Gratitude and Books

I recently returned home from spending a month in a remote area of Bali, editing and putting final touches on my novel. And a few days ago I sent them to my agent. It has been a journey and half getting here. It has taken years of patience and perseverance, a labor of love and sacrifice. It's taken failing again and again, yet not giving up on my vision and dream. Above all, I am grateful for the way it has unfolded. Timing is everything. 

In fact, I'm grateful for a lot these days in this ever madding world. And one of those things is books. Not only having the time and space to write them, but also read them. I've more than enough posts on writing and books and how they have impacted my life, so for the first time, I will write about some of my favorites, ones that I am grateful exist and what they mean to me. These are not reviews or summaries, but something more. They are about what gives the stories pulse and beauty and how they (though fiction) speak a truth that could not be told in any other way. 

Bunny by Mona Awad 🐰 Life as metaphor 

This entire novel is written as a metaphor for the creative process--at times alienating, horrific, twisted, and dark, but also playful, whimsical, clever, and a bit genius. A love letter to the imagination, Mona Awad once stated in an interview. A surreal and messy experience from start to finish. To live creatively can feel like this a lot of the time, at least for me when I'm deep into a project. But why would I want it to be any other way? Life is surreal and messy, but also achingly beautiful. I take it all in. I write it all out. 

The Secret History by Donna Tartt 🕮 Life in the shadow of story

Donna Tartt, the goddess of dark academia, birthed a genre that makes you think about university life (and misspent youth) in an entirely new way. Our life experiences, especially when we are young, shape us whether we want to admit to it or not. No matter how much therapy or healing we might try, there are some experiences that will always haunt us, that will always live in the shadows of our life story, peering over our shoulder, waiting on us to look back. 

Richard Papen, our protagonist, sets us up for this in the prologue: I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell. We can either use this to our advantage or let it eat us alive. This book has taught me how to turn pain into story, into art. Take that one story, and instead of allowing it to take your life, use it to create.

Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang ॐ Life as language

Bound by language, it informs our reality including the way we experience time. Here in this reality, we use linear language and therefore experience linear time. So in this life, whether we have free will or if our lives are predetermined isn't the point. It's how we respond in every given moment, for better or worse. Even if we know the future as it moves straight toward us, we aren't going to know that experience and our reaction to it until it actually happens--like light hitting water, will it take the minimum or maximum route? 

Character Louise asks us in the end: From the beginning I knew my destination....But am I working toward an extreme of joy, or of pain? A lesson that comes up again and again--when confronted with the shocking, the confusing, the unexpected, can you take a step back and allow it come at you in slow motion?  Whether it hits in a moment of joy or pain, it can be processed and transmuted for the better. Or so I'd like to think. 

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel ∞ Life as interwoven connection

I read this book back in early April while island hopping around Raja Ampat, the eastern most region of Indonesia. Remote and cut off from the rest of the world, it made me think about how interconnected the world truly is. Part of Station Eleven takes place in a post apocalyptic world, but focuses on those intricate interconnections made prior, those connections that survived. We see these connections travel over time and place and through the different characters. And how small gestures of creativity and kindness can impact others in such a way it gets them through something apocalyptic (even a real apocalypse) and will remain long after. 

What are some books you are grateful for that have impacted your life in unexpected and beautiful ways?

The Nature of Water

I 

You can’t escape the sound of water—the ocean, the waterfalls, the fountains, the infinity pools. Caught in afternoon downpours. Glistening dew suspended on the tips of rice stalks stretched out over bright green fields. Lushness hangs in the air. Dreamy mist envelops the volcanoes, the jungle, the hidden water temples sprinkled across the island.

Five years later, I’m back on this watery island where the raw, wild energy is force to be reckoned with, snaking its way across the volcanoes, over the rice terraces, and along the narrow roadways that crisscross over the land, where I’ve been knocked to the ground, where I crawled away swearing to never return. I am back to ride its fierce, watery energy and make peace with the intense lessons I’ve had here. Because, I intuit, intense lessons bring intense healing and perception and wisdom.

II

The text sent me into an immediate panic. There appears to be a flood coming from your room, was all it said. What do you mean? I replied. Surely this was a mistake. A message sent to the wrong tenant. No reply came, so we made a mad dash from the restaurant back to my apartment. Turns out, it wasn’t mistake. At some point that day, the bidet hose exploded, causing the snake like contraption to flail wildly, spewing water everywhere for who knows how long—long enough to seep out of the bathroom, across my kitchen and living room floor, and out into the hallway of the building wrecking enough havoc a notice had to be sent to all the tenants asking about water damage.

 

The fix and cleanup turned out to be easy enough, but the fact it coincided with the day I swam my first kilometer was rather uncanny, like the universe decided I loved water that much it wanted to reward me with as much of it as possible.

