Category — The Stuff of Life

I’m feeling much, much better.  I had some kind of brief, violent flu.  I’ve been taking it easy. Sort of. I’m not very good at taking it easy.

Today I’m going to Mapusa!  So I can run errands in the hot sun!  I will buy some plants and some fabric, drop off my trash, and peer at the steel shops.  I don’t really need any steel right now, but I wish I did!

Anyways, thanks for all your well-wishes.  The real problem right now is that our internet is sick. Again. So I’m at the internet place down the street.  I hope it gets well soon.

I’m working on a food post.  Hope to have it ready for you and have the web connection to send it over the invisible wires.

The air here has been unbelievable lately. So clean, and the sky is so blue, and it hurts, it’s so beautiful.

Oh, I’m sick. Yucky yucky yuck yuck. Chinua and I have been taking turns at running to the toilet all day. Which is more than you needed to know.

But to your left I have put nine of my photographs in a shop at Red Bubble.  They are, of course, of beautiful things I see and feel like putting on the wall somewhere, somewhere they can remind me that life is full of small, unimportant, lovely things. Maybe you want one for your wall?

Love,

me.

Dear Agent,

I have a super fantastic book that I wrote, and I think it will make us both rich and famous! LOL!  There are a few reasons that I think this.

1. Because you are totally awesome, obviously, I read your website and it sounds like you are the most awesome person on the planet! LOL!

2. Because my husband really likes the book.  He told me he couldn’t put it down. And you should know that my husband isn’t the type of husband that would say that it was good just because I wrote it.  He’s actually a really picky person.  Really picky, and he’s totally honest, too. So if he says he likes something, HE REALLY LIKES IT! LOL!  For example, when we were trying to pick a title, he told me that if I said the word “landscape” one more time, he was going to throw me out the door. Landscape. Landscaaaaape. Sounds good to me, but I trust my husband!  Did I mention that he’s in this really cool band?

Anyways,

3. Because my friend Renee likes it and sometimes she calls me to read a line she really likes to me, and then I’m all, “Why did you like it?” because I really like to talk about it.  I’m like that with writing, but not with cooking, because when I cook and people like it, I’m all embarrassed and stuff. And I made a cake the other day and people liked it and one person said I should totally start a cake business, and it was SO EMBARRASSING.  But I like it when Renee reads paragraphs that she likes to me.

What have I been doing for the last few years?  Well…. I’ve been doing lots of stuff, like cooking (I already said that) and sometimes I go for a scooter ride in the jungle, and I have this blog that’s just amazing, you should totally read it, and I take care of my kids and then sometimes I write down funny things they say!  I read all the time! And I do a lot of laundry. I also homeschool my kids. And I know a lot of people from all around the world.

Is that a good biography?

Okay, so… think about it. Let me know in the next day or so, because this offer’s hot and you’d better jump on it! LOL!

All my love,

Rachel xoxoxoxo

A lot of opinions on homeschooling!  It’s a loaded topic. (By the way, I don’t make a habit of jabbing people with forks.)

Indian people here are unused to the idea of homeschooling, but open to it. I am almost never challenged on it by the locals.

In many countries in Europe, it is illegal, so unheard of!  Their school system tends to be more thorough, and they don’t have the pioneer background of North Americans, which many people in a way feel that they can return to. Teaching our own kids, back to the multi grade school system, stuff like that.

The woman I met the other day had desire to listen.  She would ask me something and then interrupt when I tried to answer.  I think she felt that she was being honest, but for a first meeting, it felt incredibly judgemental to me, especially from someone who didn’t have kids. She appeared to believe that I haven’t thought about my decisions and the pros and cons of them at all.

I don’t have a very strong stance on homeschooling.  I have a strong stance on creative, interesting, education for kids.  I like literature based curriculum. I like a lot of imagination. I like Singapore Math. Weighing all the options (and boy do I weigh them.  I weigh them and weigh them and weigh them again. And then I measure them with a teeny tiny measuring stick that I carry in my wallet) I believe (and Chinua believes with me) that homeschooling is best for us right now. For our particular mix, at this particular time, in this particular village.

So there you are. And yes, socialization. Ahhhh, socialization. Well, I can say, that the only way I learned to socialize in school was to stay away from the mean kids and anyone who looked cool and hide in the art room. It’s a form of socialization, I guess.

