feast of tear-stuffed time and thistles

(cactus-shopping successes, dirty evening lighting, handmade cushion covers from wonderful friends, a week of mondria(a)n and velasquez readings and impending essay deadlines)

Purge // Michael Mlekoday

[purj]

-verb

1. to try and be a storm, as in the way

it always storms the day you leave a place

2. to try and be a saint, as in the forgetting

of the body, its blush and rushes of blood

3. to leave the party early and alone

4. to abandon, as in watching ivy

crawl up the side of a house

5. to set the house or body on fire

6. to kneel on the porch at midnight

until the joints ignore their own whimpers

7. to keep exhaling until the chest is empty

and no longer burning

all swallowed in their coats

(here's to the celebration of grey sky glory, unknown source)

A Supermarket in California, Allen Ginsberg

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! --- and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and f el absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

idiosyncrasies and such

(untitled, 1979, john stezaker)

how to get a degree -

wander around the city gallery painting-gazing, before rushing back to crash a jewish society lunch, make it to lectures and read beowulf in two hours flat (introduction included, of course), walk into town for free pizza and recuperate on coffee after a massive sunday shop of frozen crumpets, listen to bowie and ignore the growing pile of laundry on the hazy seafoam green carpet in an artificially-lit room that's still managing to be cleaner than the kitchen, revel in your monday-freedom to come and the lack of rain so far.

haunted graffiti

(a partial shot of diango hernandez's drawing (there are many things in the air and all of them are for free), from a summer of art-tripping)

following a week point five of meetings and nights filled with youthful enthusiasm of sleep-drained eyes and new environments, there's not so much to say. unlike the two years of india, which still leak over into the now of here with run-ins with other uwc alumni and hanging out with indians, there isn't a bassline of the 'exotic' which can be described, or at least, not yet. so here, in the gap of music talks and lecture dashing and football tryouts, is all i could find.

myth of fingerprints

(on the way to a very northern corner of norway this summer)

the odd tinkling buzz of my phone prods its way through my sleep at the somewhat ungodly hour of four. the haziness of having spent multiple days amongst piles of clothing and a tiny collection of cooking implements makes this required get-up not all too difficult, mainly because i'm still in some strange trance of limbo-state-senses. this has happened before, of course, in my multiple journeys to and from the sub-continent; the stumbling out of bed to see a last-minute to-do list and a pile of well-if-there's-space items. showers of slow-motion, dressing in pre-prepared outfits, and still somehow managing to make my mother wait in the car whilst i collect myself and my many pieces in a haste is how i do it.

this time around though, i'm not off on my long-haul to heat, but on a far shorter trip across the channel. being so used to the process of overweight baggage-fear (without fail, every single piece of luggage i've carried has been overweight in the past two years, and furthermore, i've lost my luggage twice too) and mental and physical prep for sitting/staring/leaving/arriving, it's going to be weird to just be there in an hour. packing for my university beginning (i can't believe i've gotten this far!) was difficult for similar reasons; i kept assuming that i'd be returning to a campus in the countryside, where i'd need my own supplies of shampoo, dutch cheese and clothing. in my mind, 'big packing' is now strongly linked to 'packing for a hot, isolated hilltop community' - something that meant i often packed very comfortable clothing and always assumed i could stock up on scarves once i got there. now, however, it's packing for seasons i haven't seen in quite a while - and winterwear is considerably heavier than the indian summer stuff i wore for so long. it's packing for a country i already know, where i'll be able to buy food in supermarkets down the road and where people may care a little bit more about wandering barefoot students in boxershorts. i don't know yet, nor am i sure how much i'll mind others minding (then again, i doubt bare feet and boxers are a great ensemble for temperatures lower than fifteen degrees), but where i haven't a clue on what sort of person to expect or what the overriding ideology of the community is.

