Knee Pain Sucks and A Few Other Thoughts

January 30, 2025

            Except for a day or two over the last tenday my mind has been occupied 80% of the time with knee pain. The pain began on the first Sunday in January after our second karate training of the year and has gone up and down since. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the pain has taken over 50% of my thoughts for the entire month; I’m constantly worrying about the cause and long-term effects of the pain. 

            In between life has gone on but the quality of it has felt diminished. I have heard people with chronic pain say this.

            Every morning as I sit on my cluttered desk, I have been thinking about the fascist mindset I mentioned last week. I have spent a fair amount of my faffing time reading comments by Hindu right extremists on articles by independent media. I got pulled into in two conversations. One about how patriarchal, hierarchical, exclusionist, anti-women and minorities, the extreme right ideology is. Well, the conversation wasn’t framed that way. It was more a debate about the constitution and the religious book that fascists would want to adopt instead of the constitution. I wanted to know what followers of the ideology felt was good about the book they wanted to base the running of India on. Of course, none of them could answer. The only responses were denial about parts of it (who says the book is anti-women), that it was part of the golden age of Hindu culture and we need to bring that back, or the person would suddenly begin talking about Sharia law or the way the Taliban treat women and ask me to defend it—why I don’t know since I only was talking about the values enshrined in our constitution. The second conversation was about the current need of right-wing Hindus to dig under all the mosques in India which were supposedly built over temples the Mughal invaders destroyed. It meant challenging The Places of Worship Act which was put in place to prevent this sort of endless quest to squabble about whether a mosque should be demolished to establish a temple—doing this of course is a way of showing Muslims their true place in our supposed democracy.  The main arguments there were that Hindus felt a violence was done to them 1000 years ago that has prevented them from expressing their culture even today (this in a country that is 80% Hindu), and that I was self-loathing (I was called that three times by the same person) because I didn’t want to dig up most of India to find temples instead of progressing forward. For them there was no forward progress without this digging. There were no answers to my question about other ways to strengthen our culture besides breaking down mosques and building temples. No answers at all to the fact how this kind of violence would affect both harmony and socio-economic progress. 

            So, I hit walls but what I did understand is that extremism works on the idea of inequality, not just between one group and another but also within the favoured group in which was easy for me (an outsider) to see that there are a few leaders and millions of followers, and that the followers do not know that they are mere minions but feel powerful mouthing the ideas of the few leaders. I don’t understand how they cannot see that they are worshippers and not creators of original thought. I see these dynamics in conversations on fb posts of my American friends—it is the same even when it might seem different. Maybe this attempt to study it is for me a way of staying detached from the pain it brings. For it brings an immense feeling that this is not the world I want to wake up to daily.

            This week after the knee pain got to a 15+++ level I frantically sought help. I met an orthopedic surgeon and got an MRI. Surprisingly on the day I got the MRI my pain level was down to a 3 and I joked that it was a variation of Murphy’s law that once one takes steps to MRI the painful joint it makes you doubt your decision by being almost normal. Anyway, the pain is back at an 8 today so I am glad I got that MRI. This time the weird noises of the MRI lulled me into calm, it felt like ‘me time’ to lie there—the last time I had an MRI the noise was a racket that drove me insane and all I could think of was, when will it stop, when will it stop. This time I had the insight that the need to know this pain came from something I often threw around, sometimes in deep seriousness and sometimes flippantly, that I want to do karate until the day I die. I realized I do, and I want to know how to care for my joints well, and to know the stupid things I should avoid as I age so that they will support my wish to do karate until my dying day. This from a person who still doesn’t identity as a martial arts nerd makes me wonder where it comes from. It is things like this that make me feel like I don't know who I am anymore.

            I am contemplating what else I want to do until I die. What do you want to do until the day you die? 

Lying with my legs under the domed tunnel with displays flashing I also began pondering—is it better to live like you have only one year to live, which means you complete your bucket list, and be spontaneous as you live in the moment not necessarily thinking of the state of the world, or is it better to live like you might live forever, which to me meant focus more on growth and learning, and building better relationships, and structures.

I seem to have swung from being too hermit-ty to overfilling my calendar and am suffering from the overexposure to the external that is so exhausting to introverts. Balance.

