Kaleidoscope

It's been a distinctly schizophrenic few weeks.

After the frenzy of our New York events, I took a very necessary and relaxing vacation for a few days. But then I got word that I needed to be in Boston for a wake and funeral this weekend which put everything back into overdrive.

I've only been to one other Hindu funeral and so I find that I look on the rites themselves more from an anthropological perspective. The ceremony featured a yogi who took one of the nearest family members of the deceased through the rites while stopping to explain what she should do at the end of every page. So, apparently neither yogi nor family is obligated to know what to do in advance and it's not considered rude to talk or leave and return throughout the ceremony. Then some songs are sung - none of which I understood - and then you pay your respects by pressing rice into red ink on the deceased's forehead and you leave a flower petal or a flower in the casket.

One of the handicaps I go into any Indian gathering with these days is that I don't speak much Gujrati and I understand slightly more that that. Still, it was amazing how much more of the language barrier I could bridge after just a day around all the extended Indian family. Not long ago, I got a Bollywood film in Gujrati from Netflix thinking that would help me remember the language - alas the sound recording was so bad that I could barely make out the words and the movie was so incredibly awful that I couldn't watch more than 45 minutes. I'd also forgotten how any outing to eat with Indians always involves many, many requests for hot sauce and crushed red pepper.

All chattiness aside though, seeing that much distant family at one time was somewhat stressful since at this point I barely remember their names much less how they're related to me. They all seem to know me and chatter on in Gujrati while my mind whirs trying to unearth that word I heard 30 seconds ago that came after my name. My 26 hours in Boston also featured a lot of smiling and nodding to random pronouncements on how I was now responsible for whatever, which was helpfully communicated in English. No questions about an impending marriage, but someone did opine that a boyfriend was keeping me from getting in touch more often.

Of course, it was set against the very prominent backdrop of a funeral with all the grief and solemnity that accompany them. That made all the things that I normally would've laughed off feel more like an opportunity to go hang out in a cloud of mosquitos. Combined with very little sleep before and during and flight complications along the way, my nerves were pretty fried and my brain felt like a kaleidoscope that someone wouldn't stop turning. So as much as I usually love my visits to Boston, I'm glad to be back to my normal life.

Hair Here

I was in Boston and at the Cape last week visiting family. Since I've been swimming semi-regularly at the new pool down the street it wasn't quite as much of a shock to go into the ocean as it normally is. Equally fun was biking around a bit while I was there. It was a fairly uneventful few days that featured a lot of missed connections and doing the hurry-up-and-wait. And since I took my job with me, it wasn't exactly a vacation either, but enjoyable all the same. See photos.

While in Boston, I realized how rarely one sees unnatural colored hair in DC. In addition to spying the usual manic panic shades, I complimented this teenage girl at the airport on the fantastic color of her hair: blue in the back and beautifully shifting to teal in the front. Her mom, seated next to her, smiled. (Cool mom.) Not only that, I ran across a couple of 6 or 7-year-old boys with mohawks. I see plenty of mullets in DC - not worn ironically I think - but otherwise people seem to prefer a more strait-laced look here.

Went to see Dr. Zhivago yesterday but ended up being a half-hour late and seeing Man on Wire instead. Great documentary on Philippe Petit - the man who walked a tightrope between the tops of the two World Trade Center towers in 1974. Go see it.

Plucked out of the Internet ether:

The term "modern jackass".

Reinventing yourself as a frosh? Check. That's assuming you can find your dorm room though.

Freedom.

Walmart employees are copyright maximalists, dontcha know?

NYTimes cracks on French horns and the people who play them.

Still not joining the twittering masses, but interesting points all the same.

Jen, yet again, makes me tear up.

Calendar Illusions

Ever feel like you're definitely getting older but feeling younger all at the same time?

I took a few days off to visit family and friends in Boston this past week and arrived just in time to smell the lilacs in full bloom. As usual, I had a great time, but it wasn't all fun and games.

I had that moment when I realized that I might really need to get involved in some evolving family health situations. As the only American-born member of my biological family with the language skills and resources to cope with the system, I guess I'm going to have to get involved and be bitchy and demanding. Mind you, like Tina Fey, I can be good at being bitchy and demanding. In my head, however, advocacy is the province of an adult and it's hard not to feel like a kid around my family's older-generation-but-not-grey-and-frail family members, regardless of how many years the calendar gives me. I think it's going to be an eye-opening transition from cared-for to care-giver.

On the more light-hearted side of things, I saw a bunch of friends in ones and twos and groups, did some long-overdue clothes shopping, made it to Redbones and got me some BBQ, bought too many books at Brookline Booksmith (in particular, I felt a keen case of discounted-cookbook-lust), wore out the little kitty playing many rounds of bottlecap soccer and got scratched up by the big kitty. I discovered - how did this take me so long? - that you can sync up Bollywood film dances with just about any non-downtempo music (thanks, Justin, for that). I ran around Jamaica Pond a few times and saw the ducklings and goslings trailing their parents. The ducklings especially were too cute for words. I'm considering making my next trip back coincide with the Newport Folk Festival.

Now that I'm done procrastinating, I should get back to digging through email...have a great long weekend, folks.