building a mystery

1) It's no mystery that I love Jennifer Finney Boylan, I've basically fangirled since I met her in 2011. I don't know though, why I waited so long to read her collab with Jodi Picoult--Mad Honey. For the last couple of days I've been waiting to finish all my million persnickety multiplying duties so I could sit down with my book. Just finished it today, and there were so many parts that brought me to tears and so many twists I didn't see coming and so many parts I just had to reread. It was so good. 

2) I was in a mad panic yesterday because I had written up a paper proposal about the Jhumpa Lahiri collection, Roman Stories, but couldn't find it in my email or the Google doc I'd been working on with some colleagues on another proposal. I finally found the huffy title I'd used ("Tell Me Where it Hurts: Ailment and Alienation in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Roman Stories"), by using Google History, and after over an hour of searching every doc I had opened in March, I finally found the notes I made. Back to the drawing board, I guess.

3) I got brave today and went looking for the snake I saw three weeks ago. I wore long boots, made a lot of noise, and was on high alert. But Mx. Slithers seems to have disappeared just as mysteriously as they appeared. I'd read that snakes don't like strong smells, so I took some old packets of curry powder and scattered them in that part of the garden, hoping to scare them away forever.

4) Pic: Huck, Max, Big A, and I out on our post-dinner walk... It's a mystery why our fluffy doodles think they can take on our neighbor's muscular German Shepherd, but they always do their version of trash talk as we pass. 

no stranger world

what if the the days 
called us to 
                                            speak to the strangers 
                                            seek them out
they who have much 
to share of the dark and day 
                                            whose names are conversations
                                             whose hellos are history 
when the voiceover

of memory 

                                            is the scream of a dark dagger 
                                            but sometimes lilts to tomorrow 
saying me saying me
saving me saving me
                                            for it may be as hard to get into a world 
                                            as it is to get out of it 
I too was a stranger once 
how strange that was                                
                                              let it be
                                              let me be

______

Pic: In the woods out front in the evening light. I've been thinking a lot about the way refugees are being described in this moment--partly because we used to live in Yellow Springs (Big A's old hometown), which is close to Springfield, OH... in fact, Big A was born in a Springfield hospital! Also, Haiti itself is both inspiring as the first country to win independence from slavery, but tragic for the way France has tethered it to poverty in retaliation. And I love the stoics and more recently, Martha Nussbaum's interpretation of cosmopolitanism as "bringing the stranger in." I would find it wonderful to live in a world where there were no "strangers."

a proper Friday the thirteenth

Pic: My friend PJ sent this photo of the wildfires (one of four!) raging around her home in Redlands, CA. People two blocks north of them have been evacuated, but PJ and her partner and their menagerie of animals are still sheltering in place there... at least for the moment.

PJ's pic was both a reality check and a metaphor for today--I just had to disengage from some tasks to focus on other more pressing ones. This has been a week of missed appointments and misunderstandings but luckily the work week is at an end and I get to rest, reset, and restore my settings. 

heart-shaped tree

If there is a heart-shaped tree     might it have heart-shaped roots        does it live in a heart-shaped world where we too might be invited in?      Oh, I am being silly?        I guess I am being silly.     I know.   I know I've never stopped...       I never stopped looking for love everywhere after all.      Is a heart-shaped tree an address?     Does anyone live there?       Could it be a home?     Could it be a trap?    Could it be both like a spider's web?        It is here in my life         adoration stronger than addiction      One can go almost everywhere from there. 

______________________

Pic: A heart-shaped tree! I used to love finding heart-shaped things... Here's a link to Drew Barrymore's work Find It In Everything 

today's three

1) Young the Giant was opening for Cage the Elephant this evening, and I got tickets to the show as a birthday present back in March. I've loved Young the Giant for over ten years, especially "Mind Over Matter" and most recently "The Walk Home," so it was a pretty perfect present. The show was terrific! Matt Shultz, Cage's lead singer, was on a scooter with a broken foot but had SO. MUCH. ENERGY. 

2) I read yesterday's comments, and I'm so touched by the concern and... a bit freaked out that I don't seem to be responding appropriately? It's not that I'm fearless--I was a proper ninny when there was that active shooter on the MSU campus in 2023. So maybe I'm just foolish or foolhardy from not recognizing the danger I was in? For whatever reason, this closer encounter with a gun seems not to have registered in my consciousness at all. And even as it was happening, I was translating it into an absurd dinner party story.

