I'll be your fin

from the archives (Oct 22, 2006)...

Smoked Salmon, as we all know, has a fungus problem. Lately, it's gotten pretty bad and he has lost his fin. It's very sad to see. Yesterday I was in my room and I went to check up on Rebel and Salmon and noticed Salmon floating on his side. I panicked, but realized that he was still alive. Because he's lost his fin, he can't swim like normal, he can only swim up and down. He floats on his side and then swims to the bottom of the bowl and floats back up. I didn't know what to do for him, so I wrote him a poem. It's called I'll Be Your Fin:

I'll be your fin when you're on your side,
When it feels like the world only goes left to right.
When your fishbowl is fuzzy and things are unclear,
I'll be the net that clears away your fear.
I'll swim and swim when you need me
I'll swim and swim when you need me.

You go deeper and deeper hoping things will change,
Hoping the water will rise and you can go back the way you came.
But I watch from a distance, the things you do
And wish, more than anything, that I could help you the way you need me to.
I wish I could help you the way you need me to.

Hold on the way you do, the only way you can.
Let the water pass through your gills and fill you with oxygen.
I'll swim and swim when you need me
I'll be your fin when you need me.

memo

make it sink in

say it out loud

put it in ink.

a pen, a water tower that

tempers the burn, soaks the frenzy

(until it runs dry):

with the embers

line your eyes,

to see its senescence

and also its life.

learn

to no longer need

something you once needed;

let that surprise you  

and remember

that restlessness, that rustle and rush

in your heart?

it means you're alive

"Free"

the fringe benefits of failure

the grass is greener where you water it

Stubborn, Happy Bravery

The Hula Hoop is Good at Girling

i want to feel like this every day

i feel happy of myself

i would like one of these please

prelude

Will you let me learn it? The way it smells in the morning, the way it feels, 
dry, warm, under my fingers and against my arms.
The way it moves when I move,
The way it wrinkles, pressed tight,
The way it is when things are quiet.

Will you let it seep out from your pores,
let it dampen your clothes and palms
and run down your forehead, leaving a trail that I can follow?

Let this be what moves me, what deserves me, what shakes and shifts me,
Let this be what makes me forget that I am a proud girl who wants for nothing.

Let this be what make me just foolish enough,
Just foolish enough to be brave,
Because I want to be brave forever.

Let this be what makes me patient,
Let this be makes me forgive.

Will you let me learn it? The way it chirrs like crickets, keeping me awake,
melting into my ears, echoing in the space around me,
singing out of these walls.

ode to the lighthouse

The Rugby Poets Club Presents: "Chariot" by Joshua Bennett from Ralph Lauren on Vimeo.

I know what that's like

Mamihlapinatapai: "A look shared by two people with each wishing that the other will initiate something that both desire but which neither one wants to start.”.

                         -from the Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego,
                         considered the world's most succinct word and
                         considered one of the most difficult words to translate

