Some days she can’t tell
If she feels good or bad,
Like questionable milk,
It’s unclear if she’s turned.
Author Archives: Pavithra K. Mehta
The Coherence of Pigeons
From a bygone corridor of 2013, excerpted from a letter to S. The Goddess of Twine & Doing Things Slowly
Coherence. The word has been repeating itself in my head the past several days. A word fashioned like a slender brass key. Capable of unlocking life’s secrets. From Merriam Webster, [isn’t that a beautiful name? Merriam, whose last name is Webster. If she were a person would she be bookish? A librarian? With a hair bun, wire rimmed spectacles and a beautifully modulated speaking voice?] from Merriam Webster comes this definition of coherence : the quality or state of cohering: as a : systematic or logical connection or consistency b : integration of diverse elements, relationships, or values.
Oh to possess that state! That quality of integration. To be able to hold out your palm like a sorceress and draw in the desperately disparate aspects of a life, to weld and wield that energy like a laser. Directable light. To make meaning out of chaos. To weave cogency and plot out of the potency of a Jackson Pollock. To be able to toss your days like ingredients– bizarre, beautiful, stellar and unsavory– into life’s cauldron and like Macbeth’s weird witches, conjure up philosophy as invincible as any potion in a fairytale. An explanation of why you are here and what you are doing and how it matters. That is what we are looking for. Not the dollar store variety of happiness. Which is too plastic and mass produced a word. Too Made in China. However.
Most everyone still wants to be happy– or thinks they do. Everyone is madly mistaken. What we really want is not a happy life but a coherent one. One whose every part is in sync with the rest, is integrated, involved, intelligible. One whose every part knows its place.
We make the tragic mistake of thinking this kind of knowing is at the same level as knowing the capitals of all the countries in the world. We memorize our names, our addresses, and the anthems of our alma maters. We plot out neatly, for forgettable strangers, at equally forgettable parties, the timeline of our lives. Leaving out everything that is of any real significance. We mistake the superficial and boring chronology of our lives for coherence. We use our resumes like alibis. Look! I was here! And then there! I did this! And then that! We are only dimly and occasionally aware (usually at unusual hours of the night) that we do not quite remember what we are trying so desperately to prove. Or to whom.
Perhaps this is what makes some people uncomfortable around pigeons. Pigeons will cock their beautiful heads to one side, and with bright orange halos around their black eyes, look directly into your soul. They will not pretend to be impressed by your bio-data. Name-dropping goes nowhere with them, and inserting casual hints of your upward mobility into the conversation is ill-advised. No person is more upwardly mobile than a pigeon. Also, they are not interested in your native place. Their curiosity tends in other directions.
For instance, in a world where pigeons are generally denounced for making a mess of things, [Look who’s talking! They might cry– if pigeons were as petty or argumentative as people,] they would like to know if you can perch on a window sill and observe life as they do (with no words, just plenty of billing and cooing). They would like to know if you like the refracted rainbows dancing in their necks and whether you will stick out yours for them. But most of all, what they would like to know is– have brought any breadcrumbs with you. Or anything really, to help nourish and sustain the lives that flutter alongside yours.
This Side of Eternity
One weekend they went to look at houses on the market, and she unexpectedly discovered an ability that she had not known she possessed. The ability to walk into a house for sale and sense if its last owner was living or not. Now in theory, this sounds like a faintly unpleasant if not downright morbid skill. Not nearly as amiable for instance, as the ability to knit argyle sweaters or play the ukulele. But in practice she found it to be an oddly sweet faculty. The soft crackling feeling that would settle around her shoulders like a magic cloak as she ran her hand across a tiled kitchen counter, felt a floorboard creak underfoot, or as she gazed out a bedroom window at the view someone had woken up to for sixty years. The feeling of being enveloped in a present absence. The sense of something or someone, both here and also not. Her husband smiled the first time she whispered the feeling to him. And then the real estate agent confirmed it. When this happened a second and third time he nodded his head thoughtfully.
And she began to consider the things we leave behind in daily life, in daily ways, without deeply considering them. Only because most of us believe we can go back for things whenever we want to. But in the end that isn’t true is it? No one can go back. No matter how much they want to. No matter what they left behind. And what they leave behind are things. In the end, with things it’s not take it or leave it. It’s just — leave it. And this is what renders thingishness so precious– despite the bad rap it gets in lofty circles. Lofty circles tend to pride themselves on a preference for the intangible.
