Filling an Empty Place

Today is my last day in Bloomington for awhile. I'm just finishing up some last-minute tasks before heading off to India again. Although I am excited to return, this time I am acutely aware of the people and places I'm leaving behind, even if only temporary. There is a good amount of sadness mixed with the excitement. I am the happiest I've been in a long time, but more conscious of the consequences of time and choice. I will miss dearly my family and friends, old and new. Although this will certainly be an adventure, it will be one that has been planned for me, and it will involve a great deal of work and learning.

Here's a poem I published a couple of years after my last trip to India:

And Such Is the Paradox of Living

I'm winding up my first year in law school; only three more weeks of class before finals. It has been a stressful but productive year. I've struggled to find time for everything, but that's par for the course, supposedly. I've barely done anything with my music — nothing new has been written, but I've managed to do a bit of mixing and mastering. My language study has fallen behind; I was keeping up with Mandarin and French in the fall (didn't find time for Spanish). Now I'm back to Hindi/Urdu, because I'll be returning to India this summer. I will be working in a legal internship in Hyderabad (although Telugu is the official state language, Urdu is most common in the capital of Andhra Pradesh), for the Council for Social Development, advocating for women, children, and disadvantaged social groups.

I don't get to do much reading outside of class material, but I'm currently working on Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. I'm still on Swann's Way, but it is by far the most amazing novel I've ever read. The last french novel I read was Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma — fast-paced and a bit thrilling, whereas reading Proust is exactly like the first paragraph of Swann's Way: