Thursday, September 27, 2012
Dipika Kohli, The Elopement: A Memoir
Meaning is not manufactured, it is experienced.
Dipika Kohli has lived these words.
She intuitively knew them when she quit her first job out of college and moved to the other side of the globe. It was not her first move across cultures during a moment of strife.1 Her parents had moved her and the family from Michigan to Goldsboro, North Carolina when she was ten years-old. It was a sudden and wrenching change for young Dipika, who just months earlier had lost her best friend to the terrorist bombing of Air India Flight 182. In a bitter irony, the bombing took place over the same Irish soil on which she found herself unexpectedly living many years later.
The Elopement is a headlong adventure, with much transit and transition. Like Ms. Kohli's life, it races from under snowy street lights and a lonely Lake Johnson, into the green Irish hills, with its lakes in the middle distance, then off to a Japanese metropolis of glass buildings and snaking corridors. It is breathless and thrilling, at times it feels as though one were reading The Bourne Identity of the Housewife.
The tale is filled with the kind of passion, intrigue and feeling that can only come from experience. Ms. Kohli takes us down a very personal path into her heart and soul. She acknowledges as much when she recounts her own struggles to feel comfortable and grounded in Japanese culture. She doesn't want be soto, which means "outside" but rather, the opposite, uchi, which literally means "inside."2
Her writing style mirrors that of her blog, Kismuth, the practical infused with the mystical, perhaps reflecting the duality of the cultures in which she was raised. In an interview with the Clarion Content, Ms. Kohli said she felt the tension and the joy of real, powerful reactions. She faced it travelling solo through India, meeting her Dad's uncles and her Mom's aunts, heretofore unknown, learning that although she grew up in a nuclear family in North Carolina, she was part of a large extended family that had by no means forgotten or abandoned her.
She faced her own reactions everywhere from a quiet, and sometimes lonely, Irish cottage to flying a kite by herself at lunchtime over Lake Crabtree, desperate to get away from a mindset that didn't suit her.
She notes that she was no finished product, instead, she says, "I liked who I was becoming." Ms. Kohli takes us through that becoming and beyond in what is the first of a four part series. A memoir that she hopes will, "give people time, space and permission to do some soul searching of their own."
The next installment, available October 15th on Amazon, is called, The Dive. For good reason, it will dig into the deeply personal topic of losing a pregnancy in a discompassionate town, in a realm of acquaintances, far from friends and loved ones. But before you get lost in total despair, as Ms. Kohli once was, remember this is ultimately a story of triumph and success, travelling through dark times and on to a place that has a happy family, with a healthy child, and a passion for the creative and the community, here, in Durham.
On her own website, Ms. Kohli quotes Joseph Campbell on a dark Hobbesian day,
We are reminded of the words of the English poet Robert Herrick as we eagerly await the next volume from Ms. Kohli.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.
The Elopement is available for purchase here.
Ms. Dipika Kohli will be speaking at TEDx Raleigh on Oct. 13, giving a talk called "There's Not That Much Time Left."
Notes
1Technically, it wasn't her second move either, that came when she dropped out of art school after a semester to move to Japan.
2American kids might say down, she wants to be down. Cool, inside, one who gets it. Not lame, excluded, outside the joke and the meaning.
Dipika Kohli has lived these words.
She intuitively knew them when she quit her first job out of college and moved to the other side of the globe. It was not her first move across cultures during a moment of strife.1 Her parents had moved her and the family from Michigan to Goldsboro, North Carolina when she was ten years-old. It was a sudden and wrenching change for young Dipika, who just months earlier had lost her best friend to the terrorist bombing of Air India Flight 182. In a bitter irony, the bombing took place over the same Irish soil on which she found herself unexpectedly living many years later.
The Elopement is a headlong adventure, with much transit and transition. Like Ms. Kohli's life, it races from under snowy street lights and a lonely Lake Johnson, into the green Irish hills, with its lakes in the middle distance, then off to a Japanese metropolis of glass buildings and snaking corridors. It is breathless and thrilling, at times it feels as though one were reading The Bourne Identity of the Housewife.
The tale is filled with the kind of passion, intrigue and feeling that can only come from experience. Ms. Kohli takes us down a very personal path into her heart and soul. She acknowledges as much when she recounts her own struggles to feel comfortable and grounded in Japanese culture. She doesn't want be soto, which means "outside" but rather, the opposite, uchi, which literally means "inside."2
Her writing style mirrors that of her blog, Kismuth, the practical infused with the mystical, perhaps reflecting the duality of the cultures in which she was raised. In an interview with the Clarion Content, Ms. Kohli said she felt the tension and the joy of real, powerful reactions. She faced it travelling solo through India, meeting her Dad's uncles and her Mom's aunts, heretofore unknown, learning that although she grew up in a nuclear family in North Carolina, she was part of a large extended family that had by no means forgotten or abandoned her.
She faced her own reactions everywhere from a quiet, and sometimes lonely, Irish cottage to flying a kite by herself at lunchtime over Lake Crabtree, desperate to get away from a mindset that didn't suit her.
