Beware The Undertoad

I'm Done With My Dying

2011-10-21T01:24:00.000-07:00

As I get older, I get braver -
with each year, I have less and less to lose.
Tragedy isn't sad anymore, just comic relief.

The Importance of Girlfriends

2011-10-19T11:15:00.000-07:00

I consider my natural disposition about as friendly as a doberman’s. I have this unique superpower which lets me, by the sheer act of showing up to a social gathering, cause comfort and conversation to shrivel up and die. Then I proceed to fill this new cavernous void with deep and resonating awkwardness, which I will exponentially worsen by clearing my throat about twenty thousand times. I have literally, without even using my hands, awkwarded people’s relatives into sudden hospitalization and unforeseen donut emergencies on the other side of town, for which they needed to cut our meetings short. I tell you this not because I take some twisted pride in it – even though I kind of do – but to illustrate how I’m really not very skilled at interacting with other humans. So you will understand why then, every couple of days, when I’m going about my business writing a story, tormenting the dog or trying to lick the floor of a Nutella jar, I’ll suddenly stop and think, “I have friends. I have friends? I HAVE FRIENDS.” It has the very same effect as when I eat that first French fry after a long hiatus – tremulous happiness mixed with terrible foreboding. But I digress. The real epiphany here is that when I think this happy thought, I only think of it in terms of my handful of girl friends.

This goes back to my all-girl, convent education perhaps, or maybe it’s just that from a ridiculously early age I was very aware that boys were boys and girls were girls for reasons that are only for my future therapist’s ears. I have often thought of this as one of the many great tragedies of my life (WHY did they cancel Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip?!), but what it meant was I never ended up developing any unselfconscious friendships with boys, while simultaneously forging a number of relationships with women that, if they were romantic, would easily qualify as epic love stories. Actually, you know what, they are epic love stories.

Forget about the big boorish clichés like going to the bathroom in groups, discussing in-growths in unhappy places and how all men are alternately awesome and awful. I’m talking about the ones that don’t make it to sitcoms – the rise in a girlfriend’s voice when she’s viscerally feeling outrage on your behalf. The way she can tell your happy silence from your awkward silence from the silence that is barely holding back your guttural sobs. The way we have defended one another’s honour and indeed, dishonour, alike. The way it’s ‘Us against the World/ Whoever’s Pissing You Off At The Moment’ season all year between me and my girlfriends. The code of ethics we have constructed piecemeal over time, whose nuances we intuitively understand, but can’t explain, especially not to the uncommonly daft boys we like. The way our relationships essay every other kind of relationship at different points in time – I’ve caught myself telling a friend that she is not to do a certain something-something in the very voice my mother used to use to make me drink milk of magnesia. I’ve also exchanged I Love Yous with these women, with the kind of intensity and truth I hitherto thought belonged only between a couple. We have been confident enough in our friendships so that we’ve spat virulent, unedited BS at one another and then begged forgiveness without the slightest cost to our egos. Like I said - I was aware of my ostensible girlness - not girlieness - very early on, but only truly became aware of its gravitas in the enduring company of these women.

At 26, I have managed to accrue a nice lot of meaningful male friendships as well, and I can confess that often I like to escape the girlfriends for their relative simplicity and linearity. I cannot even begin to tell you what an unqualified jock/jerk I’m capable of being around these guys. Until of course one of them offends some ladylike sensibility neither they, nor I, knew I had. Then it’s race-dialing the bestie with “GUESS WHAT HE JUST SAID TO ME…,” fervently hoping she’ll be able to tell me why I’m this mad. And you’d better believe she will.

Chimera.

2011-09-18T05:20:00.000-07:00

It is uncanny how you are every protagonist I've encountered in the books I read before I go to bed. The serious English schoolboy with a club foot, the dirty old islander of many worrying fetishes, a six foot dwarf unequipped for irony, a Brazilian Alpha male who cries at the drop of a hat. Sometimes you're even the women in my books. For years I wondered how you could be all of these people; was I desperately in love with you and just didn't know it yet? Or did I know you so well, I could seek out these kernels of your astronomical personality as unapparent as they were to everybody else. But it isn't either. Quite the opposite, actually. Your face is a blank mask that doesn't twitch, not even when I'm in pain. You are these protagonists in one way and one way alone - you are all creatures cobbled together from imagination, meant to be romanced and then let go of. And when I shut my books, you crumple in a lifeless heap. Reality is no place for your kind.

S'all right.

