Post #3

Letters in The Indian Sand Take #2
7/4/09 – 7/21/09


Why am I still here!? It’s closing on three thirty on Sunday afternoon, and I am still in the office. I’m at my desk even. I’m going mad!

I guess it gives me time to catch my breath.

It’s been a long week. I’ve been in the office for at least nine hours, usually more than eleven, every day since I got here.

Don’t get me wrong; work is great. I simply wish I spent less time here.

Today had two adventures in the chambers before I even cocked the hammer. I had a seven-page brief to get out before eleven, and today is moving day. I’m moving to a new place - a New Delhi rooftop home. A college kid’s dream. I’m still jet lagged at this point. I get up at 3 am. These were the things I was planning on when I once again rose from slumbers hours before the sun.

I was surprised that none of my neighbors at ISI ever complained about my music. I would play it whenever I was home, and at all hours of the night. No one said a thing though as Nick Drake put me to bed, and Sea & Cake greeted my pre-dawns.

I’d read, drink copious amounts of water, [omitted], [omitted], shower, and repeat until 9 came. Then I’d go to work. There I’d read academic materials, stalk the Facebook labyrinth, write, email, and go home. [Clause omitted], and every once in a while I’d venture out – risking tardiness – for a samosa or an ice-cream. Everyday for a week. It is like I never left home. But I did leave home. I got laid more at home. Why am I still in the office? I’ve been driven to drinking. I’m only here because someone is supposed to be helping me move in. They are just sitting downstairs. They don’t speak English. They can’t tell me anything. So I sit upstairs. So I drink.
I bought a fifth of whiskey for my new place, but I’m so bored that I siphoned some into my flask. I could get fired for drinking here, but I don’t care. It was supposed to by my first day off.

So now I’m living somewhere new. I’ve described it in passing to several people, but never fully. Never like I can. The building is made of plaster and cement, but it’s narrow façade is covered in pre-fab bricks of an olive hue that I’ve only seen here. I don’t know when these bricks were made. Their shape, if this were America, would suggest the 50s – low, stout, and in love with cement. Their color however would suggest the 70s – when the fashion houses of the world went blind.

I’ve learned that the whole of south Delhi is less than twenty years old however. I have a lot more to figure out.

Oh my gosh, stop the presses. I’ll get back to the third floor in a second. The man next to me in this café has me in a daze. I’m in a Café Coffee Day. Their slogan: “You never know what will happen over a cup of coffee.” They specialize in espresso drinks and Indianisms like “much more prettier.” That said, the star bucks-ran-out-of-money-lighting is not what is driving me up a tree—it never is, I’m here once a day—it’s the man next to me.

I saw his ass first. Remember the animated Robin Hood? In the opening scene they rob prince john—and he thinking them beautiful admirers stick out his ring laden hands to be kissed… this man’s gesture was similarly regal as his right cheek caressed my left, but I will not kiss it. Nor do I want any rubies it may possess. He decided that he didn’t like the seat to my left, so he came back to my right – closer to the door – and smacked me with his bag in the process. It wasn’t until I had been repeatedly bludgeoned that I took stock of his appearance.

He looks like a million other members of an international artistic fraternity that meccas, or dreams of doing so, to NYC. He looks like a million other interesting looking twenty-somethings that seem perfectly nice, but who don’t immediately impress me. Man-pris, script tattoo, wide leather banded wristwatch. He’s a weird mix of international coolness… I don’t have a word to describe the volumes that his intricately constructed sideburns speak, nor should I. It was his shoes that made me jump.

Mix banana laffy-taffy & a yellow glow-stick together, and then apply that color to something that can only be described as a power moccasin and you have an idea. I stared for minutes.

Add a lower-lip stud and you understand the sweetness. He is loud, flamboyant, pudgy in a way that lacks portly’s attractive containment, and possibly a photographer. He may be gay. He is wonderful to be next to.

Back to my room. Okay. I started writing about something else.

No pressure. My life back in Chicago feels like it is full of pressures. It seems like I was expected to do great things all of the time. From the smallest thing to the greatest it feels like I wasn’t allowed to fail. If I cook it has to be good. If I dress it must be well done. If I play a game I must show promise, and return to the fun better than I was before. If I write it must be good. If I don’t win this time, I felt like I was expected to win the next.

I couldn’t take it anymore. Everything I touched was supposed to do well. I broke. Chicago, home, the compliments; all of them led me to fear waking up. I would hit my alarm for hours because I was afraid that if I opened my eyes I would be letting some expectation go asunder. If I missed on step, then I would let them, myself, down… and they would all leave me.

If I did not call then my habit would be broken, and friends would wonder where I had gone. They all know I keep busy. They all know that I’m always planning. If my plans don’t include each and every one of them then they might think, “Why doesn’t he call?” “He must have better things to do,” they might think. They might take offense.

It would kill me if they took it personally.

I have written about this before. I’ve written about it in this book before. It must be on my mind for me to have said it and want to say it again.

