Sure as hell

Coffee cups with plastic lids stride past casually worshipped by dedicated addicted hands. I'm odd here, not homeless and yet crouched in front of a closed cafe off of University Avenue, some of the cups glance me an amused smile, some also take in that I'm reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, reactions vary. That's a good book, one says. Yup, I say. He keeps walking and I keep reading and then get lost in the design on the back of a tiny bug. The design looks indigenous, or traditional, or tribal, or whatever word one uses these days. It has straight lines. See? Who says straight lines are human inventions?

The ideas I've met in my most recent sublifetime(s) merge and revisit with one another. Earlier this sublifetime I ambled the hills of Epuyen picking rosehips and thinking about post-scarcity, the little I grasped from the first section of Murray Bookchin's Post-Scarcity Anarchism. I've probably spilled more words about the book than I read. Now Robert M. Pirsig's bike maintaining protagonist and his former being too tell me we are in post-scarcity, though we sure as hell don't know it. Well, Bookchin and Pirsig tell me, but really I tell myself.

Pirsig says Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive. So often I think this, and find it strange that I'm thinking it. But now I'd like to arrive. The problem is, I'm travelling to teach myself that I've already arrived, and apparently I still haven't fully learned that lesson.

That stuff in those boxes stuck in Maasi and Akhil's attic, I put almost all of it in the Columbae free store. Done. Llego. I've arrived. At that place that many steps closer to nothing. I'm still a packrat though, I've already started keeping the plastic cups from pearl milk tea and whatnot. For when I really arrive, bodily, in that place, that home I'm looking for, and can fill my home with systems of goodness and transformation of waste into not.

Yesterday Cherrie Moraga's Medea's lover said they were looking for a home so long that the looking became the home. So I suppose I'm always home, thought it sure as hell doesn't feel that way.

If hell is sure, maybe I'll make that my home.

sorting through cyber sent thoughts after dosa at poomchima's house in los altos hills, and damn are they altos, my bike-bonkered legs hear that

Nrityagram said no, i found out yesterday. Amma was waiting till i got home to tell me. I guess i kind of knew but i was disappointed and upset. still am a little. i think i was relying on it (my to-be, now not-to-be Nrityagram time) to catalyze me to my destiny which is truly. To Dance. I must. and right now i'm not, because i need a space, a community, music, yahdah yahday thats bullshit i can dance anywhere and i have to make myself do it. And instead here i am online again messing up my brain and eyes and arms and hands and wrists and neck and back and.

It's gorgeous outside.

I read Moment of Silence at the Fast Breaking celebration after ramadan and then wrote to the poet, Emmanuel Ortiz:
Dear Emmanuel,
I read your Moment of Silence poem at an informal poetry gathering we had this evening because what it says is hits home hard, and yet lyrical soft as breeze. I changed three things when I read it. Like, I cut out "white" before "guilt". Targetting the white people in the room just wasn't in my agenda, no disrespect meant to your righteously crafted words, but as a fellow lover of the spoken word, i know that some word artists might not be cool with edits without permission like that. I wanted to get your thoughts on it, if you have the time. Feel free to yell at me, I'll read the real version next time if you like.
Also, again only if you have that precious commodity Time that exists infinite but one can only create out of thin air, your thoughts on the anti-semitism accusation that I'm sure you've got feedback on?
Otherwise, fight on, sing on, brother.
Much health, Malavika

"Fast, Dance, Be" to lauren (and shannon and mandeep)

dearest juego de la vida (game of life)
in this thing i use many words you might not understand. i will explain some of them. but the time i can spend at the computer without wearing out my wrists eyes back neck brain is short, so ask me which specific ones you want me to explain more if you like. also, its long and i havent read it through, so it might have nonsense, apologies.

dearest shannabis and big M
i wrote this to juego de la vida in response to some of her questions on Fasting, Dancing, and both of you asked for general update on my Being, so i thought i'd shoot three friends with one love bullet. apologies that its not personalized, but think of it in the light that the links are all part of one big fat happy chain that speaks the same infinite language.

Fast
see, i was torn twisted tearing inside when i
a) read about iraq, remembered the experience of resistance i entered last year then abandoned, now so disconnected from the people i wanted to be in solidarity with,
b) read Pam Olson's letters from palestine which are so compelling telling feeling knowing, and i remembered how i changed from not knowing a damn thing about the israel-palestine conflict,
-> to thinking that i wish both sides would stop doing wrong, ->to realizing that it was a case of state sponsored and i felt so disconnected from the people i now wanted to be in solidarity with,
and at the same i was remembering our ramadan (my failed ramadan) solidarity last year and wishing thinking knowing i could do it right, or at least, less wrong this time, in the safety and stability of the warm embrace of my mommy and daddy,
so i told my parents i was going to observe ramadan to be In Solidarity with the Occupied Peoples of Iraq and Palestine, to send thhem energy to Peacefully Resist and Oust their Occupiers, and asked for their (my parents') help in any way they could give it. ramadan started on friday. friday and saturday i had dance performances, so i eased in by simply eating a little less quantity, and more consciously. sunday i woke up early and ate before sunrise, waited till sunset to eat again, and continued the next few weeks with only water during the day, having at least that because i was still dancing, performing, and i didnt believe i should collapse, that wasnt the purpose of this. I broke one day, a week into the fast, because my period started that day and i had a very important performance (explanation coming later) that night. the dance went off magically, and i was glad i broke, but hoped i wouldnt have to break again. i didnt. the last week of the fast, my mom joined me, and i stopped drinking water. it was hard, exponentially harder than just food, especially on the day during that week when i had to perform. the hour just before sunset, the last 5 minutes, was excruciating at moments. but just moments. mostly it was ok. no, not ok, great. no, not great, i just dont have a word for what it was.

