The Help

I finished reading The Help recently. I watched the movie very shortly after it came out some time last year, and I found it (of course) really inspirational and moving. The courage displayed by Skeeter made me think about the lack of courage I've seemed to show for a while now. Anyway, I marked down a few of my favorite passages from the book. They're not the very best writing in the world or anything, but they were the most relatable passages to me:

"...I'll never be able to tell Mother I want to be a writer. She'll only turn it into yet another thing that separates me from the married girls....And now she's gripping the rail, waiting to see if I'll do what fat Fanny Peatrow did to save herself. My own mother is looking at me as if I completely baffle her mind with my looks, my height, my hair."
"'It's all about putting yourself in a man-meeting situation where you can--'
'Mama,' I say, just wanting to end this conversation, 'would it really be so terrible if I never met a husband?'
Mother clutches her bare arms as if made cold by the thought. 'Don't. Don't say that, Eugenia.'"
"I shudder with the same left-behind feeling I've had since I graduated from college, three months ago. I've been dropped of in a place I do not belong anymore."

"I flick on the radio, desperate for noise to fill my ears. 'It's My Party' is playing and I search for something else. I'm starting to hate the whiny teenage songs about love and nothing. In a moment of aligned wavelengths, I pick up Memphis WKPO and out comes a man's voice, drunk-sounding, singing fast and bluesy. At a dead end street, I ease into the Tote-Sum store parking lot and listen to the song. It is better than anything I've ever heard.

...you'll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin'.

A voice in a can tells me his name is Bob Dylan, but as the next song starts, the signal fades. I lean back in my seat, stare out at the dark windows of the store. I feel a rush of inexplicable relief. I feel like I've just heard something from the future."

Writing about the truth takes a lot of strength. It involves going out on a limb and not knowing what life will meet you on the other side of that publication. But Skeeter Phelan, fictional character though she is, was willing to take that risk. The courage of that takes my breath away, and makes me wonder what risks I'm willing to take in order to write the truth.

Resolutions for 2011

I hadn't really thought of any resolutions for this year, and I wasn't planning to do any, but a few ideas came to me earlier today, so I thought it would be good to write them down:

1. Focus on my own faults and overlook others. The only things I can change are my own bad qualities, so why waste time pointing out others'?

2. See God in every person and act accordingly. Each person holds God within him- or herself, and I need to remember that constantly.

3. Write in my journal at least once a week.

4. Work out at least once a week.

5. Be less quick to anger and indignation and be more patient, loving, and tolerant. Give others, and the world, the benefit of the doubt.

6. Be more decisive.

7. Recite one of the many slokas I know once a week. It's not that hard. Do it.

8. Be more productive.

9. Read this every day to remind myself of my goals.

Here's to a year worth remembering, complete with [at least] two weddings (one for my sister, another for one of my oldest friends and college roommate), the end of my basic sciences curriculum in medical school, and my last real summer break.

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

The Best: I met Amy Tan tonight! I love her books, though I haven't touched one in ages, and I didn't even get to hear her read because I had to leave early, but meeting her was such an honor, and I got her to sign my yellowed paperback copy of The Joy Luck Club and take a picture with my sister and me. All in all a pretty great Monday night.

The Great:

1. I went to a reading last Tuesday evening by my wonderful former creative writing professor, Emily Fox Gordon (www.emilyfoxgordon.com). She is one of the most intelligent authors I've ever read--in my adult life, other than when reading, say Moby-Dick or Midnight's Children, never have I had to look up words so many times while reading a book. Emily's cadences are nearly always spot-on, and I am so proud to have been taught by her. She struggled with trying to write fiction for many many years before realizing that personal essay was the genre for her (and, I think, the genre for me--this is the class I took with her), but she had to write two memoirs and one novel (the last a triumph for her, because she never thought she could write fiction) before FINALLY getting to publish a collection of her personal essays entitled Book of Days. I bought this book at her reading and had her sign it, and she signed it "To Chaya, one of my very favorites," which made me feel really special. I'm hoping to have lunch or coffee with her some time in the near future. That reading came at the perfect time: between my first medical school exams. It reminded me that there's a whole other amazing and happy side to me and my life that isn't sciencesciencescience, and I had nearly forgotten about that aspect. So it was just. Great.

