temperatures.

Someone please explain to me how it is possible that it is the beginning of June nearly, it is 35 degrees celsius in Boston and when I land in London, it is SEVEN DEGREES CELSIUS? It boggles the mind. I had to immediately purchase on the cheap, a white fishermans' cable knit sweater. While it does nothing to hold up the fashion front, I am warm. The BBC has quite a funny series of pictures on the weather: check it here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/6698607.stm

tomorrow

So another adventure partly ends and a new one begins. Packing up my room, putting things away in boxes (I started my packing a day early unlike usual seven hours of packing through the night-J would be so proud of me!), thinking, how did another year of my life pass by with me barely noticing. Its already summer and somehow we went from autumn to deepest winter to the beginning of spring and now high summer and its 35 degrees and Boston is unrecognizable from the days when we trudged to school knee-deep in snow. And yesterday was perfect as I took a nap in between packing. The windows to my room were open, and the sunlight streamed in and it was a perfect 25 deg and the wind carried the scent of newly blooming lilac and for once I wasn't rushed as I have been all year and all I had to do was to live through the moment and it was beautiful.

And now I am listening to the soundtrack for the summer of 2000 which was the first time I came to Boston and spent my summer here and how much has changed in seven years. And in some ways the things I thought would be different are not and the things I thought would be the same are. Here's to not spending six years of your life fixated on the wrong things, to taking life as it is and not more than that, to adventure at every new corner, to the wind in my hair and a spring in my step. Here's to tomorrow, whatever it may bring.

the shadow lines

I am reading again. Two and a half books in two days surely qualifies as a literary resurgence. Divisadero as I have mentioned. Can Anna ever go back again? Are we ever able to sew scars together again? But also The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh about four individuals torn apart by the Calcutta riots. I was told by someone that this was better than the English Patient. Shocked at such heresy I immediately bought and read this. Reader, it is not. Heretic to be included even in the same sentence. Ghosh's writing is ill-ordered, characters caricatured with no heroic appeal, and no weight of tragedy to carry the writing, to imbue meaning through the slightest of gestures. Though he does wield some talent, it is not nearly as much as it is hyped out to be. But perhaps I am simply not the right person to write a comparison piece on the two. One idea he mentioned was quite stunning in its simplicity, that love was directly opposed to the idea of justice, that he had thrown everything he had into the scales and it had not moved by a tremor. As it is quoted in Divisadero, whether we are the heroes of our own lives or someone else is, these pages will show.

read

"Anywhere else, those events would only have occupied two square inches of a Brueghel, but they brought fire to my life"- Divisadero

I've read it now. And now the re-reading begins, to find out the many truths that are too buried for us adults. But it was anguishing and I tried not to linger to let it parallel but it did. The racing can only hide so much, and it should pause so that other things, ordering and stabilizing can be layered over it, but perhaps it is not to be.

And a dear friend sent ultrasounds of the baby growing in her womb, and it is a miracle of human life, that despite everything, as Coetzee says, the urge for life to perpetuate and constantly renew itself will overpower all evil.

madam, i'm adam

it's certainly scary how I can veer from exhilarated to maudlin in a couple of days. Nothing to quite explain the shift. A long lunch with a professor debating the derisive SLFP proposals before Sri Lanka today and how the situation is absolutely critical. It hasn't been as bad as this in 25 years. We will look back in history and realize that this is the turning point, when something could have been averted, as Burke said, all that is required for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. And what do you do when someone tells you they are dying, to be gone within the year and there is nothing left to say. That has been the hallmark of today, I simply have nothing left to say. And no one to say it to.

person to watch: Priyanka Gandhi. Will she turn out like her grandmother, the personification of evil, or someone else entirely, more compassionate, less paranoid about holding onto power,

one of the greats

I'm back again to the state where life is beautiful. Meeting cartoonists on random street corners, a friend becoming a future congressman in Nebraska while being a Sri Lankan activist, another person working on the Richardson campaign as a matter of honour, out of her apartment with no money. Trekking to Colombia to work with a Nobel peace prize nominated activist is another friend, while another works with UNICEF in Bihar. Met an urban planner/architect from Sri Lanka who is going to help us map out our settlement. Meeting a renowned anthropological professor tomorrow who is a dear mentor, and who wrote Buddhism Betrayed. Always carving out a path in the midst of a madness, trying to find love in the obscurest of places and being unexpectedly surprised by the promises that one finds instead. Always drifting, always at a point of "divisar" by which we look back from the distance of time. Finding another who understands Brueghel, again. We find what we search for, when we do not look for it. Years later. Being with a brilliant economist, understanding behaviour. Always pushing the limits of my own understanding. Oh, that this could last forever. And listening to potent music, (the cheap, as Noel Coward said), and watching lots of television, browning under the sun and the promise of midsummer with days of nothing ahead (except exams which we've written off). The taper and counterpoint to a year that has gone by as fast as it has been unexpected. One of the greats as each year has been since I set myself firmly, fearfully, on this path.

beat up

Currently beat up, chewed up and spat out

Listening to on repeat

a. Road Trippin' by Red Hot Chili Peppers
b. The Story by Brandi Carlisle
c. Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley
d. New Day by Kate Havnevik of Melankton
e. Bach-Air on a G String by Royal Philharmonic