Category Archives: writing

Texas, Cambridge, & Home

Texas Wildflowers (Photo credit: TexasEagle)

Indira Ganesan, Cambridge Tulips, 2013

Indira Ganesan, Welcome Home, 2013

Returning from a near week of travel, I was happy to see the welcome committee of brave tulips at home;a scraggly bunch to be sure, but a welcome sight.

College Station, Texas has wildflowers in bloom, though I missed the best of the blue bonnets, I was told. It was a surprise, for I did not know what to expect in my first trip to Texas. I overheard a man ask another about his boots, and the conversation turned from admiration to a tale about cowhide. I passed up the opportunity to visit the George Bush Library, but I did see the terrific Women Call For Peace : Global Vistas exhibit in the gorgeous art gallery at Texas A & M University, a beautiful collection of vivid imagery by Siona Benjamin; Helen Zughaib; Aminah Robinson; Faith Ringgold, Judy Chicago, and others. As the gallery notes, ” world-wide military spending is above $1.2 trillion annually; while the peace-keeping budget at the United Nations in 2009 was only $7.9 million.”

I see blue people. (and artist siona Benjamin ) (Photo credit: doodlehed

Story Quilt Detail: Faith Ringgold (Photo credit: cobalt123)

The professors of the South Asia Group, English, and Women Studies departments took extraordinarily good care of me, and I found myself dining on dosa, idlis, and laddoos, a true feasting, especially as my idea of dinner is often a grilled cheese these days. A well-attended reading, a large-group version of telling matriarchal ancestor stories, and good South Indian coffee rounded out a delightful weekend.

Boston was bittersweet, not because only because so much happened a week ago, but also because I gave my last classes. It is always difficult to say goodbye to a group of people I have seen regularly twice a week for sixteen weeks; we have written together and talked about fiction, and got to know one another a little. This is a special class, for it was the first that I shared my publishing story as it unfolded in real-time with a new book (so far, a kind of once in a blue mon event for me) and one in which they, but not I, were in a city-wide lockdown.

The small things always go together with the large, and if it were not for grammar (the infinite space a semi-colon provides , the rueful continuity of an ellipses) I know not what we would do. Thus, in Cambridge, I discovered a new cafe which encouraged a spate of writing, lusted after some vegan bags at a store, watched some dance on campus programs. I got charged twice as much for a cab ride to the station, but the day was too nice to complain. My bus arrived on time, only to have the driver tell some of us that it was full, and we needed to wait for the next one. Always an adventure on the bus, but I can’t help wondering: was it because I decided to catch the “next” bus instead of revisiting the vegan shoe and bag store as I intended?

Home, I returned local library books , only to realize I have a few more to return in Boston. The rent is paid, grades and bills are due, and the summer soon awaits. I hear that this is a funny time for Saturn, so maybe that accounts for restlessness. Still, a good time to concentrate on writing. Isn’t it always?

Tremendous Rain

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Indira Ganesan, Tremendous Rain, 2013

Tremendous rain today here on the outermost part of the Cape, and a clearing, a washing, a cleansing of the past week. I have so many questions, wondering what caused two young men to catapult with such pressure to both inflict and receive pain on themselves. Of course we are responsible; if we are not responsible, if we do not accept responsibility, then we fail as a humanist society. There is tremendous, incomprehensible loss, the stolen Friday, the fear and confusion, and the resultant relief when the siege was over.

There is a need to tell the story,the where were you when, because telling a story provides relief for the storyteller and sometimes for the listener, and because it builds bridges between people when we desperately need bridges, to fight loneliness, fear,suffering of soul and heart. My story is simple, removed from the heart of the events, because I was not there, in Boston, when it began. I was on a bus, heading towards Portland, Maine. Monday, I arrived on the 6:30 bus from Provincetown to catch the 1:15 to Portland. I thought maybe I could see the runners, because I would be so close. I took the subway to Park, where I found breakfast at the Clover truck, a place I was curious about. I remember asking the couple in line for a recommendation, chose granola and yogurt though I really just wanted a muffin and coffee, but thinking why not honor their suggestion. The minutia of our lives. I took my food to a table vacated by a smiling mother with her children, but finding it cold in the shade, I moved to a sunnier spot. Finishing, I thought I will walk to Boylston, but I was carrying my suitcase, and the thought of the crush of spectators, but the knowledge that the seats on the sidelines would be filled, made me go into my favorite cafe, and later, head back to South Station for my bus north.

