A woman sat across from me in the subway car. I couldn't stop staring. Her face was a study in symmetry. Every feature flawless, the skin unblemished, the complexion luminous, incandescent. The hair was dark and thick with a lock falling over her left eye when she bent down. Her lashes were long, each downward swoop concealing a twinkling intelligence. It embarrassed me to be caught staring. It's true what they say - you can always tell when someone's staring.
As I stole glances at her I tried picturing her as a central character in a novel. I wanted to come up with words to describe her to a reader. Would it be possible to describe her in a sentence that wasn't burdened with adjectives? Could I divine anything about her simply by looking at her as so many novelists believe can be done? It seemed impossible.
I started studying others in the car, wondering if other more seasoned faces offered insights into the souls within. Some reflected stress through their furrowed brows, some painted a picture of resignation, some showed anger and discouraged eye contact. But the only difference between her face and others seated around her was the absence of any surface clues in hers. What traits would I attribute to her if I forced her into a novel of mine?
My stop was next and she soon became a passing thought. But it did make me ponder physical descriptions in the novels I've read. The authors spend time getting it right, making the person real to the reader. For instance the woman defined by her concavity: concave torso, concave cheeks; her concavity being the only outstanding physical attribute in Will Self's short story - Ward 9. I look at the folks around me and wonder if I would have ever been able to describe a rather pinched looking person with all that the word "concave" implies...caving in on oneself, imploding...
Novelists always highlight a central character by assigning attributes which would result in instant admiration, revulsion, sympathy or pity for their creation. A character in a novel spots another for the first time and accurately guesses most things about the person, things like...the confidence masking an underlying vulnerability, the clothes telling a story, the nails, the hair, the body fat, all leading the audience toward a definitive conclusion about the person being regarded. Is such accurate assessment possible in real life?
Perhaps it is, because one sees it even in memoirs: Sting seeing Trudie for the first time at his neighbor's place, noting the long scar on her face, her lips, the lips that reminded him of a former girlfriend who had just passed away...and feeling an instant attraction. Others writing about their lives and saying how they knew someone was THE ONE when they met him or her. Does it seem so in hindsight, perhaps? A false memory, a conflation that makes one believe what they felt was instantaneous rather than gradual or incremental?
I think I need to pay more attention to faces if I ever want to realize any latent dreams about being a writer of fiction. I would have to hone the skills of surreptitious viewing and analysis of facial expressions and other physical attributes and body languages. Some blinders would have to go, some inhibitions discarded. I would have to be immune to the embarrassment of embarrassing someone with my intense regard.
Ah, on second thoughts, who wants to appear so creepy!! Forget novel writing!
I caught sight of my own reflection in a shop window and had to make some instant adjustments - my lower lip appeared to be pushing upwards at my upper lip, chin tilted upwards, giving my mouth a sad and defiant look all at once. How confused would that make another wannabe writer who was trying to come to some conclusions about what a sad and defiant face signalled about me? That's assuming I'd be a protagonist in this imaginary sly watcher's future literary effort, and not some mediocre sideliner.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Nothing: Part 13
Sometimes I think of the guy who taught me how to drive when I first came to the US twenty one years ago. He was a fine teacher and was very patient with me when I made the car lurch or when I stood frozen at the "Yield" sign unable to pick the right moment to make my left turns or when I appeared too eager to hit the brakes or misjudged the degree of the steering wheel turn needed to flawlessly execute a turn.
It didn't take more than 2 weeks to learn how to drive (except for parallel parking -I doubt I've learnt that even now and avoid it as best as I can). I remember him well because after I passed my driving test, he presented me with a delightful mix tape of his reggae music, to which he'd seen me tap my feet while waiting for the light to change, and because he said something very simple to me, he said that driving was just like walking.
He asked me to imagine walking on the streets of a city. It would be natural to give people enough space, to not stop short, to go around obstacles or people who were slower and to not bump into people who were in front of me. It would also be natural to signal my intent and to maintain a broader, panoramic vision than just staring at the hydrant that was 2 steps away. Driving came so much easier after that.