What they forget in their earnestness, she realized, is that life is the only place in the universe where we get to experience both. Granted when you are intangible you are invincible. But what is invincibility worth in a world without interruptions, inclement weather, innkeepers or inkfish? Invincibility without tangibility is redundant. Like sunscreen lotion in Plato’s cave.
When you are tangible you can harbor inklings, and intuitions, you can cock your head and listen to invisible music. When you are tangible it is given to you to dabble in the intangible. But when you are intangible your dabbling days are over. So are your days of dawdling, dueling and decorating cakes. And this may seem counterintuitive but — so are your days of doing nothing. When you are intangible, doing nothing is no longer on the menu. Menus are no longer on the menu. So if you harbor a fondness for doodling, or a yearning for yodeling, if you are pining for pine-scented trails, have a passion for passionfruit, a hankering for pressed handkerchiefs, or just the simple desire to jump to a conclusion, fish for a compliment, forgive a trespass, retrieve your soul, or go salsa dancing at sunset, you would be well advised to press your advantage while you are tangible. Undertakings like undertakers work best on this side of eternity.
And remember, when it comes time to be intangible none of the thingishness comes with. Not the favorite brass lamp, or the flowering plum tree, not the love notes, not the lover, nor the long twilights of summer…This is not by any means a new thought. But it can be a shockingly new realization.
And all this being so, if that were you then, stepping with no feet, off the edge of this world, and into the nameless next– wouldn’t you choose to float one last time at your bedroom window? And if you happened to find someone standing there with her eyes full of dreams– just as you used to– wouldn’t you find a way to tap her shoulder lightly? Wouldn’t you too want to remind someone, before you go, to cherish it all? This singular world of dreams, of views, of eyes and shoulders, of touch, and light.
Plaintive Ditty
When did the window say yes to the light
and the door that was closed open wide?
Why do the sighs that wake me at night
bring memories in with the tide?
I wish I could walk without fearing,
and learn to love without fail,
I wish all birds were immortal,
that I could ride the wind like a sail,
There are times when I think I’m doing okay
there are times when I think that I’m not
Would that I be more stable– able
always to welcome my lot.
The Physics of Apologies
Some words are like Swiss army knives. Small enough to slip in your pocket, capable of unfolding in different ways– depending on whether you need to whittle a piece of birchwood, open a bottle, or tighten a screw. This makes them convenient– but also at times when context is unclear– confusing. A Swiss army knife on a camping trip is more readily understood, than a Swiss army knife going through airport security in your carry-on luggage.
Misunderstood Swiss army knives are typically confiscated. Misunderstood words however, will typically continue to travel through the world unchecked, trailing bafflement, umbrage, heartbreak, hilarity or fertile possibility in their wake. Unlike a misunderstood Swiss army knife a misunderstood word can accrue new capabilities. It can cause happy accidents, productive subversions– even poetry. Especially poetry.
Because whether you are a word or not, meaning more than one thing means you carry, at all times, simultaneous potentials. The potentials to be for instance, useful, problematic, transcendent, lyrical, loathsome, or some combination of the above. Perhaps this is the precise definition of what it means to be a person. And this brings me now, to the subject of apologies.
Because sorry is a Swiss army knife of a word. One whose roots lie in the old English, German and Dutch words for sorrow, suffering and sores. And just as one might wrangle mousse and meringues out of aquafaba, sorry can be whipped into a multiplicity of meanings. For practical purposes, humans must never leave home without it. Must carry it in their back pocket at all times (hermits and tyrants are exempt,) for social emergencies.
Sorry proves useful as a sincere expression of sympathy in the face of misfortune (I am sorry for the loss of your pet dung beetle), or as a pity-tinged declaration of compassion (I feel sorry for his poor wife). It can be an efficient way to communicate wretchedness (Bartholemew is in a sorry state), or indicate that an enterprise is entirely regrettable (The whole sorry business of growing up). But we reach for it most often and in daily ways, where lines have been crossed, hearts pricked or severely wounded, mischief or injury done. At such times it is employed as a hat-in-hand expression of contrition, “I’m sorry…”
Not everyone knows how to properly use the bottle cap opener in a Swiss army knife. Not everyone knows how to properly use the word sorry in an apology. This makes the give and take of apologies, as a field of study– like that of two-toed sloths and blobfish– utterly fascinating.