She notes that she was no finished product, instead, she says, "I liked who I was becoming." Ms. Kohli takes us through that becoming and beyond in what is the first of a four part series. A memoir that she hopes will, "give people time, space and permission to do some soul searching of their own."
The next installment, available October 15th on Amazon, is called, The Dive. For good reason, it will dig into the deeply personal topic of losing a pregnancy in a discompassionate town, in a realm of acquaintances, far from friends and loved ones. But before you get lost in total despair, as Ms. Kohli once was, remember this is ultimately a story of triumph and success, travelling through dark times and on to a place that has a happy family, with a healthy child, and a passion for the creative and the community, here, in Durham.
On her own website, Ms. Kohli quotes Joseph Campbell on a dark Hobbesian day,
"Modern romance, like Greek tragedy, celebrates the mystery of dismemberment, which is life in time. The happy ending is justly scorned as a misrepresentation; for the world, as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending: death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our heart with the passing of the forms that we have loved."You can read The Elopement like that, with a samsaric sensibility, or you could let your soul run light and free, knowing the sun will come up tomorrow. Either way, or anywhere in between, there is lots of knowledge, wisdom and life story in these pages.
We are reminded of the words of the English poet Robert Herrick as we eagerly await the next volume from Ms. Kohli.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.
The Elopement is available for purchase here.
Ms. Dipika Kohli will be speaking at TEDx Raleigh on Oct. 13, giving a talk called "There's Not That Much Time Left."
Notes
1Technically, it wasn't her second move either, that came when she dropped out of art school after a semester to move to Japan.
2American kids might say down, she wants to be down. Cool, inside, one who gets it. Not lame, excluded, outside the joke and the meaning.
Labels: Art, Durham, fiction, Practical Advice, thought
Monday, July 23, 2012
Did You See Me Catch that Foul Ball?
Long time readers know how the Clarion Content has a hankering for good guest columnists whenever and where ever we can get one. In fact, we are getting ready to introduce two such features when we debut the new blog format.
We will be running a "Vox Populi" reader submitted column, on any topic you would like. Amaze, delight, shock our audience. We dare you. And similarly, we will be accepting your Durham picture submissions for a special regular feature.
Our guest writer, today, is a fiction raconteur who fancies this popular new format of the moment, called flash fiction. A brief bit of razzle-dazzle and you're done is their modus operandi, super short fiction.
In this piece, our guest author has seized upon one of the Clarion Content's favorite topics, baseball. A flash fiction piece about baseball in the future, we know, we know, you all are already probably thinking: no umpires, electronic scorekeeping, et cetera. This author strikes out in a totally different direction.
Did You See Me Catch that Foul Ball?
by: A. I. Wright
I work for a company that sells clips of people who catch foul balls. They make good money.
We have the interns record and then electronically mark the telecast of every Major League Baseball game each time a fan catches a foul ball and their face is visible for at least two seconds. Surveys have shown most people won't buy unless their face is on for two seconds.
Then, thanks to some excellent facial recognition software and a little data mining deal with one of the big secondary ticket broker sites, pennies per name, we are able to email them an offer to purchase the clip. We will upload it on-line to our site, licensed by MLB, for one fee or we will email them a video file for a slightly larger fee.
You would be amazed how many foul balls there are in fifteen Major League Baseball games a night. Unfortunately, on a lot of them, we don't get the money shot. Next year, we are not only going to get the telecast feed, but the game film from all the other camera angles, too. It should double or triple the available number of clips, and thus revenue.
Cha-ching.
The sublime part is most people don't even ask these days how you connected the foul ball footage to their email address to make them the offer. And ninety-eight percent of those that do ask, we are able to put off with a simple, "Your tickets."
What a wonderful world.
We will be running a "Vox Populi" reader submitted column, on any topic you would like. Amaze, delight, shock our audience. We dare you. And similarly, we will be accepting your Durham picture submissions for a special regular feature.
Our guest writer, today, is a fiction raconteur who fancies this popular new format of the moment, called flash fiction. A brief bit of razzle-dazzle and you're done is their modus operandi, super short fiction.
In this piece, our guest author has seized upon one of the Clarion Content's favorite topics, baseball. A flash fiction piece about baseball in the future, we know, we know, you all are already probably thinking: no umpires, electronic scorekeeping, et cetera. This author strikes out in a totally different direction.
Did You See Me Catch that Foul Ball?
by: A. I. Wright
I work for a company that sells clips of people who catch foul balls. They make good money.
We have the interns record and then electronically mark the telecast of every Major League Baseball game each time a fan catches a foul ball and their face is visible for at least two seconds. Surveys have shown most people won't buy unless their face is on for two seconds.
Then, thanks to some excellent facial recognition software and a little data mining deal with one of the big secondary ticket broker sites, pennies per name, we are able to email them an offer to purchase the clip. We will upload it on-line to our site, licensed by MLB, for one fee or we will email them a video file for a slightly larger fee.
