Saga of the spatula continues; Bangalore girl

Today is Jacob's birthday, so yesterday I drove to Anchorage with Margie so that we could pick up the little ones and bring them home with us. This would give Jacob and Lavina a chance to go out on a date, just like they used to do before the babies came along.

As we drove towards town, we saw that this blue car had left the road and wound up on the other side of the fence. There were a number of police vehicles around, but I saw no ambulance. I hope this means that no one was hurt, but I don't know.

When we arrived at the house, we found Kalib with his spatula.

Lavina wanted me to take a picture of her and her boys in their Christmas jammies so that she could make a family Christmas card out of it.

Kalib put on his jammies, but still he kept hold of that spatula.

The idea was to get Muzzy and everybody posed, but Muzzy was shooting all over the place and Kalib had momentarily replaced his spatula with a shovel. All he wanted to do now was to shovel snow - Christmas card pictures be damned.

So, do you think I managed to pull a worthy Christmas card picture out of this chaos?

I don't know. I haven't looked at "the poses" yet. We will find out in time.

Soon, Kalib was dressed, had once again recovered his spatula and was ready to head back to Wasilla with us. 

When he realized that his parents and little brother were not coming, too, he cried a little bit, but held fast to the spatula.

Now it is late at night and Kalib lies in bed, next to his grandmother. The spatula is nowhere in sight, but still Kailb will fall asleep.

As for little Jobe, tied snug into his cradleboard, he has already fallen asleep.

And now, one frame from India:

Bangalore girl.

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Zero degree baby; Kalib and his spatula, part 2; Larry Aiken paints a dream of belugas; a walk through the valley of the shadow

As I walked yesterday in the zero degree* cold, I happened upon a one-year old baby, who had also gone out for a walk - only she had traveled by stroller, not foot.

This is she - baby Lily. Her mother, Christie, told me that she and baby Lily go out regularly, whatever the weather, and baby Lily enjoys it all. It does not distress her to be out in the cold - unless a fierce wind is blowing and strikes her right in the face. Her mother protects her, so that she does not feel that wind for more than seconds.

Sometimes, they walk for hours, Mom says. Baby Lily loves it.

How pleasing to know that this is a little girl being brought up not to fear the elements, not to shrink away and retreat only to the comfort of the indoors but to get out and enjoy.

Baby Lily may be well on her way to be coming a true Alaska girl.

As usual, at 4:00 PM I headed to Metro Cafe to get my coffee. After Shoshauna prepared it for me, I did not go home or take my usual drive, but continued on, with Anchorage as my destination. My friend, Larry Aiken, had experienced a couple of very hard days in his cancer treatment and I knew it was time to visit him again.

When I reached the Junction of the Parks and Palmer-Wasilla Highways, I was pleased to be stopped by a red light, so that I could pause, compose, and shoot.

As I crossed the Hay Flats, I heard a text message come in on my phone. I pulled off the highway at the next exit - the Native Village of Eklutna - to read it. It was from Lavina. She was out with Kalib and Jobe and they were going to pick up a pizza.

She invited me to stop by to have some.

Only Jacob was home when I arrived, but soon we heard Lavina, Kalib and Jobe pull into the driveway.

Remember how, at Thanksgiving, I told you that Kalib had become attached to a spatula, that he kept it with him almost at all times and that it had become his favorite toy?

He entered the living room carrying that spatula. Even as his mother removed his sweater, he kept hold of that spatula. 

When it was time to eat the pizzas, Kalib proved that the spatula was more than a toy to him, but a tool as well.

He wielded that tool well.

Jobe's not really into pizza yet, but he does love his dehydrated fruity yogurt treats - as do I. Knowing full well the danger, his dad handed me the bag so that I could feed him.

I gave him one. I would have given him more, but he ate too damn slow. What is one to do when he is holding the yogurt treats and the baby is eating too slow but to eat yogurt treats himself?