3) And I completely missed today's presidential debate. I doubt I missed anything significant. I heard on the news that 30% of people polled said they were waiting to decide whom to vote for based on today's debate performance--I cannot fathom what they could learn that hasn't already been repeatedly demonstrated.

Pic: Young the Giant in concert at Pineknob Theater.

our strange logics

green the river, green the woods
if we don't have time, time has us

              enflamed with error, the things 

              we mutter soon become mantras 

you must try to forgive everyone  

who said things/happen/a reason 

               finding chance, choice after choice,

               and ways to fold time in your mouth 

steal your turbulent hopes from us

send it toward your own ripe pause

________________________

Further details from the "Gun Story" that surfaced after a few retellings.

1) The kids asked me what the gun looked like and I couldn't remember because I wasn't looking at it. What were you looking at, they asked. That's when I had to admit I'd been distracted by the dog in the backseat of their car and the family erupted into howls of laughter. 

2) On why I'm not afraid I'll bump into the people with the gun again. Their car had temporary Missouri tags, I imagine they were visitors here for the weekend and are no longer in town. (Also, I got a picture of their tag, so I'm not completely useless.)

3) The confused/amused look Big A and I gave each other when the young police officer repeatedly told us they were very unnerved and shaken by this incident. It was very Gen Z of them. 

___________________________

Pic: The river is so green from reflecting the trees here! The Red Cedar in the woods behind L's house.

flickers from other places...

Max is a goofball whereas Scout was a sentimental intellectual-savant, but they do look a lot alike and have some very similar habits. Like Scout, Max loves to be with me when I light the oil lamps in the evening, and sighs the same way Scout did when he settles himself for a nap across my legs, he even plays catch in the same silly way. 

Every morning when we wake up, the first thing Max and I do is go out to the corner where we made a Scout memorial. I ring the wind chimes, while Max (less sentimentally) pees. The other day I was playing catch with Max and he came around the corner just as Scout used to and as I mussed his ears and face, the solar lantern flickered awake although it was not at all close to darkness. It truly felt like Scout was laughing in the moment alongside us. 

*

I woke up from an intense dream last night in which my dad was asking why I hadn't placed a "pottu" on him. For the most part, this is a benign request--you'd place a pottu (the vermillion mark) as a blessing; I put one on myself every time I leave the house, or on the kids when they join me in meditation. But in Tamil slang, "putting a pottu on someone" can signify they have passed away and you're paying your respects to their portrait by putting a pottu on it. So obviously, I woke up dreading the day. Thankfully, it turns out I have no prophetic qualities, and the day passed uneventfully.

*

We had our annual Ganesha seek-and-find today (postponed from Friday). The kids found all 32 Ganeshas, showered them with rosewater, anointed them with turmeric and vermillion, and decorated them with flowers. I translated some Sanskrit slokas for them to enjoy, and they insisted on singing "Happy Birthday" in English as well. They heard about our adventure from yesterday, had so many follow-up questions, and were suitably celebratory not to wake up as orphans today.

Pic: The fam at brunch... Big A, Max, At, and Nu with Huckie underfoot. (I'm trying so hard to ignore the giant pile of napkins waiting to be folded behind A.)

the one with a gun

We'll be telling this story at dinner parties forever. 

Big A and I were on our usual walk to Sparty through the MSU campus when a car careened around the bend and barely screeched to a halt at the stop sign. There were a lot of student-pedestrians around and I have a big mouth on me, so I yelled out, "Slow down!" I guess someone in the car had a big mouth too, because they yelled out, "Boo, Bitch!" This upset Big A who took off running after their car, and they sped off. 

Except they looped around and screeched to a halt next to us again. And three of them (two of them sans shirts) got out of the car. As they got closer: Big A asked for an apology; I told them they were going to hurt someone if they didn't slow down; they accused us of looking at them (which we had been). Then the older guy in his twenties said he was going to get his gun, and... reached between the car seats, got his gun, and tucked it into the waistband of his shorts. I thought I was going to burst into giggles at that point, because this very white guy with a gun kept advancing on Big A, liberally using the N-word, and telling him to get "stepping to it." And then everyone was just staring at each other--we didn't want to get shot, and they didn't want to shoot us, I guess? We told them it wasn't right, I threw in a final instruction to slow down for good measure, we said we were walking away, and so we did.

