10:40pm, late for indian standards, the staff are all sleeping or drinking and i sit in the office with kathrin(german intern). we both are writing to far away people in far away places because the people here dont satisfy. for her there is a boy in mali with whom she is deeply in love and is going to live with in august. for me it is a little bit different.

im having serious issues dealing with a woman on this trip. history is necessary though i want to skip it. for now. i feel as if all this is in my head sometimes. as if ive just drawn battle lines and her and i are at war. i came to the conclusion the other day that my actions towards women are all designed to control them. they manifest differently but the purpose is elicit certain responses and behaviours from women; responses and behaviours that please me.

what does this have to do with the immediate situation? my roomate has become increasingly close friends with jenai and i find that almost unbearable. i feel as if she has given up our friendship for the one she has with jenai. i feel her actions towards me have become hostile and passive agressive. with my roomate behaving as such and my general isolation from the group alot of time with the group is uncomfortable for me. very uncomfortable. along with this persistant itching. and i can no longer control or have the semblance of control over her actions. that is what fundamentally bothers me here. is that a woman over whom ive have no control has now become friends with a woman of whom i had a level of control over and taken her away from me.

away from me. ME. this is an issue of possesion and more so of control. and of competition.

this makes the room uncomfortable this makes talking with her outside the room almost impossible so that there is no wy to develop anything with any sense of continuity.

my mind works really fast, really really fast. i come to conclusions based on assumptions which are total fabrications of reality so that ive painted an insane picture of the social scene here as being entirely aligned against me in less than 6 hours.

that is psychotic. it drives me crazy. really painfully crazy.

i lack the ability to just calm down. to let my mind not focus exclusively on the negative experiences or negative constructions in my mind. the good experiences tend to flow right by. i leave good moments and make bad memories. its funny to realize how much of this is a mental construction of me vs. the outside world.

today i had good exchanges with jenai, brittany, lawrence, larry, andrew, and yumiko not too mention fantastic moments with lata, chicana, samantha(that wasnt fantastic, just nice) jayama, luckama, ruckama, jayama, krishna, gopi, and rageesh. i mean, thats alot. thats alot of good things to leave behind in favour of the bad.

the created battle lines between myself and jenai are self perpetuating. there has been no words exchanged between us of significant air for weeks now. i really need to iniate some type of conversation between us and attempt to just talk with her. i think its possible.

what do i want to talk about? how i feel around her. uncomfortable, forced, painfully aware of everything i do as being disgusted despised and bad, bad, bad. sexist, patriarchal, hierarchal, authoritarian etc etc etc, all the bad words of my recent past are being thrown in my face by the way she makes me feel. its about how she makes me feel...no, its about how we interact...no, its about all of these things? no...there is something i cannot place my finger upon right now. something about how we interact that is contaminated that feels as if it can never be right again.

the battle lines go as far dividing school and play. ive got school, she has play. and because she has it any minute of play that she and I share with the group is painful and i construct what other people think and the whole dynamic of group activities has a life in my head which is fundamentally anti-demetrius and all he stands for. in my head ive been demonized and outcaste; dejected and dislike; alone and isolated from people here is how i feel.

and she gets built up in my mind like some fucking demon whose sole purpose is to exacerbate the tensions between us into full scale combat which in my fantasies ultimately involves me wining through so and so...but i paint her as being ever vigilant of my moves and i feel as if she is observing everything and noting down my transgressions against people to use later as ammunition in the public denunciation.

yeah, fuck.

but i know that these feelings are based strongly in my constructions and assumptions of other peoples thoughts and actions. in other words, im lying to myself about how others feel in order to create an inferiority complex which i can use to put my self up on an imaginary pedestal. upon that pedestal i gain a superiority complex which i use to hold myself above everyone else. that way, not only am i discriminated against but also better than everyone else.

not so fucking healthy, ya?

i dont know what to do. but i think that by putting myself through this questioning things are getting alittle better, now ive just got to start talking.

and to deal with this itching and possible outbreak of hpv. Fuck. that worries me. really worries me.

nternal hierachy. i fall down and keep getting back up. though all around
the hand holds are giving way so i rely on my legs. keep walking through
dirty busy
streets and hoping that ill find what im looking for in sunburn worn
feet and a
city that is filled with beggars bikes and autorickshaws.

my time is almost up so im out, to go back to the group and their
french fry
and cheese sandwhich eating afternoons or their beer drinking evenings im
just going
to lose myself in books and words and thoughts.

one must wonder,
which is worse?

hugs from afar
demetrius

morning time.

i seem to post in the morning alot.

good morning!

ai
d

hm.

so i got in touch with mike. wrote and mailed carrie jay. went to air india, filed complaint and got concrete ticket changing information. finished a paulo friere essay. emailed rents. emailed ise folk. showered. bought figs and those wonderful sesame balls.