Then I went to see Larry and we had a good visit. It is one of those terrible ironies of life, but to kill cancer, one must undergo treatment that will make him very sick and so the past few days had been hard for Larry.

To help get him through, Larry has continued on his art work. He showed me this little beluga painting that is nearing completion. It is of the belugas as they appear under water. Larry has never been under the water with the belugas, but they came to him in a dream and showed him how they look under there.

So he is painting that dream.

Readers who were with me then will recall how shortly after Larry arrived in Anchorage to begin his treatment, he began a self-portrait of himself harpooning a bowhead whale. His whaling captain, George Adams, was right behind, ready to follow up with the shoulder gun. Last night, Larry told me the story of that whale.

He is not quite done with the self-portrait, yet, but as you can see, it is moving along. Once the portrait is done, I will take another photo and will pass on the story as Larry told it to me.

His art is his therapy.

He also finds therapy in the support, prayers and love of friends and family.

These are the things that get him through each day. 

And I found therapy in Larry's company - and in the hug that he gave me just before we parted company. There was fear in that hug, but hope and strength even more so.

Now I will take you back to India, for just a flash:

Regarding my ongoing process of grief for Soundarya - grief that seems not to ease but only to intensify - this is how I have decided to handle it in this blog. From now until however long it takes me to sort through, edit and create some sort of picture package from the images that I took of her, Anil and of India, I am going to keep that take at the forerfront of my Lightroom editor. I will work on it when I can.

Now and then, at times with more frequency than others, I will drop random pictures from India into this blog. Until I finish, these will not be pictures of Soundarya, but of other people and things in India, the place that made her.

When you see those pictures, even if I do not mention her name, you will be reminded of her, and you will know that I am thinking of her.

I start with this set of three only because they were the ones visible on the front page of my editor at the moment I decided to do this.

I took these during an interim moment. Sandy and Anil were off being newlyweds, Melanie and I had made a big trip with Vasanthi and Vijay and were about to take another with Vasanthi, Murthy and Buddy. In the meantime, Melanie and I took a walk from the Murthy home and soon got caught in a sudden downpour.

Some fruit vendors invited us to take shelter with them.

We did. The rain was furious, but brief.

When it ended, we said goodbye as best we could to these vendors, who spoke little English, and then moved on.

Very soon, we came across this young boy.

And then this one. I would have taken more pictures of people that we encountered after the rain, but after I shot this one, my Canon 5D Mark II, which I had protected from all but a few drops of rain, shut down on me and would not shoot again until I sent it into Canon for a $350 repair job.

As I do not like to carry it, I had almost left my Canon 1Ds Mark III at home, but at the last moment had decided to bring it. This proved to be a very good thing because otherwise, I would have been out of action from this moment forward.

Well... probably not... I would have acquired some kind of camera in India.

The Valley of the Shadow...

As readers know, despite my own, very intense, and at least from my mother very sincere, religious upbringing, despite the fact that I associate closely with many people of deep religious faith, I am not a person of faith myself. Yet, from the time I woke up this morning until right now, a certain scripture has kept repeating itself in my head.

It is a most important scripture to me personally and I also think the King James version of it to be among the most beautiful words ever put together in the English language.

It speaks of a valley, a valley that we all must walk through for each and every second that we live. At times, we are acutely aware that we walk in this valley, other times, our minds push all thoughts and fears of it to the side and we just laugh, enjoy, make merry and do what we feel like doing.

But sooner or later, that valley always manifests itself about us and makes certain we know we walk there.

Yet, somehow, this scripture makes that valley appear less frightening:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:

he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul:

he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, 

I will fear no evil, for thou art with me;

thy rod and thy staff comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies:

thou anointest my head with oil;

my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:

and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. 

These words come from the Judeo-Christian Bible, but I have felt the feeling behind them in the contexts of many different faiths - yes, even in the Mormon faith that I grew up with but can no longer be shackled by. I feel it in the churches whenever I gather with my Iñupiat and other Native friends and they sing so beautifully, with such strong heart and deep spirit.

