::Journalling::

Journalling has been one of the best things I have done in my life. For the last three weeks, I have journaled quite a bit. The result is, I have been able to articulate in language things I have been afraid to admit to myself for a long time. It is not that I didn't KNOW these things before, but having them written down in words -- words, sentences, tangible paragraphs-- to which I will be able to go back to read-- is hugely empowering. None of these things I would be able to share in this blog. Not only because I want to protect the privacy of the individuals concerned, it's also because I want to hold on to certain forms of privacy for myself very very tightly. There are things in my life that will never show up on this blog. But then, there might also have been a part of me, which was putting off articulating these things because I couldn't say them out loud in public. Journalling has helped me move beyond that stage. It is too early to comment on anything else-- will these words, literally written in tears on page-- help me to "move on"? Do I really want to "move on"? What does "moving on" mean? Admittedly, it's one of those words that's thrown around a lot in the self-help language, but what does it really mean to move on? So, I am not necessarily sure what all these little write-ups will mean for me years from now. What I do know is that, right now, they are providing me with a strange kind of courage. My journal entries are providing me with the courage to be more accountable to myself. And as I am writing these entries, I am also beginning to think of the role "private writing" plays in human lives. Especially when, as literary scholars, historians, we look into them to validate/problematize/ something that is bigger than individuals

Updates

I have been neglecting this blog—between the fourth chapter of my dissertation, teaching, writing job applications and keeping up with some other deadlines, I am all blogged out. But I have been forcing myself to spend some time with my writing, even if it's 15 mins every day. I have also enrolled in a short story workshop, just so I can get some writing done. It is not that I am hoping I will achieve some huge feat, but just trying to keep up with some deadlines, getting some feedback for my work, all these little things make me feel that I am still within the process. Meanwhile, I am doing some work on the poetry manuscript. I have a better idea of where it is going. I know what poems I need to write for it once I am done with the dissertation. I am doing lots of thinking about it, drawing up a list of books I need to read.

But I am also learning, as I am writing the dissertation, that any long project, involves lots of painstaking moments. At this point, my mind and body are really ready to jump to the finishing point without going through the hoops. At the same time, I know, this is what the process is all about—taking a few pages everyday, editing them, making notes, writing a page or two, cutting things out, adding new stuff. And it takes time. I am not the same person who started this project. So has the project changed. There are moments when I sit down with it, and think about what I am writing about, I get enormously excited. Away from it, I feel sad, listless. Even more so when I think about the institutional paradigms within which I am working on it.

In the same way, I am slowly coming to accept, I might not be the best person to write in short prose-fiction forms. This week, I met with a new friend of mine, an Iranian-American woman with an MFA. After our conversation, I felt a lot energized about beginning to think about a novel once I am done with the dissertation. So, that's something I am looking forward too.

((Laboring))

I started the day with a nice rejection from PANK--oh well! This Labor Day weekend has been tough. I have moved between intense anger, listlessness, sense of failure, depression and missing someone I really really love. And if I have to be perfectly honest, it's the last thing that has been causing a lot of the other things I listed above. There are other things, too. For example, the anxiety over my dissertation. But nothing fucks me up as a conflict with a childhood friend, someone who should have understood me better than anyone else! But this is also something I have come to realize in the last few days--I am an intensely ideological person. For me, the "personal" is really really "political" and vice versa. I tend to de-code the smallest moments in my life, our lives, and this often creates emotional problems and distances with people I otherwise love and cherish. I know a lot of the things I am extremely critical of wouldn't necessarily bother most others. But this is me, and I also recognize, this propensity of mine has also given me an unique voice, I don't really intend to change myself. I am all willing to try hard to be a better person. I am all willing to modify my rhetoric depending upon the context. But what I am not willing to do is, to enter into too many "compromises."

In other news, I am still working on the fourth chapter of my dissertation. I get very easily tired these days. I cannot write more than a page or a page-and-half. But I do work on it every day. So, I am making progress. Although I am far from being done, it does help me to see that I am adding on to the chapter, I am paving my way towards completion.