so now i'm at the airport, wading in transit-time, which i feel is really one of the few spaces in which one can simply sit, reflect maybe (oh the habits of being part of the triveni (cas (extra-curricular activities)) coordination committee die hard) or just zone out. of course, there's the worry of outsized handluggage to come (will i ever not be overpacked for journeys?), and then the adventure really starts. for now, i'm intrigued by the atmosphere of a passing-through space like this, where you can go anywhere and with anyone, and the gates are lit up and everything is bare. not undecorated perhaps, but in an attempt to reach efficiency, the moving pavements softly whir, the hallways gleam and the check-in desks even have automated luggage drop-offs now (these are, by the way, awful for any overpackers, because you can't even attempt the 'but i'm a student' card with them), and you know you won't leave an imprint here. and with everyone here coming from and going to everywhere, it's funny when you're completely off guessing their destination. on my way to the gate, i spotted a group of indians, and, assuming they were going home, i checked the board to see which city. birmingham.

and so the traveling continues.

years of nights

how i feel about taking passport-style photos and packing, choices and changes being the double-edged knives of always.

disassemble the parts and frame

(by Juliane Eirich)

and sometimes days crush together the wonderful, the mundane and the completely horrible, and sometimes you can sense the physical distances. but it's a mixed bag of nuts, this whole thing, and i guess it's autumn and life's still changing.

In Autumn - Mark Irwin

The extinct animals are still looking for home
Their eyes full of cotton

Now they will
Never arrive

The stars are like that

Moving on without memory
Without having been near turning elsewhere climbing
Nothing the wall

The hours their shadows

The lights are going on in the leaves nothing to do with evening

Those are cities
Where I had hoped to live.

stun gun lullaby

(by Chrissie White)

wat ik geleerd heb -
alles went,
de wereld is mooi.

tremble and shake

lately, listings -
university readings, black-ink drawings and darker days of cold-tipped fingers and freshly returned expanses of days and borrowed time.
himalayan shakes, levees breaking and metaphors surround.

in lighter news -
the brilliance that was this art-cum-everything exhibition ('art meets science and spirituality in a changing economy'), unexpectedly seeing a band i knew from my mid-teen years play memories at a concert of another, discussions of countries and borders, good weekends and golden carriage national holidays.

and left-overs -
still searching for scraps of writing, substantial in the literal and figurative senses, and spreading the autumnal love to the soundtrack of flute exercises, led zeppelin and anything icelandic.

made you a map out of blood and glass

hello himalayas, how i miss you.

sums and syndromes

(source)

When I'm not busy (attempting to begin) reading university-assigned literature, reshaping hearts and dreaming, I like to go to concerts. Here's Sin Fang, an Icelandic singer/band, whose gorgeously drifting set I watched yesterday evening, accompanied by awkward hipsters and a lovely coyear, amongst other things. Drifting in reality too, the pokey/atmospheric size of the venue meant that we met him afterwards, obtaining us doodles on our records and accents in our ears.

suns and sleepless nights

Meet Darjeeling, captured on analogue in the shrouding mid-morning mist.
Another leg of my post-grad trip, this accompanied by a Polish coyear and pots of Ladakhi apricot jam, this was definitely one of my favourite places in India. Admittedly very backpacker-friendly (we ran into several batches of travelers at our hotel, breakfast cafe and odd British pub) and a little bit of a slop to get to (a rather uncomfortable overnight bus and a shared jeep up the writhing and well-used mountain paths), the hill-station was charm itself, a series of buildings climbing the Himalayan foothills and fading into acres of tea-plantations.
We spent our handful of days there visiting the zoo, where we ran into a strange man, dressed in a horrendous checkered shirt, pointy green shoes and with a following of demure women and a film camera, wandering around the temples in the nearby town after stocking up on an amazing Indian sweet at the local bakery, and attempting to get to Tiger Hill, where the view of Kanchengjunga, the third highest Himalayan mountain, is allegedly the best. Sadly, the last activity involved a four o'clock rise, which we just about missed, and jeepless, we walked the deserted streets and peered into the horizon from the miniature train station instead.
One night, we chanced upon an adorable/amazing restaurant-cum-creative studio, run by a couple interested in design (architecture and clothing), and spent many hours there, watching Oprah, eating brilliance on plates and discussing Le Corbusier's Chandigarh. High teas in sumptuous hotels with gardens filled with white dogs and tea-shopping alongside Indian tourists followed this, and then we were off again, back to Calcutta (this time by train, luckily), where I would be told I looked like I was a Darjeeling local.

