Fresh Feeling

September 24, 2012. The capacity for not feeling lonely can carry a very real price, that of feeling nothing at all. – Doug Coupland

I left for Tanzania this day last year. We slept in a long hotel room, sheets clean and duvet molded to my anxious body. A rerun of a reality TV show ran in the armoire, and I remember a light sleep, a tender hug in the white bed.

I lie in an ivory bed again, electronic music from a sleek computer, an economics textbook with bold markings and graphs and relatable jokes interspersed to keep me from wavering. My roommate Skypes or studies outside on the unscratched window seat, glossy wood reflecting dark circles. On my walls, I tack paintings from a local artist, the wood crooked and the paint sloppy, a Thai prayer with Chinese script floating vertically under a thin Buddha, waxed paintings of a Maasai warrior in lavender twilight, a lashed and slender and rouged women draped in French jewels.

I leave the lights overhead dark, and instead surround myself in yellow glow, in non-fluorescents peeking from pale shades.

Thousands of friends, of acquaintances brushed against in a Latin class, of that boy from summer camp, fill my screen, spreading ideas and opinions and political affiliations and life changes. Words and photos and stories topping another, competing, and overflowing, ceaseless.

I sit in a grey blanket, the warmth draped across bare shoulders, across sunburnt shoulders.

I am alone, still. Music shifts through playlists, though minor violins and through aching piano chords, and I hear words seeping under the door, of people friendlier than me, more pockmarked and smarter too, and I search for loneliness, for quotes or blogs or other nineteen year old girls with melancholy dispositions and soft white skin.

My mom read an article before I moved into my new dorm of regrets, of things to do in four years of brick buildings and white columns and blonde boys, of thumping bass shocking a dirty living room floor, of red cups strewn, of nights alone.

I start anew, the cracked and damaged wall repainted, no longer stained with Indian curry and hung with red felt prep school banners.

I yearn to make this school mine, to make the paths and churches and domes dear, to paint my story in the walls and crevices of this school.