These days it isn't something that requires too much thought. Sometimes I don't have any recollection of the seventeen elapsed minutes of thought during the drive that gets me back home from my bus stop. And yet, the fact that I find myself safe, turning the key to my front door night after night, proves that I did everything right, sans anxiety. Processed every sensory input on the road: the other cars, the slow drivers, the swervers, the cell phone talkers, changing lights, everything at unimaginable mental processing speeds, without really "thinking" about it.
I am waiting to reach that point when it comes to playing the violin. I am obsessed with reaching that realm of unthinking effortlessness, where everything happens at a deeper mental level, rendering the act of playing seamless.
I am at the stage where I am aware of the right playing posture, the angle that the instrument, resting between my shoulder and my chin, needs to make to the vertical plane dividing my body in equal halves, I know how to hold the bow correctly and how to place my fingers on the fingerboard. All this knowledge coalesces into a meaningful whole on many days and nights. I have felt the joy of a well-intoned practice session. But on many nights knowing all the right things just doesn't seem enough. Sometimes my bowing arm shakes, sometimes there is a scratchiness during switching strings that seems unshakeable and sometimes the rhythm is persistently off despite my best intentions and despite knowing what it would take to fix these problems. Some sessions are pure mortification for me and torture for my poor teacher.
She has stared at me in wide-eyed amazement because there are days when I fail miserably at playing a passage where I might have done her proud the week before. I fail to understand what goes wrong and why.
Going back to walking, something I've been doing for the last 41 years, it usually comes easily enough except for the times when I could be at my highest level of confidence, walking briskly on the sidewalks of NYC, marvelling at the shimmery bits of mica that make them sparkle at night, observing the lights on Broadway, generally feeling good and I suddenly land on my ankle bone.
"Ouch!!"
However, did that happen? What caused it? I look around and can find no answers, no bumps, no cracks, but a smarting ankle bone all the same.
What goes wrong?
My sensory neurons should work so much better with the motor neurons, synapses firing prestissimo or allegro appassionato at the very least. More neurological collaboration, please! What is with the lackadaisical attitude up there?
I doubt I'll ever understand.
This post was going to appear on this blog yesterday. It was wordier, meatier and made a better point than I've been able to make in today's attempt. In fact today I have failed to make a point. But I was on a roll yesterday. And then I lost it all! I lost some 500 words in an inexplicable instant. My hands were nowhere near the delete keys.
I was angry and frustrated. It's so hard to revive a train of thought. Especially when there's a paucity of thoughtful thoughts!
So again I ask - what goes wrong?
Something breaks, somewhere.
It didn't take more than 2 weeks to learn how to drive (except for parallel parking -I doubt I've learnt that even now and avoid it as best as I can). I remember him well because after I passed my driving test, he presented me with a delightful mix tape of his reggae music, to which he'd seen me tap my feet while waiting for the light to change, and because he said something very simple to me, he said that driving was just like walking.
He asked me to imagine walking on the streets of a city. It would be natural to give people enough space, to not stop short, to go around obstacles or people who were slower and to not bump into people who were in front of me. It would also be natural to signal my intent and to maintain a broader, panoramic vision than just staring at the hydrant that was 2 steps away. Driving came so much easier after that.
These days it isn't something that requires too much thought. Sometimes I don't have any recollection of the seventeen elapsed minutes of thought during the drive that gets me back home from my bus stop. And yet, the fact that I find myself safe, turning the key to my front door night after night, proves that I did everything right, sans anxiety. Processed every sensory input on the road: the other cars, the slow drivers, the swervers, the cell phone talkers, changing lights, everything at unimaginable mental processing speeds, without really "thinking" about it.
I am waiting to reach that point when it comes to playing the violin. I am obsessed with reaching that realm of unthinking effortlessness, where everything happens at a deeper mental level, rendering the act of playing seamless.
I am at the stage where I am aware of the right playing posture, the angle that the instrument, resting between my shoulder and my chin, needs to make to the vertical plane dividing my body in equal halves, I know how to hold the bow correctly and how to place my fingers on the fingerboard. All this knowledge coalesces into a meaningful whole on many days and nights. I have felt the joy of a well-intoned practice session. But on many nights knowing all the right things just doesn't seem enough. Sometimes my bowing arm shakes, sometimes there is a scratchiness during switching strings that seems unshakeable and sometimes the rhythm is persistently off despite my best intentions and despite knowing what it would take to fix these problems. Some sessions are pure mortification for me and torture for my poor teacher.
She has stared at me in wide-eyed amazement because there are days when I fail miserably at playing a passage where I might have done her proud the week before. I fail to understand what goes wrong and why.
Going back to walking, something I've been doing for the last 41 years, it usually comes easily enough except for the times when I could be at my highest level of confidence, walking briskly on the sidewalks of NYC, marvelling at the shimmery bits of mica that make them sparkle at night, observing the lights on Broadway, generally feeling good and I suddenly land on my ankle bone.
"Ouch!!"
However, did that happen? What caused it? I look around and can find no answers, no bumps, no cracks, but a smarting ankle bone all the same.
What goes wrong?
My sensory neurons should work so much better with the motor neurons, synapses firing prestissimo or allegro appassionato at the very least. More neurological collaboration, please! What is with the lackadaisical attitude up there?
I doubt I'll ever understand.
This post was going to appear on this blog yesterday. It was wordier, meatier and made a better point than I've been able to make in today's attempt. In fact today I have failed to make a point. But I was on a roll yesterday. And then I lost it all! I lost some 500 words in an inexplicable instant. My hands were nowhere near the delete keys.
I was angry and frustrated. It's so hard to revive a train of thought. Especially when there's a paucity of thoughtful thoughts!
So again I ask - what goes wrong?
Something breaks, somewhere.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Nothing: Part 12
This is a sequel to Part 11 and refers to the whole business of nastiness...eventually...after several detours.
A dulled duration of a long commute yields to some strange digressions in thought. I was sitting in my window seat, soporific or alert and lucid in turns. My legs had been crossed for a long time and the knee that bore the brunt of the other leg was now screaming in protest.
It made me think of the stairs and escalators that were still part of my immediate future and how much I was starting to detest them because they bothered my knees. I am not in chronic knee pain. But I feel the sudden painful twinge when I am going up or down stairs. Maybe it started when I decided to climb all the way down the Eiffel Tower and perhaps it got worse when I was expecting but it certainly feels like something that's here to stay. It's where my fabric is starting to tear or unravel.
It'll slowly worsen, become chronic, transform me from a brisk and fast walker to a hobbler. Unless I can find a way to stem this damage...knee braces, stretching, joint supplements, exercise...whatever it takes.
Hobbling is absolutely the worst possible future image for myself. I think of old images of Indira Gandhi running up and down the stairs even at an advanced age. Well...that's where I'd rather see myself; running not hobbling.
I thought about the part of me that's remained unchanged while everything around me changed, aged, transformed, matured. There is something core and something essential within that has remained the same. I know it and I feel it.
I have grown up and landed in a time and a place where being resigned to one's circumstances and giving up is passé. I owe this core, essential, unchanged and pristine part of me a 'vehicle' that is in perfect working condition. I'd rather cruise to the finish line in a Bentley than in a rusty Chevrolet station wagon; the one my first employer had me cruise around in for the longest time.
It isn't a selfish, narcissistic or vanity laced desire to keep oneself in good shape for as long as is realistic. It is a decision for which our future generations, who end up bearing our burdens in more ways than one, will thank us.
Which brings me to how this connects with the last post which talked about the draining nature of negativity and nastiness.
This rage I sense all around me, road rage, Starbucks' line rage, subway rage, bus rage, cars raging at pedestrians, pedestrians raging at cars, bloggers writing nasty posts, blog commenters being vicious...all this and more in many ways appears to be like a twinging pain in the knee, the major load-bearing joint in our bodies.
It cannot possibly be healthy, it signals an unraveling of society. It indicates some sort of coming apart at the seams. It makes me feel as though we'll all be hobbled if we don't attend to this, if we don't eliminate this toxicity from within.
And there are others who feel the same way. Like Nick Bilton on a blog in the Technology section of the New York Times today, where he talks about the nastiness in online interactions and people often forgetting that the person at the receiving end of the nastiness is a living and breathing human.
Maybe the real world nastiness I sense, absorb and sometimes reflect, is an extension of our ever-present online personalities?
A dulled duration of a long commute yields to some strange digressions in thought. I was sitting in my window seat, soporific or alert and lucid in turns. My legs had been crossed for a long time and the knee that bore the brunt of the other leg was now screaming in protest.
It made me think of the stairs and escalators that were still part of my immediate future and how much I was starting to detest them because they bothered my knees. I am not in chronic knee pain. But I feel the sudden painful twinge when I am going up or down stairs. Maybe it started when I decided to climb all the way down the Eiffel Tower and perhaps it got worse when I was expecting but it certainly feels like something that's here to stay. It's where my fabric is starting to tear or unravel.
It'll slowly worsen, become chronic, transform me from a brisk and fast walker to a hobbler. Unless I can find a way to stem this damage...knee braces, stretching, joint supplements, exercise...whatever it takes.
Hobbling is absolutely the worst possible future image for myself. I think of old images of Indira Gandhi running up and down the stairs even at an advanced age. Well...that's where I'd rather see myself; running not hobbling.
I thought about the part of me that's remained unchanged while everything around me changed, aged, transformed, matured. There is something core and something essential within that has remained the same. I know it and I feel it.
I have grown up and landed in a time and a place where being resigned to one's circumstances and giving up is passé. I owe this core, essential, unchanged and pristine part of me a 'vehicle' that is in perfect working condition. I'd rather cruise to the finish line in a Bentley than in a rusty Chevrolet station wagon; the one my first employer had me cruise around in for the longest time.
It isn't a selfish, narcissistic or vanity laced desire to keep oneself in good shape for as long as is realistic. It is a decision for which our future generations, who end up bearing our burdens in more ways than one, will thank us.
Which brings me to how this connects with the last post which talked about the draining nature of negativity and nastiness.
This rage I sense all around me, road rage, Starbucks' line rage, subway rage, bus rage, cars raging at pedestrians, pedestrians raging at cars, bloggers writing nasty posts, blog commenters being vicious...all this and more in many ways appears to be like a twinging pain in the knee, the major load-bearing joint in our bodies.
It cannot possibly be healthy, it signals an unraveling of society. It indicates some sort of coming apart at the seams. It makes me feel as though we'll all be hobbled if we don't attend to this, if we don't eliminate this toxicity from within.
And there are others who feel the same way. Like Nick Bilton on a blog in the Technology section of the New York Times today, where he talks about the nastiness in online interactions and people often forgetting that the person at the receiving end of the nastiness is a living and breathing human.
Maybe the real world nastiness I sense, absorb and sometimes reflect, is an extension of our ever-present online personalities?
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Nothing: Part 11
I find the expression of displeasure draining even as I realize I am expressing displeasure as I say this. I feel intense fatigue at the people all around me always finding something to complain about. The act is so contagious. Not only does misery love company, it actively seeks to corrupt said company.
I am being a hypocrite because I often lead the charge when it comes to complaining. This morning, at 7:13 am, I was waiting for the red light to turn green so I could enter the parking lot where I leave my car in order to take my bus. I heard the bus revving up its engine. It leaves at 7:15 sharp. I found myself screaming at the intersection, willing the light to change. I felt ashamed of my behavior even as I continued slapping the steering wheel and screaming at the top of my lungs, saying how much I hated that particular stop light, how someone needed to do something about it. I wouldn't have been behaving this way if I wasn't alone in the car, this ugly side isn't for public display. But the part of me that hates such ugliness was appalled at myself. We aren't even programmed to be consistent with ourselves. We're such sorry creations.
In the bus I kept praying no one else would sit next to me because they would bring with them the smells of the foods and drinks they had consumed the night before. Their heads would slump onto my shoulder as they snoozed or their lax arms and legs would fall on me or lean on me as I deliberated nudging them upright with force.
I feigned a sneeze and coughed a few times, hoping that would be a deterrent. Such scheming, such selfish nastiness. Of course my prayers weren't answered, the bus rarely leaves unless all the seats are occupied. Thankfully, the person who sat next to me was minimal in her usage of space and didn't slump or snore during the ride. But my cantankerous morning antics don't please me one bit.
The casual conversations are also full of whininess. People complaining about the weather, their healths, their headaches, their aches and pains, their chores, about drivers who delay the evening commute because they like getting overtime dollars (this was news to me, I always assumed it was just the heavy traffic). I should resist joining the chorus but I seldom do.
There should be some degree of acceptance, some resolve to just go with the flow, to just put up with some things as par for the course, instead of raging against anything and everything, pumping our fists up and down, striking at imaginary slights. It's everywhere!
We need to ratchet down the negativity...rather...I need to ratchet it down.
I am being a hypocrite because I often lead the charge when it comes to complaining. This morning, at 7:13 am, I was waiting for the red light to turn green so I could enter the parking lot where I leave my car in order to take my bus. I heard the bus revving up its engine. It leaves at 7:15 sharp. I found myself screaming at the intersection, willing the light to change. I felt ashamed of my behavior even as I continued slapping the steering wheel and screaming at the top of my lungs, saying how much I hated that particular stop light, how someone needed to do something about it. I wouldn't have been behaving this way if I wasn't alone in the car, this ugly side isn't for public display. But the part of me that hates such ugliness was appalled at myself. We aren't even programmed to be consistent with ourselves. We're such sorry creations.
In the bus I kept praying no one else would sit next to me because they would bring with them the smells of the foods and drinks they had consumed the night before. Their heads would slump onto my shoulder as they snoozed or their lax arms and legs would fall on me or lean on me as I deliberated nudging them upright with force.
I feigned a sneeze and coughed a few times, hoping that would be a deterrent. Such scheming, such selfish nastiness. Of course my prayers weren't answered, the bus rarely leaves unless all the seats are occupied. Thankfully, the person who sat next to me was minimal in her usage of space and didn't slump or snore during the ride. But my cantankerous morning antics don't please me one bit.
The casual conversations are also full of whininess. People complaining about the weather, their healths, their headaches, their aches and pains, their chores, about drivers who delay the evening commute because they like getting overtime dollars (this was news to me, I always assumed it was just the heavy traffic). I should resist joining the chorus but I seldom do.
There should be some degree of acceptance, some resolve to just go with the flow, to just put up with some things as par for the course, instead of raging against anything and everything, pumping our fists up and down, striking at imaginary slights. It's everywhere!
We need to ratchet down the negativity...rather...I need to ratchet it down.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Nothing: Part 10
It's sad when even the posts about nothing seem impossible for several days. How much of a vacuum have I created around me?
I think a part of me felt as if it was being dragged into the new decade. I felt like a recalcitrant child, like my brother at the age of three or four when he expressed his displeasure at having to walk for a long distance by simply sitting down on the road and saying he wasn't going to budge unless he was carried. I felt like screaming, "I am not done, I haven't finished living this decade, I haven't been able to do much of anything, I am not coming to 2010!" And here I am. Sulking as the new year gets older, as it vanishes before my eyes, making the passage of time even scarier than it was last year.
I am already imagining all the greetings that will sound exactly the same as they did this year, as they do every year. Some folks my age don't even bother to spell it all out these days - HNY and SG is as far as they can bring themselves to go. Then there are some others who shame us all by actually finding a way to anchor the year in our memories with creatively personalized greeting cards that appear right on time and don't feel generic.
There are the greetings that appear from one's boss's boss's boss, with pictures of their wives and kids skiing in Aspen or surfing in Hawaii, with no message, just a signature faked by an assistant. I glance at them and wonder if they would even say a word to me or know I worked in the same company if I ran across them outside of the office building. But in the spirit of the season I assume they have my best interests at heart as I pin it up or tape it on the wall that displays the card. I even remember the one that arrived from the CEO of the company where I worked two or three employers ago. The greetings arrived after my job had been eliminated. It was nice to know she wished me well.
So here's the new year then. 5 days old. I have 360 days to figure out what to do with myself this year. I didn't make any resolutions; past years have shown that to be an exercise in futility. I do have fuzzy goals. There must be some knob I could turn to make them appear sharper, more focussed, more clearly resolved.
I'd better list some of them, or else they wouldn't stand a chance at being realized:
1. Find a way to spend more time with Anoushka. Less whining about lack of time, more concrete action - whatever form that action takes.
2. Find out for sure if I can derive any pleasure from cooking and gardening. No luck so far.
3. Write something that doesn't deserve the title - "Nothing". This is fuzzy in the extreme. Hasn't been backed by any concrete action so far.
