Filed under: Collages, India, Journal Entries, Moments of Grace, Photography, Trains
Originally uploaded by Blue Dragonfly Girl.
We took the overnight train to Madurai from Chengalpattu. I had felt ill that evening before we left Mahabalipuram — so much so that I couldn’t eat dinner and had to go back to the hotel instead. I napped and then we had to catch the train an hour away in Chengalpattu. Jasmine garlands hung off the taxi’s rearview mirror, swinging as we drove over paved roads and speed bumps in the quiet darkness, past immense bales of hay and cyclists. The taxi driver spoke in a torrent of words mixing Tamil with English as he rambled to my boyfriend about his three years spent in the Gulf and how much money he makes now and I finally interrupted so he’d pull over and I could relieve myself, squatting on the side of the road. The ride became a blur, the taxi driver attempting to pass a blue Jeep for 20 minutes, the ease of weaving surreptitiously in and out of traffic, voices voices voices, entering the train.
The bright overhead lights were off and everyone asleep when I finally threw up into a plastic bag a throat-burning four times. There were eight occupied bunks in each open cabin and a man without a ticket sleeping on newspapers on the ground heard my retching and was advising me repeatedly to walk over him and throw the vomit out a window. I ventured to the bathroom, the smell of urine so overwhelming I feared I’d start dry-heaving, and I threw my plastic bag down the bottomless toilet where it would come to rest miles behind on us on the tracks next to other people’s used forks and toothbrushes and juice boxes with all their liquids already sucked out.
And then everything became calm. The stone temple woman across from me — the dark outline of her colossal body rising and descending with her breath, the rocking of the train sending my emptied stomach into my throat then back into my belly-button, my breasts feeling enormous with the back forth back forth, men walking outside at the stations offering “Kawpee! Kawpee!” (coffee) — just part of the noise, their voices not really standing out above the hum and the whirr and occasional screech of the train like the way all the car and bicycle and three-wheel car horns blend into the background lightly, not like our aggressive American beeps. The oddness of sharing the intimate sleeping space with strangers, the grunts and throat clears and snores, their tossing and turning under their sheets, taking off one’s shoes to be barefoot on one’s individual mattress, the darkness out the window except for bright bug-zapping lights in the unnamed stations, the insistent chirp of birds as the gray night turns into a gray day.
And I am smiling as we all flood into the Madurai train station with the overpowering scent of jasmines, the tightness of the ticket lines, the colors splashing and bursting out from every corner, the sound of drummers outside and finally the glorious feeling of not being seen — just being able to sit on my backpack and quietly watch the people stream by as we wait for the next train to Bodi.
(written January 2004)
Filed under: Death, Dreams, Fast Asleep with an Overactive Imagination, Memory, Photography
The Seal
Originally uploaded by Blue Dragonfly Girl.
The other night I dreamed that my boyfriend had died. I was distraught and someone brought out the onslaught of my tears with the line, “How are you really?” Friends that I didn’t know tried to comfort me and my boyfriend’s brother who was in his indistinguishable thirties and had sand-colored hair told me that it would be okay. He pulled out two black guns and I was scared — mostly that he would harm himself. I took the guns away from him.
Waking up from this dream, it took me a second to revert to reality. I was stuck in that half-way point where you’re trying to shake your head clear and adjusting your eyes to the darkness of the room you’re in. I remembered a dream that I had in London in 2000 — a dream in which I actually died and my vision turned black. I can’t recall how it happened, but I remember waking up sobbing.
These are the most personal death-related dreams I’ve had, but I’ve had too many dreams to count that involve running from nazis or serial killers. Sometimes I stand up for myself and try to fight back — once, I ran into the bathroom where my brother was taking a bath and tried to throw hot bath water to ’scald’ an approaching assassin. It didn’t work out so well. Those dreams are a series of running away, of hiding in small spaces. I wake up breathless.