I had read on Sunday at the wonderful Titcomb’s Bookshop in Sandwich, a shop owned and run by several generations of the same family. It is a shop I will return to; I was invited by coincidence because I was looking for a book for my niece and found it there online. Welcomed with enthusiasm and grace, and gave a reading to a group of women who could not have been more generous. We shared stories, and I left with a package of cookies and brownies I took with me to Portland.

An old Work Center friend met me in Portland, and settled me into the old hotel where I would stay, before going off to teach. I thought I would make a mini-vacation in Portland, so booked myself another day, before I would take the early bus back to Boston and Emerson College. I thought I would explore this city, maybe get a therapeutic massage, and write in the hotel. After unpacking, I thought I’d stroll in the neighborhood a bit before the reading I’d give at the University of Southern Maine, but as I crossed the lobby, my phone rang with the first of many updates from my college about the marathon.

I spoke to the concierge at the hotel, I overheard conversations on the street, I found a cafe, found news online, talked some more on the way to the reading. It was baffling, unbelievable, surreal. It was my city, my part-time city, my two days a week plus more city. It was my neighborhood, it was Boylston Street where my brother used to live in a funky apartment building I’d loved, where I imagined, after he’d long moved, that I could live one day, if I were to live in Boston. But my claim to the city was small, fractional.

My reading went very well, and the students were interested, asked great questions about how one manages to keep on writing when the writing becomes difficult, and it was all over too quickly.

The next day, I went back to the cafe, and had a chance to speak to two women who were both affected by the news, and we did what people must do: speak, listen, hug. This is what we must continue to do.

In another post, I will list the pleasures of Portland. In another, the pleasures of Boston. When I returned on Wednesday, the star magnolia trees were already in bloom. My classes, my lovely students, shaken. We went through our day’s work, and I listened to their young voices, reading and talking about their work, with such maturity, such confidence. These are who will tell our stories, who will shape our future.

I returned late to my home, and the surreal calm of the Cape, its beauty, was accented, as I realized that the further you are from a fulcrum of trauma, the more unreal the trauma becomes. Friday, I got up early, readying to go to work. A neighbor called to that Boston was shut down. My city? Couldn’t be. I would be late for my bus, but I listened, thinking, Emerson would call. Emerson did call, a little later. I stayed home, fed apples to the neighboring horses, walked distractedly through town for some errands, and checked in with the news all day.

This morning I awoke to rain, and the news, which was more or less certain last night, that the nineteen year old had been caught. I offer no balm but this: speak, listen, hug.

On lockdown in Boston (utsandiego.com)

Then, Arugula

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I rode the bus to Denver and passed the stadium where Rockies fans were roaring, long after the cows and calves and mountains on route. My friend Cynthia met me and showed me around her town before my reading at Tattered Cover. We visited the site of the Before I Die I Want To______project by Candy Chang, in which we wrote out in chalk, alongside dozens of others, our wishes. Then we took in the art museum, the Public Library, all exteriors as I marveled at the architecture of this city. Udi’s Cafe where pizza with arugula and juices was delicious provided a satisfying meal before the reading at Tattered Cover. I am still dazzled by events coordinator Pat’s warm welcome, and the deliciousness of Tattered Cover itself, a bookstore for readers and writers. A look at the Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit at the Denver Museum of Art as well as its wonderful El Anatsui exhibit. A city offers riches too much to take in a day, which I suppose is why cities thrive.