friendship

what kind of a friend am i? what do i value in a friend? i am not sure, but this week i got a chance to reflect on this. i wish this post was just a list of qualities that i look for in friendship but its more complicated than that and quite hard to write.

do i fight with those closest to me more than others? do i tolerate more in them and at the same time have more expectations of them? am i always my best self in relationships and when are those times that i cannot really be authentic or kind in relationships? several questions many of us ask ourselves.

several years ago just before me and a very close friend were both on the brink of surgeries we  got into a deep conflict that created a rift between us for a very long time. i remember feeling very hurt by her and i talked of the experience to another common friend. i had forgotten that i had spoken about it at all and cannot remember what i said but i probably spoke from an angry and hurt place and my words must have been unpleasant. this week in a conversation with the friend who i had been in conflict with i learnt  that though the common friend asked her about this conflict she understood even then that i had spoken in pain and she herself did not say anything at all about me or the conflict. she was a better friend to me then than i knew how to be and she modelled to me a quality i would like to see in myself as a friend. she gave me this gift then and this week i think this memory was given to me at a time when i am in the midst of another conflict with a friend to help me perhaps be the best i can be?

i had been trying to connect with a friend all week and felt her evading it. finally when she agreed to meet me i wasn't even sure i wanted to, so hurt i was with the double signals she had given me this week and for a while before. but i wanted to ask her about it and so we met. it was hard to do but i brought it up and she said it was true and that she felt meeting me was heavy and draining and she would like to not meet me anymore. i was stunned for several reasons - but i tried to listen to her experience. she said i had been very negative for a while and while i accepted some of it as true - thinking back to this year with the loss of two loved pets, one aborted move, a feeling of being betrayed and cheated by the agent, anxiety about my daughter who was in a foreign country with a severe kidney infection, worry about my mother who suffered from several chronic pains and who was also depressed because recovery was slow and my own chronic and confusing back injury  - i also  actually knew that i been feeling a fair amount of optimism for several months. as i listened there came a point when she spoke of me being negative during a time when i knew i had been feeling the happiest i had felt in a while - i knew then that what she said was not all just about me but came partly from her own processes. but i could also see that she felt burdened by what she thought was my negativity. i walked away giving her the space from me she needed and giving myself the time to let my pain cool.

i struggled with my hurt and anger. i struggled with the worry i felt for her. i struggled with wanting to just tell her off and with holding back. i struggled with the choked feelings and memories. i struggled with her weaknesses and my own and mostly i struggled with integrating the memory of my other friend who who had understood that my actions came from pain then and i tried to act from my best self now. i really struggled with being a good friend to her as my friend had been to me those many years ago. but in the end i just walked away.

even as i thought long about the friendship and felt tears filling my eyes in the dark when i was just falling asleep. i also thought long about why now? why had i not brought this up earlier during all the time i had been feeling that something was wrong and disconnected between us.

the years events had left me drained too and i was not really myself for a while. i know that the beginning of this year had taken away from me the ability to trust my instincts and act authentically. somewhere in the end of august as i was completely drenched in an unexpected rain shower, just as i was walking back from a painful session with my physiotherapist, the day before my birthday, i felt the shock of thunder in my body. the relentless thundering of the demolition next door rattled and shook the very flesh from my bones and finally after the fall in bombay where i re-injured a back that i felt  was on it's way to healing i felt more fragile than ever. i felt pruned down to my last resources but it  also brought me to my obscured core again. and then the time with my mother, sister and some loved friends who found a way to spend time with me, during my short mostly housebound visit, revitalised the blood in my spirit veins. i came back finally able to trust my instincts and speak from them again.

i am still struggling with being a good friend. but now in half an hour i can leave for the airport and hug my daughter again. she returns today and yesterday afternoon right on time to really enjoy this week with her i finished the last scene in my second draft and sent it off to my two readers, vandana and tamara, who have given me the gift of their time, attention and feedback. i cannot enough express my gratitude. my first writing effort, my first readers. thank you both. an unexpected third reader also emerged who knows me so well and pointed to me how the book expressed parts of me. thank you monica. 

this has been one of the hardest posts i have written. perhaps because i am still in the middle of it all. i think i am a good or a bad friend depending on many factors. i think what i value in a friend is what i value in myself. i think i want to be a better person and friend. i think this year of the snake has peeled off yet another layer of my skin.