My dreams can be powerfully — and sometimes horribly — vivid and they never truly fade into the background though details get hazy. Fragments of these dreams usually remain in the back of my mind and sometimes I confuse them with memories. Sometimes I remember them while in the shower or later in the day but sometimes it’s years later that I recall a moment, a scene, a place — only to realize that it only ever existed in my imagination.
Parking Spot
Originally uploaded by Blue Dragonfly Girl.
There is a beggar who stands on the corner with a cardboard sign stating, “Testing Human Kindness.” Every day after work I exit from the highway and end up waiting for the light to turn green at this very corner; every day I read his sign.
And, this beggar recognizes me and my squeaky old car. Every day he smiles, waves, gives me a goofy exasperated grin and points to his sign. Every day I smile, wave back, shrug my shoulders and shake my head.
Inevitably I experience feelings of discomfort in my stomach. I think, “Well jeez I’ve got change in my car — a handful of pennies I could pass through the window to him.” But then I wonder if once I started giving money, if expectations would be raised.
I feel guilty that I’m failing this man’s test of human kindness. And I hate being confronted with this test almost every single day. If there were a quicker route to get home I just might take it.
A friend of mine who’s a social worker at a homeless shelter says that she never gives money to beggars, so that reduces my guilt just a little. After all I do believe it’s better to serve meals at soup kitchens or give clothes to the Salvation Army then to possibily faciliate someone’s drug habits by dropping cash in their cup.
It’s funny though how every day this man’s sign wipes away from my mind the fact that I could very easily pass a more broad test of human kindness. I just never pass his.
The Statue
Originally uploaded by Blue Dragonfly Girl.
We sit at an outdoors restaurant in Southern Spain gazing up at a brown hill with a small tree dotting the top reminding me of what Africa could be like. A breeze wafts around aimlessly and plays with the waitress’ necklace made of a small feather. The sun shines and we wait for our lunch.
And I think, “I am perfectly content and perfectly happy right now. I need nothing more and nothing less. There’s nowhere I’d rather be.” I tell my boyfriend and he says, “I don’t feel that way.” But it doesn’t matter. Somehow the moment has been encapsulated; even recalling it, makes me smile a little.
These wonderful moments of grace sneak unexpected into my life. I’m presdisposed to bittersweet melancholy and I don’t think I could sustain constant happiness even if it were a possiblity. Besides it’s probably true that if we felt that way all the time we wouldn’t know what happiness was because we’d have nothing to compare it to. I’ve learned that I can’t go looking for these grace moments. I have to just stumble upon them and feel lucky, especially when I don’t try to grab onto them and make them last longer than they can.
And then there’s the rest of this fascinating life in between…
Filed under: Creative Non-Fiction, Loss, Madrid, Photography, Relationships, Spain, Theft
Empty Street in Madrid
Originally uploaded by Blue Dragonfly Girl.
I could go out, but coming back is such a hassle. Earlier it took me twenty minutes of fiddling with the key in the lock to give up and start ringing the doorbell for the landlady of this pensión.
“Hola,” I said meekly when she came out in a turquoise bathrobe glaring at me and made me practice opening the door several times before she let me in.
I could have gone out, but I was alone in Spain. And it was January.
My last night in London he and I went to St. Paul’s Cathedral because I’m superstitious and must go into sacred spaces before beginnings. Something went wrong. I cried and people wandered around me pretending I wasn’t there, “Promise me you won’t break up with me,” I said between sniffles.
“Oh baby no, never,” he said sweetly in his British accent, “We’ll get married someday and have kids and live somewhere with mountains for me and an ocean for you.”
After a while I lost track of how many days I’d been here in Madrid, of how many e-mails I’d sent him. I forgot how the path to obtaining my own apartment led straight through hell. And after a while I knew I’d lost something. People tried to steal from me, but I always caught them. Once when I forgot to close my bag at the EasyEverything internet café on Fuencarral and when I felt it fall against my ankle, my arm shot out to grab the wrist of a stooping man.
“What are you doing?” I interrogated. He looked blandly at me. I gripped his wrist while I determined with my free hand that nothing was missing from my bag. Satisfied, I let go.