My kids have friends from Italy and Germany and England and India. They have adult friends and kid friends. And they have each other.  They may complain to us about their upbringing, when they get older, but I think they will actually enter the adult world with grace and confidence and the ability to be flexible. I know that they have a voracious curiosity about the world around them, and that they can find Turkey and Israel and India and Germany and Russia and Canada and the U.S. and … well, you get the point… on an unmarked map, because they’ve learned that the shapes on maps are real places, and it might be possible for them to see them someday.  Kid A would like to be an explorer when he grows up. I’m not sure what he will explore, but… he has time to decide.

So there you go, my views on homeschooling. Maybe one day we will live where there is the school of our dreams, and I will say, “Off you go! Off you GO!  Get out of my hair and get someone else to teach you stuff!”  Or maybe I will teach them until college. Who knows?  We take it from year to year.  And I think for mothers that the feisty guilt demon is always gnawing away at your shoes, and you just need to put your fork in your pocket and kick that guilt thing in the head, like it deserves.

(I’m home, by the way. I have more to share about the writing vacation!  More to share!)

I’ve been up to my elbows in my book all day, and can’t bring myself to upload photos.  So I’ll tell you two secrets:

1. I love the smell of burning cow dung.  I really, really do.  Every time I whizz by it and smell it, I think aaaaahhhhh (a long sigh, not a scream) and then I think, that’s India.

2. If one more person that I’ve only known for two minutes castigates me for homeschooling my children and harangues me about their socialization (and I mean harangue, not express interest, or gently debate) I’m going to jab them in the chin with a fork and say “How’s that for socialization?”

There are limits.

I drove away from Panjim, the capital of Goa, this morning, on my scooter. In Panjim I walked around and took photos of buildings and a few people, I saw a movie in a theater (the last movie I saw in a theater was Mr Bean’s Holiday in B.C. in April of 2008) and I had a massage. It was beautiful. But I was ready to leave.

I drove for two and a half hours, and my bottom was numb when I got here. I drove through cashew forests which smelled heavenly because the cashew flowers are in bloom.  And I drove through forests of eucalyptus which were stunning and alien. I haven’t seen anything like them in North Goa.  I felt like I was back in California, except that I was on the left side of the road. I stopped completely at one point because a man was trying to tease me on the scooter, riding up beside me and staying there, trying to get me to look at him, speeding up when I sped up, slowing down when I slowed down.  I’ve had one man do that before, and it’s so dangerous. The only thing to do is either smash into him on my scooter (not a good idea) or stop at a market and wait for him to be really far away. I did the second.

Now I am at a small beach in the south, staying in a beach hut. A beach hut!  I can’t believe the luxury. It is made of coconut fronds and has a cow dung floor, behind one of the beach shack restaurants. I swam today, and read some, and edited three chapters. I walked up and down the beach a few times, climbing over the wonderful boulders at one end of the beach. I’m shrinking back a little at the prices of food.

It’s a part of Goa that the vacationers experience, a part that I haven’t, really, with my house and my homeschooling and my children.  I need the municipal market, I need things, I have appointments, I have a pretty firm schedule. But today I have only a backpack and a computer in a hut on the beach, and the comfortable knowledge that I will be with my family soon again. What a vacation. I’m a blessed girl.

Thank heaven it’s a working vacation.  I’d be so, so bored if I wasn’t working on the book.  It’s a writer’s dream, really, write for a couple of hours, then take a walk. Read for a while, then write again. Walk again. Go for a scooter ride. Do research on agents and what a book synopsis is.

The characters in my next book are banging around in my head. I have to finish this one, quick!  Although I’ll miss these folks, I really will.

PS: Reality check on the whole paradise thing: Last night after I wrote this there was a big fight in front of my hut.  A very angry British woman punched a very drunk British man and then screamed at him for a while, telling him he was an achoholic and he’d better stay the eff away from her friend. STAY THE EFF AWAY! And on and on.  A while went by and then they were dragging the very drunk man away to put him to bed somewhere and I heard a woman say, outside my hut, “But there’s shoes out here!”  I leapt out of bed and opened the door. “Oh! Sorry,” she said.

I should say!  Jeepers, can’t a woman get a little peace and quiet?