I don’t remember her name. I do remember her small head sported two brown braids and a grown-up expression. We are standing under a large tree, and she is apologizing for recent meanness. I am five-years-old. This is my first time receiving an apology. Like the first bite of a rare tropical fruit, the experience is exotic. A sunburst suffusion of sweetness fills me in a way I did not know I was capable of being filled. The sting of injured pride eclipsed, I stand rapt, reluctant to let this moment end. So I say the only logical thing there is to say, “I didn’t hear you — what did you say?”
She repeats the words. Her tone a tinge flatter this time- naturally. When an apology is well-delivered, requesting an encore is boorish. But I am spellbound, oblivious to protocol. Dazed and amazed at this new dynamic. I wish I could tell you this was my initiation into forgiveness. I wish I could say what riveted me, was encountering an in-born capacity for clemency. But I can’t. In truth what enchanted me was a heady, ill-understood sense of power. The glamorous feeling of being influential. And an innocent desire to ride the wave of that feeling. In feeling this way I was of course, fundamentally misinterpreting the energetics of it all. This is understandable because the physics of apologies is confusing.
Sincerely admit to smallness and you do not shrink — you expand. The fact that we do not always rightly perceive this phenomenon perhaps accounts for some of our sloppiness. As a race humans are notably given to making apologies, and accomplished at making exceptionally bad ones. Variations on the theme abound. There is the seeming apology (I’m sorry you feel that way.) The churlish apology (Well, if it makes you feel better, I’m sorry.) The oblivious apology (No clue what I did, but I’m sorry.) The disguised-blame apology, (I’m sorry you did that,) the expectant apology (I’m sorry, and you should be sorry too.) The forced apology, the perfunctory apology, the relentless apology…each add their own flavors to this sorry stew. And where did it all begin?
Trace a person’s life all the way back to their origins and you may discover the why behind the who. Trace a word back to its beginning and you may catch a whiff of the why behind the what. Apology roots back to early 15th century Greek and Latin, apologia. The word denoted ‘a formal defense against an accusation.’ Yes. An apology in its heyday, was a form of argument, justification, or excuse. Not an expression of contrition, or regret, not an admission of wrong-doing, or a brave preamble to making amends. It was a mea not culpa stance. It isn’t entirely clear when or how the usage flipped. But regardless of timelines and reasons, when such contradictions wrestle within the life of the word itself, no wonder our apologies are muddled.
But even in such muddied waters there dwells the rare possibility of soulful apology. You will know it when you feel the green fuse rising within you, a cleansing force that requires no calculation or strategy. You will know it when it blooms in another. Lotus-like, perfectly formed, held above all the swirling tumult of the past. Setting the air abuzz with the fragrance of freshly freed energy.
You will know it by the breath you are no longer holding. The extra space you find to dance in. You will know it by the dawn-like dazzle of finding yourself a few steps closer, to home.
The Order of the Day
Today I woke from a dream and considered the sly miracle of the exchange. That world for this one. Then I stepped into the shower like a fairytale queen, bathing in her own personal waterfall. I pulled on a cotton tunic — and marveled that it is given to us, not just to eat plants but to wear them too. I lingered at the window with a cup of chai. I gazed at the horizon and christened a faraway tree. I let the sun kiss my face all over.
I wrote a few letters, I admired a glossy crow, I swept the floor and pondered an imponderable. When I cooked lunch I sliced vegetables with the reverence of a priest. Carrots, cucumbers, onions, and radishes and — how like us they are! Skin-sheathed packets of flesh, only with more ordered inner lives. Later I weeded the garden like a young god, making virtuous, implacable decisions (until I felt a pang of compunction.) I placed my hand on a sun-warmed rock. I leaned my forehead against the grizzled bark of a tree. And learned again, to breathe.
I tended and tweaked, and took care of. I read, and relished, absorbed and adored and wrestled a little. I noticed somethings but not others. I nibbled on almonds and played with possibilities. I remembered, I forgot, I yawned. I crouched, swiveled and spun. I praised all of my fingers and toes. Then I stood upside down to feel the full weight of the blessings that carry me.
I laughed too many times to count. I teared up twice. I imagined a few things that shook me. Then I danced for a long time, in the living room, to the music in my heart.
At night I turned on a single lamp. I rested my head on a beloved shoulder, and gave darkness permission to fall.
Sometimes Resourced, Sometimes…
“Where is it?” She wondered aloud. “Where is what?” He asked. “My wherewithal,” she said, “I can’t seem to find it. Instead all I’ve got, is wherewithnaught.”
