Convulsions, Premonitions

I feel like I have had a certain conversation on repeat for the past few weeks, but I can’t stop myself. The words are there right under my skin.

“it is this time
 that matters

 it is this history
 I care about

 the one we make together
 awkward
 inconsistent
 as a lame cat on the loose
 or quick as kids freed by the bell
 or else as strictly
 once
 as only life must mean
 a once upon a time”
        -- June Jordan, “On A New Year’s Eve”

I have sunk deep into this text. There is an awful but necessary type of witnessing that happens there. In June Jordan’s poetry, we hear clearly the continuity of violence and the preciousness of human life. In Melissa Harris Perry’s note, we read raw grief. I’ve curated myself away from Facebook posts, away from mainstream news, and have instead immersed myself in artistic responses and music. I have been reading aloud poetry by friends and strangers to my empty room, finding myself too often in tears. I want to have the energy to organize and make meaning but the part of me on loop keeps circling around and asking the same unanswerable questions. Why? What is the point of continuing forward?

The majority of my work is intangible. It’s about making connections between people and resources, people and ideas, people and other people. Even my writing work, the most concrete and visible part of the process, requires so much connective energy that I often feel overwhelmed by its weight. It’s very easy for me to feel too much – whatever that means – and yet at the same time desire to compress it all into a short period of time and space.

I took great time for myself last year to process burnout. I took great time for myself to travel and make space for my writing practices. I took great time, and now I feel like it has disappeared. Dried up. Just a few weeks ago, visibility took prime focus in my life. Now there is an impulse to fold in on myself and hibernate till the long winter is over. But really, when is it ever over?

Outside there are new plants reaching towards the sun. My immediate safety is not under threat -- a significant privilege. I’ve come off a month of extra shifts and moving at high speeds; what once felt productive now feels unsustainable. So I have been hardcore nesting and making my space as comfortable as possible, being selfish with the ways I use my time outside of work. I am consoled by my own gratitude for this life, for the reminder that we return to Allah’s light at the end of the journey, whenever that may be. It is our time to bear witness to those who have died and not turn away from the reality and the ritual of it. Orlando, Istanbul, Dhaka, Baghdad, Medina, and further. Philando Castile and Alton Sterling and…

(Slowly) Letting My Hair Down & Some Images of Dhaka

This week, I was reading a series of Tweets called "Let's Be Messy on the Internet Together" by Creatrix Tiara, and I really resonated with the pressures of 'being an expert' and 'building a brand' influencing what one posts on their blog/social media. It's what has kept me from posting more deeply personal and not-quite-there-yet material on this blog -- I'm not really a blogger, per se, but I like to play with ideas and put them out somewhere. I'm also a recovering perfectionist and putting out lower-grade material freaks me out a little bit. Yet I am drawn to it still. There are several articles that talk about the less professionalized internet (oh Xanga, my first home) and I want to harken back to those days at least every so often, when I'm not sharing my obviously fabulous life stories and pitch perfect advice.

A photo of my bed in disarray -- a.k.a my creative process.

I realize that I haven't been talking a lot about Dhaka in terms of its images. Part of that is because I am still living here and it's hard for me to both experience and reflect at the same time. But another part is that I've been feeling a little bit protective of the experiences I've had living here, for fear that they'll be misinterpreted or that I'll be judged for certain things. People don't have a good understanding of what it's like to live in this city, and sometimes neither do I. The pinhole vision I've got is so based on my class and language access and spaces I inhabit. Yet the things that have now become common to me were not common at all before; the histories that I've been reaching back into just open up new questions about what life looked like in the time period I've chosen to focus on -- the late 80s and early 90s.

I think giving a long view of the city would be too much to do in these types of posts, though I long to do it justice in my fiction. But I have been collecting images here -- for the first several months I would write down 10 images a day (an exercise adapted from the advice of the great Lynda Barry). Here are several I want to share for now:

The crashing sound of a transformer bursting creates a momentary silence, then a sprig of yelling voices after

Punctuating our conversations about social space with the sound of killing moshas (mosquitoes)

 A corner stall selling hardwares -- no wider than one man -- with its shopkeep napping like a little boy on his folded arms

Sitting on a rickshaw caught in traffic, the inexplicable joy of seeing a fruit tree filled with large bats swooping overhead

 Recording the hum of the CNG as it accelerates onto a flyover

Painstakingly sounding out the words to a chapter book with my father over Skype

The moment after the lights cut out, a thunderclap

The Car Window

In the backseat of Aj’s mother’s green truck, we looped our way back around California hills in the pitch dark, studded only with the stray lights of houses in the distance. This was before her mom’s hips and knees started aching too bad, before the injury and the swelling stopped her from getting out entirely. I was a little kid by anyone else’s standards – but Aj and I held on to the word ‘preteen.’

“What if there was a guy on the road?”

“What if there was someone tailing us?”

“What if a hand came out of nowhere and pressed up against the window?”

