Leaving ...

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The past 10 days have been extraordinarily hectic. And the next ten days ... month ... two months ... are apparently all headed in the same direction. On November 3rd I am expecting to see my new novel in print. On the 14th I'm travelling to Nepal for a two-day workshop on cartoons. In December I'll go to Madras for my mother's 90th birthday on the 16th and then to Bombay on the 19th to attend my cousin's son's wedding -- and somewhere in the midst of all this, there may be launch events for the novel that I for one do not have precise dates for!

Meanwbile, here's what's been happening since I left Vermont on the 15th of October: I arrived in Boston that evening, was up the next morning to catch the bus to New York, got there, waited an hour then caught the Long Island Rail Road in order to reach the home of friends V & C for the night. Repacked again that night, this time for the trip to Sayre, PA where my sister Su lives -- caught the 2.30 pm bus at Port Authority , arrived 6.30 in Binghamton, NY, spent the weekend with my sister Su and my brother-in-law, watching movies and trying not to eat too much.

I'm not going to enter into the minutiae of the rest of the week -- but I returned to NYC on Tuesday, spent the next three nights in Long Island, then Friday and Saturday night in Manhattan, returned to Long Island on Sunday -- which is where I am now -- and am due to leave the US on Monday (tomorrow) on the nonstop 18-hour Air-India flight to New Delhi.

In between, I've been sending interviews to magazines in India, taking photographs of myself to accompany said interviews, struggling with three-pin plugs that won't fit into two pin sockets, uncooperative computers, disgruntled I-Pods, failing batteries and then, in New York, working flat out on TWO WHOLE NEW LITHOGRAPHIC PLATES, jumping on and off subway trains, dodging bad weather, meeting old friends, making new ones, attending an extremely enjoyable party in a charmingly elegant loft apartment on W 36th street, carrying my two new prints rolled up under my arm, with a bursting backpack on my back all over the city before eventually realizing (on Sunday morning) that I WASN'T going to be able to do half the things I'd planned to do while in NYC and returning to Long Island feeling tired but satisfied.

I will get around to posting pictures of my new prints here, but prolly not tonight. Oooh .... but it was SO GOOD to be in a print studio again! Wonderful. I never seem to understand how much I like printing until I'm actually in a studio and doing it. (I have an explanation: it's because I refuse to admit to myself that I'd prefer to be doing something other than what I AM doing -- because that would be to admit to failures of self-determination -- and fixing that might require more energy than I'm willing to budget).

[UPDATE: well ... as you can see, I DID get around to posting pix of the prints! They're 24"x18" lithographs -- processed and printed for me by Devraj Dakoji, so it should come as no surprise that the results are so beautiful -- but these photographs are only of the proofs taken on newsprint, and the light in the room was too low for me to sharpen the focus. Believe me when I say that the final prints -- three each, on good paper -- are really rather wonderful. That's another delightful thing about prints -- I can frankly admire my own work and yet not feel vain because even though I created the images on the litho-plate, the expertise that produced the print belongs to Devraj, not me. I plan to add colour and will hope to print a small edition. Eventually]