River. And Riven.

Heather and I just saw the largest flock of birds ever. Millions and millions of... swallows? swifts? flying inches above the dusk-clad Ganges, up-river. The flock was quite wide and it took about 10 minutes for them all to pass. They were like a 2nd river, an anti-river; I was awash in easy poetry. Heather kept getting distracted by an adorable and very much dying puppy with a feather stuck to its nose. Death is everywhere here, it's true.

And I realized last night that India has broken me down in certain ways. I often feel that I'm nothing here. I'm not good at anything. I sit at home all day struggling to make any noticable progress on a maddeningly difficult instrument. And still, I'm ok. In the past few weeks I discovered that the thing that could most easily make me crazy is illness. When sick for a long time, it's like I'm in a long-distance relationship with myself: I start fighting just to remember what's good about me, what I'm actually like. Heather keeps saying that she and I are very "immediate" people. I suppose I also subscribe to the "one is what one does" theory of being, which is proving problematic. Guess I'll have to start moving towards the "inherent self-worth" theory. Dammit.