In the creative writing front, I have been revising a story I wrote a while back. I got some feedback on it from my workshop, so I am trying to do some revisions. Let's see how it goes!

Despair

I am in that place again. I feel a listlessness creeping in, I am finding it hard to work on new poems, or revise old ones. I know the reasons behind my feeling like this—but I don't know the cures. Most of them don't depend on me. I am not sure what to do—so I keep on doing what I know best: I work on my dissertation every day, although I don't always find it easy. I keep submitting poems to journals. I am trying to read, although honestly, I am finding it hard to read too. I am typing these few lines, because I don't want this space to die.

::Why Kiranmala::

A friend of mine, after reading the poem in Stonetelling, asked me, why I chose Kiranmala. Is it because she is a "Bong" heroine. There are lots of reasons why I am fascinated by Kiranmala, but I don't think her "Bongness" is one of them. This is something that I have been thinking about a lot these days: this question of identity in the way it often comes up in my discussions with friends and students who are second generation South Asians in this country. Bangla has never been about "identity" or "heritage" to me in the way American identity politics speaks about one's racial/cultural/ethnic identity. It was the first language that I learnt. My sense of music has been formed by Bangla words, the cadence of that language. I sing Bangla songs when I am alone without really thinking about it, because that's what I know, that's what there is in my sub-conscious mind. I didn't grow up in a social milieu where people were "post-colonial hybrids." English was a foreign language to them, a familiar foreign language, but a foreign language still. They were scared of it, in awe of its skilled users. Some people I know and have grown up with, managed to developed a functional knowledge of it. My father one amongst them. Most didn't. In India, how one uses English gives out one's economic and cultural class. The lower-middle class, suburban Kolkata milieu where I grew up, people spoke, read, wrote in Bangla. That's what they still do. And I know, if I have to make any attempt towards building up any thread of communication with them, I cannot give up writing in Bangla. So, Bangla is my identity in a certain way. But it's way more than that.

Now, getting back to Kiranmala, she is someone whose life I can imagine much more easily than that a Greek goddess' or Celtic heroine's. Her story I have heard and read many many times. I can imagine how she looked like, what she ate, what colors she loved, what she wore. I can imagine her interior life in a relatively effortless way. Besides, my lit-critter's mind tells me, not a whole lot of work has been done on re-interpreting Bengali folklore, folktales, myths and fairytales. And I am not totally unqualified to do that! So, that's why I write about Kiranmala. Because I can crawl under skin, I can stay there, I can shout and shed tears from there. Yes yes yes....

Writing Table

Right now, I am in a small university town in Illinois, visiting M. I am sitting in a table right next to a big window drinking coffee. Earlier I was working on typing up some of the poems I wrote during the NaPoWriMo month. After that, I read some poems from Joseph Legaspi's book Imago. I am thinking, if I had a window and a writing-table right next to it, I probably wouldn't have spent so much money and time in the coffee-shops. This desire does make me uncomfortable. Because I recognize in that very desire, a kind of consumer materialism. And I know there are actual costs of that kind of desire. This is specifically the kind of desire that makes people crave more, take paths that will satisfy those cravings rather than stay true to their passion and creativity. In short, it makes them conform. But on the other hand, I also think, is it too much as a writer to ask for a writing-table next to a window? Shouldn't we all live in a world where everyone can have access to a workplace of their choice? Yes, but we don't live in an ideal world. And so long as we don't, I should get the most of this writing table while I am here.

Incoherent Reflections

Yesterday was a day just like others. I finally got to know I won't starve in Fall, I will have employment. And I can't help feeling grateful. Now, I just need to plough through the dissertation, and get it done. The last month has been very stressful in so many ways, not the least of which is the uncertainty over funding. Now, I can relax a little bit and actually get down to the work.

