phonetic memories

ibrahim gambari, the united nations under secretary-general for political affairs, visited myanmar recently and was lauded for the fact that he was the first un envoy in 2 years able to gain access to such a secretive political clubhouse of paranoia and repression. myanmar, or burma as some still call it, is the bungalow 8 of mysterious pariah states.

i am currently reading Finding George Orwell in Burma and am having a difficult time discerning fact from fiction. if there are no absolute truths, just versions of it, then how can one validate one's existence? i read accounts of daily human rights violations and corruption taking place and then i return to a memory of drivers, cooks, househelp and a mali. what is the burma i should know and believe?

i know the burma that was my grandfather, the encyclopedia entry asserting my memory of him. he was the handsome proud premier in black and white photos dressed in silk pasoes, tiepoun ingees, and gaungbauns, posing with the rockefellers, haile salassie, and the hollywood starlets of the 1950s. he was the man that made it a game to hide his dentures for me. i know a burma of daily power cuts, monsoon-worn homes and thanakah beauties. i know of a burma of smiling reclining buddhas and currency exchange rates that fluctuate during breakfast, lunch, and dinner. i know of the great privileges i had and the sheltered ignorance i inhaled, but i also know of the girls that flock to paddy's bar and pioneer nightclub, hoping that they will earn some dollars from the white foreigners. i know of the failed economy and political unrest, of the great sadness and loss of hope for stolen dreams of a democracy. but maybe it is the fact that i do not want to know, but i want to believe in the tourist postcards from the edges of a childhood memory.

perfumed kill

she held a 9mm glock in her hands as they talked about rape. the gun was light and felt like the hard crunch of a pulverized anthropod's shell. it smelt surprisingly like melodic perfume, sweet but with a gentle hint of a malodorous overture. it was ironic that she masturbated the handle while he refuted the fact that a woman could be raped by her lover.

"all you have to say is no. without an explicit no, it is not rape."

how dictionary perfect.

what is it about a woman's psychology that allows her to convince herself that it is love? she slumbers innocently only to be woken by her boyfriend having his way with her. she is frightened but casts aside her fears, chiding herself for being so frigid and prude. the boyfriend tells her to resist so that he can fulfill his rape fantasy. it can only be love.

how long before she recognizes a likeness of herself in the domestic violence posters glaring at her in the subway during her commutes? the dorian grays of her own diary.

what is it about a woman's psychology that permits men to rape her daily with their eyes? she is pitted with anxiety everytime she passes a crowd of men but says nothing while their looks corrode and delinquent comments ravage her beauty. she is no longer prettily innocent.

when will she stop making excuses for a boss that meant no disrespect with that accidental brush, lingering look, or miscalculated compliment? the boss fantasizes about her when he makes love to his wife.

what is it about society that drives a woman's psychology to release the trigger, allowing for the bullet to ejaculate all so mightily? she finally learns to say no. she will no longer be raped.

memories of chutney

i have a friend that just arrived in india to shoot a commercial. his photos teleported me back to 2003, to the days when i lived and traveled there. i thought i'd exhume a piece i wrote under india's spell. i know it's too early in my blogging career to have a greatest hits compilation, but there is something to be said about revisiting your past. not to mourn for what no longer is, but to allow the widow to make room in her bed for her new lover. to be able to turn your jacket of yesteryear inside out, you darn your holes and frayed edges and create a better hemmed pastiche of yourself. you have the freedom to take on the role of being a museum curator: cherry-picking aspects of one's character that are solidly complete in themselves, yet in married synergy you become all the more tangible and discernable to the audience. i can see and understand who i was, how india transformed me and continues to play a part in my life and in my heart. mother india represents the dualities of a country so divided in haunting poignancy with its castes and beliefs, yet so gelled in its ability to humble the most seasoned traveler. i prostrate myself on my stiletto knees in india's presence.

***

headshakes

I have arrived in India. It is difficult to debrief you all on my initial impressions as all the colors and smells prick the senses in a toxic thrill. I can say however that internet cafes here do not make it to the "best things about India" list. This letter may prove to be incomprehensible as the keyboards operate in an erratic manner--much what seems like a typical pattern in Indian affairs. If there is a god, India certainly has a god looking after it. So much to say about Indian life and its computer keyboards. Many formalities exist to satisfy the bureaucrats. For instance, there is the SARS counter in the airport which every passenger must pass through. The disgruntled civil servant (bless his heart) does not even glance at our meticulously filled out contagion reports as we file past.

