some more (travel)

Once more into the skies and on to D.C. where a long postponed conference-workshop awaits. 

Big A took me to the airport at 5 am, the plane took off at 6 am, and when I got to the hotel around 10 am-- they gave me a room right away.

Like me, it seemed everyone else too was grateful and eager for connection and collaboration after the pandemic hiatus, and people at our table lingered over half-full glasses of wine long after our formal welcome and orientation concluded. It turned out that one of the new people I met is an IRL friend of the fabulous Sarah from Harry Times. We were discussing academia and motherhood, and I had mentioned how seemingly effortlessly Sarah excels at parenting FIVE kids with an academic job and a spouse with a high-profile job--unsurprisingly perhaps, it appears there's only one of those 😀.

Speaking of kids--I haven't missed my kids since I kissed the human kids sleeping faces and the puppy kids furry faces at 4:30 am. 

[Pic: A nearly full moon at sunrise.]

"memory-keeping"

Ten days ago, photographer Danish Siddiqui was killed by the Taliban. I know people who don't know his name, but would recognize his images right away. What images! Siddiqui's image of the Rohingya woman keeps showing up in my dreams a lot lately (I've been rereading Sea of Poppies and I think my brain's conflating things). 

SV, who's quoted in this New Yorker article, calls his work "memory-keeping, at a time when we have lost our capacity to think or remember." Here are some other galleries of his work in remembrance. 

an ordinary happy

why not stay awake           

watch                                

today's felt blog post         

become                              

just yesterday's ghost        

to a moment, wonderful

right now

becoming extraordinary 

as memory

as witness, totem, story

-----------------------

Pic: Nu and At playing Super Smash Brothers, a game they acquired the weekend Big A and I were away in Seattle. They had so much fun pretending they were going to invite someone called "Smash" over to the house while I was gone, and I had so much fun pretending to be horrified by the idea. It was only later that I discovered that they didn't know I was pretending. "How did you even know it was a game?"--they asked. I don't know.

"How to Live in a Burning World Without Losing Your Mind"

Today I'm really feeling Liza Featherstone's essay in The New Republic: "How to Live in a Burning World Without Losing Your Mind."

"I’m in no condition to receive this news. I can’t tolerate more worry, death, sickness, sadness, or pain—more mothers and grandmothers dying, and maybe even less bearably, children.

I’m not alone.

We are in the middle of another wave of horrific climate news, but many of us are too traumatized to pay attention. The more loss and horror we’re facing in the rest of our lives—whether from the coronavirus and opioid pandemics, economic upheaval, or the ordinary awfulness of cancer and death—the less equipped we are to take it in."

holiness

can we begin with how 

reduced to sweetness

lists run through

an abecedary 

of wonder

a longing 

to recite how

we return tender

to summer's thirsts

hearts giant with shining

buddies

 

Spotlight on Huckleberry Amulya

(a.k.a Toyface and "mallalam" expert)

beyond

 

Family trip to Detroit today for the Beyond Van Gogh exhibition. It was trippy and magical.

The kids shared a Dr. Who episode featuring VVG, and perhaps that's why I found myself squeezing Big A's hand and tearing up in the immersive hall as all the beautiful brushstrokes began to swirl around me. 

like an old-fashioned riddle

I tally ego on the rosary of my body
count the worry beads of desire
sum my abacus of need

my small silence inside your eternity

my sky inside your horizon

is watching us recede

as I exchange thoughts for doubts

I wonder if you can hear them;

I think you'd concede 

that you pull me along, in undertow--

not caring for my suffering--

until you have me freed

building

A normal kind of day--normal chores, normal outings.

Went to check on the Arboretum's yearly peacock display with L before the rest of the family woke up. I love the purple spikes they've added to the begonias this year. 

And yes, it's syllabus building time again.

three in a row

Scout, Huck, and I hosted bookclub while Big A, At, and Nu did their own thing. I'd planned to have a garden party, but rain was in the forecast and mosquitoes were out in force, so I moved it indoors. And just like that we had our first indoors party since the pandemic started.

Here, Huck, Scout, and I (L to R) are spooning in blissed-out collapse after dinner.

[Pic by Nu, reflected in the glass door.]

"look for the helpers"

 I had so much help yesterday:

from the scummy

Nu skimming off pond scum

to the yummy 

At making a strawberry, arugula, feta salad

unpronounceable

I have taken these photos

no one will be looking at  
I have repeated my sights
until emptied of meaning

each one special as a child:
emotions--a trembling skin 
old memories--pause at will, 

a flip-book I cannot control

I have buried the bad sounds,

you can't say them anymore

soon I will be lost, exploring,

then unravel love for myself

I can announce to strangers

that I survived, can say I am

renewed, though I still carry  

this ventriloquist's act of you

Jig

Seaplane back to Seattle today.