the lecturer today, arun sabrahimin, was engaging and challenging. he presented a critical but fully capitalist position. i caught myself feeling overwhelmed by the picture he painted of the world and how capital is everywhere and a relentless beast, ever growing consuming and changing. word to that. but i got over my fear and was like, hey wait a second! capital aint got shit on me!

i mean, it does, but ive got more shit on it. like say fertilizer from the ISE? or sustainble building skills? or growing your own food?

he posed a question, to the critics of globalization, to our group this morning: if not this system, what else? what is your alternative?

that there is no one alternative and there need not be. capitalism functions so amazingly becuase it leaves no room for alternative ideologies to exist; capitalism is a monoculture. it must grow and grow and grow to exist so it has to reach all corners of the world; there need not be an alternative that functions similarly.

its not as simple as that, but as a foundation, i think that sentiment holds up well.

im hungry and the dinner bell rang

rar
ai
demetrius

now i am definately frustrated with the computers. this one, the supposed good one, just froze. really now.

gah.

china is looking to be mad expensive so, im pondering other routes. like through vietnam. i think ive got around 800 to spend and would like to not spend all of it.

i need to hear from mike about ghana.
need to work out the 150 to USFT.
need to know how much $ ive got
owe 50 rupee to yumiko, 30 to das, and 20 to jon

i think that might be all the jazz wieghing on my brain sans jenai. talking is proving harder than i thought

pirates and ninjas and cleave, oh my!

last night was a pirates vs. ninjas theme party. quite fun quite fun.. i was a pirate, of course. though it was a hard decision to make, cause ninjas are really fucking cool too.

but the lighter stuff aside its 940am. april 15th and i had no real valentine last night though the tension between jenai and i seems to have cooled. smiles.

reading. 1984. woman at point zero. god of small things. three penny opera. modern chinese fiction. paulo friere. david eddings. hannah arendt. june jordan. and all the readings for class. so much stuff

writing not so much not as much as id like im finding that at times im afraid of the pen or more so afraid of the reader - silly, write? its like talking. just talking to a friend or many friends or more its just expressing your thoughts on paper with the end goal of honest accounting of your experiences. talking like you write, if you could write like you talk mrs b would say that to me. way too often for comfort, no i think she only said it once which makes it stick much more solidly. how it oh so often sticks in my head is what bothers.

or eating that chocolate bar at mikes sleep over. that bothers me too. or when i used to stare at linzy fakes tits and brandon called me on it.

those little things haunt my memory and just reply over and over again. non stop midnight showings of flicks from memory.

free admission.

ai
demetrius

woah

so, just say fuck it? that would be the words of advice from kathrin. I might take them. I need to talk with jenai and then nicole and just calmly see if i can work to ease some tension that exists between me and jenai

singing songs is wonderful. and boy do i ever love learning them

gah gah gah

do i even have much to say?

maybe i think it would be best to write another letter to carrie. necessary. and i wonder if she has written back. i got a letter from leora, so i wonder...i wonder quite a bit.

to begin and maintain active correspondence. swankiness.

just wasting words cause i cant seem to generate much other fantasticness right -- but wait

so dinner at johns place? or maybe just boiled vegetables? eww vomit? im sorry but thats nasty especially when the kitchen has such infinite potential for deliciousness. fuck all that whining around food. pieces of shit. so tonight we eat out and then what? who knows, but we will find out. .

hm the possibility of discovery, does somewhat perturb me but honesty is honesty and i practice infinite patience daily.

to give thoughts to final projects and money owed to letter writing and journalling and inspiring my self to sing songs. to "challenging is good" - yumiko. what i really miss is nothing.

thankfully. im going to go read write and dream.

maybe more substence next time.

whaka pow!

ai
demetrius

today was a good day.

music is such an eternally beautifully form of communication. songs and movement and the slow learning process of humility. i think im learning something.

bhajans are beautiful rounds of song. ash, today is ash wednesday. i would of never given it second though or even remembered if it wasnt for caroline and her bringing ash to bhajan.

ash. just what ashi is. ash from fire, the fire that heated our bath water. fire, consumes yet fuels. it can bring great pain or great joy. and fire burns fuel. ash is whats left of the fuel - what cant be burnt or the pure essence of what was burned.

what was left behind, the process of leaving behind of letting go and just breathing. but there is intent in this breath. there is purpose. there is a reason and a goal, a very clear goal. to let go and move on from what was and what i was to let go to back off to let it drop to the ground so that i may be ok.

is this question on going? do i not answer it? am afraid?

how do i feel today?

great. a bit lighter even.

i really hate my roommate right now. nicole is her name. and i hate her right now.



