A Rose in Houston

The dirty underbelly of Houston exhaled, the hot breath pulsing out from the concrete tunnels like a sleeping dragon. The normal entrance to the Wortham parking garage had closed hours before, so the only option was a deserted tunnel that snaked under the boulevard. I waited for a car to pass, its headlights beaming through the humid air, and jogged to the entrance of the tunnel.

Just before I entered the abyss, a woman turned the corner of the building, on a similar mission to find her parked car. In front of me, she paused a moment, hesitant to enter. The fear quickly passed, and she bowed her head as she began to walk downward.

I had noticed her at intermission. I bought an overpriced whiskey, perhaps an attempt to blend into the scene of crisp jackets and long dresses. As I took the first sip, my eyes glanced at her just over the crystal rim. Her legs were the most striking; they were wrapped in socks or leggings with white concentric circles spaced up the length of her calf. Elegant, bold, and a defiant departure from the drab muted tones of everyone else’s legs.

Her skirt was tight around her waist, but frayed out in carefully folded creases. It angled outward on all sides, but wasn’t so dramatic as to create a triangle or pyramid; it was curiously in-between and without definition. The soft blue sheen shifted in color with each motion of her leg, as the lights bounced off in a chaotic dance.

The air in the tunnel was thick and hot, and moved in ghostly waves. The yellow lights dimly lit the slick concrete, and it extended a hundred yards to the white light of the garage. The only sounds were our steps, and the distant sounds of horns that may have been bouncing around for hours.

As I passed by her, I smiled, and for the first time noticed her age. The wrinkles on the top of her cheekbones and corners of her jaw revealed the five or six decades she had seen.

Now in front of me, I could see the beauty of her outfit matched in her face. Her eyes were a deep brown, so deep that the pupils had sunk into the darkness. In that moment, I wanted to comb her iris forever, in constant expedition of the black center I was sure would be there. Its astounding absence was a perfect reflection of her beauty; subtly humble and quietly magnificent. Her lips were thin and brown, but somehow grew with her smile. The corners turned up, but the tips turned down as she spoke her first words to me:

“The doors are closed, right?”

I had to gulp to moisturize my suddenly dry mouth. “Yeah, they are,” I responded, and immediately regretted everything. Yeah? Why not ‘yes mam’? At least ‘yes’. God damn it Michael, act appropriately.

“Why do they close so early?” her words were coated in some foreign accent, but I had never tasted it.

“I don’t know, it’s a little ridiculous,” my stumbling over words continued. I was seeing her in intimidated fear, and she was seeing me as yet another young man impatient for words.

She smiled once more, and we walked further into the tunnel, the only sound her heels striking the smooth concrete in a confident tap. My hands shifted uneasily over my jacket, and I was careful to keep the label hidden. My sleeves were rolled up, one arm – as always – looser than the other.

Her smile flashed at me again. “Did you enjoy it?”

“The Little…”

“Yes, the Little Prince,” she quickly clarified. The Nutcracker had also played that evening, and opera-goers were careful to distinguish themselves from the more blasé ballet.

“I thought it was wonderful,” I said with a smile, slowly working sophistication into my words.

“Did you read the book?”

“Yes, long ago. As a child.”

She said ‘child’ as I did, and my heart leapt. She either approved of the word (as opposed to ‘kid’, ‘youngin’, or some other American slang of which she clearly wasn’t fond of), or she too experienced it as or through the eyes of a child.

“It was great to see all of those characters…” I paused and waved my hands, rolling through words in my head like outfits. “…visualized.”

She smiled again, corners up, tips down. “Oh yes, it was wonderful.”

We walked several steps forward in silence, while the opera played in our heads once more.

“I’m glad someone’s accompanying me down here,” she said as she glanced down the tunnel.

“Yeah, it’s a little spooky down here.”

“Yes it is.”

Her serves were strong, her volleys precise. It was as if the leather stitching from her luxury handbag had leaked into her soul, straightened her spine, and kept her internal thoughts organized into clean folders. Again we walked in silence, as she looked through her files for conversation starters, and I obsessed over my conversational failures.

“So what made you choose the opera tonight?”

“Well, I stumbled across it this afternoon, and made an impulsive decision,” I replied.

“Good.”

“I’m a graduate student at Texas A&M, and also needed a break from what seems like a constant work load.”

“Oh good” she smiled, “And what do you study?”

“I’m getting a PhD in Agricultural Economics.”

“So then, what did you think of the rose?” she asked coyly.

I laughed, “I think that was one of the best parts. Not because of anything to do with agriculture, but because he’s deriving importance from something only because of the time he invested in it.”

“Yes,” she responded shortly, but her eyes hid some deeper response I wish I could have heard.

“In a way,” I continued, “roses in general are meaningless. We just have to create importance for something to be important, and I like that.”

Her eyes scanned the ground in front of us. She didn’t say anything, and I feared I had stuck a sensitive chord. The truth is, I didn’t like the thought at all. In fact, I hated it. It simply a novel thought, a perspective that hadn’t entered my head before, and like a child I necessarily shook with excitement because it was simply new. With only 24 years of words tucked away in a tuft of my brain, ‘like’ was the only way I could describe it to someone I had just met. I wish I could have said more.

“This is my car here,” she said as her taping came to a stop at the entrance of the stairs.

“Okay, great.”

“Thank you for your service, sir,” corners up, tips down.

“No problem. You have a good evening.”

“You too.”

She tilted her head slightly to the left with her smile, closed her eyes, and curtsied. I turned to go back down the stairs, but walked softly enough to hear her heels fade away.

I never got her name, nor gave her mine. I don’t know where she’s from, or exactly how old she was. She drove somewhere, I drove somewhere else, and our paths will likely never cross again.

