Catharsis has become a semi-daily ritual.  I haven't updated in weeks, I know, since I've been busing, bouncing, and  buzzing around frantically since school started.  My decision to take -- as a humanities person -- two left brain (mostly for fun, which implies that my right brain is equally impacted) courses over my application writing semester was an unstable one.  
I just got back from a student leadership conference at which Sophia and I ran a workshop on lowering textbook costs.  It went well, regardless of everything it needed to stand regardless of. 

I can't write long, since I've got derivatives of hyperbolic functions and balancing chemical equations to worry about before sleep, but I miss those of you I've fallen out of contact with.  Hi.  

Just a few more weeks and the general election and college applications will be over.  There will be more time. 

It's getting late.  I've been busy enough these last few weeks to have me going to bed in time to wake up in the mornings, which I have as yet to conceptually accept.   Classes have started, and I'm in calculus, a chemistry class, swimming, and micro-economics.  To cover the news gambit, I am (not to broach an enormous subject) horrified by Palin: her platforms, her ignorance ( The next VP will need to know what the Bush Doctrine is.  I'd fathom a guess that Biden has for a while.) and her conception of America as fighting God's War.
I'm also having some trouble typing due to a lizard bite on my finger, and preparing to prepare for my poetry reading this Sunday (2:00 @ the downtown SC library), which I would love it if any of you were to attend attend.  
Textbooks and Americans have crept back onto the list of subjects I think about each day, but so far everything on the list is dwarfed by India.  I'm trying not to talk about it as much as I want to so as not to alienate my friends, but I miss it more than I'd ever imagined I could miss anything.  

I've decided to apply early decision to Swarthmore College.  I have, I tell myself, nearly no chance of being accepted, but if it were to happen I would be phenomenally happy, and would most likely remain so for the next four years.  

     I'm back in Santa Cruz, nursing a cup of tea in the Octagon. My cell phone made a desperate but successful bid for freedom a few days before I left for India, and by now is probably feet deep in the quicksandesque junk which accumulates in our house. This has made it nearly impossible to talk to friends, since they can't call me and all their #s were stored on my phone, and has added to my growing feeling of being a shadow, maybe someone else's doppleganger, here in CA. I've made efforts to visit places which hold special significance for me: the farmer's market, bookshop, the metro center, here, all at least partially in the hopes of seeing someone I know. But that's what I'm doing: trying to find people to remind me of why I came back. Since I realize that while alone I'll focus on memories, I'm trying to nudge the memories out of India.
     I'm painting myself as more estranged than I really am. I've spent a lot of time with Nicola, my sister, and a troupe of young neighbors since my return. All of my moments alone have been upon my own insistence, which I think I can grant myself. I've been phased by coming back and suddenly being a younger sister again, with my own bed and for the most part only myself to take care of.  I've also begun to type up my journal from India,  which won't do much to pull me back into the US.
    Oy vey.  Nostalgia and culture shock aside, walking around SC has been fantastic.  It's liberating--predictably I guess--to be able to talk to anyone on the street and not to be asked daily to pose as the centerpiece of a family photo.  I'm normal here, which, while not interesting in its own right, is way fun as a new feeling.

I'm going to America.
My itinerary is sitting on the cyber cafe desk beside me.
My bag is in my room, packed save for the last few gifts still to be added to the hoard.
Friday was my last day of work, and I leave tonight for my sister's wedding in Seattle.

