this white cloth), to signify that each man is equal. for my mom and i, usually a shalwar kameez with a chador wrapped securely around our heads. and then we would pile into my uncle's old station wagon in the darkness and speed off towards mecca.
the highways are empty and long, stretching along desert, punctuated by bright street lights. every once in awhile, there will be a monument of some sort: a sculpture of two palm trees, intertwined and connecting over our heads as they cross from either side of the highway, swords crossed in similar fashion. at the checkpoint, the guards will check our passports, ask a few questions, send us along our way. a few miles later, we enter the city.
it's dark, and the street looks like one of those downward sloping curvy roads you'd normally find in san fransisco. there are buildings lining the road, and cars parked along the sides next to sidewalks. at some point, the road becomes rougher and cobblestoned. in the distance, in the little dip/valley below, you can see the white marble tiles of the mosque which holds the kabaa, lit up by bright lights in the darkness. we park the car and begin walking towards it. even at night, the city is full of life, of people, but also of a sense of calm. there is no hurry here, not right now anyway, and the breeze is a little cooler, a little softer than it had been in jeddah. the mosque is a gilded golden marbled masterpiece - you walk in between two large doors with gold and woodwork, and first, there is the covered, carpeted area. the mosque's center is an open courtyard, and the surrounding parts of it are roofed in, with chandeliers and oriental rugs, white tile which is somehow always clean, despite the thousands of bare feet which walk it everyday. lining the marble walkway are coolers of zam zam, water which is legendary in it's own right from having sprung up as a life-saving miracle to hagar, as she ran between two hills in desperation, looking for water for her crying baby ismael during their exile in the desert.
you walk towards the center, because the kabaa has this pull, this center of gravity, it looks alive because of the swirl of bodies which circumnavigate its perimeter in perfect synchronization. and it's huge. the white tile that surrounds it is perfect contrast to the large black cube, and the air in the courtyard is even cooler somehow. the entire place holds a feeling of harmony, a sense of peace, and there is this camaraderie between all the different types of people sitting, thinking, praying. there are arabs, africans, south asians, europeans, americans, south americans. every ethnicity imaginable is represented here, the same, yet different, and if you just stand and watch the swirl of human bodies as they make their 7 circuits around the kabaa, you understand the true meaning of melting pot - it is a veritable whirlpool of color.
the night is long, spent in prayer, meditation. you drink zam zam to keep awake, splash your face with it occasionally. but my favorite part is the morning, the breaking dawn when, having completed all the requirements of ummrah, we head back to my uncle's car, drive back home. upon exit from the mosque, back out between those two large doors, you notice in the early light that there are white marble fountains out front, in the open air, and a constant flight of birds. i've never really found out what type of birds they are - pigeons i think, though some were white and may have been doves. they swirl in and out of the air in front of you, with sunrise as their backdrop, and there are old and young peddlers selling feed for the birds. we reach the car, drive out of the city with the mosque at our backs, and lining the rocky, sandy desert on the side of the road are hills, small mountains, where caves once provided a place to escape, to meditate. tufts of grass ever now and then. sleepiness and calm until you return to the hustle of jeddah once more.
i'll be the first to admit that i can't always concentrate when i pray - there are distractions naturally. the mind wanders to things needing to be done, things that happened during the day, things happening out behind you, which you can see from the corner of your eye. when i need to bring my concentration back, i close my eyes and conjure up those previous images in my mind, imagining white marble beneath my feet, cool desert air, palm trees, and swirls of humanity...
it's been almost 10 years since my last visit to my uncle in jeddah - 10 years also since i last went to mecca. i was there in the summer of '99, so my memories may no longer be accurate, and since saudi is usually at its most alive at night, the things i've seen can't be trusted either. images and people and places become blurred at night, their harsher edges photoshopped out by the darkness.
any stray warm breeze will remind me of saudi - as will palm trees and monuments and highway centerpieces at roundabouts. like most of the surrounding area, saudi is scorching hot in the summer, and contrary to popular belief, those all-concealing abayas (the black shapeless robes that saudi women wear over their clothing...or in some cases, over next to nothing...) are great at deflecting the sun's rays. i don't wear the hijab (the tradtional female muslim head covering) but unlike many of my contemporaries who find it beneath them or hypocritical to wear one while in a country that dictates it as mandatory, or at a muslim gathering where it is simply a token of respect, i'm comfortable with putting it on when the situation calls for it. after all, i put it on to pray five times a day - what harm could there possibly be in wearing it out of respect for the sensibilities of an entire people?
