Karl Marx, Gordon Ramsay, Farewell London

Last day in London today. I'd signed us up for a Karl Marx walking tour, but most people wanted to try to get on the London Eye, so off they went with my blessings. I took the bus to Piccadilly Sq. to meet the walking group and milled about on the fringes of a well-heeled, Boomer-ish looking group until I realized they were there for The Beatles walking tour. A few feet away a smaller, rag-tag group was beginning to gather and when I tentatively asked "Marx?" They responded "Yes!" and "Absolutely!" so enthusiastically I felt I was at a political rally.🙂

The guide has a doctorate in Marx studies, and although the sights themselves were merely the seedy front of buildings and smelly alleys, I learned A LOT. The best moment was towards the end of the tour when hearing about Eugene Pottier's travel through England, our multicultural group began to sing The Internationale in their native tongues.

So I had a super nerdy day by myself, then a farewell dinner with the group at Gordon Ramsay's restaurant recommended by a student, where we celebrated another student's birthday, and suddenly everyone seemed super sad to leave and "return to reality." I love these people. But also, I miss my babies, and am ready for my routines and grappling with the reality of a life without Scout. 

Jhalak: a glimpse*

Sunny Singh generously spent  the morning with us, taking questions about her work from students who'd  written about her work using superlatives in their reading journals.

And in the evening, we attended the fabulous Jhalak Prize celebration at the London Library as Sunny's guests. This was definitely a highlight of the trip--most of the authors on the shortlists (children's and adult) were on hand to give a short reading and mingle. There is so much great writing in the world... I need to rearrange my life so I can read it all.

Pic: Travis Alamanza, Ann Sei Lin, Danielle Jawando, Christine Pillainayagam, Lucy Farfort, Angela Hui, Anita Pati, and Charles Patterson. Sheena Patel and Ayanna Banwo are up to hijinks with their books in the front row.

* Jhalak translates as "glimpse," so I'm being as tautological as chai tea.

tiny, beautiful things

The hospice vet visited this morning--everyone I asked recommended her, and she lives up to all the wonderful things people said about her. We now have a sort of plan: we are to call her when the bad days begin to outnumber the good days. 

Today was a bad day, FTR. On good days, I feel Scout could go on for months; on bad days I wait for the next good day. I was such a mess today; in meetings, I could definitely feel myself bringing people down with my horrible energy.

Also, it's not helping that I've been watching Tiny, Beautiful Things, which is devastating. It's based on the Cheryl Strayed book and I cry through half the show at least. When I peeked at the book, it looks really different in structure, so I'm going to have to get it and read it. And cry some more.

Pic: Scout and Huck love this little dell with its carpet of tiny bluets in April and I'm glad I got this picture of them together so carefully sniffing everything.

by night and candlelight

I found this lovely Jeanette Winterson lifestyle quote yesterday, which got me reassessing dawn and dusk:

"I have noticed that when all the lights are on, people tend to talk about what they are doing–their outer lives. Sitting round in candlelight or firelight, people start to talk about how they are feeling–their inner lives... To sit alone without any electric light is curiously creative. I have my best ideas at dawn or at nightfall, but not if I switch on the lights...." (The entire thing, including some yummy food ideas, is here.)

I started today with a candlelight meditation... and look at me now, headed to bed before midnight like some fucking champion functioning adult.

Pic: A single lit votive brings glimmer to everyday objects. (The tiny, dried wildflowers I bought home from Las Ramblas last summer are a shot of joy every time I look at them. I remember how the vendor was so engrossed in his book, he didn't even look up as he pocketed the Euro I held out and handed this bunch over to me.)

So Much Snow!

A neighboring school district had a snow day (they had a gun incident yesterday, so may have taken this as a reprieve) but Nu had school and so did I.

Lots of shoveling though. Big A was prepping for his grand rounds lecture tomorrow, so I did the honors (without the benefit of the snowblower as I've never learned how to work it). We have a really nice shovel that makes things easy, but I was nevertheless sweat-soaked by the time I finished. It was so satisfying to look up the driveway and see how neat my work was.

I'm currently reading two novels, and it's a bit weird. I'm almost done with the new Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead, (which is in itself a take on Dickens' David Copperfield) but I dipped into OM's The Dream Builders and couldn't put it down, so I'm about halfway through that too. I guess I was curious if there were any versions of me in OM's novel... Ever since I found what I thought was a reference to me in an Amit Chaudhuri, I've been curious/wary. I just reread that nearly 20-years-ago post and realize many Indian girls would probably fit that description.

Pic: Trellises with scoops of snow in the back garden.

five pups tonight

I spent many hours on the sofa in post-pizza and post-teaching lassitude this evening, accompanied by Scout (at my hip) and Huck (by my feet) and Floof (on the bannister). The fourth pup is me ("Pup," "Puppy," and "Princess Puppy Dog" have been nicknames from different loved ones--one of whom has a birthday today). 