I see the ortho later today to hear what he thinks of the state of my right knee and ankle. Wish me luck!

Dreams, Oppressors, Habits and other Misc.

January 22, 2025

            Not much has changed in this week, still doing the same old stuff and hearing the same old news nationally and internationally from last week. My dreams have changed though—I’m dreaming of groups of people, rebels, fighting an oppressive regime. Almost always overpowered but never giving up. I guess the dreams make sense in relation to the external world—with Tru-sk installed and the type of executive orders that were passed on the first days of holding power. With the far right rising in many parts of the world it feels important to counter this force, but I cannot (yet) occupy the mental space of a fascist and feel handicapped by that as I’m not sure how one can one truly fight something one hasn’t understood and experienced from the inside. 

            Tru-sk is the news in the USA, but even independent u-tubers in India covered so many aspects of what this would mean for India and the world.  Rahul Gandhi calling the statements of the fascist leader of an extreme Hindu party seditious stayed in the news here for a while, with some filing cases against Gandhi and others saying he had no right to make any statements considering what his family had done. If that latter thought had come from a troll I would not have paid attention to it but it came from a respected journalist and I found the argument devoid of logic (are you bound to be silent because of the deeds of your ancestors?) as I did some other statements that the writer made. Basically, strong moves were made to protect the fascist leader which is not surprising since the organization he belongs to has been both cultivating hate (mostly against Muslims but also against lower castes and liberals) and spreading false news for decades now. Many say Gandhi needs to change his politics for what he focuses on will not gain him electoral advantage, but I am glad he says what he does. It is true that the issues he picks up are unlikely to get him votes but they are important issues that face the country, but that nobody speaks of, and in that he speaks into forgotten spaces that need attention but are ignored, and the silences of which help rich elite and other leeches prey on the middle and lower classes. I’m not sure he would be great in governing the country (though I feel that anyone might be better than the current incompetent tyrants) but I do see him as a person with humanity and leadership. He speaks for many of us with the issues he raises.

And internally the oppressors and the rebels both are parts of me. Yesterday I drew them. Three oppressors large and imposing, two little rebel figures. I named the oppressors self-doubt, health and pain, daily exhaustion (other days they might have different names). The two rebels were not on the same wavelength though they fought as one. One was labelled ‘I can do it’ (fight the oppressors) and the other ‘I can’t do it’. I suppose we all feel that on some days. That we cannot fight the oppressors—external or internal. I began to realize that one of the reasons I was having such a hard time with my oppressors is that I have withdrawn very deeply from society and being part of it was part of where I sourced my spirit. I need to find balance.

What karate means to me has been on my mind since our annual dojo dinner last weekend—beginning with reflections about the past year I also slipped into the rabbit hole of karate memories from the beginning, the middle, and the ongoing. About an hour ago I saw a friend’s status about the practice of budo. One of the things it mentioned was that it should be practiced for short periods and allowed to accumulate through the day. This reminded me of what one of my teachers had said to me about karate. He had said that for him karate being a way of life meant that you practiced it daily and throughout the day, a bit in the mornings, afternoons, and evenings. What he said had struck me and made me dig deeper into both the things I do morning, afternoon, and evening, and what for me made something a way of life. My list included transferring the essence of what the practice meant to me into every other aspect of my life and in the process understanding myself deeply and transforming myself. Though I have often heard people say that martial arts had changed their lives I questioned that in myself—had it changed mine? Often the answer was ‘no’ or ‘maybe’ and that I was who I was with or without it. But lately I see that indeed it has in many ways that I hadn’t realized before. I mean discipline, perseverance are common things that you hear people say that martial arts bring, but for me I wondered if they came from the practice or just from who I wanted to be. Yet there are things that I see have come only from the practice and were not part of my personality growing up—one of these is finishing things. Throughout my life I have left things unfinished, mostly because they felt too easy and I lost interest, or because they were too hard, and I needed a teacher to learn them but couldn’t find a good one. Karate has been hard, and I often have had to learn without a teacher; and this is why karate is where the habit of just showing up without questioning the process has built up. I know places in my life right now, things that I feel I want to give up in, that could benefit from this habit of just showing up. 