I’ve planted roses in the soil of my family’s greenhouses, the snow of Ithaca hills, the grime of Bombay streets, and the dust in the Texas air. Some sprout, some grow, some die. I look to each one in fascination, in childish hope it will root into my skinny arms and frizzy hair.

Someone had cared for that rose growing in the underbelly of Houston. As I pulled onto the deserted highway stretching away from the city, I hoped that one day I could watch such a beautiful rose grow.

You’re wrong, Little Prince, I thought, the beauty of a rose has never been measured in time.

Unfinished Tales from Arkansas

-One-

My face glowed intermittently; with each puff, an orange glow grew and disappeared in the dark woods. Without the sun or clouds for a blanket of warmth, cold rained from the heavens down onto my little Arkansas cabin. I was sitting under a maple, though you couldn’t tell. The leaves had long since migrated south, and the bark was blacker than the night sky. Only a memory of the tree allowed me to know it.

The English tobacco tasted like peat, and the old pipe burned hot in my hands. Across the valley, lights dotted the mountain. Yellow dots meant warm houses, while the white incandescent lights marked the industrial chicken houses. In this part of the country, you see a lot more white lights. On top of the mountain, a yellow light reigned king, peeking through the valley. 

I leaned back in my chair and looked at the stars. The last time I had done that was in Hampi, and I could feel that warm stone again, rough against my back. They looked the same then as they do now: like glitter strewn across the inside of a black bowl. The devilish fingers of the maple clawed at the sky, and broke apart the constellations. I couldn’t recognize anything until the sky rotated just enough around the branches, and revealed Orion. I flashed to a place very far away from my hermitage in the woods.

Sometimes memories can be too painful, so I was glad when the maple took the belt away again.

I looked around for other familiar faces in the sky, when a plane crested over the roofline of the house. It blinked red and white, and floated away towards a distant city. It moved without sound at first, but then seconds later a low rumble ran across the valley, like the tail-end of a thunder clap.

The sound was interrupted by the barking of a dog.

“Ehh,” I mumbled through the smoke. It was probably Kevin; the neighbor’s dog was a menace of sound, barking loudly into dead nights. I didn’t actually know his name, but Kevin seemed to fit pretty well.

The leaves rustled in the distance behind me. I knew that’s what the dog had been barking at, but now could only wait to see what the darkness would bring. Was it a squirrel? A raccoon? An escaped convict with a penchant for cold-blooded murder? My mind raced as I peered into the forest.

The rustling approached. Slowly, a shadow took shape. It was taller than I expected, ruling out rodents. As the shadow left the tree line and entered the grass behind me, the intruder became clear: a sleek and silent doe had joined me.

As I remained motionless, the deer didn’t notice me as it ventured forward out into the field, and eventually the moonlit valley. I suppose we respected each other’s night of solace and contemplation. 

-Two-

My lips were falling deeper into the amber ale, and it was slowly disappearing. The brown bubbles had to travel a shorter path with each sip. The glass was thick and cool. I bought this one with three dollars, and left a couple more for the eyes behind the counter.

When I returned to my godforsaken table, she was saying something about what she planned to do with her psychology degree. I had stopped listening after her rant on homework.

“I seriously just hate school!”

Her tirade began and my attention stopped.

As her words fell on top of me, her eyes darted around the room, and her hair bounced with a calculated bob. She wasn’t there for me, I wasn’t there for her, and maybe we both knew it.

I scratched my thumb over the table. It was the same table in every college-town bar in America. It was small, deep brown, and coated with a veneer that behaved like a wax. As my thumbnail ran across it, it clumped and accumulated under my nail.

Great, I thought, I get to keep a part of this shit bar with me.

“I mean, right?” Her lips curled around the blue straw, and her eyes waited for my response. The crudely mixed vodka and cranberry travelled up into her word machine, and her eyes began a smile that her newly cooled mouth completed.

“Ha,” I laughed, “yeah I guess that’s true.”

She jumped back into her vain monologue.

I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to be in that bar, in that city, or in that country. As I sat there and pretended to be interested in a dead conversation, my mind was still racing through the Mumbai streets. She flashed her eyes, but I saw her eyes. The beer was a local Arkansas craft, but all I could taste was Kingfisher.

In my car across the street, leather gloves sat in the passenger seat. They were crusty and stiff, dried out from the wet ditch I had dug earlier in the day. The front windshield was cracked, but I didn’t have the money to fix it. I just let the frost crawl inside on cold mornings. The floor mats were covered in dirt; Arkansas clay that had finally dropped from my boots.

Inside, at the beginning of the evening, I had tried to convince her that I was helping run the family business. But the reality of my car and thrice worn shirt showed otherwise. I was a young Ivy League graduate who had failed to take on the world, and now I sat in a bar with a crusty blue collar in mid-America.

Just a few months ago, I was on a rooftop bar in the urban heart of the frontier land. I was where my home was nothing more than a whisper on my own lips, and on no one else’s mind. With an old fashioned in my hand and a Banana Republic tie around my Chanel flavored neck, I was explaining how I could seduce a leading Bollywood actress. The lights of a city growing at a breakneck pace dotted the space between my colleagues’ heads, and a sea breeze from the Indian Ocean cooled the sweat forming over my body.

Now, I held a craft beer in my blistered hands. I wasn’t talking, and was listening to a girl complain about the price of salmon at Sam’s Club. Around us there were countless conversations, none of which went deeper than that, nor further away. India was less than a whisper on someone’s lips, because I was too sad to say it. The world outside the bar ended at the state line of Arkansas.

“So I was thinking that I’ll be a human resources person when I graduate.” She waited for my impressed approval.

