Two months later: the slow emergence from darkness; the moment she became Muse
Saturday, January 22, 2011 at 12:50PM 
Once again, after having slept for just a few broken hours, I found myself awake and unable to sleep further. I quietly got up, punched the remote to start the car so that it could warm up, dressed, quietly slipped out of the bedroom without disturbing Margie, came to this computer, checked emails and then drove to Family Restaurant to eat an early morning breakfast in solitude.
It is now two months to the day since Muse and soul friend Soundarya chose to follow her husband Anil into the "thereafter," whatever the "thereafter" might be.
I put "thereafter" in quotation marks because Anil once used this word in an email to me to describe how long the journey that he would take with Soundarya as her husband would last - "life and thereafter."
Today is also the first day since November 18 that the sun will completely rise above the horizon in Barrow. A few days ago, I began to read reports from Facebook friends there that the top arch of the sun had been spotted peeking over the drifted tundra, but today is the first day that it will arise in its entirety.
I wish that I could be there to witness it.
Early in this process, I resigned myself to also living with an inner darkness for all the time that the Barrow sun would remain below the horizon. I most certainly have.
Now the sun is coming back.
What I always remember about the winters that I spent completely or mostly in Barrow is how, after the sun would come back, that was when the really deep, bitter, brutal, cold would set in.
I don't know. In my mind, I had imagined myself writing many things about all this in this post, but now that I am sitting here, I don't feel like it. I find that once again my eyes are moist and I feel a trickle on my cheek and I don't want to say or write anything.
I don't know why I am. To write in all circumstance is just who I am, I guess.
I feel so tired. So very, very, tired.
And I am not getting anything done. Except this blog. It is the only thing that I am getting done.
In many ways, this blog has helped me to get through, but I have found myself incapable of doing my work. I open it up and I try, but I just stare at the computer and get nothing done. For some reason, I can always blog, but I can't work.
I have accomplished almost nothing since I last returned from Barrow.
No, that's not true. Besides this blog, I also have a novel that I am working on. I started it quite awhile back, made some progress, stuck it aside, picked it up later, made a little more progress, stuck it aside again.
In the fall, I picked it up again and resolved that this time, I would stay with it, if even for as few as 15 minutes a day, until it is done. I figured that might take ten years - if I live and have a mind for ten more years.
Then, when Anil and then Sandy died, I quit working on it altogether.
But I picked it back up again a couple of weeks ago and I have worked on it every day since.
I set out to do 15 or 30 minutes but often wind up going anywhere from one to three hours. So I am making progress there.
But of course, that puts no money in my bank account.
Amazingly, thanks to the donate button that I have put up on the side bar, this blog does put a little money into my bank account. Nowhere near enough to live on or to allow me to become a full-time blogger, but enough to give me hope that such a thing might actually be possible.
If I could increase my regular readership 100 fold and have support come in at the same level percentage wise that it has been coming in, I could do this blog full time. Then, I could really create something here. Right now, it is just a whisper of what I envision it to become.
Surely, for every individual who does come here on a regular basis there must be 100 more who would if they could somehow be brought into it?
See, all I want to do now for the rest of my life is to work on my books, this blog and the electronic magazine that I plan to add to it.
I suppose that I have rambled like this before and this all sounds redundant. But its true. And that is how the rest of my life should be spent.
This picture, by the way, is me driving back home after breakfast - although I suspect most of you have probably surmised that already.
There are two other things that have helped me get through the darkness so far. One, my family. I don't talk about it much to them, but just to have kids and grandkids swing by now and then, to come around, to go out and get coffee, to carry a spatula everywhere, to look with adoring baby eyes into my eyes and to feel the often sad but sweet spirit of my wife who has endured through this insane, risky, always insecure, forever teetering on financial destruction, life-stye that living with me these past 37 years has subjected her to.
And there is Soundarya's family, which is also my family. Her brother, Ganesh, my nephew - he credits me for introducing him to the fact that he is a photographer. He is a natural and has the potential to be great. In our communications, although she is always there, we do not talk about Sandy much, but rather about pictures, and about what we are going to do in her memory, namely to take a long hike in the Brooks Range.
Then there is her sister, Sujitha - Suji - my niece, who has appeared in this blog, who loves Jobe and Kalib and who leaves a comment or two here now and then. In so many ways it is she, who has been hurt so very, very deeply, more deeply than I can even hint at here, who has helped me to the deepest degree, just in the communications that we share back in forth.
While it may be difficult for some to understand this deep, platonic, relationship that I share with her sister, still, now, even in her death as I did in her life, Sujitha does understand and she lends comfort that could only be lent by one who understands and is hurt and grieving to the maximum degree herself.
The maximum degree. Yet, she helps me. I am happy that little Jobe, in particular, helps her. And from 9000 miles away.
It looks like Suji and Manu's wedding will happen late next month. I wish that I could be there, but I see no way.
There is also Kavitha, or Cawitha, Soundarya's cousin. I met her only one time and that was at Sandy and Anil's wedding. We do not exchange emails all the time, but every now and then and, except for those that came with announcements of death, I always enjoy receiving them. Kavitha is a trekker. She treks in the Himalayas, she treks about southern India, she treks into dark caves.
