Check this out

Here's Maya, the *other* Harvard girl who decided to take a year off and away. Read her blog about learning opera and vocal performance in beautiful Milan, Italy.

http://mayasmilan.blogspot.com

Up north

My "year off" is actually a bit more than that -- including this summer, it's more like fifteen months off, the most recent two weeks of which I have spent in the corner of northern Michigan. This is the Congregational Summer Assembly, a religious retreat (for hard-core Congregationalist families) founded by my great-grandfather and five of his seminary buddies in 1901. Basically, the same families have been coming here for the same hundred-or-so years. So because I'm departing for Home Sweet New York City tomorrow, and because I have nothing more interesting to write about, here is a picture of pristine Crystal Lake, upon which the CSA is located.

There are wonderful things to do up north. For example, you can grab a bottle of the thirty-year-old biodegradable shampoo that's lying under the deck and wash your hair in the lake. You can drive up to Elberta (the town next door) for a cup of fantastic coffee from the Trick Dog cafe. My mother is fond of stalking the Amish family that sells its products at the Elberta Farmers' Market. You can take a bike ride without a helmet. You can play ping-pong and off-key piano in the Assembly building. You can go see a production of the annual CSA Operettas -- one featuring adults and one featuring children every summer. Now you can go on the internet and watch TV, though these are very new-fangled. (You can't, however, have a cell phone conversation.) Best of all, you can greet everyone you see on the street, even if you don't know each other. It's amazing up here. Also, the soft-serve ice cream selection is vast.

Weeks at the lake are subject to elaborate planning schemes along the lines of "I will wake up at 6am every day, watch the sun rise, go for a bird watch, eat roots and seeds for breakfast, and then sit down to some Sanskrit verb paradigms." Actually, maybe I am the only one who plans things like this. In any case -- I did not accomplish any of the above. So if you can get over the guilt of not really doing *anything* for two weeks straight, this is a beautiful place to be. For the guilty and unproductive, it is a mix of peace and torture. The most useful thing I did was go to a book sale at the local public library (where I diligently shelved books two summers ago!) and add to my growing collection of orientalist literature. Treasures: "The Asiatics" (1935) and "Coromandel!: A Novel" (1955). And I read one chapter in my Sanskrit textbook, which is a start.

But as we say in the Yogasutra (courtesy of the fantastic www.sanskritquoteoftheday.com) --

स्थीरसुखमासनम्। प्रयत्नशैथिल्यानन्तसमापत्तिभ्याम्।
"Asana is steady pleasantness. Asana is perfected by relaxation of activity and the dawn of unboundedness."




And here are my steady and pleasant parents at the Trick Dog cafe.

Eye candy

A delectable visual preview of some of the places I will be traveling this year.



Chandni Chowk, Old Delhi





Amber Fort, Jaipur




"Zooming Luxury Bus," Pune



The ever-beautiful Anthy's Guest House, Goa



The Shri Radha Rahman temple in Vrindavana



And finally, Jerusalem.

Two love poems

One about human love, and one about the Sanskrit language.

As I went down the hill along the wall
There was a gate I had leaned at for the view
And had just turned from when I first saw you
As you came up the hill. We met. But all
We did that day was mingle great and small
Footprints in summer dust as if we drew
The figure of our being less than two
But more than one as yet. Your parasol

Pointed the decimal off with one deep thrust.
And all the time we talked you seemed to see
Something down there to smile at in the dust.
(Oh, it was without prejudice to me!)
Afterward I went past what you had passed
Before we met and you what I had passed.

--Robert Frost, "Meeting and Passing"


केयूराणि न भूषयन्ति पुरुषं हारा न चन्द्रोज्ज्वला
न स्नानं न विलेपनं न कुसुमं नालं्कृता मूर्धजाः।
वाण्येका समलंकरोति पुरुषं या संस्कृता धार्यते
क्षीयन्ते खलु भूषणानि सततं वाग्भूषनं भूषनम्।।
--भर्तृहरि

Armbands do not adorn a person, nor necklaces bright as the moon / Nor baths, nor fragrances, nor flowers, nor ornamented hair. / Speech alone adorns a person, when one holds it in a refined (samskrta) form. / Ornaments waste away, of course, but the ornament of speech remains a true ornament.
--Bhartrhari