They took off in the opposite direction... but then they looped around again and pulled up about ten feet ahead of us. That's when I pulled out my phone and called 911. And they took off again, this time for real, when they saw me dialing. And we never saw them again. But we did have to wait for campus police to show up and make a formal report. And then we stayed on the lookout on our way home and snuck our way through the woods just in case their car was still around somewhere, laughing with the adrenalin of it all.

Big A is nice because, I asked, and he said that I hadn't escalated when I yelled at them to slow down--I was doing the right thing and speaking up. I am not so nice, because I told him that I didn't need my honor protected just because some rando called me a bitch, and that he should not have escalated by running after them yelling "What did you call my wife?" etc. Anyway, it was an unlooked-for Saturday adventure.

Pic: Brilliant sky, brilliant Red Cedar--the view from the bridge shortly before it all went down.

Friday vibe

This week seems to have gone by in a rush, but today went quietly. Today is Ganesha Chaturthi, but everyone had work/school so we'll celebrate properly on Sunday.

I worked with my serious independent studies students and took meetings and sat on committee meetings... and yet somehow managed to miss the English department meeting (new time)! It was embarrassing, but my colleagues were very kind about it.

At the end of the day, I printed out the flyer for the book from the publisher's website and plugged my forthcoming publication to the marketing team. My voice has been hoarse for a week, and a former student at the event thought it was hilarious and kept pretending it was because I'd been partying too hard. If only.

Back home, Nu was partying hard--they were out to the football game, senior paint party, and dinner with friends, so Big A and I fed Max and Huckie and made ourselves dinner. I made a very pretty matchstick salad of peppers, carrots, cucumbers, basil, and mint as a bed for the dumplings Big A was frying up. We missed Nu, but I guess this is us on the reg from next year. 

One of the girlfriends sent me a picture of the game, and Nu was in it! I shared it on family chat and claimed I had spies everywhere, but Nu was unfazed and rolled their eyes. When Nu got home at midnight, they shared a compliment they'd been hugging to themselves all day. Their English teacher had told them that they saved Nu's work to read last because it always gave them something to think about. Aw!

Pic: I took some new colleagues an "office-warming" gift. The "ribbons" are in our college's signature plaid and are actually shoelaces.

Thursday things

It has been an absolutely brutal day in the news. Between the French spousal rape case, the French soft right-wing appointment/coup, the latest hindu-fundamentalist accidental same-side lynching, the Ugandan Olympian dying after being set on fire by her boyfriend, the Internet Archive losing its case and the constant drip, drip, drip, of the rising Palestinian death toll... Knowing as we rightly denounce the latest U.S. school shooting that U.S. weapons have destroyed every school in Gaza.

The small habits that save my Thursdays are an early morning walk with KPB around campus before classes start, a chat with my mom on my way home from work, and Subway for dinner that Big A picks up after his shift at the clinic. Also, my last class of the week is surprisingly high-energy and just so joyfully silly and good-natured. They're prone to doing things like bringing up Eminem's "The Real Slim Shady" to argue "logos" or spontaneously quizzing each other on where I went to school. I truly feel like I lucked out with this class and hope we keep this energy all semester long.

Pic: When I was 15 I started a poem with, "Every day for breakfast, I had a spoonful of sky..." It remains one of my favorite lines although it was secretly coded to refer to my E.D. This is that sky.  Taken on my walk with KPB this morning.

the things they gave me

As we walk, Big A says he would give anything to be wrong... unlearn everything... wishes he could promise me that there was heaven and I would of course be with Scout again someday. Then we got home after grabbing my Boss Day to-go order from the sushi place and then I had all my babies--Max and Huck and Nu and At around me. It wasn't quite heaven, but contentment enough. 

