feliz cumpleanos, ammumalavikamaliemuetcetc
Liam Helmer, June 21, 2004
...bdays arent a big deal by themselves for me either any more, but i'm trying to use them as a way to keep in touch with people, so at least once a year, i have an excuse to have to check in with all the good folks for whom i have marked a day in my yahoo calendar to celebrate their existence...singapore, is um. good. quite excellent in fact. its a place that kind of epitomizes a lot of the accelerations that are happening globally, for better or worse. ...may chuckles ache your belly
Ank, June 21
ankle toby, i'm watching the third cd of Brain Story. one man can see apples but not faces, another can see faces of the queen of hearts but not the hearts, a woman who cannot see things move, and suddenly i've taken a drug that has no name and whose trip is a singularity of the impossible.
holograms of the dance performance are moving, and since both silicon and carbon based brains find it difficult to process such motion, i will wait till i have a more still representation. except, did you know, still life painting cannot be, for, what is still is not life.
i drank your email. i will respond to whatever i burp up. perhaps i should have sipped and wrote and sipped and wrote but thats no fun. so forgive me if not all your questions are answered yes? i think i will ask no questions but the ones implicit in my answers.
p.s. of course i love dolphins, but when i ask myself why i don't know. i don't love k+d yet but maybe i will when i know them. i graduated! sunday. i got an email that says so, and email is the true purveyor of all Knowledge, so it must be so. yeah, see, i took Spring quarter off to get arrested and dance in the streets, even though i just had 2 classes left. took one of two in the fall at Foothills, most excellently enjoying being a non-stanford student, and for the other class, thought i could just pass the test into spanish 3 but it turns out that after a year of not speaking the tongue my tongue twisted and broke and since i refused to change my plans to come to singapore in december to be with my parents i just decided i could take french because they dont take spanish here at the university which i always declared i would never attend, in a country i always declared i would never live in for a long period of time after i left for college. and here i am. oh, and i'm graduated. after 5 months of fucked up paperwork and chasing after people who have no business holding the power to declare me educated. when i'm empress there will be no such schools and no such administrators, they will all be lined up and fed pizza till they fold over and turn into human calzones. and when i'm empress yoda will be slightlier fuzzier. and when i'm empress i'll dissolve the empire we call the state and my post will be redundant and freedom will reign and freedom will rain. sovereignty, not freedom, i like that word better, or i would if i could spell the damn thing.
dennish bernstein is a reporter inn the bay area, most well known as part of KPFA.
dennis kucinich i? think? is? still? running? for president? i dont know anything anymore, i havent read a newspaper for 3 weeks. the united states is another world, i think in part to protect me from the extreme frustration at my decision to get to the RNC and not knowing why the hell i decided it and what the hell i'm going to do instead.
i can roll joints. just barely. you teach me rotis, i'll practice on the joints and teach you in exchange.
aurobindo was a spirituality a politicality a growth in india around the time of the call for swaraj, and after too. he was more militant and a little less tolerant of utter non-violence than gandhi, at first, but the society he and Mother (his Other) created in Pondicherry, Auroville and the Ashram, non-violence is a guiding principle of evolution of the human. He was one of the first, if not the first, i think, to speak of the Superhuman, recently more technologically oriented manifestation being Neo, the transhumanist ideal, which was brought alive in the movie Trilogy of One, namely, named, The Matrix (1, 2, 3).
my wrists are heating up. so are my thighs, i'm resting Mickey the laptop on my lap. Atop my lap. my shoulders are tightening i retreat now. soon my friend we will build tables out of landfills and dance the cancansamba on them after we've eaten mangoes floating in pineapple liquor on them.
dissolved,malavikawhich means nothing literally but is the name of an ancient princess, an herb, and one of the best bharatanatyam dancers in india today (Malavika Sarukai)
Caroline Picker, June 22
"drink deep so you have what you need to dazzle."thank you. you have no idea what a much needed truth you hit on at exactly the moment i needed to know that truth. or perhaps you do know and that's why you wrote it.
christine hoffmans's Questionaire, June 22
73. Favorite smells? mud. me. chocolate. ground coffee, then brewed. chocolate. justice. peace. peace and cream. peaches and cream. beaches and streams. bitches can scream. chocolate. me.
Becca Hall, June 22
and i have shhort tolerance for emailage these days, so i wont say much this time, but i did want to say a hello and how are you and does the wind strum ballads through your hair?
Pete, June 22
shit. i'm scared for alb now. coming off prozac cold turkey isnt easy and going back to drinking is also not so easy to be in balance with. i know. i faked mmyself that i was in balance, and i'm only now learning that i still wasnt, and mighht never be.
anyway. i'm glad jo's gone. i'm glad she has your support.
glasgow. i had deccided against it cuz i realized i was doinng it foor the wrong reasons, which were 1) thinking that i would come with the magic solution for ALB and she would get all cured how wonderful and 2) to get the fuck away from singapore and my parents cuz theyre driving me crazy even though theyre actually quite good for me and anywhere will eventually drive me crazy and make me want to run away because i'm born crazy. and i didnt have a plan for glasgow, i mean i didnt have a job or nothing. i dont mind not having a job living with my parnets because that IS kind of my job, i get to have the freedom to be withh them and make them happy any way i can, and that is worth it. but if i move away i have to be independent, which means i need a way of providing my food, housing, and a bit of dough to have a pint or a puff every now and then. and all the whhile still being part of the revolution. and perhaps saving up at the same time. and that didnt look too easy to find without even knowing glasgow at all. SO. i've already told ALB i'm not coming. but then when i read your email i was thinking, i want to sing in a band (and have a band sing the songs i've written, because the more songs i write the more heavy a sound they need, i can just hear them being roared out and the guitars and drums going insane), and do you need a singer, and do you have any ideas how i can still come over to glasgow for a few months and make a little dosh and Damn a little Man?
