Thankful

When I give, I give myself.
-Walt Whitman




For the second year in a row I am not in New York City for Thanksgiving. Last year I was living in Ahmedabad, India, working six days a week at a small, poorly-run CBO. I was struggling. Thinking of my time there, I was unhappy, deeply introspective, and brooding. Particularly when I revisit my writing, I am reminded of my frequent contemplative, inward-focused moods. There is no way to say this that is not clichéd, but I learned a lot about myself. Life and work in Bangkok are exponentially different and more comfortable than life in India and my thoughts are different too.

In writing I am able to walk through my thoughts, process the scenes I see and reactions I have, a way of engaging my mind, not just my actions, with the world around me. When in the U.S. I write only for myself, but when I am overseas I post some of my thoughts to the internet with the hope that I might communicate the normalcy of my actions and reactions - life here is different than it is in the US, the people here are different, the poverty can be destitute and conditions human beings live in deeply troubling, yet there is nothing heroic or extraordinary about what I am doing. The heroes are here; I am a proxy. Indeed, in reading my thoughts I hope you see that you can do this- we are similar.

When you see, smell, taste and experience the good in this world that exists in spite of the bad, you will act differently. If you can't go, if you don't go, I hope my words allow you some insight to the ordinary, humane, important, constitution-altering reactions inherent in going new places and seeing the exceptional behavior in the exact places you don't expect it.

--

Lately, two quotes are stuck in my head. In their simplicity and reconcilable contrast they articulate a worldview with a sum stronger than its parts, a worldview I have been struggling to formulate for the past eight months.

"You can’t help people from a distance,” said Sergio Vieira De Mello, one of the UN's best, ever. He was killed in the famous August, 2003, bombing of UN Headquarters in Baghdad where he was the director of the UN's operation. Born in Brazil, he earned a PhD from the Sorbonne, worked at the United Nations for his entire career and earned his reputation in the field on missions in Cambodia, Timor Leste, Lebanon, Kosovo (and others). I never met him, but in reading Samantha Power's new book about him and talking to colleagues who worked with him, a few things become clear: he believed in the UN and its mandate, was a good man, was guided by right, humanitarian ideas, and was most unhappy in his office in Geneva or New York City.

The other quote is from Abraham Lincoln; "We- even we here - hold the power, and bear the responsibility."

Bridging the gap between thought and action, living life in absolute consistence with our morals is a perpetual challenge that takes years and lifetimes to reconcile. It is a constant source of tension without external answers; rather, it is something deeply personal. But this Thanksgiving, compared to last, I am different, thinking with more nuance and my thoughts and actions are closer then ever before (still, lots of room for improvement). I am thankful.

Last year and the years before that, the fourth Thursday of November summoned that same, thankful sentiment, but I now say it from an enhanced, experiential understanding of what this word means. Language is a form of expression, a system to communicate feeling and last year forced me to feel the sentiment of this word, not merely its articulation, and how to act in accordance. I am thankful. Full stop. Thinking of the message in these two quotes, how I want to live my life, I am not thankful relative to something else, not thankful for or thankful because. I am thankful.

In the middle of the night on March 6, lying in bed in my apartment in Ahmedabad, I got a call that changed me. I miss Eve. This is an example where language, my command and understanding of language, cannot match my feeling. There are not words to say how I feel.

I think of her all the time. I try hard to think about how to be in this world as a result, how to honor her and carry her legacy. I try to do this in every interaction I have, in everything I read, hear, respond to, say. Previous to this, I considered myself sensitive, but my sensitivity for things changed with that phone call. When I read the newspaper I feel the pain of bombings thousands of miles away, when I see homeless beggars I wonder where their families are, violent headlines hurt me. I wish I didn't, but I know something of the pain of these people. So, I smile, listen to people, hold doors, joke, laugh, avoid blame. I am not dumb or naive, I know some of the problems in the world and know they won't get better by smiling, but this is the spirit of De Mello's quote - act. Go there. Do something. Small and large, do something. I take his words beyond smirks and punchlines and try to work on issues that matter to me, and matter to the world, in a setting that is as close to reality as possible. Each day, I try to be there, to understand, and to work, and remove distance. I see each person as capable of being hurt like I’ve been hurt. I think of Eve, try to go there, and act.

But many days it seems that the force of the problems in the world overwhelm action, provide space for excuses and despair, and the creation of mental distance far greater than the miles and meters that sometimes separate us. We shirk responsibility. We create imagine disempowering mindsets, the ultimate form of hopelessness. We tell ourselves that we are not responsible. This is a placating farce. Here, anywhere, everywhere, we have the power. And, we have the responsibility.

I find myself ready for a new bumpersticker, not content with: "Think Globally, Act Locally." Do both. We are both places at the same time. UNC Professor James L. Peacock III wrote a book called "Grounded Globalism" where he talks about 'acting glocally.' Maybe I am thinking of this, but I don't think so. There is nothing academic in how I want to live or the actions I want to take, there is humanity. There is a place for academics and scholarship in how I understand things and grow my mind, but there is nothing complex about any of this: see the people around you, respond to them, and understand that people, real people, not statistics, human beings, sons, daughters, cousins, uncles, lovers, fiancés, husbands and wives, cheaters, gamblers, refugees, criminals, doctors, live everywhere. Do your part. Go there. Act. We are responsible.

Most importantly, smile and have a wonderful Thanksgiving.




Shout out to my dad who each year cooks a whole meal for our family, and then a second, identical meal for a soup kitchen near our home.

Sacrificing for Change

Ev'ry day's an endless stream
Of cigarettes and magazines.
And each town looks the same to me, the movies and the factories
And ev'ry stranger's face I see reminds me that I long to be,
Homeward bound,
I wish I was,
Homeward bound,
Home where my thoughts escaping,
Home where my music's playing,
Home where my love lies waiting
Silently for me.
Simon and Garfunkel, “Homeward Bound”

--

I am in Yangon International Airport waiting for my flight back to Bangkok. It is Sunday night, 6:52 p.m. Yangon local time, 7:22 p.m. Bangkok time, and 8:22 a.m. in New York. Flying through the atmosphere in a pressurized cabin, vaguely aware that I am 30,000 feet above sea level, I will trade the monks in crimson robes and stacks of 1,000 Kyat notes for bright lights, women and massage parlors, and the skytrain ride to work tomorrow morning. After 15 days in Myanmar, on helicopters and speedboats, sleeping in monasteries and moldy guest houses, I am looking forward to going back to Bangkok, unpacking and sleeping in my bed.

Yangon and Bangkok are not close but the Boeing City In The Sky will travel ~700 miles in an hour and a fifteen minutes and I will expectantly step into another part of the world. Our headquarters is in Rome and trips back and forth are common but these cities are very far apart. This obvious statement is easy to forget as meetings, summits, emergencies, trainings and conferences constantly call people around the world. How often and and in what mindset many UN staff fly is absurd. There are any number of rationalizations, some valid, some self placating but consistence in work and lifestyle is rare (my favorite example is when influential, high net worth individuals fly their private, personal jet to two-day climate change conferences on the opposite side of the world).

