An Expensive Morning

It costs $62 for an Indian visa. It costs $63 to pay off the snarky towtruck driver about to impound the van you've rented to move your possessions from Toronto to Cambridge.

Starting to Feel It

Nervous, I mean. Went to the Indian consulate (it was actually open today) and got the whole visa thing sorted out. A long wait in a long line, handed them the $62 (exact change) and came back at 15h30 to pick it up. Sweet. I now have permission to enter the country. What that really means is that I'm going to India. Dropped by Tom & Jam's place tonight to drink tea. Ended up spending some time looking at Tom's pictures from last year. Just looking through them was making me nervous. Not that I haven't seen similar photos before. A lot of what I saw reminded me of some overseas experiences ten years back. But I dunno. Tom and I are the same person. Well. We're blonde, blue-eyed and Mennonite. We wear black sweaters over grey long-sleeved shirts. As he was scrolling through the photos, I started to feel my stomach go a little bit. I think just hearing him talk of his own struggles with the trip, it did start to hit me that while this is going to be an exciting trip, it is a bit scary too. The reality is sinking in -- two weeks and I'll be on a plane to Kolkata. What have I gotten myself into? I guess I'll find out when I get there. But right now, I need to calm down. Prayer might be helpful. Some time to slow down too. I'm just happy that most of my stuff is packed, and the move back to Cambridge will (hopefully) run smoothly on Wednesday. Tonight I sleep early.

Pepsi and Poverty

I’ve been stuck reading and re-reading this passage for well over a week now: Encouraged by the conventions, most people have found easy solutions to every problem – the easiest aspects of whatever is easy; and yet it is clear that we were meant to stay with what is hard; all living creatures hold fast to it and everything in nature grows and protects itself in its own manner and stays an entity in its own terms – strives to stay one at whatever cost and against whatever opposition. There is little that we understand, but our conviction that we must stay in touch with what is difficult will not desert us: it is good to be solitary, for solitude is hard, and that something is hard must be just one more reason why we should do it. Bonus marks for those who can identify the author. I steal reading lists from people all the time. Sometimes I stumble upon good things. Sometimes I find others’ selections to be utterly, unfathomably inane. This time, I've encountered sheer brilliance. I stole this particular list a few months ago, and immediately purchased one of the books. I may have re-read it in its entirety five times by now. I can't seem to get through a day without re-reading the section from which the above passage is taken. I haven’t had this experience in a very, very long time. I don’t want to read anything else. There’s something about this tiny assembly of letters and words. This portrait of the author’s soul. The way he explores and communicates his own understanding of existence. There’s something in this selection that speaks so powerfully into my life that I can’t help but return to it. I might be addicted. For months – since September really – I’ve been wrestling with what it is to live out my faith every day. Leaving work to study Theology at Wycliffe has profoundly impacted my life. It was a change I needed. It was a move that has seen so much positive growth. Yeah I’m still messing things up. But God’s doing some crazy things. I think it’s like Jason observed last night – God’s giving me this time to catch up on the things I put aside for so long. A crash course in faithful living. First Seminary. Now India. India where I’ve never been. India that scares me with its throngs of people. A new language. A new culture. A completely different understanding of personal space. I like my space. Sucks to me, I’m not going to have much of that in such a densely overpopulated city. On top of that, I'm blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and clearly very white. Going to India is not an easy solution. If anything, this will put me in touch with the difficult. It’s not a test. It’s not something I need to survive to prove anything to anyone, least of all myself. It may be another classroom – but not one governed by pass or fail. The lessons aren’t set in stone either. I’ll take from them what I need to learn, and leave other things behind. The lessons are different for everyone. The chaos of this reality, of streets teeming with lives and stories and wonders all their own – this is my classroom. And it’s a course that brings me hope. Encountering beauty in this chaotic humanity, in life’s gritty reality, in lives governed by Pepsi and poverty, I pray these lessons won’t be lost on me.

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.

Day 0

Sortof. It'd be day zero, if this was in fact day zero and not just a continuation of the past. If anything, this is just another day where another wayward global citizen starts a blog to tell about his journey. And how exciting can that be anyhow?