I grabbed Aj’s shoulder hard and we both turned to look. I could see the paper-white hand reaching out of the darkness. It was worse than the horror movies that I couldn’t bear to watch because my imagination didn’t know when to stop embellishing.

“What if—”

My shoulder collided with the hard front seat. I heard Aj squeal and her mother let out a breath like a pressure cooker. Then the slow crunch of gravel as the truck rolled gently forward again.

“Did you see it?” Aj’s mother asked.

“What?” Aj said, her voice hushed.

"That little raccoon! Damn near sent us over the side.”

She whistled and snorted with laughter and we couldn’t help but join her. I glanced out the back window, but by then the dark was complete.

In the past few months, I’ve been writing a lot of creative non-fiction. It’s been refreshing to return to fiction as a different type of storytelling, but it requires so much more follow-through. Generating material is always the exciting part, but then I have to add in transitions. By the time the rewrites and edits roll around, I’ve already bitten my nails down as far as they’ll go.

With my novel project, I’ve become more and more interested in the effect that place/space has on social practices, and on the way that’s changed over time. Specifically here in Dhaka, things like transport and access to public facilities (restrooms being a big one, but also parks and places to sit for extended periods of time) really change the way that people interact with the city. Though that’s only from my limited observation, I’m excited to start investigating what other folks have to say on the matter. Research can sometimes overshadow my drafting process, but right now it's leading me down corridors that I haven't yet explored -- I'm enjoying the thrill of it.

So, You're Not a Superhero

So you’re not a superhero. You get frustrated when you mix up verb tenses. You can’t cross the street without saying a small prayer. You’re not conventionally attractive, by American or Bengali standards. You stall in your writing – and your reading and your half-made plans. You take off your kameez one shoulder at a time, hopping on one foot as you tug on the sweaty fabric. You jump at the tiniest tik tiki movement on the wall across from you. You burst out of your new shoes. None of this is possible without you.

I moved to Dhaka a little over 2 weeks ago with the intention to write. I was here 2 years ago on a research project about perceptions of mental health and mental illness, but felt like all of the stories I was collecting deserved a better home than just an academic paper that would be read by only a few people. It was then that the idea for my novel manifested – and now I finally get to pursue it.

I also moved here as a challenge. I needed to shake myself out of my skin, my NYC hustle, and the perfectionism that keeps me from doing the work that I really want to do. It’s an amazing opportunity, but I’m also struggling with it. In my head, I wanted to pick up where I left off in my Bangla study, meet with new friends, and build a community around things that I care about – particularly social justice work. But all of these things take time.

The greatest work is to adjust my expectations as a person with a Western sense of timeline and a tendency towards impatience. It’s hard for me – when sitting down to verb charts or a blank page – to remember that learning isn’t often linear. It’s equally hard to admit feeling lonely and frustrated. I feel sometimes that I have to front like I’m superhuman and don’t have off days. It feels very much like my traveling has come to an end, and I have to learn to be settled.

Recently I’ve turned to this well-worn advice for writers: Revel in the questions. Be less concerned with the answers. Answers are, after all, a matter of growth rather than destination. And even though the results are TBA, I’m cultivating some gratitude for these hard moments as a way to connect more deeply with myself and with others.

Have you ever hit this point? Had these kinds of experiences adjusting to a new lifestyle? I’d love to hear from you – Tweet me @thecowation.

Visual: In the Library

Library books in Dhaka University

Visual: English in Bengali

This sign says 'Friends Builders Limited' - in English, but with Bengali letters

List: House Sounds of Dhaka

I was speaking with a friend living in Oregon about how Bangladesh is right now, and she asked about whether it was quieter here - heavens no! So here's a list of common sounds that I have been hearing in our home in Dhaka:

1. Prayer call at five times during the day (someone recites a Quranic passage over a loudspeaker at 3 different mosques in our local area alone)

2. Crows, crows, crows (cawing mainly in the morning - there are two that we've been particularly fascinated with who seem to be buddies)

3. Constant fans whirring (keeping us semi-cool)

4. Food-sellers yelling their wares from the street

5. Occasional street noise of rickshaw bicycle bells and car horns

6. Other apartment dwellers (since the apartments are so close together - we get screeching babies and the smell of whatever anyone is cooking)

7. A dog howling to the same tune as the morning prayer call; cats fighting in the night

8. Tik-tikis (house geckos) occasionally making their hallmark ticking sound

9. Cooking

The Shortest Path Home

Whenever we have the chance, my father and I dive into philosophical discussion. After dinner, before going to sleep, upon waking up (at the absurdly early time of 5:30am, mind you, because my body is still in time shift). We've been talking a lot about the abstract concept of home.

I've talked about 'home' writ large before - in relation to Asian Americans as a whole and my own South Asian identity. But being in Dhaka makes me want to revisit it yet again.

Visual: Rickshaw Art in Dhaka