Exponentially farther than the miles traveled are the distances between the multiple worlds. On the first day of this mission we traveled to many of these worlds: from the first class lounge in the Bangkok Airport, to our crowded country office in Yangon, to a fancy restaurant for lunch, to the nicest hotel, and onto a helicopter at 5 a.m. the next morning destined for the areas most affected by Cyclone Nargis. Such stark and sudden contrast is confusing and discomforting. With an academic understanding of the situation and always in translation we work in the field only to get back into our air-conditioned 4x4 at the end of the day. We conclude a day of household interviews on access to food - does your family have enough to eat, are there times you go to sleep at night hungry, in a week, how often does that happen - at the all you can eat buffet.

(Throughout our time in Myanmar, I struggled in the field. I rely on my ability to relate to people, to discern underlying dynamics, to ask questions based on non-verbal clues, and I did well in that space. My struggle was with the methodology and our organization. Last year we fed more than 90 million people all over the world. These people live in remote pockets, in the middle of civil war, refugee camps, floods and cyclones. Without the food we bring, they would not eat. All the time, all over the world, there are disasters and shocks, we are the first ones there and we are the best at what we do. To run an operation like this on a global scale we need reliable, accurate information about roads, weather, household behavior, healthcare access, nutrition, etc. To intervene effectively and efficiently, we need to know where people are, what their situation is, and how we can reach them.

So, six months after the cyclone in the South, during an ongoing rat infestation in the North, and human rights abuses everywhere we went to Myanmar to gather information on household access and utilization of food. Our goal was to cover the country, to go as many places as the government would allow on our 15-day visa (they issued it). In most places the roads are terrible. Sometimes we took a helicopter or a boat. Many places you have to hike. Everywhere, transportation takes a long time. When we got to a village we were focused, gathered information, interviewed people and left. The nature of our organization demands this. But, it is hard to sit with someone, ask them intimate, detailed questions, and leave. While traveling to the next place, the analysis of the previous one begins, turning people and smiles and households into numbers,tables and statistics, sometimes quickly calculating: they are not poor enough. They need help but not from us, from a different organization using a different aid model.

We work this way because we must, It allows us to provide a service no other group in the world can, but in the field, in that one on one moment, it is deeply challenging to be so ruthlessly analytical. At the very least we could bring some of our high-energy biscuits or educational posters on nutrition, something to make it seem a little more fair.)

On planes and in my mind, moving quickly and constantly between worlds and places whose geography and reality are not close, ‘normal’ grows distorted.



--

I am stuck on the idea of home.

This airport is familiar. I have been on this plane before, destined at other times for Nairobi, Tel Aviv, Raleigh-Durham, New Delhi. Tonight, I wonder where home is. A warm welcome awaits me in Bangkok, one of familiarity and friendship. But another, different, warm welcome awaits me in New York when I return in December and always. Bangkok and New York are familiar but the feelings of familiarity are incomparable. If home is where you feel comfortable, I have too many homes to count; by this logic I build homes in new places with new people and the materials around me. In several parts of the world I have made friends, learned the streets, found my favorite pub. I’ve created cities and rooms and flats and communities that I looked forward to returning to. Yet when people ask me where I am from I say New York City and I say it with pride. Many of my memories are there, most of my immediate family, my childhood. I refer to The Bronx, to Decatur Avenue, the city I credit my swagger to, as home.

Perhaps, what I wonder is what home is.

Within this question are important answers for my work, lifestyle, and future.

Flying on helicopters is cool. Seeing new places, meeting new people who think differently from you is invaluable. Understanding that right now in this world there are millions of people living in war and destitute poverty, dying of preventable sickness is important and acting to change this is more important. To have a smelled understanding of this reality is unique. The traveling that I’ve done informs my world view from a lived perspective that affords me a more nuanced, human understanding of the familiar statistics that shamefully no longer startle us. Balance remains the challenge.

I don’t want to hop around the world as if continents are small and capital cities are close, further polluting the world I know needs cleaning. I don’t want to live behind bars, in air conditioned bubbles and expensive restaurants or to work with starving children by day and drink fancy cocktails by night, using those starving children as chatpiece. My grandfather is 90, my siblings are all paired off (the stinky cheese stands alone) and the immediate future will continue to be a time of transition for our family. One day, I want to buy my 15-year-old nieces and nephews beer, to know them, not send postcards. When I fall more in love with one woman than I once thought possible, I want to be near her, our children, our families and their lives. I want my children to interact with real people, to be grounded, appreciative, and wash their own dishes. All of this is in my control, I choose how to live, but the life and work of an expat are often contrary to many of the things I think are of fundamental importance.

Lifestyle is only part of the equation. Where and how I earn money, my work, contributions to this troubled and hopeful world are important to me. I will ‘give back’ but the devil is in the details. What is home? Where do I belong? What are my battles? Feeding people in the most tumultuous, troubled places on Earth is humane, essential work that the international community must continue. But is it my work?

--

When you return from a trip people ask: How was it? In the past I have not handled this question well, sometimes dismissing people as incapable of understanding or giving a curt, uninviting answer. To see the complexity and confusion of the corners of the Earth, the people, the poverty, the hope, the smiles, the contrast between the so rich and the so poor, the disregard of the wealthy, the sickness and disease is personally challenging, deeply troubling and hard to summarize for polite conversation. This trip was as challenging as any, but I know my answer: I feel responsible.

Chin state is in the northwest part of Myanmar and is home to the Chin people, a people with a distinct culture and history from the Burmese. They are an ethnic minority, actively discriminated against by Burmese and right now there is a forced, often-violent, relocation campaign being committed by the government/military. By any indicator it is the poorest state in Myanmar, among one of the poorest areas in the world. Steep mountains, terrible roads, and a harsh climate leave few choices but subsistence agriculture.

One man in Chin State I will never forget.

It was a cold, rainy day at the end of October.The village he lives in is on a muddy path accessible only by foot. There is no school or medical clinic and one ground pump for safe drinking water that everyone shares. Children of all ages, with runny noses, heavy coughs wearing just T-shirts, were everywhere. Everywhere but school. We asked him for an interview and with a bright smile he said yes. With his wife and five of his six children, he lives in a thatched hut with a leaky roof. In his home there is no bed, electricity, battery-powered radio, or mosquito net. Looking around, I could see everything he owned. At least three times a week he goes to sleep feeling hungry because he lets his children eat first and there is not enough for him. His wife is not well and he worries about her. Their oldest son left the village at 16 and works in Malaysia as in illegal laborer (“No, he doesn’t send money home, he is just a boy”).

One goal of our household questionnaire was to understand what families are eating and how often - are they providing their bodies with the nutrients it must have? We are not talking putanesca or sashimi, only the most basic kilocaloric and nutritional requirements. In a week, how often do you eat meat, I asked. He looked me in the eye and told me that in the past month the only time he and his family ate meat was when he illegally poached a monkey in the nearby national forest. Later, he showed me the gun he hunts with. Union and Confederate soldiers used more advanced weapons. For each shot he must hand load the gunpowder down the barrel, he uses bullets he smelts out of scrap metal if he is able to find it, and he gets one shot at a time.

At the end of our interview he looked me in the eye again and thanked me. He said: Thank you for coming to my home, for listening to me, for taking the time to hear my story and of my life. He told me he was honored that I took the time to sit with him. Honored.

Then his wife handed me a cup of tea.

