what was that, my sweet sweet nothing

In all my wallowing about whatever, I forgot to list the two songs no one guessed last week. As I did mention, one of the songs is so obscure, including it was a bit ridiculous. The other song should have been guessed by anyone who caught the song on my sidebar this week, but, here they both are:

all I can see is black and white and white and pink and blades of blue that lay between the words I think and the picture I was meaning to send to you. Yep, it was the truly swoonworthy I'm the Man That Loves You by Wilco. Boys talking about the inarticulate nature of the heart? I am that easy.

it was a cold time he put the clock in the refrigerator where he could not hear it tick and tock. Pull down the covers, he went over the moon. I don't know why I am not in love you. These bizarre lyrics begin NY 10/11/91 by Vicki Pratt-Keating. If you are so inclined, you can listen to it. I am not going to lie to you, people- it is a little music of the ovaries (TM TWOP). Many a year ago, I was listening to a compilation CD of women folksingers in some megastore, and that's how I came upon this. I cannot even pretend to dislike it. Maybe it is extremely girly, but I like nearly every line in this song.

It has been fantastic to take a stab at guessing songs on other people's lists, although it is really killing me that I am coming up so dry on Mimosa's list. It makes me feel spectacularly uncool, which, I suppose, is appropriate.

How is this for a completely ridiculous tangent? My parents emailed me pictures from their recent visit to India. All of my grandfather's brothers and sisters pooled some savings and equipped a ward of a hospital in the town where they were born. The first picture sent was this:

The middle part of this sign reads Neonatal and Pediatric in phonetic Gujarati. Sadly, I cannot figure out what the phrases above and below mean. Sadder still, it took me about fifteen minutes to read Neonatal and Pediatric. I think I need to go to Zoolander's School for Kids That Can't Read Good.

It astounded me a little that my family could donate enough money to outfit an entire pediatric and neonatal ward. I have never thought of anyone in my mother's family as being exorbitantly affluent. Maybe I am just slow, and it only just occurred to me how far a dollar can spread in India. With their lower middle class earnings, my grandfather and his brothers and sisters could make it possible to save lives. When I was looking through the rest of the pictures my parents sent me, I felt a wave of blue.

I find it strange. I was not born in India, so I neither miss India nor begrudge my parents their decision to move here. Yet, I know I am missing something. When I see my parents' interactions with their extended family, when I see my grandparents, granduncles and grandaunts beaming with the satisfaction of having done something for their hometown, I am aware that all of this is one step removed. I can yearn for it. I could try to emulate it, pretend to be the good Indian daughter, but eventually I would not call such-and-such masi on Diwali, and I will fall from grace again.

But that is just it. I would be trying too hard. It does not come naturally to me, that familiarity, this sense of belonging to something immense. In the pictures my parents sent me, so many of the faces were old and worn. My grandfather is starting to look like a truly old man, and he is one of the youngest of his several siblings. All of those old faces looked so serene, so filled with joy. None of them seemed to be confused as to whether they had lived their lives correctly, whether they had done everything they had set out to do. I have been in their company before, and it is not an illusion. When you sit amongst them, you can actually feel the corners of your mouth involuntarily turning upwards. These folks are too old to care if you are married or not, if you have a good job or not, if you like India or not. They are unimpressed. They just want you to sit beside them and hear a good story. It is as if, so close to the end of their lives, they know it is not as important for them to get to know you as it is for you to get to know them. When I saw those pictures, a part of me really ached to be there.

And then I realized that would have been an illusion, me in those pictures. They were real. I would have been a visitor, a tourist posing for the camera.