I got to play copilot too.

Play copilot--I didn't actually touch any of the controls... 

I guess that had a lot to do with how I made it to Seattle, then to Detroit, and finally home today.

island times

Off to San Juan Islands --> 

Friday Harbor --> 

Saltwater Farm. 

Day tripping to Cattlepoint, the lighthouse, lawn games, barbecue, dancing, laughing and snarking on cousins' old Chennai stories about 27D (bus # not Apt. #), cousins learning to play the parai, slideshows, baby cousins, laser-point astronomy demos, and chatting until I fell asleep on someone's couch... 

I have this seascape with the seagull on "loop" mode on my phone and know that I'll come back to this when I need a mental/emotional breather.

Meanwhile

Another day of catching up on the last year with fam, and so many I hadn't seen in years. S Auntie and I always end up reminiscing about when she babysat us and I always remember the pencil eraser she had that was shaped like a bulldog. 

Meanwhile back at home, Nu loved the Boss Day presents I packed for them before we left.

Loveliness

It has been magical. This gathering of happy faces and hugs... congratulations, commiserations, reminiscences, and sweet sillinesses. Turned out, seeing A+M getting married was the cure to my pandemic year.

So much group dancing practice, group dancing, dancing with Big A. Turns out I still remember all the words to the Spice Girls, and when the DJ slipped into Bohemian Rhapsody for a minute, Big A and I promptly decided... it was a slow dance. Ha. 

Travel

 I guess this is really happening and we're headed for A+M's wedding in Seattle after all. Big A was going to do whatever I wanted to... which made me feel even more pressure to vet every tiny detail and decision.

But here we are, about to take off, it's beautiful, and... I'm so excited.

"that's how the light gets in"

we're looking for someone

we haven't seen in... years

memories--folded, refolded,
stored safely like souvenirs

 

so when you reach across 

the table to take my hand 

I already know how you'll 

want to summon a heaven

so full of holes, we lost 

places, people, all we still

seek--yet our hands open 

to applaud how light leaks in 

Title: 

Leonard Cohen--"There's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in."

Rumi-- "Stay with it. The wound is the place where the Light enters you."

Pic: Official Michigan Covid vaccination sweepstakes website.

the wild taxonomies of family chat

"Baby deer," read Big A's title of his portrait of Hucky on the picnic table faking a height advantage. 

Not to be outdone, Nu (a.k.a The Chicken Daddy) titled a group picture of their growing chickies--"dogs."

in conclusion

beauty is an accident in the day
borrowed with permission

a cataclysm

we are ones feasting on leftovers

mouths wide with awe

and appetence

as skin tightens on our tired flesh

we find brilliant secret plots

of resurrection

This happened

We got our picnic after all...

Nu and I got At to smile by asking about Mark Fisher 🤣...

Look!

An emoji for people like me...

Big A went in to work early (extended Fourth schedule) and the human kids went to the DSA Pride potluck (rescheduled due to rain last weekend), so I hung out with the puppy kids, ate leftovers, and read all evening.

Accidental celebration protest, I guess? The more American history one learns, the harder it is to celebrate.

our times

I felt like I was in a real live Yelp review. 

I had just invited At to go to the farmers' market with me over breakfast. 

He turned to Nu and asked: "What's it like going to the farmers' market with mama these days?" 

Nu said (and I quote in full): "It's ok." 

At turned back to me and agreed to go.

Is that even one star? I mean...

turn, turn, turn

I carry my words across continents

with their accidents, impermanence

bees feverish in the heat of their sting

do things so sweetly distant from pain 

a bird cleans its beak on moss again

and I try not to scare them into flight

we're "ok;" alighting on what it takes 

to make the planet spin another day

[Pic: MSU Horticultural Garden; I love this bed, which seems so effortless.]

Summer again

 

Finally, another summer day. I took advantage of our first no-rain day in over a week to putter around the garden and prep for a picnic with Nu and AC--a wonderful former student who babysat Nu years ago. I was so surprised to learn that AC is turning 30. They grow up so soon!

One of this year's WGS guest speakers (KH) mentioned how they were doing social work because as a WGS student they'd been inspired by AC's presentation as a guest speaker--I loved that so much and enjoyed passing it on to AC. 

This last year has been tough.

