Musings – chimericalprism.com

Unghosted, The Highlands, a description

Hours of driving southwest from Inverness had afforded them unobstructed access to the natural splendor of the Scottish Highlands. Green and white appeared to be the colors of choice, with the occasional blue breaking through the clouds. Dramatic mountains embroidered with flowing white lines of waterfalls and modest little white-washed cottages induced quite the admiring squeaks.

The weather was holding up as they reached Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness, the site of many ferocious battles, including those with the infamous MacDonald clan. Now in ruins, the castle had been destroyed by the owners to prevent rivals from occupying it hundreds of years earlier, according to information at the visitor center. Paige and Wilder climbed the spiral stone staircase to enjoy the view of the loch, though faces grew long as neither captured a Nessie sighting. A great disappointment as they had talked about her for weeks.

Sonia and Murray loitered nearby on the grounds, trying not to worry about the children’s safety, they themselves stepping gingerly down the slippery stone steps to the loch, locking hands once again like the young lovers they had once been.

Before the first drops of rain, everyone had managed to meet back in front of the castle gates for a photo as black, foreboding clouds gathered behind them. Afterwards, they rushed back to the car for the couple hours of driving remaining to reach Isle of Skye. Although daylight abounded until past ten o’clock at night in the Highlands, and it was still only half past three, navigating the narrow, one-lane roads took a lifetime.

As planned, the family picked up groceries before crossing the bridge to the island. Isle of Skye lay before them like an unraveling mystery. At this last leg of their journey, the famous Skye fog began to roll in, eclipsing the splendid, ethereal countryside around them. When they finally checked into their cottage in the Sleat Peninsula, it was nearly eight-thirty, but still light, in spite of the mist.

With the sun going down, the temperature decreased rapidly. Sonia burrowed deeper into her fleece. She suddenly remembered a particularly gruesome story about the MacDonalds and their main rival clan, the MacLeods, from the guidebook. For centuries, the two clans had battled to control Skye. This particular incident involved a gouged eye and an arson attack on a church congregation attending mass. Sonia shuddered. It was as if during the day, the island lived another life: birds sang, the sun burst through the clouds and rainbows appeared. Then at night, the fog returned, bringing with it troubling memories of the past, like a shroud of unrelenting sadness covering the land with a temporary darkness.

***

For the next several days, the family toured the entire island. One especially fine day, they were able to drive almost completely around, visiting the most well-known sites. They enjoyed the picturesque little town of Portree, relishing the curried mussels they ordered at a restaurant near the pier. Paige enjoyed all the little shops in the town. Wilder’s favorite experience, of which he spoke for weeks afterward, was the trip to Dunvegan Castle, a fully functioning household for hundreds of years, in the heart of the MacLeod Clan country. The craggy landscape, towering mountains, and random red phone booths in the middle of nowhere fulfilled every expectation. Yet, the beauteous scenery remained wistful, haunting if you will, like a stained-glass window molded from the shards of a broken heart.

Sydney’s Gift

Weeks after she had turned eight and before her family left Sri Lanka, Asha visited her grandmother, Aachchi, in Kandy, a favorite colonial holiday site. The English often fled Colombo’s incessant heat and found comfort in the cooler, highland interior. Nostalgic, they replicated English homes, cultivated gardens, and introduced names like Aloysius, Violet, and Felix to a new hybrid population peppered with pale eyes and fancy top hats. Although retreating in the end, the English left vestiges of their occupation, like Aachchi’s house and garden, among others.

One day during that final visit, Asha crouched under the shade of Aachchi’s avocado tree, writing in the dirt. Located next to the neighbor’s yard, the tree’s leaves touched those of its twin on the other side, branches intertwining to form a canopy over Asha’s head. Laden with fruit, the two formed a fertile arboreal world for the chipmunks scurrying across branches.

“Nice job,” said an amused but kind voice near her. Startled, Asha jumped. One of Aachchi’s new neighbors, a boy about ten, tall and golden, stood about three feet away, green eyes glistening with innocent mischief.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. “I’m Sydney.”

Asha frowned, anxious, but offered her name.

“Sujatha is going to make some fresh chilled sugared avocado for me,” Sydney said, pulling down the most low-hanging fruit. “Ever eaten any? It’s better than ice cream.”

Asha said no. Yet, she lingered, admiring Sydney’s sociability and articulation, qualities never sprinkled on her at birth.

Satisfied with his bounty, Sydney turned to Asha. “We have some fruit left over from yesterday in the fridge, if you’d like.”