2011-09-07T14:50:00.000-07:00

For the first time in as long as I've known myself, I've begun to feel something approaching peace. It isn't apparent yet because I'm trying to settle around this strange, alien feeling before I debut it out in the world. My world. Filled with people who've only ever known me as a walking factory of nervous ticks and self-deprecating humour, prone to dramatic outbursts and intimate with illogic.
And I find that these unfamiliar stirrings of self-acceptance, apart from making me beam ridiculously at the most inopportune of times during the day, are putting several of my personal relationships into perspective.

For one, I expect my social currency will plummet drastically, and quite quickly at that, in the months to come. The departure of the Gyuri-shaped disaster that has always been around for an instant ego boost is taking a toll on a few, real pieces of work this lot - I wish cankles upon you.

I realised that just because one looks like a screw-up and talks like a screw-up, doesn't
necessarily mean one is a screw-up. Relatively, speaking. And holy mother of vice versa! Some people are so calm, collected and corkscrew crazy, you just want to reach in and emphatically and purposefully pet their inner, frightened animal before they tedbundy out of control. I'd rather be messy and disheveled of appearance than of heart and soul, I'm clear about this.

As for love, forever it has meant approval. Longing to be physically desired, longing to be acceptable to other people's sensibilities, falling in line wordlessly. I've been virtually Buddhist in previous relationships - no tantrums, no demands, accepting what I got and then walking away silently. "I can't force anyone to feel any less or more than they do" I'd say, ascending slowly heavenward.
And now I'm very, very pissed off.
I don't think I'll ever be successfully mean-spirited because... let me put it like this: If I had my own animal spirit, it would likely be a fluffy, pink marshmallow named Caligula - that's how menacing I am when I've rehearsed a hate speech. But I cannot passively absorb copious amounts of horseshit anymore, either. Love is love is love is love. Love moves your bowels and sometimes, as in one of the most soulful love stories I've ever read, constipates you too. Love makes you stupid, free and strong, delighted and hopeful and compassionate. It waits while you pore laboriously over an interminable list of pros and cons and then points and laughs at you with abandon. The best kind of defibrillator and you're still a goner. Love moves you. And if it does not, it isn't love.
Then there is that which sounds and feels like love to the touch. And this is very enjoyable too, but temporary, and based more on self-indulgent illusion than anything else. It's like stroking yourself to full romantic erection, only to suddenly be accosted by a thought like 'bed sores!'. No happy ending, just a rude awakening and mild nausea.
I try to recognise the difference now.

Shiver

2011-09-05T13:31:00.000-07:00

We had all gone deaf.
The silences had been so interminable, so exacting and reprehensible
that we'd abandoned all use of our ears. They had become terrors.
The corridors were the worst, when we passed one another
inching carefully by, afraid of touch,
and loathing the chance mixing of our breaths.
At night we lay awake, our minds sick with worry -
just don't let any of us ever take a tumble along those grey passages
not on a bumpy bit of floor, or from the puddle where the wet clothes drip,
and never, never in our presence.
Not one of us knows how to hold, much less comfort, a real, live body.
The warmth will be the devastating.

J,

2011-09-01T09:01:00.000-07:00

I overheard at the club last Saturday that you've now got yourself a scar? Or car? Actually it's probably definitely a car. What would a new scar even mean? A tattoo? That doesn't make very much sense. I was sitting three tables away from the Alburquerque sisters but was practically horizontal from trying to hear them. J, of everything you've ever done to me, this is the worst. You have made me envy those vapid idiots with their colourful drinks and small, mice-like breasts. How lucky they are to know your family, to know so much about you, about your life, about your new car (or scar). And I sit there, silently willing those horrible girls to turn my way, let me hear them better. How ever did this happen? All these changes are too ridiculous to even process. Sometimes I wonder if I've suffered five years' memory loss and someone's forgotten to mention this to me. I passed your mother on the church stairs later that evening and she smiled at me, gracious as always. She has no idea who I am. To think it was I who never allowed you tell her about me. I made you swear on Loops, do you remember? My god, what an idiot I was. I deserve to eat those Alburquerques' dirt, I do.

Don't chuckle. I know you are. Or will, when... and if you read my letters. Have you received my letters, J? I don't dare to hope for a reply just yet but I want to believe that you're reading them, slapping your forehead at my rubbish. Smiling, even? I had this idea that maybe none of them had reached you. Nineteen of them just lost somewhere, misplaced, opened by strange fingers, saved at the bottom of a drawer we'll never find. Will my letters become somebody's anecdote that he or she tells with great flair. Don't laugh but I have thought about writing better here, with more flourishes, some embellishments, not too many. Attempt some poetry, maybe. Engineer the ghost of a romantic epic and give some poor girl the chance to mouth off to her cynical friends. She'll wave my letters in their faces. "Here, I told you! This love exists! This love can be had!" and they will shrug but inside they will feel suddenly excited and frightened by this.