Ends, snip snip, a broken hair falls

February 25th, 2012. Four channels of smiling Indians, singing love and longing and dancing joy and lust. One of static. A loop of Sherlock Holmes on the sixth and I leave my world for two hours, my offshore offwhite walls and vacant seats and cold stewardesses who wear tiny red bindis and tightly felled buns. A man waits for the bathroom, silver textured prayerbook in right hand, cotton white prayer beads in the other. His suit is tacky, his horse bit bracelet too, but I am offensive with my legs curled under, my feet bare. 
I watch the place creep over water and soon over land on my screen, on the others beside me, and I wish I was not here. My fingers cramp, stiff, poor circulation, I tell myself, the air vents recycling breaths from the Freckled French boy behind me, his awkward sister, with her gaudy pink shirt and the twenty-something Indian boy across the aisle who pretends to look ot my half shuttered window at the murky blue, when actually stares at my frizzy hair, illuminated from the cold light.
I wish for the barred light at Mother Teresa's, streaming in panels and angular shape that cut the washroom in intersecting lines. The dappled warm light that angled across limbs into the side room where I squeezed packets of green fruity shampoo into a tumbling bottle, the thick liquid dripping like moss into the funnel. Light that found unseeing eyes, found shivers and poses and insecurities, found Ama's uneven nostrils every morning, as I perched on her checkered bed. Found Maya Gudi and her unworded hug, her gangly arms wrapped around my soft hips. Light illuminated Anu's smile, coaxed by a rub on a pudgy into sparks of missing teeth and beauty interspaced. Pushpa and Priya as they exercise their tired English phrases to my worn Hindi, their naked bodies hunched into rolls, the stools soaking as they wash each other. 
The light of cold mornings where I hold Fatima's hand as she shakes with Parkinson's, Mary, wrinkled and arm twisted. The brown and golden light on Rosie's face as she scratches her lice-covered and flat hair, the slight namaste as her fingers form a temple, a church steeple, a holy dome. Ranjeet Kaur's stoic faces she hold out bruised and sore fingers, brown and purple and pink, for my awaiting needle every morning.
The slight obtuse light filtered by smooth walls and smells of curry as Shanti and Belmadina shear and sort fresh cabbage and carrots into metal buckets. As they hold slim arms to my blood pressure machine, the silver mercury rising as I beat my hands in pumps, and pumps and pumps. 
The strong and sometimes severe sun light over the meadow as Anita and I sit on the edges of cries, picking grass, her silence profound, I think, my contant chatter indicative. I don't understand, she will say, and I say, ok. 
The cloudy light as Kamla prods me with a stick, her green shawl askew on her confused hair. Pushing me toward the top of a dusty tree, unripe oranges hanging from yards above. I can't reach, I say, and she moans, and I say, No Kamla, nein, no oranges today. You're not even supposed to be having them anyway, come on, aja, chello, aja Kamla. And she moans again, and I pull her stiff wrist towards the meadow, and I take the barbed thin stick from her hands, gently, and throw it on the ground among crumpled leaves. She moans, pulls bak, and her green shawl falls on the ribboned concrete, and so I don't press her. I sit next to Sima, an overweight unstable woman who excuses her lack of diet and exercise on fatigue, a head cold, I am tired, no sleep, my eyes are falling out, they hurt, my arm is swollen, my feet too. I watch Kamla with my hand shading from the heat, and she drops the stick, inching towards the middle ofthe field where she stands motionless, ragged men working in the walled field feet from us, Priya and Alyssa pulling weeds and overturning cracked yellow soil with little shovels. 
I return to the tree, my fingers avoiding thorns, and knock down an orange. I peel the yellow fruit for Kamla, bolo donyvad Kamla, say thank you. Donyvad, she says, weakly, chipped mouth hinting at a smile. 
We walk back to the center, my hand resting loosely in Suzanne's, her eyes blank, voice soft, my other in Nico's, and I sing snippets of familiar pop songs that they do not understand. 
Kamla drops her orange twice, the road soaking in dirt and grass, and she washes the adhesive fruit in a weak spout protruding from a bed of wild flowers, warm and rosy and yellow blossoms for prayer and patience and patients. She delivers the orange, few pieces eaten, to Ama's bed, and I feed the rare fruit to her. She spits the seeds from her bed onto the floor, and we both chuckle. 
Donyvad, Kamla, I say. 
Pictures they draw, Sunita blue puffy flowers, Sebrina a cross, I love you, Jaya her name, bold and purple and dominant and she looks guilty and sneaky, and I laugh as I take the crushed and ruined crayon from her small hands. I collect them under the end table, covered in a cloth to hide my jacket and IPod and scratched keys, for use next week. The bulging mirror next to an out of date calendar, the picture of a beautiful and effeminate Jesus basking in the creamy light of the small room.
My light in the place is red and green and blue, the horizon line seeping onto screen, my plane having flown a little further. Clouds peak and sag, spirits and stratus and seeming the same as the place I came. 
I support Ama as she shuffles to the bathroom, and I am not fazed, the splattered urine on my once-white torn shoes. She hunches as we walk back to her bed, and I tuck her into the flimsy blanket, as always. Every day for the past three months. I call Sebrina, can you translate? Ama, today is my last day. I won't be coming back here. Sebrina overflows my words, repeating adding, subtracting, I'm not sure how much and Ama starts too. We cross our words, running sentences, she she starts crying, her voice cracks and she says, hold my hand, please, please do not forget me. I wish you a long and happy life and a good man and many children, why are you leaving? We will meet again, either when I am I alive, or when I am dead. And I start crying too, I promised I wouldn't, I will never forget you, I promise. Don't forget me, she says. My hand rests on the top of her blanket, abler her bones that I can feel shift beneath. 
Sebrina says, she wants you to hold her hand, so she can bless you. And I peel the cloth back, hold her hands in mine, mine patterned with intricate designs of orange tapestries, done for a good price, good price, by a seventeen year old in Green Park. I love you, I say, and she says it back, or imitates it back, Iwuvyew, and I cover my wet mouth with my hand. I stand up, bye bye, I wave, my henna wet and glowing as I wave to all the patients sitting upon their pink and ornage and yellow beds preparing for an afternoon nap. 
The light dims in the cabin, and I turn my harsh screen off. I wish I relived my days, my last one too sad, but wish I had another, wish I wasn't going to another country to start again, again. 
Someone behind me sprays a noxious fruity perfume. Who are you meeting? I hope you have a wonderful time. 
Orange and white lights shine in rows through the darkness to me, miles above. I see traffic stopped, cars moving, halted. I will not forget. You are preserved in my heart, in my words. 