[Pic: Robin with cherries]

child

"Guess what I am," says the child

snuggling next to me

fists under their chin

trying to--"look cute."

And so I guess: A baby bunny rabbit?

A kitten? A puppy?

Nope. Nope. Nope.

I'm so wrong.

They are, "A Baby Praying Mantis."

I guess I've always 

known they'd keep  

making me smile.

Words: Nu; July 31, 2012. 

Pic: The trans-flag kandi Nu made today.

cloudburst

There's not much to do 
in the rain, today seems 

so small, so tight, blue...

these trees, drip, shake

drops of rain off--as if 

they're puppies. I ache... 

from rain. I know I want

sunshine in clusters, stars 

writing days in happy font...

instead here's a slight salute 

--to bent sky, clasped desires,

clouds heave, heavy in pursuit 

[Pic: Made it to Ted Black Woods with L this morning--before the downpour.)

Bhiksha

"If you wanted, you could be there," 

I keep staring 

at the self I see
in these words

Knowing day will be done soon, gone

but not the work 

it came bearing 
in cupped hands: 

not an offering but an outstretched bowl

seeking alms

restoring me

ta-da / to-do

[Pic: Baby deer I spied out back this morning.]

feeling--recursive

I take the photos in this family
--every time I send one 
to you, sister

you demand to know where I am.
I'm behind the camera,
I travel back

with the sticky facts of tenderness.
What could ever replace  
you reminding me 

to burn like fire, like diamonds
the beloved coal of my body 
hybrid, haptic, whole

[Pic: An indoors kind of day; the kids have to delink settler colonialism and Catan for me every time.]

weather or not

Rain again today; lots of it! But we snuck some other stuff in there as well. 

Met up with DD and TD who are visiting Lansing after 15 months for a walk outside and a catch up. 

Pride Parade was rained out, but the kids and I went to Salus Center's open house and my gay babies got some merch to supplement the stuff they got at our in-home pre-Pride party yesterday. 

I made "leftover rice" for dinner (rice from Indian takeout; bean and corn salsa + tomato, cilantro, and onion salsa from our pre-Pride-party's "rainbow nachos;" veggie sausage, seasoned potatoes, frozen veggies, a pinch of garam masala, and a couple of teaspoons of ghee... voila).

Then the weather alert system started going off on the radio and our phones, and tornado sirens started up too, so we all trooped into the basement (Scout and Huck anxious, Big A needing to sleep before work) for an hour and half of weather-mandated family time 😅😂.

[Pic: We found this highly apropos duo of national flags outside Salus! My parents were so delighted by this photo 😇.]

 

"The Chicken Daddy"

"The Chicken Daddy" is Big A's name for Nu who spends inordinate amounts of time just doting on the six chicks they got with L. I love seeing how proud and patient they are with the cheepers. 

But they don't want to name any chicks yet because they "don't want to get too attached." That's too much reality for me.

The all-day and all-week rain has been unreal and disappointing. I'm nothing if not stubborn, however, so I've been sitting in the swing reading, drinking lemonades, and eating cherries anyway. 

Where's Mama?: A Story in Three Parts

 

if it wasn't already clear...

 

Jackie Sumell's "A Solitary Greenhouse" asks us to imagine a world without prisons. The link has better photos and text.

From a walk through Beal Gardens.

"and it was all yellow"

Nu and L welcomed their chicks who arrived by mail (in a bright yellow shipping box that matched Nu's rainboots perfectly). 

old school laughter

to sit down with strangers talking talking
talking, the sun stunning in its brilliance 

like our laughter, sounding like we never 

heard of hurt, happy as an escaped key

I start, you finish, then we restart again  

the sisters say: "quiet now, settle down"

they turn their backs, snort their grace

and then we're off on one more round... 

odd how though it's made only of sound

laughter never loses its meaning--or place

[Pic: Waterlilies at MSU Radiology Gardens]

Fathers' Day*

The kids and I called my dad last night (already Fathers' Day in India) while my sister was making him a "full English breakfast." Everyone was super excited and happy and talking over each other and couldn't hear very well. My dad legit couldn't hear us, I suspect 😞.

At and Nu took Big A brunch in bed and got him a couple of cans of the beer he likes and a very VSCO beer cozy. They said all they knew walking into the store was that the kind Big A likes had fish on the logo... they nailed it.

Pic: My one fancy nursery planter splurge didn't make it too long before it was colonized by a family of house sparrows in the most beautiful, mossy nest I've ever seen. But now the baby birds have flown and I am going to see if I can rejuvenate the planter.