I am smiling J, I feel so ashamed of these silly thoughts. It's why I began writing this letter in the first place. I was at Pemb's this afternoon, remember it? The tiny little place next to the tailor's shop, with the great burgers? Anyway, I was drinking the best glass of basil lemonade I have ever, ever had, and right then, with the glass still raised to my mouth, it came to me. For the first time, ever since I've known of romantic love (that would be, say, nineteen years? Colin, his name was) I realised that that transcendent, big love opus I've always known would be mine eventually, might not. I don't know what it was. The glorious lemonade? The empty burger shop? Those adorable red and white awnings that flapped disconsolately? I cannot know. I ran out of there so fast I almost knocked over a chair. Mum thinks I have met someone and I'm keeping a love secret. How shall I tell her how much it is not that?

Read my letter, please. And remember me.

Are you stupid? Well, yes and no.

2011-08-20T10:19:00.000-07:00

I have noticed the proclivity of those who know me, to talk to me like I'm three. You know that voice? The one a parental type reserves for a shifty-looking child when they're trying to understand why the dog no longer has hair on one half of his body. It's a mixture of incredulity, bemusement and the overriding feeling that it's their responsibility to be your voice of reason since events clearly indicate you do not have one. And when said child is actually 26 years old and a peer, there tend to creep in delicate harmonics of superiority and disdain. And for the most part, I get it.

I'm impetuous and often regrettably so. Outrage comes to me as easy and frequently as total amnesia in my interactions with people and even if I can get a good, solid grudge going, it's nothing a superior meal won't magic away. When I'm around people who make me feel vulnerable, I take to my heels and I don't even mean that figuratively. I am pointlessly defiant. In fact, currently I'm not talking to a friend because of a conversation about hypothetical fall outs and I resented how sure he was that I'd give in first. Mind, we haven't actually fallen out, I'm just making my thoroughly unnecessary point. And you see I realise this, but I still won't give in because then he will be right hypothetically and I'd rather rip my nails out than have someone be so sure they know me. Even though they probably do. With me still? Oh and the hair, I just do not have sensible hair. So I get why when people regard me with a certain sense of "Here's a nice project to take on/ befriend".

But. A chubby, hairy But.

I wouldn't have it any other way, believe it or not. My mistakes are what I like about myself the most. They always leave me with laughs (when enough time has elapsed), stories and scars both emotional and physical (Best not to happen upon a sleeping dog, if you didn't already know that) that I'm very fucking sentimental about. We're always cautioned about The Hard Way, this supposedly terrible fate that befalls those who don't have the good sense to have good sense. Well I've been there a time or thousand and if today, I know exactly why I should not attempt to straighten my own hair with strong chemical products 'For Professional Use only', or why I will never again attempt to possess a man I love, or why I will always hold my peace most when I'm viscerally angry, it's because of The Hard Way.

So if my laboratory lifestyle should make you feel relieved about the organisational miracle that is your reality, so be it. I have just a few things I need to tick off my list when it comes down to it. That I am alive, with my various appendages in working order, having managed it with a little bit of grace, a little kindness and with no serious physical or emotional cost to anyone/anything I know. That I do my job well and I am liked well enough by a sufficient number of people who matter to me, and animals. And that every once in a while, I too can become transcendent, whether witnessed by another or just during a long, solitary walk, where I am perfect and godlike for a few moments before once again I am not, and I return to my bungling ol' self.

In short, I'm doing serviceably well, thank you.

Sink.

2011-08-12T10:52:00.000-07:00

What were bulwarks once, have turned obstacles.
What were convictions, have become weaknesses.
Unscathed and alone.

It was lovely, it was awful. It was that kind of feeling.

2011-08-10T13:59:00.000-07:00

Crrrkfloopp, the rusty hinges run headlong into the bouncy silence of flesh.
You peel the door off them, and I schlep those fingers across a thousand miles of pain, to my face.
It's settled then, there's worse ways for chewed nails to look.
My digits are having a heart attack, they're flushed with a hot, biting, terrible ache,
one is turning a colour whose name I'd hate myself if I knew.