I wish that I could give you my eyes to see what I see; to give you my heart, to feel what I feel. I feel as if I know India, a place where life is condensed and magnified. Life is so simple, so ancient, so present in its deaths and births, nights and days. I feel as if I understand and belong here, yet I know that in its presence, I am humbled and understand nothing. The Lord Buddha reached enlightenment here yet India is a nuclear state; beggars ask not for money but for the Nike shoes or designer shirts people wear. They want a piece of the global village that brought you to their villages. India can be appropriated to represent any niche--glamor, asceticism, poverty, opulence. Over 1 billion people are looking for something, and are now taking that something to become a part of India and to make the world's most populous democracy functional. It is hard to stand back and view India through my hardened glass eyes. Extreme poverty, corruption, dirt--I have lived through it all before so I find it hard to describe something that is as familiar to me as my own worn reflection. I have to stop comparing India to what I know and approach it as unpackaged and fresh. But I cannot help but feel at home here.

I am using India as a go-between in understanding my own native country. Understanding the lack of sanitation, the handwritten ledgers of government records, the weakness for betel nut; I feel like I will somehow come to understand Myanmar beyond my childhood visits. I will have to stop seeing through child eyes and take on the country with an adult's perspective, irrespective of nostalgia. What shakes me out of my boxed impressions are the range of features that pass me daily with Kohl framed eyes. Beauty is served in more flavors than Baskin Robbins. The hospitality and smiles here flood every village gate despite the fact that people exist on @ 50 US cents daily. The other day I was welcomed (at the end of my visit) with a Hindu ceremony. The head of the village marked my forehead with sanguine colored powder and presented me with a revered coconut worth a quarter of a daily wage.

There are many curiosities about India which I am not sure will ever be understood. I find myself passing through abodes which have hand and footprints stamped across the walls. I wonder if this is the 3rd World's version of Hollywood's boulevard of the Stars. Here are the smears of the poor and acrobatic (as the prints are in the middle of the walls). I am in my 2nd week of assessing water and sanitation in villages throughout Maharashtra state. I never thought that the day would come when other people's shit and piss would take on a new importance to my life. Throughout my study-tours, I have been made to feel like Princess Diana. A swarming sea of smiling children giggle and cling onto the shadows of my every move. I have been presented with flowers and new renditions of "Rlow rlow boat gentry streen" (row your boat). All I could give in return was a place in my memory. I feel like I should continue on with my humble cause of tackling AIDS, landmines, and world peace once I finish saving India next week. Mumbai and these villages are worlds apart. Mumbai, much like many urban centers, are cesspools of aggression--men have turned back to spit at us and everything that the foreign world represents. Out in these villages, everyone wants to practice their English. Unfortunately conversations don't go further than, "what is your name; what is your teacher's name;what is your second cousin twice removed, hairdresser's girlfriend's goldfish name." I have found that once people find out that I am also from a fellow developing country, they quickly lose interest in my "exotic" and move onto my "Amerika friends". Many children and adults alike have entertained us with their sincere kindness and warmth. The good fortune of the Hindu Gods have blessed us during our stay so far and we were invited to a Hindu wedding. I believe the women took pity on us as we were dressed like paupers with no jewelry and donned in mere cotton. To escape from the heat and the daily grind, I have experienced the famed Bollywood extravaganza which begins with the national anthem and public service announcements about HIV/AIDS and smoking. 3 hours later, I leave the cinema with ringing ears, not sure whether it is from the sweet Hindu melodies or from a burst eardrum as the sound system is set to deafen the deaf. In hardly a month I have a lifetime's worth of experiences. Every now and then I have to catch my breath with the realization that I am in India.

one to infinity

at the age of 30, i feel like i am the last single woman standing in nyc. very few of my friends have married, but they are most definitely speaking the "us, we" lingua in blissful union with their boyfriends or fiances. i am almost always the only single girl friend at all of their parties, for as long as i can remember. then come all the nudge nudge wink winks, "why don't you talk to a very pregnant bill over there carrying around his 9 month beer-belly or tom over there with the nervous twitch..."

my mother begs me to start freezing my eggs. "dahlin' it's fine if you don't want to get married, marriage is not something you should rush into. but you should freeze your eggs. the older you get, the harder it is to conceive and a marriage without children is rather lonely in your later years." my mother then proceeds to rattle off the names of all of my aunties and uncles and the hairdresser's daughters who are in various stages of being a singleton, childless, or going in to get their earwax removed professionally.

