mi vida

So why is that now I get paid to write a blog, and travel etc..I don't really want to do either? Funny how that always seems to happen. I find myself with all kinds of cases of writers block the minute I am supposed to sit down and write, maybe it's because I know there is an actual audience now and my run on sentences are no longer considered artistic, but unacceptable. Maybe it's also because for the first time in 7 months I have unpacked my bags, hallelujah! And you better believe the minute I moved in my hotel, which may or may not be home for the next three months, I unpacked and organized everything I own, right down to my earrings and pens. Seriously.
There is something really unsettling about literally being a "nomad," which I guess I really have been for awhile now. As for traveling, I think I got that bug out of my system the minute it started to feel fake. I want to LIVE abroad, not just be a tourist abroad, maybe that's why I am reluctant to get on any more tumultuous bus rides for a while (it will probably only last about a week, since us adrenaline junkies live for that stuff, really.)
After saying goodbye to Chiara the other day, who has probably not left my side for more than five minutes over the last six weeks, I find myself slightly panicked in facing the reality of this situation, in that I really have to start living in a schedule again. I have to actually go to work, (and for all of you out there doing this everyday, I know you're thinking F YOU...) but it is quite a hard little transition after doing my "work" and education on the road for so long. It's like running at a sprint on a treadmill and then stepping off only to feel like you have to learn how to walk again, GEEZ.
And as glamorous as being a "travel writer" sounds, there is a lot more office work than you might think; especially since the power is only on for four hours a day it makes things a little tough. Everything seems to take longer than usual in Nepal, I'm not sure why.
So now most of my time is spent under the romantic candle light of my hotel room. (it's really romantic all by myself, right.) I've resorted to learning ALL the capitals of the world, a game Chiara and I started weeks ago, and somewhere along the way I became obsessed with. Literally, falling asleep for awhile was difficult because I was running over the capital names in my head. Reminds me of studying for an effing statistics test and having all those equations I never understood keep me up at night. Wow.
So yet another blog wasted on my rantings. I could tell you about the situation in Nepal, how there is trash piled up in mountains on every corner, and how there is load shedding for 16 hours a day...but I'm afraid I have probably already lost your attention for now. That is a whole different can of worms, and it might take thousands of words to even begin explaining anything.
But, I'll try soon enough.
check out my other blog at http://www.zennepal.com/, or http://www.world.zennepal.com/

kids.

Ninos, children, kids, babies...everywhere. Kids climb on their mothers arms, crawl on the sidewalk, stare up at me with their big brown eyes. Kids play on the street corners, tattered and torn; their feet cracked and bare, and heads matted in tangled hair. Bombay, Gorakhpur, Chennai, to Kathmandu; their faces are all still with me.
I never wanted to go to Goa. I did not want to be that tourist. I did not want to lay on a beach in India, where millions of people are homeless and hungry living in some of the worst poverty in the world. I never wanted to go, but I did anyway. I wanted to go to the beautiful beach, just like everyone. I was drawn to the Ocean, and the waves, and longed for something reminiscent of home. Something similar to the beautiful coasts I spent my whole life growing up on. This Coast, in Goa by the Arabian Sea, is nothing like the Coast I love so dearly. This Coast is in India.


Days ago now, a distant dream, a faraway place. There is a pounding noise; a beating drum and a hammer tapping metal. There is a pounding noise and it is bothering me. This noise is bothering me while I lay here. I lay here bare boned, lazy, and privileged. I lay here in the sun, my skin naked to your eyes; your body is covered from neck to toes. I am laying here relaxing, and I am annoyed that something is bothering my peaceful slumber. Yet, I am laying here, and I am laying in India. This is India, how could I forget?


I look up in a daze. My vision is blurred with the bright sun, my face caked in speckles of sand. I look up to see you standing there; feet at attention and eyes gazing down. Your eyes are gazing down on me. Your little dancing feet begin to move, and your body shakes in rhythm; covered in a black cloak of feathers. You look like a little dancing crow, your feathers shimmering in the sunlight. Your face is scrunched up in concentration, body swaying and moving, and keeping in time with the rhythm of fingers on a drum. Your sister, or brother, or friend -because it changes with each girl, and with every day- sits watching, making the beat. Your costume is thrust off, discarded and crumpled in the sand. Your stage is cemented in the sand, constructed with your own hands.


The poles stand at attention; rope taut, ready and waiting, for you. You place a stack of shiny silver vases on your little head, and grabbing the slanted pole, shimmy up the bamboo trunk. The drum is beating; beating with your little dancing feet. You grab the tightrope with your toes, clenching and curling over the fraying ends. Now you begin a slow procession across your makeshift stage. Bouncing in balance and rhythm, the rope stretches under your weight. Reaching the end of this tightrope, high above our heads, you scramble to sit upright on the pyramid of poles.


