India from Afar

After a 15 hour delay, suspension, a few hours of sleep in a posh hotel that could have been anywhere, except for the south Indian breakfast and the smell of sewage from the open emergency exit door on my floor, made it quite clear where I was.....still.

Got home a few hours after my Parisian friend left my apartment, the plan is that we would be able to spend the day together. Oh well....The jet lag is loopy, making me tired at strange times, trying to steer the horse of alertness to times that make sense here.

It's a bit of a blur. I am SO GLAD TO BE HOME! Once again I appreciate the familiar, the luxury of my life in the west in New York. I think I was a bit greedy with this trip, should have quit while I was ahead with the last one in December. A lot of the time this trip, I would ask myself, 'What am I doing here?' 'What am I looking for?' 'What do I expect?' Maybe what I fell in love with before isn't quite what I can love now? Maybe it is easier to love India from afar? Other people who have lived abroad come to the conclusion that they prefer to live where they know, what is culturally familiar. There are many layers of this familiarity, all personal.

Loving India for me is best from afar, I think, fresh from the sub continent. It is a place, entity that I can carry in my heart. Much better than my intestines, at this point. Now that I've landed in the 'new world' they are behaving themselves (fyi). I have my experiences, my photos, sounds, Indian jewelry and shawls, memories, a great collection of friends. Great treasures have been taken from Mother India and I have paid in exacting ways only she could have dreamed.

There has been a sense of obligation with my driven fascination. I have been so influenced by the art, spiritual practice, etc., of India that I felt obliged to go and seek, pay hommage in some form. Do I really need to do that anymore? I can go to yoga practice 5 blocks away, take the train to the Metropolitan Museum or Asia Society or Rubin Museum and see much more Asian art in much better venues than anywhere in India. It seems the export of the art has helped the preservation of it. Yes, these may be fighting words, but I heard them originally uttered by people with Indian passports. The contract of obligation is over. If I want to go back, not completely out of the question, though for now it definitely is. My parameters are quite clear: not alone and one or two places/areas at a time, an organized pre-tested itinerary. Yeah, right....India totally blows that last one up, rolling on the floor laughing at my tears. "oh you like the challenge of India." a friend had said. Do I? Do I really? I'm not so sure.

Maybe what I really have to seek is here. I want to get on with my work–art, not building stuff, that's the 'day job'. Despite all this, I still want to keep making ganeshas, my Ganeshas, multi-armed, with trunks curved to the left, but with sneakers, iPods, handbags, cupcakes and sometimes (gasp) even female breasts. I am an infidel! I am an American! I am an Artist and the best artists steal, at least according to Pablo Picasso.  I say Si! Let's see.....

The love of travel has not left me permanently. It's just that my traveling needs a vacation. Though this blog has been used as a travel blog I may put on another kind of shoes and continue walking on with the blog, writing/picturing some different takes about things more local, or perhaps even more internal. Again, let's see....