“Estás loca,” he said and left gracefully and quickly. No one looked up from their computers.
It’s not until April when I understand what I’ve lost, or that maybe I never had it to begin with. I remember when I might’ve had it back in March. All thirty-six hours of it when I broke up with him, here on an emergency visit. I felt more liberated, more justified, more prepared, more alive. We had to spend the night together before he could get a flight home. The next morning I took beautiful pictures of him sitting on my patio smoking a hand-rolled Golden Virginia cigarette. Beggars smiled at me and the subway doors opened right where I was standing. A clear breeze blew me into 7-11 for a baguette, hot from the oven. And when I got back to my apartment I was glad to see he’d left nothing but a note in uppercase letters.
At a street corner a gypsy tried to unzip my backpack. As I twisted around and seized her dirty hands, I think that something fell out of my back pocket. I must have crushed it underneath my feet as I defiantly crossed the street. After that I couldn’t be alone anymore. A Spanish family tried to adopt me and fatten me up, but I preferred the company of a pretentious Harvard graduate. He used the imperative too much and wouldn’t let go of me in public.
I have to laugh about that day in early May when a security guard stopped me in a perfume shop and gave me a lecture about how to prevent theft. What could they steal? I leave the windows open that lead out to my balcony. I have a table and a chair and a futon, a cracked toilet seat lid and a broken tap in the shower. At night I watch the bats fly through a pink sky in the abandoned lot next door. On Saturday mornings I hang my clothes out on the line and listen to Ben Harper sing about loss. Then I run out of the apartment and read about Quijote on the metro to somewhere else.
If you asked me in June, I would have traded all the oceans to be a woman staring out the window onto a gray English day. I saw this woman having children and a sweet husband and daydreams of all the oceans that she couldn’t see. I try to explain to my friends why I wanted to be pregnant then, but they don’t understand. I was twenty; why would I have wanted to throw my life away like that? Well, maybe yes, maybe no. I didn’t choose it, but meanwhile I was in a landlocked city without an ocean in sight.
(written Fall 2003)
Ana in Orange, Marta in Red in January or February 2005
Originally uploaded by Blue Dragonfly Girl.
For whatever reason, all my European day-trips include inclement weather. This time it was snow and slippery roadways. General consternation prevailed, but I knew that days like this always become nostalgic — you remember fondly the snow beating down on your umbrella, the heat when you all finally ducked into a warm cafe for tapas, and singing along loudly to cassette mixes while you’re stuck in traffic trying to get back into the city. And you remember it longer than if the trip had gone perfectly.
I stood on the corner of 9th and Brazos waiting for the light to change. A homeless man with white froth on the corners of his mouth, gestured at the Mexican Consulate behind us.
“Used to be over there,” he said pointing to an invisible point, “Twenty-five years I’ve been here. Used to be over there.”
I nodded, “Things move.”
“It’s a good thing about sending ‘em all back to China,” he said, “All they do here is spend our money.”
The light changed and we crossed the road and I chuckled quietly to myself imagining a boat full of Mexicans heading across the ocean (back) to China.
Blue Bench Outside Jail
Originally uploaded by Blue Dragonfly Girl.
As part of my job description, I go to jail at least once a week. The people I meet with are accused of drunk driving, check forging, theft, sexual assault, murder. I listen to their stories and explanations and try to find out who they are so that we can put the pieces of their case together. Someone asked me if there are people who compel me and the answer is yes — those who I most want to help (although of course, I work hard even for those that I intensely dislike) are those who are most genuine. I don’t care what someone did, if they present themselves to me as who they are then I become truly invested in their case. Honesty is amazingly refreshing.
It happened last summer while I was biking to work. Traffic was heavy so I moved off the road headed down the sidewalk and I saw that a truck was parked up on the curb. It was so far on the sidewalk that I had to get off my bike to fit through what was left of pedestrian space.
As I pushed through to the other side, I saw the owner of the truck approaching and I smiled in greeting.