This is a guilt post, since I haven't really communicated with America (aside from calling my mom) in a few weeks. When I first arrived I needed the contact with home, but now I feel capable here and find myself missing you all for your own and not safety's sake.
Three other volunteers and I have taken the long weekend to visit Rishakesh, a town in the Himalayan foothills near the mouth of the Ganges river. The Himalayas are surreal, foaming with trees and buffered from the world by a thick layer of mist. The Ganges, with its gray-brown and teeming waters, resembles nothing more than my mental image of The River Stix; an impression aided by the river's periodic descent into a thick fog which obscures all but the first ten meters of its twisted torso. There's a festival going on, in which men from all over India dress in Orange and make a pilgrimage to the river. There's a... party atmosphere, and the normally timid pilgrims occasionally grope and steal kisses from us, outnumbered by about 300:1.
Work is going well back in Delhi. Last week was my first experience as the only volunteer. The teacher, Meenu, doesn't really teach more than an hour or so once or twice a week and spends the rest of her time doing paperwork in the office. This means that I have total responsibility for a crowd of almost 20 boys, none of whom speak English. With only one volunteer, teaching is impossible. When I turn to write on the board, fights break out behind me, and when I run to separate them, I lose the few children actually following the lesson. These last few days I've mostly been playing games or doing one-on-one work.
One of the hardest things to master has been holding myself back from showing new kids, those only hours off the street, any more than average attention and compassion. I've slipped up twice that I know of... once soon after I arrived, and once because the new boy was so hungry for gentle interaction and had clearly been through some serious shit. (Many of the kids were raped--usually by older men--on the streets, and almost all of them knew abuse before they ran away from home. A few are ex-druggies, and a handful also have AIDS and/or other STDs.) I spent over an hour counting and playing catch with him, at the end of which the change in the older boys was obvious. They hit him when they thought I wasn't looking, and when I defended him their attacks only escalated. I leave at 5:30 each day, and the children spend the night on the floor of the shelter... both times this type of situation has presented itself, the kid was gone the next morning.
The power just went out for a few minutes, reminding me that I'm in the Himalayas and have better things to do than sit at a computer. (We're staying at an Ashram and woke up at 5:30 this morning to do Yoga, so I'm not counting on much energy remaining with me as the day passes.)

One last note, my camera deleted 5 out of 6 of my pictures. The slide show will be short.

Miss you!

I won't be able to describe life here. If I start really trying, I won't be able to stop. Everything here is such an amalgamation... without touching on the whole, each point I make, however true it may be, is looking at close surroundings through a telescope: distorted, inflated, and by omission, nothing like the real world.
I'm happy, if that's the most important point. I feel genuine, genuinely liked, and strong. I care enormously about the individual people here, much more than I anticipated I would. There are major imperfections, but the workarounds are part of what I love most about being here. There is a constant flood of activity, the result of which, for many of the people I see daily and work with, is survival. In the slums it is impossible to doubt life. Not only are there constant reminders of our own physicality--the sweat literally dripping off of us, the heat, the dirt, and, as the day passes, a mounting exhaustion--but no one shelters any doubts as to what the lack of life, however transient death may be here, looks like. The flies swarm dead rats and dogs in the streets, and although the closest I've personally come to seeing human death so far is the occasional procession of men carrying a body covered in flowers on a stretcher, other volunteers have talked of seeing dead children in bags on the side of the street.
Of course it bears mentioning that there are areas and aspects of Delhi to which none of this applies. There is a strong upper class which is intellectually unparalleled by most of what I've seen at home or while traveling. There are beautiful bookstores and small cafes, gleaming parks and breathtaking temples and monuments, tombs and gardens. I, working in Old Delhi, simply don't see affluence as much as I do its counterpart.
I'm trying to describe again. There's no hope for narration, as I explained earlier, but I can give you facts.
In response to a comment on my last post (and I'm sorry I can't remember all you questions, who ever you are), the children, with one exception, speak only a few words of English each. We communicate by facial expressions and body language. They're teaching me Hindi, but I'm painfully slow.
At the moment, I'm working with a British man named Alex. He's a great guy, very easy to get along with. This is his first stop on a round the world trip he decided to take after quitting his job.
I'm living in South Delhi, and working in Old Delhi. I take the bus most days, but it took a bit of getting used to; on one of my first days of work, I was lifted about six inches off the floor by the pressure of bodies around me, and almost lost a shoe to the crush as I got out. When Alex and I don't want to deal with the bus, we take an auto rickshaw. Cycle rickshaws are also widely available.
Udit (a brilliant poet my own age, who also happens to be a wonderful person) and I walked in the first Delhi Pride Parade last weekend. Homosexuality is illegal here, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. In surrounding countries, it is met with the death penalty. There have been minor pride parades in India before, with 20-30 people, but ours, expected to bring in about 200, was closer to 1,000. The next day, there was a front page article on it in The Times of India, the photo for which featured, among others, a very cheerful me.
Alright, this has been a much longer update than I had intended.
I miss you and send my love,
El

