Trade Show Blues

Didn't feel up to any updates over the weekend. The rest of this week I'll be at a trade show. In town but not at a computer much. My feet are already complaining. Ouch! Anyway, more updates next week.

Have a great week all.

The paranoid neuroses go on....and on...and

I am in the middle of writing my essay for the Seal Press anthology. Muslim Women Redefine War.

I've written 7 of the 10 pages and am getting really nervous. What if it totally misses the mark? What if it sucks? Or is incoherent? Too ambitious or not ambitious enough?

This topic can essentially be of my entire life and experiences. What to put in? What to take out? Is there a good enough narrative thread pulling everything together? I am sure to get some flak for not being Muslim enough, lapsed Muslim that I am. That's fine. And good in a way, but I don't want it to suck.

I want this to be really good. Some of the other writers in this anthology are really top notch and well known and I don't want to be uncovered for the fraud I am.

Okay, now this self-indulgent breast beating is irritating even me. Back to writing.

9 months old and already dead

He's dead. At nine months old, before I ever saw him. A little baby born with such a short lease on life. And his parents, his big brother who had made such plans for him, they are left, with an empty room, his scattered toys and extra formula in the fridge.

His funeral is today. I sent Sympathy Lilies. Wholly and utterly inadequate. But his parents don't want to talk to anyone right now. They cannot think, can barely comprehend this great tragedy visited upon their little family. Even if they would talk what could I say? I know it's not what you say...it's just letting someone know they are cared about, that they are not alone. But really, what comfort is that when the baby you carried within your body is today being put into the cold, hard ground?

When your heart is broken and your soul is crushed what recourse do you have?

I had written a story on chowk, 'The Drive,' about something similar. Click on the link on the title of this blog to read it.

In the Time of Fever

A black tiredness bubbles up from the depths of some unknown place within me. It comes without warning, without any tell tale signs. Just this exhaustion and a fever. I call it my friend. It has been with me for about a decade now. Everything else in my life could change but it always visits. Sometimes it goes away for months, sometimes weeks. But I know it will come back. It's loyal that way.

And it's wily. Oh, so sly. It hides itself away so that even if vials of my blood are tested in labs, it hides. I swear I can hear it laughing. Is it playing hide and seek? Hiding itself somewhere before it comes out to play again.

All I know is I am so, so very tired. And all I want is the will and the strength to do what I need to do today.

Waiting to be Written

I find abandoned buildings fascinating. Any time I see one I want to go in. I think I see them as time capsules. No...more like a time captured forever, unchanging, maybe even a portal to another time. And an adventure.

Circles of light from a flashlight in which dance particles of dust. Exploring, finding a time and a place, frozen. There's something very Miss Havisham about it. Trying to hold on to something ephemeral through what is tangible, graspable. A wedding cake festooned with cobwebs, a wedding dress in dirty tatters, a stopped clock.

I remember going to the Hotel Lands End in Bandra and being transfixed by Hotel Sea Rock that sits across from it. Dark, desolate, echoes of another time trapped within. Ever since Sea Rock was damaged in a bomb blast it was deemed too unsafe and was left as it is. Just recently they opened the first floor, the Lobby Bar. I wondered if I could go in, get a drink, and the quietly slip away from some hidden stairway and enter one of the sealed floors.

Will I find televisions tuned to ghost stations? Socks abandoned in a drawer? Cobwebs spun on sinks and tubs? Will I hear panicked footsteps heading down, trying to escape?

Each time I take my dog to the dog park I pass by this other abandoned building. All the windows are boarded up. Kids from the nearby skate park have sprayed graffiti, including one giving passersby the finger. Underneath it says, "This Sucks."
A sign on the door informs me that this building was closed down because of asbestos. "Danger," the skull and crossbones scream at me. "No Trespassing," another says.

Still, there is a part of me that wonders if I can bring a crowbar and break down the back door and wander in.

Abandoned buildings are like stories waiting to be written.

Asra Nomani review

My review of Standing Alone in Mecca is up on chowk. Take a look see :-)

More than Real

I got an email from my publisher in India. My book is officially on the schedule. I feel like a writer. Finally! I'll start getting edits in a couple of months and by mid-March, or so I am told, 'The Burden of Foreknowledge,' will be real. I know it's real when I wrote it, when I read it and edited it and printed it out and mailed it.

But there is something substantial about a book with a cover and the name of a publisher that makes it real. More than real. The heft of a book, feeling the paper, tracing my fingers over the ink. And knowing that the words staring up at me are mine. This is my work.

I can't wait.

I'll be posting updates and also excerpts as we get closer to press time.

Not on my Door...please

It's strange the memories that arrive out of nowhere. Strange, yet largely innocuous memories that still make me want to shake my head and go, What the fucking fuck?

In the first semester of my ill-fated attempt at a PhD (I got disillusioned and left after two semesters) I shared a house with some other students. This was near UK, in Lexington, Ky, and the house was in nearby Transylvania Park.

I had the first room, downstairs, as soon as you enter. Unfortunately, a couple of my housemates were undergrad party kings and they would come back drunk and invariably leave the front door open. Safe, right?

One night...or rather early morning around 3, I am fast asleep, in my room, when I hear the loud roar of a true redneck pick-up, revving really loudly right outside my window. I turn over and try to sleep.

The front door slams open. I think it's one of my lush roomies and mentally calculate how long I have left on my lease.

Heavy footsteps, slurred speech. The guy is calling someone, tripping over his words, so I can't understand a thing.

He pounds on my door. Like I am letting him in. He pounds and pounds and then cusses.