Luna Federici, June 22
yup. i can see you resonating to indonesia.too bad about joanna. i was hoping she was still going to be there. my uncle, aunt, cousin, are moving to KL later this year, and i was like sweet, i'll head up there and see them all (includinng joanna i mean). forgot about hte gardner fellowship, tess had told me about that. you know tess right? we ran into each other in bombay at the world social forum. frickin insane fortuitousness that was. i love our global community, the wanderers of the world. yeah. exactly. there is SO MUCH possiblity so how on earth do we choose? i just got an email saying i'm graduated. i no longer have any official reason to say i'm a student, which i had been saying, even though in my mind i graduated a long time ago. so now i have to find a new label. or not. whatever. ebb flow come go jolly good show we've all put on, ho. i'm feeling oddly british today. perhaps i shall move to london and have tea and crumpets. or a decree of trumpets.sorry. you caught me in crackbaby mode. i should go check on the bread, i smell its wafts.
love mali
Thea, June 22
i'm doing my best to stop trying to look beautiful, its so very hard. being an ugly duckling i was so used to putting on a flashy tacky swan suit that would distract and dazzle at least momentarily. now i must learn to be me just me, me free, see me free, set me free.
Babaloush, June 22
amar asked if i was good. fuzzy. yes, i said, fuzzy, sometimes, sharp others. in general good. it wasnt a lie, not wholly, but i guess i'm not entirely ship shape and shweet. i have a feeling this particular series of days of feeling out of sorts and a little weepy for no real reason is because my period is about to start, but its still a real part of me, a real thing i'm feeling, no matter how irrational, and i dont know who to talk to so i was trying to call you this weekend, well to ask about the exam, but mostly to talk and cry a little bit. i've been fine, gotten over my little bout of down each time, but i found myself in that state again just now so i thought i'd let it out to you on email at least, and also i figured i would tell you anyway that i called to cry to you so that next time you will do the same without feeling bad about it. i deleted the stuff i had written here about my bout of down. i dont need to go through it and you dont need to read it. i'm done. my period will come and go and i'll stop crying and start laughing again and all will seem rosy again.
David Gasca, June 22
i'm dancing. everyday. theres a sanskrit phrase in the natya shastra (the text from which most classical indian dance originates), dainika nritta, which means daily dance. it means that everything, ALL, life, existence, can be seen to move in a dance. i love that. i'm trying to know that and be that.
heard of Gurtu, a musician? listened to a CD called Miles_Gurtu this morning and dance/acted to it. you would love it, the CD i mean. collaboration between miles davis and gurtu dude.
Paul, June 22
cool. i definitely wasnt opposed to the PGP thing, but i was looking at it more like a fun game to figure out. security is no longer an issue, i'm naively believing. its all so fucked up that worrying about shit like that just becomes paranoia for me, and i cant live like that. go ahead motherfuckers put me in jail, make me a martyr, how many Mumias can you handle?
so here's the thing, i was confused when you said violence is the only form of political expression. you very purposefully ended the email withh PEACE, which you seem to believe in. you laid out in the streets, peacefully (some would say that itself was a form of violence, shall we complicate and complexify or let it be?). so i was confused. then i resolved it by thinking maybe you meant it as follows, which i can also resonate to:
the use of power/force is inherently a form of violence.
political involvement (expression) is the use of power/force.
thusly, good friends and countrymen, political involvement/expression is a form of violence.
but methinks that is not what you meant. you say our capacityy for violence has given us everything. as in, violence is necessary and good. what parts of the above did you mean, and what parts of the above are bollocks?here's where i stand. i am doing my utter best to not cause suffering (and because death causes suffering, death also) in every action of my life. violence causes suffering regardless of cause. so. i will do my best to avoid violence. however. i do not rule out the possibility of certain situations requiring a certain amount of force. i'm down with the zapatistas even though they swing their rifles. they've proved that they tread with caution, and who am i to say that they have not tried every other avenue and that a form of violence is not necessary in their struggle. that said, if i were to jet over and join their struggle, i would refuse to pick up a gun.
chewed. responded. sleepy. why did you quit your job? itchy eyes. ya basta. good night.
