Back at SUA

I've been back in California this week, and it's been both wonderful and exhausting. There's a lot going on inside my head, but most of it is diary-worthy, not blog-worthy. Still, I feel the need to touch base a little.

Staying with J & W, that's been wonderful. Also really glad I came out early enough int he week to actually get a chance to meet and talk with TL, PV, and JK... even when all the students had changed and the cafeteria seemed weird, it felt good to have these guys still be there, to be able to talk to them as an alum but also as a student. I feel like my favorite part of being an SUA alum is having such close relationships with my teachers.

In some ways, of course, the ceremony was overwhelming. Not the ceremony itself, but all the people gathered there. There were so many more people to talk to than was possible; I hugged more people yesterday than I have all year, but I didn't get a chance to talk to anyone for more than a couple of minutes. That's not how I work; I know I need to do more catching up... so, in a weird way, I feel less like I caught up with people at graduation and more like I now feel more motivated to catch up with people after I return from my summer adventures. Including with people who weren't there today but whom I would have loved to see. I feel more connected to the alumni in general after today, and it's a good feeling.

Two more people to meet, hopefully tomorrow, and then I head on to LA to spend a day with L, then off to Mexico on the 1st of June. So glad I did this week at SUA first.

Suddenly very nervous about the whole Mexico experience, though. I'm sick. More than I have been in a long time now... walking in very painful right now. It's a scary context from which to be going into a rural summer... I'm not sure how to deal with it yet. Trying to see a doctor tomorrow, but struggling with the medical system in the USA and figuring out health insurance details. J & W have both been so wonderful, so grateful they are here through this, but still scared of what next. Even briefly considered dropping the whole Mexico plan, but couldn't bring myself to do that... I really, really, really want to go. But I have to weigh this out carefully and make sure I'm taking all necessary precautions. Don't want to repeat Mongolia. (Yes, this is more than I would usually admit about my health on a public space, at least during a crisis, but I'm trying to be more upfront about things, in general and therefore on this blog as well.) We'll see, I hope that my next entry is indeed from Mexico.

Returning to "the hill"

In 2 days, I'm going back to SUA for the first time since I graduated. M is graduating, I'm so proud of her for getting there despite all the odds she faced that I have to be there to celebrate. I'm also looking forward to a week of catching up with friends I haven't seen in way too long, haven't spoken to in a while either.  At the same time, I'm so sad about all the friends who won't be there, especially two close friends I was counting on being able to hug and catch up with after too long... but I guess that's part of what moving so much involves. I'm especially looking forward to one person, whom I haven't seen or spoken to since sophomore year of college, driving up to the OC to say hello... that's going to be the most interesting, even if intense, meeting of this next week, I think.

But a little part of me is in disbelief. That world feels far away. Mexico, where I return on June 1st, feels even further away. I can't exactly say I'm nervous-- it feels too far away for me to feel anything about it-- but I am curious to see what happens. I know I'm not the person I was 3 years ago, and I know that's probably going to be true for most of the people I'm going to see again after this interval, so I'm curious to see who we are now in relationship to each other now. That's especially true of my Mexican friends and even the village I'm going back to... 3 years is a long time, the toddlers I carried in my arms will be running all over the place now, the 10-year-olds will be teenagers, probably with a bit of an attitude, and none of them will remember me. There's something humbling about that.

And yet, I feel I will be more myself by the time I return to New York City in July. It's almost as if I no longer know who I am without the confusions of identity... being an international student from India in New York is almost too simplistic, I need to be all of those other people in order to feel whole now. It's a little bit like when you've been sitting in one place too long and your foot goes to sleep (is that the expression in English too, or am I just translating literally from the Hindi?)... waking it up involved those pins and needles that are uncomfortable but not in a bad way, just in a strange way. Once you move it around a bit, though, the blood starts flowing again and you can walk and feel your feet below you as you do so. I'm in the pins and needles stage just now, but I do look forward to feeling my feet again.