Maybe words are holy

February 17, 2012. Sanitized dew forms puddles on palms, and I rub my hands together, to show her. Devi runs hers together questionably, circles of whiskered lines, and I take her fingers in mine. The boil on the bottom left corner of her mouth juts out as she objects, takes her hand away, and I do not comfort, only pull her trembling arm back, my gloved hand impersonal and moist. 
I hold her fingertip, wipe the tip dry, and punch the needle into the calloused skin. She cries, and the bright room locks her sounds so all turn, and I squeeze the tip harder, the drop of blood forming, swelling, reflecting windows and eyes widening and tearing, and I catch the moment, the blood, in my dark blue reader, and I unhook my hand, watch hers fall, waiting for the hourglass to stop spinning, waiting for her hatred to drain. 
She squeezes the blood farther, red crossing down her hand as it reaches sanitized pools and drips quicker, and Sister Maria shakes her shoulders, shames her, orders Devi to the cracked sink where Lady Macbeth wipes clean. 
I write the number in silver metallic, the date, the time, her 327. I raise my hand above my head. High, I say, and she is embarrassed, turns her head and looks at the tiled floor, her boil lowering, and I say, no more sugar. Sister translates. I say, ok, acha, done, and still she standwatt racing my gloved hands through the air. 
She watches, they all watch, as I prepare the next. Urge the tiny needle into a hole on the tip. Extract the needle. Place into a glove, to be discarded among spoiled cabbage and cookie wrappers tomorrow evening, the cows witness and the peacocks too but none other. Replace the reader. Spray Ranjeet Kaur. Repeat again. 
The courtyard reflects the halfhearted sun, catches warm breeze, reverberates screams too. Alyssa holds her torso and she thrashes, an animal past tipping. Terri binds her arm, I duck teeth and bites and kicks and cut, cut, the sound my goal. My nail clippers flashing, pieces of dirty fingernails falling or flying, up my sleeve, in her hair, but I am fastest, and so I click again, once more, my promise, one more. Rohima, her two yellow teeth pincers in an open mouth, bends her neck, about to sink into my tense arm, and I rip away.
She bites herself instead.
The toes are easier, knees bend at odd angles, and she screams, AMA, AMA, mother, mother, and I think of mothers, only briefly, a fleeting second of flashing comfort and anger, before I spin from her thrash at my stomach. 
I finish, and we stand, the yells unnoticed as I shakily pour fingernail clipping caught in dimpled newspaper into a rusty square garbage bin, the semicircles falling into a banana peel, an unripe orange, a crumbled cracker. 
I lift Tuja Ama from the tangerine metal bench, my hands cupped under her armpits, around her shoulders, her stomach, where she won't fall, but I feel her collapsing as we get closer. I call for help, I cannot support, but no one comes, and so I boost myself, haul her frail body to the wheelchair. I lift her up again, grasping at the thin grey pattern of her dress, bring it up farther, farther. I push the bedpan with the toe of my ruined shoe under the wheelchair, and back away, three feet, my yard of respectful distance. She pees into the metal through the hole in the chair, some streams missing, and gliding instead around the tiled floor, snaking in pale yellow towards me, spraying my ankles, and I make note for next time.
I haul her body up again, slide the dress down, her knees covered again, and I measure my steps to hers. 
My work is ugly, my shoes soiled and stained and my fears evaporated. I learn to cut hair, lice tripping down the purple sheet I drape over swollen necks and back, and bald spots less numerous. I bathe, and I comfort, I see naked woman, stomachs caving in folds ands hands crippled, breasts downturned and skin soapy and dripping, and I do not feel disgust. 
My last week is ahead, my goodbyes stuck in my throat, and I pour late hours into vapid reading and chatter, bowls of fruit and trips to markets and cafes and tense streets where bombing threats hang dangled.
I promise to teach blood pressure readings, promise to write emails and books and guides, promise to promises to promise to create fire, Prometheus my vision. I promise to change, promise to not ask for change, promise to Ama to return tomorrow, promise her even though she cannot understand, promise my love, and she cannot understand, but somehow, my promises ring, my fire abounds.  