“C’mon. Get a move on!” he said.
“He must be joking,” I thought, “After all, his truck is in the way,” and I gave him a weak appreciative laugh.
“I’m not kidding,” he said, “You dumb cunt.”
Aghast — this was the first time anyone had ever used this word to insult me — dumbfounded and a little bit nervous, I jumped back on my bicycle and coasted away. Later I thought of all the million things I could have said in response, but hadn’t.
Your brain doesn’t really work during those situations — it’s hurriedly flipping through all your previous experiences trying to find something to match, something to help you figure out how to respond…but there’s nothing there that comes close.
On a warm spring evening last May, I was still working at a retail store near Lamar and 12th. I volunteered to take down the wind chimes and hammocks that hang outside to entice customers. The sun had already set and the landscape was dark except for the headlights on cars and the vibrant blue of the sky. As I reached up for a clanging chime, a man walked through attired in the ragged, bulky clothing that helps you stereotype the homeless. I nodded at him and smiled.
He looked at me and mumbled a string of mumbo-jumbo that I couldn’t comprehend. “Excuse me?” I asked, confused.
“Whore!” he exclaimed, lifted his arm and threw something at me, hitting me hard on the forehead. Now I was scared. He stood between me and the entrance to the store. I didn’t want to aggravate him further. I didn’t know what other throw-able objects might be in his hand.
Luckily, he stumbled off and I skitted inside to tell the manager what had just occured. She and another co-worker went outside to find him. He rambled to her about being sick of whores and she told him never to return to the store or she’d call the police.
After we went to find out just what had struck my forehead. We shone a flashlight on a hard thick crust of bread that was crawling with ants. Granted, a rather amusing object to be hit with, but in the darkness you don’t know what’s coming your way and believe me, hard bread still hurts upon contact.
There seems to be something about me in Austin that attracts the misplaced rage of unknown persons. It’s a strange experience largely because it involves me, going about my business, blithely innocent to the mean possiblities of the world, blithely expecting kind interactions with people. And when you’re not expecting to be yelled at, you are so taken aback that you don’t know how to react. And then it makes you skittish — for a while I was scared of the dark and I’d wince when passing homeless folks as though they too had something up their sleeve to punish me for whatever sins they might consider me guilty of.
Later — a month or so into summer and hours past sunset — a friend convinced me to bike through the bike paths that allow you to get from West 5th to Barton Springs. The light from his bike wobbled on the dark, jungle-like surroundings and barely lit up the path. As he biked — maybe 15 feet ahead — I saw a man lurch towards the path from the darkness between us.
In that second, the appearance of this obviously drunken, homeless man amplified the beating of my heart so much that I couldn’t hear the crackle of the woods, and the strange coos of the birds. I would have to pass him by and so close that he could push me over. I sped up and pedaled as fast as I could to catch up with my friend. The homeless man offered some words to me as I nearly ran him over, but I don’t know what they were.
Back on a main road with streetlamps, my friend told me: “You have to get over your fear. This is a problem for you.”
“I’m scared because it’s a reasonable emotion to experience!” I said loudly, “You don’t bike through parks at 11 ‘o’ clock at night. You just don’t do it.”
“I could have defended you if I had to.”
“Not immediately. You were ahead of me. You couldn’t have stopped him.”
In response, my friend started trying to teach me martial arts. I usually just laughed or giggled and felt un-coordinated. But my fear wasn’t based on not being able to defend myself. It’s that fear that the world is going to mutate on you — that what you experience as normal will turn on you and throw ant-filled bread at your head. After all, if it’s happened before, it can happen again, and in my case, it probably will. Believe me, I don’t want to live in fear — and eventually by late summer I was perfectly content to walk down quiet streets at night again — but maybe it’s good to have that small dose, like a common sense warning to stay away from places where danger could lurk. The rest of the time, I’d rather assume that the people passing me by are just going to return my smile with a nod and keep on going. And when people decide I’m to be the misplaced object of their rage, perhaps soon enough I’ll know how to respond.
