Countdown Begins

The rain comes down in droves. I’ve just finished twelve hours of sleep, two cups of coffee, and a viewing of Antwone Fischer. I must be exhausted. I cried through the entire film. It’s one of those Mighty Ducks moments like I had during exams in undergrad. I haven't had that in awhile. Life just keeps happening, and I haven’t had time to slow down. Thank God for sleep, and the peace He brings in the morning (okay - late afternoon). My room is so sparse now. With the exception of the U2 poster on the wall and Warhol’s portrait of Sam (a lovely pink cat), it looks as though no-one lives here anymore. Pretty soon someone else will have moved in and made the room theirs. I’m leaving next week and all my worldly possessions are stacked in the corner. I have way too many clothes. So much for my feigned desire of minimalism. I could open my own clothing shop. If I follow through, there’ll be an army of Andrew clones walking around in clothes I wore a year ago. Maybe I’ll replace Clinton, and change the name to “Andrew's What Not to Wear.” Doesn’t sound pretentious at all, does it? I haven’t the nerve to throw these things out. You never know when the knit sweater vest is coming back into style. Any day now, I suspect. Maybe I’ll resurrect it in the not-too-distant future. Not in India tho. Too damned hot. And humid. Rainy season – monsoon season – is coming. I can’t believe the trip is coming so soon. And yet, I’ll be boarding a plane on May 11th. Everything’s been coming together surprisingly easy. Just wait till I take my first breath of Kolkata air. Toronto’s smog alerts will taste and feel like mountain air. Got an email from Silas today. I’m going to meet him after I move back into my parents’ place next week. Silas is a friend of a friend. He’s also a monk from India. In Canada for some time, Silas is returning to India in mid-May. It’ll be amazing to speak with him about the country, and just hear what he has to say. I’ve been so blessed having people to talk to about my experience. Jam and Ryan, Elaine and a bunch of others have been really great resources for learning a bit about the country and what to expect. Sarah’s been amazing too – crash courses in Hindi, life-changing places to go, bartering tips, and sarcastic banter to boot – hopefully some of it will stick. Not the sarcasm part. I have that pretty much covered off independent of her influence. All of these pre-trip hypotheses are highly theoretical right now. Talking about India is one thing. Stepping foot on the tarmac in Kolkata is a completely separate feat. Even reading Miranda Stone's account of her voyage was enough to let me know that no matter how well-prepared I may be, the experience is gonna catch me off guard. I remember the way I was shaken when I went to Brasil in '95. Re-reading Sartre’s Nausea last week, this line stuck out: This is what I thought: for the most banal event to become an adventure, you must (and this is enough) begin to recount it. This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories, and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell. Where does the intersection between telling and living come? I’m writing down some thoughts of what I expect this experience to be like. I’ll be journaling throughout my three-month stay overseas, and yet, there’s something unspeakable in what I’ll be doing. I won’t be able to communicate the story except by living it. When I get back, it won’t necessarily be a matter of me talking about particular instances. It won’t be me telling about my experience at Kalighat. It won’t be regaling you with tales of the friendships made, the difficulties faced, the food eaten. All of these things are so far beyond language’s capacity to express. And yeah, I’ll tell those stories, but I suspect they’ll lose something in the translation. That’s the thing, isn’t it? We all live our own stories, we all are molded and shaped by what we see, do, read, write, experience. At the same time that we’re interacting with the world, changing it in some way, the world has a way of changing us, challenging us, and turning us into who we are becoming. The challenge, perhaps, is to let ourselves simply become. Become the person God created us to be. So when I come back, I’ll be different. I’m convinced of it. I don’t happen to know how that will play out. Maybe I won’t notice it as much as you might. In the next few months, tho I’m many miles away, I’ll continue to live my story. So when I can’t necessarily express what’s happened to me, when I try to explain the transformation, know that there's more going on than what I'm able to express in my stories. Let my life fill in the silences of these unutterable and inexplicable things.