rarely would we venture out during the day - when we did, we walked a few streets down from my uncle's house to the line of shops selling cloth, and then to the tailor's, to get clothes made out of that cloth. my mother and my aunt would usually buy some snack from the street vendors - i'm a firm believer that lack of hygiene is actually what gives those street foods in countries like pakistan and saudi arabia the certain indescribable and irresistible flavor which cannot be duplicated. you KNOW it'll probably give you an upset stomach afterwards, but you have to eat it anyway.
most of our outings are at night, when the desert air is cooler and more forgiving. out to the huge mall in jeddah's city center, or for dinner at a favorite restaurant, ice cream afterwards. all over the city there are constant reminders that this is a muslim country: the many street roundabouts are adorned with monuments of arabic calligraphy, verses from the quran and sayings from arab tradition. men with their white robes and checkered red or black head coverings, women in their abayas and burqas and hijabs, all in fluttering black, their eyes expressive and twinkling. yet despite the traditional context, jeddah is still unmistakably cosmopolitan. mecca is a different story.
one night out of our trip will be planned for ummrah, the shortened pilgrimage to mecca. we'll try to sleep during the day, and if we doze off in the darkened family room that serves as a quasi-guest room during our stay, we dream. my aunt would wake us at 8 or 9 pm, and we would eat the amazing food she would have silently and swiftly prepared before preparing for the night. for the men, a single unstitched piece of white cloth to cover their whole body (i still don't know how they managed to get them to stay - my uncle is an expert at wrapping and securing this white cloth), to signify that each man is equal. for my mom and i, usually a shalwar kameez with a chador wrapped securely around our heads. and then we would pile into my uncle's old station wagon in the darkness and speed off towards mecca.
the highways are empty and long, stretching along desert, punctuated by bright street lights. every once in awhile, there will be a monument of some sort: a sculpture of two palm trees, intertwined and connecting over our heads as they cross from either side of the highway, swords crossed in similar fashion. at the checkpoint, the guards will check our passports, ask a few questions, send us along our way. a few miles later, we enter the city.
it's dark, and the street looks like one of those downward sloping curvy roads you'd normally find in san fransisco. there are buildings lining the road, and cars parked along the sides next to sidewalks. at some point, the road becomes rougher and cobblestoned. in the distance, in the little dip/valley below, you can see the white marble tiles of the mosque which holds the kabaa, lit up by bright lights in the darkness. we park the car and begin walking towards it. even at night, the city is full of life, of people, but also of a sense of calm. there is no hurry here, not right now anyway, and the breeze is a little cooler, a little softer than it had been in jeddah. the mosque is a gilded golden marbled masterpiece - you walk in between two large doors with gold and woodwork, and first, there is the covered, carpeted area. the mosque's center is an open courtyard, and the surrounding parts of it are roofed in, with chandeliers and oriental rugs, white tile which is somehow always clean, despite the thousands of bare feet which walk it everyday. lining the marble walkway are coolers of zam zam, water which is legendary in it's own right from having sprung up as a life-saving miracle to hagar, as she ran between two hills in desperation, looking for water for her crying baby ismael during their exile in the desert.
you walk towards the center, because the kabaa has this pull, this center of gravity, it looks alive because of the swirl of bodies which circumnavigate its perimeter in perfect synchronization. and it's huge. the white tile that surrounds it is perfect contrast to the large black cube, and the air in the courtyard is even cooler somehow. the entire place holds a feeling of harmony, a sense of peace, and there is this camaraderie between all the different types of people sitting, thinking, praying. there are arabs, africans, south asians, europeans, americans, south americans. every ethnicity imaginable is represented here, the same, yet different, and if you just stand and watch the swirl of human bodies as they make their 7 circuits around the kabaa, you understand the true meaning of melting pot - it is a veritable whirlpool of color.
the night is long, spent in prayer, meditation. you drink zam zam to keep awake, splash your face with it occasionally. but my favorite part is the morning, the breaking dawn when, having completed all the requirements of ummrah, we head back to my uncle's car, drive back home. upon exit from the mosque, back out between those two large doors, you notice in the early light that there are white marble fountains out front, in the open air, and a constant flight of birds. i've never really found out what type of birds they are - pigeons i think, though some were white and may have been doves. they swirl in and out of the air in front of you, with sunrise as their backdrop, and there are old and young peddlers selling feed for the birds. we reach the car, drive out of the city with the mosque at our backs, and lining the rocky, sandy desert on the side of the road are hills, small mountains, where caves once provided a place to escape, to meditate. tufts of grass ever now and then. sleepiness and calm until you return to the hustle of jeddah once more.
i'll be the first to admit that i can't always concentrate when i pray - there are distractions naturally. the mind wanders to things needing to be done, things that happened during the day, things happening out behind you, which you can see from the corner of your eye. when i need to bring my concentration back, i close my eyes and conjure up those previous images in my mind, imagining white marble beneath my feet, cool desert air, palm trees, and swirls of humanity...