“Oh yeah? That’s awesome. I think you’d be good at that. You can certainly talk to people.”

“Aww thanks! Yeah I don’t know, talking makes me happy.” She twisted her head and curled around the blue straw again. I think it was supposed to be cute.

Where was I? 

An Ode to Fishing in the Dark

On late summer nights, stretching long into the forbidden September doldrums, Lake Somerville removes itself from time. The black skyline outlined by a yellowing moon sits like a prop on a cosmic stage, and the creak of the marina slips out sound like the tuning of an orchestra. Once set, the curtains part, and the play begins:

An Ode to Fishing in the Dark.

We walked down the steep plank-way leading to the marina store, rods and reels in hand, along with a six pack of Shiner Blonde. The woman at the front of the park, sitting under yellow light swating bugs away from her purple mascara, had told us:

“There’s a ten dollar fee for fishing in the campground, hun.”

She didn’t look up from her long nails clicking away at a small phone, her words navigating their way around the gum she had been chewing for hours. We were instructed by the bored and tired woman to find the marina store to pay the fee.

The store was a floating structure near the shallow eastern end of the lake. The lights outside buzzed, partly from the tired chemicals depleted after years of use inside the bulbs, and partly from the armies of gnats and moths bravely burning on the hot glass. Signs were plastered on the outside walls, earnest attempts at fishing puns that fell flat on inexperienced eyes.

Inside, the store bulged with a dusty inventory that had waited patiently for years to be touched by the hands of guests. Lures, artificial worms, candy bars, maps, knives, hats, extra-large t-shirts, and beef jerky filled the beige metal shelves. The entire family of the operation sat behind the counter, eager for interaction. Engrossed by the scene, I didn’t notice my tall pole approach the hanging pole light-bulb, and it hit with a violent metal clang.

“Oh oh, I’m sorry,” I said apologetically.

“Eh, don’t worry about it,” the apparent proprietor said. He was wearing a teal t-shirt that hugged his bulging belly, and a hat with the brim tilted just slightly off center. His glasses were thick and hung low on the bridge of his nose, so that part of the frame hid his eyes and highlighted the top of his cheekbones.

“Well, here.” I leaned the poles up against an adjacent counter, to continue the conversation sans the light-bulb offender.

“Alright,” I looked back to him, “Hi!”

“Howdy,” he said with a smile.

“So I was told to come to the marina to pay to fish off the dock. Is that alright?”

“Yup yup, it’ll be five dollars a person,” he said, somehow squeezing the word ‘eye’ into ‘five’

“Alright.”

His wife was sitting at the register, aged more, but with deeper wrinkles where smiles lived.

“Do you go to A&M?” she said, looking at the logo on my shirt.

“Yup, I do. Just started grad school.”

“Oh good!” she smiled, “Did you get to go to the game today?”

“No, but I might be okay with that. Seemed like a hot day to be sitting in a stadium.”
“Oh yeah! That’s true, too hot for a game.”

“So what was the final score? Forty-something to twenty…”

“Yeah it was something like that,” the husband interjected, “Wasn’t really a game.”

“Well have we really played any games this year?” I said, conscious of the fact that I had referred to the team as ‘we’ for the first time.

The husband and wife both chuckled, and the husband slipped the ten dollars in the register.

“So,” I continued, assuming their concurrence on my last comment, “we can fish anywhere off the dock?”

“Yeah,” the husband replied, suddenly serious, “You can fish anywhere on the dock, and over on this end is the crappie house where they’re really bittin’.”

Nelson and I left the shop, and found a dark side of the dock near the gas pump. The wood planks under our feet shifted within the rusting metal frame, and sent occasional cockroaches up to the surface to inspect the disturbance. The spot we settled on was just outside the ring of light cast in a cone on the edge of the dock. Here, we were safe from the bugs.

Had it been a year since we had last seen each other, from the comfort of our little yellow Sabita? Or, had it only been a year? We talked once of the possibility of meeting in Texas, if I ever made it there, but the thought was as brief as fresh Bandra air. And yet here we were, talking again of life and its absurdity.

The worms we had purchased at Walmart sensed their oncoming doom, and when I opened the top of the thin plastic container, they dove into the clumpy black dirt, desperate to survive. I moved one clump to the side, and pinched a pulsating body. It flung about as I threaded it onto the needle, green ooze seeping out of its body. I don’t ever say it out loud, but I feel bad for the poor worms. Yet the regret is never enough to dissuade me; the promise of fish is far greater.

The first cast felt perfect. The pole started behind me, and as I flicked it forward and released the line, the catapult motion of the arch coupled with the snap of the pole and sent the pink hook soaring into the blackness of night. For a brief moment, it all disappeared, and I waited for its return to earth. Finally, with a plop 30 feet in front of me, the worm began its first free dive.

Across the lake, two headlights were bouncing along a dirt road. High energy country music bounced across the lake, and my ears strained to catch the song. The creak of the dock and the lapping of the waves were determined to keep the song from me, and so it remained a muffled clump of notes.

Between casts and sips of Shiner, we tried to fill the gaps left by a year of distance. We cast hooks and words out into the distance, and reeled in what we hoped would be success.

There’s a calming peace about fishing in the dark. The task becomes more abstract, and your eyes, desperate for something to look at, point to the stars. The same stars that fought through Bombay smog were now raining on our weary shoulders, on the side of a quiet lake in Texas. There were no rickshaws, no vada pav, and no traffic jams here. Just a couple of guys who held those memories, and spoke of them into the night. For the first time, Lake Somerville heard of the far away mystical town of Bandra, and the adventures we had there.

Maybe the fish were mystified too, because they didn’t bite.