Then I hear it. The unmistakable sound of drunken peeing. Right on my door. It went on forever. He sighed in relief, said something else unintelligble and left.

I peek out from the side of the blinds. It's some fifty-year old, fat dude in a cowboy hat. He climbs into his bright red truck and takes off, none too steadily.

I am still stunned this many years later.

I broke my lease early and refused to pay a penalty. I also made the landlord clean up the huge amount of yellow, frothy, smelly pee that had gathered outside my door, forcing me to leap over it as I went to my early morning class.

Weird memories.

The Mystic Masseuse

Yesterday, in the morning, I bowed my head to put a towel on my wet hair to start drying it. Instead, I went "Ow...ow...owwww." Apparently, I had pulled some set of muscles at the base of my neck.

I tried to be brave. I tried to go on.

By noon I came home to work from there and called and got a last-minute appointment at a therapeutic massage place.

Sarah is a magician. Her fingers are strong and smooth and they glide over my skin, untangling the knots that lie under the surface. The oil has no fragrance, the light is dim and a large, glowing crystal sits on the counter. Some strange, vaguely, generically Eastern music plays softly. Any other day I would have smirked to myself at the hokeyness of it all.

But then, with all my senses focused on that one spot on my body and feeling the slip-sliding feeling of Sarah's strong fingers, I felt like I was in a trance. The music melted into my mind. I fell asleep.

I came awake slowly and flexed my shoulders experimentally. I was still sore but that awful tightnes was gone.

I woke up still sore but feeling better than yesterday morning.

Is Sarah a magician or a witch? Or simply my very own mystic masseur....errr...masseuse.

I've been tagged

So...here goes *clears throat*

5 years ago: I had moved to California and bought the house of my dreams. I could see the mountains from my bedroom and loved my life. This was the time before death, job troubles and family issues became prominent features in my life. Do I sound enough like Eeyore? :-)

1 Year ago: I had recently moved to Boston. Hated it. Still sort of don't like it. My niece moved in. I started feeling what it must be like to be a parent. Scary cool. I felt sort of grown up.

5 songs I know all the words to: No Woman No Cry by Bob Marley and the Wailers, Color of the Sky by Ten Thousand Maniacs, Not the Man by Ten Thousand Maniacs, Yeh Daulat bhi Le Lo, Jagjit Singh, Ironic by Alannis Morrisette.

5 Snacks I enjoy: Chocolates, Walnuts, watermelon, popcorn, bhel puri.

5 Things I'd do w/ $100 million dollars: Start a foundation for girls' education in UP (India), start a well-funded dog and cat rescue, move back to SoCal, pay off all debts, help some memers of my family get on their feet.

5 places I would run away to: Egypt, Morocco, Spain, India, Nepal

5 things I would never wear: belly shirts, diamonds, hot pants, 6-inch heels, burqa

5 favorite tv shows: Six Feet Under, Sopranos, Seinfeld, What Not to Wear, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit

5 greatest joys: Waking up on Saturday morning, the love of my life, my insane dog, sitting in my backyward, writing

5 favorite toys: Slinky, Magic Robot (had it as kid, not sure it's still around), Barbie, toy cars, Scrabble (so, it's a board game)

5 people I'm tagging: Bina Shah, Temporal, Anne (from Anne's Utterances), Estel, Saurav Sarkar

There are days

There are days when I could float away. Just somewhere. Away. Far away from where I am. Eyes closed. Sprinkles of cool water on my face. Lying on my back. Nothing around me. Nothing above me.

There are days when I could just laugh. Laugh because the sky is so blue it seems unreal. Laugh because life changes in a second and I don't know what's beyond that single frozen moment.

There are days when I could just cry. All day. Every day. Tears, fat as raindrops, sliding down my cheeks, stinging my skin, cleansing me. Away. Making me float away. Somewhere. Anywhere.

There are days...

Katrina is a Bitch

Katrina! Such a girly name. A Sex and the City gal who sips Cosmos, wears impossibly high heels, has a tan in winter, wears the coolest clothes and is on a quest to find Mr. Right, or at least, Mr. Right Now.

But she's a bitch! And that's the truth.

A Class-A bitch, whirling around over balmy waters, gathering strength and fury and unleashing her pent-up rage over N'Awlins. Did she confuse the Big Easy with Mr. Big?

She is a murdering bitch with no mercy.

Streets became rivers, sea lions swam in them and 300 years of history became flotsam. Pieces of the past floating in the rising water with the dead.

She's the little sister of the biggest bitch in recent times...Ms. Tsu Nami. These two sisters have ruined lives, entire communities. They have laid waste wherever they touched, ripping open wounds that may never heal, killing the helpless and weak with glee.

The man with lung cancer who died in his bed because he couldn't live without his depleting oxygen tank. He ran out of air.

The woman dead in a lawn chair, the bodies lying in the streets. Corpses trapped in their attics, abandoned for now. The homeless walk the street like the living dead. Parents, tired of seeing their children's hunger, looting shops. Jams and jellies, bread, rice cakes, diapers. What people do in desperate times.

Yes, Katrina is a bitch and I am glad she's dead. May neither she nor Tsu rest in peace.

P.S. Donate to Katrina's victims at www.redcross.org

Asra Nomani

I just finished reading Asra Nomani's book, 'Standing Alone in Mecca.' As a Muslim woman of uncertain (non-existent) faith myself and around the same age as her I found it an interesting read though somewhat repetitive and contradictory at times. I will be posting a review at chowk soon if I can get off my butt and write it.

You should check out her site.

I hate the dentist

I spent two hours in the dentist's chair today. Will write something more substantial soon.