Christine Hoffman, June 24
apple pie sugar plum there's bread in the bread machine again. methinks i was machining bread the last time i wrote to you too? its nice, the smell, even though i still cant really say i'm BAKING bread, cuz i'm really MACHINING bread. should machining have an e after the n? who the fuck cares. not i, sir, not i. i had missed you, thought about and wondered what you were doing, now no longer, yessirree cuz you will tell me about your burned apartments and your morning thoughts and the very best of meaning of life that you seem to have found in your love for one person who loves you back, the existence of which, along with the existence of the Kyle and Rachel who were here last week for the performance studies conference and i got to hang out with them more gooder than i had when we were together at stanford, yes all the existence of that makes me not so lonely and not so alone. whats billboard liberation front? it sounds familiar, and i could guess what it means, and i could even look it up in my Holy Book aka the internet, but i'd rather wait for your reply and read your description, even though i'm kind of in a hurry, i mean i only have until the end of existence to do all this shit so i better start typing faster and fatser ssnassdjflksjl ,xvolskdjf . i was born in boston to my daddy who was doing his PhD at MIT and my mommy who had joined him from India when they realized he would be there longer than they thought so they saved up to buy her a plane ticket. they sometimes didn't know where the money for my food for the next week would come from. my dad was walking on the ice once and he slipped and i flew out of his hands and landed on my head so i tell everyone i was dropped as a baby like a big joke but its not really that funny cuz my epilepsy (which has never been fully figured out, just like my depression, cuz its not actually depression its bi-polar disorder you fools, and i can tell you more about my brain than you can so get your medical degrees and MRIs and counselling therapy out of my face assholes) could have been a result of that fall, and i often wonder if they feel bad about that, they shouldnt, i hope they dont. theyre the bestest parents i could have asked for even though they drive me crazy, especially my mom. shit. you gave me your life story. you asked for it baby. during the time we were in boston we also sort of lived in austin texas for a little while. we flew over to singapore when i was 3 lived here for 3 years i hated my school bus and i stopped growing as tall cuz the milk is different here and my dad hated the department he was teaching in but we lived here for 3 years becausee it was close to family in india and plus the pay wasnt bad connsidering they were saving up for my college. then my mom went to do a linguistics PhD at stanford while my dad taught in the same department and gave her harsh grades because our culture does that, we're less nice to the ones closest to us, and i played in the quad and made very few friends because i was starting to become a quiet well-behaved child. fucking pansy. i was brown and not very cool but i only had a small inkling that i wasnt that cool. and THEN we moved back to singapore because my parents both got a job in the same department and thats so rare and it was gonna be much easier for us to see our family in india again and i went to an international school and we didnt change countries (still havent) but we moved house a lot because in our last last last life we were a nomadic desert tribe and i dont like to stay in the same place for more than 4 years, i think its a form of running away, i had a lot to run away from by the time i got to high school because there were cool kids and i wasnt but more importantly, EVERYONE, cool or not, was starting to get into relationships with that group that used to have cooties and i wasnt and in order to make myself feel like i was just a little cool and sexy i started getting drunk and partying and hooking up with people and puking every weekend because all my friends were british and they all did that and i took that habit to college along with my by-then-very-severe depressinon that was in fact suicidal because even though i loved life i didnt want to live without life and the way my life was going i thought i would end up alone forever and most of the time i still think that even though i'm ok with that, and i lived a terrible life my freshman year even though i had lots of friends and was often very happy and actually had a lot of guys thinking i was hot even though i didnt always know it and never knew how to handle it and then in the spring i tried to kill myself because i just couldnt make myself think of more things to stop myself from doing what i thought about doing for every day of the last one and a half years and then my parents flew over freaked out flipped out and i was in a psycho ward and they gave me stupid meds and no-one could figure me out and i had a glimpse of what happiness should really be and i came home with them and when i went back to school in the fall i quickly turned into a radical politicized hippy-wanna-be who everybody saw as a burning flame of energy tasting life to its fullest and strong and independent from everyone so noone felt needed even though inside i was a lonely curled up little ball of need. most of the rest of my life you kinda know the general gist, like where i lived and shit, and really thats the important part of this story so i'll stop now because maybe by now your brain is hurting from all the insanity i've revealed or maybe not because maybe youre familiar with insanity, at least if not in yourself, in others you care so deeply about. i've heard more about your mom than your dad. it was nice to read about him and his gardening tree loving computer science rejecting shelf building ways.
my address for now, at least till september-ish and possibly more is 1
03 Clementi Rd, Blk A, #09-08
Singapore 129788
whats yours? i like writing letters, especially from india where i wont feel like goinng to an internet cafe, i'd much rather sit on the mountain in front of my grandparents house and scribble to my world and my peeps.
uf t w
mali
Denali, June 30
you know how i said i cant commit to a plan for myself? its not like the usual oh i dont know what career i'll have and i need a career now, cuz we both know neither of us subscribe to that BS. but its like the problem i always had at stanford, or wherever, wanting to do too many things, because the things i was doing were never enough, and i'm training myself out of that, but even now no matter what project i choose, i feel stifled by it after the glow wears off, and i dont commit to it and do it the best i can. problem committing. the real problem is, i think, i know, that applies to people too. mmm. i wrote more to try and explain but its not coming out right. anyway, my point is, in some ways, be glad for you
desire (i dont mean desire in the sexual fantasy way, but in the walk in the woods way you wrote about), i envy you that because i fear i will never have it, and without loving i cannot be loved truly, or at least i cannot feel that love, and thats a scary thought, and all the more frustrating because its seemingly in my control, but not really.
Pam Olson, July 1
funny (in a not that funny way) that one of the experiences that shook Yeshuda Shaul was the kids eating his trash. i always felt that oddness when we dumpstered in good ole luxurious PA.
how did the PNI interview go?
i'm in singapore with my parents. right now i'm officially jobless and graduated and people are asking me what i'm doing. remember that uncareer fair Think! did? we distributed that comic strip with the girl meeting her friend and being asked what she did? if you remember it, thats what i feel like communicating to them, DOING to them, and cant, dont know how. and if you dont remember it, no matter. just know that i'm trying to learn how to live life and am frustrated by people sitting willingly in cages, pods, getting their lives sucked out of them like batteries, and i want to scream and tell them to unplug already. its not always like that, the way i feel, and i when i describe it like that i'm being very unfair
to the ones around me, but hey, what the hey.
my parents are cool. theyre most excellently supportive. i'm here because of them, to be with them make them happy, and they know that. its hard to live with them at times, but its giving me a stability that i need to build on.
pam. you've known a love that movies and fairytales try to capture,
polaroided, distorted, but yours is real. how fortunate to have happened on that, even in its loss.
off to india next week.
may the olive trees in your area still be thriving, and may the only
Caterpillars you encounter be the cute fuzzy wriggly kind.
mali
The Think! list, July 4, labelled "is anyone else sad that..."