The fifth pup is in this poem by Charles Simic (Simic died recently and I've been thinking of this poem about how we don't deserve dogs--or war--a lot). 

On this Very Street in Belgrade

Your mother carried you

Out of the smoking ruins of a building

And set you down on this sidewalk

Like a doll bundled in burnt rags,

Where you now stood years later

Talking to a homeless dog,

Half-hidden behind a parked car,

His eyes brimming with hope

As he inched forward, ready for the worst.

 

double bubble

The reflection of the graffiti doubled how colorful that patch of the bridge looked as L and I came around the bend, and it reminded me of Laura Gilpin's poem "Two-headed Calf." 

L hadn't heard of this amazing poem, so I found it on my phone and read it to her with my voice breaking at the end.

Then we finished up our walk and I headed into a day of meetings meetings meetings meetings.

And some good news from this week: two poems  accepted to an anthology of pandemic-era writing, and also accepted--an academic book proposal that the editor who wrote back characterized as "gentle and kind."

great starts

My friend Oindrila Mukherjee's novel "The Dream Builders" was launched today. Here she is with her fabulous book and a cake version of it too. After the launch, reading, Q&A, book signing, and helping with clear up, we hung out with tapas and wine, celebrating until late with her local and Atlanta friends. 

I got home after midnight, and hung out with Scout and Huck for a while (they were the only ones up), too tired to actually go to bed. It's after 1:30 now, so I really should get up and go to bed as I'll have to wake up at 5/5:30 to help Nu get to school...

The first day of classes went well. For the first time in a while I don't have the same students in more than one class, so it felt very liberating to make the same silly icebreaker jokes without feeling like I'm repeating myself. Ha. 

(Oh... and I was one of the few people who was masked at the book launch. One of the guests who'd come from Atlanta, and WHO WORKS AT THE CDC, said they put away their mask because no one else was wearing one, but now that I was masking they felt more comfortable...  then they pulled their K-95 with a flourish and wore it. What the what?!?!)

some yays...

Grades are in ! (Early!)

Dinner with BSL and EM!

LOVING Anna Karenina!

I get to pick up Big A  from the train station tonight!

I can finally watch the season finale of White Lotus!

Pic: Lots of extra pets for Scout and Huck from EM.

imagine: rice, flour, oil, sugar, and beans

I post some version of this reminder that food banks benefit most from cash donations every year. This is as much for me as for people I know. It's always tempting to add extra peanut butter-beans-cereal to my grocery cart to feed my "larger family."  It's always satisfying to imagine that some other children (and I always imagined they were children) would be able to make a snack out of things I'd picked up. And of course when the kids were younger, it was a tangible way to teach caring. But giving to food banks is not supposed to be about how it makes me feel. 

So I've been good about cash contributions. 

But when The Refugee Development Center in town started taking up in-kind donations for Welcome Boxes, I signed right up to bring rice, flour, oil, sugar, and beans. If I were displaced and in a new place, I imagine I could make something my family might recognize from those supplies. I would want to.

There is a passage in Robert J.C. Young* that always resonates with students--where we're asked to imagine ourselves as refugees, to imagine the break in the daily routines of living... like discussing the day's menu with a neighbor. I think about that passage often. 

Anyway, Nu and I dropped off lots of supplies this evening. I could have easily done it before I picked Nu up from their remedial (whole other story!) class at school. But I kind of liked the idea of doing something together that would get Nu out of their own thoughts and social loops for a while.

* Also, that book is the ONLY time ever where I'm listed right next to Homi Bhabha (in the "Acknowledgements").

reading weekend

I'd saved a couple of books for the long weekend and they were amazing. I'd actually preordered Preeta Samarasan's Tale of the Dreamer's Son-- I was that excited for it. But I saved it to be my reward for after NWSA and Thanksgiving were accomplished. 

At 492 pages Tale of the Dreamer's Son didn't feel long enough, I wanted to keep reading it. I fell in love with P.S.'s first book Evening is the Whole Day, met her at a conference years ago, and then we became friends on "the socials." She thinks Nu is an amazing artist and that Scout and Huck are treasures (all true) and I've loved her quirky and irreverent takes on parenting, her parents, classical music, the odd short story or essay, dead celebrity heartthrobs (Kafka! Chopin!) etc. This book--which has been a long time coming--is nothing like any of that... it's twisted and suspenseful... political gothic. I was sad when it ended.

My other read was Brian Doyle's One Long River of Song, which continuously broke me in so many beautiful ways. It was a book club pick--definitely not something I'd have picked for myself. And kids, that is why I should be in more book clubs.

"under the trees in Autumn"

I walked out of the house into this weird estrangement of weather...  as though into someones's pointlessly strange story...

I love the hopeful green against the snow. It reminds me of disagreeing with Wallace Stevens' in "The Motive for Metaphor"

You like it under the trees in Autumn,
because everything is half dead.

Try it the opposite way, I want to tell Stevens...

we're all still so alive...

that's all, folks

This is it: the highlight of my day/week/month...