Buffalo: Part Two

When I woke, I found my body entangled in a web of uneasiness. It was invisible, but I clutched at the nothingness, hoping to remove the hollow feel.

The earth exhaled from somewhere north, and the trees swelled like lungs. The leaves in my chest quivered in ecstasy as the cool air blew in. I took from the bounty of nature, but it gave no concern to me. I was nothing more than anything else, and that equity set me free. A voiceless observer, content in nonexistence.

It was a cold morning on the side of the river, and my clothes hung wet on the clothesline. The wetsuit and t-shirt I had in the sleeping bag with me had dried next to my warm skin, and I slipped them on while still in the cocoon. I scratched the sleep out of my eyes as the cooking stove warmed my oatmeal mixed with instant coffee; a Gulmarg special of sustenance and caffeine. It tasted awful.

There was no activity as I pushed off onto the grey river. Humans seemed to be a memory in this place, and even the birds were wary of song.

The river surface was still on a cosmic level. With only five miles to travel over five hours, I decided not to paddle. The river would take me along at the right pace. As I looked off the sides of the boat, water bubbles and suspended particles of dirt and twigs floated in unison. Without the reference points of shore, the river stopped; all objects were travelling at the relative speed of nothing. Nothing moved at a difference pace than anything else, so everything stood still on the surface.

The southern river took a characteristic slow bend, and my kayak toured the lazy outside curve. Along the banks, bright ferns and moss clung to tree roots and rocks, eager to drink from the water. The black of the soil and the luminance of the leaves clashed in a battle I was glad to witness. As I came to the point of the bend furthest from the upcoming rapids, I placed my paddle into the pool for the first time. I wanted to stay in this place for a little longer.

A creek joined the Buffalo at this point, and a clearing in the forest revealed the vein as it snaked back into the body of the Ozarks. Small rounded rocks and boulders were rhythmically massaging the small stream as it flowed downward, clear and free.

It was a memory for the river. Water that had once fallen on the leaf of a quivering cottonwood dripped down into the brook, where it was beat upon the rocks. From there it grew and lived, until the solitary drop joined the mighty river at the tip of my kayak. The Buffalo had thousands of memories like these, and millions more as individual drops oozed out of rock faces and saturated soil. The river itself didn’t exist. It was an infinite collection of water from far away, coalesced into a body that collectively existed, here, as one.

I waved a mosquito away from my stiff rain jacket, as the mist picked up to a drizzle.

Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport was sparsely populated as I approached the gate. Each footstep leapt through time, and clawed at me on the river. Like deep notes on a piano chord, they marked the incessant passage of time, and my departure from the maximum city. I was inching away from everything that I had built and destroyed over the past year, but more importantly, I was walking away from the foundation of a new life.

I had established something great in India. Men yelling in the streets woke me up in the morning. Strange tastes grew into my tongue, and burrowed themselves in like groundhogs. My work was respected, and my opinion sought after. I learned to understand conversations without knowing any words. I grew into a negotiator. I grew into a lawbreaker. My heart turned cold, but burned hotter than ever before.

My last view of India was Juhu beach, glowing bright along the black ocean. I watched as the clouds slowly took the light away, relegating the city to the limits of my memory.

The day’s first rapid was quick and narrow, and a tantalizing flat rock face sat inches above the cold water. I paddled hard into the ‘v’ formed at the top of the rapid, picking up speed to ram into the rock face and bounce up onto the surface. The plan worked, and as the front of my kayak bellied up to the rock, the rapids pushed the back side forward. The combination of the forces spun the kayak in place, and soon I was teetering on the gnarled boulder.

Without hesitation I jumped out and dragged my vessel further onto the outcropping. Once safely away from the water, I looked up to the shy sun.

The next photon to hit my cornea sent my soul spinning into tops of the southern pines. In an instant, my mind was hurdling through time as my body anchored itself on the Buffalo rocks.

One moment I was young again, just a child, floating on a raft with Dad, Becca, Uncle Jeffery and Aunt Vale. My head was more golden then, before the darkness set in. Becca and I struggled with paddles twice the size of our bodies. Yet somehow we were filled with a pure, unapologetic desire to go. I looked into my little blue eyes: they were scowled and determined. I wish I could warn them of the rapids to come, and maybe catch those inevitable tears.

The next moment I was becoming a man. Sinewy arms flailed underneath the moldy lifejacket we had forgotten to take off the boat, long ago the previous fall. My golden hair had begun its descent into brown, but was frayed and frizzed like the small claws of a wool blanket. Pimples bulged out from my face, oil production in overdrive, slowly planning their escape from my body. But my eyes continued their scowling, peering down the river in apprehension and hope. The poor creature in front of me had fought with valiance through the fraying of his family, and the cleaving of his home. I was proud of those blue eyes and skinny arms; there was strength in his vulnerability.

The current of time wrapped around my calf and shoulder, and spun me in a cold whir into the next frame of life. Arms still skinny, my face had shielded itself with a beard, and the lifejacket was no longer moldy. Incessantly behind me, in a separate kayak, was my father. He sent words of wisdom to my crumpled left ear, and they danced in the ridges. Some remained there until they became inaudible, while others dove into my head and burrowed themselves into my heart. I’m proud of you. The words tattooed themselves onto my right ventricle. There they will remain, stretching and shrinking until the faded ink is forever lost with the last beat.

A new moment approached with a wave of distortion. Subtle wrinkles had begun to carve themselves into the side of my face. I was alone again, and paddling slower. My eyes were still set upon the river, emotionless in concentration. Yet somehow they flashed grey in a way I didn’t recognize; like peering into the eyes of an old sea captain, I was aged by longing for something. The image was frightening, and I was glad when the flow of time drowned my body again.