..the only mailage on this list is virus/junk/spam stuff?
i'm sticking on out of some stupid unrealistic hope that some day there will be a something like Think! Int Uninc. Pbl Unlim. (Think!
International Unincorporated Public Unlimited), bringing disorganization, discontent, and somethingconstructive to theatres of revolution near you.
this unneccessary mailage was brought to you by Think! Singapore aka
SingtownThink.
how's it going out there?
Ank, July 4
i had planned to throw this independence day party today. not because i'm patriotic and all that jazz, but i was going to invite everyone to come and celebrate independence from whatever they wanted, whether it be as the white folks who crossed the ocean and gained independence from their queen and her dominion, or the brown folks who are some day going to gain independence from the system run by the white folks who came and took their country, or other brown folks who were born in that country and are slowly starting to gain independence from the identity of being part of the first white folks' legacy, or the orange folks under the leadership of aung san suu kyi gaining independence from the orange military folkks that have taken over the country, yeah so all that, party, invite, didnt
so much happen. i'm good at having ideas, not so good at making them
happen. kellea says i need a secretary or something. blech. i would hate to have a secretary.
whats fukuoaka?
you're not crazy. but you're wrong in thinking none of the goodytwoshoe freemarket inndians want to apply. they ARE applying. in droves. to these programs that are like, look, come back to your country of origin and help them get sliced bread and wheels and wireless networking. ick. the way they run those programs, i do not like, theyre all corporatey and icky, and i'm sure they open their eyes a little, but i dont know. ick.
well i'm off to india this friday to go roast some eggplants and have sex with other americans, except, i'm not american anymore, i'm not indian, and i'm not singaporean so i dont really know what i am.
i had a dream last night that i was stuck on the outskirts of some town and someone was trying to explain that it was america(tm) and tell me more about it but everything was blurry and we were trying to get into the middle of the town somewhere even though at the same time i really jjust wanted to get away from the whole damn area. i dont understand what the dream means. jung? freud? anyone? a little help here?
dreaming life, waking death,
mali
Interlude: Emails to Shouri, Mica, Ayla, Wind, Marc (FNB), that i deleted but thought i should remember that i sent, trying to reconnect with them. no response from any. Also an unanswered reconnect email to Jed a week earlier.
Valarie Kaur, July 9
val.
hmmm. yes. i'm glad you dont associate me with cold and dark. but try replacing those words with cool and shaded, respectively. better picture? just the calm space the peace away from the frenzy the madness the desires the angers that consumed corrupted me while i battled the world.
dark chocolate. yes, that is what it must be, what i think i would like to be. that is what your description of the love you are exploring reminds me of. if you had asked me what kind of chocolate i would want it to be before, i would have said the milkiest creamiest possible but now i discover in fact, no, bittersweet ecstasy can only be dark chocolate.
leaving for india this tuesday for two months, very very very excited.
pet pet pet on cocoa and kajal's heads.
snatch snatch snatch type type type.
your turn.
love love love
mali
Pam Olson, July 21
in bangalore right now, learning all i can about the politics of freedom and identity, and the interflowage of community. off to delhi this evening. then down to kerala (south west state of india) to see the rest of my family for a month and a half or so.
not using toilet paper. being brown skinned and semi-white brained in a brown country. spending my parents money which we three see as family money not separable and yet me still being confused on whats worth spending on.
read on for my dad's email to me in response to my question about publishing.
wondering why the hell i'm at a computer instead of using my last few hours in bangalore walking and talking and blinking and breathing and seeing.
mali
Thea, July 25
thealita
am on journey, as you say. journey has passed from singapore to bangalore to delhi where i am now and where i was walking on grass and felt breeze and thought it was just across that particular point in the fabric of space and then walked forward and realized it was all over the general area of space and it was actually only at that particular point in the fabric of time. i guess i'm more aware of motion through space rather than time and so think more in terms of space than time. mmm. what a deliciously brainless revelation. i've been having a lot of those. there's a lot of time to revelate when you're on the go, visiting folks entering their lives for a week, a little taste and onwards ho.
plants are awesome youre right. theres a bitty biodiversity plant across the road from here, we're going there to chill with the greenery after the afternoon when we've put the sun to sleep. its hot here. smelt like the wicked witch of the east, we will, if we step into the sun now. i tried, with a sheet on my head, this morning (which is when i walked on the grass and confused space with time), cuz my cous and i were being ghosts playing a kid game, but even with the white reflecting the heat it was toasty burning.
my brain got fried. off i fly, with a peck on your nose and hello to olivia, who yes, of course i know and a tap on my bottom for acceleration
till my next cyberial travel that happens across your communique,
malavika
Mansi Maheshwari, July 25
heya from uncle/aunt/cousin/dog's house in gurgaon, mansi. my aunt is a translator. she was talking about the EU and the sudden demand for translation and how now languages are flying all over the place and i thought of babel's tower falling and breaking and now its happening all over again, and then i realized i dont really know the story of babel and the tower, i just connect it to a vague thing about languages and tower falling and maybe i should read up or ask someone.
ok, that's my random thought for the day, hope thinking is just as scraggly and confused and illuminating on that corner of the sphere(wait but spheres dont have corners. heehee.)
