The bread in India is usually soft. There is a way in which you describe the bread, and you do not use words, but just the love of walking to a bakery and back, that one particular bakery, Lakshmi Bakery.

Here, in Ames, Iowa, the kitchen hardly invites and everything else that looks inviting is also blinding you with hidden downsides.

Anyways, coming back to the days when workshops, teaching kids communications, and English take up my days…. I am now here to invite you to come to Dog Eared Books Cafe which is just down the road from where I live! I will be READING on Oct 18th! Yay! I CAN NOT WAIT!

Check out the bitches! https://dogearedbooksames.com/event/emerging-writers/

Every year, Iowa State University organizes the Emerging Writer Series at the cafe which is a beloved spot for our MFAers!

I will be reading alongside Connor, Eleanore, and Johanna! They all are amazing writers and some of the best people to be reading alongside. I have known most of my people here for a very short period of time but I do feel connected and have a sense of familiarity with the things I am passionate about.

I feel that there is also a sense of belonging which is new to each of us. We all are trying to find our footing. There is also a tremendous sense of leadership, in trying to write to lead. Write to express the best of the things and to play with the kinship that offers insights. Iowa’s MFA program is very busy-bodied but also exciting because there is always so much going on! The text in the Graduate section explaining the program’s motto says: Poems, stories, and essays are not written in a vacuum; they arise from the imaginations of writers who are imprinted and influenced by specifics of place and landscape–by history, geography, geology, biology, and ecology, among others. And the texts that writers create are also situated in and imprinted by particular bio-regions and multiple environments, often subtle and complex.

In dissecting and also living up to the ideals set by the program, I feel nourished and also supported, but also a sense of loneliness grapples me as I feel that everyone is in a unique position with respect to their writing goals and living situations. Not having someone who loves you at this point of life, at 29, feels like a treacherous path full of arrows laden to test the muddied waters.

Last week Connor told me that for him getting featured in the Kirkus would be an honor and something, he as a writer considers to be worthy of living and writing for! I thought about what my aim or motivation is.

I think it is to be read, widely. For all instances and purposes, I want to be published widely and liked for what I do. Liked in the sense of having helped or have been of the greatest assistance to someone new to writing or life!

I have also been reading and watching a lot of stuff here in Iowa! I just need to put down my head and make that lazy ass list! I have promised my supervisors that I will have a pedagogical list ready to share with my peers and students! I have also been submitting a lot more than usual but this last month, I hardly read anything except a few books that I had started or browsed in July! I think I need to stop overthinking the MFA.

I am also sneaking in a recommendation- The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World by David Abram

I loved watching The Patient and the new S2 American horror show! what a freak the TV industry has become! It is all gore and serial killers. The Dahmer Tv show is kind of too dark for any kind of trigger warning. Even though I watch a lot of dark shows and documentaries, I do think it is not everyone’s cup of tea.

ULTIMATE WEEKENDER LIST

1. Tribespeople try Pizza for the first time

2. Lunch Odisha Rice & tamatar baigan chatni eating

3. Must-watch Movie- Gore lovers alert!

4. What happens inside the book community?

5. Nahin Tere Jeha Hor Disda

6. Emre Kabak Slowed Remix

7. A feminist comes to terms with the Men's Rights movement

8. What makes a good life?

9. No Sex Marriage – Masturbation, Loneliness, Cheating, and Shame

10. The Case of Kathy Blair

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