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.

stars eat planets

(Leh, last summer, being eighties and cold in India)

With February long past and March fast whizzing around my head and into the realm of memory too, I've been keeping myself busy.

Having had a week off school, I spent a lovely ten days exploring yet another area of India and basking in the warmth of the soon-summer sun. With phrases of poetry (think T.S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, Margaret Atwood) floating around in my head, and a large rucksack packed hastily last Friday, I set off to Bombay. I travelled with a German co-year, a Malaysian first year and one of my second years - Rosie, who'd flown back over for another four-month jaunt around India. Together, we covered Bombay, Hampi and Bangalore at a leisurely, reading-filled pace, which was a well-needed breather following the hectic final-deadline-hand-it-all-in style of February.

I haven't quite gotten round to getting photographs off my co-years as yet, and it's currently UWC-week, which I'm rather proud about. More on everything soon, hopefully.

Love from India!

innumerable sailboats

(Safety Space, site specific, December 2010, 80 kg of salt, 6 rolls of double-sided tape, a sari and some cushions)

One long Monday and a weekend that already seems eons ago later, I've now spent the evening drawing out tickets and posters for the upcoming play - The Fairytales of Mr Night - that has been written and directed by two lovely coyears of mine, and will be happening this Saturday and Sunday. Cue minor panic on my, the producer's, behalf, as I've got quite a couple of props and costumes left to source. Considering the play is about fairytale characters (who begin to consider that the Brothers Grimm aren't the ones in charge of their destinies), there are some odd items I'm still hoping to stumble upon somewhere in this rural countryside area of India.

As for the rest of MUWCI-living, we had a College Meeting on communication and decision-making again today, although once again it remained rather ambiguous as to why and what and how we were discussing. There's a Change of Pace day on Wednesday, as it is India's Republic Day, so that'll be good for EEing/sleeping/doing some more art.

To explain the above piece, it was an attempt at creating a 'safety space' - I'd researched into bunkers and tried to consider what safety might mean. I discovered that salt had a lot of interesting, contradicting meanings in religions and cultures, so I wanted to use it as the core material (the texture is also rather appealingly gritty) to convey a concept of inherent contradictions of vulnerability/security, preservation/destruction, freedom/captivity. There was already double-sided tape from a previous exhibition on the walls, so I added to that to allude to previous inhabitants and a void of attempted personalisation of the room. It also remained sticky, making it uncomfortable to lean back, as over-the-top safety often makes one felt clung unto. There are also some allusions to Gandhi and the sea, which I could go on about but I think I'll just post the document I wrote about it at some other point, and try and refocus on India and sleep.

Love.

fairytales of grim and glory

(Madurai, during winterbreak)

To backtrack a little, I traveled for ten days in December, down in the Indian south. We spent a great amount of time on buses, which varied from beds as seats to rockhard tiny benches with deafening Bollywood music playing in the early hours of the morning, but managed to also see a lot of beautiful things. Madurai itself wasn't the nicest city, and we'd had what I would say was the worst bus journey of the lot, as there was a continuous draft, no way to get comfortable and the bus station was smogged out and ten kilometres away from the centre.

The temple, on the other hand, was rather impressive. A World Heritage Site, with a multitude of colourful tower-things (called gopurams) that are painted once every twelve years, it contained a mini museum of sorts and required my travel-companion (a Danish boy in shorts) to put on a lungi (a type of wrap-around cotton skirt worn by Indian men in the south).

(If I wasn't slightly scared of him not appreciating the photos I took of him in it, I'd post them. Alas, I suspect they'd be detrimental to his masculinity?)

The temple was already full of praying people when we got there at eight in the morning, and the place held a certain haunting quality that definitely stifled the garishness of the stalls selling gold plastics and religious paraphernalia. It was massive too, and we spent a while simply wandering around barefoot on the cold stone floors, before heading off to the Gandhi Museum and our next destination of Tanjore.

this orient

(Fort Cochin)

(Mysore, incense rolling)

(Pondicherry)

Some photographs of my wintertime travels as I readjust to the erratic pace of campus-living. Theatre Season starts this weekend with Blackbird, and in the meantime, this is a poem that somewhat described the dislocation sensation of being home/interviewing/home/traveling/home/in France/home/in India this past holiday.

Mayakovsky - Frank O'Hara

Now I am quietly waiting for

the catastrophe of my personality

to seem beautiful again,

and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and

brown and white in trees,

snows and skies of laughter

always diminishing, less funny

not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of

the year, what does he think of

that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,

perhaps I am myself again.

rain in the realm of fantasy

(photo taken by Jeppe during Ganpati in September)

Issues are slowly culminating on this little hill of ours. It really feels like part of the 'experience' - we're struggling with the implementation of (surprising?) rules, spending time in meetings and heated courtyard discussions instead of studying or sleeping, and through all this controversy of sorts figuring out our ideas, ideals and priorities.

At least, so I like to think.

We've been told about rules that will now be properly enforced, such as the one about not sleeping in other rooms and have been presented with new ones, including the appointment of some sort of 'paternal figure', who will aid us in our 'living' here. Everything is a little dubious and ambiguous as of right now, but discussion (as long as that will truly occur) ought to help all of us (as the 'community' we like to call ourselves) work out something, at least personally.

On a less serious note, I went down for Active English today for the first time this term. I got a group of boys to play games with outside, which was a lot of fun and a welcome relief to be able to imitate animals, race through 'heads, shoulders, knees and toes' and just generally think no further than the next 'educational' game we could play to keep up the energy.