A Salsa Story

Last night was taco night and Shadow and Ryan's place, a tradition Shadow and I have celebrated since our days back in Broome Street dorms. It's one of those nights you talk about months in advance, and never plan on a whim. If you're invited to a taco night, you come to that taco night. If you miss a taco night, you know you're missing out on a Core tradition.
Anyways, last night was the first taco night in a while, and we were excited. I picked up Shadow from work and on our way home we stopped by the grocery store to pick up some necessities: taco seasoning, sour cream, salsa, and mini tortillas (for the soft taco option). We walked into the store expecting to grab and go-- you know, a quick, casual trip so that we could get to assembling tacos as soon as possible. We had no idea what we were in for.
Sour cream was no problem-- we saw it and threw it in our cart right away. Same with the tortillas. But we soon became painfully aware that this would be no quick stop at the grocery store.
Our first hunt: taco seasoning. It was no where to be found! No where! Next to the beans? No. Next to the HARD SHELL TACOS? Nope. PERHAPS IN THE SEASONING AISLE? No cigar. Shadow and I began to panic, thinking, Oh god, there can be no tacos without taco seasoning, and there can be no taco night without tacos! And just as we began to hyperventilate in unison (as shadows do), I grabbed her by the shoulders and said, SHADOW, LOOK WITH YOUR HEART. LOOK WITH YOUR HEART FOR THE TACO SEASONING.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and started walking. She paced down an aisle we'd passed moment before, this way and that, and then, in a moment of clarity, looked up, up, above the ground meats and sausages, into a small, dark cubby above the refrigerated section, and ever-so-coolly plucked a packet of taco seasoning from the cubby.
I squealed. She looked with her heart, and she found the taco seasoning! She made it look so easy.
Now it was my turn. I was tasked with finding the salsa by looking with my heart. Simple enough: salsa, in my opinion, is probably one of the most commonly bought items at the grocery store, next to milk and bananas. Late night slumber party runs to the market always result in chips and dip, usually opened up on the car ride home. Supermarket Sweep contestants always threw salsa into their carts.
So, my job was easy: open my heart and find the salsa. While Shadow scanned the aisles for anything we had missed, looking with my heart, I started searching. And searching....and searching.
Words cannot express my dismay.
Here I was, trying to take my own advice, trying to look with my heart for the last ingredient to our perfect taco night, and I just couldn't. Couldn't find it. Totally lost.  It had been so easy for Shadow. So clear. But my heart vision clearly needed to be checked. I panicked. Was there something wrong with me? Was I just an idiot? Was I unlucky? Was I walking past it over and over, staring right at it, missing it? Shadow could see that I was swimming in the possibilities, so she decided to ask the store manager where they keep the salsa.
Shadow came back with the news: THEY DON'T CARRY SALSA. It wasn't my heart's farsightedness, afterall. I was just LOOKING FOR SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T EXIST. I felt even worse than before. Horrified and heavy-hearted, I slumped out of the store, with Shadow at my side trying her best to console me, begging me to not take this as an extended metaphor.
But how could I not? It was all so clear to me! I've been looking for Salsa my whole young adult life, and have been pacing up and down life's proverbial aisles, watching as all my friends open their hearts and find their taco seasonings. Here I am, worried about my heart's hazy vision, thinking I'm just passing it by, and even though what I'm looking for seems simple enough, maybe I'm just looking for something that The Grocery Store just doesn't carry.
I was still distressed when we got back to Shadow's place. Ryan greeted us as soon as we walked in, with fresh beers from the nearby store already in hand. As soon as I set my things down, I took one from him-- my only remedy. As soon as I did, he said, Oh, Foram! I have something for you.
He reached into his backpack and pulled out a jar of curry-style salsa that he just happened to pick up from the store along with the beers. He had seen it while checking out and thought of me (as an important little Indian in his life). I was elated. He had no idea why.
I thanked him profusely, for bringing me my salsa, and for teaching me a lesson almost instantly. Maybe the whole point is that looking for my Salsa-- with my eyes or my heart-- will not do me any good if my Salsa just isn't around yet. I might be in the wrong place, or maybe it's just the wrong time, but when it comes down to it, with my nearsighted eyes and my farsighted heart wide open, my Salsa will find me.

she maps everything...

Her son's favorite burrito joints...

 

"This little map celebrates my mastery of the “My Maps” feature on Google Maps, introduced to me by my son Greg, who also happens to be my webmaster and computer guru. Obviously, he's a huge burrito fan. The text at the bottom("I like burritos") is a nod to Greg's wife Yenari, for whom he is learning essential Korean"

Or the New York City Marathon...

Or the journey of a person...

                                                              -Redstone Studios

I wonder if I can stay put, if I can rest in one spot,

just long enough for you to get here

and find me.

I’m floating, trying, but

I’m losing my bearings while I play it cool,

while I pretend that I’m not thinking

of what dress I’ll wear when we have our first picnic

of what I’ll order when we stay in and watch a movie.

Tether me to this place,

where my heart skips at the sight and sound and feel of your name

on paper or in the air.

I’m letting myself sail on this breeze,

listening to the susurrus of my insides.

I am scared,

damn, I’m scared.

And a million other things.

***

You gave me your card.

A token, a fingerprint, a static timestamp

of the night you started to stick.

You left it on my nightstand.

It’s still on my nightstand.

Sometimes it’s covered

by a book or a glass of water or a hair clip,

and sometimes I’ll pull it out from under, just to remember

what it feels like to know

where to find you.