malavika
Day 27
Moon 28
...bdays arent a big deal by themselves for me either any more, but i'm trying to use them as a way to keep in touch with people, so at least once a year, i have an excuse to have to check in with all the good folks for whom i have marked a day in my yahoo calendar to celebrate their existence...singapore, is um. good. quite excellent in fact. its a place that kind of epitomizes a lot of the accelerations that are happening globally, for better or worse. ...may chuckles ache your belly
Ank, June 21
ankle toby, i'm watching the third cd of Brain Story. one man can see apples but not faces, another can see faces of the queen of hearts but not the hearts, a woman who cannot see things move, and suddenly i've taken a drug that has no name and whose trip is a singularity of the impossible.
holograms of the dance performance are moving, and since both silicon and carbon based brains find it difficult to process such motion, i will wait till i have a more still representation. except, did you know, still life painting cannot be, for, what is still is not life.
i drank your email. i will respond to whatever i burp up. perhaps i should have sipped and wrote and sipped and wrote but thats no fun. so forgive me if not all your questions are answered yes? i think i will ask no questions but the ones implicit in my answers.
p.s. of course i love dolphins, but when i ask myself why i don't know. i don't love k+d yet but maybe i will when i know them. i graduated! sunday. i got an email that says so, and email is the true purveyor of all Knowledge, so it must be so. yeah, see, i took Spring quarter off to get arrested and dance in the streets, even though i just had 2 classes left. took one of two in the fall at Foothills, most excellently enjoying being a non-stanford student, and for the other class, thought i could just pass the test into spanish 3 but it turns out that after a year of not speaking the tongue my tongue twisted and broke and since i refused to change my plans to come to singapore in december to be with my parents i just decided i could take french because they dont take spanish here at the university which i always declared i would never attend, in a country i always declared i would never live in for a long period of time after i left for college. and here i am. oh, and i'm graduated. after 5 months of fucked up paperwork and chasing after people who have no business holding the power to declare me educated. when i'm empress there will be no such schools and no such administrators, they will all be lined up and fed pizza till they fold over and turn into human calzones. and when i'm empress yoda will be slightlier fuzzier. and when i'm empress i'll dissolve the empire we call the state and my post will be redundant and freedom will reign and freedom will rain. sovereignty, not freedom, i like that word better, or i would if i could spell the damn thing.
dennish bernstein is a reporter inn the bay area, most well known as part of KPFA.
dennis kucinich i? think? is? still? running? for president? i dont know anything anymore, i havent read a newspaper for 3 weeks. the united states is another world, i think in part to protect me from the extreme frustration at my decision to get to the RNC and not knowing why the hell i decided it and what the hell i'm going to do instead.
i can roll joints. just barely. you teach me rotis, i'll practice on the joints and teach you in exchange.
aurobindo was a spirituality a politicality a growth in india around the time of the call for swaraj, and after too. he was more militant and a little less tolerant of utter non-violence than gandhi, at first, but the society he and Mother (his Other) created in Pondicherry, Auroville and the Ashram, non-violence is a guiding principle of evolution of the human. He was one of the first, if not the first, i think, to speak of the Superhuman, recently more technologically oriented manifestation being Neo, the transhumanist ideal, which was brought alive in the movie Trilogy of One, namely, named, The Matrix (1, 2, 3).
my wrists are heating up. so are my thighs, i'm resting Mickey the laptop on my lap. Atop my lap. my shoulders are tightening i retreat now. soon my friend we will build tables out of landfills and dance the cancansamba on them after we've eaten mangoes floating in pineapple liquor on them.
dissolved,malavikawhich means nothing literally but is the name of an ancient princess, an herb, and one of the best bharatanatyam dancers in india today (Malavika Sarukai)
Caroline Picker, June 22
"drink deep so you have what you need to dazzle."thank you. you have no idea what a much needed truth you hit on at exactly the moment i needed to know that truth. or perhaps you do know and that's why you wrote it.
christine hoffmans's Questionaire, June 22
73. Favorite smells? mud. me. chocolate. ground coffee, then brewed. chocolate. justice. peace. peace and cream. peaches and cream. beaches and streams. bitches can scream. chocolate. me.
Becca Hall, June 22
and i have shhort tolerance for emailage these days, so i wont say much this time, but i did want to say a hello and how are you and does the wind strum ballads through your hair?
Pete, June 22
shit. i'm scared for alb now. coming off prozac cold turkey isnt easy and going back to drinking is also not so easy to be in balance with. i know. i faked mmyself that i was in balance, and i'm only now learning that i still wasnt, and mighht never be.
anyway. i'm glad jo's gone. i'm glad she has your support.
glasgow. i had deccided against it cuz i realized i was doinng it foor the wrong reasons, which were 1) thinking that i would come with the magic solution for ALB and she would get all cured how wonderful and 2) to get the fuck away from singapore and my parents cuz theyre driving me crazy even though theyre actually quite good for me and anywhere will eventually drive me crazy and make me want to run away because i'm born crazy. and i didnt have a plan for glasgow, i mean i didnt have a job or nothing. i dont mind not having a job living with my parnets because that IS kind of my job, i get to have the freedom to be withh them and make them happy any way i can, and that is worth it. but if i move away i have to be independent, which means i need a way of providing my food, housing, and a bit of dough to have a pint or a puff every now and then. and all the whhile still being part of the revolution. and perhaps saving up at the same time. and that didnt look too easy to find without even knowing glasgow at all. SO. i've already told ALB i'm not coming. but then when i read your email i was thinking, i want to sing in a band (and have a band sing the songs i've written, because the more songs i write the more heavy a sound they need, i can just hear them being roared out and the guitars and drums going insane), and do you need a singer, and do you have any ideas how i can still come over to glasgow for a few months and make a little dosh and Damn a little Man?