Yesterday was my first day of work, since, through some fluke, everyone here thought I was arriving on the 5th of next month and this was the earliest we could rustle up a placement. I'm working in a PCI shlter for street boys between the ages of 5 and 18. Until the 28th, there will be two other volunteers working with me: Druvahl and Kavi, Londoners of Kenyan descent.
One of the things we did yesterday, after teaching in the morning, was an outreach trip to the local bus center. There we saw and talked to (those of us that spoke Hindi talked to) about 20 street children aged between 8 and 12ish, most of whom we weren't allowed to take into the shelter since they were drug addicts. As we spoke to a group of them, they passed around a cloth which they took turns sniffing. We found some perspective children, but since they looked like foreigners (they were runaways from Nepal) they were prime targets for the pimps that were also looking for children, and wouldn't trust us. This is apparently normal, and we'll go back almost every day to build up a reputation with them.
Around 3:00, we took the kids out to play soccer in a nearby field. There were 15 of us from the shelter, and more neighborhood children joined in part way through, so we ended up with a game of over twenty. I, as the only woman and obvious foreigner, drew looks as I whooped and yelled and got covered in mud. It was clear, after, that the boys respected me for it, as well as for jumping up and down and waving my arms as I taught, and systematically beating them all at arm wrestling.
The monsoon season started early this year, with the first storms coming on the Sunday before I arrived. This is the earliest they've begun in 108 years, which makes the weather a legitimate topic of conversation.
One last thing, which I hope will be the last since I intend to see the city after I'm done checking in, is a clarification from my last post. I inadvertently implied that I had been arrested, which was not the case. 25 protesters, of which I was one, were arrested. I was a protester, but not one of the 25. I apologize for the clearly misleading syntax, while partially hoping that I gave Santa Cruz some good gossip.
There's so much to write about: my host family, the kids, the language, the roads, all the oxymorons of life here, the buses, the heat, the humidity, the other volunteers, I don't know that I could ever do it all justice. Ask me about it in seven weeks.

Good!

Namaste?

This is it! I'm in London. I'm leaving at 4 in the morning tomorrow for the airport to fly to New Delhi, but as long as I don't oversleep my alarm, I've got everything seemingly under control.

Yesterday as I was poking around the houses of Parliament, I ran into a Bush protest, which I joined. Twenty five of us were arrested, and five police officers were hurt, though most of us were able to remain peaceful. By the time I arrived, mob control police in full body suits and helmets had been called in. There was a point at which police were coming at us from a new angle and I was in the first wave of five or so to get to them. I remained in the front line of protesters, and during one of the line breaches, I was pushed from behind by a policeman and almost fell. They were clearly waiting for any semblance of provocation to hurt us, and I got off lightly. Bush was inside one of the buildings talking the new Prime Minister into sending more troops into Iraq, but the police wouldn't allow us, for 'safety reasons', to march on whitehall, which is where the protest should have taken place. The whole thing was all over the London papers today; I have coverage of it torn out of four different newspapers.

Part of me wants to outline the rest of what I've seen and been doing, but I don't have time. Paying for internet is low on my priorities list, and I have only three minutes left. You get the un-edited version.

I'll write again from New Delhi and the monsoons,

Elowyn

I haven't posted any poems in months, and if I put it off anymore I won't get them up until mid August. Suffer through, target demographic. Suffer through two almost final drafts:




Crashing Orange


If there were ever an ocean cave

which were not simultaneously an umbilical stump,

I would have found it.

I would have twisted it with my stronger stomach

and reluctant:

"I can explode, you know."


How is there a reaching out of sphere?

A thumbnail resistance, creviced liquid

this, orange, is your flaw.

I tempt your tempered unit circle,

pull away from you the dust

immigrants dried in late spring.

Your skin's fragility: shared acne scars


I will live to live past this coolness of you,

sand and salt leavings

open you by closing waves





Waking


Mushroom cloud of me

my legs proofed over night

rising doughy and diffuse past my potential.


Light from a window I have no confidence to own

bounces off my curved palm

finds the green in me


Billowing spine unfolds as a still-born

tea with milk, pirates, something softer than the impending

waves of blubber and rasp


The finger tip tracing of a trajectory

hiding from thoughts that will not hide in

dry lips which I misuse

curls of physicality


In the moment, I would trade for death

if I could end with no God and silence

by the persistence of blood, the following out of human capacity,

I would trade

I haven't updated in about a month, and am intimidated by the concept of trying to summarize.