these are the days of miracle and wonder

(enroute to our temporary ten-day home in Leh, during the dawn of my lengthy summer holiday)

evenings out, days of work and bicycling, the sun warming the autumn dusk and the crown of my head - and still no words up here. i think of india, about india, about what happened in india, with fondness but perhaps also like a series of old photographs now; having the people who were part of it so far removed makes the entire thing feel more like a brilliant indie film, complete with a great soundtrack (thanks to my more-musical-than-me friends), late nights and a low budget.

one earth-bound minute

(Krista and my feet, one early morning with art deadlines and other endings impending)

Turning - W.S. Merwin

Going too fast for myself I missed
more than I think I can remember

almost everything it seems sometimes
and yet there are chances that come back

that I did not notice where they stood
where I could have reached out and touched them

this morning the black shepherd dog
still young looking up and saying

Are you ready this time

pack my suitcase with myself

(my first year room at muwci, in celebration of finally having (kind of) finished clearing up my room here in holland)

ambiguity, experience-expectation-experience.

meeting coyears who too recall the application procedure with the smiling yet modest fondness of a successfully operated patient, the strange and stilted nature of memory comes to the fore again as we dig and sum up our two years to each other, marveling at the immensity of likenesses and odd areas which sometimes undermine the unity of a twelve-school-experience.
i'm not sure where my over-description of something i don't consciously understand, future or even interpretation of some past is going, but my trains of thought reach their destinations infrequently and are prone to (m)any sort(s) of disturbances, so tracks are lost and found and i can't achieve more than a paragraph right now. life is good and busy, and my to-do list still has 'write about india' on it.

sun rays as fierce as toddler tantrums

(Chris and Gita, analogue of a picnic pre-India)

Still sifting through heaps and piles, I'm glad to have found the sun returned to me from across the oceans, and have thus taken several breaks to bask in its glory. With picnics and biscuit-baking being the order of the day, it's still amazingly busy (I have managed, against all odds perhaps, to even find a job) and I'm kept away from desk-sitting introspection and (sadly) typed-India-rehashings.

Thinking back though, I'm surprised at how much happened within the two year framework, and to use a cliche; it felt like forever, yet like absolutely no time at all. I can still vividly recall how sticky and dense my first gasp of Mumbai air was, how long the jeep ride felt, how large campus initially seemed. We wrestled in the mud of the monsoon-drenched lawns, kept our eyes and mouths perpetually open and grappled with foreign languages, cultures and food, both in and outside of school. And then, we were back on a plane, back in a jeep, and back in a familiar landscape that never got dull, only, at points, too intense.
Before I knew it, the photo above became two years old, the rooms cleared and monsoon beginnings seen for the last time for the near future. Although I have learnt a lot, listened a lot and obtained a lot of good music, it seems I'm still not quite so great at writing all of this down. 'Bad girls don't keep diaries' doesn't feel like the most appropriate phrase to borrow here, so I'll leave you once again with extensions of long-overdue promises and the side-note that home is happy and my first autumn in a while is slowly dissolving the greens of summer in a most lovely manner.

see the cities rust

(analogue cafe table shots from two years of catching up over coffees)

Whilst I delicately step over piles of assorted clothing, books and items of no apparent use, painting my walls white and generally cleaning up a room long overdue a clear-out, familiar stone houses on the other side of the world are filling up with familiar faces. Back into the monsoon of memories, to refurbish and paint over and around last year's events and relationships; I guess we're all doing it. Although it does feel rather odd not to be on a flight and far-too-warm jeep on the road to a trusty hill, excitedly singled out by tired eyes at a specific turning on the Paud road, lunchtime with a fridge full of dairy products, loud music and the lack of heat averted my inward gaze from the darks of nostalgia - I've still got several coffee dates to go before university starts in October.

and at once i knew i was not magnificent

(details of Cycle of Six Parts by Sigmar Polke, seen in Munchengladbach museum last Sunday)