So I’ll do my very best to wait, patiently, painfully,

and as gracefully

as I can.

just do me a favor

And find me.

portrait of grief

         Jayendra Bhatt was a rickety old man, at least at first glance. He would careen down the sidewalk using his old cane as if it were a prop to make his grandchildren laugh.  “He had this funny British-Indian accent,” said Kush Bhatt, 15, his youngest grandchild. “He would say things like, ‘make haste’ when he wanted us to hurry and ‘take heed’ when he wanted us to listen.”  Those were phrases he once often used on students as a Professor and Dean at Sardar Patel University in Anand, a city in the western Indian state of Gujarat. He was a scholar, philosopher, athlete, and boxer (and though he looked delicate in his old age, he still had the muscles to prove it). An avid reader, Bhatt always had a book in hand. Indeed, in his very last moments, before dying of a heart attack while lying in his bed, Bhatt took his final breath with a book rested on his chest.  Bhatt was an atheist who believed that happiness was essential to life, and that it came from peace within the heart, not from outside forces. “Every day he would ask the same thing when I got home from school,” Kush added. “He would ask, ‘Are you happy?’ I would say, ‘Yeah Dada, I’m happy.’ Then he'd smile and say, ‘Good, that’s all.’” 

in memoriam, 4/5/08

Recently, I got a notice from my building asking if I’d like to renew my lease, something I normally anticipate months in advance as I start making plans for the coming year and all the changes it’ll bring. When it came in the mail this time, my first instinct was to start looking for another apartment on CraigsList, as usual. But before I could crack open my computer, a thought occurred to me—the first of its kind that I think I’ve ever had: I don’t want to move. After five years of packing up and switching spaces, I think I'm going to pass on the ritual this time around. Part of me is totally surprised. The other part of me is breathing a sigh of relief.

I love moving. Always have, and in every way. I’ve always liked the physical act of getting up and going. I danced for 11 years. I have that shaky-leg syndrome whenever I'm sitting down. I picked up and left home at 18 to move to New York--pretty much the city of movement--and I've hopped from apartment to apartment every year since. My mind relishes in distraction. I have a feather tattooed on me to remind myself of how beautiful it can be when things stir; some of the most special moments in my life have been when I felt things shift inside of me.

But for the first time, I think I’d like to stay where I am, in a little apartment made up of walls painted yellow and blue, decorated with pictures and art and shelves stacked with books; a little apartment that, occasionally, a little mouse scurries across; a little apartment with a rusty fire escape and not very much storage space; a little apartment that has grown me up in the past year in entirely unexpected ways. Yes, I think I’d like to stay where I am.

In yoga, Savasana, or corpse pose, is considered by some as the most challenging—you lie on your back, palms facing up, and remain perfectly still. What makes it so difficult is that you have every opportunity to move, you just choose not to. It's in this pose that you become acutely aware of every single swing and vibration in your body, reminding your senses of how much we miss in the shuffle. Like buds that bloom or leaves that peel open and out, just because things don’t move doesn’t mean they don’t change. There is so much to feel and unfeel by just staying, finding the freedom in remaining absolutely, perfectly, still. 

Maybe that's part of being whole. Stretching in place, knowing when to remain, learning yourself in the quiet. And before you know it, you're the person that you always were and not at all what you expected.

Why he writes

"Linda was nine then, as I was, but we were in love. And it was real. When I write about her now, three decades later, it's tempting to dismiss it as a crush, an infatuation of childhood, but I know for a fact that what we felt for each other was as deep and as rich as love can ever get. It had all the shadings and complexities of mature adult love and maybe more, because there were not yet words for it, and because it was not yet fixed to comparisons or chronologies or the ways by which adults measure such things.
I just loved her. 
...Even then, at nine years old, I wanted to live inside her body. I wanted to melt into her bones--that kind of love.
Neither of us, I suppose, would've thought to use that word, love, but by the fact of not looking at each other, and not talking, we understood with a clarity beyond language that we were sharing something huge and permanent.
...And as a writer now, I want to save Linda's life. Not her body--her life."


-- Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

Sibling bonding

mmmm...umford & sons...

Also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP5brJ94uAI

A love story

Once upon a time, in India...

She was in her twenties, he in his forties. She was unwed, the eldest of 10. He was the father of two sons and a sickly wife. They lived across the hall from one another in a small apartment complex, and, sometimes, they would stand in their doorways and glance (shy).
Soon, his wife passed away, and a love affair began. Her brothers and sisters would hear her sneak out in the middle of the night and return with a fruit-- a pear, a mango (a token of his affection). She would eat it, quietly, in the dark. Her parents disapproved, and when her mother passed away, her father guarded the front door of their apartment like a watchman. For five years, he wouldn't step foot outside, for fear that his daughter, Ramila, might meet with her love, Shankarlal. So they waited...

