Thursday, May 31, 2012 at 9:20AM ;)
Now I take a quick hop back to India. Although my recent Return to India series was fairly extensive and sometimes intense, I focused it almost entirely upon the preparations for Sujitha's wedding, the wedding itself, and the search
Monday, March 19, 2012 at 8:12PM ;)
The first cat I photographed in Jaipur stopped by this basket and peered at the garland within, such garlands playing sacred roles in Hindu society. What I did not know was that back home, my little Pistol-Yero either had lain down, or soon would, beneath my desk, apparently to take a nap.
During my absence, Caleb and Margie would frequently let both him and Jim into my office. They reported that they missed me badly, as they always do when I go and that my absence had been particularly hard on Pistol. On this day, he had been in my office quite awhile, so Margie opened the door to check on him. She saw him lying beneath my desk, apparently sleeping peacefully, so she closed the door and let him be.
But he was not sleeping peacefully. He was dead. No one knows why he died, but he did. He was not an old cat. He was our youngest cat. I cannot remember for certain what year we got him. 2004?
My little Pistol-Yero!
How am I now going to be able to bear the return to my house, to step back into my office? It will feel so empty. How will it be, to sit at my chair, in front of my computer, where he would so often join me - most often to insert himself into the space between my keyboard and my monitor, making it very difficult for me to view my monitor?
Most often, I just let him get away with it. I knew he did it because he wanted to be in close proximity to me. I knew it made him feel happy, important, and loved to sit there, so, I would let him sit there and I would do my best to peer around him at whatever it was I was working on.
My little Pistol-Yero!
So sweet, so loving! It took time, because I know he was abused as a kitten. When we brought him home, on the surface he appeared mean and tough, but that was all a facade. He just did not want to be abused anymore.
And when he finally figured out that he would never be abused in our house, when he came to know for certain that no matter what happened, no matter what he did - even if he peed on the rug - he would not get hit or punched or kicked across the room, he put the mean and vicious facade aside. He let the love pour out. He let the love pour in. His sweet purr surpressed his frightened, snarling, growl.
Every night when I would be home, he would curl up right beside my head and there he would purr until he fell asleep. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I would place my hand upon him. He would purr some more.
;)
And now he is gone. This is my final day in India. Tonight, I board a jet that will take me to Dubai, then on to Los Angeles, Phoenix, then, two days later, home to Wasilla, where he is now being kept outside in a box, frozen, in a place Margie assures me no dog nor raven can get to him.
More than three feet of snow covers the frozen ground.
It won't be easy, but we will come together as a family. We will shovel a plot from the snow, we will pierce the hard, rocky, frozen earth; we will dig a grave. We will bury him - our dear, sweet, beloved, little Pistol-Yero - of the fragile, tender heart.
Saturday, March 17, 2012 at 11:01AM ;)
OK. I'm way too tired to write much about this day, or to edit pictures at all and so I just chose this frame from the last series of five images that I shot today - this gentlemen and his camel, crossing the road. We have just entered Jaipur. He is not waving at me. He is signaling to our driver that he is crossing the road no matter what and so the driver should stop.
Meanwhile, the driver is seeking a way not to stop, but to just keep driving, to see if he can avoid a disastrous accident by an inch or two - something he has done at least 200 times on this drive, usually not with camels though, but big trucks. And our driver is 83.
It took a long time to get here, thanks to traffic that backed up again and again. You see a sign and it says "Jaipur - 65 kilometers" or so and so you think you will be there in 45 minutes or so, because the highway is very good, but then two-and-half hours later you see another sign and it says, "Jaipur - 31 Kilometers" or so. Plus, we stopped at gigantic Chittorgarh Fort of the middle ages to roam about its magnificent walls and through its temples, royal quarters and ruins of various sorts.
But I've got to go to bed.
Can hardly keep my eyes open.
So this is it for today.
