Margaritas, Onam, Words, Life

These days my body and alcohol aren't exactly compatible. I get drunk easily and then I feel light for a bit and want to immediately go to bed. Which is where I am right now. I just typed write for right.

I forgot it's Onam till Achan called and wished. That is a first. Onam is so important. How did I forget? I am not doing anything. We will be at our aunt's and she sounds down herself. Erryone got issues.

I realized something. Nothing big, but something. I like doing little things for people and while it gives them joy, it makes me happier and maybe why I do it in the first place. But I don't do any of it with the expectation that I should receive anything in return. If I do that's wonderful, but mostly it's the best feeling to surprise someone or to remember someone's something be it anniversary, birthday or whatever.

Words. Words are crazy. I got no words right now. Kind of ironic, but if there is one lesson I know it is that words flung can't be taken back. The saddest, the most utterly disheartening thing as it seems right now is when someone you trust breaks your heart and it doesn't stop there, it goes on to tinge every thing in your life and soon you are questioning everything done and said. Recently I read a story where a girl discovers that her mother meant to leave her father earlier than when the mother actually left which in turn made the girl question all events, all words, all the moments between that moment of consideration and moment of action. Because suddenly then it occurred to the girl all the falsity in those years. Because everything mother did suddenly shows itself in another light.

This guy who hits on me is getting divorced. People about to get divorced make me nervous. They say and do strange things like this guy for example. He not only hits on me, he does it very half heartedly. It is kind of a fuck-I-am-getting-divorced, I need something to do. It's truly sad and I have no response to it except kind words which I see clearly not helping.
To be divorced when there is a kid to consider seems the hardest thing to do. To share and split and argue about something that was once most important for two people..

I leave you with a few beautiful lines from my friend Ruth's poem.

"We leave each other from the minute we meet,
don't we, and isn't it so strange
how we can touch other &
stay cold? How I forget to pray for you."

Bye Bye

Bye Boston. I feel so guilty that I didn't make use of everything that I could have possibly done, things that this city had to offer. I had the monies but I worry so much about spending it unless for books and food and good movies that I missed so many readings, theatre and events. I guess it's all right. Maybe I will be back.

Some dreamily..

Some dreamily smoke cigarettes, some track

BY MARIANNE BORUCH

Some dreamily smoke cigarettes, some track

toddlers who walk like drunks. Buzzy,

the picnic grounds, noisy, sun-crazed, how

forks and spoons don’t exactly lie flat.

A mountain’s here, a famous overlook

from which you’d see none of this. Like that

first daguerreotype, its moving carriages

and those who strolled never picked up

in the long exposure, a Paris street emptied

by the camera, only houses and lamp posts

gone eternal. Or the one who stopped

for a shoe shine, the one who knelt to the task.

At the picnic—a commotion. A large man

to a younger man. I don’t know you! he’s hugging

and laughing. I don’t know who you are,

he shouts over and over a stillness so immense.

Cloud of Unknowing

Can the end of a year which was exceptionally momentous be called the end of an era? I am calling it anyway.

There are  many next steps that don't make much sense but they are there anyway and even as it's exciting, to pick one would mean to stick with it because you know, you don't want to be thirty and thinking ok now what. Sure, you can change directions whenever, people in my class, almost five of them are doing it but I don't want to.

In a group of eight, I have three friends. That's not bad at all.

Hjin has been telling others how my novel has improved by 'leaps and bounds'. I can sleep on this little information and dream a few dreams for a while. Even as it means absolutely nothing. Just a little boost of a sad ego.

It's one of those times when I have learnt a really good lesson which I absolutely didn't see coming but it's all good. We can't always learn everything from others mistakes, even the most obvious ones.

To live with A again is both looked forward to and shied away from. The latter less.

There will be trips and sights and stories to write. At least till January.

There will be a baby. Wont there be a baby? I think so.


There will always be books so nothing can ever go that bad.

