Things I Don't Know

Life is a many splendored thing. Invigorating and exhilirating and exhausting and devastating by turns. 

I do not believe in a higher power, which means I believe my presence, my combination of DNA and brain synapses, and my lot in life, are largely by chance. To be born now, to be born here. Not in some secluded mountain range, or wayward jungle, not a prince and not a slave. I could have been in any place, or any time, or not at all. 

Never have I felt this so much as now. It is strongest when riding in trains past green rice fields and empty temples, or in taxis past strips of clothing hung out to dry on an overpass. 

There is so much I can't take credit for. Even beyond the larger coincidences there is all I owe to those before. How much of my life was made by my grandfather when he was a young man himself, or by some unknown great grandmother laboring away for a better life. 

How can I be here and not there?

Why not this old man, whose head shook back in forth in some private torment? 

There are a hundred tents lined up along the road, lean-tos of plastic and bamboo poles. Entire lives lived in public, brushing their teeth in the morning as cars whiz by. Sometimes I think the concept of reincarnation, of heaven, must have been created by kings to keep anyone from asking why. What have I done for my blankets, my hotel bed? Why do I sleep soundly, belly full. 

For some reason the laundry gets me. Such labor! Such endless fruitless labor. The pounding and the wringing and the search for water. For what. To be done again, over and over. Pounding, wringing, searching.

How did you get here? How were you born? Was anyone there? Was it difficult? How long have you been living this way? Were you held? Did they sing you lullabies? Do you have someone to sing lullabies to? 

I am not so arrogant to think I own happiness, or that it requires certain objects. I know that humans have always been dancing, singing, falling in love. I don't think I know you, your joys and sufferings. I don't think I am anything you have been waiting for.

I know what this all sounds like. Like some ansty teen poetry or black and white pictures of a graveyard taken with your first camera when you have FEELINGS. Think your perspective unique and incomprehensible. 

I know the priviledge that comes with all of this, the ridiculousness of blogging about it, for gods sake. I know, at least, that really I don't know, and that this fact doesn't do any good. That the last thing the world needs is another white middle class traveler in culture-stolen printed scarves iphone-ing away handing down impressions from on high. 

I have learned not to hold too tightly my own impression of things, that they change with new experiences and information. What I felt sure of the first trip to Chennai is now a hazy memory. The person I was then seems as naive as the person I am now will seem from the next. I vacillate between feeling that bearing witness matters, and realizing how unbelievably pompous that sounds. I have ideas, and anxieties that prevent them, and having both of these is a luxury.

I should delete all of this. It is a stream of conciousness I will surely regret in a few hours. I want you to like me. I want to cover all my bases. I want you to think I am a good person, but I am not sure if I am. 

I do not know what the ending should be.