Naydja's Spot

wow has it been 3 months, it has been. Well the dilemma in posting has been what do I say, how much do I tell and then what. *sigh* well, I'm alive and well, family is doing great, work has been good. I was traveling all of April, I suppose it took all of May to get grounded again. I was in NY for a conference and India for 2 weeks. My sister wants to go to hemkunt, and I want to go, I'm grappling, looking in the mirror, looking at my family, and I don't see who I am anymore. I don't see me. I'm sitting for the GREs (yeah yeah, my LSAT score expired, stupid me) but its time to be true to myself, so despite the harrowing path of self discovery I thought I'd emerged from, my mom and dad reminded me that life's a journey not a sprint and in fact, you'll be discovering things about yourself until you die.

What's funny is that used to be a philosophy of mine, if you find me and I'm stagnant, standing still shoot me, and yet, for the past few years, that's exactly what I've been doing, standing still.

I am everything, everyman, every culture, and yet, I've been so singular, so purist, it's incongruent with my view of myself.

so yeah, I've been traveling and unsure of what to write, I've retreated to my safe place, I've retreated to my family, who doesn't maliciously judge, but loves and prods. I've retreated to Guitar Hero and Mario Kart. I've retreated to summer book releases and season finales.

What's hard about this blog is that I'm not anonymous, and I know you judge me, you can't help it. And well, I love and appreciate you, but I just don't trust you.

So I'll say more when I'm good and ready, but in the mean time, Happy Summer, Congratulations on weddings, engagements, graduations, births, all that lot.

Random I know, but covers a lot of bases doesn't it. :)

I can't believe it has been over two weeks since my last post. I find that so much has changed and yet so much has stayed the same. I suppose that statement is as true today of two weeks ago as it would be today of two years ago! We over analyze the minutia of our lives do we not. I'm still contemplative and reading and writing.

My work has me busy, like most of you, but I'm not talking about my 9-5, I'm talking about my other pursuits. I bought my mountain bike, finally, after much deliberation and research, so I'm in the gym and on the bike a lot, looking forward to warmer weather and wanting to be ready for it too. I've been devouring books; I find that I'm just about caught up from my time away - sure you can get books in India, but they don't have everything, so I had a running list and just about everything is crossed off. I haven't been terribly eager to catch up on the films I haven't seen and I'm not going to the theater as much either. I'm sure I just need a good hit to draw me back in, but, I am content with my books.

In addition to the job, reading and getting fit, I also became the Communications Director of a growing non-profit organization, Sikhcess. If you haven't heard of it, I encourage you to visit the website to learn more, but in brief its a global service organization, encouraging community involvement.
Sikh is in the title, but not because it's a sikh organization - sikh is in the title because the organization aspires to one of the most fundamental tenets of the sikh faith - to live in service, to give back to your community. More than needing your typical donation, Sikhcess is asking for your involvement, your active participation. Don't get me wrong as a fledgling organization, money pays the bills and is needed, but it is human capital that funds the campaigns. Sikhcess' volunteers fed over 70,000 homeless in one day last November.
On March 1 Sikhcess volunteers will once again band together across the globe to feed the needy, in not just two or ten cities in the US - Sikhcess sponsored events will be taking place in almost 40 cities in 7 countries.

What are you doing on March 1? Take some time out of your day and contribute to this movement. Or don't wait for March 1 find out what you can do in your city.

I know here in the US, we tend to think there are solutions for homlessness and hunger - there are shelters and soup kitchens, churches and charities. The truth of the matter is that the need has never been greater. Unemployment rates are soaring, thousands working full time are still living below the poverty line. Food bank donations are down, community pantries are rationing to keep from turning people away. And in direct contrast - there are three Starbucks within walking distance of my office and you can bet during rush times, they all have lines out the door. The latte metaphor has been used before, I certainly hope this isn't the first time you've head it - but its true. Whether your indulgence is movies, coffee, cds, books, shoes, clothes...the list goes on. Every day there is something new to buy, a new flavor, new style, new gadget. And every day the people just scraping to get by are working harder to make ends meet. People are still recovering from Katrina, from wildfires, from the war, from any number of things.
As you pay for your next new must have or your next everyday habit or your next indulgence - take a moment and think about what you can do. More than making a donation, more than writing a check, more than dropping some change in a box. Can you give of yourself. Can you donate time? Just like pennies add up to a dollar, minutes add up to hours. I'm sure you can find some.