To keep myself distracted from these worries, I have been thinking about cover-art for poetry books a lot. I tend to think, the cover-art is a form of collaboration, a collaboration between the artist and the poet. Anyways, this is one of my favorite cover-arts in poetry books. The one above. I love the blue. I love the combination of the blue and the white. And I also love how the entire cover gives out the story of the verse-novel itself, in a very dexterous nutshell. What is more, I read somewhere, the poet Thylias Moss herself, designed it! I don't think I can ever be that talented, that multi-dimensional to try my hand in so many different things!

Nerd!

When I am smack dab in the middle of my despair, I ask myself,what these years of academic training in literary criticism has done for me. It has done a lot. LOT. But more than anything else, it has taught me to be an active reader. An active reader as against a passive consumer. It has taught me to wriggle inside the belly of a text. It has taught me to find space within a text to stretch myself. And now that I have learnt to read this way, my relationship to the "world" and the "text" will never be the same again. I am a more complicated person to deal with now. But also probably....wiser

In the Middle of Rejections

Ever since the NaWriPoMo began, I have written four poems. All of them are re-fashionings of older work, but still, they are more complete now, with definite arcs. They are full-fledged first drafts now. I have also submitted to a few places in the last week--some by snail mail, some electronically. This is the least favorite part of what I have to do as a writer, but also something that I have come to recognize as essential.

I have been thinking about the role rejection plays in one's growth as a creative artist/scholar etc. Why?Because, I am in the middle of rejections. Which often does make me think, maybe I am not that good enough. Maybe I should have just chosen some "safer" career-paths. Like being a secretary or a high school teacher, where the pressures to be "innovative" in this way does not exist. It is only during this last week that I have explicitly recognized, how both my chosen profession (literary/cultural scholar) and vocation(writer) are highly dependent upon subjective evaluations. Which basically translates into this: I might work very hard for a project, even put my best into it, but that does not mean I have any control over the reception. Reception, like production itself, is dependent upon too many factors.

Now, this is also an interesting life-lesson in itself. I might spend a whole lot of time talking to someone about race, gender, sexuality, sexuality, progressive politics, the intersection between political and the personal blah blah blah, but at the end of the day, my emotional investment in that person does not mean much more than my emotional investment. He/she will take it up at his/her own pace, re-mix it with things he/she is receiving from the historical/cultural/social environment around, reject some, accept some etc. And there will be lots of people in this world who will not take anything at all.This can be frustrating, especially when I am passionate about something, someone, and badly want to convince someone of something, or want my work to reach a larger audience. But I don't see any way around it. My work, my hard labor will be rejected-- probably many more times than it will be accepted. Do I stop writing then? Do I stop interacting with people about things I am passionate about? Do I stop developing the ideas for my dissertation? I don't think so!

Because that would be the ultimate defeat, the ultimate act of self-immolation. My voice, my words, my ideas have emerged out of my interactions with life, my experiences. They are by no means perfect, they are as limited as I am...but at the end of the day, they do have some relevance for ... if for no one else, for me...and hopefully, a couple of other people. So, I cannot stop working. I cannot deliberately stop myself from growing. Writing this post wouldn't really solve any of the problems right now, but it is definitely making me feel calmer, and more energized to go back to the work-table once again.

A Day In the Life Of...

Reading


Lunch


What I Had For Breakfast: 2 Cups of It

Writing...er, dissertation...and a brand-new poem....

Work

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.
---Alice Walker

This is definitely not how I felt when I was younger, but as I am growing older, I feel, being a writer is about doing the writing, true. But it's also a way of being in this world.In that it is more than just writing. I feel like I have to be more critical and more loving at the same time, in order to be the writer I want to be. I am someone who believes in the autonomy of the text, the ability of the text to generate meanings irrespective of the text-maker, but as I am getting into the act of creative writing more and more, and getting introduced to more and more writers, I am beginning to see how biography too is important for the art/text we make.Our contradictions surface invariably in the art we produce. Our art, the texts we produce invite us to explore our contradictions. Whether we choose to do it or not, depends on us. Human beings, as much as they try, do not lead compartmentalized lives after all.