***

I glide slowly and smoothly across the pool, back and forth, building momentum and strength and resilience in the water. A moving meditation. A mental cleanse. A space of fluidity. I untangle stories and rewrite them in my mind. I analyze them from different angles and perspectives and points of view, through different colored lenses and psychological landscapes. How much stories can morph when you step in and out of all the different ways to tell them astounds me. This is the steady flow of where I remain. I don’t try to solve the big problems of the world or worry about my life on land. In the water, it becomes easy to build and retain energy and strength that the world seems so intent on stealing.

 

Being in the water, living by ways of the water, I will work with water and learn from it instead of trying to control or fight against it, instead of running from its uncontrollable strength and overwhelming power.

III

I felt it coming before it fully formed—the way the tide pulled back so far and with so much strength it nearly knocked me over. Then the build of the swell that was far taller than I was sent me into a panic, so I turned my back to it and ran. The wave caught up to me and crashed at my heels, thrusting me forward faster than I could run, knocking me to the sand.

You can’t run from the waves, especially big ones, I was told. You just have to face them, hold your breath, and dive under them when they come.

 

So, there on that nearly deserted Thai island in the Andaman Sea, I learned to face the waves and dive. And once I learned the secret, I became addicted to it. Give me what you’ve got, I wanted to scream into the ocean. But, I also knew not to tempt it. Not respecting water, fearing it, and hiding from it, only feeds its strength. I needed to humble myself around it, learn from it, and work with it if I wanted to truly understand its nature. Under the water is silence and calmness. All the violence and crashing takes place on the surface. Much like meditation, I needed to go under the surface, to find the calmest place and face it. It’s the only way to come out the other side unshaken and with a sense of having surrendered and survived.

IV

The majority of my natal chart is full of water signs. I’ve spent my life navigating this world of mystical water—my flowing emotions and creative impulses, like unstoppable forces of nature. The earth is 70% water and humans 60% after all, so perhaps it’s only natural to want to understand its nature and ways. It puts out fires, it floods the earth and spreads uncontrollably, it amps up and runs wild with wind. It’s natural state is uncontrollable and free flowing. If left to stagnate, it breeds disease and cultivates sickness. It kills. Perhaps this speaks to something of my own nature as well.

***

Lying on the beach at the northern most tip of Borneo after dark with no light pollution for miles, I sank into the sand and listened. The star filled sky and roar of the ocean swallowed me. The milky way stretched across the sky. Millions of miles away from the stars. Million miles away from worry and the stresses the world creates. Somewhere floating in the liminal space. Terrifying, yet comforting. Buoyant and timeless. My natural state.

Little did I know then that my next visit to Bali not too many weeks later would leave me hospitalized with a scar etched down my forehead. Only in retrospect do I understand what it means to hold so much water (and fire) that it can lash out at any given moment, putting you in your place, demanding respect, forcing you to face its wrath when you think you have all the control.

It’s my first time back on Bali since that moment. No wonder I vowed to never return. No wonder my body had been so tense at the thought of going back. No wonder the only way to ease the discomfort is by immersing myself in water, moving with it, respecting it, dancing with it. Strengthening the navigational system I was born with.

V

Raja Ampat off the coast of Western Papua, where more life teems underwater than above it, I swim through these translucent waters with purpose and confidence, with fluidity and grace. And I face all these watery, wild islands of Indonesia the same. 

What is your relationship to water? Do you fear it? Embrace its power? Or have you been forced to face it and make peace it?

Untangled

Days after I landed in India for the third time in the past year, I untangled. 

To untangle: to free from a twisted, knotted state, to be free from perplexity, from confusion. 

All those circumstances that seemed so distressing, so confusing, so pressing, so important, only days ago, weeks ago, months ago, slid through my mind, dissolving into nothingness. Knots of anxiety untangled themselves, tightly knitted problems woven into my mind, unraveled. 

In their place, a lightness, a void, a clear path.

We awoke just before midnight and ran to the rooftop to watch the fireworks over the backwaters of Kochi. Aside from a handful of noteworthy and beautiful moments and accomplishments, I was glad to see 2024 behind me. A year of navigating stress and loss. A year of feeling too much. 

Somewhere between stillness and movement life got blurry. 

Blurry: not clearly or distinctly visible or audible, unable to perceive what is real and what is not, unfocused.

During these darkest days of the year, a surge of new energy rises. A time to recalibrate and refocus. Focus harnesses creative power, something tangible and real. An ability to create. To actualize. 

The word maya is often translated as illusion, something to rise above or see beyond. But a better, more accurate translation is artistic power. 

When I stop moving through the world and life as though it's an illusion, it becomes more vibrant, more real. I see it as a creation I can work with and immerse in. I stop making every experience something other than what it is. I stop projecting meaning onto everything and simply live. 

Early weeks of the new year were punctuated by southern Indian sunsets and meandering beach walks. Feverishly reading Han Kang and Mona Awad, afternoon writing frenzies, and endless cups of masala chai. 

Untangled, I am fearless, focused, and clear. Unrushed, with eyes wide open. 

Move through the world like you are walking a labyrinth, slow and mindful, winding your way through landscapes and colors and enchantment.

How did you navigate through 2024? What strengths did you find? What will you do differently this year?