"Songs of a dead laughter, Songs of love once hot"

Let me tell you that Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell, ever since the day I first heard of her, has been a source of utter fascination to me. So when we were told to select a woman for our 'Culture, Gender & Global Communication' class's final project, naturally I picked her. On the bus ride home today, I was reading "The Letters of Gertrude Bell" - 30 minutes of beautiful prose were enough to breathe life into a deadening week of work, work, work.

In 1897, Gertrude Bell published a translation of the Diwan (collection of poems) of the magnificent Persian poet Hafez. Here are stanzas from a few of the translations:

~~~

To Hafiz of Shiraz

Thus said the Poet: "When Death comes to you,

All ye whose life-sand through the hour-glass slips,

He lays two fingers on your ears, and two

Upon your eyes he lays, one on your lips,

Whispering: Silence." Although deaf thine ear,

Thine eye, my Hafiz, suffer Time's eclipse,

The songs thou sangest still all men may hear.

Songs of a dead laughter, songs of love once hot,

Songs of a cup once flushed rose-red with wine,

Songs of a rose whose beauty is forgot,

A nightingale that piped hushed lays divine:

And still a graver music runs beneath

The tender love notes of those songs of thine,

Oh, Seeker of the keys of Life and Death!

~~~

Divan of Hafiz

XIV

(From poem on the death of his son)

Light of mine eyes and harvest of my heart,

And mine at least in changeless memory !

Ah ! when he found it easy to depart,

He left the harder pilgrimage to me !

~~~

~~~

"You take delight not in a city's 7 or 70 wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours."

- Marco Polo in Italo Calvino's 'Invisible Cities'

The Story of Nick

Let me tell you a story. In a resplendent little hostel nestled amidst the cobblestone slopes of Albayzin, Granada, worked a young man from Boston by the name of Nick. I met this friendly young man during my travels this summer, when I stayed at the Makoto Backpacker's Hostel. He showed me around the place - "here's our little kitchen. Breakfast is free, from 8 to 11 each morning", "these are our hammocks, we only request that you take your shoes off when you use them", "here's your bed for the next three nights" - and then proceeded to pour me an awful version of Tinto de Verano at the ramshackle bar.

One night, after wandering around Granada for hours, I returned to Makoto, huffing and puffing, and asked Nick to pour me a glass of Tinto de Verano.

"So how've you been?" Nick enquires, as he pours me the sour drink.

"Good. I love Granada."

As I sip my drink, I am overcome with curiosity about how a gentleman from Boston happens to speak such fluent Spanish and works in a quirky little hostel in the hills of Granada in southern Spain. So I ask him to recite to me the story of his life.

And he tells me.

"Well, I backpacked to Granada last year - sort of like you, actually - and stayed at the Oasis hostel. And, like you, I fell in love with the city. So I moved here."

Now many of you might not find this story as spectacular as I do, but a few might share my admiration for the idea of packing your bags on an impulse and going after something you want without really knowing what lies ahead.

And for abandoning the futile pursuit of wealth and social status for something more satisfying.

--

I think I am too aware of the temporary, fleeting nature of life.

It's good to keep it in mind, but I think I am a little too aware of it.

Update

You know what we need? A break in the quarter. Not just after it ends, but also during, so I can take off to a faraway land (or, you know, New Mexico) for a little while. How much better would it be if the quarter could be stretched to 11 weeks, with the 6th week off for some much needed replenishment? Right now it just gets progressively busier. And crazier.

That being said, what a fantastic quarter. The 2nd year of grad school is something else entirely - priorities rearrange themselves, people change, you change. Perhaps someday I will write about it, when I'm not buried beneath heaps of reading about Political Islam, Ischaemic Heart Disease, and the Central Limit Theorem.

PS. Diwali and Halloween next week/end!

Of Lists and Things

Caitlin mentioned that she experienced "reverse culture shock" upon returning to California after two years in Uganda. I get what she meant. I had no culture shock whatsoever when I first arrived here, but after a summer in Costa Rica, Spain and France, it's going to take me a little while to get used to the United States. I mean, where are all the street artists and musicians? Why does everybody look so busy, and why are there so many laptops around? What is with the insanely high number of choices in the supermarket and why is everything supersized? And I suppose I have to get used to not having 16th century castles to hang out in.

But lots of things to be excited about - like my new apartment, for instance. It is pretty awesome! My Thai roommate Dao is lovely. Priscilla lives on the floor below mine and Caitlin lives right across the street. I can't wait to catch up with people that I haven't seen in months. And my classes - Major Diseases in Global Health, Statistics, and Introduction to Middle East & Islamic Politics. I may have given up Engineering, but my love for Biology and Math lingers on. And the Major Diseases class goes into the gritty details of pathology and transmission patterns of diseases!

..okay, I'll stop now.

Anyway, how do you feel when you wake up in the morning? While in Spain, I would wake up in a different hostel bed every other night, surrounded by strangers who'd become friends, in an unknown land, and the feeling I had was one of absolute bliss. Of camaraderie, adventure and freedom. The absence of plans and of anything mundane. It's got me thinking - maybe I want to spend the rest of my life waking up to that feeling, to that sense of adventure. (Who needs a man? Just kidding. Universe, do send a nice young man along when you can find the time.)

Classes start next week, and already I'm flooded with to-do lists. Now I've never been someone who makes a lot of lists, but I suppose grad school (as delightful as it is) does that to you because there really is so much to do! It's a Sunday, school hasn't started yet, but this is what my list looks like:

1. Look for jobs.

2. Buy shower curtain hooks (buying just the shower curtain was quite pointless).

3. Send emails.

4. Unpack.

5. Organize photos on laptop.

6. Do laundry.

7. Pick up new I-20.

But there's always going to be things to do and tasks to complete, and I'm going to wind up spending each day checking things off a list.

It's ridiculous.

*Blinding flash of light* and suddenly I see hordes of people in suits going off to work and living their lives according to a list. Is that what I want to do? I'd rather hang out in one of the narrow cobblestone streets of Granada with Antonio and listen to him play the guitar, thank you.

I know that probably sounds ridiculous. And perhaps impractical. ("You've got your head in the clouds. Sooner or later you've got to return to 'real life'. You're just an impulsive, immature 22-year-old. You're still in vacation mode. Aiyo saami, your parents did not send you to grad school so that you could take up a vagabond life.")

But it's hardly as ridiculous as letting a list take over my life, is it?

People

The people I met (so unexpectedly) while travelling - Julie, Yanqing, Damian, Nick, Yaeen, Seora, Joel, Jinny, Jordan, Constantine, the fun Canadian couple whose name I never learned, Armando, Venancio, Franziska, Daniel, Diana, Wendy, Frederico, Benjamin, Ruben, Marian, Xavier, Severin, Lucie, Samuel, Anna - were ones that I really connected with and shared some of the best conversations with, conversations that you don't get to have very often in everyday life. Yes, the fact that we weren't in an 'everyday situation' and were seeing each other in passing adds to the mystique, but only so much.

It's a little sad that I don't get to see these crazy, incredible people every day.

It's true though - the people you meet on your travels really are some of the most interesting ones.