A Nice Evening

Last night, RR and I went out for an impromptu “date.” Since we are both very interesting people, our idea of a “date” consists of going to Mozart, shit-talking about the yuppies who have HUGE homes up on the cliff, watching the ducks swim in the green water, trashing the spoilt-brats who knife through the water in their privately-owned yachts, and drinking cappuccino. Oh yes, we also set our timers, and wrote. For the last couple of days, I have been writing my dissertation at home, in the mornings, right after waking up and breakfast coffee. So I worked on doing some drastic revisions on a poem while RR worked on de diss.

Later, we went to Buenos Aires Cafe, did some more people-watching, and ate some really good food. Empanadas as appetizers, some very meaty stuff for entrees, and then a dark chocolate crème brulee for dessert, and talked some more about literature, film, the relationship between craft and ideology. All in all it was a productive evening which helped me get out of the hopelessness of not landing any huge fellowship yet for the next academic year!

I kind of have an idea what I want to write for this chapter of my dissertation, and I am not letting the “I need to read more before I can begin to write” impulse to get the better of me. Instead, once I am done with the writing quota of the day, I try to devote some time to the reading/catching up on the secondary materials. And then, once I am done with the first draft of the chapter, I can go back and do a more thorough finalization of the whole thing. But I need to have the basic work done before anything else. This, often, for me, is the hard work. Because at this stage, I am trying to figure out what my arguments are going to be. So, it's a lot of active brain-storming. But I think best when I write. This is something I have discovered about myself in the last one year, while writing my dissertation.

Feeling Heavy

In a week and half, I have a campus-interview, and a 35 minute presentation to go with it. I have six pages of the presentation written down, and I feel vastly unprepared. Part of it is just that, I have too much stuff, and I feel like cutting it down to 35 mins. (15 pages roughly) will be a hard task. I am nervous, and I am procrastinating. Anyways, I will have to make myself work on it as soon as I am done with dinner. In terms of other things in life, I have been thinking of love, friendship and hurt a lot. Yes, I do have a few intense friendships in this life where things aren't always smooth. Yet, I do not want to let go of them. I know, any therapist I will go to will say exactly the opposite. But I am not someone who believes that I need to drop my friends and loved ones at the emergence of first (or second or third)sign of conflict. There was a time when I used to do that, but I think, growing older has changed me in this respect. Honestly, I have become more aware of human mortality, and this awareness of death does change things. In my present life, I am trying to do two things:

1. Letting people know I love that because I love them and support them, it doesn't mean I am letting themselves off the hook.

2. Trying to avoid meanness. In recent past, I have wished loved ones immense suffering, all because what they were doing were hurting me. But honestly, I shouldn't have done that. Meanness, and pettiness do not change things.

I am beginning to feel, and think, that if I need to see certain things change in this world, I need to set the example myself in my own little way.

I have always believed that work (creative, political, scholarly) is more important that personal dramas and personality issues. To a certain extent I still do. But I am also realizing, work is also embroiled within personal dynamics. The kinds of work I do are especially fertile grounds for them, because at the end of the day, we bring our personal histories into our creative/artistic work, political work, scholarly work.

Normally, I don't write such personal stuff in this blog. But I am writing this down, because I want to be accountable to these processes I am undertaking.

Note To Self

I am feeling a little bit distracted. I have noticed, this sense of aimlessness often takes over me when I am in the middle of too-many projects. I need to tell myself to cool down, to focus, to concentrate on the work and not the results or the consequences. It is during these times that I also tell myself Walt Whitman took thirty years to yank out Leaves of Grass. Honestly, I don't know if I have the patience to work on one single project for that long, to dig that deeply into something. But I have observed, my mind works best when I divide the work into smaller, manageable chunks, and devote every day into it. And that's what I am trying to do right now. I also think of my own work in terms of longer projects, even when I am working on a short-story or a single-poem project. I don't know whether that is good or bad, but that's how I work. At least now. So, for now, I will just concentrate on the work itself, let the projects themselves decide on their own pace and length, and keep on working hard. Tomorrow I need to go to Benson to pick up some books for the third chapter of my dissertation.

