Ask and ye shall receive

I got a God in the mail today!



I've started writing a book about my experiences in India. It's my first serious attempt at a looooong piece of writing and, frankly, it's scaring the ink out of me. A couple of weeks ago, I woke in the middle of the night with only one thought in my head: "If I am writing a book, I need Ganesh."

Ganesh is a Hindu deity, a jovial elephant-headed boy often called India's most popular God. He is "the remover of obstacles" and he's also the God of Writers. Ganesh is usually depicted holding a broken piece of his tusk in one of his four hands, which he uses as a writing implement. Like all artists, he creates from parts of himself!

I e-mailed my friend Erin, who lives in India and chronicles her life in the amazing blog Bindi Girl. I asked her to please mail me a Ganesh. The Indian postal system can be fraught with difficulties, but Ganesh lived up to his reputation as the remover of obstacles by arriving in perfect condition and record time.

Even better, my Ganesh is POP-UP! Check out the 3D trunk and ears!



I am truly grateful to Erin for helping connect me to India and to her own travel-writing badassery. This week, I've been writing about our first meeting in India. She helped me cross the insanely busy streets of Mumbai and bought me my first masala dosa!

May you all be blessed with such patient guides when you step out on your adventures.

Leap of faith

There's more than one way to jump off a cliff. Sometimes you have to stuff your world into a backpack and hop a plane, but often, life's biggest leaps are internal shifts in consciousness. They happen when you suddenly realize the life you're living is too small for who you've become.

Take stand-up comedian John Ross. He spent two years touring with the Coexist? Comedy Tour, a team of five comedians who tell jokes about their respective religions. Ross was the Christian comic on the tour, until he lost his faith.

I had the opportunity to interview Ross for the Sacramento News&Review about his decision to surrender his Christian identity and search for a new way of relating to God.

“From the beginning I had questions,” Ross said, “but I would just write them off with ‘Our understanding is not God’s understanding.’ Until the last few years. It’s hard to keep doing that.”

You can read the rest of that story here.

You can catch Ross' post-Christian comedy when he hosts Comedy from the Couch every Friday night at the Sacramento Comedy Spot.

And you're welcome to share your own cliff-jumping, life-changing stories at foolscompass@gmail.com. Those of us contemplating big jumps always appreciate inspiration from those who've leapt and lived.

Missed calls

In India, most cell phones are pre-paid. Phone calls cost 1 rupee per minute, so if you want someone to know you care without spending money, you give them a missed call. Just call and hang up, so your friend's phone registers the attempt.

I met lovers who did this every hour, all day long. One of my friends bragged that he and his girlfriend, who was hundreds of miles away in Kashmir for the winter, had never gone longer than 4 hours without a missed call.

For a handful of rupees, you can also buy a song for callers to hear while they wait for you to answer. The man I dated bought a favorite love song from a current Bollywood hit - Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi - and renewed his subscription faithfully each month of our courtship. He wanted me to call and listen several times a day, but I resisted carrying the phone he gave me. I needed to unplug in India. I wanted to wander the beach, get lost in books, or stop for spontaneous chai with fellow travelers. I refused to be accountable at all hours and often forgot to return his missed calls.

During our morning beach walks, he patiently taught me the Hindi words to our phone song. He asked me to sing it to him over and over.

"I like it so much when you sing, because you don't sing properly," he told me. This embarrassed me - I was trying to sing properly - but I'd still squeak out the lyrics whenever he asked. If I couldn't remember the missed calls, it was the least I could do.

Once I returned to America, it took several days to connect with him overseas. The first time I called and heard the theme song to Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi tinkling through the phone lines, my chest felt suddenly vacant, as if I'd only just realized I'd forgotten my heart at the other end of that call.

Months later, after I canceled my international calling plan, I wrote this poem. You can find it in the most recent issue of WTF?.


Missed Call

Women and men
do not hug
in public India.
Even when one of you
is technically American
and actually flying
to the other side
of the world
from the other one of you.
I want to leap
up on your hips
wrap my arms
around your neck
and cling
until women hide their faces
in embarrassment
and airport security
separates us
with bamboo blows.
Instead I brace myself
for a chaste handshake,
culturally appropriate
in its formal brevity,
but personally
romantically
devastating.
I pull my pack from the idling taxi
and turn to extend my hand.
The driver slams the door
too fast
its metal edge
knocking me dizzy
before our fingers touch.
Your face is already a blur
and I’m not even moving yet.