In my world of everything, people constantly speculate about the dire state of the world. Newspaper headlines and magazine columns compose doomsday tales filled with fatalistic predictions of violence, crime, and suffering in the future. We, those with everything and every reason to believe in the world choose not to and this man, with every reason not to, does. In the truest sense of the word, he is exceptional.

All over the world, in situations similar, there are people - human beings - with an equally exceptional outlook on life. This man owns nothing. On a day where he can find work he earns 1,500 Kyats ($1= 1,250 Kyats). He lives in absolute poverty, each day he struggles to find the money to feed his family. This is not a dramatization or exaggeration, this is his life each morning and each night and he offered me tea, he looked me in the eye and thanked me. He did not ask me for anything. He does not despair, he chooses hope.

But, you can’t go to his home and he can’t look you in the eye. His story is my burden. How was my trip? I feel responsible.



--

On Tuesday night, the world changed. After two years of campaigning, Barack Hussein Obama was elected 44th president of The United States of America on the promise of change and a belief in hope. Kenya declared a national holiday; the world is excited. I am excited, aware that I am living history.

President-elect Obama speaks often of the sacrifice that hopes of change necessitates. For me, what would sacrifice be?

For the first time in my life I am thinking of working in government, of working at home. With Barack Obama as president America, for the first time in my life, is in a position to match the exceptional action of that man in Chin state and change the world for the better.. Sacrifice would mean fewer planes and exotic locations, upholding my responsibility by entering government, working at home on a battle that is mine, and leading a life of balance close to friends and family.

Traveling to Bangkok

The top right corner of my computer says it is 6:59 a.m. on Sunday, September 14th. I sit in bed awake but my mind and body disagree with the clock, confused by the 17 hours of air travel, 11 hour time difference, and new sights, sounds, and smells of Bangkok. My body is on the other side of the world but my mind it taking its time to catch up.

Mom and I drove to the the airport in NYC early in the morning and my stomach was calm, I was not nervous, I was ready to go. Late into the night before, I gathered my things and thoughts, preparing myself for this next step and I fell asleep feeling the same way I did when saying my goodbyes: peaceful and ready.

Traveling through Abu Dhabi on September 11th during Ramadan on the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, the flight was empty; on a plane built for over 350 people there were fewer than 50. Among those 50 were two of the loudest, most annoying little children with the most inattentive parents in the history of the universe. For the entire flight the little demons screamed, cried, squawked, screeched, wailed, made every unpleasant noise known to man and beast to the point that the relative comfort of spreading across the middle row of seats was likened to dropping an ice cream before the first bite. Enter the modern wonder of direct TV on planes, countless movies, and my own fatigue. Most distracting - and it did not help with sleep - was the facade of modesty in the airline uniforms, beautiful Arab women wearing thin veils, the veils doing nothing more than accentuate their dark eyebrows, red lips, and distant allure.

Landing in Abu Dhabi is unlike anywhere I’ve ever landed. After 12 hours in the air, the pilot prepares the plane for landing but when you look out the window in anticipation of arriving in a new place, there is nothing - no skyscrapers, no visible roads - just sprawling dessert and a low, flat, tan, building designed to tolerate the unforgiving sun. It is possible we landed on Mars. Then you walk into the terminal and are smacked in the face with a contrast unlike most. Sitting along the wall that leads out to the main area are a group of women wearing burkas. Their eyes and feet are the only visible parts of their body. With them is a young boy in jeans and an American Eagle t-shirt. Covered by a blue and green tile mosaic, the terminal is a two-story imperfect sphere, wider than it is tall, the middle open so that you can see down from the second story. It is Ramadan and day time; none of the cafes are open. Red bearded men, their heads covered, wearing white shrouds and no shoes walk by British tourists in tank tops and money belts. A stern, shrouded, female security guard keeps a keen eye on things. Sikhs from India walk by, their trademark beards, curled mustaches, and head covering different from the beards, mustaches, and head coverings of the Saudis waiting for their flight. In an electronics shop an Arab man wearing a long, white, tunic talks with a shopkeeper about the new iPhone; in the window it is advertised at $1,545 - NO WARRANTEE. Duty free shops sell cigarettes, alcohol, perfume, and chocolate, while the shop next door sells mini versions of the Koran and hookas. The loudspeaker announces flights in Arabic while around me I hear Hindi, English, Spanish, French, Farsi, Thai, and other languages that I cannot name. With my eyes wide open, I pace the terminal for 1.5 hours.

Like the pilot, so too did the Western media prepare me for this landing, conditioning me to expect something other than I found. My reaction to being there was what interested me most; I was nervous. When I asked at the Etihad Airlines transfer counter for an aisle seat on the next flight, I hesitated momentarily when the man asked me for my passport. I thought of changing money but was afraid to present American dollars to the clerk, in front of a line. In just two hours of waiting I felt myself go through numerous, split second reactions of bigotry and stereotypical judgement. Ironically, there I stood, my first time in the “Arab World” (if an airport counts) on September 11th. Stupidly, I reacted with fear and anxiety, when around me all I saw were couples readying for a vacation, families traveling together, men waiting to get home to their wives, and grandparents anxiously looking forward to seeing their grandchildren. It is not right for women to be treated as servants, slaves, property or second-class citizens, it is not right to restrict free thought and public expression but neither is it right to judge whole countries, people, histories, cultures, ordinary men and women, based on nothing you’ve lived, seen, tasted, felt, or experienced first hand. There is no just reason for me not to change money in the airport.

Bangkok is cool. It is really cool. There is a skytrain, a metro, river taxis, multiple newspapers, bars, dance clubs, art shows, sports teams, cultural events. The list goes on. I will look at two apartments today, play pick up basketball on Tuesday night, meet mutual friends for dinner this week. On Saturday morning I got a spicy (spikey) haircut. My life here is making itself. There is still much for me to explore, just 40 hours old in this new city and without a day of work but, I fell asleep last night with the same feeling when I said my goodbyes: ready and peaceful.

Dreams Deferred
By Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

--

She sits across from me on the train, the exhaustion of her body mimicked in the tattered fibers of her clothing. It is 9:17 p.m.; I am on my way home from work and my ankles throb after eight hours of standing. Sagging over her slight shoulders, engulfing her beanpole wrists, her black jacket is three sizes too big, maybe an older brother’s, the elastic cuffs frayed at the ends, in parallel with her raspy brown hair that is no longer in a pony tail. Nearly empty, the subway car’s orange sherbet seats, bright lights, advertisements for foot surgeons, and new kinds of beer are all too familiar. Distracted by nothing, I stare, saddened to the core by this young girl and everything she represents.

Alone, she sits on the other side of the aisle. No more than ten, she is with no one, on her own. In rhythm with the speeding train, her legs rock back and forth, too short to reach the floor, perfectly childish. She sits forward to allow the backs of her knees to sit perfectly on the edge of the seat. She is a little kid.

After two stops, she reaches into her bag – an oversized, blue shopping bag - with her left hand and pulls out a sandwich wrapped in aluminum foil. Peeling away layers of foil and wax paper, she finally gets to her dinner: a bacon and egg sandwich on a white roll. Parts of the bacon are too crispy so she cracks them off and throws them on the floor to join the foil. Furthering the perfect image of a child, her feet now hang above scraps of food, the same as a toddler who sits in a booster seat above the Cheerios they’ve thrown all over. This is her dinner. For dessert, she eats a donut from Dunkin Donuts. This is her meal.