I stayed under for longer before the next moment came, perhaps reminiscent of the long desert-like stretch of the middle-ages of a man’s life. When I finally bobbed up, I had aged greatly. For the first time, I was not in the front. My body was stationed at the back of a canoe, my hair returning to the golden color of yore; streaks of grey peppering the brown into a brighter hue. In the front of the canoe was a bright red shadow. It was something, someone. A high-pitched voice and laughter emitted from the aura, my graying eyes glowing blue in response. This time I spoke low and softly to the front, my words becoming ink for new ideas. My eyes were no longer focused solely on the river ahead. Instead they peered into the canoe, and scanned the horizon for trouble.

Powerless against the flow of time, again I was pulled away. The next moment was the last. My arms were frail again, and my skin hung loosely from my bones like a featherless chicken. My head bobbed rhythmically as I struggled to keep it up. My paddles were labored and slow, always seconds behind the action of the river. There were hazy apparitions all around me, spinning around the canoe like an ancient rain dance once common to these woods. The ghosts were encouraging, and even though my body was broken and old, a smile shot from my lips like a deadly cannon. It was, finally, happiness.

A boom sounded upon the river, as my happiness sprung into the spirits and left my body motionless in the canoe. My eyes were no longer visible, but the blue continued on into the haze, destined to forever float upon the river. My lucky body was merely a momentary vessel in its infinite journey.

Upon my return to the present, May of 2015, I found myself lying upon the warm rock face. A soft cloud blew through the canopy of the Ozarks behind me, and the perfume of pine rolled over the stagnant wetsuit and kayak.

“Howdy!”

I blinked through the fog left by my journey to find an old man sitting upright in a silver canoe assaulted by dents.

“Hey there. How’s it going?” I said with an influenced twang.

“Well,” he began, “it’s a nice day for a good paddle, I reckon.”

“Yeah,” I nodded slowly and smiled deeply.

As he passed by with a wave, I spoke softly to my own ears, “It sure is.”

The Buffalo is a giver. The surrounding woods and bluffs emanate sounds and smells that gently tug at your heart, until they turn your head and you say, “Oh yeah, that’s right. That’s who I am.”

Who am I?

I’m Arkansas, I’m New York, I’m India, I’m an oak, I’m a golden retriever, I’m an architect, I’m a digger, I’m coffee, I’m old wood, I’m a truck, I’m a car, I’m a watermelon on a deck, I’m summer heat and winter cold, I’m Carl Sagan, I’m a river.

I am nothing that I could ever write, and something I may never know. But dear reader, my time in India (and perhaps more importantly the reflection time afterwards) has forced me to confront myself in ways I never have before. We are all momentary, but we are immortal through memories and smiles. We must go fast and far through the world, dusting ourselves into the memories of others so we may live without end.

Maybe the rose and peanut farmer in Indapur will tell his children about the day a white guy from America visited his farm. Maybe they will in turn joke about the idiot who once visited their father’s farm. So I will again exist upon their lips and laughter, and again romp through the Maharashtrian sugarcane.

My journey east was not geographic. It has been a directional journey into an unexplored recess of my psyche, and I’m so glad I discovered this place.

Now, dear reader, it’s time to go south in the incessant exploration of life.

Texas, who am I?

Buffalo: Part One

Whispers of his voice travelled up the river. They slid through the dense Arkansas forest, like ghosts or deer, and drifted into my head.

You know, this is really big.

What do you mean?

The move to India. I don’t like it son!

Ah, it’ll be okay.

A pause in the river, my memory, and his voice. Then: It really is exciting. You’re going to change from all this.

Yeah, probably so. But I don’t think in a bad way.

No, but the rest of your life will be affected by your experiences in Mumbai.

As I broke the surface of the Buffalo with my paddle, I watched the front of my boat turn slightly to the left. The sun beat down on my exposed neck, and cradled my body in a blanket of heat. Crickets sung in a chorus, whining in accordance with the sizzling of the rock faces towering over the still water.

Another voice came from around the bend.

I’m scared.

Me too, but it’s alright. It’s all going to be okay.

The assurance, I knew as I paddled through my memories, was premature and wrong. It was not alright, nor had it been since. A mosquito dive-bombed into my ear, and I slapped both the bug and voices away. I just needed to make it to the rapids, then everything would be okay.

My paddle, oared on both sides, slipped into the water like a knife through warm butter. No sound was made on entry. Gripping the black pole interspersed with water and sand, I pulled it back to my body. I had altered the still surface, and two small whirlpools formed on either side of the paddle. As I pulled it out of the water, a small but forced splash broke the silence. That side of the paddle continued to rise out of the water, high into the air, dripping crystals of clear water that exploded in the sun. The whole process repeated for the other side, and in alternation, my boat swayed slightly from side to side as it floated downriver.

The day was warm, one of the first of the spring, and swarms of antsy adventurers descended upon the protected river. Particularly annoyed at one bend, and with a stomach panging for food, I pulled sharply to the right in the middle of a rapid. The bow of the kayak slid up upon the rocks, and I jumped to pull it onto shore before the back end was taken away by the current. A creek joined the river, and there at the confluence stood a tall and solitary boulder.

Dude, this is a sick face.

Francisco’s voice and memories of Hampi hit me like a wave, and my body involuntarily jumped onto the rock, eager to return to the climb.

Once scaled, I unpacked my small backpack for lunch. I had carefully prepared a sealed back of pita bread, but my ration for lunch was only two pieces. Two protein bars, half a bag of beef jerky, and an apple completed the meal; it was fit for a river king. As I calmed my angry stomach, I gazed down upon the river rats.