18 July 2008
stolen words
when you can' think of the right words yourself, look for quotes from others...
"we shall not cease from exploration
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time."
- t s eliot
"we shall not cease from exploration
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time."
- t s eliot
layers upon layer upon layers. truths resting on lies, resting on truths. one, two, three parts of a whole - like those little russian dolls. is each a part of one person, or are they three individual schizophrenic people inside one person? voices crowd the brain until one is no longer sure of oneself, but absolute silence is also a deadly impediment to progress - are we truly ourselves with those outside voices telling us who we are and what we should be, or are we truly ourselves in the silence, where our own lonely voice holds singular, oft-mistaken court? i'm not sure. but above all, there are simple truths which remain the same, constant over the years. like a love of reading. like a sense of identity. like a summer rainstorm.
i'm struggling to define myself again. i'm something like those layers of soil which indicate different periods of time the lower you go, an archaeologist's dream. but last night, i rode my bike in a summer downpour, and realized that experiences recur, and their recurrence is the same, yet different everytime. so life is a series of memories and experiences, many of which intersect with similar ones from a time before. the reason we don't recognize the repeat is that we've grown into different people, and each time, the experience is new, with a hint of deja vu.
when i was young and an only child, my mother used to take me to the swimming pool or the library in the summertime. afternoons would find us waiting for my father to come home from work, sitting on a grassy patch of green at the edge of the road, munching on doritos and soda. what infallible instinct led my mother to take her 7/8/9/10-year old daughter the library on rainy days, when she herself had always been an outdoorsy child?
the rain had timing. a few drops would start splattering the pavement in front of the library by the time we left, my thin arms carrying at least 7 or 8 books. we'd run to the car, and the ominous clouds which had been gathering all day would finally pour forth a deluge of torrential rain that would last anywhere from 5 minutes to 3 hours. clinging to my books in the front seat of the minivan, i would watch the clouds follow us home, and pretend that we could outrun them with the speed of our car. my mother, serene at the steering wheel, was the hero who saved us from the rain and the clouds.
as the dreamy teenager i grew up to be, head full of legends and myths from greek and celtic mythology, an active imagination fueled by years of reading mysteries and horror stories, the rains were welcome. i would stand barefoot beneath the lip over our front door, right next to the plant of jasmine flowers, and watch the sky sizzle with lightning. the breeze would waft the scent of hot rain and jasmine, making the two mingle, creating a link in my mind forever between jasmine flowers and summer rainstorms. my feet would be warm on the sidewalk, while pockets of steam rose from the spots in the parking lot where the rain hit hot pavement.
i have no memories of rainstorms in the summer during my two years at rutgers. perhaps that should tell me something about the selectiveness of forgetting. or about the connection between rain and happiness in my life.
during my only summer in heidelberg, in 2004, a friend and i were summoned to the courtyard behind the neue uni by friends who were waiting - it was the historiker sommerfest, and it was outside. trouble was, my friend i were stuck in the dining hall when the rainstorm began, and between us, had one umbrella (mine) and an inconvenient skirt-and-heels combination (hers). holding the umbrella above us both, we ran across the cobblestones, laughing, and when i said "screw it," and handed the umbrella to my friend to run across the courtyard bare-headed, she yelled that i was crazy and chased after me in the rain. we arrived in the courtyard, me soaking wet, and entered the small tents set up for the fest to the sound of our friends applauding.
there was the night towards the end of summer, when 5 of us sat on the terrace of that amazing apartment my Best Friend and i had just moved into, under the lip of an overhang, in our improvised pajamas. we ate pakoras with yogurt, watched the glittering city below, with the darkness inside the apartment at our backs, and let the rain fall before us in soft pitter-patters of sound, happy in the silence.
i remember those two nights better than entire years.