On some levels, the futility of my many endeavours and lost to-do lists can only be covered up with viewing/sharing art like this; I'm still processing, unpacking, catching up, and these paintings, made of a mix of silver leaf, silver oxide and a amalgam of other chemicals, are far more meaningful than my current state of lethargy.

occident out on the weekend

Some analogue photos of the gorgeous scenery of the Himalayas of Ladakh, taken on a collective camera between my travelmates, which I've finally gotten around to digitalising. It's somehow become a bit of a busy summer, and, as usual, I've not managed to surpass the stage of promising updates and travel-anecdotes. Perhaps it is a little daunting a task to attempt to pick out moments to write about from two years that felt like nothing and yet, in some ways, everything. So many things were different, so much has changed, although I'm (disappointingly?) consistent in my lack of filling in those "coming soon!" updates.

Starting over, starting small though - here's a brief recount of two days instead. Specifically, two spent at Pangong Lake, about which Wikipedia tells us:
"Pangong Tso (or Pangong Lake; Tso: Ladakhi for lake) is an endorheic lake in the Himalayas situated at a height of about 4,350 m (14,270 ft). It is 134 km (83 mi) long and extends from India to Tibet. 60% of the length of the lake lies in Tibet, which is today under China's rule. The lake is 5 km (3.1 mi) wide at its broadest point. During winter the lake freezes completely, despite being saline water."

To add to the bare bones of fact and measurement some human sensations, the lake and area around it are also bitterly cold, meriting the wearing of recently-acquired vintage jumpers and a curling-up-in-sleeping-bags instinct that was speedily indulged when we arrived at our home-stay of choice. Having spent five hours winding up a mountain road to the soundtrack of our nineties youth and Ladakhi chants (a strange playlist our driver apparently enjoyed), naturally with the occasional (and varyingly enthousiastic) sing-alongs, we quickly got back to reading and further enjoying the stunning scenery. Whilst we had been hounded by Indian tourists earlier on in our drive, the final stretch of road to the tiny settlement of campsite and home-stays was blissfully unadorned, empty and almost lonely in its isolation.
We stayed overnight with a lovely trio of elderly Ladakhis, eating by candlelight and conversing with the aid of our hostess throughout; the first-year roommate of my co-travellers. In the morning, we managed to force ourselves out of the warmth of our layers of blankets and sleeping bags with the thought of seeing the lake at sunrise. Goading each other on and grumbling and stumbling down a grassy lane, we found the sun already risen at five, but sat still and watched the light grow and time change by the lakeside nevertheless. There was a certain silence about the moment, the setting; refreshing, chilling, calming. The later revelation that Three Idiots had been shot by the same lake was a little at odds with the experience we'd had there, but I suppose the emptiness is sometimes just waiting to be filled.
Soon we got cold and hungry, and a brief cup of tea and a gifting of our paperbag-wrapped fruits to the wrinkled and smiling three later, we set off back onto the winding road to Leh. Accompanied once again by the sound of Shakira, bad disco and poetic string instruments, we quickly rejoining the Indian contingent in the race to reach the next restaurant/toilet stop at the half-way point.

all dry and english slow

Sitting still and warmly clad (relatively, of course, to my as-yet-still-recent Indian expeditions) in a hotel room somewhere in northern Finland, on our way to find the northern-most point of Europe.

A recent trip to Amsterdam allows me to fill up some of the impending emptiness of this blog-content with a recommendation, go here: http://www.corbijn.co.uk/

Also, other entertainments of recent times included a minor reunion with some Eurotripping friends, which provided us, the Dutch, that is, with much opportunity for 'my city is better than yours'ness and some proud 'eat this food' culinary mishaps (including a frozen kaassouffle).

Having now caught a cold and ambling along to the tunes of Animal Collective, I leave you with little greetings from Santa-land and some tales of India still on the production line to come.

afterimage ecstasy

(Les Savy Fav at Metropolis, source)

It has been and will be a busy couple of days, so sitting amidst the piles of plans, clothing and items amassed over years and travels, I once again leave you with words not mine to fill some holes.

Lit (or: to the scientist I am not speaking to any more) by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

Don’t say you didn’t see this coming, Jason.

