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Book 7, revealed.

July 22nd, 2007 Posted by admin | General | 2 comments

Moratorium

As I write this, it’s Friday evening, only hours before July 21st. Now I know you folks over in the Western hemisphere have a slightly longer wait, by about 12 hours or so. But still: less than 24 hours before the release of the Book.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The final book. The last installment in the saga of a young wizard and his nemesis. The one in which major characters will meet their end. The one in which Lord Voldemort, at the most critical juncture of the plot, cries out:

“Luke! I am your FATHERRRRRR….”

Hang on, wrong notes. Ah, there we go…

At any rate, the Book’s release is a moot point here in the hills of Himachal Pradesh. I am no more likely to find a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in Rewalsar than I am to find a Cartier wristwatch in my next packet of Hide and Seek biscuits. But that’s okay. I am content to wait for Joy to bring her copy back from the States, when Lama Wangdor Rimpoche’s teaching tour ends. That’s still a matter of weeks. In the meantime, somehow I have to protect my poor mind from the unwitting revelations of those Harry Potter fans who will have finished the book by about 7:23 AM, and can’t wait to share their reactions.

As a child I was a voracious reader–mostly science fiction novels, murder mysteries, and the occasional graphic novel. (Phoebe Zeitgeist, anyone?) Like many people I went through an Agatha Christie phase. However, I went through mine while still in elementary school. Hercule Poirot and his little grey cells completely captivated me. One day a teacher asked my opinion of Murder on the Orient Express.

“Oh, I loved it,” I chirped. “You’d never guess that ************* did it!”

If looks could kill, I would not be around to write this now. After glaring at me hard enough to burn holes in sheet metal, the teacher mastered her dismay, and gently lectured me about giving away the ending of a book to someone who hadn’t read it yet. The lesson has stuck with me to this day.

With each Harry Potter book the secrecy stakes have gotten higher. Each time it’s gotten harder for me to keep myself blissfully ignorant until the next Book reaches my hands. This time around a copy of the Book is allegedly wandering the byways of the Internets, engendering much discussion as to whether it’s the real deal or not.

Here in the far reaches of India, I read a lot of blogs to keep my sanity. Geek blogs. Food blogs. Knitting blog. Blogs about writing. Blogs about medicine. Blogs about, oh, any damn thing at all. But just today I was puttering along in someone’s nursing blog, and hit an entry where she gave away a major plot point of Book 5. Mind you, I’ve read Book 5, but that’s not the point. The spoiler was there, with no warning, and entered my frontal lobe faster than you could say “Crucio!”

So I have no choice but to declare a moratorium on my blog-reading, until I’ve read the Book for myself. A spoiler could pop up anywhere, at any time. Y’all may not be putting yourselves under the same restriction. In the interest of promoting some of these folks, I’m listing a few of my favorite blogs below for you to enjoy on my behalf. There’s a lot of thought-provoking and funny writing out there.

Joy’s blog

Penny Arcade

User Friendly

News of the Weird Daily Edition

The Yarn Harlot

The Rabbitch

The Beadlizard

The Panopticon

The Lawdog

Violent Acres

The Cranky Professor

The Certifiable Princess

Tigers and Strawberries

Crass Pollination

Day by Day

Barista Brat

Rickety Contrivances of Doing Good

The Evil Editor

The Dilbert Blog

July 20th, 2007 Posted by admin | General, India | no comments

And then there was one. (redux)

Sometime during the early hours of this morning. Dusty died. He was one of two boy kitties Chime gave birth to only about three weeks ago. It was one of those respiratory ailments that is so lethal to young kittens. He showed almost no symptoms except for a growing lethargy and the occasional gooked-up eye. But late last night, it was obvious he was having problems breathing, and no matter what I did, he couldn’t keep warm. I wrapped him up in a fleece blanket as best I could, and then went to turn out the house lights for the night. I stopped to marvel at the odd points of green glowing light that were decorating the floor of the veranda, before I realized what they were.

Fireflies.

Dying.

A chill ran down my spine. Sometimes the Powers That Be can’t resist making reality as obvious as possible. It’s as if they want to make sure you don’t waste any time with denial, plea-bargaining, arguing, or any of those other emotional stages. Just cut right to the heart of the matter, and keep on keepin’ on.

And the heart of the matter is really this: it’s hard being a baby creature of any kind in India. There are just so many things that can kill younglings before they’ve ever had a chance to experience life at all. I’ve posted elsewhere about how humans and animals alike tend to procreate as much as possible, and then wait to see how many offspring actually survive. This is Chime’s second litter since March, and with me, Joy and Lena housing and feeding her, she’s still only managed a 40% survival rate. It’s one of the frustrations of being raised in the First World, and then living in the Third: so many resources we take for granted in the West are non-existent here. As I often do, I turned to the laptop, and Googled for pet advice, but all of it counseled the same things: “Take your pet to the vet immediately,” or more often, “Just go down to Petco and pick a bottle of these tablets.” Neither of these things was an option for a rural Indian kitty, dying in the middle of the night.