I am in the backpacker’s India of my late teens and early twenties, in a little guest house with plywood walls that are cracked and sagging. I am showering in cold water, standing over the squatty toilet, toweling off carefully.

When I got up this morning I hurried to the shower, hoping to be the first there. I didn’t need to worry.  Apparently my fellow backpackers aren’t up at 7:00 for the shower, not having jumped out of bed as soon as they opened their eyes and it was light.  I can’t help it!  I need to see the world, the sun is up and I am exploring.

I love this. I paid 50 rps extra to have two windows in my room. One is a little one about 18 x 24”, with a view of the roof of the building next door. I’m glad I paid the extra. The air was unbelievably fresh this morning. It is January, and the coolness off the river is delightful.

I had Indian breakfast at a little restaurant around the corner; bhaji parantha. Fried flat bread and a potato curry. Mosquitoes were biting my ankles and so I brought my legs up and crossed them on the seat (this is, after all, India) and later the owner of the establishment came by and rebuked me. “Put your legs down,” he said. “Sit properly.” I was quickly aware that I am no longer the venerated mother of four, queen of my chaotic household, drinking my espresso and cream amid fluttering limbs of people under eight. I am just your ordinary backpacker, a budget traveler, with unkempt hair (dreadlocks) and Nescafe in my cup. I have traded respect for a bit of peace and quiet for a few days. I notice how differently I am treated when I am alone. I don’t have the weight of my family in a country where family is everything.

That’s a lot of talking that I do on the internet, although I’ve been silent a lot recently.

Silent. Hmmmm. I’m entering a new stage of culture shock that I like to refer to as “I have no connection with the rest of the world” stage.

Is there a rest of the world?  Or is there only my veggie stall and coconut grove and small dirty market in the middle of nowhere? I’m inclined to think the second in my heart. But I know there is a rest of the world in my mind. So I’ll go with MIND rather than EMOTION. The world is round, it’s been shown.

Sometimes when I think of writing I wonder if I am standing on the edge of a floating carpet on the sea throwing words into the wind. They blow back at me and stick to my face like cobwebs. I know it’s not true, but I feel separated from everything outside of this little square I’m standing on. Do you feel that way?

I want to endeavor to keep throwing words out there, so I’ll post snippets and lists, photos and sentences, mostly everyday for a while.  Just to get over myself.

So here is a question for you.  Do you ever belatedly add something to your “to do” list, just so you can cross it off, after you’ve already done it?  I do.  I just did. There are all sorts of ways to pull yourself out of being overwhelmed.

I’m sorry that I write so much about being overwhelmed.  I think it is my normal state of being.

It may be the seventeen-month-old climber/run-away/dog-lover (this one is really challenging in a country with a lot of street dogs)/rock-eater. He is so beautiful and so exhausting.

Whoops.  Sad post/happy post/sad post/happy post.

So I’ll end this by linking to a couple of happy things.

The first is happy/sad. This is a friend of a friend with her family in Haiti, doing what she can with what she has in a little space that she occupies.  That’s what we have, right?  I like how she is feeding thirty people everyday with a single burner.  Challenging, my friends, challenging. This is their website. Thanks, Rebeca, for the link.

The second is happy/musical.  A new Turbans video! (My Superstar Husband’s band) Here you go.  Enjoy.

“There is neither a proportional relationship, nor an inverse one, between a writer’s estimation of a work in progress and its actual quality.  The feeling that the work is magnificent, and the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged.”

“I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as with a dying friend. During visiting hours, I enter its room with dread and sympathy for its many disorders.  I hold its hand and hope it will get better.”

Both quotes are by Annie Dillard in The Writing Life

You could say, that’s how Rae’s doing right now.  She’s working, trying to ignore insecurity or wild hopes and just write.

Also: We are having a retreat right now, with a few dear friends.  It’s been wonderful.

I’ve just had a plan that was in the works seriously crushed. I’m trying to remain positive but I’m feeling really down about it. Sluggishly moving through the day.

I miss my parents.

I’ve been working on the same post for four days, and even today I didn’t have it ready. I have nothing, I am empty, I am curled at the base of a tree like a little fern frond, just huddled and waiting.  I expect that good things are around the corner.

Really, I’m the blestest of girls, really, really. But sometimes down is just down.