I really love being in India right now. It is not perfect. I can tell you all the ways it which I am uncomfortable later. For now, and most importantly, I do not feel the way I elaborated on above; I don’t feel that way here. I’m too far away from the physical and social pressures that I allowed to get to me. I’m currently solo, and it is liberating. That status quo may change as I get friends here, and as there are new demands on my time, but I do not want it to. I have no one to impress. I don’t want to impress anyone. I am teaching myself to relax for the first time in a year. I need it. I think everyone who can should get a job in a country in which they have no friends. You think mojitos are tonics, you think they shoot menthol and Cuban relaxation through your veins? Try this. You haven’t seen nothing yet.

That said I could use a drink.

It’s now Friday July 10th. I have not written much at all in this book for a week. But here I am. The ink is shining under the halogen lights. The house beats are shaking, and here I am writing. This is what I do. I go anywhere. I go to India. I watch the Sikh DJ try to make us happy. I write. I laugh. I write.

Today is one of the best nights of my life. One of the best days. I am next to a twenty-something couple and they are kissing and dancing under the blanket of a great sound system. I am tapping my foot too. Twice as fast as the man-in-the-textured-shirt-next-to-me’s hand is pumping. They just don’t get it. This is one of the best days of my life.

I’m drunk. They fulfilled my orders. I can feel the beat like I can feel the 120ml capariña, the Rob Roy, the Peach Dream (challenge to the bar tender) and the 650ml Kingfisher. I’m here. This is my cap at Rick’s. I came to the Taj on a Saturday to put a cap on my time. To put a cap on my pen. To see if I could sleep in an air-conditioned room. I asked if there was any availability in the hotel, but they were full.

A girl said a mouthful today. That was a big part of my day. I would have given anything for her to have been here.

Pingashka just introduced me to a friend. He said hi. “What is Love?” just came on. I met the best 13 year old in the world today. I’ll tell you more tomorrow. I love life.

dj_rohan@yahoo.com (This is the email for the Sikh DJ at Rick’s. I sent him a song.)

Yes, I’m going to try. I’m going to catch you up on the last week. Here I am slowly walking into my 15th and 16th days in Delhi, I have done almost nothing to tell you how it is. How it’s going.

I’m sitting in an Italian restaurant on the top floor of a mall in South Delhi. This is what I wrote there as I sat by myself and finished my gnocchi.

I just melted my credit card in a way I have never done before. Sure my parents have treated me, and I’ve certainly purchased more things, and for more money, both. But my credit card has never been run quite so furiously through by so many hands in so little time. Italian this, Italian that – a belt, a shirt, a wallet – in that order. And for so little. Deviousness never came for such a low price.

I was walking around and I hope I was right to think so, but I couldn’t help but wish I had a female compatriot with me. Someone else that saw the fun, pure unadulterated fun, in fashion for both sexes. I have expressed fashion as an articulation within a system. Much like a language, where the letters are pre-substantiated, clothes sit on racks for our fingers to run down or on manikins for our greedy eyes. You can look at clothes quickly or slowly, but I’d like to think that only a set class or caliber of appreciators that look at fashion as earnestly as I do. I am in awe of each day’s aesthetic articulation and what pieces of iconography I can blend to say what on a given day. That’s what I say – just say something. If you do that then you understood fashion. Can you tell that I think it is just one more way to speak?

I wish I knew someone who could teach me about women’s shoes. I know a good deal, and I have my own opinions about them. I want to know everything though. Maybe not how they feel on my feet – at least not too often – but everything else. I want no condescension in this relationship. I want only a master and mentor; I want someone who can walk me through every aspect of shoes. I want to know which timeless bases go with each body type, which color palates, and what the best constructed among them look and feel like. I want to know what emotions are evoked in someone who is truly knowledgeable about this part of the fashion spectrum – the epitomes of material, effort and talent. The things that the others try to emulate. Then I can move down. I can see who is emulating and who is synthesizing. Where, and why. That is what I want.

I have to say that woman’s shoes have so much range compared to men’s chic. The later is often defined largely by it’s conservatism. I know men’s shoes can do fantastic things – I’ve seen them – but I rarely, rarely find such things. Do you?

I like complexity. I like fashion. I like women. I love life.

I think that the calories I just ingested are hitting me. I’ll explain why that is important for you to understand my current mood.

I was constantly overweight growing up. My father will be the first one to say that I was never obese, but I say that I was always overweight growing up. I ate a lot. I ate many times a day, and in large quantities whenever I did. This lasted for years. Not until recently, not until college, did I ever exist in a why that would allow me to appreciate the energy packed into a calorie. I never understood food as fuel. I was always running on full. There was no point of contrast through which I could formulate understanding. Now I know what a sugar high is. Now I know what it feels like when chemists understand calories as units of energy. As I told you before, I ate gelato in Athens once and I jumped over a dumpster. My ex-girlfriend’s parents asked her, “What is he doing?” She understood this part of me, and she answered, “He’s just had calories.” She had a smile on her face. Her parents quickly adopted it, and they laughed as I sprinted off down the street.