As I was fixing my coffee (milk and sugar thank you) - the very handsome older gentleman (my guess would be Syrian, maybe Afghani) - smiled at me tentatively and gesturing mildly to my head said, " It's wonderful what you did like that - it must take a lot of time!" "no, not at all," I replied, "it's quite simple and easy. "Its beautiful, you're beautiful," he said, smiling, then nodded his head and joined his friends at their table. When he joined them he must have said something because they turned to look at me and were smiling and nodding.

It's amazing as I was walking to sit down, a cog clicked in my brain. When I wear my turban, people say that I'm beautiful. I get that more wearing my turban than when I didn't wear it.
** a little history here, I've been wearing a turban for about 6 or 8 years now - it's not important how long. But there was period that I wore it intermittently, not at all, then intermittently - oh about 3 years ago. **
When I wear my hair uncovered - up, down, bun, braid - people always comment on how beautiful my hair is. And it is, my hair is my vanity. They'd comment on my shirt or a cute pair of shoes or how good my jeans fit - but I hear the words, "You're beautiful," more now that I ever have before in my life.

Which is ironic in that I'm not a main-stream beauty am I? I wear a turban, I don't shave, I'm shorter, rubenesque (woman of ample bust, plump cheeks, soft-full lips, and a healthy profile of alluring curves). Walking around in a swimsuit in the Dominican Republic, getting coffee in my local cafe, riding the Metro, at the supermarket - I get the most flattering compliments. I'm not saying this be demonstrative. (remember, I'm single)

In September I'll be 30 - not that the idea is in anyway alarming to me - on the contrary, I'm pretty sanguine when it comes to my age. But I find myself reflecting on where I am here and now in my life vs. what my plan for myself at this age was.

I had this notion, more of a conviction, that I would be engaged by 25, married by 26, pregnant at 28, again at 30 - I mean, really these were my milestone ages. And I was engaged by 25, I thank God everyday that I called off that before I went any further into head-long misery.
**Long story short, I loved him, he loved me but he loved me for who I was when we met, not who I'd grown into. I thought I knew him, turns out I didn't. He realized that my growth wasn't a phase, I realized that he couldn't come along any futher and we parted ways. Overall it was a relationship that lasted a lot longer than it should have, as things that are comfortable tend to do. By no means was it as simple as I'm making it out - there were many tears, a bit of pain, wallowing, etc - but hey - I got over it - and that's all anyone can do in those situations - but let me pause now before I get even more tangential than I already am :) **
**one more thought here - there are as many forms of love as there are moments in time - never feel guilty or sad or regretful about your loves - feel sad, regret the loves you didn't learn and grow from**

I realize now that my barometer was my mother. When my mom was 30, she was pregnant with my younger sister and had been married for 5 years. She was, is and always will be a model, and example to me.

The funny this is now - today - I'm actually in no hurry to get married... I want to get married, but I'm not actively looking to get married - today, tomorrow, a year, five years....there's no timetable! I do want to get married and I'm not afraid of it, or putting it off - I just looking for more than convenience and a warm body with the ability to procreate. I'm not on shaadi.com, or sikhmatrimonials, I did get on eHarmony (so my sister and Tanya would shut up and so I could say I told you so :P ).

The fact is I'm single and I'm recalibrating my barometer. I want to get married - wedding, big, little whatever - I want the marriage more than the wedding.
I want kids, ideally 4, some people think that's a lot, but the thing about barometers, I can't change everything - and there were 4 of us and it worked. :)
I want someone that I can be myself around, say whats on my mind to. I want someone to get and accept me. It's really not that complicated - is it?

