em (-) dash

Last week we went on a hike that started along a never ending stretch of train tracks in Ella. We moved quickly in the morning sunlight, bracing ourselves for the inevitable climb upwards. We turned down a path that led us to an overgrown alcove. Dead end. Walking back the way we came we asked a man of nearly seventy for direction. He was wearing a baseball cap that said “PARIS”, an open button down shirt and a sarong. His response left me wanting to record the audio, some sort of BBC radio network series. “There are many paths,” he replied in a calm, clear voice, leaving me to have an existential crisis on a Saturday morning. As we moved up, he again lamented the numerous paths there were to take and quickly led us on. What turned into simple directions brought us to the top of the mountain with him as our guide four hours later. I didn’t mind, I knew we would have to compensate him in some way, we’re still tourists after all, but I liked the way he pointed out simple things in English. “Tree” he would say, and gesture to our surroundings. “Oh” I would reply. He grabs a branch and tears off a handful of leaves, pulverizing them between his palms and pushing them up to our noses. “Eucalyptus!” he proclaims and then lets them unceremoniously fall to the ground. 

“There are many paths” is something that I’ve had to repeat now, far too often. I’ve been working on a few writing prompts to try and capture my view of ‘work’ and my view of ‘life’. This is not an easy task when I actually think about what these two things mean. A quick Google search to find out the meaning of life leaves me laughing and maybe more confused than before. I’ve never really taken the time to sit down and flesh these things out - what do I think, about life? And why do I think that? I find it extremely paralyzing to sit with myself in this way. The major breakdown that Google's AI gives me is that we have several options to choose from: 

1. Philosophical Perspectives - the Sartre’s, Camus’, Humanism and Absurdity theories.

2. Religious Perspective - Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and Hinduism I find comical the ones they’ve decided to include as if there aren’t a million religions out there. 

3. The Sciences - This is of course a category, but I’m less interested in it because it lacks a certain sense of mystery for me.

4. Personal / Subjective - I also find this unnecessary because, for me, these fall into the sub categories of their predecessors. 

This all leads me to a crash course - refresher on Nihilism - the idea that life actually has no inherent meaning or purpose. I find Nihilism to be a cop out for laying claim that nothing you do matters, therefore you can do anything you want. Nihilism basically comes down to lack of imagination. No, that can’t be it, so I quickly move on. 

Last Friday night I started to cry at temple while staring up at the Bodhi Tree. I’m not sure exactly what did me in. It wasn’t the incessant chanting, the tussle of leaves, the feeling of my feet on the cold sand. It was everything at once hitting me in the stillness. I thought about how there’s literally never a time anymore that I’m alone and don’t have my phone, don’t feel the pressure to check, see, remember. I close my eyes and feel the wind, it’s so strong and I’m being lifted off the ground the way I think dying might feel when all the pain goes away. There are so many unnecessary, unstoppable thoughts - the noise never stops - but on the rare occasions that it does, it's almost too much to bear. 

It’s no secret that morning is my favourite time of day. Hope has not yet been met with resistance of either my own conjuring or someone else’s and I feel my clearest then. A few weeks ago I was at the beach and sat out to watch the sunrise amidst a group of people. Among them was an old man and his two grandchildren. He stretched as the sun came up, his little imitators following suit, a tradition that I assume started years ago when they were younger. The novelty for me, the routineness for them, it felt amazing to see someone lead the kind of life that I strive for on my weekends and little vacations sprinkled through time. Does he know how lucky he is? Then again, do I know how lucky I am? It’s all relative when you look at it from this side and that. 

I was looking for a poem for the English Literary Association day at my school. I fell into a deep hole and came out many hours later. In the hole, maybe you’ve been there too, I found a poem by Emily Dickinson. “Ruin is formal, slow and steady…” I’m sure. I’m not in ruin but I’ve been reading ruin, I've been feeling ruin. 