2. I've realized that I can count on my best friends to see through my facades and know exactly, exactly when I need them and to be there when I need them, and that is comforting in a way I cannot even express. I don't know what I'd do without the wonderful people I have in my life.

The Good:

1. I've made soup twice since moving into my apartment, and both times, the soup has come out great. Really, great. This is absolutely wonderful, partly because I love soup, but also because I've always, always wanted to be a wonderful recipe-less cook like my mother, and I'm finally starting to edge towards the possibility of that. I've eaten tons of sub-standard Indian food (prepared by myself) for the past few years as I've tried to find my cooking rhythm, and I'm finally starting to get that magical intuition that all Indian mothers seem to have. And my newfound cooking savvy seems to extend to pastas and soups as well! This is wonderful news.

2. I'm one block into medical school, and I've not only made it so far, but enjoyed it. I'm a little loath to begin studying again now that a new block has begun, but I'm hoping that my enthusiasm will grow slowly but surely.

3. The new Sara Bareilles album is filling me with great joy. How wonderful when an artist one loves proves her worth with a second album that is quite possibly better than the last.

The Bad:

1. It's 9:10 PM and I've only reviewed one of the four lectures I had today. And I wanted to go to bed early tonight as getting up early (after four days of vacation) was particularly difficult this morning.

2. Crazy as it sounds, medical school is the simplest, most manageable thing in my life right now. On the one hand, this makes medical school not so bad. On the other hand, it shows how much of a struggle many other things are being right now.

The Ugly:

1. I'm trying to write a piece for my medical school's literary magazine, and I'm running into problems from the outset. I haven't written anything worth anyone else's revisions in an incredibly long time, and I really want to make this piece great, because I know there's substance there. I just feel like the lolcat in that lolcatz picture, the one that's sprawled across a keyboard with the caption "Writer's block. I haz it."

2. I just want so badly to be substantive, real. I feel that I'm not really either.

Beloved

It took me weeks to finish reading Toni Morrison's Beloved. I began reading it right as I was leaving India, and only finished it up last week. Chalk the slow pace up to its being a bit impenetrable at times. The book was very good overall, but if I were to try to piece together the plot meticulously, I'd still be baffled. Since I've chosen instead to focus on the themes presented in the novel and the moments of breathtaking writing in it, I'm mostly just happy I finished it. As I am wont to do with nearly everything I read, I dog-eared the pages containing lines that made me swoon as I read. Unfortunately, since I never underline or highlight said lines, I have to search for them on the dog-eared pages after I read the book and blog about it. So the following are (hopefully) my absolute favorite quotations from this book:

"...but even when she said it she was thinking how much her eyes enjoyed looking in his face." (46)

"She shook her head from side to side, resigned to her rebellious brain. Why was there nothing it refused? No misery, no regret, no hateful picture too rotten to accept? Like a greedy child it snatched everything. Just once, could it say, No thank you? I just ate and can't hold another bite?...But her brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day." (70)

"He sat down beside her. Sethe looked at him. In that unlit daylight his face, bronzed and reduced to its bones, smoothed her heart down." (71) I lovelove the cadences created by the first two short sentences, and then the concept of a face smoothing someone's heart down, the same way I love the concept of eyes enjoying looking at a face. The idea that beauty can be comprehended severally by your senses and not just in a lump experience by your brain.

"Sethe rubbed and rubbed, pressing the work cloth and the stony curves that made up his knee. She hoped it calmed him as it did her. Like kneading bread...Working dough. Working, working dough. Nothing better than that to start the day's serious work of beating back the past." (73) This excerpt ended a chapter. An ending like that--it just makes me go "mm."

"...she wanted Paul D. No matter what he told and knew, she wanted him in her life....Trust and rememory, yes, the way she believed it could be when he cradled her before the cooking stove. The weight and angle of him; the true-to-life beard hair on him; arched back, educated hands. His waiting eyes and awful human power. The mind of him that knew her own. Her story was bearable because it was his as well--to tell, to refine and tell again. The things neither knew about the other--the things neither had word-shapes for--well, it would come in time..." (99) What a fantastic description of the things one can love about a man, and the way lovers can begin to occupy spaces in one another's lives.