Part one: Things I'm Done With.

I've finished with all my classes, and within a few more days will be done with Cabrillo point blank. I've gotten basically all of my ICC stuff out of the way (we've also found a Chairperson for next year), we had our Textbook Documentary showing last Thursday (far more stressful than any final), had our Zambia benefit dinner Friday (in which we made over $700 profit), took an SAT subject test Saturday, and slept in on Sunday.

Part two: Things I'm About to Do.

In five days I'm leaving for India for two months. I'd talk more about that, but really I have no idea what I'm getting into yet and haven't had time to start to wonder. Tomorrow some friends and I will be going to SF to get me a visa, and we'll get back just in time for the ASCC/ICC bonfire that night. This week will be a blur of packing, saying goodbye, and trying to have a summer. As a fun aside, I talked with Len from Poetry Santa Cruz yesterday and he asked me to be a featured reader at one of their monthly poetry readings once I get back... I'll post the time and day once we get closer to the fact.

Part three:

I'd have liked to have had some kind of formal goodbye with everyone, since I'll be gone for a full two months, but there was no time to do more than giggle at the idea of throwing a party. Anyway, I'll miss you, and will hopefully come home with enough interesting anecdotes to make up for the uninspired goodbye.

Cheers, artichokes, sprouted peanuts, The Buttery's sugar cookies, a sense of accomplishment, and other good things,

Elowyn

I'm going to force myself into a free write and get something on the screen.
I'm running the ICC (inter-club counsel) meetings for the rest of the semester, since the woman who was in charge had the burn out every ICC chair comes to expect at the end of a few months. As her successor, my shelf life got a few digits knocked off it.
I'll be on KUSP on the 18th, doing something poetic. Also, a poem of mine is going into Poesia, a biannual journal based in SF and the first to publish me without knowing my age.
I took the SATs again, since my math scores from last time won't get me into Swarthmore/Wesleyan/Stanford/Brown/the reach schools. This time I started studying a week in advance as opposed to the night before, which is all I gave myself last time. Here's to hoping.
I just finished Willful Creatures, which was a quick and easy read but complex in all the right aspects and a good way to curl the ends of a bus ride closer to each-other.
I'm leaving tomorrow for DC, and haven't even begun to pack.  Rhiannon gets home in about a week, and on the 13th of next month I leave for India. .  .   .    .     .      .       .        .         .          .           .            .            .             .              .              .               .                .                  .                  .                   .                       .

O,

I've been home sick all weekend, save for a few choice hours in which I took the ACT.
On my way home from the exam, I stopped by Bookshop to look for further stuff by Witold Gombrowicz, and discovered a guide of his to philosophy; it's in 7 parts, each on a different philosopher. I'm chewing on Hegel, having finished Kant and Schopenhauer. Reading is one of the advantages of spending two days for the most part horizontal, although real content probably wasn't the best choice as I'm hardly lucid in my current state.

It looks like professor Lau and I are going to be doing a directed reading(!) in which he'll be giving me lists of poetry books to read, which, once I'm done, we'll discuss. I'm ecstatic. I have no idea how I got to be this lucky.

School tomorrow. I'll need to train myself to sleep more or weekends like this will become a ritual.

Since there are so many things I should mention, I've decided to write blurbs for all the posts I should have written over the last x days and let you extrapolate upon them to whatever degree you see fit:

All hopes I sheltered about Thus Spoke Zarathustra were ill-founded. I can't find time for the superman.

Rhiannon's home from MDDLBRY. (Omitting most vowels should make me sound contemporary... although admittedly there have been only modest returns when I've tried it out-loud.)

Cabrillo is on break; I've been reacquainting myself with sleep.

I won the River Of Words competition, which means that Robert Hass has read my poems.
My mother and I will be flown to DC in May, at which point I'll read What Wasn't Born (my poem) in the Library Of Congress.

The textbook committee, in conjunction with the new Journalism club, is making a short documentary on Textbooks to screen at the annual Social Justice Conference.

I'm part of the aforementioned new Journalism club, and should be spending this time and finger muscle mass writing an article on Iraq withdrawal policies.