I have felt it in a tipi, with a fire burning hot in the center, surrounded by drums and singing on the rim of the circle. I have felt it in a sweat lodge where spiritual beliefs that predate the United States but not the original people of this land have made themselves manifest.

And yes, I have felt it in a Hindu temple when a holy man has spoken words that I do not understand and has reached out and touched me on the forehead and left a red mark there - and among Muslims, who have invited me to come in off the Bangalore street and into their butcher shop, with carcasses suspended from the ceiling, there to share their coffee and spirit with me.

I have felt it among those sincere in many faiths when they have reached out with that faith to soothe and support others.

I do not necessarily feel it from those - again in any and all faiths - who would use their religion as a club to smash down and subdue others.

But among the sincere, hurt and caring, I have felt such comfort across the gamut. I gratefully accept all of their prayers and blessings.

*That's zero degrees F; - 18 C.

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To find, to lose, to find and lose again - my India take vanishes into digital ether; I search, I plead

I shot only one frame all day yesterday and this is it - two ravens through my car window as seen through the drive-through line at Taco Bell and this is how I wound up there:

I had it my mind that when I could, I would sort through my India pictures and put together some sort of package on Soundarya to share with the family. I did not know where those pictures were and I dreaded the search to try to find them.

Behind and to the sides of my computer monitor, my desk was a clutter of hard drives, cables and wires - a couple of dozen hard drives, in fact - some of them plugged in, some of them not. I had once known where everything was on those hard drives, but over time, in the constant juggle and shuffle of digital information - moving images from this drive to that, then erasing from here, etc. etc. etc., it had become a tangle of confusion.

I came up with a system in my head to finally get on top of it, but to do so would require that I remove the harddrives from the enclosures they came in so that instead I could just insert and take them out of hard drive docks at will.

I checked with an expert and he said, yes, this would work - I could just remove all those drives from their enclosures and this would free them up for use in the docks.

So I did, and it took me a long time, because once I would figure out how to take one sort of enclosure apart, the next would be completely different and I did not have the right tools.

To simplify a complicated story, by the time I finished, I discovered that six of my harddrives were of an earlier design and would not seat into the docks, so I could no longer read them. Plus, two harddrives would seat and spin, but would not sign on to the computer. So I made four trips back and fourth to Machous were Bruce helped me reconstruct those that needed reconstructing and tried to help me bring the two that would not read back, but they had gone bad and could not be brought back.

During one of those trips back and forth to Machaus, I stopped at Taco Bell and picked up an order for myself and another for Margie, who was not feeling good.

In my office, I carefully searched every drive that could be read - and was horrified to discover that my India take, #2, when Melanie and I went to the wedding of Soundarya and Anil, could not be found.

Although I blogged the wedding, to this date I had not found the time to go through the big majority of the thousands of photos that I took afterward. I know there are some good pictures of Sandy in there, along with many other things from those times that Sandy and Anil were off by themselves and Melanie and I were traveling elsewhere with Vasanthi, Murthy, Buddy and Vijay.

All this now appeared to be lost, vanished into digital ether. If I could not somehow find them, then all I woud have from that trip would be the few low-res images, mostly from the wedding, that actually appeared on this blog.

I searched and searched and searched, venturing into the shadow areas. At one point, I thought that I had found a set, for I did find folders for those dates - but the folders were empty.

They are only photographs and their loss is a tiny and insignificant thing in comparison to her loss - but still, photographs are all that is left. I sank into despair. My body shook and my hands trembled.

I realize that what I am about to state is going to sound really corny to some, but it is how it happened, so I am going to state it. Not knowing what else to do, after a day-and-a-half of searching but not finding, I said aloud, "Sandy! I need your help! You've got to help me."