An old couple went by in a canoe. The wife sat in the front, paddle in tight grip, fiercely moving from side to side, deciding on the plan of attack for these rapids. Right? Left? She made the decisions, but gave no verbal indication to her bemused husband. He sat with a paddle dragging in the water, motionless and emotionless. Her lips were pursed so tight that vertical ridges had formed, and his were so lax that air slipped into his mouth, as obscenities quietly slipped out.

A group of Boy Scouts followed. They all donned life-jackets too large for their scrawny bodies, but none of them cared. Some boys were serious or scared, and shouted simple and ambiguous commands.

“Left!”

“Paddle left?!”

“No go left!”

“Paddle right?!”

“No left!”

A few canoes went by like this, with furious and redundant paddling. Several more went by in silence, partners in sync with each other’s actions. Brining up the rear of the convoy was a chubby boy and his annoyed partner. The larger boy had lost his paddle along the way. He grabbed the sides of the canoe and was shaking back and forth.

“Earthquake!” he yelled, “Woaaahhhh!!!”

The bowman was not amused: he threw his paddle down into the boat, and the pair floated down the rapids backwards.

A minute later, drunk college kids came by. They were spread in four canoes, presumably by couple. They hardly paddled, and were letting the water take them downstream. The men were shirtless, and had hats cocked slightly up and to the side: brim direction is often a good test of sobriety. The women were clad in bikinis, but with an oversized tank on top. The group laughed and drank warm beer. The rapids were of no concern to them, and to their credit of observation, they were one of the few people that saw me perched on the rock. One woman stopped paddling to give a big wave, and said “Well hey there!” through a deep smile.

As I finished my small lunch, a father and son floated into view. I stopped chewing. My throat had refused to work for a moment. The dad was saying something to his son, but it was deep and low. The kind of thing meant for his son’s ears and future memories. The son sat in the front of the canoe, his paddle resting on top, followed by his arm, then finally his head: he was deep in thought. Perhaps he was bored by the float, but his open and bright eyes indicated otherwise. As the father guided them through the rough patch, the son saw me. He raised his head and sat up. We made eye contact, but neither one of us waived or said anything. We locked eyes until they went around the bend.

I packed everything back into the kayak, pulled it into the river, and with a push-off I slipped back into the current.

He was right. Mumbai had changed me, and it frustrated me that I couldn’t quantify how. I still felt like Michael, but somehow the definition of Michael had changed. The new definition had been inscribed in Hindi, and was foreign to the people here. Even I couldn’t read it, but at least I could feel it. I knew what it felt like to ride a motorcycle through the dust of a frontier city. I knew what it smelt like along Marine Drive. I knew what a vada pav tasted like. I knew what a rickshaw sounded like, as the two stroke engine struggled through traffic. I knew the sight of raw human endeavor and failure, and the honesty in cheating. But I couldn’t read these things. I couldn’t pick up these memories and read them to the ones who loved me. It’s a lonely feeling not being able to define yourself to those around you.

On a deep part of the river, an algae covered log rose from the depths and scratched the bottom of the kayak. It came from nowhere, and it scared me. A swarm of ghosts jumped from the embankment, and swam up to my boat.

I’m going to miss you son.

I know. I’m going to miss you too.

You have to jump before it stops. It’s the only way to ride the Bombay local.

You’re fucking crazy.

What do we do now?

We make it work.

Money? Payment sir?

We don’t use your god damn services! Stop asking!

England? From England?

No, USA.

USA! Skinny American!

Mr. Black, your tests have come back, and unfortunately you have tested positive for Dengue fever sir.

Are you serious?

I love you.

They had finally gotten to me. I balanced the paddle across the boat, and sat still. I put my head up, in hopes that the tears would fall back into my skull. They didn’t, and my eyes recolored themselves to red. I was unhappy with where I was in the river. Bound by my resume and gut, I was stuck between a scary future and a bright past. It was so easy to look upstream, and let those memories drown me. I didn’t want to be too concerned with downstream, because it inevitably leads to the take-out spot. Each paddle is a step closer to that.

Some people paddle hard, prepare for rapids, and navigate the obstacles easily. What’s the point, though, if everyone eventually leaves the river? Why paddle at all if the relentless and never-ending current takes us all away? The purpose has to be the journey, not the destination, because otherwise there would be no differentiation between anybody. All people die, but only you can live by your paddle.

As the sun sank low over the tops of the Ozarks, spilling golden rays over the tops of newborn leaves, I pulled my kayak out of the river for the night. The wetbag had failed, and it was difficult to pull my wet clothes apart from my sleeping bag. I set up the tent, and cowered over my cooking stove. The beans and tuna were good, but fell uneven on my broken stomach.

That night, I fell asleep under the Milky Way, unaware that a cosmic shift was occurring. Electricity pulsed through my sleeping brain like a thunderstorm, and knocked loose a trapped memory. One mile downstream, in the still darkness, an epiphany was waiting to reveal it. 

A Silent Fan of Light

Without sound, the lights of the Ford truck fan out in the fog hanging low in the valley. From my perch on the hill, I don’t  hear the engine rumbling along, sputtering in the cold night. I don’t hear the father’s hand running through his little girl’s hair, and I don’t hear her soft breaths on his thigh. Her lips are closed, and dry enough to keep them stuck together. The soft glow from the radio dial casts a green light over the tan leather, and her nose takes in the perfume of coffee, dirt, and diesel. It’s the smell of home, and it has calmed her to sleep. The father keeps his eyes on the road, but his mind is elsewhere. The plastic pink backpack in the back of the truck, flooded with the cold air, shakes next to three loose bolts.

It’s my weekend, he thought. The words didn’t seem right. My weekend? My weekend? Like this angel is some property I have to share? What about other weekends? Is she not mine then? This is my baby. My beautiful baby girl. Forever and always.