My forbearance is exemplary, it's this big haired girl whose making me look bad -
holding out her hand to you like that, crying those chubby, kindergarten tears.
Stop it, you girl, you stupid girl! What's he going to do exactly, tell the door it's been bad?
Stupid girl, you bring our hand back right this minute and say you're fine.
No! NO! Don't you da...

Iced, caressed and splayed across your heart, my fingers covered by yours.
I am collected to you, nose to the blue squares on the inside of your collar,
lips smooshed against your buttons - why do you keep so much rubbish in your shirt pocket?
You're attempting to hum.

Where is that door? I want to hug it.
But later. Not now. God, not now.

A Hope

2011-07-28T04:13:00.000-07:00

"He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself."

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

I asked the boy for a few kind words.

2011-07-14T12:10:00.000-07:00

He gave me a novel instead.

Rainy Afternoons

2011-07-08T10:59:00.000-07:00

Melancholy's got a bad rap if you ask me.

The Familiar

2011-06-11T01:41:00.000-07:00

When I am happy, it feels like indulging in a fun activity for a while,
Novel and heady and quite exhausting
By the end of it, I'm ready to scurry back to my soundproof melancholy.

Happiness is like that wonderful old friend who knew you when you were a child -
predominantly in petticoats, terrorising pigeons -
who, for even five raps of the cane across her palm, wouldn't tell on you.
Long lapses of time are spent working up to her visit.
You will show her the sights, spare no expense
lavish her with that gratitude you've safe-kept in some shadowy recess of the heart all these years.
But she arrives and soon it is time for her to go
and you haven't even left your living room.
Crumbly photo albums have been brought forth, wine has been spilled
and batter been devoured before it had the chance to become cookies.
"Do you remember the nut job who'd follow you to the egg vendor's each day?!" you'll chortle.
"My god, I cannot forget," she'll laugh. "Do you remember the way we were?"
"I do," you'll say. "I do."
Right then you are that child once more; incorrigible and vulnerable,
your instincts crackling, possibility thundering in your ears, gossamer clouds of hope everywhere.
Disiloojene...menent sounds like something best left to the adults.

Once you've waved her off and her bus has turned a lane and out of sight,
you walk back down the street, so pregnant with quietness, it's like a silent scream.
Your thumping heart once more slips into its familiar, dopey cadence
you're back to your tea-and-toast evenings, pegging away at that mountain of bills,
the brain no longer an implosion of noise and colour.
Edges and shadows roll back into focus.
Your empty house seems to regard you kindly.
willing to let the last few hours (was it days?) slide without mention.
You stumble upstairs to bed and lie there, dead centre,
until sleep tip-toes in and your eyes no longer brook protest.
You forgot the locks, but then you never have interlopers.

Party In My Pants

2011-06-01T12:24:00.000-07:00

Must have these pants or a fab knock-off of 'em. Even if that means my arse turns lunar each time I have them on.

You see my clothing choices run two ways. There's the list in my head of clothes I'd give my granny for. Jersey maxis, tailored shorts, cute little fauna-print dresses and Peter Pan collars. Naturally therefore, if you're at all familiar with my world, none of these suit me even slightly. Originally I'm a pear shape. Currently I'm the shape of conjoined pears doing a great The Hulk. So instead of sitting around crying about it, I eat deep fried potatoes and go buy safe, characterless clothes that won't draw too much attention.

I want to slowly edge out of the dowdiness, one unthreatening yet unusual (for me) separate at a time. These pants combine my love for comfortable, slouchy silhouettes while adding structure and a bit of um...style even?...without too much choo-choo peh-peh.

I'm raising my mango lassi to change.

Cry Baby

2011-05-26T09:12:00.000-07:00

There is that feeling that I have my proverbial wires crossed. Look, people have died on me and all I've done is packed their belongings, swept the floor and called the rest of the family. So I'm not exactly the sort to go all to bits. UNLESS apparently I hit my head really hard on the railing of the bunk bed I'm occupying currently. Then everybody's scrambling for dry land.

The big stuff I can weather; the silly stuff, I'm hapless against. Falling down new-camera-lens-forward, having my knees jam into concrete in the presence of several pitying tourists, losing a sizeable chunk of my shoe fund because I forgot to ask 'what rate?' when changing basically ALL my cash, running out of M&Ms when I least expect it and finding that sometimes One-size-fits-alls don't exactly fit me.

Lots of soggy tissues in the wastepaper basket today, basically.

2011-05-23T15:57:00.000-07:00

हजारों ख्वाहिशें ऐसी कि हर ख्वाहिश पे दम निकले

बहुत निकले मेरे अरमाँ, लेकिन फिर भी कम निकले

Things I Will Never Tire Of...

