August Beginnings

"Nature does not know extinction.All it knows is transformation."

Wernher Von Braun, Quoted on the title page of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow

The heralding of the month of August somehow augurs a good feeling in me.Its is a kind of rejuvenation of the spirit month for me.Like a Phoenix.It was on 1 Aug 99 I landed in Cincinnati,OH after my trip across the seas.Port of Entry so to speak for further vistas.

I had a partial death in the Spring of 2001 and had to return home with the probability of never coming back.Yet I made my trip here entering at JFK on 2 Aug 2001 with hardly any hope.I had felt what it means to be "depressed" for the first time in my life.(I carried it across the borders with me). There was no glimmer of resurgence in my tunnel vision then.I had to figure a way to hang on,stick it out and make something out of myself.

I stand now on 2 Aug 2004 .I cannot say I made this journey alone.I have been transformed as well as had an differential impact on almost everybody I met during the phase.Now I have come a full circle.I am going to back to school to enroll in the same professor's class whose course last time helped me find a good friend, a nice life and mutated my life from extinction to that of almost thriving.