Instead of a booster seat, a mother and father sitting with her for dinner, a family member with her on the train, a schoolbag, she continues her journey alone. She looks comfortable, as if she has done this many times before. But, in spite of her hardened shell and the independence defaulted upon her, she is still just a child with a playful curiosity in her eye. She starts to play with her food, the aluminum foil of her dinner becomes her distraction for the few remaining stops.

With great attention to detail, she tears one piece into a rectangle and folds it in half two times. Playing dress up, imitating, emulating, the role models from T.V., her block, movies, music, magazines, she puts the foil in her mouth, suctions it around her top teeth, and smiles into the window to admire her new grill. Stretching her neck to see her reflection, she laughs out loud in delight, pleased, smiling with joy at the altered reality she dressed-up her way into. Thrilled, her eyes sparkle, someone all of a sudden.

Three seconds later, as quickly as it comes, it goes, her amusement stops. With no one to acknowledge her or play along, to believe, to pretend, defeat sets in and, with a face of dejection she removes her grill and throws it on the floor. Her dreams, like the drool on the side of her mouth, wiped off and thrown away.

The doors open at her stop. She hops off her chair, grabs the huge blue shopping bag, and gets off the train in one of the most crime-ridden areas of the Bronx. Below her seat sit bits of crispy bacon, stale bread, and her dreams. Still alone, she climbs the stairs.

--

I worry about the state of our children. I miss my friend Eve, I mourn for her future (Gabriela’s beautiful phrasing), think of her family, miss our friendship, her laughter, smarts, concern for people. I just miss her. Her death and the violent way she left the world is on my mind all the time and affects me all the time in complicated ways I am not fully able to understand or articulate. Yet, one of the questions I come back to again and again is this: What are we doing to our young people? As I ride my bike through the streets and pages of case studies, crime statistics, and Op-Ed columns, I am saddened by the state of childhood, by how we have failed a generation of young people. It hurts me to know that 10-year-old children do not believe in their dreams -- dreams not just deferred, but dreams they never believed to begin with.

dthonline.com

I am home from India having concluded my fellowship early to return to the US, family and friends to say goodbye to my former roomate and dear friend.

An excerpt from February’s monthly report (names changed and organization called AA). ‘Rents and a break get here tomorrow; thank god.

I am totally frustrated, fed up, and out of patience, feeling like I don’t want to be working in Ahmedabad any longer. There is no one event that tipped the scale. In the beginning months I was fine to do anything, handling (more or less) certain frustrations, trying to work hard, excited at times and looking to contribute however possible. Seven months in, my patience is lost and my nerves are on their last legs, sick of people hissing at me in the street, the chaos of our office, and most things in between. Within AA I am an english-speaking secretary and the expectation with which people ask me to do menial tasks is annoying. People still stare in the streets, are rude, the city is dusty and loud. I don’t like it.

What I like least about it is my reaction. In a previous life I was a happy, energetic, (relatively) patient, stress-free person with an optimist’s outlook on each day, an appreciation for human interactions, and a generally pleasant countenance. Now, my interactions are curt, sometimes rude. I hate this, I don’t want to be rude to anyone, in my office, rickshaw drivers – anyone -- but it is a coping mechanism, one that I have done my best to avoid for months and months but find myself reverting to. It is not nice to be unkind it is not how I care to live my life but, sadly, I am.

This infects everything, my work with and commitment to AA most notably. I’ve started looking ahead, counting the days until I run the marathon and leave right after that. This is not a good way to be here and I don’t know how to change it – it must improve – for the remaining time. Hopefully a week with my parents, a break (we just had a break), and some time away will reinvigorate me for the balance.

What I find most problematic is dealing with _____ji, a man I have grown to appreciate so deeply for his archetypal imperfection. He is such a good man, a sweet man with a caring heart and the best intentions, but he doesn’t know what he is doing running an NGO and makes it up as he goes. He is stubborn, sexist in ways he is not aware of, frantic, a great talker. In him I see someone struggling to lead, to support a staff where funding might be running out, to help these workers, to play a part – to act in a space that requires a skill set he does not have and he tries every day, as best he knows, to cover his bases. He is not dumb or naïve, he is cunning, manipulative at times (I think he has ADHD. I mean that. I have never seen the man sit still for more than 10 minutes and even when he is sitting his eyes constantly dart around the room, and his hands fiddle with something. He does not focus or listen. At first I thought it was just his personality, and in part it is, but so too do I think he has ADHD. Yes, this is my professional, psychiatric opinion).

Because of his character, I have a very hard time telling him no. When he asks me to do something, we are not really able to talk through why he/AA is doing it – language is a problem but the bigger problem is that he doesn’t work in this way - what he is getting at, any sort of broader strategy or plan, so I have two options; “_____ji, this is a good idea,” and his excited reply of, “Good good good, very good!” or my reply of “_____ji, I don’t think this is the best option” and his defeated admission: “As you like.”

Living Here

From the window of my room on the tenth floor I can see a lot. Facing the intersection, I see the empty plot next door sprinkled with litter and surviving plants. A stray dog and her puppies roam for food. Across the street on both corners are empty lots and high rises just beyond, tall buildings of poured concrete that don’t sweat and will soon buckle under the yearly stress of ten months of dry heat and two months of biblical rains. Opposite our compound is a party plot, a series of three grass cordons decorated with flowers, ribbon, music, stages, and gross amounts of food in an over the top, tacky show of wealth. Announced by blaring eight-person bands, horse and carriage, and dancing processions, arranged marriages unfold here, the platform for wealthy, exclusive families to broadcast their mergers. Love is absent. Motorbikes speed by, green and yellow rickshaws spewing fumes prowl in the search for customers. A man wearing a wrinkled white dhoti rolls along on his fruit cart smoking a bidi, absent-mindedly steering his camel. Each morning, this is what I see. This is where I live.

At the train station last night I dismissed a mother of no more than twenty, her infant child swaddled on her hip, when she asked me for ten rupees. My nod so fast, it was almost instinctual, a reflex.

Living here worries me. Every day I see things that are not right and they’ve phased from outrageous to normal, my reaction no longer disgust or sadness or indignation, but of shrugged shoulders and self-centered concerns.

This afternoon, on the way to the store to buy 500 rupees of phone credit, I passed a construction site. Under the noon sun, two young women worked together to haul bricks from the street to the mason 100 yards away. One of the women, in a yellow sari, her muscular mid drift exposed, bangles covering her biceps, shoulders pulled back with a strong, royal stature, stood with a piece of rolled cloth on her head and a plank of wood on top of that -- the cloth serving as a shock absorber and soft base for balance. The other woman symmetrically placed bricks onto the piece of wood, five across and four high. Without looking down and with twenty bricks stacked on her head, the woman in the yellow sari walked to the mason.

Nearby, on a pile of sand, two young boys in t-shirts and nothing else were playing, their hair matted and dirty, almost dredded in filth, snot crusted to their upper lips.