The hole opens up and I go back in. Joking with a friend about Emily using ChatGPT to make poems, I do a quick search and am greeted with something ugly, indistinguishable, drowning within all of the em - dashes. This gives me hope, maybe GPT isn’t as clever as I thought. I open Instagram and see a concert someone has posted a video from and I am reminded of a concert I went to with the Walker boys while I was maybe in college. It was in Brighton, we ate outside leaning against a car. I don't remember who played or what type of music it was, but it doesn’t matter. To see someone perform in such a way, a secret for you, this is something I will never be able to bring myself to share with the world. 

We were on the same beach where we’d met Bernadette and Kai in December. We were greeted by the manager of a small restaurant- smiles, hugs, high fives, home. The open mic consisted of two men in their early fifties. They urged us to sing, they let us pick their songs, one was from my village, bought land at some point and sent his kids to the ‘good school’. How does this happen? I thought. 

Some people are plucked out of a field and everything ends up OK and some are left for dead. I see the love here through boys who grow too old to be home and yet remain while being fed every meal by their mothers. They bring their mothers to temple since they can’t drive themselves, they pick them up without stepping inside, simple but loving things. There was a door open to a house on the way back from the temple, I was sitting in the back of a three wheel with three women that watched my every move. Through the door of the house the faint glow of the TV filled the entrance way, a bed set before it, mosquito net over it, one family all together, not out of necessity, but out of closeness and a tradition that is so common. Maybe I wasn’t ready or didn’t see what I see now six months ago. All I could focus on some days was ‘what wasn’t’ instead of ‘what is’. I like changing, not in any drastic way, but the way the light changes in the summer time - one minute every day until you realize that the sun is beating down on you and it’s already 8PM, where does the time go, where does the misplaced frustration end up? 

War, war, war has been on my mind. The biggest emotional feelings I’ve had in a long time, watching uselessly from the sidelines thinking that my greatest defense and help to the world is following the headlines like a child vaguely interested in learning adult games. And how is it that a video on Instagram has brought me to tears rather than seeing raw footage of homes, children, and whole cities bombed and burned past recognition. War wasn’t meant to be viewed through your phone on a Tuesday night while drinking a cup of tea. But the involvement of the camera exposed it to the world and then the world forgot or showed little interest. Consecutive and slow - Emily had it right, crumbling is not an instant’s act but an attack for decades. 

I got three rolls of film developed last month when I was in Colombo. The best part about shooting here is that I don’t know when I’ll be able to get them developed and subsequently lose track of what's on each roll. This time it was a trip to Kandy, a night in Ella, a weekend in  Arugam Bay, a few weeks at my site, a train ride I’ll never forget, and a hike I took in Central Province almost a year ago. My time is marked in strange ways, the date on all the photos is wrong, but maybe it could be right, I have no way to distinguish but to rely on how I felt. 

Photos force you to look at something in a different way, whether you agree with what you see or not. I had this feeling my whole childhood growing up with multiple photos of my biological mom and only one photo of my biological dad. I was reminded of this on a Monday night. Do we see what we want to? Do we not look close enough? 

Nate pointed out that a photo of Pottuvil, taken from the window of a red bus, with goats walking in the street and two men talking at the bus station, it looks vastly different from what we see on the day to day. This photo looks so remote, timeless. This place, to me, is unrecognizable, maybe not because I haven’t been looking, but because it’s been over a year and a half of living in Sri Lanka. I lived in my apartment in Brooklyn for six years before coming here. The impressions of the door handle and the ding on the right side of the wall in the hallway on my way to my bedroom are still burned into the tips of my fingers. The suction of the downstairs door, so loud and intrusive when you come home at 3AM, ringing in my ear. I don’t think it takes very long to come to know a place, but to be reminded of what others might see is an unimaginable truth until you’re forced to look. 

Dilapidation's processes

Are organized Decays —

 I wonder where Emily’s hands traveled, what she saw when she was forced to reexamine the foreground. It’s a special gift to be able to refocus and zoom out. Maybe we can save ourselves from what she points out is never a slow process - fail in an instant, no man did. Perhaps the moment of refocus helps us to do just that, to see that changing course, vision, attitude when the time is right.