Heathen Me

I was raised atheist. I have grown up around people who mostly believed Religion Is the Opium of People. There were plenty of evidence in our everyday life to prove that. I still believe in that, except for the fact that I think, the whole religion thing is slightly more complicated. Religion has functioned as an opium to people. It has also functioned as hope, and most importantly, as a tool of resistance. I am interested in seeing how different communities and individuals have often used religion as a rhetorical tool to argue about things which had very little to do with God. So, right now, I am an atheist who takes the ability of religion to mobilize people very very seriously. I mean, any basic reading of any kind of historical anthropology would tell anyone that this whole idea of God is a human intervention.It's kind of dumb to not realize that. And even if there IS something called God, who has the immense super-natural power to turn things around, I must admit, his sense of justice is extremely fucked up. I mean, he has no sense of justice at all. Anyone whose sense of justice and wellbeing is so fucked up, or totally non-existent, I kind of think, it's an insult on my intelligence and being to believe in him. So, I don't believe in the existence of God. But that does not mean I don't believe in the super-natural or the divine or the numinous. What can be more numinous than human creativity? What can be more divine than the human ability to tell stories, to play with colors, notes, tunes and create art? What can be more spiritual than the human efforts to create a better world for all? There is nothing natural about human creativity. In fact, most of the social hegemonies, in every kinds of human societies, have been structured to turn human masses into un-creative, acquiescent, obedient bodies. But human spirit is such that it rebels against such structures. This is what I consider to be super-natural. Something that eludes our sense of dominant, common-sense rationality. Not some idea of a BIG MAN sitting on a chair ruling the world. And because I believe in human creativity, I am also mindful of the fact that all forms of religious practices have inspired human beings to create art, to create stories, to create literatures. They have given human beings tools to argue with power-structures, to question authority. I respect that aspect of religion, I want to understand it more. But at the same time, religions themselves have exercised authority, created their own forms of power structures, allied themselves with other forms of power structures, and have been extremely useful in oppressing people in very systemic ways, conducting genocides, communal violence and riots and overall making life a living hell. In short, religions are nothing short of ideologies, and for me, it's little hard to see any kind of redemptive power in religious organizations and institutions given their problematic histories.

End of the Year Rant

I have been thinking about the place of "biography" and "personal history" and the role they play in writing a lot these days. I still believe that texts writers/artists end up producing do have lives of their own, they are autonomous entities in themselves. But at the same time, I think, our personal limitations (which, to me, are never merely personal), the limitations of our social location do show up in the texts we produce. I am realizing this more and more as I am getting to know more and more writers, and reading their works. Some people I have met before I have read their works. Some I have read before meeting them. In both cases, their writings were trying to grapple with exactly the same kind of crises they were trying to grapple with in life. I have also come to realize, if someone is trying to deal with one's life-issues in a less-than-honest kind of a way, that would show up in the writings they would produce. Even if the writers themselves are not very conscious of it. If someone is trying to deal with life primarily through denial and evasion, that will show up in the art too. In short, art provides an artist with very little respite in that way.

In my own case, the more I have gotten into writing, I am finding that it has become harder for me to pretend, perform in real life. I have to be honest in my opinions to others. I don't have any problems if someone doesn't agree with me or doesn't follow the suggestions I have for him/her. What I find difficult is to keep on going in relationships where there is no space for my honest opinions. Where, in order to keep the relationship going, I have to suppress them or lie to the people. In the last couple of years, I have let go of friends with whom sharing an honest space was becoming difficult. In some cases, I was realizing that our differences were so huge that any attempt on my part to be the real me would end up breaking the relationship anyway. I didn't want to spend my energy in fights and arguments, because with age I have become very very wary of the energy I expend in such things.