Every night around 10 p.m., our doorbell rings. I know who it is; when it rings I scamper into the kitchen and look for something to give. A piece of fruit, some biscuits, leftover food if there is any, I try to find something. The man at the door is a Dalit (untouchable) sweeper who works in our compound and the neighboring ones. Without fail, he, and sometimes his son, make rounds of the building to beg for food. People toss him one or two rottis, some daal, vegetables on a good day. What he collects will be his family’s food for the day.

These are easy examples, obvious examples of destitution that stands in the most marked contrast to Western norms of what is and what is not acceptable. These are the norms. There are others that are as obvious – the caste system – and countless subtler ones that also stand in contradiction to what I’ve lived: most middle/upper class families have several house help (cleaners, cooks, ironers, drivers, washers); it is ok to drive like a lunatic (yes, a comparative measure against a Western norm that could very easily be tame driving by Indian standards – like all norms); it is ok to harass women; blatant corruption; piss anywhere you want; litter; answer the phone in the middle of an important meeting; wear white denim, ass-hugging bellbottoms.

Maybe adjusting or adapting or accepting norms is a coping mechanism, something you have to do not to go crazy in a new place where the customs are different from what you know. Sometimes there is no choice and you eat what you are served. In this international volunteer game, this is often encouraged and called acculturation or behavioral fluency, substituting Skippy peanut butter for locally roasted peanuts, or jeans for a lungi, or your greeting for a more appropriate, local one. In so doing, foreigners try to fit in, to assume a normal life as dictated by what’s around them, to substitute some of what they’ve known for the new world they’ve landed in.

But, I don’t want to be rude (yes yes, conversations on what is rude, what isn’t rude, social

constructions, etc.) to people just because everyone else is and it is not right for children to shit in the street, for families of a dozen to live in one room, to grope women on the bus, to throw trash anywhere, or to wear ass-hugging, white denim bellbottoms in the year 2008.

Maybe it is a coping mechanism -- it is not that hard to relinquish Skippy peanut butter - but at what point is the acceptance of norms an excuse for a dulled sense of morality, responsibility, right and wrong excused by anthropological masturbation that permits you to write it all of as a local norm. When did I go from fearing the approaching beggar because of how uncomfortable he/she made me feel, to brazenly dismissing illiterate, dirty children with a motion of my arm because everyone around me does the same.

I missed something, I’ve tipped too far, gotten used to things that no one should get used to, neither the person seeing it nor the person living it.

Maybe accepting norms is buckling under the pressure, acquiescing in the face of enormity. But it is not about the enormity, it is about what I see everyday and reacting. This is about personal behavior in response to norms, about looking out the window each morning and rejecting comfort, refusing to say that the view from my window is acceptable. My answer should not depend on what those around me say.

I can clean my own apartment, wash my own clothes, and, no matter how many times I see someone jump into a sewer in their underpants, remain indignant about something that is normal here but loathsome, inhumane and unjust. Even though I live here, I can remain outraged at the outrageous.

Yesterday someone stole my bike. In the morning, like usual, I rode to work, listening to music, taking in some warm morning sun, dodging cow shit mines, cars, bikes, and camels, on my morning route that cuts through the village, over the train tracks and then parallel to them. I parked my bike, locked it, and went upstairs to start my day. Normal, it’s the same day I’ve been living since September. At our office, the parking deck is on the ground floor of the building, bicycles and motorbikes perched in-between concrete support columns, making it impossible to keep watch out the window (not that I would). Just above the back wheel, where bikes in the West have a rear brake and brakepad, sits a single handcuff serving as the lock, jamming the back wheel before it is perched onto the kickstand that really is a stand; the bike is locked to itself. It is a joke of a lock, the handcuff from a police officer Halloween costume. Not more than 20 feet long, the driveway leads to a busy street, making this the easiest of thefts – the bike parked in a sheltered place, the lock a formality but not a deterrent, no guard, no gate, and a waiting, bustling street to disappear into. Quick cash.

When I first got the bike everyone told me that I should get a second lock. In the U.S. I rarely lock my bike on the street, bringing it inside whenever possible, well aware that in NYC it is just dumb to think that a lock will deter theft. Here, I didn’t get another lock, thinking I was invincible, or that no one else uses a second lock why should I. I don’t really know why, but I didn’t. “I will be back in 20 minutes, I am just going to the post office,” I told my co workers. At the bottom of the stairs, jingling the key in my right hand, I turned the corner and didn’t see it. Maybe someone moved it. The corner, the nook where a bike can’t fit, the street, the neighboring balconies, pan parlors – I looked everywhere. My bike was gone. My bike is gone and it ain’t coming back.

What a shitty feeling. Maybe there should have been another seven locks, maybe I should have had an alarm system on it, it is a moot point. I was robbed and that feeling sucks. It was probably someone from the neighborhood, someone who watches me come and go and finally worked up the gall the make his move. Loosing my bike and the money sucks, but the world goes on – the feeling of being robbed and totally helpless to do anything about it is the worst part. I just hope he needs the money and uses it for something good.

With my tail between my legs, I sulked upstairs in search of a: “Sorry, that stinks.” Instead,“You should have had another lock,” was the response from everyone. Great. Thanks a lot. That is really sweet. Your right, getting my bike stolen was my fault. I apologize. They mean well but it wasn’t what I was looking for. When the director returned he went crazy, ranting about how that person is a bad man, he must be caught, my cycle will be replaced in one or two or three or four days, and that man is a thief and a bad man. He is such a sweet man and is extra careful when dealing with me, but this enthusiasm was more than I wanted to deal with right then. I just wanted for someone to say, “Sorry man, that sucks,” and then get on with it, take a few days to think about the best next move and let is pass with time. More ranting, I must call the police, file a report. In the middle of his best-intentioned tirade, I looked outside and chuckled – good luck finding my bike, the same bike that every other person in Ahmedabad rides. That’s not like looking for a needle in a haystack, it is like looking for a specific needle in a needle factory.

I walked home.

My Biggest Fear

BC answers the phone. It is 9 a.m. in Great Neck. I know he is just beginning to stir at this hour, awake but in bed, eyes open but not on, periodically bothering Lezley to see if the paper came, if he pissed the bed, or for no good reason. I see his bedroom in my head, the very empty bed next him, the remodeled bathroom to help him bathe, the Venetian blinds drawn, a shoe horn about, powder on his dresser, an oft used comb. Through the crackle of the connection, a wire carries my voice across the world. The distance remains. Immediately I miss him. Hearing his voice lets me see his face; his patent hello, an upturn in the O after the few seconds it takes for him to place the receiver to his ear. Whhhats happening, he asks not just with his voice but with his personality. I hear his wise cracks, feel the sweet gestures, the semi circle of the receiver somehow now resembling his mischievous smirk as it communicates his thoughts and I feel his warm smile amongst these cold lonely mountain clouds. Soft hands, blue eyes, thin hair. I think back to shooting baskets in the park, teaching me to drive, when he let me use the remote ignition on the Maxima, days at the pool, lunches at Scobee, his Pittsburgh hat, that bad moustache, bar mitzvahs, baseball games, days in the hospital for him, days in the hospital for Doc, Tobey Gale, playing drums in the basement, the first Thanksgiving after Doc died, the look of 50 years of love he gave Doc and Doc gave him when she was inundated with tubes and machines - my Simoney he said as she turned, somehow, even though the doctor said she was going to die -- Montauk, swims in the ocean, walks to the park, everyday is fathers day to me, how lucky can a guy get, take it take it take it, Chanukah, sleep overs, tokens for the bridge, birthday parties, stories of UVa, Fuzzala, driving backwards in a rental car, meeting Doc at Grossinger’s, the bungalows, eating at that Italian restaurant outside of Liberty, bagels and lox, foster kids, basketball games, support and advice. A perennial presence.

