Yeeeeeoooowwww!!!

I tried to add this the other nite and failed! Glad to see Blogger working with us once more! Oh, this picture, yeah...it's me...me dancin' the nite away...happy as can be! Love it.

So tonite I got an email from someone who was pretty dear to me during my time in India. No, not Jonny Boy--though he did call me last nite and that was really sweet as well! This email was from a guy who I actually thought I was in love with for a while, but, like all my loves, they prove to be somewhat impossible situations. This guy, also like Jon, was a great brother to me--in a true Indian sense and otherwise. In India, esp. in ultra conservative places like Varanasi, it's not really appropriate, or safe, for women to be out and about on their own, so "Raj" was my protector. He took me to buy train tickets, showed me where to get great chicken tikka, he even took me to buy my first punjabi suits! haha Now *that's* true brother territory! There's a festival every year in India called "Raksha Bandhan" where sisters tie a cord (called a rakhi) around their brother's wrist. In doing this, she is honoring and thanking him for honoring and protecting her. She is also asking him to continue to protect her and uphold her honor. I missed this year's festival and therefore never gave Raj his rakhi, so this is in honor of him:

As I was leaving India, Raj wrote a farewell poem for me called "Singing Dreams". I just sat down and read it again this evening and it really touched me. My favorite line is "The heart with many marks dreams best." And if I could figure out the damn cut & paste method for Blogger, I'd post it on here!! hahaha I guess it's not going to happen tonite! But I just want to say that it was really special in that he was giving dignity to something that I've many times come to doubt, feel foolish about, even loathe...that "something" being my dreams.

I had big dreams once...big ideals...but they got the shit kicked out of them over there and I'm *still* trying to figure out what happened. But, more importantly, I'm trying to figure out where to go from here with what (if anything) has been left of them. So, thank you Raj for believing in the dignity of our dreams...of my dreams...and for upholding my honor and theirs.