4. Master the vibrato technique. How do they make their fingers vibrate on the violin?
5. Make my music practice sessions more productive; more right-brained, less left brained, rather, less hare-brained!
6. Go further along the path of lowering expectations from others, for instance:
- Not feeling even a twinge of envy when someone in the office receives a floral delivery for their special occasions. That twinge makes no sense because I am not a flowers person, neither is my hubby. Flowers die. I can't even say, "You don't send me flowers anymore", because he never has! I'd rather he didn't and I'd rather I didn't feel like it would be nice to get them! Quite the exercise in lowering expectations this! I need to isolate it and define it in order to lower it!
- Watch movies or plays alone, dine alone or with friends who indicate they wouldn't mind joining me, if the spouse is unwilling. This way we won't have to come to blows about his fascination with Poker or football and mine with arts, entertainment and recreation. This might prevent high decibel conversations about our divergent interests that so defy 19 years of togetherness.
7. Celebrate, memorialize and anchor the small A n P n "Little A" area - if one pictures a Venn diagram with 3 sets. I need to do it more often, really "feel" that I am doing it. Maybe then I wouldn't quite mind the "quicksilvery racehorse" passage of time.
I think a part of me felt as if it was being dragged into the new decade. I felt like a recalcitrant child, like my brother at the age of three or four when he expressed his displeasure at having to walk for a long distance by simply sitting down on the road and saying he wasn't going to budge unless he was carried. I felt like screaming, "I am not done, I haven't finished living this decade, I haven't been able to do much of anything, I am not coming to 2010!" And here I am. Sulking as the new year gets older, as it vanishes before my eyes, making the passage of time even scarier than it was last year.
I am already imagining all the greetings that will sound exactly the same as they did this year, as they do every year. Some folks my age don't even bother to spell it all out these days - HNY and SG is as far as they can bring themselves to go. Then there are some others who shame us all by actually finding a way to anchor the year in our memories with creatively personalized greeting cards that appear right on time and don't feel generic.
There are the greetings that appear from one's boss's boss's boss, with pictures of their wives and kids skiing in Aspen or surfing in Hawaii, with no message, just a signature faked by an assistant. I glance at them and wonder if they would even say a word to me or know I worked in the same company if I ran across them outside of the office building. But in the spirit of the season I assume they have my best interests at heart as I pin it up or tape it on the wall that displays the card. I even remember the one that arrived from the CEO of the company where I worked two or three employers ago. The greetings arrived after my job had been eliminated. It was nice to know she wished me well.
So here's the new year then. 5 days old. I have 360 days to figure out what to do with myself this year. I didn't make any resolutions; past years have shown that to be an exercise in futility. I do have fuzzy goals. There must be some knob I could turn to make them appear sharper, more focussed, more clearly resolved.
I'd better list some of them, or else they wouldn't stand a chance at being realized:
1. Find a way to spend more time with Anoushka. Less whining about lack of time, more concrete action - whatever form that action takes.
2. Find out for sure if I can derive any pleasure from cooking and gardening. No luck so far.
3. Write something that doesn't deserve the title - "Nothing". This is fuzzy in the extreme. Hasn't been backed by any concrete action so far.
4. Master the vibrato technique. How do they make their fingers vibrate on the violin?
5. Make my music practice sessions more productive; more right-brained, less left brained, rather, less hare-brained!
6. Go further along the path of lowering expectations from others, for instance:
- Not feeling even a twinge of envy when someone in the office receives a floral delivery for their special occasions. That twinge makes no sense because I am not a flowers person, neither is my hubby. Flowers die. I can't even say, "You don't send me flowers anymore", because he never has! I'd rather he didn't and I'd rather I didn't feel like it would be nice to get them! Quite the exercise in lowering expectations this! I need to isolate it and define it in order to lower it!
- Watch movies or plays alone, dine alone or with friends who indicate they wouldn't mind joining me, if the spouse is unwilling. This way we won't have to come to blows about his fascination with Poker or football and mine with arts, entertainment and recreation. This might prevent high decibel conversations about our divergent interests that so defy 19 years of togetherness.
7. Celebrate, memorialize and anchor the small A n P n "Little A" area - if one pictures a Venn diagram with 3 sets. I need to do it more often, really "feel" that I am doing it. Maybe then I wouldn't quite mind the "quicksilvery racehorse" passage of time.
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