"I'll plant carrots just so she can see them, and turnips. Have you ever seen one, baby? A prettier thing God never made. White and purple with a tender tail and a hard head. Feels good when you hold it in your hand and smells like the creek when it floods, bitter but happy." (201) Who else could write so evocatively about a turnip, for goodness' sake! This excerpt makes me want to hold one, see one, smell one, so much.

"There are too many things to feel about this woman. His head hurts. Suddenly he remembers Sixo trying to describe what he felt about the Thirty-Mile Woman. 'She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.'" (272-273) I so desperately want to be described this way one day, as a woman about whom there is too much to feel, a woman who can gather a man's (or anyone's, for that matter) pieces and give them back in the right order. Mm.

"He wants to put his story next to hers." (273) Again, an amazing way to conceptualize (ugh this is not the right term; where is all my language gone?) love and marriage--putting your stories together.

NOTE: Boldface and italics were added by me, and were not in the original text.

Coming Attractions

I really want to blog about my time here in detail, and do it right with photos and everything, which means I probably won't get to do so until I get home (which is approximately five weeks [OMG five more weeks] from now). So that I don't forget the things I wanted to write about, and so that I actually write about this trip instead of just posting pictures on Facebook, here's a list of topics I want to cover in future blogs:

1. Mahaballipuram (really amazing historical city on the coast of the Bay of Bengal in Tamil Nadu)
2. A Primer on South Indian Temples (because I've visited so many while here, and have been taking pictures as well)
3. What Once Was and What Might Have Been (my parents' history here and musings upon the life I might have had had my father not been recruited by an American company--and thank goodness he was)
4. The Ugly Truth (about the unpleasantnesses of India as I experience it, encompassing things as specific as my family here and general as the widespread lack of soap in public restrooms, a state of affairs that makes me want to use this smiley: -__-. What's the point of washing your hands without soap?!)
5. Narayana Tirtha Aarathanai (this is the weekend music festival, held in the village [and I mean village] where my mother grew up, that I attended this past weekend. It's one of the main reasons I left for India as early as I did and am staying for as long as I am.)
6. The beauty of the Indian countryside

Those are the only posts I've thought of so far, but I'm sure I'll come up with more as time goes on, and that miscellaneous items will begin to coalesce as my trip continues. I've been in Thanjavur, the town where I was born, for 8 days now, and I'm leaving with my family for Bangalore via train tomorrow night. From Bangalore, I'm heading back to Chennai on March 2, and the night of March 17 will see me on a plane to Singapore!

Fear of Flying [Things]

Seeing as how I'm leaving on a long international flight tomorrow afternoon, it's pretty darn good that I don't have a fear of flying. I associate a certain level of discomfort with flying, (I have gotten airsick once or twice, and being in the air for that long does weird things to my body) but I rather enjoy the important and excited feeling I get when I'm wheeling bags through an airport. Flying, therefore, doesn't really bother me.

Flying things, on the other hand, are a different story altogether. I've known for as long as I can remember (or as long as I've been articulating fears) that I'm afraid of moths and butterflies. They're so fluttery and fragile and you can just run into them at any given time. Something about those creatures really freaks me out. I didn't realize until I was about ten or eleven years old that the same kind of fear translates to birds. Again, something about their fragility and the fluttery way they move. I don't really think they'll harm me. I just don't like them near me, and I think it's because I'm afraid I'll hurt them. Anyway, I've recently begun to wonder if I'm as afraid of birds as I once was. I mean, I'll admire the occasional bird when I'm out running, and tropical birds are rather beautiful in pictures. And I've been wondering lately, in general, if the things we call our personalities aren't just cleverly constructed versions of ourselves that rigidify with time simply because we like the way they look and sound. By which I mean maybe I just think I'm afraid of birds, when really I'm not anymore. This morning, though, that theory was proven wrong. There was an unusually large contingent of blackbirds in the parking lot when I drove onto campus, and I only noticed them once I had already stepped out of my car. I walked around to the passenger side door to grab my backpack and purse, and was horrified to discover one of the birds sitting on the roof of my car once I looked up. As it flew away, I definitely shuddered and said "Oh my God" at least once or twice. So the answer is clear: I'm still afraid of birds. And probably always will be.

