Temp

1. A temporary temporality

As I close in on the sixth month mark here, evaluating in which ways I've 'succeeded' and in which ways I've faltered or fallen*, I keep turning on a defining characteristic of the very time I spend here - the temporary nature of it all. No matter how much I feel like I finally belong here, no matter how many fewer stares I get per day or how many more successful conversations I manage to carry off, how much more integrated I become in this neighborhood and its quirky dynamics, always nagging and tugging is how temporary all of this is. All of the friendships, relationships, apartments, ideas, feelings, desires, hatreds, wants, needs... all are based on an assumption of this one momentous moment, with the suspension of the outside world and my life within it. This is a flash that happens to last a few months rather than minutes yet ends all the same, without even the slightest vestige or trace of its glow, no matter how brilliant it had been. This temporality effects more than the obtuse and the diffuse existential mindset, rather it constantly fucks with you, leaving you wondering where you really are and what your situation really is. 'Best friends' disappear back to the west, crowded social schedules suddenly appear vacant and bleak, as the particular tenants in this expatriate boarding home pack up their books and trinkets and head back to a world with stop-lights on every corner and 24 hour delis.
Basically, I feel lonely sometimes even when sitting in front of a friend, their image almost flickering before my eyes with a hollow transparency... poof.

* = My goal being the comically simple aim of actually just existing without too much in the way of defined goals, plans, or desires. In other words, living in someplace very very different for one year, without reading or injecting too much into it, letting it happen as it seems to be inclined rather than trying to force or contrive something different or alien out of it.

2. Again sick

Again tonight I'll go to sleep hoping not to wake up shaking from cold halfway through - a particularly obnoxious effect of my recent bout of sick. The newspapers have been blaring on and on about the 'vector diseases' (malaria, dengue, encephalitis) and their recent rise, pushing me in a fair bit of worry and concern to the doctor today, confused as to the reason behind this fever that has lasted several days now, swinging rapidly between 96 to 102, never seeming to actually abate (a particularly common pattern for malaria). I went to the doctor's chambers at 7 Hindustan Road, a tiny room with half-doors like an old-west saloon, kirtan or baul music (I can never tell the difference outside of guessing) so loud it was difficult for my complaints of headaches and 'loose motion' to be heard, a sikh man with both a turban and a motorcycle helmet (the two often come paired, it's true!) rudely peeping his face over the doors in impatient agitation. The blood test, after much waiting, and the possession and presentation of a number of numbered disks to mark my place in a tumultuous queue, luckily came back negative. I'm still sick, but now I just need to wait it out with heavy doses of antibiotics, happy to know I didn't somehow manage to catch malaria. No malaria! No vector diseases today!