I've noticed over this past year in New York, more than ever before in my life, that I switch, from one hour to the next, between feeling surrounded by the love and care of so many beautiful friends that I can't believe my good fortune to feeling utterly alone. That's at least in part because most of those beautiful friends are physically not here, and it's easy to let them slip to the back of one's mind sometimes... and i haven't had the time or emotional energy to create that community here yet. Yet, I know by now that, for the rest of my life, my "real" community will probably live inside my head and all around the world, not in any one specific geographic location. That's both wonderful and frustrating.

Speaking of which, I owe at least two of those friends a phone call before I set off on my summer adventure. And my apartment is demanding a thorough cleaning spree, and my bags haven't even come out of the closet yet, and I have SO many important errands to run, and I leave in less than 48 hours. It's time to sign off, and I look forward to seeing many of you lovely readers soon :)

A gift... and gifts

I was given a beautiful gift today. By a woman who has given me many beautiful gifts over the last few months-- my poetry professor in Spring semester, Suzanne Gardinier.

It was the senior lecture, a tradition at SLC where the graduating class selects a professor to give them one final talk before they leave. This lecture was called "A life of learning: How to tear down a house and build a boat" and it reminded me of so many beautiful things that I asked her for a copy, knowing I would need to go back to it at different points in my life... as I reread it late at night, I can only think of it as a wonderful gift that someone gave me and that I gratefully received.

Do you know the feeling of being at home in a talk? Suzanne's talks and writing make me feel at home in a way that only one other person's talks and writings do-- Sarah Wider's. they both talk about poetry and activism in the most beautiful, most gentle of ways, with a love that makes me feel so complete and so utterly... at home, that's it. Here's a quote from it, something I needed to hear today, something I need to hear often:

You're not lying awake worrying because you're neurotic.  (Or not entirely anyway.)  You're worrying because you're awake.  And the question isn't how best to anesthetize yourself against this, but how to live with it.  How to dance with what's true.... you can be trained enough not to panic, but to dance

Anesthesia is sometimes the easier choice, but I want that training she talks about, and I know that all of this past year's struggles with illness, with confronting mortality, with everything, have been part of acquiring that. Have been part, simply, of learning to dance.

Suzanne would often talk to us in class about what a gift our art can be, would encourage us to think of ourselves as creating gifts that we can give to people we may have never met. She wants to see a world where people leave poems around for others in to read in phone booths and coffee shops and public places, where who wrote the poem is less important than the gift of that piece of one life to another life. Today, I read a blog posted on the facebook page of a friend who recently did something called "poetry in unexpected places"... a group of young poets/ spoken word artists who spent one weekend afternoon performing poems in the subways of NYC. The blog post mentioned something to the effect: "The greatest part was that nothing was expected in return." Because if something was expected in return, it wouldn't really be a gift, would it?

I can't get these thoughts about gifts out of my mind. I have been thinking a lot lately about what it means to give something without expecting in return... when the other party doesn't quite believe you expect nothing in return. So, when you give because you find joy in giving, and the other party starts feeling uncomfortable because they assume you want something back that they cannot give, should you feel apologetic about giving in the first place?

S told me this morning that I can come across "too strongly"; that he knows me well enough to understand where I am coming from, but that for someone new, it can be hard to realize i honestly don't want anything in response. I'm talking here not so much about literal gifts as just about love and support... there have been a few different people in my life whom I have tried reaching out to over the past few weeks, people I don't really know that well but, for different reasons, connected to and wanted to reach out to. I ignored the voices, once on the outside but now well settled into my head, that tell me I "care too much," felt comfortable in reaching out with all the love in my heart. I knew I couldn't get hurt because I really wasn't looking for any specific response, or even a response at all necessarily, that was not the point. But I hadn't realized that other part enough until recently... that even if I don't expect anything from someone, they often still think I do, and that often still makes them uncomfortable. I am starting to see that over the last few days, and S was right in stressing/ explaining that in a way that drove the point home. It almost feels selfish not to have realized it on my own.

Except that I don't know where that leaves me. I don't want to apologize for caring; I don't want to apologize for the gifts I want to give. Mostly, I don't want to apologize for who I am. But do I want to apologize for their discomfort? I'm not sure.

