India.

I am going to India next year. Melane, who took this photo as we were traipsing along the walls of Intramuros recently, noted how high-pitched her voice had become after hearing the news, and would like to know why my face is still in its typical, pinched scowl. I have to admit. Typing it here - I am going to India - made it sink in a bit more, although I would be hardpressed to say that it has me tearing up my hair and beating my chest a la Trojan women, except in joy.

Which is to say I ought to be more excited. I am going in November, so the year-long wait may have something to do with the lack of figurative (and maybe literal) confetti (far from the agonizing way one couldn't sleep the night before a school field trip to Nayong Pilipino). Mostly, I look forward to the distance. Melane, who herself went on an Eat-Pray-Love tour of Indonesia, said she loved most the newness of things. At about the same time, I was in Sagada, and we both readily took back what we said about ourselves and our inability to escape them. Maybe you can't, but perspectives change, and that's almost the same thing.

When I read some accounts of past residents, I couldn't help but think of Silliman and the other workshops I have gone to: how it gave me a glimpse of the life I want to live, a world without, essentially, the need to think about sustenance, which is to say, money. Yes, I will invoke my distaste for capitalism here to rationalize my laziness (the refusal, for one, to take on a full time job for almost two years now). I know that I may very well be just postponing my entry to the "real world." I'll be 27 in a few months, and 28 when this residency ends, so I can say, at the least, that I gave it a good fight.

PS. Now re-reading Midnight's Children for a paper. I tell myself I am hitting two birds with one stone. Learning about India and trying to take that INC off my records. Sure.