pardon the messiness as i reorganize

see the old blog here: www.jillm.com/india

everything is a dream
and it’s moving fast
oh it’s hard to hand the present over to the past
so i don’t know where to start
cuz i fear the end
and all this transition into ‘remember when’

every day is sailing by
drinks you dry
but you’re balancing the world
it never fails you’re last in line
by design
so you’re balancing the world
all alone

sometimes it’s hard to see
when our cheeks are wet
and the storms inside our hearts won’t let our heads forget
that this is part of a life
a chapter in the book
that’s where one day we’ll sit back down and take a look

every day is sailing by
drinks you dry
but you’re balancing the world
it never fails you’re last in line
by design
‘cuz you’re balancing the world
all alone
all alone

oh but you are not alone
you are not alone
no no
you are not alone
no no

oh no where to now
your life’s turned upside down
it stings
standing in between
the world and everything it brings

you are not alone
you are not alone
you are not alone, etc.

disclaimer: the following passages may need to be read several times to understand the intent, enjoy the carefully crafted personification, and relish in the meaning…
sometimes, words are truly beautiful.

sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. it happens to nearly everyone. you can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. it is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. the skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. its beginning has the pleasure of a great-stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. a man may have lived all his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. the events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. and then-the glory- so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. and i guess a man’s importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. it is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. it is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men…

it is true that two men can lift a bigger stone than one man. a group can build automobiles quicker and better than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform. when our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking. in our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea of God. this in time ins the danger. there is great tension in the world, tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused.

at such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions.
what do i believe in? what might i fight for and what must i fight against?

our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. nothing was ever created by two men. there are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. once the miracles of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. the preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.

and now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. by disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammer blows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. it is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.

and this i believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. and this i would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. and this i must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. this is what i am and what i am about. i can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. surely i can understand this, and i hate it and i will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beast.
if the glory can be killed, we are lost. [133-134]

the transition seems to be much easier than i anticipated, though there were some funny things that unexpectedly caught my attention…
+i’ve been used to tuning everything out in hindi and perking my ears when i heard a familiar english conversation. suddenly being able to understand everything around me is exhausting me!
+wedding rings, we didn’t have them in india.
+starbucks…i think there were 29 in chicago’s airport.
+women wear jeans and their shirts don’t always cover their backsides. in fact, they don’t really cover much at all.
+men are no longer smaller than i am, but big and tall. did i mention big?
+i can flush toilet paper now. i keep forgetting.
+i no longer have to plan ahead for my showers to heat up the water. it is always instantly ready to pour out of the faucet piping hot.
+i tried to watch tv on one of my way-too-early-to-be-up-time zone-adjusting mornings and i couldn’t figure it out. technology is way complicated.
+tap water is safe to not only cook with, but also to drink.
+ice cubes…how i’ve missed you!
+i have yet to use the microwave. i keep forgetting about it.
+my closet holds more than 5 outfits and shoes i didn’t remember having. my sisters should have raided it before i returned as i probably wouldn’t have known.

i’ve also discovered a weird phenomena…people who have been reading this website, have been connected to me for the past year. it’s as if, to them, i haven’t been gone a year, but they’ve been journeying with me. although i greatly appreciate this interest and their enjoyment of the adventure, i, on the other hand, often have no idea what has gone on in their lives. the internet really is a bizarre thing. it seems my catching-up time has been spent more hearing of their happenings and less of telling mine. no worries, though. i don’t know yet what i would say anyways.

i’ve been home in kansas only a week now, but in a strange way which i cannot yet understand, it feels as if i never left. i know, you’re thinking. how can that be? i honestly don’t know. i dropped my luggage in my room and looked around. it looks just as i left it. my usual walk around the neighborhood proves the same truth. not much really changed. i hop in the car to meet a friend for wine and hummus, driving the same roads which took me to work every day. i roll the window down and turn the music up. my arm finds its way out of my window and assumes its natural position of dancing with the wind. i haven’t put my arm out of a moving vehicle in a year for fear of losing it. it’s just as wonderful as i remembered it. i sit here, typing at my wooden desk and upon my old studio chair, thinking… was this past year a dream? i glance up to the calender on the wall…
august 2006 still reads across its pages.
hmmm…. i guess it really happened.

let’s see…

…sunday in hong kong with corey…

see photo sets here and here

…monday in delhi with eMi friends…

see photo set here

…tuesday in kansas with my family for a funeral.

the rest of the week has seemed rather boring.
i think i’m okay with that.

getting caught up with sleep and sorting…
please interrupt me for talks, walks, and coffees!
[same old cell phone number...let me know if you need it]