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.