on a shower

i happen to have a weirdly vivid mental image of what a man ought to look like when he showers thoroughly. i try to live up to it, as much as i can. sometimes i am successful, which makes me proud and happy and cheerfully overjoyed, but at other times i am not and it can be dissatisfying and seriously unsettling beyond words can explain. today, however, i was determined to have a picture-perfect thorough shower. so after i finished reading The UnAmericans, an NPR-recommended title that E gave me for Valentine's Day, i walked over to the bathroom sink, took off my clothes, flossed my teeth, examined an itchy red spot just chilling near my left nipple, pinched around my lower belly to detect any unfamiliar ounce of fat that may have made its way to my abdominal stucco during the weekend's binge-eating spree, manicured my scruff, made a U-turn to the bath tub and pulled the plastic shower handle to let the water flow. it took me seventy two seconds to adjust the temperature, while standing by the bath tub, leaning down, and wetting my finger tips periodically. the pivoting back and forth, between sizzling hot and bone-chilling cold takes away, typically, a good deal of my patience. especially with unfamiliar showers, figuring out the mechanics of getting the perfect temperature is nothing short of a mental marathon, a brain sweat that manifests itself through after-shower erraticism, temporary bipolarity and awfully bad mood swings.

with the right temperature in check, i hung the bath towel on the hook above the edge of the tub, and inched into the shower: right toe first, then right heel, then left foot, then calves, torso and finally, head. i flinched, immediately, when the spray of water beads touched my torso, but after a minute of getting used to, stood directly under the shower head. i got wet, in a matter of minutes, and it felt exceptionally good. the sight and sounds of falling water are quite remarkable, if you ask me, and you should take a moment to observe if you haven't done so already. sometimes, they look like concrete mercury dollops or pellets of Rogaska crystals clinking in the steam, or like copper crowns swirling in the heat, making a constant shh sound, and whistling down the strings of gravitational water veins. and at other times, they look like little pearl drops forming and disappearing, clanging and thrumming along the way of the riser rail, before crashing at the base with exhaustive thuds. then they pool around the base of the feet, chirp a little, like grasshoppers in a pageant, lilt and sway in a strong physical tension and wiggle down the bare-open rubber gasket of the shower drain.

after about three minutes of standing under the pouring shower head, i took a dime-size dab of shampoo in my palms, added a splash of water, lathered it slightly and applied it at the crown of my hair followed by my hairline. a strong aroma of caramel and honey curled up in waves, and sweetened every corner of the room. i scrubbed my hair and scalp, gently at first and then really vigorously, to make bubbles. small to medium-sized macro-spheres to micro-spheroids, transparent and prismatic, round and plump-looking bubbles, revolving in nano-orbits, and giggling at each other like little children in a yellow bus, with tummy tickles and cartoons. the ecology of bubbles, the frequency, the magnitude, etc. all add to my vision of a thorough shower. i don't know why, and i don't know how, but it's an integral part of my showering scheme. the same happens with body soap, or body butter, as i use it to rub and scrape my skin vigorously, lathering up to the extent of the frothiness of histrionic mythological floods, and feel a new sensation of cleanliness nibbling at my skin tips and tickling at my sweat glands. There is this re-dawning of freshness, that is hard to explain. this feeling that someone has used a squeegee in whopping arc-radii, and cleansed every milli-pore of skin to twinkling specklessness. i feel calm, re-energized and light.

i had a lot of thoughts when i was in the shower today. various topics, various concerns, impressions, cravings and ideas. i thought about the fact that i haven't spoken to my parents in over six months since falling out over being distracted, wasting my life, and Eli Reisman. i thought about what my life would be like if i went into mainstream design writing, ten years from now or even twenty. and then there was Mary McCarthy's Libby MacAusland and the disheartened likes of Evelyn McHale sipping champagne at the Carnegie Institute, flummoxed by the appearance of Giacomo Puccini. somewhere in the middle of it all, there were thoughts about Bikram yoga, about red lentils, Naples and rainbows. and finally, that recurring thought about belonging, about fitting right in, about the profile of a minority. the fear of otherness and living as a category dishearten me sometimes. but i suck it all in, when the beans spill, and think about the positive side. the relentless pursuit of assimilation, to be just another one of those, to be a part of the mainstream, has its own status of non-scrutiny, its own stamp of consolation. to be a part of the ocean, to refine a niche, to blend into a majority growth wing, has its own array of rewards. Sarah Hellerstein asked me the other day, while i was waiting for the bus in front of the Juilliard School, why do people forget their roots? the way they evolved? i didn't bat an eyelid and blurted out because sometimes those roots evoke images of horror, sadness and disappointment. sometimes, and only sometimes, temporarily forgetting those roots gives a chance to begin, to re-form, to re-discover from scratch. the tailoring and laundering of identity politics, of stitching together and rehashing a dominant persona, sound easier in theory than done. and i have struggled with it a lot, and given it less and less thought over the years. sometimes all it takes for the complaints to trickle back down is a run-of-the-mill comment. don't get me wrong, i am not wallowing in depression. neither am i sitting here, ripping hairs with a glum face. it was merely a thought, and it has passed.

sometimes i want to scream, sprinkling colors of sounds all around me. sometimes i want to cry, with patterns and cuboids, stenciled on my face. sometimes i want to breathe in the melody of Bach, the rollicking of Brahms and the rockiness of Liszt. i want to learn how to Salsa, sing Rusalka, own a tuxedo and make a basket. i want to run to the mountains, eat vanilla beans, roast coffee and read. how the mind wanders, speaks, dances and spins, in the simple space of a shower cubicle is absolutely fascinating to me. where poets have composed, and lyricists have imagined, and scientists have dreamed of ambitious discoveries. in splashes of water, percussing on the body, in stains of bubbles, melting away, in the innocence of steam hissing at the ears, the washing away, the deep-cleansing, the therapeutics of water works is a critter of wonder. and shall remain unexplained.