Unlike most movies

Unlike movies, most books I read I need not read again. Once the last page has been turned, I eagerly skip to the nearest bookstore for a quick exchange, a new fix of anothers adventure. I have found several though that warrent the dogearred pages and the cumbersome wioeght of excess luggage. I savor each page. Rereading sentences twice or thrice to taste the salt on my lips or feel the weakening agony of loss. Thi s seems enough to satiate a hunger that has quickened since my arrival.










Yes I am hungry again Hungry to taste all the world has to offer.

I laugh outloud to anything written by Iriving. Kingslover reaches into the very corners of my heart tearing it open. I discovered Shreve on this journey as well as Amy Tan. Anita's (Shreve) titles alone tantilize me: The Weight of Water and Strange Fits of Passion. Tan managed to put into verse moments of my life as she dictated a story by a woman who had meant to lead a tour through China and Burma, but dies just a few days before departure.

For so long I felt I no longer held a voice. My heart had dried. My soul felt crumbled, thrown into a corner and forgotten. I came to India to retrieve what was lost. Lost somewhere between then and there.

I took my time. Sometimes impatient, as you know I am, with the reluctance my mind had to the new journey. Expectations continued to fall around me. I became invisible behind my veil. Faded into my own skin. Days would pass in shadow, always on the periphery. Refusing or denying myself access to step in. For days I followed the lives of Gemma or Michael or Maureen, not leaving time for the dust to settle one page. I saw others. I heard themspeak of their badges of travel. Sometrying to out do the other, but most seasoned enough to just have the need to be acknowledged. That's what we all need isn't it, to be acknowledged. The few I would make eye contact with seemed to say exactly what I needed to hear at the time (I know I am sounding a bit like a recluse, I promise I have not gone mad). Those first days in Pushkar I felt like a ghost, appearing in only a few chosen dreams. During this time I must have stopped long enough for the dust to settle around me.

One day, and I struggle to remember just when it was, but one day I looked up and I saw. Plies of dust, of sandy crests had fallen from the crusty shell I had spent years building. It had dropped to the earth and the gentle desert breeze was blowing it away. Leaving me deliciously vulnerable and more alive than I had remembered possible.