Solitary Loons and Waiting Rooms

Some lives are lived in the solitude of darkness. Some lives are lived in the dazzling brilliance of glitter. And some lives are lived in the waiting room with a cup of coffee warming shivering hands; they're lived on a beaten threadbare couch because standing hurts aching feet and because the line in front of the window just keeps getting longer and longer. Searching eyes look through the pane of glass at the buses that keep leaving behind their tracks on gravel and idle fingers unravel the loose thread on a scarf, twirling and untwirling, wondering what the road beyond the parking lot had looked like before the wait began, and what it would ever look like if the wait ever ended. But the night falls and the crickets begin their mirthless chirping and in the murky blackness of flourescent lighting, the eye becomes myopic, focused on the unwanted entanglements that made the waiting room a reality. And slowly the dust begins to settle in, the bones become weary and before long, the threadbare couch has a heavy skeleton dangling off the ends. And to think the wait would have been over if only the line had been tolerated for five more minutes....

Bob Marley

Currently listening to: The Best of Bob Marley.

Currently reading: 100 Years of Solitude, Kahlil Gibran and a Hindi biography on B.R. Ambedkar.

I can’t particularly judge the quality of the translation that I’m reading at the moment, but considering its Marquez, I feel obliged to bow my head in respect. Lately, any and every stimulus leads me to thinking about identities and the way they’re shaped, especially by language. We adhere to language as the last straw of hope. I know I do. For me, language crosses all barriers that seem to be imposed by living in a foreign country and creates zones of comfort where I can finally “let it (insert preferred cliché here).” Whether I stick with English or revert back to Hindi or any of its dialects that I’m familiar with, my speech and my writing help me jump the good fences that good neighbors seem to erect around themselves.

So what exactly do we lose in translation? The fact that there is an interpretation standing between Garcia and myself is a given. When I imagine a hot, lazy summer day, I’m not sitting on the porch, talking to Garcia between sips of coffee. I’m quite possibly at loggerheads with the translator, disputing the direction of the winds billowing from east to west or whichever direction that they were given. My point? I feel as though I’m being manipulated. But I’m a long way from reading 100 Years in its original language. Thoughts?

On the other hand, how cool is Bob Marley? No really. Here’s to breaking barriers and just chilling on the floor with over stuffed pillows, good friends, good books and good food. I like being back. For the nonce.

For my love of epiphanies

Writers spend a lot of their time in dream worlds, conjuring up visions, vistas and worlds that somehow correlate to the descriptions of their favorite authors. There's always an adventure waiting to happen around the corner, always a stranger waiting to be enveloped as a passionate lover, always an earth shattering moment waiting to redefine the meaning of a floating existence.

We wait in the darkness for someone to switch the light on. Our conversations are peppered with symbols and hidden meanings and jokes shared in the arch of an eyebrow. Someday. Someday the book will be released from the tangles of worldliness and coffee cup stains and take on a life of its own and breathe the way we never did, and suddenly our names will be taken in the same breath with the pillars that we admire.

We wait for epiphanies. And we write by the light of oil lamps just to prove to the world that we are, in fact, living images of the hopeless romantics we refuse to see. But destinies are choices and ephiphanies are created. So here, for my hopeless love for an epiphany, and for the love of all things written, I welcome you back into my world. I think I can see the light.