Mountain Goats.

sometimes i get worried that the older i get, and the more time i spend in india, the fewer eye-opening, heart-changing moments i have. actually, i would say that that IS the case.... but it's good to be reminded i can still have them. driving is usually what does it to me. call it voyeuristic, (and it is), but when you drive through india--through the villages whose names you're never going to know, past the road-workers whose lives look (to me) like hell, through all the mountains you won't ever walk over, you face yourself in a different way, suddenly. on the street, you're exposed; you're looking at the world and it's looking at you and you barely have enough person-power just to deal with chaos and confusion and hypocrisy that is (my) everyday life in india. but on a long bus ride, you pull your feet up and you cover yourself in a shawl and you put your chin on your knees and you're in india, but you don't have to face india, really, so you face yourself.

(this is arguably the most orientalist, use-distant-lands-as-a-backdrop-for-discovering-the-self thing that i've ever written. but i'm all spaced out on MSG, so go with me for a minute).

yesterday, on day three of a five day bus ride from zanskar (ladakh) to dharamsala, i was listening to the mountain goats (perhaps my favorite band) on my ipod, when my co-instructor amrit tapped my shoulder and pointed out the window. "Wild mountain goats," he said. i was listening to a song called "dance music," which is about a little kid who listens to his record player to escape the sounds of his step father abusing his mother. i was thinking about my parents (who are not at all abusive), and about their childhoods (which i'll only ever imagine, and not actually understand), and about mortality, and about all the people i'm going to lose in my life, and about all the people i've lost already. and then Amrit was pointing out the windows at the wild mountain goats (which it turned out were actually wild ibex, when we got closer to them), and the mountains around me were the biggest in the world, and i suddenly saw them, and i felt, simultaneously, how connected to them i am and how very not-connected to them i am. and i felt how much india is a part of me and how it has formed me and how much i rely on it as a formative feature in my life, and how much i'm never going to understand it. and i thought about my parents, and how formative they are, too, and how much about them i do understand, and also the parts i don't. the sound track didn't match the view outside at all, and i was somewhat carsick and somewhat cold and somewhat tired of everyone around me, but i felt an aching rush of sadness/happiness--that feeling we call nostalgia--but for which i'm still looking for a more perfect word.

and now here i am in manali, where i plan to go shopping for t-shirts and kitschy stuff that i will eventually wonder why i bought. but i'm going to buy it anyway.

love to all,
emma
p.s. don't worry--i haven't changed my name to shanti yet, and still have no plans to.