Yesterday our garage door stopped working properly. Everytime we clicked the button to close it, it would swing down — slower than usual, and once it had closed, it would immediately– as if startled by contact with the ground– swing up and slowly open again. I called a Garage Door Repair company, “Pain-Free Garage Door Repairs.” A promising name. And they sent over — let’s call him, Dostoevsky– to assess the situation. Dostoevsky is possessed of a clearcut profile, a Russian accent and an air of disdain. “Your door, it’s too heavy,” he told me, “Not good. Must replace it.” And he sent us a proposal for a several thousand dollar replacement. At which point I began to think his company was poorly named. So I turned to our local neighborhood social media platform, that offers a panoramic view into the marvelously mixed bag of humanity that resides in one’s own neck of the woods, and that also offers tried and tested recommendations on everything from where to find the best gingerbread, to whom to call if your water heater goes bust. There I discovered an array of rave reviews for, let’s call him, Terrence of Paradise Garage Door Repair — and something about the spirit of the recommendations made me trust this man, sight unseen. And so I called him, and we set up an appointment for 8AM this morning. He pulled into our driveway right on schedule, and when he climbed out of his truck, I couldn’t help but sigh a little. He looked fresh out of college, still wet behind the ears. I’d been hoping for someone reliably weathered.
Terrence made his way into the garage and began fiddling with the motor, the switch, the sensors. I began to run through a list of possible backup options. And that’s when my husband stuck his head out the window and asked me to ask Terrence if he wanted some chai. So I did and he did. I went upstairs, leaving Terrence to potter about. My husband in the midst of making chai, says to me, “I think Terrence is going to fix it.” His optimism wasn’t founded on much — just a general sense of confidence in the man so many neighbors had vouched for [he hadn’t even read the reviews, he was going off of the little I’d told him.] I refrained (admirably) from saying anything dismissive. And when the chai, steaming and cardamom-and-saffron scented, was ready, I carried it down, and found Terrence had indeed fixed our problem, with no more than a Phillips screwdriver and the adjustment of a loose piece on the overhead track.
The garage door, like a well-behaved and docile house pet, now stayed down when it was supposed to stay down. Terrence began to explain why the problem had occurred, and what he had done to remedy it. He was so clear, so eloquent and engaging that I found myself growing unexpectedly interested in the inner workings of garage doors, and newly grateful for their wordless diligence, their heavy lifting. Terrence sipped his chai, and flashed an appreciative grin — “This is really good!” And it really was. My husband has a way with caffeinated beverages. Terrence then proceeded to educate me briefly on the mismatched springs that were holding up our very heavy garage door. “You might want to switch them out at some point, if the slowness of the opening and closing is ever an issue. Not urgent, not necessary, but a possible enhancement.” He could send us a proposal if we ever wanted to do that. Yes, that would be great, do send that over– we may consider that down the line, and then I ask — And for your troubles this morning? Oh –I didn’t do anything . But we’d like to offer you something! The chai is great, he says. Holding up his cup like he’s proposing a toast. “I don’t like to charge for doing nothing.” It wasn’t nothing. And there are plenty of people who will charge just for setting foot on your driveway. But he’s already back in his truck. “Call if you ever need anything.” And then he’s off and on his way. Leaving me with a little unidentified melody playing in my heart.
It has been a full week — another transfusion for my husband, with the usual flurry of attendant uncertainties. New details to be coordinated with his hematologist, the Ayurvedic specialist and a specialized health coach we have just engaged. Rainstorms barreling through the Bay Area — felling trees, flooding roads, closing highways. Dance classes every evening. A gas furnace that is being replaced with a heat pump, work trucks in and out of the driveway each day. Enormous camellias impossibly red and frilly bursting into bloom in the backyard. The maple trees are leafing. Wildflowers are preparing to take over the garden stairs. Interviews and workshops being planned for and run, alongside a series of circle-dialogs — the latest one focused on a lighthouse of a couple. Navigating a complex form of cancer with breathtaking grace and an astonishing willingness to investigate life for what truly matters. For how to make good on the moments, regardless of however many there are of them left. The days have been so full and so heightened, I didn’t realize I was teetering on a brink until that garage door refused to close. A mechanical failure that in an alternate universe would have been just that. In this universe it felt more personal somehow — yet another unnecessary and ill-timed reminder– that things fall apart.
