In the name of 2007's Resolution #2, "Get The Funk Out," I was reorganizing a closet last night. A closet that's like a compost pile of mementoes and old coats and sporting gear, with the bottom-most articles crushed under the weight of the most recent additions, which are usually thrown hastily on top, by me, the door slammed before they can slide out onto the floor.

In the process I found a giant shoe box (Simard, boot-sized--luscious leather for which I probably paid a freaking mint. Where are the boots now? I have no idea.) full of old photos. Being a Pisces, I never give up an opportunity to turn household entropy into newfound forms of chaos. Instead of organizing these photos into some sort of useful array, I sprayed them all out over the kitchen table for a stumble down good old Memory Lane. I rediscovered a bunch from a trip to India I took exactly ten years ago. Which swept me up in a wave of nostalgia for bel poori, Thums [sic] Up!, and over-the-counter Valium.

Here is one:


I took this photo at dawn in my favorite Indian city, Varanasi. It's on the banks of the Ganges, which I came to use as a regular walking route after narrowly escaping death under the hooves of a bull in flagrante delicto on the sidewalk of the main thoroughfare. The smiling child featured above is wearing a T-shirt as a babushka and is indeed collecting cow shit on a sort of hors d'oeuvre platter. Poor Indians use sundried dung as cooking fuel. And we pick up our dogs' poop with plastic shopping bags.