She plans to come on the Brooks Range hike.
I hope the rest of us can keep up with her.
One thing worries me a little bit about this hike. My Indian relatives are all vegetarians. We can carry a certain amount of dried food, maybe even enough to get us through with some fairlly significant weight loss, which will be good for me, but I would kind of like to supplement our diet with at least a few fish and maybe some ptarmigan. If there are enough of us to eat it all, maybe even a caribou. But I can't feed fish, ptarmigan and caribou to vegetarians!
We will have to carry a gun or two, both for protection and as a survival mechanism, should it come to that.
I think we will figure it all out, though.
Last night, I dreamed that we had just left on this hike. We were very unprepared. Margie had packed my pack and I did not even know what was in it.
When I opened it up, I found a suit, white shirt, tie and a pair of shiny, black, shoes.
The above image, by the way, is Metro Cafe as I drive by on my way home from breakfast.
There is a folder within my pictures folder labeled, "Ravens for Sandy." It has many photos in it, many that I sent her and others that I did not, but that I placed in the folder to hold until the day that I would.
And all these ravens that continually appear here, I still photograph them for Sandy. I no longer put them in that folder, but only here, in my daily blog folders, but still I photograph them for her.
I photographed this one yesterday, as I walked to Metro to get my afternoon coffee. Both Kalib and Jobe had fallen ill, could not go to daycare and so Margie had gone to town to babysit them. I was left without a car and so I walked.
I am a little surprised to realize that I took no pictures while I was at Metro.
I don't know how that happened. I had my camera. It just never occurred to me to take a picture while I was there.
And this was one of those rare times when I was on the inside, at a table, slowly devouring a hot cinnamon roll as I sipped and savored the coffee - not on the outside, looking in through the drive-through window. Maybe I am beginning to lose it.
Hey - just a couple of weeks ago, it would have been completely dark at the time that I took this picture.
So the light is coming back. It feels kind of strange - as it always does when the light first manifests itself in the new year. We have had plenty of cool weather in the sub-zeros here in Wasilla, but we have yet to experience any true, deep, cold this year like we can get in this neighborhood this time of year.
I guess we had better brace ourselves. It ought to be coming any time now.
The moment she became Muse
Although I have been running this little series of India pictures in memory of her, I have not been including pictures of Sandy herself.
Today, I make what I believe will be my one exception, because I did not explain this muse thing quite well enough. I did explain how, after my first trip to India, I began to photograph the world that I live and work in here in Alaska with the goal of producing images that could explain it to a young woman in India and thus she was my muse.
But this is the moment - the very moment - she became Muse.
In the early 1990's, at the request of Melanie and Lisa, whenever I would travel, I began to photograph cats wherever I could find them. If I went to a new community, village, city, state or country, I would always seek out a cat and photograph it for my daughters.
So, when my sister's daughter Khena and Vivek planned their wedding and it became clear that I was going to go to India, I immediately began to imagine the cats that I might find to photograph there.
But Khena told me that in all her travels with Vivek in India, she had not seen a single cat. She did not believe that it was common there for people to keep cats the way they do here. Vivek could think of no cats, either. When I got off the plane and met his parents, they did not know about any cats.
And then, after the wedding feast where two soul friends from who knows how far back recognized each other, Sandy invited me to walk and so we walked.
We talked of other things and did not speak of cats.
Then all of a sudden she squealed with delight. She had spotted a cat - this one. She hurried over to the fence. She did not know the lady but asked her to hand her the kitten and let her hold it for awhile. The lady picked up the kitten and lifted it over the top of the fence. I raised my camera.
Hence, Soundarya! Muse!
May her memory live forever.
Reader Comments (7)
Peace Bill. And peace Soundarya!
I think this is one of your best blog posts ever, Bill. x100 readers is possible. Once you come here, you want to come back again and again.
I have been a silent reader for some months; perhaps over a year. Like a cat, I often watch from the shadows, but today I'll plop right down in the middle of your favorite chair long enough to tell you that I enjoy your blog very much and look forward each evening to a little visit to Wasilla and beyond.
With her love of cats and all critters, perhaps Soundarya could more accurately be called your "Mewse"? You honor her memory and I feel certain she's watching, too.
No words Bill, just sending ((((((HUGS)))))).
Hi Bill,
If you want to monetize the blog why not add some ads on the sidebars? I believe Squarespace allows you to do that. You can then add google adsense bars on the sidebars or in between posts which in turn can generate revenue for you. Blog visitors usually click on a ad-link or two which is what provides for a certain commission for the blog-owner (you).
As I will remember Soundu forever...I will remember this blog forever too.. Love n Hugs
Suji
Manx - For you, too.
Mocha - I appreciate the encouragement.
CatsPaw - Glad you dropped in. And I know Sandy would chuckle at the word, "Mewse"
Kat - Nothing better than a hug from a kat.
roshan - I have contemplated this, and maybe sometime I might make an experiment with it, but I want to keep a clean, neat page and ads just mess it up. I have some other ideas if I ever can get organized enough to pull them off.
Niece - Love and hugs back... always.