my romantic tryst with cancer

Tonight was seminal in many ways. Ordinary by most measures- we had a drink, took a walk, went to a club, danced a bit, left, walked home, said goodnight, retreated to our respective lives- but I feel more visible then ever. We were at Rangeela , an annual South-Asian fundraiser, elegantly nested (and somewhat marginalised) at the early cusp of Toronto's Pride celebrations. These were my people, or rather people like me. I didn't feel different, even though I never think I do, or so I tell myself. I recognised the music, the language, the vibe. There is always a place you call "home" when you use the word, and I realised tonight how much more my identity finds its feet when it feels comfortable in its own skin. I realised in being visible, how invisible I can be otherwise. My community, also has a colour, and acknowledging it is a start. Songs were played that reminded me of first blushes in my early days at University. I danced in a way that everyone else kind...

I'm floating tonight... I just got back from an evening that I'll always remember. There are two authors I cherish, who weave words into the most unimaginably beautiful fabrics, who garden the universe with planets rich with stories, who make life become art, and their art becomes love... Jeanette Winterson is one of these two. Her books have been companions in the best and worst of times. She's a philosopher, and poet, and in my opinion a sculptor of thought too. She spoke of how important poetry is to make us human. She spoke of her life, and her past, and how precious the present is. "Love is art" she said, and you have to love the inside as much as the outside. There are only three endings in her opinion, "revenge, tragedy, and forgiveness", and if we all could accept and make peace with that eventuality, we could live the present with so much more feeling, beauty and meaning. My words do not do justice to hers... I got to speak with her afterwa...

I'm in London, Ontario. I've just come back to my room after a long walk with colleagues of mine from this course I'm at. I feel alive when I'm here, even though this City is somewhat dead. The conversations, the discussions, the utopian luxury to even have them, unpeel the patina that seals me from myself, a flake at a time. I write this tonight in an effort to remember this feeling when I return, and relive it in how I live each day. It's not an aspiration, but a reality that I cannot deny for much longer. Change is inevitable, and I've got to think of how and when it happens now, and why... I stopped to smell the peonies in front of the campus on my way in. They were intoxicating in the darkness of the evening.

What is held in the heart is never lost....

I'm finally going through the unread emails in my inbox, all 629 of them, some dating back to 2005; and I find these lines from Renu as she was plugging away at her thesis in 2008... And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now, And perhaps without knowing it You will live along, someday into the answers. - Rainer Maria Rilke

I've just done my last load of laundry. On Wednesday, I'll move to my new home, and the familiar whirr and buzz of this washer-dryer duo will be replaced by another that will hopefully grow on me. I remember going out to buy them... That was only after I'd put money aside from each pay cheque for a few years to replace the teetering top-loading antiques that came with the apartment with something 'modern'. Jack and I had scoured many stores, over many weeks (bless his patience) till serendipity (and a bit of pressure) got me to buy this set. I feel a certain sadness closing its doors for the last time. I feel the same sadness with so many things in this home that I've come to know these past six and a half years. I remember my first trip back to India, almost 4 years after moving to Canada, and flipping the switch to turn on the lights in my old bedroom, hearing that click and being drawn to tears. It's the associations and familiarity of that act had ...