The Good Wife

So I am watching obsessively this show called The Good Wife. It's got all your run of the mill public sex scandal, politician-wife, wife stays with husband despite everything except in this case Juliana Margulies plays the most enchanting, mysterious woman ever! I am so floored by her character and her poker face and mannerisms and it's absolutely interesting how you never get a peek into her thoughts or head but it's only maddening not annoying. I can't bear to watch Chris Noth the philandering husband not so much because of the sex, but the behavior afterward, this thoroughly entitled asseholic behavior, completely sure ( at least at first) that his wife WILL stay on with him.

Anyway, so toward the end of season one, lady in question and her boss at the law firm ( ex boyfriend from college, and rather adorable man) have kissed and are now all confused. :/ And the finale concludes with the ex boyfriend man calling her up and she is at her husband's campaign and ex boyfriend is all waxing romantic lines and she says, " look, I get the romance bit, but all I need is a plan." and he says, "Things can't be planned like this" and she says, " Well, poetry is easy but I have kids, a husband and a job, so I need a plan." and the ex boyfriend man has the most amazingly confuzzled expression on his face. I don't know why I liked this so much. Maybe because of the way it built up with the ex boyfriend drinking a glass of wine and buttoning up his suit and dialing all purposeful like and then pooh, shoooooo! Ha. Yeah anyhow.

I really should finish my book and not watch a whole season in two days, but that's just me acknowledging that I should. We all know I will watch all three seasons.

August: Books and Movies

Books:

The Changeling
Tis Pity she is a Whore
Persuasion
Museum of Innocence


Movies:

Medea
Chinatown
To Rome With Love
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Une Femme est unne femme
Tokyo Story

Species

There are these terrible people in my class who are my friends. They aren't always so bad except they are.
Okay, so you see, there are these two women in their mid forties. Let's call them SY and MM
SY is mostly all right, has strange tendencies to sort of order you around and if you are like me; who can't exactly stand up and make a point then well you will be reduced to silent mumbles and teeth gnashing. The thing is SY means well mostly, so you got to give credit with that. Except she thinks she has lived THE LIFE and so now all the wisdom she has acquired must be put to good use. So hereby you too should live by the rules she has learned.

MM on the other hand is truly terrible. Like a classic study of self-involvement to the extremes and extremely vociferous if criticized and completely shut out from the world of awareness. I am yet to meet someone worse than her in the awareness department. The undergrad kids in my summer classes pass notes about her literally under her nose and snigger and laugh --they are undergrads!!--- and she won't see it. She can just not shut up! In the class if the Prof. asks a question her hand just bounces and bounces and her voice has this drawl? OHMYFUCKINGOD. Make your god damn point and shut the fuck up. Then she does this thing where instead of sitting in the circle she sits next to the Prof. and pretty much behaves like she is running the class. The Prof. : a wonderful human being bears it in good humor.
Once we were to go to a reading given by one of our writing profs. and I said: Hey you want to go? and she said: No, why should I? He didn't come to mine.

:/ ://

Anyhow.

There is a slightly overweight girl in the class who likes wearing low cut tops and short shorts and a lot of fat kind of bulges over and while I think she has a pretty face, it's hard not to look when her boobs are spilling out and I am very interested in her purple sequined bra!!

So it was with much surprise that I ran into MM and SY bitchin like a pair of old crones during break. I couldn't believe that at their age they were actually being all high schooly over THIS. And then all the terrible fat girl in revealing clothes criticism was rounded off by SY with: Oh god, I am such a prude, I am OLD.
This was clearly said in: Hey, S, tell me I am not an old prude, tone. But I couldn't bring myself to disagree. LIKE HELL YOU ARE NOT. So I just smiled and left and hated myself for not speaking up.

I dont understand this kind of censorship. Isn't it enough that society and able bodied males are telling us what to wear without women adding to it?

I was also quite horrified at this discussion of  being fat. Now it's really not like this girl is obese, she is maybe about 180-190 pounds which is definitely heavy. and I will admit sometimes I do find myself looking away in a bus or train when a morbidly obese person has to be wheeled in or out or something. Or like on my regular bus, I have a regular seat :/ because OCD, and so this guy gets in at a stop before and sometimes he takes my seat and I get upset at how he took my seat because it's the first seat and its easier for him, but then I try to catch myself before I think this!