Asha hesitated. She knew she should probably ask for permission, but this time, she decided to cross the hedge on her own. She followed Sydney to the set of steps leading to the kitchen. They sat down, and Sujatha handed them bowls of sugared butter fruit, cool and melting in their mouths like frozen cotton candy. Left alone on the steps, Asha and Sydney finished their treats. When the final spoonful disappeared, Asha said thanks and snuck back through the hedge.

Not long after, Asha and her family left, settling in California. There, new contraptions like VCRs, microwaves, seatbelts and paper towels greeted her awestruck eyes. The avocado tree in the community garden, however, beckoned her with familiar branches, cementing an eternal bond across oceans.

Wuthering Heights, Weathering Lows

I always feel it’s essential to read a treasured book at different points in life. When we revisit a story at twenty-one and find we dislike a character that we once adored at thirteen, we verify the growth and maturity we should have attained with the passage of time. On the cusp of my thirteenth birthday, I completed my first purchase of young adult literature, Wuthering Heights. Earlier that summer, an older relative had teased me out of the warm and comforting literary cocoon I had built around myself consisting of the Anne of Green Gables series and all work by Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author. This relative had dragged me to the classical section of local bookstore and bought me a copy of Pride and Prejudice. Equipped with my mother’s ancient dictionary and ready to reread as many passages as necessary, I was determined to understand and finish that story. That summer was quite pivotal in turning around my literary tastes, when I finally forayed into unfamiliar genres like science fiction and fantasy in addition to exploring the classics.

I’m unsure what attracted me to Wuthering Heights. I suppose the paperback cover, with its characteristically desolate moor as well as the title itself, both shrouded under a veil of mystery and dread, cumulatively illustrate silent wails of haunting sadness. Appealing to a preteen always fascinated almost genetically by ghost stories. I grabbed the tome and rushed home to devour the contents. Although I recall very little detail about that first reading, excluding the numerous shuffling of pages in that old dictionary, I do remember both loving and hating Heathcliff. Admiring his tenacity, determination, mysterious origins and lost years, and intelligence but hating his cruelty, especially to Hareton, an innocent child who, I thought, deserved none of Heathcliff’s revenge but just a modicum of what may remain of his empathy in spite of Hindley’s hatred.

A few years later, Wuthering Heights was required reading for our senior high school class. Unfortunately, I had moved little beyond my first impressions of the characters. In fact, I think my conflicting feelings for Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff had gravitated further toward the negative realm. For someone who had really experienced very little of romantic love, I certainly had strong opinions on how people should act. For instance, I failed to grasp how such a spoiled and capricious little girl like Catherine could capture Heathcliff’s heart so steadfastly. Only years later did I understand the power of first love, especially one formed under such dire, isolated circumstances. At this point, I think I just gave up on the story, tired of the grotesque cruelty pervading much of the book. Although I am relieved that Cathy Linton and Hareton end the curse by closing the cycle of revenge and hate in their families, their blossoming love fails, in my eyes, to adequately make atonement for the loss of love, longing and sadness endured by the numerous others who came before them.

Recently, however, I ran across the newest adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” on PBS. Perhaps after a decade and a half spent learning about love and being, in general, happy, my views on Catherine and Heathcliff have transformed. When the two are finally reunited on the moor, only to be followed up by another trying scene of unhappiness, a sense of melancholy overwhelmed me. When I was younger, Catherine bore the brunt of my contempt. Because of a sheer case of bad luck (or is it good?), Catherine finds herself a guest of the Lintons for an extended period of time during which she discovers the privileges of being part of the gentry. Although Catherine hails from the landed classes, she is never educated in the “proper ways of a lady,” spending much of her time running wild and free in the moors. Heathcliff feels she betrays him, but as a woman in such a desolate place, what great choices did she have? In fact, although he never hears it, Catherine tells Nelly she is marrying Edgar to partially elevate Heathcliff’s station in life. On the other hand, Heathcliff, though born penniless, is a man, intelligent to boot. If he had received just an iota of love and nurturing, he would have most likely reaped his success through admirable means. But, alas, we are sometimes only a reflection of and remembered for our worst flaws.

Time has certainly softened my views on certain characters, but it has also changed my outlook on another aspect as well: the moors. Windy, cold, dark and uninviting, how could one find such solace in such a barren and soulless place? Now I realize that to Catherine and Heathcliff, this place was as lush and beautiful as the open greenspace is to me in the springtime, so verdant after a long winter rainy season, the magical weeks before the strong California sun bleaches the landscape to an overwhelming flaxen gold certainly less easy on the eyes. In the moors, there is freedom, there is equality, there is love, all of which disappears within the confines of Wuthering Heights. Ironically, man’s worst tendencies, including selfishness, bitterness, jealousy and cruelty, enjoy free reign in the man-made, “civilized” walls of Wuthering Heights, but his best, loving tenderness, joy and liberty find a home roaming in the wild heath, which is often mischaracterized as bleak, ugly and dangerous.