Luna Federici, June 22
yup. i can see you resonating to indonesia.too bad about joanna. i was hoping she was still going to be there. my uncle, aunt, cousin, are moving to KL later this year, and i was like sweet, i'll head up there and see them all (includinng joanna i mean). forgot about hte gardner fellowship, tess had told me about that. you know tess right? we ran into each other in bombay at the world social forum. frickin insane fortuitousness that was. i love our global community, the wanderers of the world. yeah. exactly. there is SO MUCH possiblity so how on earth do we choose? i just got an email saying i'm graduated. i no longer have any official reason to say i'm a student, which i had been saying, even though in my mind i graduated a long time ago. so now i have to find a new label. or not. whatever. ebb flow come go jolly good show we've all put on, ho. i'm feeling oddly british today. perhaps i shall move to london and have tea and crumpets. or a decree of trumpets.sorry. you caught me in crackbaby mode. i should go check on the bread, i smell its wafts.
love mali
Thea, June 22
i'm doing my best to stop trying to look beautiful, its so very hard. being an ugly duckling i was so used to putting on a flashy tacky swan suit that would distract and dazzle at least momentarily. now i must learn to be me just me, me free, see me free, set me free.
Babaloush, June 22
amar asked if i was good. fuzzy. yes, i said, fuzzy, sometimes, sharp others. in general good. it wasnt a lie, not wholly, but i guess i'm not entirely ship shape and shweet. i have a feeling this particular series of days of feeling out of sorts and a little weepy for no real reason is because my period is about to start, but its still a real part of me, a real thing i'm feeling, no matter how irrational, and i dont know who to talk to so i was trying to call you this weekend, well to ask about the exam, but mostly to talk and cry a little bit. i've been fine, gotten over my little bout of down each time, but i found myself in that state again just now so i thought i'd let it out to you on email at least, and also i figured i would tell you anyway that i called to cry to you so that next time you will do the same without feeling bad about it. i deleted the stuff i had written here about my bout of down. i dont need to go through it and you dont need to read it. i'm done. my period will come and go and i'll stop crying and start laughing again and all will seem rosy again.
David Gasca, June 22
i'm dancing. everyday. theres a sanskrit phrase in the natya shastra (the text from which most classical indian dance originates), dainika nritta, which means daily dance. it means that everything, ALL, life, existence, can be seen to move in a dance. i love that. i'm trying to know that and be that.
heard of Gurtu, a musician? listened to a CD called Miles_Gurtu this morning and dance/acted to it. you would love it, the CD i mean. collaboration between miles davis and gurtu dude.
Paul, June 22
cool. i definitely wasnt opposed to the PGP thing, but i was looking at it more like a fun game to figure out. security is no longer an issue, i'm naively believing. its all so fucked up that worrying about shit like that just becomes paranoia for me, and i cant live like that. go ahead motherfuckers put me in jail, make me a martyr, how many Mumias can you handle?
so here's the thing, i was confused when you said violence is the only form of political expression. you very purposefully ended the email withh PEACE, which you seem to believe in. you laid out in the streets, peacefully (some would say that itself was a form of violence, shall we complicate and complexify or let it be?). so i was confused. then i resolved it by thinking maybe you meant it as follows, which i can also resonate to:
the use of power/force is inherently a form of violence.
political involvement (expression) is the use of power/force.
thusly, good friends and countrymen, political involvement/expression is a form of violence.
but methinks that is not what you meant. you say our capacityy for violence has given us everything. as in, violence is necessary and good. what parts of the above did you mean, and what parts of the above are bollocks?here's where i stand. i am doing my utter best to not cause suffering (and because death causes suffering, death also) in every action of my life. violence causes suffering regardless of cause. so. i will do my best to avoid violence. however. i do not rule out the possibility of certain situations requiring a certain amount of force. i'm down with the zapatistas even though they swing their rifles. they've proved that they tread with caution, and who am i to say that they have not tried every other avenue and that a form of violence is not necessary in their struggle. that said, if i were to jet over and join their struggle, i would refuse to pick up a gun.
chewed. responded. sleepy. why did you quit your job? itchy eyes. ya basta. good night.