After I spoke the words, I suddenly noticed one of those tiny, portable, black plastic hard drives that you can buy at Wal-Mart, sitting beneath the computer tower on my desk. I always take two or three of these into the field with me, so that I can make duplicate copies of everything that I shoot as I move along. After I get home, I dump the images into my big harddrives and then erase these little ones, so that I can take them back out into the field the next time I go.

I picked up the little drive and plugged it into the computer.

The India take was all there.

Coincidence, my brain tells me. My heart wants to believe otherwise.

The truth is, I do not know. 

I now have the pictures, but Sandy is still gone.

Even as I type this, I am loading those pictures into my Lightroom editor. This is the very first image from that take - it is Melanie as we wait at Ted Stevens International Airport to board the first of the four planes that will fly us to Bangalore.

And here we are, Melanie and I together, reflected in the window of the underground train that shuttles passengers between various terminals at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

Now we have left Chicago, enroute to Mumbai.

And here we are, in Mumbai.

In Mumbai, we saw a sleepy little girl.

Now we ride the shuttle that will take us from one Mumbai terminal to another.

Through the shuttle window. What you don't see is the heat. Despite the late hour, it was stifling hot. We are about to board the flight to Bangalore.

Now we are at Murthy and Vasanthi's in Bangalore, where I fell asleep. It was Sandy who woke me up - Soundarya Ravichandran. After I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, I took a picture of her and this is it. The next day, she would wed and would become Soundarya Anil Kumar.

I now have many pictures to sort through and edit. This barely begins it. It is going to take some time and I do not know where I am going to find that time.

I know that I promised that I would not let this blog dwell where it seems to be dwelling, but one does not just turn away from an experience such as this and suddenly find that it is over.

Still, it is my commitment to now get back on track and to blog about other things. After I have a picture package ready to share with the family, perhaps I will put up a few more up here.

I suspect that this will take me about one year.

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Hello - and goodbye

Christian hymns have been playing in my head continuously for the past several days. I believe this is because I was unable to travel to Soundarya's funeral and so my subconscious mind had to create a funeral for me. The only way it knew how to do this was to pull up the hymns that it has heard at so many funerals - none of them Hindu. I just don't know any Hindu funeral hymns.

Within the past few hours, the hymns have gone away. They have been replaced by two Beatles songs, which come and go as they please: To Know Her is to Love Her and "I don't know why you say goodbye I say hello." So my personal funeral for Soundarya must be over. I did not see her body or the beautiful saree and flowers that would have adorned her. I did not witness her cremation. I did not observe or participate in the rituals. I did not get to embrace her mother and father, her brother and sister or any of her large family of relatives - my relatives now.

I did not get to weep with them.

Even so, my brain provided what it could by way of a personal funeral and now that funeral is over and I must move on.

Before I do, I thought that I would put up one last picture of Soundarya and I thought that it should be from when we first met - either from the wedding feast for Vivek and Khena or from the walk Sandy and I took afterward.

So I typed "Sandy" into my computer's internal search engine and then chose several candidates from the many thumbnails that appeared upon my screen. I narrowed these down to the three pictured here on my monitor and then finally chose the one to the left, desaturated of most of its color.

Then I realized that I could not just put a picture from the past up in the context of the past, but that my "hello-goodbye" picture had to be as I saw it today - looking out at me from my computer screen in my dimly lit office.

The two model airplanes on the wall to the right, as some of you know, were made by my deceased brother, Ron, before he broke his neck and became tetraplegic. 

Ganesh Facebooked a link to me of a song, Kabhi Kabhie Mere Dil Mein, performed by professionals. He and she once sang it together and ended it with a big laugh fest. I listened to the song several times, but each time I closed my eyes so that I would not see the actors in the video, but only her and I saw her strongly. She once told me online that she had visited a seer who had told her that we had been close in lives past and would be close in lives future.

This life is the only life that I know and am certain is real, but it is a nice thought and would explain many things.