It takes him a while to place my voice. Today he answers the phone without his dentures. "As far as I can tell I am all right." His words slither off his gums, aspirating his syllables. I’ve called too early. He is out of it, unsure at first who I am, where I am, or what hour it is. But, when I close my eyes and see him, my blue eyes just like his, I see the glitter in his eye looking for trouble the way he always does, his mind witty and ever ready with a sarcastic retort. Those quips don't come as fast now and their delivery is unreliable. This month he turns 89 and with each day his momentum increases, no longer aging with the invincibility of youth but aging in a real, mortal time, in units of faded memories, panicky midnights and medications required.

His routine is paramount, without it he is easily disoriented, rattled, confused, stressed and worried, inconsolable by anyone other than my mother, Lezley, or Big G. No more snooze buttons, he gets up when he is ready and eventually makes his way to the shower, already thinking about what to have breakfast. He eats the same thing every morning. Once dressed, he thinks more about what to have for breakfast, filling at least a half an hour and the empty room. Wheat Bran, half a banana, skim milk and his medication. That takes him to about 10:30 or 11, the perfect time to read the paper and start thinking about what to have for lunch. But, such a monumental contemplation definitely requires a change of scenery. From the kitchen, he goes to the living room to sit on the old couch in the white slip cover closest to the front door. Near the phone and with a clear view of the street, he is ready for action. He asks Lezley: “whatta we got?” He will eat lunch, take a nap, think about dinner, maybe watch jeopardy, worry about things, talk to my mom and my uncle, and get ready for bed. Small things like a note in the mail, a call from his grandkids, trip to the barber shop or supermarket, the occasional visitor or a walk to the park when it is warm, make his day, an event to rattle the monotony.

Such is aging I suppose – I don’t know - and the glass is overfull, an unbelievable life ripe with good fortune, love, health, and family. I think, but don’t really know, BC is living the last years of a wonderful life. His health is good and his medical coverage comprehensive – there is no immediate reason to think this - but at 89 the thought is there.

I don’t want him to die. This is my biggest fear and the single hardest relationship to be away from.

It pains me to be so far away. During university I saw him during the breaks and between summer forays, called often and felt nearby. Now, I call but it is not the same. Before I left my mom asked me what I would do if BC got sick. It was on my mind and yet her asking made gravity seem real, the thought holding more weight if she too was thinking about it.

I am here, I chose to be here and I try to stay in touch. It is not the same and in these important years it is not sufficient. I miss BC; thinking about it melts me into a 11-year-old child at sleepover camp for the first time, whimpering, helpless, a pain the rests just behind your stomach when you curl in your sleeping bag and try to fall asleep. What I fear most is the onset of some sort of Alzheimer’s (his memory is still sharp – there is no reason to think that he will develop it now) or another stroke, the fear that he is alive when I return but does not remember me. Or, of course, that he might die, that I might have said goodbye to him forever. I don’t pray often, but I pray to see him soon.

A Eulogy for Toi Market

Outside of the black gate, take a left, walk by the nursery of ferns and every color green, follow the path as it heads to the Adams Arcade roundabout, bumping and dipping, closer to the road at times, spackled with litter. Cross the street to the right, the petrol pump on one corner, the furniture maker on the other. Watch out for stopping matatus – you will probably hear Shakira not lying about her hips before you see the likeness of Wesley Snipes airbrushed on the side door – and the gutter that serves as a latrine. In the cold air of Nairobi’s July winter, shops open later in the morning, women with their over-bundled babies strapped on their backs dust off vegetables to make them look extra fresh for one more day, men gather around one newspaper and read about the latest celebrity scandal out of Hollywood, children on their way to school walk in groups of three or four, their uniforms perfectly assembled, their shoes somehow spotless despite the mud and puddles. Stray dogs that don’t know the difference between Monday and Thursday stay close to the butcher shops, sometimes venturing out to see what they can find but always close enough. The bag seller unpacks his duffels, rucksacks, knapsacks big and large, stuffs them full and hangs them carefully. A stall of hats next to a stall of shoes, then pants, then children’s shirts, then men’s shirts, then a heap of children’s clothes. The big Church on the right side of the street. The homemade church to the left, as big as the one on the right, is forever expanding and the only thing more certain than construction its lumber walls and plastic tarp roof is some sort of witch healing ceremony.

Directly ahead is storage, the safe where everyone’s wares are stored nightly in overstuffed burlap sacks the size of offensive linemen. Each morning the sacks are loaded onto carts and delivered to their owners who carefully unpack the carefully packed goods. At the corner it is more like J walking, a quick left and the next right just as quick, the street straight but snaking momentarily. The first strip is a locksmith on the left and fruit and vegetable sellers – all women – on the right. Red tomatoes, that beautiful purple of eggplant, interior decorated eggshells, parsley, mustard greens, avocados, mangos, bananas, onions, garlic, pineapples, potatoes stacked five and six on top of each other readying for a sharpshooter contest. This stretch of the road gets bumpier. Just past the vegetables starts the coat sellers, and a long stretch of men’s shirts. These shirts take you to the corner capped by a large pile of socks. Rose’s house is in the compound through the gate on the right and the school children file through the gate to the secondary school on the left. Running between the wall of that compound and the retaining wall of the school is the entrance into the heart of the market, as if this street is one finger leading to a forearm, the elbow intersection now towards the core. Now the path is jagged.but mkokotenies push on, hissing from behind, they have the right of way. Often, the stop, look for a smoother path, rock back, redirect and push their wheelbarrow forward. The bicep starts with a shirt seller with shirts on three levels in parallel lines to the ground, as if out to dry. Trees canopy over the path and the light sprinkles through. Cackles from the school yard rain down, shirts now untucked, footballs entertaining by the dozens. Stalls only one the right hand side, next is another locksmith who also sells radios, then a stand for women’s undergarments, a place of necessity and embarrassment, women trying to try on bras over full sets of clothing.

Oily smoke enters your lungs at the shoulder. This corner is mad, an gulf of an intersection, people speeding from the many rivers, tributaries, brooks, and streams that empty there. Bubbling, frying cauldrons and tea stands. A sharp right leads to the most dangerous part of the market, food kiosks, billiards stands, and checkers depots, all made out of wood scraps, tin or plastic bag roofing. There are few colors there and many young men with the stayed look of glue fumes in the eyes. Paths don’t go straight for more than several steps. Music blasts. It is here that salaries are gambled away and drown in alcohol.

If you go straight you head directly into the heart of the market, down a wider row of shops that has constant, surprising, smaller paths emerging where you think they can’t. A left takes you past more vegetable stands, live meat marts, and confusion. A left is alive, churning you through total confusion, spitting you out higher up on Kibera Drive near a popular hang out for drunk matatu drivers, high beggar children, a huge, smoldering garbage pit.