Watching the tress outside my window is a way of life for me. I do it every day, morning, afternoon, evening, and at night I watch their silhouettes in the moonlight or the light from being in the midst of a city. 

What makes something a way of life for you? What do you do daily and throughout the day?

The World We Want to Live In?

January 16, 2025

            This morning the sun was ‘properly’ out for the first time since Friday. Sunlight warmed the white sheets on my bed and my bare feet bringing some relief to my aching knees. It’s still a very slow time externally. My mind is still hectic, my dreams chaotic, but I like the lazy pace of most of my days. I am lost and drifty and my dream activity points to something more within. I dream of being at airports and arriving at the boarding gate, after wandering for a while through arcades and theme park rides, and finding that I’ve lost or misplaced my boarding pass. I have my passport, unlike the phase when I used to dream of being in a foreign country without a passport and money. I suppose this is a shift? A part of my identity less nebulous but perhaps what I need to get to my next destination is still missing. I also dream of people partying and then finding themselves in a drunken state, or in a hospital with spine or other bone fractures. Feels like an unpleasant warning of some sort and I am trying to decide what the ‘partying’ is a metaphor for in my life. It feels like there are deeper anxieties that I don’t want to touch? I think because a lot of them are out of my control to change.

            Yes there is enough on the personal level that is worry producing but the state of the world, the future of the world, suddenly feels more uncertain than before (though I did read about the ceasefire between Hamas and Isreal and am eager to know more). India, besides having a ton of problems related to employment, poverty, economics, is going through a conflict of ideologies and not many whose voices will be broadcast and heard, and not many ordinary citizens either whose voices are unlikely to be heard, are speaking about it. For a while now a starlet (as she was called by a reporter) has been saying that India only got independence after 2014, when Modi came to power. She blasts her opinions around a lot but she is of little consequence and people know she makes such statements to butter up the Modi crowd and many have ignored her. But two days ago, the head of a fascist far right religious organization claimed that we got true/real freedom only once a Ram Temple had been consecrated last year. He claimed we might have got political freedom in 1947 but not until last year could Hindus truly be themselves. The temple was built on the ruins of not just a mosque but on the wreckage, on the beginnings of dismantling the secular, democratic, country I love. This man regularly propagates the idea that India is for Hindu’s and should be a Hindu state, with separate laws for minorities and lowered privileges for lower castes and women – though the latter is not yet uttered aloud, but is obvious for anyone who can think. The man has forgotten that without the political freedom that he and his organization do not respect he could never have demolished the mosque and built the temple. And people don’t seem bothered by what he said though it is an insult to all the freedom fighters who got us independence from the British is 1947 and is also another nudge towards directing us to being a Hindu state. 

            Yesterday, the much maligned, the much joked about and trolled Rahul Gandhi, leader of the opposition in Parliament, said that what the man uttered was treason and, in another country, he would have been jailed. He was speaking at the new office of his party, the party from which many our freedom fighters came, and the party which formed our first government and have been endlessly cursed and condemned for the mistakes they made. Gandhi or RaGa as the trolls have named him was attacked by people from the ruling party, journalists (some who think themselves neutral and clear thinking reporters), and of course trolls who said it is he who should be arrested. Most people laugh at him and urge him to take up issues more important to the people. Most people are oblivious to what the fascist head said or what RaGa said. Most people are not talking about this, while I feel that every street corner should be hosting debates about it. The very nature of our country is being changed, the idea that India is for Hindus is introduced daily in small doses, that normalizes it. I guess this is one reason I don’t feel like going home anymore. I mean what am I supposed to talk about with people I meet when the thing uppermost on my mind is this dismantling of democracy. Shouldn’t we all talk incessantly about the world we want to live in, or should we merely live our small joys and let others decide our the larger landscapes and rules we live in and by. 

            Last night I listened a debate in which Rahul was dismissed and labelled as a ‘bad’ leader of the opposition. It was depressing but today I watched a debate in which the participants though outraged were glad that these discussions were now out in the open and that people could talk about, analyze, and form their own judgments. I wish I shared their hope but I feel deeply anguished. With Trump-Musk now holding the kind of power they do the future feels so, so, so unsettled, though I do try to remind myself that ‘this too shall pass’. 