As I wrapped Dusty’s body in a katak this morning, I couldn’t help remembering the loss of our cat Velcro, about a couple years ago. We had no idea anything was wrong until she fell over in the bathroom, and couldn’t get up again. At the time we were living in the Bay Area, deep in the heart of civilization. In that region there’s any number of 24-hour animal hospitals, tricked out with all the latest medical gadgets, and staffed by vets who stand by to minister to an ailing pet no matter what time it is. It was only a matter of minutes for us to find an emergency room to which we could transport Velcro. After tenderly packing her up in a box, there was perhaps a 15 minute drive, and then she was receiving care comparable to what a human would receive. Examinations. Lab tests. An IV drip to stave off dehydration.

At the time, mind you, this turned out to be small consolation. Vet after vet came out to talk to us, saying in a gentle voice, “That’s a really sick kitty you have there.” Velcro’s illness turned out to be a cancer so advanced, there was no hope of treating her in a way that would maintain her quality of life. After a tearful couple of days, we opted to have Velcro put to sleep at home, with all of us holding her and singing manis as she died.

In India, when a cat is this ill, the only thing you can do is sing manis.

Which may be the lesson for today. Two cats, two very different cat lives, same ending. Life and death may be ugly, unacceptable, and hard, but there’s always that chance for salvation from the Great Wheel…

Editrix’ note: It’s two days later, and Sandy is dead also, from the same thing. I’m noting it here rather than in a separate blog post, because there’s only so many unfortunate animal stories I can bear to write. The respiratory problem set in so fast, there was really nothing to be done. I hate this. It’s the kind of thing that makes me want to say to the Powers That Be, “Ya know, this ain’t right.” But this is the lot of many animals here.

July 15th, 2007 Posted by admin | India, Tibetan Buddhism | 4 comments

A Celebration of Independence

Admittedly, it feels a little odd posting about Independence Day, bt I thought I’d give it a try. When I was in the States, July 4th was the holiday I felt most ambivalent about celebrating. After all, I am descended from folks whose first experiences of the New World were of the involuntary kind. On the other hand, there’s nothing like a day basically spent eating, drinking, and then playing with fireworks.

After a year in India, I realized that when I put my mind to the idea of independence, some entirely new perspectives on the subject came to the surface. I realized what I really wanted to celebrate was freedom from “dependencies” I’d always assumed were just part of the American way.

Freedom from advertising. Think about the advertising you’re exposed to over the course of a day: billboards, bus stands, magazines, newspapers, radio, television, and so on. I didn’t realize how much of it I’d been exposed to, until I started living in a place with much, much, less. Oh, there’s advertising signs plastered on the front of general needs stores, or the sides of sheds, but it’s not even close to the experience of driving along, say, 101 for about 30 minutes.

Freedom from “i”-anything. No ipods, No iphones, no i-nothin’. Yes, white earphones are trendy now, in Delhi and Mumbai, but out here the cult of the Tiny Tune Carrier is mercifully absent. Instead, many cell phones include radios and MP3 players.

Freedom from Franchise living. No Denny’s. No Target. The closest Mcdonalds’ is 12 hours away. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that there are times I’ve pulled into a Denny’s for a meal, precisely because no matter which Denny’s I went to, I was guaranteed to get the same thing every time, whether I ordered it in Portland, Oregon, or Roswell, New Mexico. Here, a bus ride can expose me to several different Indian cuisines, including the fiery Punjabi fare.

Freedom from “the office”. I have a home office again, in my bedroom as is my wont. Ironically, because of the pace of rural life, I tend to get up much earlier and start work earlier than I ever did in the Bay Area. Some days I’m up and working by 6 AM, and happy to do so.

Freedom from religious assumptions. If you want to change your religious world view, travel to a place where Christianity is not the dominant religion. In Rewalsar the kora path passes by three Buddhist monasteries, several Hindu temples, and a big Sikh gurudwara. In the morning as I go on kora, I meet neighbors going off to temple, and nod to the Sikh meditator who sits by the lake in the early morning. One time in Delhi, I wandered into the Muslim quarter of “Old Delhi”. As elsewhere, I found myself being stared
at by passersby. I was a bit surprised to realize that many people were staring not just because I was a Western tourist wandering in the hood, but because they could see my face.

Freedom from….er…meat. No, really. I’ve not become vegetarian; I still tuck into the occasional dish of thukpa or momos. Except for sushi, I don’t actually miss it that much. I think back to the number of times a week I had steak, burgers, chicken, or fish back in America, and the amount seems kinda startling now. I’ve just grown accustomed to eating a lot of vegetarian dishes.

Freedom from wanting a lot of material goods. This is way different from needing material goods–I still lust for a dishwasher, and a microwave from time to time. I’m talking about more of the “retail therapy” form of wanting. It’s the difference between needing a new pair of pants, and buying five pairs because the store happened to have a sale that day. Many days I try to think of stuff I would buy tomorrow if money were no object. It’s actually a pretty short list, mostly computer stuff, chocolate, and hair
product for my dreads. Of course, in this “material goods” equation, yarn doesn’t count…

So those are the freedoms that are on my mind today. What kinds are y’all celebrating?

July 4th, 2007 Posted by admin | General, India | 2 comments