IT IS IN YOUR SELF-INTEREST TO FIND A WAY TO BE VERY TENDER

Ever since Becca introduced me to Jenny Holzer’s aphorisms from “Survival” (1983-1985) I haven’t been able to stop going back to them for moments of fiery inspiration. In the heat of one of the most tender, jellyfish points of my life since I was a child: I crave focus. And only in the severe, black and fertile way. I want to feel my own stares and I want to use spit, carefully. I don’t lech at others, but there’s certainly this leopard instinct building inside of me. I shamelessly work on my Frida Kahlo gaze. I have this compelling desire to be striking, to sort of assault people with my presence.

I fear I am becoming several people who disagree with each other

I don't use blankets when I sleep

I eat food and pause to look upward, as if someone were there

I'm an imitation of Zora, Langston, Foucault on Power

I leave my hand on my breast

I wonder if I'd like to be choked

The day and night make no difference to me

I catch my heart reflected and it looks fresh and pulpy

I want to hold peoples arms and say that I like them and mean it

I watch my fingers drum on things

I brace my stomach like it needs protecting

I smoke, because I don't need to run

My skin is a loaded metaphor

and it makes me feel close to things

I think someone unknown is in the room with me and I close my eyes peacefully

I clench my thighs with magnetism

I go crazy for rock music

I think wearing khajol gives off my comfort with death

I agree with sewer smells

I know things will not stay the same

I am okay with this life

Catherine told me that a professor, er Jamaica Kincaid, once said to her something about how people know you’re a writer when you become involved with them, therefore they should expect betrayal. I’m not even going to pretend and disguise my egoism like that. So, this is me being dedicated to me, but at least an honest me. I left Hyderabad six days ago. I left with my hands in someone else’s hair. I left hands like a gardener’s and sounds I’d only ever heard my mother make when she expresses discomfort. I left the Mesozoic period that is HCU, dried up tamarind trees and once precarious boulders slumped together. I left lying together nude and bathed in blue morning light. I even left Chandu. I left the people whom I felt it so easy to care about. But everything except the Chandu bit isn’t anything close to abandonment. I don’t think you can just do that. I am moving to Mumbai this week to work on possibly the project of my diasporic dreams. But I think I’ve made it clear to most that I have a particular fondness for the boring things in life. So Hyderabad, this is only the beginning of my infatuation with knowing you as I do. And even from Delhi, I don’t know, but I’m beginning to think that I might just have to let my stunning leopard leap.

molested on the train from Delhi to Hyderabad

I wrote this after my first trip back from Delhi in early April. I wrote this to get un-lost.

"So I'll do what I can to put the past few days into perspective for you, working back and forth as it does for me right now. On Wednesday evening around almost 11 pm my train left from Delhi to come back to Hyderabad. I had gone on Sunday in order to get my visa converted in order to stay in India until the beginning of August. On the train, I had the uppermost bunk on the left side of the designated compartment. The piece of technology that divides me from the person in the other compartment with the same bed (the uppermost bunk on the right hand side) is a blue metal fence, which until now I thought only held a sliver of open space at the top. Around what I think was 1 or 2 am I woke up to the person in the mirroring compartment attempting to grope me in my sleep, as I swatted away their hand. Even though it was only a couple of days ago, I've kind of lost the ability to describe it much after that. Something that I do remember, and probably so much so because I still feel it while I'm writing this now, is this feeling of dread, and I felt it really pitifully. After waking up to that I immediately stiffened and put together whatever it was that I had to put together in order to register what was going on. I really want to tell you that I flipped the lights on, that I slammed that piece of shit fence between me and him and woke everybody up in order to ask him what the fucking idea was, and still I know that I deserved every single one of those moments. But what happened was is that I buried myself further under the blanket and sweat myself clammy, knowing him to be so-fully-there and unwavering, but still keeping with this veiled reasoning that not actually placing eyes on him would allow this situation to remain in a hallucinatory state. Though from the way that I kept my eyes transfixed on the barrier between us, glancing between it and the alarm cord beside my head which stops the train, quietly fishing in my pockets for my lighter, and just the overall discretion I was using about the whole thing, well, I could say a lot about that here but I think you probably know something about ambivalence. And so the rest of the 28 hour train ride was kind of like that, caught in the anticipation of something that already happened and of course knowing that that didn't stop me from being sexually harassed again. Waking up in the morning on the train, the other compartment was empty and a perfectly decent train ride ruined. Outside it was cloudy with a come rain or come shine temperament, but I guess I was feeling pretty adverse to most things at that point so I just stayed up in my bunk and placated until it was 5 am the next morning and I was waiting to get off at Nampally station. And if you can believe it, after all of what felt like an immensely dull moment as I got off the train and heard the auto driver speaking to me, I saw myself kind of sad about having to go. I didn't necessarily feel healthy about all this, though I did feel humanly about it, for whatever that's worth. I guess you could say that something important had happened for me there and I'm sure the cognitive forces are at work with that."