Most days I went straight, right through to the end, a right passed the hotels, empty homemade churches and avocado seller, stepping on the precariously placed piece of wood bridging the latrine trench, and towards what looks like a dead end. There is a blue kiosk there and a path to the left, next to the woman who sells hair brushes and wire sponges for scrubbing. These shops are sad, poorly stocked. At the end, women often sit to have their hair plaited just opposite the woman selling fish. Stepping just beyond her, the market stops but never ends. In Kibera, on Ngong Road, in lots of Nairobi Toi Market is connected to everyone by the goods it supplies to hundreds of thousands of people, the jobs it provided, commerce it facilitated, the institution it was.

Most days, whether it had rained or not, that street had a huge puddle, making it a tip toe on one section of concrete to pass the shop where Tommy would sit chewing miraa. Then Salim’s old house, and right, through the blue gate that advertised the video arcade that doesn’t exist and out to the almost-main road that, down at the bottom of the hill, forms the corner with Kibera Drive.

Sat in piles of three or four empty tires, the Car Wash staff say what’s up. For some reason, this corner also always has someone pissing in the bushes. Up the hill towards the matatu stage. This hill is tough for those same mkokotenies, grueling to get their goods up the hill. Stalls all along the left, groups of men up along the fence behind the bus stop to the right..Left. Straight for a while and either further straight towards Kibera Primary and the path that leads down from Olympic towards the heart of Kibera, or right, past the junkyard and new sparklng, Coke-built, usually locked toilets, and Swahili Dishezz. Straight goes by the travel agent and the man with a copy machine and as you curve to the right you pass MoMos supermarket, the military outpost, some abandoned cars, and the woman making samosas just before reaching the CFK compound. If you go right, there is a barber shop on the right, several general provisions stores, a hair salon or five, furniture maker or three, and then the CFK compound.

No more. Toi Market was burned down in the violence that is corroding Kenya’s core. All of it. Emails tell me: “Toi Market was burned down”; “Toi Market doesn’t exist.” No more socks, squawking chickens, 15-year-old Lacoste polos, avocados, hideous jeans, bootleg sneakers. My memory is erased. Now, in my mind, where to I walk? Those lives, those shopkeepers, that heart of Nairobi.

--

Things in Kenya are bad. People are murdering each other for no reason. Both politicians rigged the election, both are corrupt, neither care for the people: they are killing them. Triggered by politics but now largely unrelated, the hate has exploded. This is a festering hatred that rots people’s insides over years, fermented in the toils of poverty, destitution, malnutrition, waiting to explode at the given chance. Raging at the world, at living in their filth, at having no drinking water, of siblings dying of diarrhea, of no electricity, chaos creates someone to blame, someone to kill, someone to, at last, stand over. Mob violence conflagrated.

NGO work is stopped. Adolescent girls’ health takes a back seat to murder, rape, robbery, and burning, erasing years of work, creating a new set of victims and issues. Bed net distribution schemes can’t happen during flaming ethnic violence.

Think of what people carry in their hearts that they can do what they are doing, for how long they were mad at the world, a hatred so pernicious on a low boil. For so many in Nairobi life is a pressure cooker and it is exploding.

Good Morning February

I got back to Ahmedabad on Monday and back from the toilet three minutes ago. It feels good to be back, refreshed after a nice break, and that, just the third time on the shitter this morning, is a vast improvement from the record-setting shits-in-a-day pace I’d been on since Monday night. On Wednesday I went to the doctor, shat in a film canister which presented lots of logistical difficulties, at one point the initial blast almost knocking the container into the abyss, peed in a film canister (why do they give you two containers, the same size, for two jobs that are very different… different angles, pressure releases, smells, colors. One of those lab techs should try managing explosive diarrhea into a small plastic container and they would soon learn to provide a receptacle that is better suited for the work), had my blood pulled and thanks be to the lord I don’t have Typhoid or Malaria. Instead, I’ve got some other creature, or colony of millions of creatures, living in my body in a place that survived the nuclear Cipro attack. The doctor called in for back-ups, air cover, ground fire, two new types of antibiotics, 4 days in bed – these suckers don’t stand a chance. Forget world peace, I just hope I stop peeing out of my butt. It’s the small things in life.

My mind is in a good place. Leaving and returning lets you see things more clearly, realize what you do and do not have. I don’t like Ahmedabad, work is not good, and this is not the life I want. But, it doesn’t matter. Somehow, with your help (thank you for the packages, letters, emails, calls, comments), I made it through the most lonely, confusing five months of my life and here I sit (near the toilet), refreshed, just back from a 10-day gallivant to Mumbai, Bangkok (it was very weird to be reading magazines in the international airport terminals of the most famous cities in the world, waiting for my flight, and not be on my way home) and Goa, looking at February, my parents’ arrival in three weeks, and then three short months beyond that. This year has been good for me and taught me a lot about how I want to be in the world, what is important, what is annoying and stupid, etc, and I am still trying to understand all those lessons, there are many more still to come and I will be working to understand this period of time for many months and years after it concludes. But, the labor of getting through simple tasks, the burden of communicating is gone; now, instead of frustration and confused confusion, I laugh. Go ahead and state; I don’t care. I ride my bike in peace, joke at work, able to manage the little things and the larger thoughts in an engaged and healthy way.

Daydreaming

In 2005, the median White household with toddlers in Manhattan had an annual income of ~$284,000. For Black households in Manhattan the median was $31,000, and for Hispanic households it was $25,000


--

My head is in the clouds and my heart is lost, the two periodically, momentarily grounded by the change of songs as iTunes shuffles through the depths of my daydreams. Lauryn Hill coos and I want. Companionship. Jack Johnson pines. Cary Brothers tell me of inspiring eyes. Radiohead’s had their heart broken. The Temptations know I am looking for my girl. At my desk in a daze, I sit with a blank face concocting images of perfection and beauty, writing fairytales of love on the ceiling tiles in the next room. This is a feeling I get in the middle of crowds and when I am all alone. This is a feeling I have sitting in the most comfortable places, with familiar faces, in the arms of lovers. This is a feeling of painful hope that makes every love song feel like it is made for me and that dreamy someone I am yet to meet. Alone, only she understands.

Indian women are everywhere and nowhere, all around and unapproachable. Their beauty, the color of their dress, perfection of their hair present constantly but guarded by cultural norms, sexual repression, lack of freedom, choice. This is the part of my life that makes me feel the most like a tourist, in a museum, walking through hallowed halls with high ceilings, riding my bicycle on the streets of a living gallery, a contradictory exhibition on the Western media’s obsession with these often-fetishized women and my chaste existence. Vaguely Indian, international-looking women writhing on the screens of Bollywood’s latest release cloud the Western mind. Fair skinned and traditionally dressed, Itialian, Brazilian, Spanish, Puerto Rican, Persian, Greek, North Indian, Turkish, Saudi, Moroccan, Egyptian, Sri Lankan all at the same time, this ambiguous, skinny, tame caricatures emerges as the pedigree of beauty. Her eyebrows are perfect, clothes exactly stitched, blemishes airbrushed, skin fair. Of course she can cook. But the brochure for this installation piece leaves an expectant Westerner wanting. The women of those glossy pictures and billboards do not exist, real women do and they are beautiful, but repressive gender roles guard this museum’s many Mona Lisas.