            These thoughts fill up my head and leave little space for ‘creativity’, I feel no urge to write or draw, though I continue to read a fair amount. I notice a desire—to start a podcast to rant about the socio-political things that bother me. I have observed that my sugar urges have lessened, as have my obsessive need to buy a new pen. I didn’t try to stop either, only noted when I had the urges and the mood and circumstances I was in when I felt them and one day they shifted. This is my belief about inner change. You can’t bring it on with discipline but with awareness. I thought I would be writing about the last book I read that impacted me strongly but something else pushed that aside. 

Stories

January 8, 2025

Last year I was most dissatisfied with my writing, but I couldn’t narrow down exactly what I was dissatisfied with. I was able to write in scene, create conflict and characters, plot out a piece of work etc. but the sense that there was something more nagged at me but it was one of those things that I didn’t know how to search for and it was such a ‘busy’ year that I didn’t focus too much energy on figuring it out. I drifted through the year that, as I wrote last week, felt like one of the most meaningless years of my life. I see now that one of the threads in the year was about allowing my head to find its acceptance of the aging body, something that I and possibly many of us don’t gracefully embrace. But this is not what I came here to say today. 

            Last month I did a creative writing course that opened the door to understanding this dissatisfaction I had felt with my writing. It was a hard class, with readings that felt so alien to my brain and with a teacher whose ideas about writing were more about slowing down and creating the moral atmosphere rather than throwing the reader into action to hook the reader. I liked what he was teaching. One of the essays we read was Joan Didion’s, The White Album. She starts the essay saying, ‘We tell ourselves stories in order to live. The princess is caged in the consulate. The man with the candy will lead the children into the sea.’ Later in the paragraph we see that she is talking about the narratives we build about the events of our life (and possibly others), picking the most ‘workable’ choices to fit the story we want to tell ourselves, but that these stories may actually detract from, ‘the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.’

            It is also a truth, at least my truth, that it is easier to see the stories others tell themselves than the ones I build for my life. I also think it is a truth that we are heroes or at least the good guys, the ones wronged, the kind ones, in our own stories and the others who are villians in our story also are heroes in their own, right? I won’t be specific today but since having this thought I have seen many villains of my life in a slightly shifted perspective. Only slightly shifted as I feel I am not yet big enough or flexible enough to see myself as the villain in their life. 

            Our stories often sometimes curated around the fairy tales we’ve been told or as we grow more often the messages we pick up from books. The first book I read this year (I don’t recommend it – so I won’t name it) was one in which the messages followed the lines of 

·      Things happen for a reason. Often bad things – and we need to find the learning in them.

·      For something to exist you have to truly believe it does. This could be a physical object or a dream. So if you cannot manifest your dream then it is your own lack of faith, right?

·      What is not lost cannot be found. Hmm… Along the lines of, we already have everything we need within us?

·      When you want something badly enough the entire universe conspires to get it for you. I think this became popular after The Alchemist became popular.

·      I am right where I need to be. Or that my whole life brought me to this point or some such thing. 

Haven’t we all at some time or the other, especially when life felt purposeless, fallen into one of these beliefs to make sense of what was going on? Yet it is also a truth, for me, that these have stopped me from really diving into the search for meaning in my particular life, which if find I might also touch the universality of the meaning of life. Of course, there are books and philosophers who have done the ‘work’ and have more to say about the meaning of life. But isn’t that also something that I need to approach with caution so that I don’t take on their meaning for mine? 

The last book I read last year was, Headshot, long listed for the Booker. It was about eight young women at a boxing championship. Though structured around the seven fights the girls fought to find one winner, the omniscient narrator wandered around the pasts, the presents, and futures of these girls. Winning or Losing do not define the rest of our lives, nor has your destiny lead you to this one moment. There are multiples of things we exclude if we tell ourselves those particular stories. 

Yes, I think one of the things I will be doing this year is excavating the stories I have told myself, extricating beliefs that I might have built my stories around, and hopefully leading a more fluid life where I can slip out of one of my story lines and into another until they all collapse into the naked present moment. 

And I will be reading more books this year, good and bad ones, and learning about myself from them. Because we read, fact or fiction, not only to know about someone or something else, but to know more about ourselves. As I wrote the line before this one, I had the thought that oops, is that too much of a self-absorbed quest? I will find out.