2011-05-22T15:11:00.000-07:00

- Little old Japanese ladies wearing visors.
- Meat and potatoes. You know how you once looked at an obese person and thought 'geez how'd they let themselves get that way?'? I'm understanding slowly - I don't recognise the hanging gut and billowing thighs in the mirror at all. (I am very worried about this actually, but more on that later).
- Looking at candid pictures of celebrities
- Buying tonnes of eye make-up I'll never use.
- Watching (often shamelessly gawping at) people. The shapes of their silences, the way they shuffle their feet, the way their fingers grip a spoon and the way they arrange themselves around life's awkwardness in general.
- Wondering about my place in the scheme of the world. Actually, no, I don't enjoy this. It pummels at my brain endlessly, questioning questioning all the time. I've forgotten how to live in the moment. In fact, when I suspect I've met someone with a proclivity for living in the moment, I try to get as far from him/her as possible. I don't want this, but that wont do either.
- Stewed peaches. Finally I have an answer to at least one in the spectrum of 'What is your favourite _______?' questions. My favourite dessert is peach compote. This is progress.

And for (badly taken) picture of the day...

They stopped kissing when I walked by & he asked if I'd take a picture. He showed her off and she was shy & mock embarrassed. <3

It's Been That Kind of Day

2011-05-20T07:59:00.000-07:00

Not how I'm feeling at all right now. Nope, not me.

You know you're down on your luck when you have a sugar craving and all you can afford are cruddy digestive biscuits.

Have lost my blasted glasses yet again so yes, take it away, migraines!

I have always waxed eloquent about the balls of my feet - poetic things like sand grazing them and water tickling them like a shameless teenager with no reserve whatsoever. But I've only just met them, like really met them. They are not pleasant things, these, especially after they've been pounding pavements for 10 hours each day.

I think I'm quickly turning into what are usually known as 'humourless broads'. When I see people kissing in public and squeegeeing each others fun parts, I get all red in the face and squinty-eyed with judgement. Is that weird? I have to point out, in my defence, that this kind of kissing is less sweet, more alarming. Also, is EVERYONE in love or something? I'm glad I'm not part of the cliche. I'm single and grouchy and have recently relaxed into wearing granny chuddies most of the time. Me:1; Love: Thenga.

That's all folks. I shall now spend several minutes talking my butt out of this chair and back on the road. Viszlát! (I think)

This and That

2011-05-17T09:37:00.000-07:00

The last few days have been a sensory overload. In a mostly good way. The excesses were many - too much beauty, food, melancholy, art, aches and pains, sleeplessness, satisfaction, gratitude and as always, enough confusion to make me feel like myself :-/.

Slumbering Woman by Johann Baptist Reiter

Cardinal and Nun by Egon Schiele

If love should mean rapture, then I have either been in love hundreds of times or never once.

Slumped Shoulders

2011-05-03T10:59:00.000-07:00

I suspect I have what my mother calls a 'black tongue' when she's feeling particularly provincial. A black tongue, for the uninitiated and the minimally Mangalorian, is the 'mooh' in 'Tere mooh mein keedey, tere mooh mein dhool'. It is the harbinger of inauspicious, unfortunate circumstances and its proprietor is roundly decreed by all, a bloody nuisance. Folks, I have a sixth sense for the awful.

Thing is pessimism is my chief defence mechanism. I fetter my expectations to the bleakest eventuality and figure it can only be good news from thereon. I'm the Worst Case Scenario girl. The girl that, when everyone's chirruping about how we're going to have a big posy of an outcome, will go deathly quiet and nod weakly.

Grimacing and scorn... "What? What? Just say it."
Sheepishness and shame... "I don't know what you're talking about."
Irritation and exasperation... ". . ."
Hijacked and pleading... "WHAT IF IT'S AWFUL? WHAT IF IT SUCKS SO HARD WE'LL NEVER RECOVER? WHAT IF IT REDUCES US TO EMPTY SHELLS OF HUMAN BEINGS IRREVO-IRREVI...I-R-R-E-V-O-C-A-B-L-Y?"

Glaring and subtle gulping. Resumed chirruping but now a touch uncertainly. Setting down the plate extra hard when I ask for the bread to be passed.