Christine Hoffman, June 24
apple pie sugar plum there's bread in the bread machine again. methinks i was machining bread the last time i wrote to you too? its nice, the smell, even though i still cant really say i'm BAKING bread, cuz i'm really MACHINING bread. should machining have an e after the n? who the fuck cares. not i, sir, not i. i had missed you, thought about and wondered what you were doing, now no longer, yessirree cuz you will tell me about your burned apartments and your morning thoughts and the very best of meaning of life that you seem to have found in your love for one person who loves you back, the existence of which, along with the existence of the Kyle and Rachel who were here last week for the performance studies conference and i got to hang out with them more gooder than i had when we were together at stanford, yes all the existence of that makes me not so lonely and not so alone. whats billboard liberation front? it sounds familiar, and i could guess what it means, and i could even look it up in my Holy Book aka the internet, but i'd rather wait for your reply and read your description, even though i'm kind of in a hurry, i mean i only have until the end of existence to do all this shit so i better start typing faster and fatser ssnassdjflksjl ,xvolskdjf . i was born in boston to my daddy who was doing his PhD at MIT and my mommy who had joined him from India when they realized he would be there longer than they thought so they saved up to buy her a plane ticket. they sometimes didn't know where the money for my food for the next week would come from. my dad was walking on the ice once and he slipped and i flew out of his hands and landed on my head so i tell everyone i was dropped as a baby like a big joke but its not really that funny cuz my epilepsy (which has never been fully figured out, just like my depression, cuz its not actually depression its bi-polar disorder you fools, and i can tell you more about my brain than you can so get your medical degrees and MRIs and counselling therapy out of my face assholes) could have been a result of that fall, and i often wonder if they feel bad about that, they shouldnt, i hope they dont. theyre the bestest parents i could have asked for even though they drive me crazy, especially my mom. shit. you gave me your life story. you asked for it baby. during the time we were in boston we also sort of lived in austin texas for a little while. we flew over to singapore when i was 3 lived here for 3 years i hated my school bus and i stopped growing as tall cuz the milk is different here and my dad hated the department he was teaching in but we lived here for 3 years becausee it was close to family in india and plus the pay wasnt bad connsidering they were saving up for my college. then my mom went to do a linguistics PhD at stanford while my dad taught in the same department and gave her harsh grades because our culture does that, we're less nice to the ones closest to us, and i played in the quad and made very few friends because i was starting to become a quiet well-behaved child. fucking pansy. i was brown and not very cool but i only had a small inkling that i wasnt that cool. and THEN we moved back to singapore because my parents both got a job in the same department and thats so rare and it was gonna be much easier for us to see our family in india again and i went to an international school and we didnt change countries (still havent) but we moved house a lot because in our last last last life we were a nomadic desert tribe and i dont like to stay in the same place for more than 4 years, i think its a form of running away, i had a lot to run away from by the time i got to high school because there were cool kids and i wasnt but more importantly, EVERYONE, cool or not, was starting to get into relationships with that group that used to have cooties and i wasnt and in order to make myself feel like i was just a little cool and sexy i started getting drunk and partying and hooking up with people and puking every weekend because all my friends were british and they all did that and i took that habit to college along with my by-then-very-severe depressinon that was in fact suicidal because even though i loved life i didnt want to live without life and the way my life was going i thought i would end up alone forever and most of the time i still think that even though i'm ok with that, and i lived a terrible life my freshman year even though i had lots of friends and was often very happy and actually had a lot of guys thinking i was hot even though i didnt always know it and never knew how to handle it and then in the spring i tried to kill myself because i just couldnt make myself think of more things to stop myself from doing what i thought about doing for every day of the last one and a half years and then my parents flew over freaked out flipped out and i was in a psycho ward and they gave me stupid meds and no-one could figure me out and i had a glimpse of what happiness should really be and i came home with them and when i went back to school in the fall i quickly turned into a radical politicized hippy-wanna-be who everybody saw as a burning flame of energy tasting life to its fullest and strong and independent from everyone so noone felt needed even though inside i was a lonely curled up little ball of need. most of the rest of my life you kinda know the general gist, like where i lived and shit, and really thats the important part of this story so i'll stop now because maybe by now your brain is hurting from all the insanity i've revealed or maybe not because maybe youre familiar with insanity, at least if not in yourself, in others you care so deeply about. i've heard more about your mom than your dad. it was nice to read about him and his gardening tree loving computer science rejecting shelf building ways.
my address for now, at least till september-ish and possibly more is 1
03 Clementi Rd, Blk A, #09-08
Singapore 129788
whats yours? i like writing letters, especially from india where i wont feel like goinng to an internet cafe, i'd much rather sit on the mountain in front of my grandparents house and scribble to my world and my peeps.
uf t w
mali
Denali, June 30
you know how i said i cant commit to a plan for myself? its not like the usual oh i dont know what career i'll have and i need a career now, cuz we both know neither of us subscribe to that BS. but its like the problem i always had at stanford, or wherever, wanting to do too many things, because the things i was doing were never enough, and i'm training myself out of that, but even now no matter what project i choose, i feel stifled by it after the glow wears off, and i dont commit to it and do it the best i can. problem committing. the real problem is, i think, i know, that applies to people too. mmm. i wrote more to try and explain but its not coming out right. anyway, my point is, in some ways, be glad for you
desire (i dont mean desire in the sexual fantasy way, but in the walk in the woods way you wrote about), i envy you that because i fear i will never have it, and without loving i cannot be loved truly, or at least i cannot feel that love, and thats a scary thought, and all the more frustrating because its seemingly in my control, but not really.
Pam Olson, July 1
funny (in a not that funny way) that one of the experiences that shook Yeshuda Shaul was the kids eating his trash. i always felt that oddness when we dumpstered in good ole luxurious PA.
how did the PNI interview go?
i'm in singapore with my parents. right now i'm officially jobless and graduated and people are asking me what i'm doing. remember that uncareer fair Think! did? we distributed that comic strip with the girl meeting her friend and being asked what she did? if you remember it, thats what i feel like communicating to them, DOING to them, and cant, dont know how. and if you dont remember it, no matter. just know that i'm trying to learn how to live life and am frustrated by people sitting willingly in cages, pods, getting their lives sucked out of them like batteries, and i want to scream and tell them to unplug already. its not always like that, the way i feel, and i when i describe it like that i'm being very unfair
to the ones around me, but hey, what the hey.
my parents are cool. theyre most excellently supportive. i'm here because of them, to be with them make them happy, and they know that. its hard to live with them at times, but its giving me a stability that i need to build on.
pam. you've known a love that movies and fairytales try to capture,
polaroided, distorted, but yours is real. how fortunate to have happened on that, even in its loss.
off to india next week.
may the olive trees in your area still be thriving, and may the only
Caterpillars you encounter be the cute fuzzy wriggly kind.
mali
The Think! list, July 4, labelled "is anyone else sad that..."