Later in the evening, as I gathered the mint growing in wild abandon, I remembered Medo Halimy telling the world that he plants as a form of resistance. "They take away life... I bring life to earth," he said as he planted around his tent in Gaza and celebrated each sprig and sprout. This beautiful, lovable person dead at just 19, is yet another young person who has taught me so much. Whether or not I dedicate anything to him formally, his spirit and optimism will echo in my head whenever I tend to my plants. 

Pic: Late evening light at the garden gate. 

C.U.N.T.s

One of my (many) family names is the Telugu title "Dorakanti," and when Big A and I got married, we took the "Dora" part and linked it to part of his Lithuanian Jewish name to make our hyphenated family name. 

Flashforward to a few years later when after years of audience participation in The Vagina Monologues and joyfully yelling "Cunt! Cunt! Cunt!" in reclamation, I wished we'd taken the second half of my family's name. It would have been so cool to have been Prof. Kanti (pronounced "Cunty")--I would have borne that name with extra pride. (Not sure about the rest of the fam though--they're prone to bristle if someone so much as calls them "Dora the Explorer.")

But I got my chance while hanging out with the girlfriends after work this evening. We were making plans to hang out again next Tuesday, and I suggested that if we were going to keep doing this on Tuesdays, perhaps we should just make it official and call ourselves the C.U.N.T.s. (You know--as in the euphemistic acronym for cunt--C U Next Tuesday?) I think our group chat just got renamed "CUNTs." Baby steps.

Pic: On my way to work this morning, a sliver of sunrise over the Maple River. (A bit splotchy through the car window and a bit oblong  from cropping the car out of the frame.)

my calendar is a landscape

my feet are rooted in the ground

my face is in tears 

up at your second-story window 

in the harsh delight of half-light 

my gaze falls halfway 

dry like my breath on your neck 

eager as flame flirting with a book 

inside which everyone 

you thought you loved might live

tell me when it's time to begin 

the burning of July 

so we can take August with us too

________________________

Pic: Recuperating in the hammock (I'm feeling so much better). Someday I want to get a picture of geese heading out in a "V." (Just putting it out there to the universe.)

picking myself up

This morning, I was supposed to go across the street to L's to participate in a local TV interview about the Peace Pole quest she puts on every September. But I woke up feeling poorly, feeling sad Big A wasn't around to care for me.

In the hour before I snapped this picture, I was crying into my bathwater because I felt so feeble. My throat had started to feel tight and painful last night. I'd thought it was just me getting used to using my "lecture voice" again. But Big A had wondered while we were saying goodnight on the phone if I "had the back-to-school 'rona." 

I tested negative for Covid, but I felt awful anyway. But after a good cry, I felt okay enough to get dressed and show up for L. The rest of the day was blankets and books and bed. And buttered toast and scalding hot lemon water. I will survive.

Pic: The reporter setting up cameras. It was a crew of... one

redefining work

I was going to say I didn't do a lick of work today... but that wouldn't be true. 

I just did work that was different from what I'd been doing all week. 

I took care of my zillion indoor plants, cleaned the house, baked some pretty focaccia with herbs and veggies harvested from the garden, cleared the storm debris from the driveway, planned BL's baby shower with them (end of September), celebrated AS's birthday in style, and tended to my three babies--Maxie, Huckie, and Nunie. (Have I mentioned that Nu sometimes calls Max "Maxi Pad?" Rude.) 

And although my grandmother has been gone for many years, I always remember that today used to be her birthday...

Pic: The Red Cedar from the eastward bridge.

birthdays, bookstores...

I got to bed before midnight most days this week--progress! 

I did stay up well past midnight by accident last night, but it was just as well because I got to wish my dad in India a Happy Birthday bright and early. (It's also Chairman Fred Hampton's birthday and Mary Shelley's birthday, so he's in a very special club.) He didn't put his hearing aids in, so we didn't talk for very long though.

At the end of the first week of classes, things are going well (I think). I already know everyone's names--that's kinda my superpower so far. And the older I get, the more adorable I find my students... it was so cute when one of them made up a song to remember how to spell my name. 

It's also EM's birthday and the birthday of the independent bookstore in town so I stopped to pick up some book gifts and was gifted in turn with a lovely heart-to-heart with D.D. who still ministers to my soul although she no longer works as a pastor. 