i became really curious about the world of on-line personals just about the time i started grad school. here i was, writing a paper at 4 a.m. and the only people i had any communication with were dead white males telling me about power structures in society, via seances that were weakly disguised as graduate classes in political science. to find comfort in those wee hours of biorhythm chaos, i would peruse all the people in the personals. it was so reassuring to see the glow of a yellow smiley face indicating that the person was on-line and a severe insomniac. it was like the christmas lights were finally lit and the anticipation of the presents to be opened were up to the hilt. for those few minutes, i would boldly sneak out of the house of post-development theory with teen-like boldness and drown myself in the green eyes of "green-eyed in brooklyn" or pretend to smoke cigarettes and talk about beatniks and the demise of the democratic party to "jazz fan, 35, divorced".

originally, in my ephemeral moments of dating, i believed that on-line personals were for unattractive people with severe halitosis, more comfortable sending lovenotes in code "00110100111010" than buying a hallmark card for all occasions. so i tried it out for a week.

dear me, that was probably one of the most overwhelming experiences i ever went through. within one week, i had over 89 messages from people that professed that i was the one they were looking for...it was weird for a girl like me with serious space issues to let these strangers into my virtual space. of course i could serve as the fictionalized character of their dreams, whether it be the nice submissive asian so often found on the back pages of the village voice, or be it this superstar of a woman: successful, witty, intelligent, independent, but tired of meeting the same types...i was whatever they constructed me to be. i was their capsela, the motorized building systems toy that my elder brother had in the '80s.

in the world of on-line dating, we are all fiction writers. desperately erasing the ruled margins of the fictionalized realities of our daydreams, and the truths that speckle our expository fictions. when will the moment come that the "mathematician who loves his grandmother" breaks the emergency glass and seeks out jessica, the red-headed pastry chef, in 3-D? to find her in a multimedia presentation devoid of genetically modified photos and heavy-handed spell-checks? how do we package ourselves in 1200 words or less, proclaiming ourselves to be THE generation's zeitgeist and come away with a better sense of vulnerability and $50 poorer?

i got a great glimpse into the ticks and tocks of people. the online dating scene is a very egalitarian tool, where the wallstreet boys list with the tv repair men. (by the way jason, my cable is out and you promised to look at it for free...write back!) despite their different realities everyone wanted to share their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with a special someone. and i guess i realized that i was not there yet, ready to embrace my role as demeter and exist as the girlfriend, wife, mother.

so my mother is right yet again, i will have to freeze my mojo after all.

pimp my blog

i have blog envy. i notice how adept all these cute little 10 year-old munchkins from singapore are at making all these fancy-pants blogs, and then i return to the anti-climax of my 2-inch flaccid eunuch of a page. i hate millicent and andrei, checkers, and caz for all of their hello kitty wonder and barbie dreamhouse of a virtual portal. but like every 9 year-old damned with wearing head-gear to junior high, i will grow out of my awkward adolescence and become a mtv 1 hit wonder. i will...(fast forward 11 years).

i have blog envy.

copyright infringement is also going to kick my bubble butt. please readers, run--don't walk, do not pass go--but go directly to your lawyer friends and plead a good case for me. ok, you can collect the $200 as it will probably come in handy when i do the martha time. i hear kmart is now producing a line of very fashionable ankle tracking devices. hey, convicts have fashion needs too you know. i'm getting mine in rhinestone. bling on baby.

about a girl and her dents

my wisdom teeth are infected and i am scheduled to abort them. the glory days of my prodigy teeth have waned, and alas i will discard of them like a cold-hearted capitalist. poopoo on you, you trouble-rousing, neo-liberal politics toting teeth, you. out, i say, out.

i get my left side pillaged on the 25th, my right side raped the following 2 weeks. i'll be swollen as if i was gently sucking on a bowling ball, and wearing bibs to catch my spittle. all in the wondrous play that is called sandarlicious.

in the beginning...

shazam. welcome to the pleasure dome. or at least to a hint of what it means to live in blissful denial. yes, so 'tis the world of sandarama in full- frontal technicolor. there are no money-back guarantees here or whispered sweet nothings promising that i will save you tons of money on your car insurance. instead, your eyelids will feel very heavy and you will be compelled to hand over the entire contents of your savings account. i will be kind to the first 20 readers and allow a compromise and take a conciliatory prize of shoes, puppies, and a life supply of toothpaste. but please, my dentist recommends sensodyne. mint.

now enough about me. it's about you. why read another blog? the world is polluted with enough egomaniacs and self-promotional infomercials, you say. i say, yes. but you have not tasted this hot-sauced world of kooky wit and obscure references to mass media icons promoted by random embassy cultural centers in developing countries. you have not met this napoleonic heavy-hipped freckled collision of evolutionary wonder. so hurry, read on. clip the coupon with raw urgency. offer ends soon.