..the only mailage on this list is virus/junk/spam stuff?
i'm sticking on out of some stupid unrealistic hope that some day there will be a something like Think! Int Uninc. Pbl Unlim. (Think!
International Unincorporated Public Unlimited), bringing disorganization, discontent, and somethingconstructive to theatres of revolution near you.
this unneccessary mailage was brought to you by Think! Singapore aka
SingtownThink.
how's it going out there?
Ank, July 4
i had planned to throw this independence day party today. not because i'm patriotic and all that jazz, but i was going to invite everyone to come and celebrate independence from whatever they wanted, whether it be as the white folks who crossed the ocean and gained independence from their queen and her dominion, or the brown folks who are some day going to gain independence from the system run by the white folks who came and took their country, or other brown folks who were born in that country and are slowly starting to gain independence from the identity of being part of the first white folks' legacy, or the orange folks under the leadership of aung san suu kyi gaining independence from the orange military folkks that have taken over the country, yeah so all that, party, invite, didnt
so much happen. i'm good at having ideas, not so good at making them
happen. kellea says i need a secretary or something. blech. i would hate to have a secretary.
whats fukuoaka?
you're not crazy. but you're wrong in thinking none of the goodytwoshoe freemarket inndians want to apply. they ARE applying. in droves. to these programs that are like, look, come back to your country of origin and help them get sliced bread and wheels and wireless networking. ick. the way they run those programs, i do not like, theyre all corporatey and icky, and i'm sure they open their eyes a little, but i dont know. ick.
well i'm off to india this friday to go roast some eggplants and have sex with other americans, except, i'm not american anymore, i'm not indian, and i'm not singaporean so i dont really know what i am.
i had a dream last night that i was stuck on the outskirts of some town and someone was trying to explain that it was america(tm) and tell me more about it but everything was blurry and we were trying to get into the middle of the town somewhere even though at the same time i really jjust wanted to get away from the whole damn area. i dont understand what the dream means. jung? freud? anyone? a little help here?
dreaming life, waking death,
mali
Interlude: Emails to Shouri, Mica, Ayla, Wind, Marc (FNB), that i deleted but thought i should remember that i sent, trying to reconnect with them. no response from any. Also an unanswered reconnect email to Jed a week earlier.
Valarie Kaur, July 9
val.
hmmm. yes. i'm glad you dont associate me with cold and dark. but try replacing those words with cool and shaded, respectively. better picture? just the calm space the peace away from the frenzy the madness the desires the angers that consumed corrupted me while i battled the world.
dark chocolate. yes, that is what it must be, what i think i would like to be. that is what your description of the love you are exploring reminds me of. if you had asked me what kind of chocolate i would want it to be before, i would have said the milkiest creamiest possible but now i discover in fact, no, bittersweet ecstasy can only be dark chocolate.
leaving for india this tuesday for two months, very very very excited.
pet pet pet on cocoa and kajal's heads.
snatch snatch snatch type type type.
your turn.
love love love
mali
Pam Olson, July 21
in bangalore right now, learning all i can about the politics of freedom and identity, and the interflowage of community. off to delhi this evening. then down to kerala (south west state of india) to see the rest of my family for a month and a half or so.
not using toilet paper. being brown skinned and semi-white brained in a brown country. spending my parents money which we three see as family money not separable and yet me still being confused on whats worth spending on.
read on for my dad's email to me in response to my question about publishing.
wondering why the hell i'm at a computer instead of using my last few hours in bangalore walking and talking and blinking and breathing and seeing.
mali
Thea, July 25
thealita
am on journey, as you say. journey has passed from singapore to bangalore to delhi where i am now and where i was walking on grass and felt breeze and thought it was just across that particular point in the fabric of space and then walked forward and realized it was all over the general area of space and it was actually only at that particular point in the fabric of time. i guess i'm more aware of motion through space rather than time and so think more in terms of space than time. mmm. what a deliciously brainless revelation. i've been having a lot of those. there's a lot of time to revelate when you're on the go, visiting folks entering their lives for a week, a little taste and onwards ho.
plants are awesome youre right. theres a bitty biodiversity plant across the road from here, we're going there to chill with the greenery after the afternoon when we've put the sun to sleep. its hot here. smelt like the wicked witch of the east, we will, if we step into the sun now. i tried, with a sheet on my head, this morning (which is when i walked on the grass and confused space with time), cuz my cous and i were being ghosts playing a kid game, but even with the white reflecting the heat it was toasty burning.
my brain got fried. off i fly, with a peck on your nose and hello to olivia, who yes, of course i know and a tap on my bottom for acceleration
till my next cyberial travel that happens across your communique,
malavika
Mansi Maheshwari, July 25
heya from uncle/aunt/cousin/dog's house in gurgaon, mansi. my aunt is a translator. she was talking about the EU and the sudden demand for translation and how now languages are flying all over the place and i thought of babel's tower falling and breaking and now its happening all over again, and then i realized i dont really know the story of babel and the tower, i just connect it to a vague thing about languages and tower falling and maybe i should read up or ask someone.
ok, that's my random thought for the day, hope thinking is just as scraggly and confused and illuminating on that corner of the sphere(wait but spheres dont have corners. heehee.)
malavika
Day 27
Moon 28
posted by Malavika at
11:14 AM
3 Comments