Dance
it was important because
a) i, with the help of my teacher and mom, choreographed the item i was doing earlier this year, so it was a new phase of dance being
b) i was coming back to a style of body awareness in dance that i had lost at some point, but with the new awareness that i've gained along the way, so it was a new phase of dance being
c) it was the night before Vijayadashami, which is the day you start all things to do with learning. you go to your guru and give gurudakshana. i had decided that from that day for the next year till the next Vijayadashami, i was dedicating myself to Dainika Nritya, which might be translated as the Dance that is All Life, translation itself interpretable in many ways. how i choose to intepret dainika nritya is what i will find out over this next phase of dance being. on saturday my mom and i broke completely for the last day of the fast. we had to break quickly because we had tickets to a Odissi dance performance. Odissi is a classical dance form from Orissa, India. Our (my mom, dad, and mine) lives were changed that evening. The two performers were from Nrityagram, a dance school near Bangalore, India. Nritya means dance, gram means village, dance village. here is the website:www.nrityagram.orgi really want you to look at it when you get the chance. its not just dance. or rather, it is just dance, it is dainika nritya. it is dance, it is life choice, nature, urban spaces (please please please read the architecture section, it wont take long, but it will please you i think), it is food, body, mind, breath, health, peace, determination, joy, i have to stop now or i'll explode, but just one more thing to say. the reason it changed our lives is. :: . Fickleness of mind be gone. Wanting, needing, being dizzy from turning away and away and away, not knowing, thinking too much, be gone. I'm applying to be a student at this school for next year. If they don't accept my application, or turn me down after the audition, I will go and visit at the very least. If they accept me for three months of probation, but turn me down, I will leave ecstatic at having had spent that time. If they take me for the three or six years, then !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ......... *_*_*_/^~^\ jhimmi ta kita toom toom tari kita tam kita taka toom jhimmi jhimmi toom toom

Be
i am. and it is. wonderful. tough, sometimes. i just spent half an hour melting by my sun burning window trying to convince the Kent Vale (our apartment complex) Block A (our block) representative (representing us to the university authorities who rule us) that it would be a good idea to approach the university authorities about allowing us to start a small compost project in a small corner of the estate that i would be in charge of at least until i leave, and if nobody took it over, i would simply take it down, and chalk it off as at least being able to compost my own family's waste the way i have been doing already, except without having to bury it (which, now reading One Straw Revolution, i'm less keen to do, and plus its hard work, blech) and without worrying that someone would come and stop me. thats worst case scenario, and even that is pleasing, which is what i was trying to tell her, but she has been burned by the conflict between her ideals and the difficulty of the Singaporean mindset and bureaucracy bullshit, a fire fueled by the pressure of the workplace in university teaching. i was quite politely tenacious and didnt allow her to make me give up, so perhaps i have a chance. a year ago, no, because i didnt know enough to give the impression of capability, and i wasnt stable enough to finish what i started, like my stupid stinky unhealthy compost heap in UBC and the free store i scattered and abandoned on the lawn, and i wasnt disciplined enough to keep things neat and clean and presentable so that people werent disgusted by them, unlike my messy trashy garage UBC room, but i believe in myself now, because my parents are my checks and balances, and in their shining light i grow and give and love and be.

Om Bhur Bhuvaswa Tat Savitur Varenyam Bhargo Devasya Dhimahi Dhiyo Yo Nah Pracodayat = We contemplate the ultimate reality that permeates the earth, sky, the heavens.

Terribly insufficient translation, but it will have to do. i cant make predictions about the future, even choices that seem to be be in my control. i said i was going to be in brazil, then i said i was going to be in glasgow, then i said bangalore, now i say i'm here till mid-january at least, because i'm doing a play (greek tragedy, with the words, but with movement based on Bharatanatyam, the style of classical indian dance that i'm trained in, very exciting project) that goes up in january, and then at some point, possibly february, possibly march, i'm going to the stanford/bay area to collect and get rid of the stuff that i'm storing in my aunt's attic, and to say goodbye to the people trees ground air that i only said See You Soon to because i thought i was coming back soon, and after that i dont know if i'll ever see again, and to wait for my parents to come there so we do a Be Trip. Be, meaning, existence, but more literally, this show is brought to you by the letter B. Bay Area, British Columbia (Vancouver, friends), Boston (friends, Chomsky my dad's teacher, my birthplace), Barcelona (friends, cooperative revolution), Bergen (my parents' linguistics conference). possibly our last such world travel, since we're now settling down to saving every last drop for the Home we will build after the next few years when my parents "retire", a idea that started off as an orphanage type thing, -> morphed into home for children, -> morphed into home for children with accomodation for elderly who can help out but need community and support also, -> morphed into simply Home. for all Life and Living. it will be in india, we think, south india, we think, it will be natural, because everything that exists is natural, but more natural than other natural things in that humans forget that we are natural, so this will be a reminder. coconut trees, coffee trees, happy children, education without indoctrination, banana trees, mud buildings, intelligent but tolerant debate, grey water systems, will sing from the ground.

Come visit us? Play with the babies? Be babies? Be?

Munching on home baked bread, Sending much love and velorutionary shits and giggles,Malavika Mali little m, your Bu