Mercifully, I've been wrong every time it has come to other people's potential misfortunes and this led me, quite foolishly, to risk some optimism in my own affairs...
Last year, I lost seven phones in a span of 6 months, each within 2 to13 hours of thinking 'Hey, I've not lost this phone in a while." Or "Wow I'm really growing up, I'm so responsi... WHERE THE HELL IS MY PASSPORT?! I'M GOING TO BE STRANDED IN THIS AWFUL COUNTRY I'VE BEEN PRETENDING TO LIKE." OR, and this happened twice, "I think this might be it, he's the one. Yep." Next day/ week, relationship kaput.

Now when I feel optimism or self-congratulation threatening to ruin things, I quickly distract myself until the feeling passes. I've been disaster-free for a couple of days now. It's quite dull, really.

The Way Forward

2011-05-01T23:32:00.000-07:00

I wish to be like the sea,

formidable without intention.

I shall come and I shall go

and with me I will bring happiness

so crackpot simple, it cannot be second-guessed.

So too abiding loss to drown the heart.

A thousand times I will promise intoxication

without as much as a word.

When I roar, I will be heard -

colossus without mercy, watery impasse.

And all the time,

I shall not have once thought about it.

Loveliest thing I've seen and heard in a while. Thanks KK.

Safety-Pinned Mind

2011-04-26T23:11:00.000-07:00

My mind's been off having adventures. Identity crises, moral ambiguities, confusing arousal, and euphoria and depression chasing each other in circles - and I've just sat back and allowed it do its thing. Usually it returns in time for Top Chef. ~~Composure~~ Coherence, on the other hand, arrives about as often as my freelance cheques and I'm rushing to make good of today's sudden burst...

I've realised only recently that my quest to understand people would be strides simpler if I stop trying to solve them.

The handful of relationships that I cherish have one thing in common. They're all based on the premise of Quality > Quantity. I'm not built for too much familiarity, I don't like knowing every last stitch of anyone's day or recounting mine, for that matter. Unless you can tell it well and the conversation has potential to descend into lots of meta humour, then I'm all ears. Otherwise, let's just talk when we actually have something to say.

I think I enjoy struggle way too much to ever really succeed in the conventional sense. I'm at a professional fork-in-the-road currently and while one path definitively leads to being able to afford poncy hair accessories I don't need, the one I'm on has me under house arrest because I can't afford even coffee without feeling like a shameless wastrel. It's still a tough choice. The writing jobs I enjoy the most are the ones that often push me to tears of inadequacy, the ones that come easy are forgotten almost instantly no matter how well they turn out.
I wish to have it all though even the thought of it bores me intensely.

Stupid trends irritate me so much I feel like punching my screen. This business of saying 'super like!' on Facebook, SHUT UP, IT'S NOT A THING. Also, this sudden adoration of droopy hipster girls with limp hair wearing oatmeal-exciting fashions. WHERE WAS ALL THIS HYSTERIA WHEN MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL DID IT WAY BACK WHEN? Herd. I spurn you.

I have been feeling quite good about my weight even as I remain the fattest I've ever been. Except for this past week of beer and fries and Easter pastries and Pepsi, I've been pretty good about working out and eating well. I suppose it's freeing to know you've done your bit and it's now out of your hands.

I am diabetically girlie. Lace, florals, ruffles, sequins, pastels, sorbet make-up, aforementioned hair accessories, box clutches, diaphanous everything and I'm sold. I haven't triumphed in any popularity contests because of my love for jeggings either.

Ever since I watched Chashme Buddoor a few weeks ago, I've been mesmerised by Deepti Naval. Forever she's been no more than a clip-on Smita Patil to me but Christ, such beauty and vitality. 90% of the stuff below is from here.

Am I right?

Miss Chamko!


So Thelma & Louise :)

'course she's a poet.

Happy to Board This Bandwagon

2011-04-16T05:43:00.000-07:00

The first time I heard Adele, I pooh-pooh'ed her out of my natural instinct to pooh-pooh anything and anyone labelled 'the latest sensation'. The second time, well, Jaysus. My head began to bob and my insides started to gloriagaynor of their own accord. Pre-empting "events", I walked silently to the door and securely locked it. Then I brought out my highest pair of heels, belted my nightie, dabbed on every item of makeup I own and... un. leashed.

I am writing this from a very happy, tranquil place.

Andie.

2011-04-11T04:03:00.000-07:00

"What about me, Phil? Do you know me too?"

"You like boats, but not the ocean. You go to a lake in the summer with your family up in the mountains. There's a long wooden dock and a boathouse with boards missing from the roof, and a place you used to crawl underneath to be alone. You're a sucker for French poetry and rhinestones. You're very generous. You're kind to strangers and children, and when you stand in the snow you look like an angel."