I'll remember her kind and complimentary words forever.

Pic: with Angela Y. Davis. #NWSA2022

the Hill

Terrific first day of NWSA in Minneapolis! I feel like we've been working on getting it off the ground for nearly a whole year and it's such a thrill to see it take off. At this point, this fabulous convention has momentum and doesn't even need me... it's quite a thrill. 

Got to see both Anita Hill and Angela Davis today. The Anita Hill conversation was sobering (she has no remaining faith that SCOTUS will rule fairly). It also made me think about coming to political consciousness with the events of 1990-91 and how it must feel to have a lifetime of wonderful work always evaluated in the light of one's sexual harassment. 

At the book signing, I wanted to thank her for being a role model for people everywhere and how much her example guided me through my own Title IX mess, but the line moved too quickly. Thank you, Prof. Hill. 

Pic: Beverly Guy-Sheftall and Anita Hill in conversation. 

what was I thinking?

I wanted to (re)read some Mary Stewart, who's been a comfort read since my teens, and picked Wildfire at Midnight, which was my first Mary Stewart and a book I'd originally picked somewhat serendipitously from the untouched hardback section in the Holy Angels Convent library. I was so taken by it, I retold it frame-by-frame to my sister and cousins at our sleepover later that week.

Anyway... So I had very good reasons to pick Wildfire... And yes, the language and descriptions were just as flawless and the murder mystery just as intriguing. But of course the historical moment is a key player too--the conquest of Everest by Tenzing and Hillary and... the coronation of QEII.

I guess subliminal colonialism is a thing.

Pic: Reading my Mary Stewart compendium with Scout and Huck.

Okay, this is new...

RH, an old student I've kept in touch with via FB, sent this screenshot for reference and wrote to say he's been contracted to write for a game called Wildsea and that he based an NPC (non playing character) on me. 

To say I'm grateful to be remembered is an understatement. 🥰 And then I was very moved that my character is a teacher/mentor. 😭

It was only when I attached the screenshot here and looked at the name again that I realized that the character Dorma Laspra's name is a composite made of the beginning syllables of each of my two first and two last names. 

🥰 😭 🥰 😭 🥰 😭 🥰 😭

I'm kinda crying now, in case you couldn't tell. 

India at 75

After a few writers shared it on FB, I've been reading this WONDERFUL collection of 75 writers on India's 75th birthday from PEN all day and bugging my cousins to read it too.

Each piece is so beautiful in its own way and every piece is so poignantly regretful about the way the promise of India--a secular, multicultural, pluralistic democracy--is sliding out of grasp. 

The slide towards authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism in my country of birth (and my country of residence) makes me sad on a daily basis. I nearly cried when one of my cousins said that since everything is only about Hindu values now, we wouldn't have the friends--Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Parsi, communist, atheist, etc.--we'd had if we were growing up in India today. 

I tried to share something from the PEN anthology, but how could I pick just one? 

Sir Salman

Really unsettled today by the stabbing suffered by Salman Rushdie, whose brilliant and provocative work is the basis for whole disciplines. I and hosts of others made academic articles/positions/reputations based on his work. And he was always so amiable and cordial every time I met him. 

I'm not a fan of his later work, recent politics, or aspects of his personal life (I stopped buying his books when he supported Roman Polanski), but I cannot forget how breathtaking and eye-opening Midnight's Children was when I first read it or how poignant Haroun and the Sea of Stories was when it came out ... I remember thinking I didn't know you're allowed to do this with language... I didn't know you were allowed to write about this... 

I hope he makes a full recovery. 

Back in 2006, I copied this extract from an article in The Telegraph:

It has not escaped his attention that living under a fundamentalist threat was once a solo occupation for him. Now we all are.

"That's true," he says cheerfully. "And I think we all are in the end making the same choice that I made all those years ago which was, you just have to get on with your life. You know, in the end, that is all you can do."

Thinking about "The Mother"

A long time ago, I read Lydia Davis's "The Mother" from Break it Down. Here it is in its entirety: 

The girl wrote a story. “But how much better it would be if you wrote a novel,” said her mother. The girl built a doll-house. “But how much better if it were a real house,” her mother said. The girl made a small pillow for her father. “But wouldn’t a quilt be more practical,” said her mother. The girl dug a small hole in the garden. “But how much better if you dug a large hole,” said her mother. The girl dug a large hole and went to sleep in it. “But how much better if you slept forever,” said her mother.

Although I read it so long ago, it's always in the back of my head as a reminder of how not to "fix things." While that chilling paragraph is about the specific dynamics of mother-daughter relationships, I think it works for parenting/teaching/editing/being a friend or partner too. There are more of Davis's stories here.

"bookstores, beverages, and besties"

A slow, quiet (bit sad) day for me today. But I saw this post this morning and have been thinking of "bookstores, beverages, and besties" tours all day.

I'm craving travel and people I haven't seen in a while and don't know how much longer I can hold out.