loss

i should really be finishing up the last scenes on the second draft of my novel. i might have said this before - this second draft probably is more like what an experienced writers first one would be. but thats ok. we all have to start someplace. and my two readers have given me amazing feedback which i hope i can integrate and have a much better third draft. i have a goal of finishing this draft before shibble arrives on sunday and with only 8 scenes to go i can see that happening. and once she comes there is much work to do together on a goal be both share.

but on this windy, thundery day i cannot really focus on that. so i am dropping out of my schedule and taking time to stare. the grey sky i see through the rain-spotted window pane suits me today. it allows my pensive mood in a way a sunny day would not. I am sad. we in our iogkf singapore dojo said farewell to our sensei last evening. 

i met sensei five years ago when i moved here. in the beginning the only constant and structure in my life here was the dojo. my growth path in karate was shaped a lot by the two sensei's in this singy dojo. it is a big loss. 

loss sweeps in change, sometimes before we are ready for it. it is a time to really gather the self, face those fears and insecurities and hopefully take a leap into the future. we have an amazing group of students committed in different ways to learning goju. there are many resources within the group to tap into. i am excited to see what will develop. but sometimes i also get nervous.

i guess for me it is time to step more fully into my authentic self. i am who i am and if i have the courage to just be with all my weaknesses and gaps in knowledge - i must trust that things around me will fall into place. the fears themselves will become a reason to dig deeper and find my own way through. the supports i need will manifest. the inner growth will continue and what i have learnt, about karate and about life, will form within me and will find a way to express itself and be useful to others. 

ultimately each step takes me to the naked core. the me without masks. i feel like standing open armed,  under the falling rain and inviting in new life. 

a short post after a short trip to what is and is not home

i returned from bombay yesterday. a very short - just a week - trip.

entry into bombay was hard for me this time. very hard. i couldn't get it out of my head that a young woman had been gang raped in a city i had felt safe in until then. on my way home from the airport my eyes constantly scanned the people along the roads. whenever i saw a group of men in the age group the rapists were i wondered what they were doing hanging around on the streets. it took me a few days to feel connected to the city again and want to call it home.

i returned with an increasing sense that i don't know where on earth home is for me.

it is bombay and it is not.

it is singapore and it is not.

increasingly i feel more at home in the novel i am writing. the second draft is less skeletal than the first but still it feels more like bare bones with parts of skin. no musculature or organs yet. some veins pulsing with blood but the heart that pumps it through still a bit ghostly.

i feel like i am searching for that spot on earth where my sacred tree is. it is tattooed on my left upper arm. it emerged in the body symptom work with the repeated back injury. but it is also lost to me. like laxmi seems to have lost her owl and parvati her tiger. an idea for a story emerges softly. a whisper of that which is missing in the novel circles my ears in a gentle breeze and moves on.

there is also a lightening bolt tattooed on that arm. the bringer of rain and life. may we all find what we seek. may we also be able to see what we find instead and love it. 

wizpert? and other bites

Its raining in cold, grey, relentless sheets. Visibility is impaired. But today I find it relaxing. I don't have to get out till later in the day when hopefully the rain will have spent itself. Right now the wind is howling, a dull low continuous sound with an occasional high pitched wail. I imagine I am in a tower surrounded by lapping waves, alone with the wind and rain. That feels good.

About two weeks ago I got an email from, Micheal W., founder of something called wizpert. This is how Micheal described wizpert -

'our platform, called Wizpert, is a fast growing community of experts, where users seek advice and coaching on an array of topics, including relationships, friendships, parenting, social media and more.'

The email invited me to join the community of experts based on my blog posts. I was flattered that my blog posts seem to contain some knowledge that made me an expert on something but I was also skeptical. Random ramblings cannot possibly give anyone the sense that I am an expert at anything. Besides, the word expert itself is something I have reactions to. Anyway I went ahead and checked out the link and it seemed to be an interesting idea on some levels and disturbed me on others. 

I liked that idea of a community that was linked through cyberspace that one could go to to find someone to talk to. I didn't like the idea that there would be experts that might advice the person on their issues. I don't believe in advice, especially when offered to a stranger that I might have talked/listened to for few minutes or even an hour. On the other hand I do believe that open conversations that explore a persons problem can lead them to finding temporary relief from the worst turbulence of the problem and so putting them in a space to think clearly. I believe that such exploration then can lead a person to find their own solutions. I loved the thought of spontaneous chats with people from different parts of the world. When people talk about their problems they are more open about themselves and the conversation is more than just surface deep. That was exciting. But the idea of being approached as an expert did not really make sense. 