Wuthering Heights is a beautiful and seductive chameleon rather than the dragon first described by critics. Despite its intense and savage view of human nature, the story, once captured in the heart, beckons throughout one’s life with new insights. Not for the faint of heart. It is certainly a story to which I often return, yet I can’t help but wish that the next time I open the book, Catherine and Heathcliff are finding happiness in this life as opposed to the next. But then, what would we gain and learn?

Not only in a name but in a dream

Researchers are finding that more and more humans are chimeras, having absorbed the genetics of a “ghost twin” they never knew had existed with them in the womb. A number of unbelievable examples have popped up recently, specifically having to do with paternal and maternal testing. A woman in Boston, the first and most famous example of human chimerism, unwittingly discovered that she was not the biological mother of her children. After enduring numerous genetic tests, she discovered that her ovaries’ genetics were completely different from that of her thyroid gland. In a very early stage of development, the woman had absorbed her sister, who, not to be forgotten in the game of life, had in turn fused her ovaries with that of the woman’s. In a more recent case, a man discovered he was not the biological father of his child. The genetics of the cells inside his cheek were different from the cells producing his sperm, which were actually remnants belonging to a brother the man had absorbed in utero. Ironically, although the ghost twins in these examples never received the chance to experience living, they have indeed won the larger evolutionary battle: their offspring will live on.

Fantastical, wouldn’t you say? But completely true. Potentially, some of us have also absorbed a ghost twin, but we may never know because the chimerism in us could inhabit places other than our reproductive organs. I like to imagine that people’s chimerism, really, is at the very heart of our multifaceted personalities. The girly girl that loves dinosaurs and running (me!), the rambunctious five-year-old boy who can never satiate his love for the playground but insists on an hour of reading everyday… chimeras surround us. Wildly fanciful, imaginary, unreal, but truly existing on earth.

Similar to the idea of chimeras, where a living being differs from what he/she initially seems, a prism, a transparent object used to refract or disperse light, transforms one reality into another. Fused together, the chimerical prism allows us to thrive as a whole, enabling us to produce innovative, spectacular, and useful gifts to enlighten humanity. Go out, it urges, embrace everything you love and become the Renaissance men and women you were always meant to be.

Short review: Island of a Thousand Mirrors

There is a common thread weaving through books by authors of South Asian background: lyrical, dream-like prose undulating through and pulsating life onto paper, conjoining the lush tropical jungle, humidity, warm Indian Ocean currents, haunting superstition, monsoon season and a never ending quest for justice and closure. All familiar and comforting. Perhaps, they subconsciously aim to mimic the ornate, spherical nature of written language originating from Sanskrit, translating the physicality of characters into the ethos of being human. Michael Ondaatje, Jhumpa Lahiri, Salman Rushdie and now Nayomi Munaweera. As a member of the “1.5” generation of Americans (born in another country but growing up in the US), specifically of Sri Lankan origin, I thoroughly appreciated this effort. If you are at all curious about the 30-year civil war in Sri Lanka that only recently ended, here is a book that lends a good perspective, fictionalized, of course. My only disappointment is the lack of depth and development in the main characters, except one, which is likely intentional. It is difficult to feel emotions at their fullest capacity because of this. Highly recommended and looking forward to the few other books coming out by authors of a similar background!

Sushi

My love of sushi is boundless. What began as a mere fondness for California rolls has turned into an addiction for the freshest bit of salmon nigiri. In fact, my taste for any cooked fish has dissipated, meat of any kind taking a backseat. When I can’t get my fix of the raw goodness, I devour sliced lox weekly with scrumptious amounts of slathered cream cheese on jalapeno cheddar bagels, pacified by the hint and feel of uncooked salmon. After the birth of my first child, the craving grew stronger, to the point where I couldn’t believe the depth of my lust, having been deprived of sushi for nine months. Then, my second child was born, and cravings reached unparalleled proportions. My child is nearly two years old, but my desire for sushi never satiates. At this point, the rational side of me can only attribute my unrequited passion to an unexplained, synergistic interaction between various fish-loving dominant genes passed on by sea-faring ancestors. Hailing from an island at the ideal center of centuries-old maritime trade routes and the victim of numerous aspiring empires, I must have inherited each from various fish-consuming sailors passing through the island, all synchronizing together to form an all-encompassing sushi-loving mega protein that stimulates my addiction neurons. In the end, I’m left with this never-ending appetite, which is occasionally partially satisfied by the freshest spicy tuna roll. Only a temporary purgatory, I soothe myself optimistically, because I know my roll in shining seaweed is still out there, waiting patiently to find me.