Although, I will be the first one to say that arguments and fights can be extremely productive too. They can expand a person, force him/her to rethink certain opinions and locations, and lead to discovery of things about one's own self and the world. In other words, I am not that much of a lovey-dovey hippie who doesn't acknowledge how fruitful conflicts and contradictions can be. But I have also come to realize that one can have engaging fights and arguments only when one shares a basic level of emotion and a political common ground with someone.

I know I am not exactly an easy person to be with. I can be "critical" of someone's work or decisions in life. ( I think, the trendy word is "judgemental.") I do tend to (over)emphasize a certain kind of ideological framework when judging my own or others' actions. And "ideology" is not exactly the word most people during these sad times of ours want to take into account. Although, these are deeply "ideological" times. In every fucking sense of the word. So, most of the times these days, I tend to spend with my writing and my books. Yes, I do have a few friends. And I value them over more than anything else in life. Yes, I write for them. At the end of the day, I hope my writing will have something to offer to the friends I love. It will lead them to see me a little bit more. Beyond that, if my writings touch anyone else, it's a gift that I will humbly accept. But I don't expect that gift from the world. And in the last resort, if my writing doesn't necessarily make me a better person, I have no use for it or any other forms of art in my every day life.

I don't write to please anyone. I don't write to impress anyone either. I write to know myself better. To discover and understand the world around me better. And the more I write, the more I believe that itself is a political act. Art is inherently political in that way. To deny that politics to art, is to be delusional.

Morning Coffee

Morning-coffee with PB is one of my favorite times of the day. This is the time when we talk about literature, writing, academic work, politics, activism, art, film,neo-liberalism--basically all the things over which we have no control over--before we go on to take care of the to-do lists of the day. For one thing, we are both coffee addicts. So, it feels very nice to be still in a position where we can still afford at least a cup of good home-brewed coffee every day. I like my coffee without milk, and two spoonful of sugar. M likes his coffee with a little milk and no sugar. This is also the time when I realize what good friendship means. It is not about big, grandiose words. It is not about maddening excitement. But it is about sharing what stimulates me most with the other. It is about learning to expand myself, while trying to be in the other's shoes. It is about slowly nudging the other into creativity. It is about encouraging and nurturing the critical-creative in the other.

Anxiety

I am trying to finalize some of the fellowship applications. A painstaking process, no doubt. But hopefully, after Dec. 1, I will have some respite. The next deadline is not until December 31st. Hang in there, I keep telling myself. But I am anxious because I haven't had a chance to write much. I have scribbled a poem for Rachel's class, I have been writing the essays for the applications. But that's all. I am beginning to realize how dependent I have become on writing not just for expressing myself or reacting, but it's the only kind of therapy that works for me. Cooking helps too, but only in very limited ways. I am anxious to go back to writing poems and stories.

Revelation Friday

I have been busy writing grants and fellowship applications for a while now. I don't do a very good job of advertising my project or myself. So this is stressful. Also, I have lots of other bureaucratic things to take care of. I am not good in dealing with these either. Besides, there is also the anxiety. What if...what if nothing comes my way next year...how will I survive...how will I finish my dissertation...all in all these are not the happiest times for me. But I am trying to focus and take one thing at a time. It does feel good to be able to take care of my things from the to-do list. And I have been. But what is missing is that nice feeling of getting done.It's not that I am slacking off. It's just that I have a horribly LONG to-do list to take care of.

Cranky, YES!

Not even my best friend will be able to claim that patience is one my strengths. I tend to get particularly impatient when I can see the end, but will still need to slog some more to reach that end in the way I would like to. So, dear readers, I don't have anything smart or thought-provoking stuff to share with you. I am tired and cranky and the things aren't moving as quickly as I would like them to. Instead, a poem by one of my favorite poets of the moment. Federico Garcia Lorca.

Farewell

If I die,

leave the balcony open.

The little boy is eating oranges.

(From my balcony I can see him.)

The reaper is harvesting the wheat.

(From my balcony I can hear him.)

If I die,

leave the balcony open!