Maybe its a problem with me owning my own inner expert. In any case I did not follow through with it but yet the idea does have some appeal for me and floats on the edges of my thoughts.

The winds howling has changed as I have been writing. Its more urgent, wilder, faster. I like the sound.

I am grappling with finding the heart of my story yet. Part of me does not want to write till I find it and another wants to keep going and trusts that the process will lead me to it. Part of me is overwhelmed today with the idea of writing a book and wonders why I did not start with short stories. They are quicker, you can finish one and send it out and keep going. But a long story is my basic form. Part of me is scared that I will never get it right. While another just wants to tell a story. I just like telling stories and have a person want to know 'and then what happened?'

Many other things are floating around today. Few that are making me sad.  Somethings that make me question my path. An email conversation that made me happy. Another incident that made me hope. Glimmers of that path hidden under the sheets of rain. Its a good day to be alive.

mostly tangled wires

its very frustrating when you have something to say but the words just don't fall together in lines that make sense. I had a sort of mini eureka moment this morning.

Some people have eureka moments in the shower. I often have mine on the treadmill. I am not a runner. I only run so I have good stamina to do karate. Just 30 minutes, nice and easy. Like many people do, I too used to prefer running outdoors but rain drove me into the gym one morning and I found I loved the treadmill. If I am outdoors my attention is very outward focused - making sure I don't trip or bump into someone. But, when I run indoors I can have an inward attention and chaotic things in my head begin to form intelligent patterns, restless emotions run with me and are spent and sometimes I just follow my breath and it becomes a moving meditation.

This morning I was thinking of my dream from last night, an email I had read in the morning from a friend who is helping me by giving me feedback on my fiction draft and a couple of things a young Chinese-American writer said about his own writing that resonated with me. 

On weds I went to a session organised by READ at the NLB and listened to Ken Liu talking mostly about his short story 'The Paper Menagerie'. Two of the things he said remained long with me. He said he wrote the story to express something that he felt was missing from the experience of stories out there and he advised asian writers trying to write fantasy, a market hard to break into for non-anglo writers, to write the story they can write and not write to a market. I feel my own motivation for writing is similar - i write to the gaps in my world and I write stories that are mine to tell. Ken Lui's story are very much his, they are like moving soul breath. But as I thought more I felt a bit depressed. I felt that somewhere I had lost touch with the heart of my story and I needed to step a bit out of it to find it. Strange that, to step away from something to find the essence of it? or perhaps not that strange.

I woke remembering a dream. 

'i was telling a friend of mine that I was ready to start playing publicly (in the dream i played a stringed instrument - it wasn't a sitar which i used to study, nor a guitar or any i am familiar with). so he set me up to meet an agent. i got cold feet and felt i wasn't ready. i was still learning the skills and he would know that i was a 'fake'. so i didn't take my instrument with me in case he wanted to hear. i saw he was a young man i vaguely knew and he said 'i was hoping that it was you - the woman with the good voice.' i felt flattered and confused. i played an instrument not sang.'

And then I read the email from my friend who among other things encouraged me to bring my own unique voice into the writing. 

And here is where the words are still not expressing what I want to say.

I went to the gym confused about why I felt more raw about sharing my fantasy story, something I had made up, than I had sharing my memory, something so deeply personal. While running - I also realised that I had more trouble handling criticism of 'what I did' but could easily shrug off criticism about 'who I was.' 

Hmm, if I can handle criticism of 'who I am' then I must have a strong core? Actually I do believe in 'who i am' even when paradoxically I have forgotten 'who I am' for I genuinely believe that forgetting and re-discovering is the core of 'who I am' anyway. That's what the young agent from my dream liked I think. And 'what I do', I often feel inadequate. I question my own skills and when someone is critical I can feel very vulnerable and even defensive. Yet, If someone attacks me at my core I am ok. 

If I am comfortable with 'who I am' then why shouldn't I be ok with 'what I do'? However unformed or bad it maybe? New learning, new skills take time to perfect and do need critical self-analysis and feedback to improve. While 'who I am' is perfect. That's what so many spiritual traditions also say - we are all perfect just the way we are.

It sort of makes sense and it's sort of still like dangling wires waiting to connect. I need to get back on the treadmill.