People ask me all the time who I'm seeing, am I engaged/married yet. I have aunts, friends, friends of friends, their parents and my MPA students all "looking" for me. Interestingly enough, I think they all have a different person in mind - hehe. "You're such a beautiful, strong woman, Naydja," they tell me, I just shrug, sigh, laugh a little. "What's wrong with men? I just don't understand it," my cousin's wonderful wife told me when we were out the other night. She was going on about it for a little while, it made me laugh. (Really she's wonderful, and they're so cute together - when they touch forehead and "sync" their iPods - hehe- that's love)

I suppose I'm a bit jaded from my four years of post-engaged single life. For some people the fact that I was engaged makes me tainted goods. One of the last things my ex-fiance said to me was "Naj, you're so complex, it's beautiful." At the time I was like - What the fuck, get your cliched, movie line reciting ass outta here. I think now, that he's not incorrect. I am complex. I'm multiple ethnicities, not just one or two, but more like six or seven, because of my blood, where my parents are from, where we've lived. I grew up two faiths and while I'm a Sikh, I grew up Catholic. I went to midnight mass with my family at Christmas (a tradition we kids have kept since I got my license at 16) and I went to Ash Wednesday Mass today. Something about it still speaks to me; I didn't take communion or anything like that - but something about the service still speaks to my soul and Latin High Mass, amazing! For some people, the turban and hair are a turn-off - even for "traditional" or "amritdhari" folks. As are my background and the fact that my dad and brothers aren't Sikh. I'm not a doctor or a lawyer. I hang out with my family - they're amazing - and yes more times than not, we'd rather sit around the basement or play scrabble or scattergories (we stay away from Monopoly since Dad so thoroughly routed us!)

My parents have been married for 33 years. They they are adorable, so cute with each other. They support each other through and through. That's what I want - and that's my real barometer.

I'm sitting in a cafe, I really had to get out of my house, and its so funny the reaction I get with my turban. Men vs. Women, people of different ethnicities and origins - it's so interesting the expectations people have.
You know, after 9-11 sardars got all the exposure didn't they, we turban wearing women were sentences, footnotes, almost an afterthought.

Just when I'm used to it - there's someone, some ignorant idiot or on the opposite of the spectrum, a super compassionate commenter. Then there are the folks who want to know how long my hair is, am I bald, how to tie it, can I show them in the bathroom, can I take it off...you get the idea.

People keep asking me about India.
"Tell me about your experience there. What was it like?"
"Wow was it hard? Don't you miss it?"
"Did you get really sick? What did you eat? Did you drink the water?"

The thing is, bottom line, I miss it. I miss the air, the clean and polluted air of Punjab. I miss walking through the land, feeling the spirit of warriors... I miss the vibrations at Sri Harimandir Sahib (Golden Temple). I miss sitting in Guru's darshan listening to kirtan, silent tears rolling down my cheeks. I miss the energy of a good yoga class - MPA spoiled me there - big time! :) I miss the kulcha stand and fresh lassi. Boy do I miss chai! (I mean, sure I can and do make chai pretty regularly, but go to India, get chai and then come back and tell me you didn't like it...)

I miss the kids - the bundles of emotion and energy and inspiration. They I miss most of all.

So if I'm sorry if I don't talk about it much here. I'm writing a lot, but it's hard for me to share my feelings on Punjab - because that experience - those memories are so very dear to me. I just visited in October and luckily I'll be going back in March/April-ish.

I was doing a celtic cross tarot reading for myself....
Hmm, that won't do will I, you need more explanation than that don't you.

While I was in India, my roomie, Parampurkh, was a bit of an intuitive - and she had cards - Tarot, Angel, Osho, and more. She did a few readings for me and I found comfort in the wisdom of the cards. (WHAT? you're screaming) It's not that the cards are right or will tell you the answers, rather that they present you with a little nudge to figure it out. At least thats how I feel about them. The words and images tie up with the thing thats on your mind and help you flip it over, examine it, take it apart, put it back together - to come to solution, resolve, peace with it even.

As you can tell from the meandering series - there has been a lot on my mind, conscious and not. I thought I'd take a moment and pursue another avenue of aid - I've run, written, listed to music, played music, sang, driven - I'd forgotten that Tarot has helped before too.

Back to my celtic cross tarot this evening. I came across this card, the five of cups. Part of the message was:
[The Five of Cups] advises you examine your negative habits and notice how they can impact others. Show more appreciation for those people who love you anyway. God knows, we can be hard on our intimates....be grateful that as the cups fell, only three of the five were lost. Two are still intact, pristine and full of sacred energy that you can use to build a new relationship. Instead of defending past setbacks, focus on awakening your desire for improvement when the time approaches.

