Saturday, March 14, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
coffee
Saturday it rained. The nice kind of rain, the atmospheric kind. I spent the morning wandering, coffee in hand, through the park with a friend and his dog before leaving to meet another friend for a coffee. Coffee number two lasted for hours in a cozy cafe over a worn wooden table before we decided we needed a change of scenery and we made our way to another cafe for more of the same.
Other things are going on but I prefer to think of this: a day spent wandering, bundled up in scarves, hats and gloves, from coffee shop to coffee shop buried in good conversation. Perfect.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
down by the water
Incredibly, impossibly cold but yesterday's brilliant sun was enough to tempt people all over the city out of their homes and into the streets to enjoy the light. It was a good day to wander along the lakeshore.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
stop or they'll gallop
It's all fun and games until you're pulled over in your car by a horse. Then it's just embarrassing...
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
gimme gimme more
It's been a beautiful, white, brilliantly sunny winter but the snow in the city is melting so I'm off to a cabin in the woods for five days of long walks, lazy yoga and fireplace daydreams...
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
typhoid is soooo last century
I get sick – never – so when I fell ill a few weeks ago I didn’t know what to expect and when I felt dodgy in the weeks that followed I didn’t think anything of it, just figured it was the aftereffects of being sick. A few days ago a fever hit and it’s only just occurring to me that I’ve felt like crap for two solid weeks. Still, I figured the fever would pass and focused on ignoring the uncontrollable shaking, cold clammy skin, sweat drenched clothes, and being insufferably hot quickly followed by being impossibly cold. Then a few nights ago I woke up to discover that I had been shaking so hard that I’d knocked a crown out and it struck me that this might be a bit more than "the chills". The next morning I went to the hospital to see a Doctor and get some bloodwork done.
It was SO not fun. Imagine a very busy Indian train station but with less organization and imagine navigating that while you’re sick. I ignored the hands pushing money past me, paid to consult with a doctor, waited 1.5 hours for him to return from rounds and received a prescription for a battery of tests. Then the real waiting began, five long hours of it. Bloodwork was first. I was weak and tired and getting shaky again. It took two hours to get in, have my veins repeatedly jab jab jabbed (thin veins madam, very thin veins), and faint. I’m not a fainter but I had the idea that at home people put their heads between their knees when light headed; here it seems that the custom is to keep yourself upright, it was a very bad time to learn this cultural difference. I kept trying to put my head down between my knees and concerned hands kept rushing forward, catching my face with a smack and pushing my head back to the wall with a thunk, holding me there. It sucked.
I freed myself from the blood ladies and navigated my way to my next set of tests where I joined the non-line of people packed outside the room and prayed that somehow somewhere there was order to the chaos. There was nowhere to sit so I staked my claim on a corner of the wall and started waiting – and shaking. After 45 minutes of clinging to the wall shaking violently, my legs started to give out and I began sinking to the ground at which point people took notice. One of the Sisters rushed over and stabbed me in the behind with a needle of something which helped with both the shaking and the waiting, I think they were so freaked out by the fainting, convulsing foreigner that they dumped me into the room almost immediately.
Before I even talked I’d disappointed the ultrasound man with my very empty bladder. No one told me to keep a full bladder and no one told me I was getting an ultrasound or I’d have known to do so on my own. I lay there, answering for the millionth time that I was single, no, no husband, and listened to them talk about my faulty ovaries over my head – because nothing makes women of a ‘certain age’ feel better than repeatedly asserting her status as a spinster while listening to doomsday talk about the possibility that she’ll ever have children. If I weren’t already shaking, the vision of dying alone and being eaten by my cat would have kickstarted the process.
Tests were done, many prescriptions given to cover the days until the results came in, and the Doctor's repeated requests that I check myself in were blithely ignored. Why you ask? Because I'm an idiot. I figured things couldn’t be that bad and as someone who doesn’t even take aspirin, I didn't even plan filling the prescriptions. I got myself in a rickshaw, got myself home and spent the night shaking uncontrollably while calling for my roommate of 10 years ago. The next day a friend with far more sense than I brought me to the OTHER private hospital (hallelujia) where I was to spend the next week.
Typhoid. I had typhoid. Such a very cool name for such a very uncool illness.
It was SO not fun. Imagine a very busy Indian train station but with less organization and imagine navigating that while you’re sick. I ignored the hands pushing money past me, paid to consult with a doctor, waited 1.5 hours for him to return from rounds and received a prescription for a battery of tests. Then the real waiting began, five long hours of it. Bloodwork was first. I was weak and tired and getting shaky again. It took two hours to get in, have my veins repeatedly jab jab jabbed (thin veins madam, very thin veins), and faint. I’m not a fainter but I had the idea that at home people put their heads between their knees when light headed; here it seems that the custom is to keep yourself upright, it was a very bad time to learn this cultural difference. I kept trying to put my head down between my knees and concerned hands kept rushing forward, catching my face with a smack and pushing my head back to the wall with a thunk, holding me there. It sucked.