I thought I’d share this so you’d understand where I was coming from. I ate. I got my pick-me-up, and consequentially I told you, once again, that I love life. I realize I have been saying that a lot. I know that I haven’t said it much for a long time. I know that I used to at least think it a lot. It was in those moments that I used to write. It was in those moments looking over everyday things and associating them. I would take moments and the things I saw to create characters and hypothetical situations that smacked of things I loved. I’ll share some of them with you sometime if you ask. I still have them I used to make poetry from those moments. There was a period from the end of high school until two-thirds of my way through my second year in which I thought that line to myself at least once a day. “I love life” would pass through me, and I wouldn’t be happy just saying that. I wanted to share it. I wanted to let everyone know, but I wanted to say it in a way in which everyone would like to read, to hear. I wanted to say it well so they’d care, and so they would feel as I did. Well, now, I’m saying it again. Maybe I’ll get used to being this happy again, and then I’ll go back to just thinking it. Then maybe I’ll go back to writing the way I used to. Maybe I won’t. No matter. Regardless, that seems like a pretty nice part of someone’s life. A person I knew once told me, “Sam, you deserve to be happy.” I didn’t believe her. It made her very sad. My mother used to tell me, “Get happy.” Well Mom, I am.

I’m still in the Italian restaurant. I’m still thinking about aesthetics. I think aesthetics are amazing.

I think we pay for control. It is the instantaneous representation that we can manipulate surrounds into lines, colors, and depths that please us. It is the quality that lets us approximate permanence. Material and time. Both controlled for when we are truly comfortable. It does not have to be with money, but we pay for control. That is the modern aesthetic.

July 15th, 2009 – Things I did this week:

-Ate at a place that serves food on flaming foils.
-Climbed to the top of the Noida CNN Building
-Joined a gym run by a former Mr. India
-Traded a gym employee Spanish lessons for Hindi lessons
-Wrote great things for personal satisfaction, and felt the pleasure of sharing the,
-Re-read the 7th Harry Potter
-Read ‘Study in Scarlet,’ ‘The Sign of Four,’ and drooled over the new Sherlock Holmes trailer (I already know who I’d like to go with. Shout if you wanna come. You’ll see me giggle gaily on the way in.)
-Got too drunk to walk at the Taj
-Ate Gnocchi

Things I’ll do Tomorrow:

-See Harry Potter 6.

Things to write about:
- Exploring western iterations of Indian space and how that may be an appropriation of global factors (I swear this will make sense if I ever write it. Now? Only I know what I’m talking about. Don’t care.)
- Café Coffee Day
- City Walk Mall
- Universality of Gym Culture
- Exploring Housing Projects
- Witnessing a Funeral Procession
- Finding a Kite

Things I realized this morning (the morning of this post): If I could have two things—and if they could not be mutually exclusive even in a dream world—I would be in Chicago and Southern France for a time. I would go to Fox and Obel in Chicago, and shop for expensive olive oils and Pisco and then get a pulled pork sandwich from the deli. I also want to be in Nice for a day or two. I want to be back in that open-air market. I want to go into a cool deep body of water. I want to lie down on the beach and enjoy that spot as I think intently about all of my options for dinner like so many others have done for centuries. It’s a geographically specific dream that takes me past that Eastern Orthodox Church back to the place with the ravioli that I liked so much fully 7 years ago. I want to sit on a bench under a streetlight after that, at 2 am, and think about my favorite Hopper etching. I want to wonder if his man reading a paper, under a lamp in a park, on a bench, would be different if he were representing a Frenchman. I would decide that it would, and wonder how. I wouldn’t be able to figure it all out, and descend into a meta process about thinking about thinking. Then I would go home, and wake up in Delhi all over again. That’s where my daydreams took me while I was in the shower this morning.

I’m still mulling over the details from the 16th to the 21st. It has been another amazing week, but I am not prepared to write about it yet. I am not prepared to ramble through it.

I’ll fill you in on some of the crazy people I’ve met, all the parties I’ve been to, and how people all seem to want to help me. I’ll tell you how Delhi is like Chicago, and Bombay is like New York. I’ll tell you about the new cocktail recipe that I got from a bartender in South Ex. I’ll tell you about the chopper pilots I’ve met, the reporters that have taken me out, my not-so-interesting interesting love life, and more. I’ve just got to figure it out first.

Here’s a poem I memorized one summer day in 2006. I can still tell you the day. I mean to build off of its structure to hammer home my final point.

Advice

Folks, I’m telling you
Birthing is hard
& dying is mean
So get yourself
a little
loving
in between.

-LH

With the same earnestness implied I say: If you don’t mind dirt, and sweating, then you may not mind India. If you can bring yourself to say hello to everyone, if you have a good smile, and if you like both leading people around corners and being led by them around the same, then you may love India.

I really mean it.

I’ll show you around if you ever give me the chance.