Curry Reverie

This week I purchased a one way ticket to Denver so I could spend every last possible moment with my love and say a proper goodbye at the gate like we used to in the late 1900s. Yesterday I took him to the airport for his one way flight to India. We had a tearful kiss goodbye at the gate and I stood at the window and watched his plane as long as possible, walking throughout the terminal to improve my vantage point until I ran out of windows to look through. It was worth every penny. The weeks leading up to his departure were filled with as much love, joy, and happiness as we could possibly experience together. There were far fewer tears than I anticipated. And I am incredibly proud of the strength and dignity we brought forth in each other as we rose to meet the challenge of this next chapter. Tonight I am watching one of our favorite movies--Metro...in Dino. I highly recommend it. The many songs in this film have been a constant soundtrack in our lives for over a year. The joy this fi...

It's been 3 years and 8 months since my first date with my partner in a local coffee shop. 1339 days since we met. Yesterday we embarked on our most adventurous date--we went skydiving together. It was incredible and delightful and surreal and extra special because we did it together. It is the grandest adventure we will have before he moves back to India in 12 days. Twelve. The swimming pool of my emotional & mental state is full to the brim and frequently spilling over. And yet somehow on that tiny propeller plane, flying way higher up into the sky than it seems it should have any business doing, I was much calmer than I could have expected. I was with him and we were sharing something amazing. I don't know what the next chapters hold. I can only hope we'll make a way to write more adventures together.

I am not sure I'll ever feel strong enough to tell this story of impending heartbreak, but I'm not unique in my experience. And on the global scale of how myopic votes cause ripple effects of immense harm, my pain is so small. Very long story short--due to changes to immigration policies in the US, my partner cannot visit his family, his home, in India with any reasonably certainty that he will be able to schedule the newly required interview to return to the US. I recently learned that there is a backlog of half a million people in India who need these interviews to return to the US. Some of them have been stranded for months, separated from spouses and children, and a life built "the right way" in the US. He is preparing for what will likely be a longterm if not permanent departure. The invisible weight that perches atop my chest when I think about it is almost unbearable. It steals my breath and threatens my spirit. Weeks ago, I thought of Tennyson's declaratio...

I recently learned that Niagara Falls can have tornado warnings. Ask me how I know! ;) My partner of three and a half years and I went to New York last week. We walked tens of thousands of steps around New York City, Niagara Falls, and Buffalo. We saw everything we possibly could and ate incredible South Asian food for as many meals as possible. The morning we planned to head to Niagara Falls started out somewhat inauspiciously with our shuttle bus cancelling without notice. Struggling to find our next option, we sat at the shuttle stop searching through our smart phones. At some point another Indian man walked up and asked us the question we were hoping to find the answer to--how do I get to Niagara Falls? We shared that we were in the same predicament. He mentioned that he had spoken to a taxi driver who had given him a price he was not willing to pay. We offered to split the fare with his family of 4. Soon he & my partner were off to find a taxi van for us all. They drove up mom...

The more I learn about emerging technologies, the less I want to share my carefully composed words with the world. I have withdrawn significantly--something that I fought so hard to reverse for most of my adult life. You will, by the way, pry the em dash from my cold dead hands. I loathe the digital parasites daring to leech onto my words, my artwork, my mind. They seek to devour my very humanity. And I have no idea how to stop them. I DO NOT CONSENT. And so I closed my turtle shell around myself to protect my imagination. Feeling as if I had no other recourse fuels part of my rage toward the ransacking regurgitation platforms. Of course, environmental and economic justice are other significant sources of my ire. Lately, I've been reading about how the targeting of art and literature are intentional. A technocracy needs independent thinkers to shut up. Keep your radical, liberal, progressive, commie ideas to yourself. At some point, believing drinking water is a human right became ...

I recently asked my youngest niece what she was excited about for 2026. She shared some lovely things, only one of which I predicted, and then as the thoughtful & skilled conversationalist she is, she reciprocated the question. And in the moment I had . . . nothing. Not because I have nothing. My mind just went blank. After a year that demanded so much of me, that yielded incredibly beautiful results beside incredibly painful outcomes, being excited feels like a dangerous luxury. Hope, like most worthwhile pieces of the human experience, exists only in vulnerability. And I had a choice, keep to the safety of a mind unwilling to risk materializing thoughts of excitement, or I could find a way to continue the conversation and articulate some precious things. I chose the latter. I shared a few things, the last of which was a hope that 2026 would pleasantly surprise me. Before noon today, I was surprised by a few different & wonderful things. 1. my favorite band is releasing a conc...