One year into Graduate school

I'm not sure today is the best day to restart this blog, but I figure I'll never start if I keep waiting for the right day to start it. So here we go, this probably won't be my most interesting entry, just think of it as my ramp back in :)

I feel strangely exhausted. I finished my first year of graduate school 5 days ago, and I haven't really done anything since, but I'm still so drained. Most of the time, it's a good exhaustion... you know how, after a really excruciating workout, you wake up the next morning and every muscle of your body hurts but in a really good way? That's how I feel emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually right now. Everything hurts after this past year's excruciating workout, but in a good, satisfying way.

I'm not sure how to sum up this year.

Am I a better writer than I was when I got here in September 2009? Yes. 100% yes. It feels really good to be able to say that with such conviction... I'm not sure I could have said it after my first semester, but definitely by the end of the year. I've grown in craft, but the really important part of this year has been becoming much more honest to my experiences, much less conscious of other people's thoughts about my work while I am doing my work, much more comfortable in my voice.

It's also been a process of deconstructing my education, so informed by first British and then American literary traditions, and ask what that means for the understanding of literature that my generation of writers in postcolonial societies has grown up with. In my first school, we could be punished for speaking Hindi; we learned early that English was the language of intellectual work, was somehow more respectable. Although speaking in Hindi would not have been an issue in the school where I did most of my schooling (moved there in 2nd grade), I refused to speak Hindi in school, outside Hindi classes, until my friends in 10th and 11th grade made me do it. I was never sure why I wasn't comfortable speaking this language in school when it was my home language just as much as English was; I guess lessons learned in childhood go a really long way. Now, as I think about writing multilingually, I realize that my diary is naturally multilingual, but the moment i "sit down to write," I switch into English and have a hard time being flexible. Interestingly, though, when we did pure sound and rhythm based exercises in class, I found myself composing in the devnagari script-- it just didn't work in the roman script-- partly because Hindi is more phonetic, but i think also partly because when you reach beyond language into more primal rhythms, then Hindi's rhythms inform me in crucial ways. Now, my program director is strongly encouraging me to do translation work (from Hindi and/ or Spanish) as part of my thesis next year... which sounds like an amazing idea, and feels like a logical next step, but is still incredibly daunting. We'll see.

In the context of those questions and explorations, it's been an interesting journey being the only international student and the only non-white person in my poetry workshops. Even though I've lived in so many different places, somehow I've never really had to think about being a cultural outsider as much as here at SLC, except perhaps in the Catholic University in Argentina. I guess all of those spaces have had enough diversity within them for me to find a home in it; here, being the only one, I've been pushed to think about it in a whole different way. I have also never had to think about race before; this year has shown me that, even if I'm not thinking actively about it, there's no way for me to avoid it while I live in the USA... and has thereby forced me to reflect on how it informs my everyday experiences here. At first, all of that was incredibly unsettling: being surrounded by one specific poetry tradition, hearing a similar voice around me and knowing that that was not my voice, but not really knowing what was my voice. Over time, though, it became a useful exercise: every time I read-- or wrote-- something and knew "that's not how I sound," I was forced to ask myself, "well, then, how do I sound?" A few months ago, my poetry changed incredibly as a result... everything, the content, the structures, the rhythms, the line lengths... and for the first time I felt like I was really hearing my own voice in my work. Other languages I speak, other traditions that speak inside my head, other experiences that are close to my heart, all slowly began to creep into my work.

And, frankly, that scared me.

I don't know if I can explain that fear to someone who doesn't create and think about art on a regular basis... but it was outright scary to hear this raw voice and realize it was my own and then to have to wonder what the other voices were. Not that they are in opposition to each other; the new writing just felt deeper and more gut level than anything that came before, but it's still scary. And the further I'm trying to go down that road, the more scared I am, but also the more excited I am.

Now, I feel I'm "talking like an artist," and that isn't a comfortable feeling either! I don't want to be obscure, and I'm always wary of pompous artist-y talk. But this feels so utterly true in my heart, I'm just going to accept that this is coming from me :)

In that context, I'm curious to see how my writing evolves while I am in Mexico for the summer, utterly away from both English and Hindi, surrounded by Spanish and Nahuatl. Even if I continue to write in English alone, will the rhythms of those other languages creep into my work? I hope so. I can't wait to see.