Don’t say you didn’t realize this would be my reaction
and that you never intended for me to get all worked up,
because if that were true, then you are dumber
than Lenny from Mice and Men, blinder than Oedipus
and Tierus put together and can feel less
than a Dalton Trumbo character.

You put the Dick in Dickens and the Boo in kowski
and are more Coward-ly then Noël.

But you don’t understand any of these references,
Do you, Jason? Because you ‘don’t read’.
You are a geology major and you once told me
That, ‘Scientists don’t read popular literature,
Cristin, we have more important things to do’.

Well, fuck you.

Be glad you don’t read, Jason,
because maybe you won’t understand this
as I scream it to you on your front lawn,
on Christmas Day, brandishing three hypodermic needles,
a ginsu knife and a letter of permission
from Bret Easton Ellis.

Jason, you are more absurd than Ionesco.
You are more abstract than Joyce,
more inconsistent than Agatha Christie
and more Satanic than Rushdie’s verses.

I can’t believe I used to want to Sappho you, Jason.
I used to want to Pablo Neruda you,
to Anais Nin And Henry Miller you. I used to want
to be O for you, to blow for you in ways
that even Odysseus’ sails couldn’t handle.
But self-imposed illiteracy isn’t a turn-on.

You used to make fun of me being a writer,
saying ‘Scientists cure diseases,
what do writers do?’

But of course, you wouldn’t understand, Jason.
I mean, have you ever gotten an inner thirsting
for Zora Neale Hurston?
Or heard angels herald for you
to read F Scott Fitzgerald?
Have you ever had a beat attack for Jack Kerouac?
The only Morrison you know is Jim, and you think
you’re the noble one?

Go Plath yourself.

Your heart is so dark, that even Joseph Conrad
couldn’t see it, and it is so buried under bullshit
that even Poe’s cops couldn’t hear it.

Your mind is as empty as the libraries in Fahrenheit 451.
Your mind is as empty as Silas Marner’s coffers.
Your mind is as empty as Huckleberry Finn’s wallet.

And some people might say that this poem
is just a pretentious exercise
in seeing how many literary references
I can come up with.

And some people might complain that this poem is,
at its core, shallow, expressing the same emotion again,
and again, and again. (I mean, there are only so many times
you can articulate your contempt for Jason,
before people get bored.)

But you know what, Jason? Those people would be wrong.

Because this is not the poem I am writing to express
my hatred for you.

This poem is the poem I am writing because we aren’t speaking,
and it is making my heart hurt so bad, it is all I
can do just to get up off the floor sometimes.

And this is the poem I am writing instead of writing
the ‘I miss having breakfast with you’ poem, instead of
writing the ‘Let’s walk dogs in our old schoolyard
again’ poem.

Instead of the ‘How are you doing?’ poem, the ‘I miss you’ poem,
the ‘I wish I was making fun of how much you like Garth
Brooks while sitting in front of your parents’ house
in your jeep’ poem, instead of the ‘Holidays are coming around
and you know what that means: SUICIDE!’ poem.

I am writing this so that I can stop wanting to write
the ‘I could fall in love with you again so quickly
if only you would say one more word to me’ poem.

But I am tired of loving you, Jason
cause you don’t love me right.

And if some pretentious-ass poem can stop me
From thinking about the way your laugh sounds,
about the way your skin feels in the rain,
about how I would rather be miserable with you,
then happy with anyone else in the world.

If some pretentious-ass poem can do all that?
Then I am gone with the wind, I am on the road,
I have flown over the fucking cuckoo’s nest,
I am gone, I am gone, I am gone.

I am.

scatter like a billion spores

(Hampi, second travel week)

"Padma can hear it: there's nothing like a countdown for building suspense. I watched my dung-flower at work today, stirring vats like a whirlwind, as if that would make the time go faster. (And perhaps it did; time, in my experience, has been as variable and inconstant as Bombay's electric power supply. Just telephone the speaking clock if you don't believe me - tied to electricity, it's usually a few hours wrong. Unless we're the ones who are wrong ... no people whose word for 'yesterday' is the same as their word for' tomorrow' can be said to have a firm grip on the time.)"
- Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children

middle of adventure, such a perfect place to start

(Mia Nolting)

Some rather nice drawings I found rather a while ago, that have been patiently sitting in my folder of found wonders, waiting for yet another of my forages for substitute imagery, instigated by my lack of recent travel documentation (it's coming, it's coming!).