At the end of this performance, your companion disassembles the stage. Poles come toppling down as they are unearthed, and the rope is untied, leaving not a trace in the sand. While your companion packs up, there you are with your little dancing feet running up to me. Hands outstretched and a look of indignation in your eyes, you hold out a tin plate in my direction.


You worked for your rupees. You put on a show, so why do I see faces turning the other way? Many barely look up, but simply put out their hands and shoo you away, as if you were a stray animal. Some gladly return the favor, placing rupees in your palm. White, bare, sun burnt skin against your chocolate, cinnamon, toffee.


I want to run away and dive in the ocean, and I feel like a hypocrite for just laying here in the sun. Now I write this from a far away place, where these faces are a distant dream. You are still there on that beach in India, and you are still putting on a performance in the hopes that a disenchanted tourist will notice your hard work.


I am told these performers, these travelers, these children; are gypsies. Traveling and working, migrating all over India to walk a tightrope for rupees of gold.


I ask your name, but all you can say is 'thank you madame.' You don't understand my English in your glittering India.


This whole situation seems wrong. Why do I get to lay here, and you with your small hands and crumpled hair, work all day. You are not the only one either. Laying in my sandy blanket filled with books, lotion, and my bare skin; girls come and go all day. Girls filled with jewels, beads, bangles, necklaces, and earrings. They lay them out in front of me on a tattered piece of cloth, "please just have a look, it's free to look." Some are older and defined in wrinkles and posture, some are teenagers, and some are no older than ten.


I am laying here bothered by somebody disturbing my "holiday," and when I realize who it is making that noise, or who it is laying their jewelry out for me; I can only feel wrecked with guilt. I don't know if we even belong in a place like this, and I'm beginning to feel strongly that we don't.

train tracks.

We sit rumbling along, eyes averted to the passing landscape rolling by on either side. Yellow mustard seed fields cascade across the horizon, a beautiful bright yellow hue, as if someone dipped a paintbrush in a mustard jar and carefully splattered it all around. She is sitting next to me, but I have yet to see her face. Tanned toes, sprinkled in jewels and elaborate patterns of henna, protrude from beneath her orange sari. Golden sprinkles strewn all along her veil, covering her face entirely, not a single strand of hair, not a freckle, and not even a smile can be seen. She sits there underneath this shield and watches the world created on this train, without uttering a word. Silent. No eyes. No voice. Only ears and hands. To hear, to listen, and to cradle her baby until he falls asleep in her arms.
I am sitting across from you. My arms are bare. My neck is bare. My face and hair are revealed for all the world to see. I sit here with my book, absorbed, studying. I sit in between your husband and his friends. A place reserved for you, but you silently decline. As if revealing anything of yourself to these men will change the world forever. It's as if our lives have been molded like clay, with sets of hands. And these hands shape us with different colors, different textures, and different paints. Af if your portrait is the negative to mine.

The tracks are lined with rubbish. Discarded plastic bags, bottles, shoes, food wrappers, and human feces. Piles and piles, strewn in a mosaic of colors and textures. People throw things out the window. Cups of chai, old dinner plates, cigarette butts, food and plastic. Always plastic. Adding to the river of rubbish lining the tracks. Squatters watch as we roll by, leaning on haunches with pants rolled around their ankles. They relieve themselves out in the open air, on the open tracks on the railroad. Tracks that carry us from one world to the next, sailing us across land, villages, towns, and cities. Tracks that connect our lives so vividly from place to place. Tracks that invade the natural landscape, natural environment, and tracks that stretch from sea to sea. When will people realize that tracks are not a rubbish bin, just as the sea is not fit to carry our leftovers.

As we sat by the water yesterday, in a daydream haze of Bombay, people came and went all afternoon. Some to get their fare share of eyes on us, others to toss their garbage into the sea. Rubbish piles neatly tied into a ball, wrapped in plastic, and floated out to sea. They fling them gently, like a bowling ball fluttering through the air, until the plastic crackles with the impact of waves and water. It is as simple as throwing a frisbee. As carefree as strolling on the beach. As mindless as watching a sitcom rerun over and over.

How can this mindset change in a city of 20 million? Bombay is literally packed in like sardines, people living on top of people. Cars moving at a stand still, never able to accelerate past the traffic jam. People sit, wait, stand, sleep, eat, and walk together. A moving mass of people, like the waves washing up the Arabian Sea, never settled or still.