If anyone wants to reach me, this is the week to do it in. Beyond that I think I'll be overcommitted up until the end of summer.

Good Night! ¡Duerme con los angelitos!

The Senate has allocated $20,000 startup funds for our textbook rental program. If we get another $10,000 from the foundation and if the bookstore carries its own weight, we'll be in decent shape financially here for a while.

I'm old enough to give blood. I'd been trying unsuccessfully to lie about my age for the past few years, but now there's no need... I'm the real thing. The only drawback? I'm a malaria risk. In other words, I won't be able to donate until mid June. Guess where I'm going in mid June? Another malaria risk country. I won't be able to donate blood for another year and a half.

Here's a thorough if slightly outdated Ted talk on OERs. I would highly recommend it to anyone with any stake in higher education. Key terms to listen for: Conexions program, Hewlett Foundation, Creative Commons license.

It's wonderful to be here at last.
Yesterday I spent thirteen hours (only marginally above this week's average) at Cabrillo. After, my mother and I met downtown for dinner; as we ate she mentioned that we hadn't talked face to face--what with her working so many nights and my being gone days--since last weekend.
Counter intuitively, I took on a light course load this semester. I'm taking Spanish three, a conceptual physics class (the one for science majors was four days a week and conflicted with practically everything), both of their respective labs, and an entirely nominal communications class. All told, this only brings me up to 12 units... just barely full time. This means I'll be able to spend even more time working on textbook (and other senate) stuff, pay attention to AGS, JSA, and AFE, and read for fun!

take THAT, cruel world!
I will finish Thus Spoke Zarathustra!

This has been a very enjoyable update.
Now I think I'll go interact with the carbon based world.

Mom has been plane hopping across the east coast for the past week or so, and is now in NYC with Rhiannon. I'll be leaving in about a week to join them, but for now--aside from my occasional sojourns over to my father's house--I'm living alone. (+cats, dog, and a Chia pet growing an unfortunate breed of mold.)

Speaking of my father's house, I went through my bookshelf last night and found a hardcover copy of Walden by Thoreau, which more than made up for the copy of Chicken Soup For a Teen's Soul I found beside it. (My room there is an amalgam of everything everyone who stays in it thinks I should like. I'm rarely there, so it's used as a guest bedroom, and for reasons I don't think I'll ever truly understand, everyone else leaves a stronger mark on it than I do. Each time I spend the night it seems like there's a new book on my shelf relating vaguely to a new religion or to "Being A Teenager".)


I took the SATs for the first time yesterday.
I'm still waiting for the perfect punchline... with any luck it'll be included with my scores.

Wintersession! What are you doing to me?

I'm taking a course in Macroeconomics.
I'm using phrases like "double coincidence of want" in everyday speech, and have become one of those people that will berate you for thinking that the fed really controls interest rates and then turn away muttering incoherently about OMOs.

This is a phase.

I'm reading Blood Meridian, which gives my mental state another level of Screwed Up.


Nicola and I ran against each other today for our JSA chapter's Vice Presidency...
1/4 of the ballets were made out to "Nicowyn".
The remaining 3/4 had us tied.
We're splitting the duties.

It's going to happen!
The tickets are about to be finalized.
One of the best things about the itinerary, second only to the destination, is that I'll be spending four days alone in London along the way, sleeping in a youth hostel and prowling during the day.
Then to Delhi!

Damn the JSA bill I should be writing; I'm going to be happy for an hour.

I've begun to map out next summer's volunteering escapade.
Nothing has been solidified quite yet, and nothing on this site has been ruled out, but I'm leaning toward the Delhi street children program.
I'll be gone longer this time.

but the rest of us are on break, all slowly figuring out what to do with time. Personally, I prefer to wax hermetic and read, work on the computer, or sleep, but friends have been persistently present enough for me to remain comfortable as a social cog.

I've been reading Frank O'Hara's stuff and missing anyone that knows who he was.

I inherited my father's bike and am now a SleekSpeedyHelmeted bicycling hero.

I finally finished The People Of Paper, which is the most innovative yet effective Magical Realism book I've read.

(I doubt any of you really want these lists of facts, but my life has no trajectory. I'm also moderately committed to leaving most of my entries public, which means that broad generalities and semi-trivial minutia are all I'm really going to try for. )

Happy New Year!