an Ode to humor; may it persist in the limp-knuckles of my heart rate

Okay so just to put it out there I’m actually a total troll (and a lusty one at that) and 2 am is sort of like our secret meeting spot where we discern on petty existential affairs and our favorite soups to drink, so here I am writing the What(sit) on the glitterblog. Because lifeish ways are begging for some sense of urgency from me (a revelation brought to me by internet astrologist Susan Miller/#astrodreamsdocometrue) I’ve shifted from prickly to pickled and have decided to write the ode before it festers itself outta me. To start, do you ever arrive at this incredible, heartwarming feeling that you are maybe—and you say this maybe sheepishly, because even you have to be modest to you—are this special conglomeration of all the stuff you want to be and think is significant and shapely and smart n all that? (and how suspiciously all these things begin with an ‘s’ but just bear with me please.) And surely you don’t go around thinking this all of the time, but how sweet is it when you get to perceive yourself in the dead light and, you know, you kind of like what you’re workin with—which has thankfully transgressed from the you of 2009 because god you said some lame things—but this persisting you, this ‘changing same’ vision of yourself that has a trained eye for interesting people and a damn good response timing (and even your own twisted idea of the perfect outfit), well, you could really see a [non-linear] future with this you. And my dear, dear patrons of the goat milk tragedies, this is a peek into why I’m dedicating a chapter in my blog to that which shatters and keeps you a bit strained with anxiety on both sides, each of which you failed to remember after all this feel-good, blank individual meets blank philosophical query meets blankity blankness.

Humor, or that which has no physicality to speak of, has made its insidious way into my messy consciousness and my even more distraught heart of hearts (i.e. some prefer to call it a conscience). And now there’s something about humor (or shall we call it the “humorization of cultural experience” and make it disgustingly anthro up in this biatch) that I am finding sooo irresistible. Like I’m not ready to go into this business about disrupting the reality of the nonindividual or somesuch mighty concept that places humor as its magic wand, but I will say that it’s allowing me to realise how I’m use to taking myself so seriously. That’s not a jab at my seriousness, and trust that I still think societal shit is serious. I’m mad as hell about cut funding for planned parenthood, about racist arrogance, about neo-imperialist leisure in ‘the developing world’, about not even craving to walk alone at night anymore, about explaining homophobia to homophobes, about lists of things that accumulate and lose their origins. So there’s that, and you can see how humor, being somehow both delicate and meaty in the same instance can really do a lot for me in this position. Something has to tell that person whose arrived at the exceptional hypothesis of themselves that they, too, are caught up in this ‘ol hybrid ‘”matrices of domination” and especially when they’re not looking (which is why we gotta keep talking! A dried up argument on loquaciousness next time…) and even when we are. As it’s conducted, humor tends to lighten things up and with the same air can keep us relatively tangled for periods long afterthefact. It dissipates, too. It's helping me to realize how much I like difference and how everything is going to be okay. It smirks at antithetical realisations like this one without hurting my feelings (remember this). How else are we to deal with all the –isms ists, essentializing bullshit and especially the lofty quest to name the Oppressor? I know I’m daring myself to get creative, not just slip the lousy banana under em. Is it fair to call it a coping mechanism? Generally this comes in handy around relatives and when someone you’re finding attractive says some problematic yikes-town stuff. “I’m not really calling you that, just suggesting you’re doing it—Ha-ha.” So god dammit, at least some of our self-respect seeps through. (And to clarify, we still take to the streets, have the protests, blog about it, cultivate la revolucion, et cetera et cetera.)

