Getting Real?

TAKING THE TITLE OF THIS BLOG IN EARNEST I AM EXPERIMENTING WITH MY TRAVEL WRITING--> In the past week I have started some writing projects that involve me with other people. This represents an attempt to break out of my isolation and to connect with other people who are also interested in writing and improving their writing. Two of the projects are informal and are in the opening stages The first project is with my niece Nimmie. In 2004 she went to India for a long visit and to acquaint herself with her father's family and his culture and the places that were part of his life as a boy and young man in India. Nimmie was born and raised in Canada, and like many Canadian children of immigrants she speaks English and also French but no Indian language. She developed a habit while travelling of writing about her adventures in a diary that she shared with friends and family. I had read and admired earlier journals she posted online of journeys to Cuba and Guatemala. Now she has a 90 page manuscript detailing her time in India, and she would like to raise it to a publishable level. Nimmie is a talented writer and has a funny and engaging persona as a traveler. I would like to help her improve her book for publication and also to use the opportunity to concentrate on one of my own travel writings and see what I can make of it now. In my past travels I spent a year in India, many summers in Ireland and a year in Romania. I only fitfully and very unevenly tried to write about those times. Helping Nimmie and taking my own advice, I might be able to make something I could publish about my locales. Or I might find a way of expressing that time in poetry or drama. I am embarking on these new writing initiatives on line in the spirit of the conclusion that I came to after many sessions with my therapist---DO WHAT I CAN DO NOW. DON"T WAIT TO BE ALL BETTER TO DO IDEAL AND MORE AMBITIOUS PROJECTS>

What is lost in translation

My husband turned 80 years old a few days ago. I have told him that we will celebrate this big birthday for the entire month of October. October is a special month--there is a change in the light : the air seems molten gold that floods the world with some hidden meaning. I got him two CDs of the ghazals of Ghalib set to music. He likes to listen to them and sometimes he translates the Urdu phrases as they are sung and repeated. One he noticed today "One desire can eat up an entire life; desires come by the thousands/I 've received what I asked for many times; but it was not enough." I once would have thought that this insatiability is one of the proofs of human failure, now I see it more as a sign that yearning is our default position--our glory. There is something that we want that cannot be satisfied by mortal things. Shakespeare has one of his characters say "I have immortal longings." Augustine said that our souls are made for God and we will be "restless until we rest in Thee." Shelly, another poet, wrote about "the desire of the moth for the star, the day for the morrow" Is this restlessness the best thing about us--that we know that we were meant for something more than this mortal coil--that we are hungry to be reunited with the spirit that made us. Writing about the endless, hopeful human activity when there is no cause to hope, Ghalib writes "The efforts I make in my life resemble a bird in a cage/ Who can't stop gathering straws for her nest." One funny line from Ghalib " God sent an angel to drive Adam from Eden, we've all heard that story,/But when you threw me out I felt something much worse had happened.