Feeling better bit by bit. Which is good for all of us (this includes me) who no longer wants to read or think about my abnormal bowel movements.

I do want to think about how I have the greatest friends and family in the world. It was so good to chat with my sister today! I love her! And Chris sent an email the put all my anxious thoughts at rest. There is no replacement for that. Such wonderful people in my life - truly and utterly.

I also feel blessed to be moving amongst the living again. I walked down the street today and felt particular fondness for the life about me in all it's complexity: the man carrying a satchel of coconuts on his head, the men bathing (and peeing) on the corners, the women in the doorsteps in their beautiful red saris, the child asleep on the stairway, the goats being driven down the street. Today I loved them all.

Still, lately I wonder how much to trust what I see. There are so many layers, it's hard to know what is true. I suppose that is the case everywhere, but in a foreign country, with all the intricacies of culture and language, custom and history, sometimes it seems all the more difficult (though the reverse can also be argued. Just not by me today.) Here's what I mean. There are these women that walk up and down Sudder street where I live. They seem obviously poor and they carry small, tiny babies in their arms and they beg for money for milk for their babies. Everytime you walk down the street your eyes and your heart are accosted by the sight of so many such people - the women and babies, the men with no arms, the hunched over and crippled, the blind, the poor. And I want to pour all my money into their hands and say, take it, and have food!

But it's so much more complicated than that. A girl who has been here a year said she has seen one of the women's babies change three times in the course of a year. She says that they aren't actually their babies, but the women buy or "rent" them as an aid to begging (and this in turn supports child trafficking). She said that most of the beggars in this area aren't the "real" poor - she said the real poor can't even make it here to this street to begin with, but in reality that this area is controlled by the mafia and other forms of underground crime, and the beggars pay a fee to beg in this area. And if you buy milk for the women, they will return it unopened to be resold, and the money will be divided between them and the mafia.

And yet the poverty is so real.

It's just hard to know what is true. And it's hard to know what affects your actions, any actions will have on the lives around you. Will giving to a beggar aid child trafficking, or will it mean that someone has a meal that day? The difference seems so important, and it is so difficult to know.

So I go to Varanasi tomorrow. To see the Ganges. To float flowers down it. And perhaps to write a bit of poetry. And perhaps things will make more sense. Or at least there will be more peace for the things that don't.

In the meantime, I am off to see the doctor again. I saw him last night, and go for my lab results today. I liked him a lot. He reveled in storytelling, and was captivated by Aneita who is from Austria, "his favorite country in the world." He said, "oh, you are from Austria, then you must come sit by me so I can hold you hand, as it is my favorite place in the world." So she did, and he held her hand and dreamily spoke of the walnut bread he and his wife buy there and the pumpkin dressing you can get on this one street at this one place in Vienna. It was nice. I was half hoping he'd invite us home for tea so I could continue listening to him talk. But instead, he did something kinder; and gave us medicine and told us to go home and "read good books."

But first -eeek - today I shall expose myself (in more ways than one) to the art of Indian hair removal. I'm trying to make it sound exotic. I'm just getting my legs waxed. Off with the old! Because I'm off to the Ganges!