Boy did that hit home. Am I saying Thank You and I Love You enough to the people I love? Have I been mired in my angst-filled quagmire that I'm guilty of neglecting the relationships that matter most to me? DING DING DING DING! We only get so many chances, why mourn over what's passed? Look to what's coming. Use what you have to repair and rebuild. Work on yourself!

Now its not genius - I'm sure I've heard it before and passed it on as well - just the same, it was a nudge I needed tonight, one I'm glad was randomly selected from a deck of old cards.

well the floodgates have opened and closed for today :)
Maybe we can meander together again another time.

There are things that I've chosen to forget. There are memories that I've shoved into a box and buried, six feet under. Because if you don't remember, how can I? Do you know what it's like to have a one-sided memory? Something so intimate, so special - but did it really happen if only I remember it? You have no idea what you've said - and how hard it is to forget!

To add all that to a burden of pain that no one else can help me carry.

Silent tears, mourning for a future that will never happen...that was forgotten even before it was thought about. Yet another chapter I must close. Another chapter in the book of dreams, hopes, memories and visions that will remain unlived in a buried box - the Laurentian Abyss of my life - that forgotten realm in all of us, where the things no one wants to remember dwell.

My eyes betray me
the faucet is off
what I could once summon at will -
or at least readily enough
I am now denied.

I have been neglected! You never truly cared for ME - you care only for yourself. And in your selfishness, you care for me - for my aid. So I get some perversion of love, not a semblance of authenticity.

If you met someone you could truly be yourself around, with whom you could completely relax and trust - someone you could submit to - who could take the Jesse James seat - wouldn't you snatch them up, hold them close? make them yours? And yet, you haven't. You won't. Despite your bluster and bravado, all your eloquence and fine words- your actions belie all of that.
For you take when and as you will with no regard to the consequence - no thought to the process or the effect - and the result is nothing - emptiness.
A hole in my heart - a point blank blast that sits unhealed.

Do you know that I gave you full control? I gave myself over to you completely....WHY? you have to ask?
Because I trust you- implicitly. You hurt me, and yet I trust you, continue to love you - just a glutton for punishment I suppose. Meanwhile, you care for me only as long as it benefits you.

And yet, I love you despite your selfishness. How you can you get me so completely and not know me at all? One day I'll understand the why, the how of that possibility. In the meantime, I'll just be. And try to forget the things as you have. Try to forget what you said to me, what you murmured in my ear, what your wrote, what you were.

My memories ever the betrayer of my logic. Hope - that disease that won't set me free, of you.

I find tears these days are hard to come by. Even now I'm denied the simple catharsis of a good cry. I try all the usuals - the triggers - the movies, the books, the songs, the places - but no. I come to the brink, a keening sob bubbling below the surface - and then I'm robbed of its escape. Something cold and hard clamps down - the darker side laughing - better luck next time.

and I end up wound so tight - on a hair-trigger - with no outlet, no way to vent the pressure. So I wait, wondering when the next explosion will be - because I can't sit by anymore. And you know, pressure can be devastating - cruel even.

Pressure is what drives water through rock, wearing it down, honing it to a point or renting it in two.
Pressure is what thrusts hog magma to through the crust of the earth to force change.
Pressure is what moves air in the skies to create claps of thunder and bolts of lighting.

I'm soft, malleable - only human. Water, flesh, blood, bone, what will pressure do to me?

I've given up so many people who knew me once - who knew me....before.

secrets, stories, jokes and memories...
lost and buried - given away.
not forgotten, but purged - cast aside
stored in the attic at that other place, in the other me.
not the old me - the other me.

Why is it so complicated between us? and why does it always go so badly? so horribly? walls go up between us - faces are shuttered. Silence stretches no longer comfortable and companionable -but strained and painful.

Take what you can get? Should I try that on for size?
I thought I was - but how do you approach something, someone with no expectations? especially when you have a running episode, an archive, a history a memory. How do you approach something with no hope of more?

If someone could teach that - it would indeed be a lesson worth learning. One of many I have yet to learn.

How can I be Satraj - how do I live up to that? given my own doubts and fears, my insecurities...my loneliness.
But then again, nobility is a lonely existence - public, scrutinized, your true self hidden away.