So you see if I was really that awe-inspiring individual described above, then I would probably not have uttered humor the word itself and just threaded its potent, non-identical metaphysics throughout the piece, channelled through coarse, garden-variety English (but woulda takin it to all sorts of fluffscure dimensions—duh) but really I’m just not that impressive. But do tell me: how is it getting to watch me grow up n all? #precocioustwenties.

I've been quite the ambitious beetle since that last post and Justine just gave my bangs a trim tonight so I'm feeling especially conversational. I went to Bombay for five days-four nights last week for the Queer Azaadi pride march and I think I melted over n over again, which is more than anything that has to ship themselves away to the states in a few months should ever compromise. Of course I don't think any of that is true at all, and it really was the nicest one night stand I think I've ever had, if not the only. I just sent an email to my cousin who lived there for a bit, mentioning the sad pangs in my stomach that I get from just talking about the trip and missing it, and rudely cursing Hyderabad for constraining me here with school,it's big boulders and their taunting symbology, and again school. (Taking four classes on different branches of yoga is a nice afterthought but instead I enrolled in these totally aggressive sociology courses that frequently 'hurt my feelings', structurally speaking.)

We met for the parade at this cricket park full of dried-red-clay and I was delighted by the dresses and make up and yelling and all that, mingling with several activists and lovers and avoiding the media that insisted on photographing the handful of “white” folks present. Signs reading 'We Are Homo, We Are Indian', the unflinching rainbow of course, and speeches and chants in hindi. In places, god it was so fucking queer, no worthy culture concept about it. I didn't cry but I think I was crying like a damn baby all day. The march was two hours and took up streets and ended in front of the beach. We left the parade all sweaty and slap happy and laid on the sand which is something I didn't even know I missed. I went in to wet my feets, while Grace kept talking about all the intensive surgery we'd have to get if we cut them open on shards of glass.

I've been feeling so mouthful here, definitely more than I'd felt for the past several months in Asheville. It's really thick here, and in my other writings I can't seem to keep up with all that's panning for consideration. There are some things too tender for blogspot.com, but it's all subsiding near by—very much an under the skin process and at the same time a dull laboring that tends to surprise me with how graceful settling in here has been. I think I had this peanut idea that boundary erosion took some kind of weight-liftin, shin splitting kind of work, but what I took as my own ill-preparedness in coming here was actually sort of privy, like almost impossibly intuitive. In other news, I can't stop listening to The Strokes' Room on Fire and Cat Power and still don't really know what I'm trying to convince myself of. I even feel like more of Leo here but I know that's just my own bullshit, so, yeah. I'm back in Hyderabad: writing papers, brushing teeth, meetin cute people. Bombay was charming and eventually I want it back, but it's nice to be here on campus and looming in all this incredible geology and philosophy majors and, I don't know, overall just keeping the blood prickly. Double promising to post pictures so it can be electrified.

I've skirted around posting a blogi for long enough, so hello and greetings from Hyderabad! Here I am having an 'indian' winter and it's been three and a half weeks and a sloppy decade turned over since I left the strange familiar for more strange familiar. It;s been enough time for me to loosen the stares of people on the street like I first fidgeted with when arriving, even my own face so grated against fluorescent lights and ear flies. I'm going to get sore from this but here's some of that chalk full description I daydreamed I already told all y'all: the campus is long wide and green and all our new buildings look like props like you'll think you can just walk behind them and see a cardboard plank holding up the whole production, bear with me, and from the handful of people i'm getting to know and feel of course romantically for because there's this special particular time-place business, today I saw a kingfisher bird so so incredible, I'm taking classes on diaspora and migration and sociology of muslim communities, and we came in the heat of some local political tension concerning the formation of Telangana state, and went to a performance of 100 snake charmers and yes we contaminated it with "this is made for the english man's pleasure" and "having orientalist charisma" but still we enjoyed it, meaning the mapping of this trip is going to be engaging with something I aint done since living in the Dutta house coupled with some kind of personal famine but my, my the most ddddiiivvversssityyy I ever perceived (ill-literally). One of the first days when I arrived and was having difficulty adjusting I thought of this 5:30am encouragement from anthropology of place: when I encounter the 'other' [sic], I really encounter me more. here it is like all fermentation projects, spread spread spreadling but with no starting point and *oh*my*god* I haven't had this much deja vu in years. It feels so good to play!