Post 1 of the India Project

Of the fifteen million little things going through my head right now, the one that seems to dominate above all else is 'I have too much/too little stuff packed'.  Second is disappointment that I'm going to miss seeing my prickly pear cactus open its thousand blooms.

Not anxiety over whether or not I'm going to survive three weeks in a place so foreign to me that even the surface of the moon seems familiar...


Not, 'I'm going to desperately miss my husband, my four legged children, my mom, my brother, my home...'


Not, 'Typhoid and Malaria and Cholera, oh my...'


Nope.  My mind is perseverating on 'stuff' (in the strictly George Carlin sense of the word).  That and the bloom of a common, native plant that I will have access to for the next 50 years of its bloom cycle. 


To say the mind works in mysterious ways is a complete understatement.  


Just like saying 'boy, Wendy, that's a big duffel bag' is an understatement (did you know my spell checker does not know the word duffel?  Weird).

I suppose that the OCD level preoccupation with 'stuff' is probably just what some psychoanalyst might label as 'transference' or something.  None the less, I've spent an inordinate amount of time worried about the silliest thing like having the right watch, exactly the correct selection of underwear and sufficient rolls of biodegradable toilet paper and very little on what I'm actually DOING.  


For example:  I know now that there are a very limited number of watchmakers who actually sell a analog (face) watch with an alarm function, and NONE who sell it for less than $180.  I do not know where I want to stay in Gangtok, or even (really) how I'm going to get there from the train station in Siliguri.  Of course, from my computer at home it is easier to spend countless hours pouring over collections of obscenely ugly watches than it is to work out details of transportation in a city that is 13204km away (that's 8206mi for those of us who are not accustomed to metric).  

The Momentum Pathfinder Watch - Analog and alarm.
Who knew this would be such a revolution in this day and age?

So I suppose it's safe to say that I'm obsessing over what is easiest to obsess over and just putting the rest away until a later date.  I'm sure when I'm sitting at the hotel in Delhi, looking at my giant pile of crap, the only thing going through my mind will be something like 'what was I thinking leaving everything and everyone I've ever loved thousands of miles behind', rather than 'oh shit, I don't think I'm going to have enough toilet paper'.


But then again...hmmm.  I think I'll throw that extra roll in anyway.