Now I will let her go. I will not stop thinking of her, my tears for her will not altogether dry, but I will let her go and I will deal with the things that I must deal with everyday and I won't be blogging about her anymore.

At least not for now, not for awhile. Someday, when I find the money to return to India and capture the time to find a way to better tell her story, then I will blog about her again. How can a storyteller have a muse and not tell her story?

I will tell it, Muse. I will tell your story. The world will know about you - your sweet, gentle, caring soul that could bestow kindness not only upon a kitten but even upon a bug - or a cobra... the fierce defense that you would throw up to protect those you loved against those more powerful than you... the dreams, passions, ambitions and desires that filled you... the bitter disappointments that you pushed through again and again right up until this last one... the beautiful even if painful memory that you have now become.

I will tell this story - but not now. For now, I must pull back and do other things.

As for these two on their snowmachine, I saw them yesterday afternoon off Church Road as I was cruising and drinking a Metro coffee that I had bought from Shoshana.

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Soundarya Anil Kumar - "Sandy": April 13, 1979 - November 22, 2010

Upon the death of my soul friend and muse, Soundarya, I am left to bear the unbearable grief and to ponder the meanings of love, in all its variations, in the many different ways that it comes to us.

There is love of blood and kin, love that we are born into and that descends from us – the love that we feel for our parents, our brothers and sisters, our grandparents, our cousins, followed later by that powerful love which we feel for our children and grandchildren – so strong; the love we feel for our nieces and nephews.

There is the love of romance that we strive for, seek out and when lucky find sublime, other times foolish, and sometimes only deep and bitter heartache.

There is the love that we share with friends – sometimes we slip easily into it, sometimes, we meet and do battle first and in our combat discover respect that leads to friendship. There is the love that we earn with each other by working hard together, sometimes enduring hardship as we do.

There is another kind of love that if a person is lucky, might happen half-a-dozen times in one life. It is that love that you recognize at the very moment you meet a person. I use the word, “recognize” because when you meet that person both you and she feel that you have always known each other, that you have been bound together at the level of the soul for your entire existence.

This can be the love of deep friendship, or of romance, or both.

This is how it was when I met my friend, the late Vincent Craig, whose funeral I took readers to in May. It is how it was with Margie – in fact, this recognition came to me weeks before I met her, when I first heard her name spoken. I loved her the instant her name struck my ears. Before I ever laid eyes upon her or even saw her picture, I wanted to marry her, to make babies with her and to spend my life with her.

I first met Soundarya in August of 2007 at the wedding of my niece, Khena, to Sandy’s cousin, Vivek. At the moment I looked at her I felt a warm feeling of closeness, as though I had always known her, that she had been my friend for all of my life and would always be. I did not ask for this friendship, I did not seek it out. It was just there. I would never have mentioned or even hinted at this to her or to anyone else, but after the wedding feast she asked me if I would walk with her.

As we walked, a bird landed high in a tree above us and Sandy delighted in that bird. She saw baby monkeys, leaping across roofs and jumping onto window sills and was again delighted. When she spotted a kitten in a yard, she squealed with pleasure and made the woman who owned the kitten hand it over her fence so that she could hold it for a time. 

And there has not been a day since when I have not felt the bond that was just naturally there between us.

I feel it now, even though she is gone, but now it manifests itself in the midst of a huge new hole torn into my heart. I will carry this hole for the remainder of my life, for it can never be filled. There are many other holes there.

The number just keeps growing.

I call her "Muse" because when I returned to Alaska following my first trip to India, I began to think about my photographs differently. I had always tried my hardest to make my photographs good, even though most of the time when I shoot I feel that I am creating nothing but junk, yet I never let this feeling stop me but I always work to create a decent picture that might speak to a large audience.

After I met Soundarya, I began to shoot my pictures for an audience of one. My photography became an effort to interpret my world in Alaska to a young woman who had spent her entire life in the equatorial tropics of Southern India. I felt that if I could successfully interpret my world for her, then perhaps I could interpret it for anyone.