I Told You So

2011-04-09T09:36:00.000-07:00

People always tell us who they are right off the bat. It's why I don't hold with the I Just Never Saw It Comings and the What A Bloody Tool This One Turned Out To Bes. If you're listening and watching closely enough, you'll always know. This is the boring explanation of course and personally I have always chosen to go the way of moral outrage: weeping fat, incredulous tears at the horrible transgression I've had to endure at the hands of a these, let's face it, VILLAINS AND LOTHARIOS! WOE WOE WOE, HUMANITY IS A BIG BUCKET OF SUCK. Some Jenny Owen Youngs later and weary from putting down a cocktail of trans fats, I usually end up feeling so sorry for myself it's really quite enjoyable. But that's besides the point.

People always, always tell us who they are. I once had someone say to me right at the get go, "I lie. Very often, I don't know why, I just lie. I'm trying to stop." To me this was staggering honesty and I knew right then that I definitely wanted to have whatever was possible to have with this person. Years later, the equation dominoed spectacularly - turned out that first truth had been the last. I just hadn't had the insight to take advantage of a gift like that. Lesson learned. Someone informs you they're going to rob you if invited to your party next Sunday, best to hold off on that eVite.

That once was the exception though. Usually it's a matter of simple deduction. Girl A does not have to tell you she thinks she's unlovable, she just has to be everybody's arch BFF and you'll know. Boy L, The Waiter Humiliator - I'm thinking either vacant Y-front or overindulgent mother? Chronic drunk dialing is a great way to let everyone know that you're, let's see... attention seeking, boring, narcissistic and disrespectful. And it's impossible not to get 'imbecile' and 'moron' from people who think Japan deserves its natural disasters, and 26/11 was avenged when India beat Pakistan respectively. Then there's always the quieter ones - casually going through your phone, knowing what you owe them down to the rupee but never vice versa, taking one too many friendly digs at your hair, congratulating you heartily on your golden luck whenever you achieve something.

As for me, I'm still consummately stupid about relationships. What's the alternative really? Being safe and very very lonely? The difference now, I suppose, is that along with focussing hard on what I like about people and hoping like always to be happily surprised, I can also appreciate that we're all creatures of habit. And we will usually always go on to do what we'll do. A tiny addendum but saves a whole lot of heartache.

Oh, reckless abandon

2011-04-06T11:10:00.000-07:00

Lullaby these nights, this.

I've Seen Better

2011-04-05T03:45:00.000-07:00

I have this crazy idea about how relationships are supposed to work. It circles honesty and every now and then bumps into loyalty. On the way the two happen upon acceptance, admiration and abiding love. They never meet agenda. That one always takes the short road.

At the best of times, a good relationship will make you feel almost transcendent. Other times, unimaginably burdened. You might not see it but all the time it is growing, this roiling mass of whispered confidences, terrible jokes you two must never ever utter to another soul, commonly held nemeses, small holidays, big calories, potent loathing, inevitable disenchantment and if you're really lucky, a weightless return to love.

It's just that once you've known this kind of exchange, it becomes the benchmark of your human experience. Any less chafes like mad. Relationships that might otherwise have managed a decent run time dissolve prematurely under the weight of its... betterness.

This post was really supposed to be about those barely tolerable enterprises. But I just can't be arsed.

Shifting shapes

2011-03-27T10:46:00.000-07:00

Long nights used to be my allies, my friends. Filled with wee epiphanies and heightened senses. Where they led me I would go and they always took me some place good and lucid. In fleeting moments I sometimes felt what I imagine was my soul and I breathed in whispers just in case it had a voice. By the time day light dripped in, I would sink down slowly into smoky pink clouds of sleep.
Those nights are past. In their place have arrived murky interlopers that bring with them despairing panic. I swat feverishly at my notebook and the air. Clear the way, clear the way! Don't keep me from myself, not a minute longer, please. But these nights are unyielding. When sleep comes it is wretched and feels like failure. And the days, I reject.

Loose Ends

2011-03-22T00:38:00.000-07:00

Entuca is, by all accounts, an oddball. In a sea of noisy eight-year-olds, he is like a sudden plummeting silence. More distressing, though, is his order. He takes small bites of food, always has a perfectly square folded kerchief on hand and moves with such economy it makes you want to pop your knuckles. His expression is an orderly blank too. “It’s unnatural,” says one mother at the Meeting of The Mothers, “my Loki scribbled on all the pages of his art book last Thursday and he didn’t even react!” The other ladies shudder in sync. Keep away from that strange boy they tell their sons at night, god knows what his story is. One enterprising lady writes the principal asking that action be taken at once! “Pray what has he done?” the old man asks. “Nothing!” she cries, “and it’s making us all very uncomfortable!”