His eyes blur more than the fog on the road, but he wipes them clean, momentarily moving his hand from his daughter’s hair. He doesn’t sniffle, and wipes his hand on his jeans before returning to her warm body.

A world of pain and love, and the only thing to see is a fan of white light, moving without sound through the valley.

It soon passes on, leaving only the darkness again. A cricket chirps in the void, perhaps the last one until spring next year. Then, nothing again.

I pull my hand away from the blind, and let the plastic blades bump against one another. I slip backwards into bed, and stare up at the blank ceiling.

Another stream of light slips though the blinds, and walks slowly along the far wall. It gets quicker as it moves along the wall, and all at once it leaps forward and disappears. Who was this light from?

A drunk husband?

An overworked mother?

A nervous teen?

A policeman?

The light didn’t differentiate, and I suppose it didn’t matter.

The Twirling Daisy

In the dead of night, with soft snow falling on my Arkansas cabin, my body shifted restlessly. The house was dark, but the light from distant streetlights skipped over the surface of the frozen ground, and filled my room with a soft blue. I was asleep, but sweat was forming on the back of my neck. It wetted my short hair, and soaked into the crevassed pillow.

She had returned to haunt my dreams.

“Excuse me?”

Service was normally stellar in Mumbai, with servers pouring over your every need, anticipating your want for an extra pav before you knew you needed one. But here at Suzette’s, it was the customer’s job to pine for the waiter. The owner had truly created the French experience.

A man clad in a black polo and a stoic expression turned his head as he walked a tray of empty plates inside. He held up one finger. Another anomaly; I was used to the standard pinch of the fingers, and the requisite: ek second.

He returned with a small pad and the same expression. He clicked the pen and waited for my order.

“Can I get the ham and cheese omelet, an orange juice, and an espresso?”

“Yes sir,” he tilted his head.

“Can I get the espresso after the meal?”

Another nod. He clicked the pen and walked away.

“Wait, can I also get a water?”

It was too late; he had already entered into the AC portion of the café. I preferred it outside, especially on Sunday mornings. Palm fronds protected me from the harsh rays, and without the intensity of traffic, the sea breeze travelled up the road to reach me. It was rare, but it was fresh.

Another waiter walked to the table across from mine.

“Excuse me.”

Like a broken record, my words fell short of his ears.

“Hey!”

He finally turned.

“Can I get a water here?”

He nodded and returned with a glass bottle of warm water, with an accompanying glass barely large enough to qualify as a shot glass. I gave no thanks; two can play the French game.

I slid my laptop bag beside me, and put my helmet on top. I had bought a roll of Halls cough drops long ago, and the Indian heat had melted the menthol and it bled through two pockets. It would take me another three weeks to notice the stickiness and the smell. The helmet was once a brilliant white, with two blue horns painted along the side. Along the chin, the word “Ace” was printed in cursive. It was that word that lured me to the helmet in the first place. Ace. It felt good to roar through a foreign city with a title of Ace. The helmet was now yellowing from the constant exposure to the Bombay smoke and hell. The visor, which I always kept open, had a film of black dirt on the inside. The airflow pulled the pollution over the top of my head, and slipped between the white of the crown and the tinted visor. The particles of filth stuck like magnets to it, and I tolerated the Wooly Willy dust.

I clasped my hands together on the table. To my left, there was a large stack of travel books about France. A yellow spine caught my attention; Bordeaux. I figured it would be a good idea to know exactly where that was, and maybe use some obscure knowledge at a cocktail party sometime. Some ass hole might mention his time in Nice, and I’d respond with a comment on the superiority of the Bordeaux region. I shook my head at the thought. I’d rather tell him to fuck off.

“Mr. Black!”

I turned back to my right. Alex had walked up the two stone steps into the portico. His Ray-Bans and pastel polo fit his combed wavy hair and linen pants. His girlfriend was breathtakingly beautiful, and followed behind him. She gave a friendly wave. Her cheeks rose to her eyes as she smiled. It was a telling smile; it was early for her, and her desire to eat alone had just been smashed. I moved to assuage her concern, because I shared it. A Sunday morning crepe at Suzette’s is meant to be solitary or with a loved one. Three was a crowd.

“Alex! How are you?” I elongated the “how”, and shorted the “you”. It was enough to turn a generic question into a personal one. Life is all about tone.

“Pretty good man. Getting your crepe on?”

“Ha, yeah man this is the routine.”

“Us to! Usually not so early, but this is the place.”

The greeting had expired, and we stood at a conversational crossroad. We could dig deeper, ask about work, about life, about plans. Or we could pause, say it’s good to see each other, and move along.

We both opted for the later.

They sat at the table catty-corner to mine, and I worked hard to avoid eye contact. This meant staring at the French books until the omelet arrived. Another breeze floated under the palms, and I breathed it in as I took a sip of the warm water. The sweat on my back from the ride over was still fresh, and the breeze called the goose bumps out of me.  I was wearing a red Cornell t-shirt, which had fit once. My body had shrunk since coming to India. Sweat and diarrhea continuously took pieces of me away, leaving a smaller and more emaciated me.

The omelet and orange juice arrived. The ham was roughly cut and salty, like good ham should be. The strings of fat and sinews of meat were robust, and mimicked wild boar more than an Iowa-fed hog. Meat this good was a rare thing in the city, and it came with an appropriate price tag. The orange juice was more pulp than juice, and the tang overpowered the sweet. I devoured the food like a starving man. The butter chicken roll from Mini Punjab wore off hours ago, and my tongue missed the simple flavors of salt and sweet. It was confused and lost from the masala deluge I had subjected it to since coming to the country. Meals like this were the best way to cure homesickness. I could practically smell Grammy making scramlets, after a morning of feeding the cows.