Hope is the most human of emotions isn't it? I don't know that any other animal or creature exhibits that feeling.
Dogs, cats, dolphins, birds, even our closest genetic relatives in the animal kingdom monkeys and the great apes don't hope. I don't think I've ever heard a mythic or paranormal legend or character hoping either. A vampire? a lycan? An angel or a demon with hope? Maybe I'm just reading it all to thinly.

Here I am "sitting, waiting, wishing" - hoping - holding out - for what exactly? That is the $10Billion dollar question isn't it.

Why doesn't disappointment ever become cursory? Even when you expect disappointments, they still come as a sliver of a surprise don't they? A little sucker punch to the gut - know why? HOPE. No matter how pragmatic you think you are, how cynical, there is still a shred of your being that tinges expectation with disappointment - something promised shattered.

I guess I hoped that by showing my love, my support, out loud and in silence - in my presence there could be something more - something intimate. But I suppose not.
Even as I resigned myself and steeled myself - fortifying my defenses and leveling my expectations - focusing my energies and my attentions on this one thing - this one person.

How can someone SO wholly get me and yet not at all either? Confound it - to call it a mixed message is a gross understatement.

So now I truly need to let it go - let go of the idea, the hope, the spark - let it go, let it fade, let it die - and keep moving.

Silly me!
SO LET GO!
Why is that so hard? - so lonely, so alone...

What was I thinking? What did I think would happen? Even now I'm not sure - I'm not sure at all. What can I trust if I cannot trust myself - my own inner compass. I mean, I can usually read a situation, read the person - but maybe my intuition is fucked...maybe my compass is broken - or even better spinning madly casting me every which way.
and yet despite it all... haha I guess its true what "they" say, you try to cut someone out of your heart and in the end its your heart that betrays you.
and that's the question isn't it? Where is my heart and what the fuck does it think it's doing? Where is my intuition? How did I get to be such damaged goods? I may not be high maintenance (really, I'm not - ok a discussion we can take up later) - where was I - oh yeah - I may not be high maintenance, but I sure am complicated aren't I?
I'm all of everything NOT one of something - I reverberate with the presence of wherever I am. I connect to the land, to the people, to culture in a way that is more remembrance than infatuation or intrigue. It makes me wonder just how old my soul really is - How may lifetimes have I lived? Am I learning my lessons or am I just repeating shit over and over? I wish I knew.
but then again, I suppose part of me does know.
part of me has always known

The question really becomes what do I do with that? where do I go next? I suppose the cycle has worked so far.
they cycle of birth and death
I wonder what the Akashic records will well of me at the end of this life so far - when my egoless self watches the movie of my life. I'd like to think it's been more than " a quick succession of busy nothings..."

I know I've meant something to somebodies, I know I've had an impact, but why and for what purpose? That is what I'm not sure of.

Perhaps, I suppose, I shouldn't challenge that - I should just accept - but then again I'm a stubborn soul - and blind acceptance comes as a hard price.
Just how much? at what cost - TBD I suppose, TBD.

What do you do when confronted with your own stupidity?

Ok so I've opted to share my ramblings - perhaps they'll help you understand me better, perhaps not. Consider them collected works from my mind.

In some cases I'm talking about myself, in some cases I'm just talking to myself or someone else or just to hear the sound of my own voice (or read the words from my own fingers as the case may be).

At any rate - these are gems or their articles from the dump truck of my mind :)

I've been doing a lot of writing...so posts are coming. The hard part is that as I intimated in my last post, I've been doing A LOT of thinking, mulling, pondering, contemplating, soul searching, introspecting...I think you get the idea.
I'm not sure what all brought this on - but there it is. So I've written a ream, but its all very very raw, and so I'm just trying to decide how much to share I suppose.
I'm pretty sure most of it will make it, there's something cathartic about it all - I love that word catharsis - its from the Greek katharsis, from kathairein or katharos which means to cleanse, to purge.

Consider yourself warned on the flood of words and emotions to come, the ramblings of my mind, forthcoming. (yes, i know, a bit ominous)

Sorry I haven't had much to say of late, I've been devouring books and contemplating...the meaning of life - well nothing that grandiose, but thinking and reading and writing - but not online :)
I promise I'll post again soon, its hard, trying to decide and filter just what to share here, as I'm not exactly anonymous am I.
Enjoy the snow if you can!