In the streets, cafes, restaurants, and shops in my life the eyebrows are less perfect and there are blemishes. There are real women everywhere and they are beautiful; every day I fall in love. I try to be conscious of my coached response to this ‘exotic’ beauty. But I can’t help it and I don’t care too, refusing the sociological unpacking of my mind. I fall in love with a distant grace, a perfect braid, exposed shoulder blades, stunning silk saris, a beauty that assaults my senses, women that I have no adequate response to, no understanding of. A fleeting glance, hennaed hands and feet, bindis, exactly matching outfits, gold.

No touching, no talking, no photos, please move along sir.

I cannot talk to them; usually my armpits smell too bad. Perhaps in other, more cosmopolitan Indian cities it is possible, but here in the home of resurgent Hindu conservatism, I can count on one hand the times I have had a one on one conversation with a single Gujarati woman. A friendly wave hello is met by suspicion. I am just saying hello. We live in the same building. We see each other all the time. Just hello. You don’t have to insult my soul with that sneer; a simple wave would do. I’m fine, thank you for asking.

I left the U.S. on August 11; I am horny. It is more than that. I am horny to be horny. I want my brain to be active, to be stimulated by a glance from across the room, that it might be her calling, a stupid text message, body language, dancing, writing her name in the margin of the page. I crave the fun part of crushes and courting. The physicality is nice (really nice?) and missed, but it is secondary. I want to share this with someone, to have someone to retreat to, to work with, to be there for. So I retreat into my mind and I think of her, giddy not with a person in my life but with an idea in my mind, a classic move for me, consoled by the deity I dream of.

Jon tells me that I am good at putting myself out there, going out on a limb to far places outside of my comfort zone. But only in certain areas. When it comes to loving, partnerships, relationships, I rarely crawl outside of my tree trunk and never on to branches far from the ground, afraid to be cut down. It is usually worse than that, letting someone in for a peek, then like a paranoid old Jewish lady living in the South Bronx with seven cats and newspapers from the past 40 years, scare them away, close down, bolt the eight locks of the door and, alone, eat my matzo ball soup, almost resenting that they got to see my prized newspapers and antique phone -- places strangers don’t get to see.

Maybe this is why I travel, an escape, a place to do the opposite of what I just said, to be vulnerable far from friends and family, to love, to work hard in a place that I enter already knowing when I am going to leave. So too does it make a firm excuse to avoid relationships in the U.S., convenient excuses that I convince myself of and tell to others: now is not a good time because I am going to Kenya for the summer, Scotland for the semester, India for the year.

Thelonius Monk plays beauty into a religious experience. The Beatles tell me love is all I need.

Deep down I know I am not lying. I want to be in love, to be loved, to pain through it, to have someone to share things with, to make me stronger. I want this so badly. I want to write love songs with my actions, to write corny things like: I want to write love songs with my actions and I sit here dancing through this thought in the love songs of the world, indulging in a thoughtful loneliness that makes me smile.

But I can’t live in love songs, or the thought of writing them. This is the least mature facet of me. I see that limb right in front of me but I am so cozy with my newspapers and my cats, aware that I got the best friends in the world, family who love and support me, a core group that is there for me no matter what and all they ask for in return is some warm milk. The thought of compromising that for someone new is a branch I can’t crawl out on just yet, knowing full well that it is the only place where I will ever meet the imperfect version of the woman in my mind.

And I want to be with her so badly. Since arriving in India I have thought a lot about the world, how I want to be in it, what is important, my priorities, work. Sitting here daydreaming on a Saturday, I know what my long term priorities are: to never have to work on Saturday. Saturdays are going to be for cartoons, making pancakes, loving, learning, growing, tee ball and recitals and little league, dinner with my wife, the newspaper in bed in the morning, work around the house, school projects, a partner I adore and family I love more than anything. Family will define me. Consistence in my life and in my work will be the litmus test for the type of person I am, and my children will be how I change this world.

This is not magic, it takes sacrifice, selflessness, commitment, acknowledgment of imperfection; or so I am told. One day I will be ready. For now maybe it is better that I am in a museum because it is more difficult to drive recklessly, to hurt people, to showcase my immaturity. For now I just feel alone. Alone and thinking of her, lost in love songs made for us.

Great New Year

“If you have any sense of responsibility at all, stay with your riots here at home. Work for the coming elections: You will know what you are doing, why you are doing it, and how to communicate with those to whom you speak. And you will know when you fail. If you insist on working with the poor, if this is your vocation, then at least work among the poor who can tell you to go to hell. It is incredibly unfair for you to impose yourselves on a village where you are so linguistically deaf and dumb that you don't even understand what you are doing, or what people think of you. And it is profoundly damaging to yourselves when you define something that you want to do as "good," a "sacrifice" and "help."” From: “To Hell With Good Intentions,” an address given by Monsignor Ivan Illich to the Conference on InterAmerican Student Projects (CIASP) in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on April 20, 1968

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This morning I woke up smiling. It is a new year and feels like it. I am happy. My mind is clearer than it’s been in months. People are staring a little less. Work feels like it is going better. Merchants don’t try to rip me off as often. Rickshaw drivers know where they are going. It doesn’t always smell like cow shit. The air is cleaner. There is less traffic. Adolescent boys used the mighty Internet to answer their questions about Western women. Young men combing their hair in packs and posing on their motorbikes don’t hiss at me as I go by.

No, none of this changed in the calendar page that went from 2007 to 2008, there are still Mondays to start the week and no one in my office learned english as Cinderella left at midnight, but it’s in my head. Just like that my brother’s words snuck up on me: optimism is a modifier. Minutes, days, weeks, and months before, my mood, mentality, feelings about being here were not positive – at best, they were neutral, defeated to the point of contentment, inaction, sedation -- which made summoning positive energy in response to the insanity around me very difficult. Today is different. I feel hopeful, happy, more like my old self, less volatile. No more a hormonal, 12-year-old cat spraying on the curtains one moment, curled sleeping in the sun the next.

My actual celebration of the New Year was hardly a celebration at all. In bed with a fever, wearing 5 layers, scurrying to the toilet for my drop at midnight, I was not at an open bar, dancing at a club, or mingling at a party. But, I couldn’t be with friends so it didn’t matter. I was tucked under the covers, shivering, promising not to make empty promises, thinking about former lovers, family, friends, remarkably at peace with spending this over-hyped, anticlimactic party night in bed healing.

I woke up half way home, looking down at the 5.5 months in front of me. No longer am I wearing a diaper, sucking my thumb with Dumbo tears forming in my eyes staring at this beastly, never-ending, fanged, 9-month loneliness in Ahmedabad. And the last two weeks were definitely the bottom of the barrel, the holidays, the expectation of a break in the action, quality time with friends and family. Instead, just more work. No longer. Optimism now.

Who knows what I’ve done so far, if I’ve contributed at all, “helped,” hurt, been a total waste of space, ate too much, done too little -- the only thing that I can say for sure is that I’ve made it. I made it half way and it feels really good. There is a mid year retreat in two weeks, my parents will visit in February, and all of a sudden the end is in sight, there is a touch of immediacy around my work, thoughts of what happen next legitimately enter the picture, travel in June and July, thinking about how I am going to deal with the cost and disconnection of living in the U.S. again, getting to have lunch with B.C.

It is just January 4th, but climbing down is always easier.