* I'm going to punctuate it this way and not this.

I said

a letter seems only an island of sound 

till it has found bridges and isthmuses 

of words and meaning

we're at this crossing to talk some more--

soaring through side streets and alleys 

where we are all children

come back, connect, read me generously

correct, on this towpath of peace, release

my complaint--always me

[Pic: cobwebs-bridge-Red Cedar River]

shadow friends

When cousin P and I had a marathon chat last week, she lamented how all the people who were so amazing to us when we came to the U.S. as grad students: the kind, generous, progressive folks--who fed us, acclimated us, radicalized us--seem to have disappeared. 

Not true, I said--thinking of L--I walk with one of them almost everyday. 

[Pic: L and I being silly with our shadows in the Red Cedar on Farm Lane yesterday.]

starting summer

No working stove yet, but I'm getting quite good at making do with L's electric skillet... I might even be thinking of getting one. Luckily, picnic-style food works great right now.

Finally got the kids' to share their summer fun lists. After weeks of begging 🤨. Maybe that's more of a "me" thing?

Lots of other little traditions are making their way into our lives. At, for instance, will share a reading and then schedule a long walk to talk about it. This happened quite organically, and I LOVE it. Right now he has me reading Shawn Wallace's The Designated Mourner. 

complications

Yes... no... I don't know... yet
how to take things for granted
let's say we're sort of Egyptian 

in all the ways we are learning 

to prepare--not for life--but death 

I hold for friends who have left 

homelands... once upon a time
with untold pasts, fear for those   

whose names change every day,

who clasp peace so hard--it splits

[Pic: Ely Woods with L this morning]

cenotaph

For you're breathy as a kettle, 
in all of this ennui, this outrage
yet we sit blandly where people 
were dead--had been for ages.

We are the ones who are alleged 

to dust off the drifting ash before 
standoff, feel around for the edge 

of backlash, its puny incoherence.

But we listen; learning now how
all news is unbearable, how it all

allows us to be portals standing

impatient, indifferent, in disgrace.

mixed

Had a welcome breakthrough on a work project and managed to meet a proposal deadline one whole day ahead of deadline.

Took a nap. Woke up because of a horrifying moment in a post-apocalyptic-style dream (someone had tumbled down some stairs because I bumped them and when I went to check on them, I was captured and they started pulling on my clothes... also, my dad was supposed to help me keep watch, but he fell asleep and didn't hear me when I was shouting for help).

I'd planned a "Summer Celebration" to celebrate the end of Nu's 8th grade year.... it literally got rained on after we set the picnic table. 

Ah well, watermelon tastes almost as good indoors too. 

third wave

A lovely start to the day, going up the riverwalk with L... Then a chat with my sister who said that a third wave is expected in India by the end of the year... After that, everything felt very off for the rest of the day. 

I made a summer soup for dinner in the InstantPot (stove's still not working), but left everyone to their own devices and put myself to bed with a bar of chocolate.

"and also with you"

MC's ordination today: KB drove here from Alma and then I drove us both to the church. It felt a bit like a road trip and I did all the chatting and checking-in my heart desired. The ordination was communal and loving and there was lots of singing (and cake afterwards). I loved it all.

My first car trip with someone outside the family; first gathering with strangers; first church service in over a year. You'd think I'd have needed and thus attended more services online this past year, but... no; I haven't. 

[Pic: Detail from St. Paul's in Jackson, MI]

they rock

 

Tidying up a box full of old greeting cards and mementoes, I came upon this (fairly humdrum) rock. I'm guessing one of the kids gave it to me. I honestly have no idea which kid or when or why. 

I checked with them to see if they remembered, but they don't, so I'm releasing this one into the wild, wide world.

I miss my tiny kids and their sincere, impromptu prezzies. 🥰

gaze

I begin to unpin guilt like it's hair
hold my own hand as it trembles
a stare still lies a bit out of reach
grows into a new part of my body

my body goes old young indifferent
time folding across like a clock-face 
and hands clap for what comes next 
texting alien syllables from my name

analog clock, digital face, so partial

to opening my heart all the way like

I once said I would in a secret place

we know where it stays dark all night

ablaze

This person I am--capricious, 

madness layering my mouth
breaks strangle words
swallow all loneliness

For nothing here is really mine

foreign country... alien tongue,

the lift in my heart merely

a mad end to a depression

Swimming lightly into this mirror
I become my eternal reflection

--cinders fly like insects

--their love a cartoon net

[Pic: Pegasus at Pegasus Critical Care Center]