I'm sorry, I didn't revise

February 1st, 2012. I have never seen people more ugly, I think to myself. Most smell like soiled curry and all have rotting teeth, decaying amber pillars under bulging noses and crawling hair. I track years through stiff calluses and I shiver when I receive a hug. They hold my hand and I sweetly recoil. I watch as Kamla grabs dripping lentils in dirty fingers previously clawing out lice from her ear and dribbles the yellow brown into her hollow mouth. Rice cascades and splatters, the ripples of food extending down her stained sweater.
Jyoti screams and rubs her head back and forth across a leather pillow, and she laughs and cries out, and I am frightened and disgusted. She has a bucket under the barred bench to collect her excrement, and I cannot bear to rub her back, cannot bear to face her mother who tries to pour water into the tossing mouth, cannot hold her hand. 
I run from the washroom, ashamed that I cannot wash Najma, I do not want to wipe her raw skin, damp from the night before. 
I do not want to touch the untouchables. 
I remember my first days, weeks, at Mother Teresa's. I wished for sickness, for a broken limb, for relief from the horrid. 
I wished for beauty, in a country where I could see only the smog, the men whose hair crawls up their cheeks and whose eyes crawl over me also. For white lines and straight roads and some beautiful elderly I could tend to in plush beds and beeping monitors and clean white hair. 
And maybe still, I wish.
But to paint beauty in facial features, of lotioned limbs and verdant landscapes, is easy. 
To paint the beauty of a family, of friendship, of love in a screaming and silent center, is harder. 
Kamla pries the blanket from Ama, who shivers in the sliver of the morning, and I rise to stop her. Kamla cries, her vacant eyes not seeing me, and she sobs. She runs and comes back, and I guard the bed, and she pushes me, slaps me, elbows my stomach. Others stop her, and hit her face and I wish for words. She again returns from the washroom, her bare feet tracking in grey water, bedpan in hand, and I move, and I wish I knew the words for 'I am sorry, I did not understand.'
Mary, mouth sealed by folding skin, eyes almost closed as well, leads Fatima, who shakes with Parkinson's, into the courtyard. They sit unspeaking, unknowing of each others name, their hands with wrinkles bound in veins and tendons resting near. 
A woman comes, beautiful, and holds a box of orange sweets, precious in this world. I take one for Ama, and though she wishes for the foreign compound, she says, Kamla, Kamla. I call Kamla over, and give her the candy. To Ama she gives her own.
Can I pretend to give justice to this beauty?
I stare at my face in the crooked mirror, outlined in baby blue and bulging in the right corner.  
Beauty is fascinating, captivating, inspires ships and poems and music and wars, and I try to remember why I thought beauty is in the millimeters of difference in nostril size, in the angle of the eyebrow, in the size of an upper lip. 

In Thai squiggles and dots

February 26th, 2012. My henna fades, orange lines blurring into form and shape, detail disappearing into pores. I sit on the second floor porch outside our room, Nalgene chipped and dirty and full with bitter water. I am the only in my group. Jack, short for something unpronounceable, found me as I strode towards gate three, the meeting point, arms of lead and suitcases, tourist tshirt my name. 
I gushed about the buildings glimmering tall and angular through the night, the traffic, worse in India but I didn't say that because he complained, the heat and the taxi driver talked in clipped oriental sounds of why the air-conditioning wasn't working, and I just wanted to get there, how much longer did you say?
The others have traveled before, swam in mountainous rivers with elephants, slid and watered at parks and toured temples, hoping. They decorate the s
Dcked whit drudges with drawing for the staff, a red pocohontas, a sunburnt Ariel. TO JIEW! LOVE SAM AND ABBY and I wonder where I will fit. We sit at the kitchen table downstairs, and I eat a plate of tart pineapple. They ask questions, care not for my replies, my reliefs. 
I wake hours before my twinkling alarm, find company of bits who peck the ruddy roof parallel. My ankle holds poison, the hit of a bump rising. I play plush Spanish music.
I am anywhere, I think, wiping the oblong beads of sweat that form on my nose tip.