Most days I can live with the inevitable truth of that, even smile at it peaceably. At other times it feels utterly untenable. A wretched arrangement– a contract that should have been shredded on sight, instead of signed and notarized by whoever was in charge of Reality when this whole parade began. At such times the tiniest crack can turn into an abyss, wide enough to swallow me whole. And the wonder of it is, in such times the slenderest thread of human goodness can turn into a cable, resilient enough to pull me out, and set my feet gently back on the plank. That’s what Rose Wilder called it. “Life is,” she wrote, “a thin narrowness of taken-for-granted, a plank over a canyon in a fog.”
Somedays I discover, even a plank, is wide enough to dance on.
Reclaim
Journal entry, 2014
Reclaim. The word materializes in my mind (is that an oxymoron?) I sit here looking at a sky that is cloudless and blamelessly blue. Down the hill from us, I see lemons on a tree beneath the window. How is it, that I have never, in seven years of living here, noticed that tree and its lemons before? It is such a young-looking day that it makes me feel old. No. I must not shift the blame. I have been sitting here in front of a computer screen for too much of the morning. Feeding myself with other people’s thoughts and images and words. And now I have the distinctly uncomfortable feeling of someone who has devoured an entire bag of potato chips without intending to. Hence the word. Reclaim. It blooms in my head like an imperious flower. I have lost something that belongs to me: Me. And now I must go retrieve it. Bring myself home. And in doing so, return to a place that feels less ragged and empty than this moment. A place where my mind is like a polished pebble at the bottom of a cool lake. Smooth, quiet, at ease in the depths. Not tired and frayed, like the end of a rope someone has been trailing in the dirt.
The Vanishing Point
The disconcerting phenomenon of learning something new, and feeling you somehow know less than you did before. Bonafide knowledge is always a subtraction of certainty. If this is confusing, it’s because you are used to equating not knowing, with ignorance. But to know that you do not know, is the truest form of knowledge there is. The one all other forms of knowing rely on.
Your deepest knowing must be sweet and soluble.
What sits on your tongue like a pebble is not a sugar cube. Knowledge you can grasp is a fistful of coins. Please don’t strike a bad bargain. Too many have traded their days for small change.
The Games People Play (or) How It Is Sometimes
In another lifetime they might have been good, perhaps even great friends. Their natures each pitched to unusual keys, offset just enough to harmonize in inspired ways. But they didn’t. Not this time around. What emerged between them instead, was the relationship equivalent of elevator music. A vast politeness, a blameless bond neither strong nor interesting. It held them temporarily in the same orbit, no more, no less. Like passengers seated next to each other on a plane, who exchange brief pleasantries then fall into their separate worlds. Or acquaintances at a mutual friend’s party, who listen to one another’s stories with that air of formal attentiveness that betrays a lack of natural sympathies. From their forgettable interactions was absent the trouble or reward of real conversation. They traveled a shared highway, a little more than distant and much less than close. You know how it is with some people. And so it was with them. Though it might have been otherwise.
*
The kind of falling out that sinks beneath the surface after the initial confrontation. Unsettled ghosts woken by the disturbance now refuse to fall back asleep. They cast a gray pall over these relationships. Joy like a migratory bird leaves for warmer climes. Pleasantries continue to be exchanged, small kindnesses done. But there is wanness to them. Like winter sun. A futility. Like seed cast on stone. Everything feels smaller than. Diminished. Emptied like a shelled pea-pod. A once container. Contentless yet true to form. The ghosts stir the hollowed out husks with their sighs. ‘Do you remember?’ they whisper, ‘Do you remember those days when life was unbroken, the illusion whole? Do you remember when this friendship made anything possible?’
*
A variety of veiled distrust between them that self-righteously tilts away from full-blown disagreement, and nurtures instead, many minor refusals to correspond in perspective. The bigger battlefields have been wisely abandoned. The smaller ones foolishly overrun. Each bends over backwards to avoid seeing eye-to-eye on minutiae. For to concur on trivialities admits common ground. And the thought of shared turf even in its most innocuous forms, is still repellant. A passive contrariness becomes the weapon of choice. Difference of opinion wielded as, not sword, but toothpick. Capable of wounding nothing, save vanity. Horns will not be locked like battering rams. No. Nothing so honest or conspicuous. Instead balloons will be pricked, and sails quietly de-winded by turns. Subtle deflation the new strategy.
The Poetry Of 