and i really hate how personal a roommate is and how you could not seperate yourself from that attachment as most attachments due to the deeply personal nature of the attachment, you sleep in the same place, shit on the same pot and stand naked on the same tile daily. the connection there is naked and strong, giving it overly undue wieght on your mindset. so that roommate conflict fucking blows because it reaches everywhere in your life

and when you are living with 10 people 24 hrs a day in a foriegn country they are everywhere and avioding them is hard and futile, so you dont even try to do it and then they are just everywhere.

distraction comes as your best weapon and that fails at points when the tension is present when they play music in the same room as you and you just sit there and create a stronger feeling of anger and rage at them because you are sure that they are doing it just to get at your nerves and when they play bjork and then sing along - all you really want to is get a new roommate or live alone, but that would not accomplish much at all.

so you breathe and accept the reality that you are faced with. because as much as it sucks, you dont seem to have many recourses sans conflict resolution though you are not trained in it.

smash crash boom bash fuck kill maim or just avoid but you cant seem to do that either, so maybe you'll just go and take a nap or read a book cause being here does not make you feel any better.

a totally different reality indeed.

alot. like a couple dozen lakhs of dump trucks dumping emotion, reality, experience, challenges, and hot sweet black tea on me all at once.

im loving it.

though challenged. a spot perturbed withmyself for not being up on silly things, like daily bouts of sweating to maintain my sexiness or only going to yoga every other day, not daily. or my fucking roomate who is turning out to be the biggest challenge her - except for the fact that i cant yet relate to larry or emily(black & republican respectively) feeling really fucking lost when it comes to those two, though larry and i both enjoy a bit of green now and then so that is working; emily im totally lost, kind of...we will see.

so, dropping pretension is hard, being honest too, not letting the fact that most kids in the group dont speak in lectures keep me from speaking and engaging the lectures, but then is that just a manifestation of privilege(economic and race and gender)? which im not actively destroying or is it a product of experience and preparation - because i did spend a shit of time this semester researching this country and ive been exposed to critical traditions for a few years and i lack the fear of being/saying something stupid - whatever it is - this trip is manifesting into a spot more of a personal challenge - how i relate to people as somewhat of a dominant theme - for example: lata, beautiful girl who works in the kitchen, there is no concept of casual anything here, so any intimacy without marriage is more or less out the question, but she can help me learn kannada(local language) and i can teach her english - alternate connection established, but shiiiiiiit putting away the hormones is not like putting away legos.

eastern religions fun fun fun. liberation struggles of the dalits/untouchable. critical analysis of gandhi and hinduism, someone who claims that islam can be liberal, all sorts of positions to dissect and digest and then throw their shit right back at them. the painfully obvious lack of any spirituality in the west and the glaring nature of it here, gaudy even but the power of ritual moves me and i tend to really enjoy getting coconut oil thrown on my head along with kokum?(red powder) to watch rituals that are alive and somewhat meaningful makes me really wonder about rituals that i engage in on a daily basis, introspective self analysis competes with ten page papers that must be written and shit all id like to do is chat and cook and make friends with villagers but thats not an option - i think we are doing something tomorrow that involves the exploitation of animals - woooooooo. what an enlightening perspective. i might just not go.


i love that i am not just a source of prospective and sarcasm but tension as well.

swanky. to think that people think about lil ole me when im far far away is such a wonderfulthang.

ahhhh i smell food cooking im going to go bother the kitchen staff - not just staff but lata, jayama, luckama, gopi, ruckama, lunama, lewis and little jayama - and have them teach me things i dont know.

things are wonderful here. but not in that rosy, easy going, glowing sort of way; in the mryiad of ways to follow: challenging thoughts from lectures, historical knowledge, various different viewpoints about religion & history, learning about liberation struggles of the dalits(untouchables oppressed by the caste system), screaming to myself: why the fuck are the kids im with not saying anything in class?, being angry at my roomate and then frustrated with myself for getting angry, indian food morning noon and night, new languages and wanting to speak them fluently without any hesitation, challenge the way i relate to situations[challenging my competitive response to everything(people, places, things)] learning to cook indian food; gender barries - like trenches in wartime, if im in the kitchen i almost constantly am being asked to leave by some of the women who work there; its frustrating then to see few examples of women involved in different roles and on the flip side all i see the men doing is drinking tea, bullshitting about politics etc, and not having the same sense of solidarity that i see among women here; the most frustrating part of this is there is no room to be "hey. well my gender is progressive, so when you through me into a situation where the men definately are one thing and the women definately are another thing i feel like a fish."

early morning india.

birds puddles big leaves smacking the ground sunshine drifting in through the window making the bed peeing dressing grabbing notebook, journal, reader and checking my pocket for pens out the door and over to the veranda for tea with sugar.

the newspapers arrive the breakfast bell rings tea is drunk coffee is downed water poured and coconut chutney mopped upped with dosas.