Meditation can help, some say

February 21st, 2011. I unroll a freckled pink mat onto the dusty concrete, my footprint tracked in gold sand. The match in my hand flicks, shooting up a jet of smoke and I light the incense, perched on the back of a turtle. The turtle sits beside me, oriental designs curling like the twists of ashes and burning wood transformed. 4:52. My eyes close, flutter, my legs cross, hands in a loose ball, birds screech in voices I don't recognize, frequencies in keys changed. I hear their taloned toes tap on the pieces above, the blue plastic awnings, flaps from streetlamp to chipped railing to trunk dripping in vines. 
Breathe, in, out, in out in, these birds are obnoxious, I wonder if I screamed, would my zen be broken? The people three stories above, the ones with a soft white curtain pulled close, would they wonder at the white girl with bra-strap peeking under a loose sweatshirt, let me fix this, oh, right meditation, breathe in, out, in, out. 
My thoughts wander, my mind, unhinged at women carrying cloth under pale arches, the boy and the other and the girl now too, playing ball and catch and loudly whispering, I cannot see, I hear, in circles and squares. Is there a mind? I ask, my science urging me to disavow perceptions, neurons firing, muscle contracting in my left leg, and I twitch, breathe, breathe, breathe.
I gather the distracted child, every flag and tan line and spot under my eyelid cause for wander, for wonder. I gather, release slowly, without permission, and collect again. 
I click the button on my iPad. 4:59. Is it possible? Breathe, again, diaphragm contracting, releasing. In my statue form, I live my verbs. 

Without order, Mosquitos bite my wrist

January 23, 2012. Alex, Kelly, Kathleen and I drove to Jaipur this weekend, a Sikh man named Jassi explaining the yellow flowers abundant on the roadside and braking and steering between camels and hundreds of multicolored trucks. We passed under the waning sun, turned amber through smog and cut by bare trees and telephone lines crossing the grey sky. Our hotel room a brothel, the lights dim and bedcover red silk, and we slept curled in tight knots. The voices of white tourists crept in from the lobby, and a singing man outside our window waited for the cries of birds in the morning.
We ate toast smothered in butter and pink jelly and then drove through the tiny town of Amer, filled with goats and camels and dirt a shade darker than Delhi. We left the car at Amer Fort, bridging the gap between curling pink walls that stood against the stark mountains surrounding the village. Alex and I rode an elephant, named Lucky, to the top of the fort, and caught the reflection of shimmering lakes and blue mountains in our bare faces. 
The elephant driver, swaying on the neck, asked for a tip, please, please, tip, tip. And we didn't give money because a sign forbid us, but I felt guilty, still. Lucky idled away, her painted trunk swaying in splashes of pink and blue and green. 
We visited palaces and temples and tombs, red and pink paint chipping from shrines. I stood in a tower, looking across the mountains, down onto the city of Jaipur, the sky clear and blue, experiencing the world through my camera lens. 
Kathleen drove to the hospital late Saturday night, Jassi accompanying, we followed hours later. Skin sallow in the green tinted fluorescents, imperfections bumpier and freckles louder. The pigeon rested in the window sill, mesh filled with skins of insects, those trapped in squares of soiled wire. We watched a Kung-Fu movie on the small screen, and we tried to follow but the pinches and punches and kicks and characters all blended, the frames melding, and I don't remember past the eyebrows of one man. 
We left the city hours and minutes later, ancient dust disturbed by our presence, the ghosts of temples and tombs awakened by children perched on rooftops, strings of kites pulling from their tiny hands. Red, blue, black dancing cloths rise and dart from the porches of the poor and the rich and the in-betweens and the city and sky are awake. 
I am awake too.