I freed myself from the blood ladies and navigated my way to my next set of tests where I joined the non-line of people packed outside the room and prayed that somehow somewhere there was order to the chaos. There was nowhere to sit so I staked my claim on a corner of the wall and started waiting – and shaking. After 45 minutes of clinging to the wall shaking violently, my legs started to give out and I began sinking to the ground at which point people took notice. One of the Sisters rushed over and stabbed me in the behind with a needle of something which helped with both the shaking and the waiting, I think they were so freaked out by the fainting, convulsing foreigner that they dumped me into the room almost immediately.
Before I even talked I’d disappointed the ultrasound man with my very empty bladder. No one told me to keep a full bladder and no one told me I was getting an ultrasound or I’d have known to do so on my own. I lay there, answering for the millionth time that I was single, no, no husband, and listened to them talk about my faulty ovaries over my head – because nothing makes women of a ‘certain age’ feel better than repeatedly asserting her status as a spinster while listening to doomsday talk about the possibility that she’ll ever have children. If I weren’t already shaking, the vision of dying alone and being eaten by my cat would have kickstarted the process.
Tests were done, many prescriptions given to cover the days until the results came in, and the Doctor's repeated requests that I check myself in were blithely ignored. Why you ask? Because I'm an idiot. I figured things couldn’t be that bad and as someone who doesn’t even take aspirin, I didn't even plan filling the prescriptions. I got myself in a rickshaw, got myself home and spent the night shaking uncontrollably while calling for my roommate of 10 years ago. The next day a friend with far more sense than I brought me to the OTHER private hospital (hallelujia) where I was to spend the next week.
Typhoid. I had typhoid. Such a very cool name for such a very uncool illness.
Friday, July 4, 2008
happy body, happy mind
Yesterday I mentioned to someone that I was fasting and they responded with the observation that a body-type like mine looked like it could probably withstand a fast.
Heh.
Luckily my ego is that strong that I'm totally assuming it was meant as a compliment, oh yes I am...
Heh.
Luckily my ego is that strong that I'm totally assuming it was meant as a compliment, oh yes I am...
i'll be seeing you
My departure date (a customer service interaction that included my request to “talk to someone who’s not going to yell at me”) is changed but even with a later departure, my time in Mysore grows short. I’m at the same time comfortable with the idea and resistant to it. Being deafened by honking horns on my way into town, oh yes, I'm comfortable with the idea of leaving. Then I think of leaving the smells, the colours, the sounds (horns excepted); I think of leaving this easy, slow life; I think of leaving my friends; I think of leaving this yogi playground where talk of pranayama, meditation, asana and philosophy flows so naturally and mixes so hilariously with nonsense talk of porn-eoke and I want to cling, grasp, hold on because I can’t do this at home. There is nowhere like Mysore. Then again, there is nowhere like home.
It’s not just my time that grows short. Just as quickly as new faces are flooding into town, familiar faces are moving on. It’s time, things change, but still I resist. I tell people I’ll be seeing them instead of saying goodbye; the world is increasingly small so the former is very likely true but that’s not why I put it that way. It’s because I don’t want to say goodbye, I want to ignore the closing of this time and the transition to another.
It is beautiful this opportunity we have, whether here or elsewhere, to meet and appreciate people without attachment, to find kindred spirits in the most unexpected of people, to realize just how bountiful love, support, and understanding are in what we keep being told is an increasingly disconnected, impersonal world. It is also beautiful this opportunity I have to practice accepting people as they move in and out of my life, to practice accepting change. It’s practice I very much need because, currently, I’m less on the “it’s beautiful” side and more on the “fingers in my ear screaming ‘lalala’ while ignoring everything” side.
Still, "lalala" notwithstanding, the universe conspires to help me. Many of the new faces flooding into town are familiar ones, people I haven't seen in years, people I probably said "I'll be seeing you" to at some point in time and here I am - seeing them. There is truth to my words and a different consciousness arising in my motivation for saying them.
It’s not just my time that grows short. Just as quickly as new faces are flooding into town, familiar faces are moving on. It’s time, things change, but still I resist. I tell people I’ll be seeing them instead of saying goodbye; the world is increasingly small so the former is very likely true but that’s not why I put it that way. It’s because I don’t want to say goodbye, I want to ignore the closing of this time and the transition to another.
