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Tremendous Rain

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Indira Ganesan, Tremendous Rain, 2013

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.

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Marmelade Skies

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Indira Ganesan, Back to Boulder, 2013

Boulder is in a bubble, they say. An air-filtered, non-smoking (hurrah!) mostly, vegetarian-conscious, compost-enlightened, spiritually aware and awfully expensive place to live. It has demanding yoga, serious runners, and a farmer’s market that is a good size. I go on and on about this place because I adore it, even if I have had both low and good points there. It is where I am deeply connected because of people in so many walks of life.

Boulder Bookstore

Boulder Bookstore (Photo credit: Jesse Varner)

I read at the Boulder Bookstore to a warm, gracious audience mostly made up of friends. I spoke a    little about myself, feeling oddly tyrannical while standing up holding a microphone. It struck me suddenly that this is a very unnatural thing to do. I went on anyway, self-conscious and feeling slightly ridiculous, because I was speaking to my friends from my notes, my iPad in fact.

A friend generously housed me, others treated me to dinners, and all in all I felt deeply taken care of. I had a chance to visit my favorite cafe and attend a yoga practice to which the instructor kindly remarked, “you have not been practicing in a while, right?” advising an early savasana.

I ran into friends on the street, not having to explain that I’d been away two years. I met fellow writers,and felt embraced. I wrote a happy book in Boulder. How could I not?

An examination of war in domestic plane travel

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Indira Ganesan, New Hampire Dawn, 2013

Indira Ganesan, New Hampire Dawn, 2013

It began on a plane, but it might have begun at the security, when I was too slow to unshed for the inspection, and a guard scolded me roundly for selfishly holding up the line.  In my defense, I was waiting for the person ahead of me to finish, but I took three baskets from a nearly empty pile, and to be truthful, one basket too many to hold my coat, my shoes, my purse, my scarf, my sweater, my book/laptop bag, and the person behind me readied their basket to begin unloading before I had begun.  One should in Newark, have everything ready to go yesterday. One should remember, even if one had been up at four am, that people didn’t sleep at all and had flights to catch earlier than mine.  I had allowed an hour, and checked my big bag earlier, and was offended.

I boarded the plane, greeted the cheerful stewards with a big smile, and looked for my seat, 4D, window.  A man held up the line while rearranging the contents of a bin to fit in his roll-on.  A good feat of engineering, but also creating no allowance for my book bag.  This was my seat companion.  I sat down, tucked both of my bags under the seat, and unbuttoned my winter coat when the arm rest separating us was forcibly slammed down, with a “Thank you,” hitting me in my thigh, trapping my coat, my seatbelt and coat, and leaving me, once again, quickly offended.  I slipped the seatbelt over my coat on armrest side, under the coat window side, and proceeded to enjoy the view outside, while claiming half of the armrest deliberately.

“Can you move your coat?” asked my neighbor when we were taking off or having just taken off.

Here was the turning pont.  I could have quietly acquiesced, and readjusted.  Instead I replied curtly, saying, “You did not give me time to adjust.”

I proceeded to raise the armrest dramatically, unbuckling my seatbelt, removing my coat, rolling it up and –damn, my scarf had been in his seat as well– and placing them both under my seat, joining my two small bags.

“Take your time,” he said, possibly horrified a brown-skinned plane passenger displayed anger of her own.

I could have backed down at this point. I could have apologized.  I could have let him have his armrest.

It was a 43 minute flight.

The dawn appeared, spectacularly.  Other window seaters began to take photographs, and I did as well, enjoying an incredible expanse of dawn sky, orange sun, and below, islands making up New Hampshire.  I pulled out my notebook to write. Later, I pulled out my work, and became absorbed.

“Could you shut the window shade?” he asked.

I turned slowly to look at him, silently, both astonished and offended.

Without waiting, he reached over and violently slammed down the window shade.  I felt a true flicker of fear in my belly as he did.

I became very still and continued with my work.  But I am a fighter.  Three times offended and really, I should have gracefully admitted defeat in this game of human vs. human and withdrawn.  But I was at a window seat with a spectacular dawn occurring, on the last legs of a twelve day mostly business trip, and I would not be silenced.

“Can I just open it a crack, without the light shining on your eyes, please?” I asked.

“If it doesn’t hit my eyes.”

“Is this okay?” I asked, opening the shade three inches.

“Amazing,” he replied with generous sarcasm.

I looked out the window at a still-beautiful view.

Finally, trip over, and I waited until he was safely off the plane before I began to gather my things.

Expecting a common look of sympathy from the stewards, I found them smiling tightly, arms crossed.

This is when I realized that what I had indulged in was shameful.  My tug of war, which had no need for me to participate, involved innocent bystanders.  I had participated in a war that was meaningless, a waste of energy.  In the taxi to work, tears sprinkled as they must.  I remembered my yoga teacher who I hardly have the right to address as such, given my lack of practice,  remarking, after watching kids shrieking and tussling at a party, “It will end in tears.”  All such skirmishes must.

I tried tell the story twice verbally, and once on paper.  This is my fourth attempt.

The ending came much later when I cleared my purse last night.  My seat number was not 4D at all, but 3D.

I had literally sat in the wrong seat.

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