I'm back in the lovely lowlands again, calmly doing not very much and slowly reacquainting myself with the ways of reality - bikes, full closets, a far crisper/colder summer and people I haven't seen in too long. So far, I've seen Jamie Cullum play a brilliant set at Parkpop, been out for minor reunions during the evening times and attempted to unpack (the latter being quite easily deviated from, what with the calls of chats, books, cheese, baking, friends and speedy internet, amongst other things).

I'll be getting my photos put into some sort of digital format soon, and will filter through some travel stories too, so the past month of traveling up north - from Ladakh to Delhi to Calcutta to Sikkim to Darjeeling to Bombay - will be fleshed out and coloured in soon!

green hills and enemies, these things they make us sentimental inside.

Currently at 11,500 feet, which is a long way to have come from home's below sea level and the humidity of the beginnings of a Bombay summer.

I'm in the Himalayas, back in Leh after last year's brief but enchanting visit. It's a little odd to be here again, after another year that felt like decades but also like a passing breeze of thoughts and memories. It's cold, I've already acquired some vintage woolen jumpers and am enjoying the lack of oxygen and surplus of sleep I'm getting.

It's only been a couple of days since graduation, departure and the hectic horribleness of packing two years worth of items into bags, but it feels so far away already. I'll be traveling for a month before coming home, so I'll be trying to get a hold of internet, photos and final cultural experiences (read: food.) before returning to my Dutch home.

Also, there's s much left to say about my 'UWC experience', the ambiguous parameters of which I am still grappling with. I'll try and process them over the course of the summer, so this little monologue-ing forum will be up for a while longer.

Love from Ladakh.

(I'm also feeling rather postcard-loving, currently, so if you'd like one, just send me your addresses!)

hold our insides in

(Celestial Vault, James Turrell, the Hague)

I've never felt more Dutch than in these two years, nor so worried about being cold during a European summer.

don't look back into the sun

(photos of 'I want to paint a face', an art project I did in my very first term here, in collaboration with Zuzana)

Sitting outside on one of my last days here, I've realised that there's a wealth of things left unwritten/documented/forgotten in the rush of a stream of experiences and changes. Considering the limitations of luggage allowance, I have been sifting (and resifting) through notes and items, selecting the most 'valuable/useful' ones and having to decide on whether I'd ever look back at my Hindi notebook at home. I often find myself attributing or attaching memories to objects, and in owning the physical thinking I own the memory as concretely too, so the choices I'm making now are difficult and also an interesting reflection of what I now perceive as important - I am not going to need any chemistry notes in the future, but taking my (chai-stained) notebook along with me is something I would like and perhaps even need to do, especially as I'm leaving so much (metaphorically as well as physically) behind in this place I've given and gotten two years from.

Over coffee and chocolate, both imported in yellow parcels from a mother in Germany, I had a long conversation with my roommate and housemate today. It was along the lines of questions I've thought of and have heard raised in various forums during the two years out here; what do we base our self-worth on, what does a grade say about us and what value do and should we give to it? How do we perceive intelligence, smart people or admire others, and on what basis?
Especially having just finished all my exams early, and under the impression that I may have underperformed, do I regret not working as hard as I may have needed to, can I even assume that I have a capacity that I did not achieve and does it even matter?

Ultimately, the decisions to not attend class, which I made multiple times over the course of the year, my preference to sit in the art centre, talk to people all night, or even choose to attend all the music events and not study for a test, were what I made and perhaps not with the greatest consideration of consequences. The dichotomies of wanting to do so much and the conflicts between what I expected and got, were very much things I struggled with, but also what was incredibly important to pick up on. Who was I working for - me, others, my perception of what others would expect, or just for what I enjoyed?