See what had happened was...

I haven't updated Fool's Compass in forever. A whole summer. A lifetime in the blogosphere.

I needed a break from writing about India. I fell in love with India when I lived there last winter. More specifically, I fell in love WHILE in India, with a wonderful man I've been too shy to write about here. Then, while spending this summer in California working three jobs and studying Hindi and dreaming only of getting back to him, I fell out of love.

That's not it. There is still love. It's more like I fell out of faith. I could not figure out how to make us work on a practical level. The gap between cultures, languages, and shared dreams is just too large. I can't become someone I'm not -- even as much as I might want to, even for love.

My heart realized this before I did. After I'd been home a few months, I began waking up with tears in my eyes, before I'd even had any conscious thoughts. I sobbed my way through several long-distance phone calls to Himalayan landscapes, much to the confusion of my beloved. "But how will it work?" I'd ask over and over across a crackling phone line. "What will I do there? What will you do here?"

And then, at some point, all the crying stopped. Everything inside me felt still and heavy. I knew it was over. My dream, the love I was throwing all my resources into nourishing, had died. Without my consent.

I no longer found comfort in recounting my India stories here, once I knew I would not return. I retreated into the soothing inactivity of movies and television. I retraced my past with old friends. I rediscovered the American magic of rock shows, frozen yogurt, county fairs, and vintage sundresses. I taught myself to play the ukulele. I read trashy novels and took road trips.

All the while, I wondered, "What on earth am I going to do now?" I kept working my temp jobs and nodding vaguely when people asked about my travel plans.

Now my temp jobs are over. My bank account is full and my plans are uncertain. Thankfully, my heart is lighter. It's been a rough summer, but I've come out the other side with a story to tell. It's a love story. A travel story, about a female adventurer in exotic lands. And it's a true story. My favorite kind.

Who am I when I'm gone?

During five months of travel through Southern India, people often asked where my family was. It’s unusual to see a woman navigating life alone, and surprised locals always wanted to pin me down.

“Where is your husband?” is a question I faced constantly.

When I answered that I am not married, the natural follow-up was, “Where are your parents?”

I’d answer that they are both in America, but they do not live together.

“Which do you live with?”

“Neither. I live by myself.”

Shock. “By yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Brothers? Sisters?”

“No, I’m an only child.”

“Just you?” This was always said in a tone of disbelief. What parent could ever be happy with such a slim offering?

“Just me.”

Further questions about religion (none), occupation (none), and my travel route (totally unplanned) yielded similarly unsatisfactory answers.

At first, I found their surprise amusing, but after awhile, the constant repetition of these unanswerable questions began to make me feel I didn't quite exist. In India, a person without a family, a home, a job, a faith, or a goal is no one at all.

But I am still here.

More true confessions

In last week's Sacramento News&Review, I admitted in print that I'm living with my parents. I guess that wasn't enough of an ego boost, so I followed it up with this week's short essay, which my editor titled "Real-life bottom of the employment barrel?" It's about one of my many part-time jobs, handing out free samples in supermarkets.

Standing in public interacting with everyone who passes has its hazards. One customer repeatedly snuck up behind me to “test my reflexes.” Creepy men offer to warm me up when I shiver in the ice-cream aisle. I hear about everybody’s dietary restrictions. Gas, diabetes, indigestion—nothing’s too personal for the coupon girl.

And nothing's too personal for you! Read all about it here. There's also a great cover story by Ted Cox about Sacramento's homeless. It made me tear up a bit. Be grateful for your roof, everybody.

Summertime fun in newsprint

The Sacramento News&Review Summer Guide is on the stands this week, chock-full of fabulous entertainment ideas to make your summer the most exciting to date!

And then there's my essay on reliving summer in my childhood home, 20 years after I thought I'd left it behind. It offers no entertainment ideas whatsoever. I didn't want to pressure anyone.

To this day, when I hear Alice Cooper announce that “school’s been blown to pieces” or John Travolta sigh over those summer nights, I feel a shiver of the anticipation I felt on the last day of school. When Justin Timberlake insists what we share “just can’t be summer love,” I want to believe him. I want to believe life can seem boundless again, even though I’m an adult with three part-time jobs and the annoying habit of falling asleep before 10 p.m.

Intrigued? Bored at work? Click here for more. Or pick up a hard copy and enjoy the added bonus of dozens of coupons. There are free hamburgers in there, plus an actual coupon for a gram of medical marijuana. Yes, really. Check it out.