last night, the bike ride was an escape. it was raining, and the tires were slipping. the heat in nj is oppressive because of the thick humidity - it stifles you, drives you mad. i am not an expert bike rider - my youth was spent at the pool or the library, and my one experience with bike riding led to my little knees becoming so skinned after a fall on black tar pavement, that i never went back to my pink huffy bicycle again. but i suppose once you learn it, you never forget it (though stopping is still a problem). it rained heavy against my face, but the droplets were cooling, and i let the bike slide easily down slopes on our road. my hair curls oddly in the rain, as it did around my face, where it clung. and in that rain, i realized lots of things - that i am what i make of myself, and i never had need for strict definition. the rebellious, open-minded questioner of all things set in stone is still there, as well as the spiritual, faithful memorist, who knows certain truths will always be the backbone of her life. i realized also that although i may not be as happy as i was three years ago, right now, i am content...and that's enough for me.
i'm struggling to define myself again. i'm something like those layers of soil which indicate different periods of time the lower you go, an archaeologist's dream. but last night, i rode my bike in a summer downpour, and realized that experiences recur, and their recurrence is the same, yet different everytime. so life is a series of memories and experiences, many of which intersect with similar ones from a time before. the reason we don't recognize the repeat is that we've grown into different people, and each time, the experience is new, with a hint of deja vu.
when i was young and an only child, my mother used to take me to the swimming pool or the library in the summertime. afternoons would find us waiting for my father to come home from work, sitting on a grassy patch of green at the edge of the road, munching on doritos and soda. what infallible instinct led my mother to take her 7/8/9/10-year old daughter the library on rainy days, when she herself had always been an outdoorsy child?
the rain had timing. a few drops would start splattering the pavement in front of the library by the time we left, my thin arms carrying at least 7 or 8 books. we'd run to the car, and the ominous clouds which had been gathering all day would finally pour forth a deluge of torrential rain that would last anywhere from 5 minutes to 3 hours. clinging to my books in the front seat of the minivan, i would watch the clouds follow us home, and pretend that we could outrun them with the speed of our car. my mother, serene at the steering wheel, was the hero who saved us from the rain and the clouds.
as the dreamy teenager i grew up to be, head full of legends and myths from greek and celtic mythology, an active imagination fueled by years of reading mysteries and horror stories, the rains were welcome. i would stand barefoot beneath the lip over our front door, right next to the plant of jasmine flowers, and watch the sky sizzle with lightning. the breeze would waft the scent of hot rain and jasmine, making the two mingle, creating a link in my mind forever between jasmine flowers and summer rainstorms. my feet would be warm on the sidewalk, while pockets of steam rose from the spots in the parking lot where the rain hit hot pavement.
i have no memories of rainstorms in the summer during my two years at rutgers. perhaps that should tell me something about the selectiveness of forgetting. or about the connection between rain and happiness in my life.
during my only summer in heidelberg, in 2004, a friend and i were summoned to the courtyard behind the neue uni by friends who were waiting - it was the historiker sommerfest, and it was outside. trouble was, my friend i were stuck in the dining hall when the rainstorm began, and between us, had one umbrella (mine) and an inconvenient skirt-and-heels combination (hers). holding the umbrella above us both, we ran across the cobblestones, laughing, and when i said "screw it," and handed the umbrella to my friend to run across the courtyard bare-headed, she yelled that i was crazy and chased after me in the rain. we arrived in the courtyard, me soaking wet, and entered the small tents set up for the fest to the sound of our friends applauding.
there was the night towards the end of summer, when 5 of us sat on the terrace of that amazing apartment my Best Friend and i had just moved into, under the lip of an overhang, in our improvised pajamas. we ate pakoras with yogurt, watched the glittering city below, with the darkness inside the apartment at our backs, and let the rain fall before us in soft pitter-patters of sound, happy in the silence.
i remember those two nights better than entire years.
last night, the bike ride was an escape. it was raining, and the tires were slipping. the heat in nj is oppressive because of the thick humidity - it stifles you, drives you mad. i am not an expert bike rider - my youth was spent at the pool or the library, and my one experience with bike riding led to my little knees becoming so skinned after a fall on black tar pavement, that i never went back to my pink huffy bicycle again. but i suppose once you learn it, you never forget it (though stopping is still a problem). it rained heavy against my face, but the droplets were cooling, and i let the bike slide easily down slopes on our road. my hair curls oddly in the rain, as it did around my face, where it clung. and in that rain, i realized lots of things - that i am what i make of myself, and i never had need for strict definition. the rebellious, open-minded questioner of all things set in stone is still there, as well as the spiritual, faithful memorist, who knows certain truths will always be the backbone of her life. i realized also that although i may not be as happy as i was three years ago, right now, i am content...and that's enough for me.
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