In other news:

1. I'm officially going to be a medical student at Baylor next year. I've broken the other medical schools' hearts by withdrawing my applications to them, and I've put down my deposit. I couldn't resist the siren song of the Texas Medical Center, even though I'd love to get out of Houston for the next four years. I keep telling myself that I'll leave for residency. I will. I will.
2. I'm leaving for India tomorrow afternoon, and will be carrying quite possibly the heaviest purse known to mankind (containing 2-3 books, a journal, a portable DVD player, two MP3 players, and my wallet, passport, ticket, etc...since when did I become such a wired, pampered American?) cleverly disguised within a backpack. I hope the airline will allow me to carry it on along with my rolling carry-on. I think I should be okay.
3. I'm having breakfast at EIGHT AM tomorrow with a friend who used to live in Houston but moved to Tennessee last fall and is in town for the weekend. I'm really excited about the seeing her part, but rather horrified at the fact that this makes two weeks during which I've had to be somewhere at 8 AM on Saturday. What's up with that?

Here's to a wonderful trip and blogging from Asia!

A New Beginning

I've officially defected from Xanga and come over here. I've been thinking about doing this for quite some time, (a bit idly, I'll admit) but I was hesitating because I always develop attachments to the things I use often--cameras, computers, glasses, cars, and also blogging sites, apparently. I felt a bit like I would be betraying my little ol' Xanga were I to start a new blog here. But since I haven't posted regularly in my little ol' Xanga for ages, I don't feel so guilty anymore. Besides, the Xanga had too much of my teenybopper past attached to it; perhaps that's why I haven't blogged much recently: it was slightly buried in the remnants of the past. Anyway, though, here I am!

Having graduated a semester early, I'm spending this spring semester working in my lovely plant genetics lab on campus (You're sure to hear more about it as time wears on. Lots of fun stuff happens in lab.) and going to India (to visit family) and Singapore (to visit a friend) for seven weeks! Which is a long time. Which brings me to the reason I felt like posting in the first place. I know the trip could be really good, if I went at it with the right attitude. I'm sure there will be many memories to be made, lots of fun to be had, much soul-searching to be accomplished [check it out--countable and uncountable nouns in that list, woot!] in both India and Singapore. Yet I kind of don't want to leave home. I feel like being gone for such a huge chunk of the semester will lose me the opportunity to watch my friends do a lot of interesting things--not to mention to do a lot of interesting things (i.e. go to Chicago over spring break, do random stuff in lab that both annoys and entertains the postdocs, linger obnoxiously long over lunch in South Servery, do movie nights and celebrate 21st birthdays and on and on) with my friends here at home. And I know I'll get homesick in India; I always do. Plus I've never actually gone there by myself before, so I'm slightly nervous about lugging around my bags and making my way through the airport and actually knowing what I'm doing.

All that being said, though, if this trip isn't going to suck, I need to get myself excited for it. So to that end, here is a list of things I am looking forward to doing during my trip to Asia:

1. Drinking fresh coconut water (eleneer; how the heck do you transliterate that?)
2. Eating palm fruit (or so I think it is; all I know is it's called nungu--again, how do you transliterate that?--in Tamil)
3. Eating roasted corn (suttu solam!)
4. Seeing Singapore for the first time!
5. Visiting the temples I love
6. Writing lots of postcards to friends back home
7. Getting to know my cousins better
8. Going to Pizza Hut in India; yay for paneer on pizza!
9. Making enchiladas for my cousin in Chennai
10. Buying clothes and shoes and earrings and other nonsense in Pondy Bazaar and elsewhere
11. Seeing parts of Chennai I've never seen before (hopefully this will happen)
12. Writing in my little green journal and maybe even conceptualizing a new piece!
13. Reading lots of books in my spare time

Right, that's a pretty good start, I'm thinking. But if I want to actually get on the plane, I need to pack, which means I need to get off the computer and get my day started, which I am loath to do, but I guess I should just suck it up. Hopefully I'll be able to update this once or twice while I'm in Asia so that I can show you guys what I'm doing over there. Here's to happy blogging!