It is beautiful this opportunity we have, whether here or elsewhere, to meet and appreciate people without attachment, to find kindred spirits in the most unexpected of people, to realize just how bountiful love, support, and understanding are in what we keep being told is an increasingly disconnected, impersonal world. It is also beautiful this opportunity I have to practice accepting people as they move in and out of my life, to practice accepting change. It’s practice I very much need because, currently, I’m less on the “it’s beautiful” side and more on the “fingers in my ear screaming ‘lalala’ while ignoring everything” side.
Still, "lalala" notwithstanding, the universe conspires to help me. Many of the new faces flooding into town are familiar ones, people I haven't seen in years, people I probably said "I'll be seeing you" to at some point in time and here I am - seeing them. There is truth to my words and a different consciousness arising in my motivation for saying them.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
lessons in non-attachment from Coffee Day
On the topic of Coffee Day, if you’ve never been there it may be hard to imagine and if you have been there you know exactly what I’m talking about – what is UP with the music? First, each song gets, quite literally, only 1.3 minutes of play (if lucky) before we skip to the next track. Second, although the censors have been active on the CD’s they use, they insist on featuring Eminem and Fifty Cent heavily in their rotation - not only are the songs only given 1.3 minutes airtime but half the words are beeped out.
By the time we get around to their one, tired Backstreet Boys track I’m ridiculously happy to hear the strains of “I Want It That Way” because those Backstreet Boys are good boys. No cursing = an entire 1.3 minutes of uninterrupted music (maybe ;).
By the time we get around to their one, tired Backstreet Boys track I’m ridiculously happy to hear the strains of “I Want It That Way” because those Backstreet Boys are good boys. No cursing = an entire 1.3 minutes of uninterrupted music (maybe ;).
my mysore
When I fell sick a few weeks ago I missed a meeting with my favourite rickshaw driver. He sent an sms wondering where I was and, after learning that I was sick, continued to check in by sms in the days that followed. Yesterday I saw him for the first time in weeks and caused him all kinds of concern over how “weak” I look and answered many questions about my medicine (none), food (lots now), and rest (no worries, I’m a sloth). A few hours after he dropped me off he returned with some food his wife had prepared. It was completely unexpected and I was absolutely touched; he didn’t have to do that.
Later that day I walked to Coffee Day to listen to overly loud music (but, inexplicably, only 1.3 minutes per song before we jump to the next one) while I worked. On my way, a woman waved goats off the road so I could pass, stopping when I stopped and laughing with me when I laughed at the smallest but loudest goat standing his ground (they really do say “maaaa” – who knew?). We had a “moment”.
Not long after I settled in at Coffee Day a trio of girls arrived and ordered a piece of chocolate cake. The cake arrived and one girl cut off a piece, approached me, and started pushing it towards my mouth explaining that it was her birthday. She resisted my attempts to take the piece and feed myself by stating “it’s my birthday, I must give to you”. It crossed my mind that she could be taking the piss but then, it was chocolate cake, and always I’m so ingratiatingly pleased to be included in any way, I acquiesced and let the strange girl hand-feed me chocolate cake. It was awesome (the cake, not so much the being hand-fed part).
So many people come to Mysore and everyone has their own, unique experience dependent on a million different factors but when I think of some of the things I’ve heard (or read in blog-land) about the country, the culture, the pollution, the people, the men…I want to go and take those people by hand and walk with them for an afternoon through my Mysore because my Mysore is a wonderful, wonderful place to be. Of course there are frustrations, bad days, monkey minded torments but above and beyond that, at all times, blessings abound, beauty surrounds, and kindness is everywhere.
Later that day I walked to Coffee Day to listen to overly loud music (but, inexplicably, only 1.3 minutes per song before we jump to the next one) while I worked. On my way, a woman waved goats off the road so I could pass, stopping when I stopped and laughing with me when I laughed at the smallest but loudest goat standing his ground (they really do say “maaaa” – who knew?). We had a “moment”.
Not long after I settled in at Coffee Day a trio of girls arrived and ordered a piece of chocolate cake. The cake arrived and one girl cut off a piece, approached me, and started pushing it towards my mouth explaining that it was her birthday. She resisted my attempts to take the piece and feed myself by stating “it’s my birthday, I must give to you”. It crossed my mind that she could be taking the piss but then, it was chocolate cake, and always I’m so ingratiatingly pleased to be included in any way, I acquiesced and let the strange girl hand-feed me chocolate cake. It was awesome (the cake, not so much the being hand-fed part).
So many people come to Mysore and everyone has their own, unique experience dependent on a million different factors but when I think of some of the things I’ve heard (or read in blog-land) about the country, the culture, the pollution, the people, the men…I want to go and take those people by hand and walk with them for an afternoon through my Mysore because my Mysore is a wonderful, wonderful place to be. Of course there are frustrations, bad days, monkey minded torments but above and beyond that, at all times, blessings abound, beauty surrounds, and kindness is everywhere.
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