Then. On a trip to visit her uncle in a nearby town, Ramila, pushing 30, explained why she refused to marry: "If I ever wed," she said, "it will be to Shankarlal."
"Ok," her uncle said,"I give you my blessing."
Just like that: with her uncle's approval, and without telling her father, Ramila married Shankarlal.

For years, her father was outraged. But over time, he grew to know and love Shankarlal, and near the end of his life,  if Shankarlal was ever late or absent from the breakfast table in the morning, her father would ask, "Where is he?"

One day, Ramila and Shankarlal had a baby girl.  They named her, my mother, Zankhana, meaning deepest wish, truest hope, because she was the product of what they had wished and waited for: each other.

Super Superbowl ads

These two got standing ovations in our living room:

watching you go

This little girl, she has no idea why everyone is crying. She is spreading a blanket on the ground, crawling on her hands and knees, making room for her tea party, and she is whispering

because that’s what her mother told her to do.

There is something so essential about this way to die. It’s the essence of what a life is, maybe. Or what death ought to be. Because if you must die—and we all must—shouldn’t it be this way? Surrounded by the people you spent your life with, your memories with. This is your enormous family all thinking of you as a child, as a man, as a husband, as a brother. All thinking of you at your alivest.

And there is nothing we can do. So

we will sit and we will wait and we will fill our hearts
with so much love that we can only feel grief while we watch your soul slip out of your body. There is nothing we can do but love you,
so we will watch you die.

We will breathe shallow breaths, saving some for you. We watch you go.

With every labored breath, every yellow touch, every slow, slow movement, we watch you go.
We all knew this would happen.
You are not ready. We are not ready.

In one moment, there will be all of us, breathing in and out,
and in the next there will be one less.

These people you leave behind, these pieces—your porch, your garden, your children, your shirts and pants and cologne and shampoo—will be your calling card, your existence, long after you have left.

And when the rest of our lives happen, we will watch for you.

This little girl, she will probably remember you the least. She will remember this day as the one where everyone cried while she begged them to play make believe.

-- For Kalapi Mama

enough now

I don’t miss you.

when I stopped feeling your eyes on me,
stopped feeling your hand on my shoulder,
when I stopped feeling your kiss on my back,
I stopped missing you.

How could I miss you?
You came, and you stayed
in my breath and voice and thoughts
until you left.
And now you are finally,
finally gone,
and I can taste air that doesn’t belong to you
and oh, it’s never tasted better.

You came to me as soon as I let go
the first time
but this time I’m letting go of you.
So take back the space you gave to me
because I don’t need it,
I have enough now.

But I’ll keep some things.
I’ll keep the music the tent the dances the blinks.
I’ll keep the day you sipped my beer
I’ll keep the flower you put in my pocket
I’ll keep the pieces of the shell you cracked

I’ll keep the electricity
I’ll keep the motions the words the firsts
I’ll keep what was mine, always mine,
and maybe I’ll keep some of yours.
But the rest, I don’t need it, I don’t want it
Those things will belong to you
Oh, this way is better.

You take the sandwich dates the empty signs the last chances.
You take the name that won’t leave me
You take what kept me awake
You take the part of me that wanted you.
I’ve had enough now.

Take back the space you saved for me
Because I won’t take it.
I have enough now
And oh, I’m feeling better.

“When I put my hands on your body on your flesh I feel the history of that body. Not just the beginning of its forming in that distant lake but all the way beyond its ending. I feel the warmth and texture and simultaneously I see the flesh unwrap from the layers of fat and disappear. I see the fat disappear from the muscle. I see the muscle disappearing from around the organs and detaching iself from the bones. I see the organs gradually fade into transparency leaving a gleaming skeleton gleaming like ivory that slowly resolves until it becomes dust. I am consumed in the sense of your weight the way your flesh occupies momentary space the fullness of it beneath my palms. I am amazed at how perfectly your body fits to the curves of my hands. If I could attach our blood vessels so we could become each other I would. If I could attach our blood vessels in order to anchor you to the earth to this present time I would. If I could open up your body and slip inside your skin and look out your eyes and forever have my lips fused with yours I would. It makes me weep to feel the history of your flesh beneath my hands in a time of so much loss. It makes me weep to feel the movement of your flesh beneath my palms as you twist and turn over to one side to create a series of gestures to reach up around my neck to draw me nearer. All these memories will be lost in time like tears in the rain.”

-David Wojnarowicz