Particularly in conjunction with chemistry this year, I found myself frequently wondering why I was less than engaging with something that was in certain aspects so relevant and intriguing and learn-able. A week ago, I began to truly study, quite probably for the first time in my two years here, and it wasn't fun to realise how little I had done, but I found it was possible, and preferable, for me to learn/revise in two weeks, and I had managed to do what I had wanted to at moments in the past. Going on exeats, making more art pieces, seeing concerts and being part of more committees and activities than the minimum required did mean consolidation in other areas, and it's taken me a while to consolidate my compromises and accept my own disappointments and decisions that may have been detrimental, but I feel like this was to some extent the crux of what I had to learn here.

And although I may not feel this way all the time, I can only look back and not alter a thing anymore.
So I'm glad for everything that was difficult, utter crap, beautiful and tiresome.
And maybe I'll write a more 'I'm in India!' post soon (:

sure in a cinematic way

(another one of my bones, wax and oil paint on thigh, 2011)

moss.
by William Thomas Moore

what will happen 

now? she asks. 

now, i say, 

now, 

the dishes will pile 

up in the sink 

and there will 

be only one 

pair of shoes 

at the door.

(So I'm done with school and still busy packing/cooking/watching Israeli films/bonfire-ing. More extensive update soon!)

wage this war of one

(Shelter Stone/Stone Shelter, wax on stone)

A little further along with exams now, and the weather's still bright, somewhat stifling and generally rather glorious. Still trying to comprehend the impending closure of 'being in India', or more specifically, 'at MUWCI'. Here's a poem while I attempt to cram in as much as I can, both knowledge and experience-wise.

Art and Facts // Autumn Giles

My dearest museum,
I burnt the last painting today, just like you told me. I wanted a holiday— a day just for me. I whisked the frames around my waist like hula-hoops and then caught them on fire. It didn’t hurt because I thought about you. Now that I am completely unemployable, we can be together. You can keep me; I’ll sit still. Find me in the flames. I would look great in the foyer.

future rust and future dust

(view out of a MUWCI window, a couple of years ago.)

thoughts on a supposedly studious fortnight:

1. where did all those days go?
2. my room is finally decorated and my desk cleaner than ever before
(my teeth and feet too, funnily enough)
3. oh hello, hindi exam.
4. a multitude of subject/group dinners have been held, in which I:
- dressed up as a "ageing china doll" fortune teller
(cue red lipstick and layers of brightly-printed baggy dresses)
- sat around the pool talking primary-school-memories with fellow science students
- didn't even leave the wada one night, and was fed much ice-cream under a space stage-lit
- talked films over frozen pineapple cake for a final 'cinema and the city' session
- danced to a bombay band (think strokes meets southern rock meets coldplay's keyboards)
post-pizza eating, garnering some attention too.
5. teacoffeeteacoffeelaundryteacoffeetalkcoffeetea sleep.
6. dear koninginnedag, you'll have to wait till the 13th. you too, royal wedding.
7. mangoes are in season!

temporary shelters

(shots of my final art exhibition as i attempt to re- and deconstruct the homes I've built)

dreams of beyond

(photos taken by the lovely Karanjit)

Some photos of Active English (where we taught the children in the local village English on a weekly basis), while I stumble my way through piles of assorted notes.

Algerian War of Independence/Reactions of Alkanes/Trangression in God of Small Things, anyone?

throw away survival kits

Campus races to photocopy, scan, fix, finish art in all its forms and features have begun, so here are some images of Hampi, a deserted little hippie-temple-rock town, and of my mental state in Bangalore, pre-MUWCI-return to races and running and typing at double-speed.

As for the rest of life, INC is coming up, which means the selection of the 'new generation' of Indian UWC kids, and I'm still only adjusting, readjusting and actually just settling in to the continuous changes of pace that make this place so exhaustingly interesting. In the last week alone, our headmaster resigned, Mamma Mia (the musical) was performed with much gusto and extravagance, and mock exams rounded off with a dull thud and the gradual pain as we realise that we may just have to study sometime soon. Maybe.

Besides all that, here's a poem from the book I'm so successfully concealing myself with in the last picture.
Love from a sunny India!