Pic: My sister (with whom my parents live) sent me this pic of dad at breakfast and it made me miss my dad extra: our old hours-long conversations, his smiley face the way it was.

not giving up

L invited a bunch of us over to her place yesterday to write postcards to people in Georgia urging them to check their voter registration and vote early as "our freedoms are on the ballot on November 5th." We copied addresses out, stuck stamps on, decorated to our hearts' content, and wrote encouraging messages till our hands were cramped. L is not taking things for granted or giving up on American democracy.

Students are not giving up either. They're back on campus and beginning to hold informational meetings and protests. There have already been arrests at Columbia and closer to home at the University of Michigan. In this country, student protests have always been on the right side of history from Vietnam to apartheid South Africa. There are several weeks to the election, and arresting students protesting the shredding of hapless civilians in Gaza by U.S. bombs is... a bad look. Harris-Walz will need to address that swiftly. 

Pic: A couple of my co-writers and the Red Cedar through L's living room windows yesterday...

And he's off...

Big A set off for the five-day Dick Allen Lansing to MacKinaw Bicycle Tour (the DALMAC) this morning. A few friends were surprised/concerned because he was in the hospital with long Covid just last month. 

If I'm being honest, I am too. But A can make decisions for himself and it's all fairly local, so I can always go pick him up if he decides to bail. He really does look forward to this tour every year, and I hope he has a lovely time!

Pic: Big A figures out how to ride a bike... KIDDING! Big A sets off for the DALMAC.

yeses and umms

Yes!: The huge thunderstorm that arrived in the morning on my way to work even as the people on the radio called a heat advisory to warn that the day would feel like 105 degrees. My outside plants and new trees needed the rain so badly and it saved me having to do one more thing on an already busy day. Umm: Nu got thoroughly soaked on the way to the school bus and had to go home to change and then be dropped off at school. (By Big A after he got home from his overnight shift)

Yes!: Hearing At on NPR's Morning Edition! The NLRB has determined that Chipotle's decision to withhold raises to its unionized workers is illegal. As one of the labor organizers, At got to say a few words on how despite everything, the workers remain very pro-union. Umm: Not sure if the decision has any bearing on contract negotiations (ongoing for two years now) and if there will be backpay (which would be awesome!). 

Yes! A colleague encouraged me to go home early after looking at the weather forecast, and I made it home ok in the huge thunderstorm that accompanied me on my way home despite downed trees everywhere and 60-mile gusts of wind. Umm: A second thunderstorm on the same day? There were massive traffic backups due to flooding and traffic lights being out so my plans with the girlfriends got canceled and I had to eat leftovers with Big A and Nu like a pleb. 

Pic: A mullein thicket out front earlier this week. An umm but also a yes? They came up as weeds, but I hear they have health benefits. 

celebrations (and an observance)

National and international doggie day today!! Every day is a day to celebrate our doggie family and friends. But here's extra love for Max, Huckie, Scoutie, Izzy, Chester, Popo, Henry, Zoe, JoJo and also to the doggies we know in Internet land--Rex, Hannah, Zydrunas, Mochi, and Mr. Darcy--today.

It's Janmashtami!! The birthday of Krishna, the little blue boy, as my kids like to call him. Nu has always been a fan just because he's so pretty and always getting into trouble, and I think he's recently been reclaimed by second-gen Hindu kids as an LGBTQ icon. We had a small Indian feast and pooja to celebrate this evening. Back home, my favorite tradition was how people would borrow toddlers and dip their feet in wet rice flour so when they ran around your house, the floors would be decorated with "Baby Krishna's footprints." For a country with the highest growing population, Indians really delight in kids.

It's here! The first week of classes! And I'm so ready... I'll be in three classrooms tomorrow, and... my Canvas sites are live, my syllabi are uploaded, classes have been welcomed via email, diagnostics are loaded, and class plans are posted. I'm excited and keyed up! I hope I get to sleep early...

And finally, it is the six-month anniversary of Aaron Bushnell's brave, brave sacrifice. There's not a day I don't think of that young man and the sweetness of his dear face in the photos. I've never watched the video, but I probably know every word of his note by heart. Despite the horrific manner of his death, I always think of what he did as something intrinsically life-affirming. 

Pic: Max and Huck say hello to my mom on the phone!