You would be amazed how many foul balls there are in fifteen Major League Baseball games a night. Unfortunately, on a lot of them, we don't get the money shot. Next year, we are not only going to get the telecast feed, but the game film from all the other camera angles, too. It should double or triple the available number of clips, and thus revenue.
Cha-ching.
The sublime part is most people don't even ask these days how you connected the foul ball footage to their email address to make them the offer. And ninety-eight percent of those that do ask, we are able to put off with a simple, "Your tickets."
What a wonderful world.
Labels: fiction, Guest columns, technology
Thursday, March 01, 2012
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
As a person who grew up hearing over and over from his Mother, "Books are our friends," I might be more inclined toward this wonderful little film than some. It is true that I believe books are alive with the spirit of those who wrote them. The continuum of knowledge is an on-going dialogue.
While the makers of this film must implicitly feel that way, too, they are able to communicate that and so much more with a nary a spoken word. This lyrical and beautiful short is called "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore."
The metaphor of storytelling is so powerful because it mirrors the human experience. Each of our lives, writ large and in vignettes, unfolds like a story.
This is a good one.1
Special thanks to a Durham writer friend for sending this to the Clarion Content.
Notes
1We know in the days of short attention span theater, fifteen minutes is a massive time commitment. Worse yet, this film starts out a little slow. It is worth it when you have a moment.
While the makers of this film must implicitly feel that way, too, they are able to communicate that and so much more with a nary a spoken word. This lyrical and beautiful short is called "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore."
The metaphor of storytelling is so powerful because it mirrors the human experience. Each of our lives, writ large and in vignettes, unfolds like a story.
This is a good one.1
Special thanks to a Durham writer friend for sending this to the Clarion Content.
Notes
1We know in the days of short attention span theater, fifteen minutes is a massive time commitment. Worse yet, this film starts out a little slow. It is worth it when you have a moment.
Labels: fiction, Pop Culture
Friday, September 16, 2011
The Early Morning
Does anything bad ever happen in the early morning?
Birds crowd on droopy telephone wires and sing towards your window replacing the radio from your alarm clock. Go ahead, yell. The birds are too happy to stop squawking. That black cable is their water cooler.
Drug dealers enter the paint-peeled squares as the worms burrow into the mud.
Bed monsters rub that weird shit out of their eyes, and sleeping beauties snore until their wives kiss them on the cheek.
Some wake up on the right side of the bed. Others, lie there and will continue to do so, until found days later.
Some wake up with wings, because last night after the party, they flipped from their backs, crawled over the tile floor, inched up to their blanket cocoons, and waited to become better. Much like it makes what was cold into warm, morning makes disgrace into opportunity.
The magical elves hide in the bushes, only leaving their morning dew as evidence of their presence. The stars take five to refuel their tanks, and end their opening act. Sunrise is soon. Turn off all cellphones so as not to disturb the audience.
It’s time for the eagers to feel the wooden floor with their toes and catch the cold water from the shower head. A shaving razor clinks against the side of a sink to lose the whiskers and cream. Cast off high heel shoes, cover the shag carpet, as a woman hops on one leg to slip on another likely rejection.
House doors are closed by night-shift workers and opened by diploma recipients. Joggers break their mothers’ backs and mommies reach into microwaves for the warm bottles. Two hands carry a bike out of a backyard and a car cranks from slumber.
Tires massage the highway’s back and vehicles honk good morning to one another. Middle fingers are shoved out of windows while peace signs are shown right back.
No, nothing bad happens in the morning.
Because too much is already going on.
Labels: fiction, That solid old Man
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Desire and conquest
You met her with stone eyes, even though your insecurities tried to melt them into wax. She looked down, smiled, and the rest went to rest. Now, with her legs, she envelopes you like a pearl in an oyster. Her soft cheek hugging your hard shoulder and it's woman and man. In the dark, her eyes are holes that you've learned to recognize. You know her by the sound of her breathing, by the weight of her hand on your happy trail, and by how her hair tickles your nose, but doesn't make you want to sneeze. You try to imprint on your brain how the pressure from her feels on your stomach, chest, and knees so you can call her to mind, physically, when you're alone. But you're disappointing yourself, because now you'll never be alone. Comfortable loneliness is not having any Body around and no thought of one either, and with her, that will never be actual . But right now, you're brazen. You're selfish. And don't know how and don't want to be satisfied. So, you explore her back with knuckles and callous fingers, nearly crying to God to turn the dead tips of them pink so you could feel her winding road. You realize how much of her thigh fits in your palm and how far up your hand can go until her breathing halts. Which inch makes her sigh, which centimeter makes her stretch out, and which itch she dies for you to get. As you skate on her skin up her neck, she reels back and her hair hits your face making a splash. Almost arrogantly, you move up further into her field of a black mane, and make a fist to pull it back. She looks at you and spaces out completely gone. Completely gone. Because she's found the man to pull her reins.
...by That Solid Old Man
Labels: fiction, Guest columns, That solid old Man