Before I went to bed last night, I tried to call her three times to see if I might somehow lend her comfort after the tragic death of her husband, but I failed to reach her. Why didn't I call her ten times, 20? Why did I use Skype?

So I sent her an email, told her about the Iñupiat song, "praying for you," and since I am not much good at praying myself, went to bed with that song in my head, my brain struggling to project the words and message from Arctic Alaska to a grief-stricken soul in tropical India.

This morning, I tried to call her again at her brother's number, but the phone system refused to recognize that number.

Then, at lunch time, I set out to walk from the North Slope Borough to Osaka Restaurant, and was amazed to see this beautiful moon hanging over the ice of the Arctic Ocean, but in my stress, grief and worry, I had forgotten my camera.

I went back and got it, and shot this picture - as an interpretation of my world in Alaska for my grieving muse, Soundarya, in India.

It was very near to this same time, perhaps during this very time, that she decided this world had become too painful to bear, that she was going to join her husband.

So that is what she did.

It is a decision that I strongly disagree with, but there is nothing that I can do about it. I want to, I keep thinking there must be some way I can, but I can't.

After I got the call, I spent some time just walking, trying to stay away from the roads, because I did not want anybody to stop and pick me up. I bought a coffee from Thelma at Aarigaa. It was hot when I began to drink it, but soon turned cold.

I just walked and walked. Sometimes I shouted. Sometimes I screamed. 

At one point, I noticed this other person walking. 

Right now, I want to do but one thing - to go home, to hug my children and grandchildren, to tell them how much I love them, to scritch the cats behind their ears. I want to hold my wife close to my heart, for a very, very, very, long time.

Thanksgiving in Barrow is a unique and beautiful thing and I had planned to stay through, to cover it, blog it, and then after I returned to Wasilla to have a late Thanksgiving dinner and late birthday party for Lisa, my youngest, who just turned 25. Now, I just want to go home to be with my family, so I guess that is what I will do.

As for my soul friend Soundarya, I want to reach backward in time, to call 20 times, 30 times, 40 times... to reach through our cell phones, wrap my arms around her and say, "Hang on! Hang on! You can get through this. You will always feel the pain but still you can get through it and you will laugh, you will smile, you may not believe it but another young man will come along for you and you will love and be loved and will live a life that is good and fulfilling."

I can't do that. She is gone. That is that.

So I will go on and I will laugh and I will smile and I will love and be loved and will live a life that is good and fulfilling, but not a day will pass that I do not feel this horrible loss that I suffered today. This blog will not dwell upon this loss or upon my lost Soundarya, but will move on, as life always moves on.

And Sujitha - Ganesh - you must get through this, too. You must! You must! And your beautiful parents! Vivek, Khena, Vijay, Vidya, Kavitha... Murthy, Vasanthi... on and on this list can go... Barathi, Brindha... on and on

Please note: I have disabled comments for this post*. I know I have many readers with big hearts who will wish to offer words of comfort and condolence and I appreciate that, but I do not wish to read any words of consolation. And if you wonder how I could write this in this situation - this is how I deal with grief. I write. And I take pictures. This is how I get through it.

It is now nearing 3:00 am. I must go to bed. How do I do that?

Thank God that I am not in a hotel but am with the Ahmaogak family. They understand grief, they know love and they give love. They have given it to me in abundance.

Soundarya!

*Thanks to a couple of comments left elsewhere, I have realized that it was unfair of me to close comments here. I just felt that I could not bear the pain of reading those comments, but this was wrong. If anyone reads this and is moved by compassion to say something about Soundarya, I must open the door for them to do so. So I am now, nearly 36 hours after the original posting, opening this up to comments. I realize that multitudes of readers have already passed through and that there would have been some among them who would have commented but who now never will, but for any late comers, or returning visitors, the board is now open.

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