 Because one) ITS NOT MY BUSINESS and 2) it must be so hard being him. or any one who is fat and has to face the world every day and be the target of looks and look aways and comments and all this equating of being fat to being lazy or dumb which btw a lot of people do here.

Anyway. I sometimes hate these two. I can't believe you want to be a writer and lack such obvious empathy for someone.

So I thought maybe younger people might think differently but no. Here is ED who is younger than me. Her bf has a kid from his marriage and the child has been diagnosed with some kind of special need and is in a private school where they use a lot of creative means to teach and ED tells me: you know, I think she should just go to a public school and just be like forced to learn. What is all this drawing flowers and singing songs bullshit. I went to a public school and I turned out fine.

Clealry, ED, clearly you did.

I don't even---
Anyway. These are the people who are learning to be writers with me. Isn't this amazing?Dont you just want to read the books these folks will write?

Treats and Fears

I just submitted the thesis today to L and HJin. I left early in the morning to print and format and bullshit and by afternoon dropped it off at his house and now I just need to spend three paranoid days wondering if he might say: REVISE. This won't sit well with me because I have an India trip coming up and a visa renewal. I won't even, I don't even have a contingency plan except begging to him. I don't know why he should say no, except why shouldn't he? I don't know.

Even so, I was pretty thrilled at submitting. It looked and felt like a real book. Like if I published a 90 page book, it would feel like this. So I stared at it for a while and then went for a movie and had lunch at a Indian place which wasn't good, but today I didn't mind that so much.

I saw To Rome With Love, and initially for the first 20mins, I was a little bugged. I mean the quirky Woody Allen thing isn't something I really enjoy anymore. But it definitely got better and there were some, only some, great moments. It ended on a good note though.

A and I and P will be New Yorking it this month. I have all kinds of fun activities planned for us! :) other than the usual touristy stuff.
and then A and I will be hitting up India and a trip somewhere-- Sri Lanka? Andaman? Somewhere and then I will be off to Istanbul for a month and a week.

So many plans and exciting things so no need to MOURN MFA END. OKAY? ok.

P has landed and I am so happy that she is a call away.

I have to start packing this week. I came here with 80 books and I have 140 now. :/ I probably will have to sell some of the not good ones. That's going to be a little hard but I do have some crap lying around.

Later

Shakespeare

All the Shakespeare I read when I was young weren't verses. They were abridged copies, so now when I am reading again the real words with a vague whirl in my head of knowing the story but not entirely remembering it, it is the best feeling in the world!

So far I have done Hamlet and Tempest and I just saw the movie by Julie Taymour with the female Prospera played by a wonderful queenly Helen Mirren. I definitely loved it, although I am sure I like the version I had in my head better. I am not even trying to be snobbish here, but when it's a production so many things change like Caliban. I love the Caliban in the movie but not as much as the one in head. But definitely like the movie Ariel better.
It's always amazing to note how the ideas he played with are so eternal. Why does that always surprise me?

My father keeps telling me for almost five years now about the virtues of forgiveness and the joys in it. When I read the Tempest and watched the movie I am almost convinced, but not yet. Why can't I be old and forgiving as opposed to now? The only difference I can think of is --awareness. To be aware of  being able to maybe let go and forgive now but still choosing to wait it out is probably the mistake I am making as opposed to someone so miserable and in their misery, blind to the joy of forgiving.

And like Prospera ( I love the female better) says: This thing of darkness, I acknowledge mine.

And I am sure I can live with it.

On to Titus Andronicus which apparently no one seems to read and Othello--of course. I think my paper is going to be on Othello and I am sure the Prof. will say: Oh, I wasn't looking for that subtle a meaning :/ Yeah, I have a Prof. who does that!

I said: the only reason I am not entirely convinced that Prospero's forgiveness is based entirely upon their penitence is because no remorse has been shown by the culprits and that to me, it seems a sign of self delusion on his part and a need to believe in the most base quality of being a human.

and he said, long pause later: Oh, I am not looking for that much subtlety.

I don't know!!


I am sure I will remember this because I was pretty pissed.