Kid // Simon Armitage

Batman, big shot, when you gave the order
to grow up, then let me loose to wander
leeward, freely through the wild blue yonder
as you liked to say, or ditched me, rather,
in the gutter ... well, I turned the corner.
Now I've scotched that 'he was like a father
to me' rumour, sacked it, blown the cover
on that 'he was like an elder brother'
story, let the cat out on that caper
with the married woman, how you took her
downtown on expenses in the motor.
Holy robin-redbreast-nest-egg-shocker!
Holy roll-me-over-in the-clover,
I'm not playing ball boy any longer
Batman, now I've doffed that off-the-shoulder
Sherwood-Forest-green and scarlet number
for a pair of jeans and crew-neck jumper;
now I'm taller, harder, stronger, older.
Batman, it makes a marvellous picture:
you without a shadow, stewing over
chicken giblets in the pressure cooker,
next to nothing in the walk-in larder,
punching the palm of your hand all winter,
you baby, now I'm the real boy wonder.

fear of flying

(analogue snapshot of a corner of my Dutch room)

Here's something I wrote a couple of months ago for an English assignment, which was inspired by a prompt piece about love. Art and workbooking calls, and having just rounded off my mocks with thousands of fountain-pen inked words hollowed of meaning, I'm feeling as empty as the receding tide. Time and applications and self-reflective thoughts that circle and spiral inwards towards a centre I hope is fixed, it's April and I'm still passing my time listening to guitar-strumming co-years sing tales of lives far removed. I'm repeating steps in my mind, with my feet, hearing the sound of illusionary settling and the shattering glass of expectations, as things continue to change, as I want and need and can't stop them from doing.

Spaces in Togetherness

Spooning in a small bed, they talk about everything and everyone under the stars and moon and sky. Merging into one being with two sets of eyes, limbs and toes is a secret longing of hers. She imagines it would be so much more effective, stronger and more resilient to have a spare or double of every and any piece the world only gave her one of. If they did merge, she would be a they, they would be one and no spaces would need to be filled between their physical beings, no chasms of mental differences would need to be bridged.

She likes bridges, of course. Bridges are useful, she knows that. Every morning, she crosses at least three, living in the small, canal-segmented city of Delft as she does. Bridges are ingenious, she knows that. She loves the massive Erasmus bridge in Rotterdam, the architectural achievement it stands for. Even smaller, more mental bridges are great. Connections built through new knowledge, bridging the gaps between two facts that were previously seemingly unrelated. In relationship terms as well, she feels an appreciation for the skill constructing and maintaining bridges of comprehension requires. But, she'd rather be a single entity, a solid piece of land without intervention, without bridges that would imply small streams of troubled water.

He is big, tall, broad and safe. Enveloped in his embraces, generic as that sounds, comfort her and make her feel at home. He is not small, like everything she has grown up in and around. It is brilliant.

"She wants to know if I love her, that's all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there, like new batteries in the flashlight in the emergency kit in the hall closet."

(Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)

I'm not a spare tire, he thinks. He knows she wants nought but all, but he needs to find some room. It's a comfort thing, he understands, it's a size thing, he gets it. In his mind though, he is not in the cramped room with the clingy girl, but out in Iceland, with the free and the wild and the alien of the unknown. He's too big for this space.

I always wanted to be an astronaut, he thinks. Can you imagine the insane feeling of being completely separate from the world? His favourite song used to be the one about Major Tom, the one about the man who manages to lose contact with Ground Control. He pictures himself in space, in endless amounts of space and stars and emptiness. He needs emptiness.

I like balloons because they're empty, he thinks. The notion of negative space, something that only works because so much space is left alone. He pictures himself in a bubble, a personal bubble of space. If he had his own bubble, he would look like an outsized goldfish. Maybe he wouldn't even have to wear clothes - the bubble could be opaque and only open for food and love. If everyone lived like that, in a private space of their own, then nobody could lose themselves into others unless they intentionally stepped out of their bubble. She always loses herself, he thinks.

He stirs, she stirs, the alarm rings. They set off to work, their separate ways, where distance will hopefully make the heart grow fonder.