As I chewed the last fragment of ham, the waiter came with a small cup of steaming espresso. Not wanting to risk opening my mouth and let the flavor escape, I made a writing motion with my right hand. He tilted his head to the left and closed his eyes; he returned with the check a moment later. 1000 rupees even. I took out 1010, and left it under the bottle of warm water. One last of sip of the bitter black drink buzzed the front of my head, and hollowed out the inside of my hand. The jitters had come prematurely; usually they didn’t arrive until the caramel macchiato was half empty at the Juhu Starbucks.

I threw my bag over my shoulder, and turned it around on to my back. Helmet in hand, I left the sanctity of Suzette’s to brave the Indian roads again.

“Y’all have fun” I smiled to Alex.

“Look at this guy!” he shot back. His smile widened, and pointed to my helmet, “Such a fucking bad-ass.”

I laughed, “Oh yeah. These 100cc’s are almost too much for me to handle.”

“Drive safe. You, Lukas, and I should get drinks at Yacht tonight.”

“Hell yes. Just text me when.”

“Alright, sounds good.”

“See you around.”

The motorcycle was parked out in the hot sun. It was only 11am, but the seat had already warmed so much that it was hot to the touch. As I approached the red machine, I noticed a young girl standing next to it, leaning on the seat and playing with a flower. The stem was bent over near the bloom, but as she twirled it in her fingers, the petals spun like a helicopter, and lifted the stem upright. It only lasted for a second, before she stopped to twirl it the other direction.

I interrupted her world. “Hey there. I need to get to my bike, sorry!”

She stopped twirling the flower. The smile she held between her lips vanished, and she instinctively held out her hand. A whiny request in Hindi followed, as she tilted her head and took a step forward. Her clothes were tattered and brown, and a stench floated away from her little body.

“No, nahin.” I said with a smile, and moved closer to the seat of my bike.

She didn’t move, and I was close enough to warrant the shirt pull. Her small fingers pinched the red fibers of my shirt, and she tugged downwards.

“Hey, no.” My words were morn stern this time.

  

An angry man buried deep in my chest beat a drum. Ruh, ruh.

She continued to tug at my shirt and held her hand out. Her words had formed a chant, repeating something short and sad.

“Get your fucking hands off me” I raised my eyebrows and looked directly at her.

Her dark eyes stared back at me. The dark brown pigment camouflaged with her pupil, creating once large disc absent of color. Where there should have been white, there was yellow, streaked with small red veins. Those eyes belonged on an animal or a demon, but they were placed in the skull of a little girl. Her brown skin was dark, and beads of sweat lined her face. Some was pooled on the top of her cheeks, just under her eyes. A red bindi was crudely pasted on the forehead: splotchy and uneven. There were heavy wrinkles running along her forehead, painful memories of a long life lived in a short time.

Her tugging and begging was incessant, and my animalistic absence of humanity reared its ugly head. I grabbed both her shoulders. Her arms were skinnier than I had imagined, and it felt like I was grabbing a small terrier or large turkey. I picked her light body up, and moved her to the side. As she was lifted in the air, two thoughts ran through my head:

Gross. What am I touching?

I hope her feet don’t touch my shoes.

She didn’t expect to be forcefully moved, and as I returned her to the road, her begging stopped. Her mouth closed, and her eyes widened. A bead of sweat accumulated on the ridge of her nose, and it ran downward towards her cracked lips.

I straddled the bike, the seat hot through my jeans. I leaned forward to disengage the kickstand, then leaned back and dug my heels into the Bandra bricks. It took four steps to get the bike into the street, and with a swift kick downwards, it rattled to life, and I revved the engine as first gear engaged and the rough tires skidded away from the little girl. As the gravel jumped backwards from the rear tire, the girl left me with one more plead.

It was soft, it was sincere, it was heartbreaking. She closed her eyes, and said:

“Please sir. Please.”

The roar of the engine was my response. I left the girl with the broken flower, and nothing else.

My foot kicked my body awake. The sweat was heavy on the back of my head. I looked around the dark of my room. The blue hue was cold, and the snow falling outside was creating a deafening silence.

She’s not here.

I kicked the covers away from my body, and touched the lamp beside me to life. The light leapt from my room and landed on the soft ground outside. The floor was cold as I walked to the kitchen, and my feet picked up particles of dirt and dust. I filled a glass of cold water, and sat down on the couch in the living room.

She’s not here.

Under a table across the room, my old motorcycle helmet sat like a ghost. It was now adding a layer of Arkansas dust to the Bombay filth. I picked it up and held it in my hands. It had been months since my head had been inside. I rubbed the letters of “Ace” with the side of my thumb. I sniffed the inside, and the smell of sweat and mold filled my nostrils; the smell was home.

On the other side of the world, it was 11am on a Sunday morning in Bombay. She was undoubtedly on the road again, if she was still alive. Her pain was real, and so was my guilt. She wasn’t the first beggar I had turned down, nor the last. It was a reality of India. People beg, and sometimes it’s real. Other times sick and twisted men burn and mutilate children to better garner an emotional response. Sometimes babies are put in pain, so they scream in the arms of young girls as they navigate heavy traffic on bare feet.

She will die before me, probably lying on a dirty rug under a blue tarp. I didn’t return to my bed that night. Thoughts of her consumed me, and my eyes were affixed on the dark hill across the valley.

I took a daisy out of a vase on my coffee table. My fingers ran up the stem, and I broke it in my hand. The bloom bent over my fingers. I pinched and dragged it across my thumb. The petals rose up in the air, and spun in a blur of color.

She’s here.

I smiled and the two of us played across the planet.