This is how it is with Entuca but he barely notices. His thoughts are filled with Kenmi. “Hello kitten!” she’ll say in her jaunty voice and he loves the way she says it. She’ll sit him down on her cardboard stool and give him her terrible herbal tea. When Kenmi found him eight years ago, at first she thought he was a cat (Kenmi thinks everyone’s a cat at first). After cooing from a distance incase Officer Mottle caught her, she threw him over her shoulder like a dish rag and walked out of there humming. That Kenmi, thought Mottle longingly as he watched her amble away, sad he had no reason to arrest her into being near him for a while. Since then, they’ve been together. Kenmi’s never taken care of or taught Entuca anything, she just lets him exist around her. Some might say that’s as good an education as any. Around her his smiles come pouring forth and they’re startling in their truth. To watch them is to feel suddenly frightened: will you ever feel happy like that? Just pray you don’t because everyone knows visceral smiles say only one thing: don’t even try to imagine what happened to me before this smile, don’t do that to yourself.

Kenmi though, she knows a thing or two about Pasts and how they should remain that way. Before she leaves for the night, she stands by the door, holding out the open envelope. Entuca will dip his face into it and laugh obediently, she will then lick the envelope shut, pat it and put it close to her heart. She’s been storing his laughter for years. “In case you need it one day, I can give it to you,” she always says. “In case I need it someday and you can’t give it to me.” Entuca doesn’t understand symbolism at all. The night swallows her whole and once more, he is alone.

In a house down the street, a kitchen light flickers scratchily. Pukpuk rocks back and forth slowly, shrouded in shadows. He is not cute, cheery or squat like his name suggests. I do not believe in names at all if you want to know, or I’d be beautiful and my husband, kind. Pukpuk is tall and lean and those eyes alone should be a criminal offence. He thrives on order too, just like Entuca. When he finds something he cannot understand, his world descends into chaos and doesn’t regain equilibrium till either the mystery unfolds or is obliterated. Mother Pukpuk spent all her nurse’s money buying little Pukpuk a new Scrabble board and buttons every time he torched the last one. As the last of the melted Xs and Ms would drop into the bin, she'd reflect on another disaster averted. Father Pukpuk had been right, she should have smothered the infant Pukpuk in his sleep.

They sit across from each other and the boy and man stare and stare. “Who are you? Why are you like this?” Pukpuk trembles. Entuca is silent, unblinking. He hasn’t moved since Pukpuk walked in, his eyes catch the glint off the steel wrapped inside his bony fingers. “Tell me what you know. You can see it all can’t you? You’re seeing it right now. Just tell me, that’s all. Tell me everything. ” But the child is a blank impasse. The man cannot stand it – no fear. Not even curiosity. The eyes regard him and wait.

The old principal lets the receiver limply fall to its cradle, Kenmi’s faraway voice had sounded barely conscious. The child’s grotesque silence is over, in its place there will pool common, porous absence of noise. He must phone and set the Mothers at ease.

Plans for Getting Better

2011-01-16T11:32:00.000-08:00

1) Finish all the books I started last year and didn't finish because I got distracted. For every Pratchett I read, I will read one of the classics or one non‐fiction book.

2) Quit smoking. And keep quitting every day, if it comes to that. Ditch the aerated drinks.

3) Return calls within the day. Keep phone conversations short. Twenty minutes will be my upper limit after which the mother will call me for lunch/I will be walking doglet in an area that does not have network/ the wraith‐like Anglo Indian I've hired especially for these occasions will vulgarly keep calling me till I hang up with you.

4) Gently exhort every clean shaven man I come across to consider facial hair. Unless it is Jon Hamm, in which case I'll be gently exhorting him to consider things of, one might even say, a hairy nature.

5) Comb my hair every day.

6) Write something entirely unrelated to work at least thrice a week. Even if it just means describing in tedious and enraged detail how the bathroom renovations we undertook TWO months ago have been jinxed in every way because we tried to save money and ended up with a contractor who should be handed over sole custody of the word 'moron'.

7) This is the year of Meaning and I will not piss it away to be instead, Well Meaning.

8) Don't be mad if people I like don't like me ‐ I can understand if petulant, cranky, and selfish is not your type. People who like me, I needn't like (What a load off when I finally realised this was an option).

9) Talk to the mother daily. With no distractions. Offer to help her around the house.

10) Stop saying 'I mean' every other sentence. I've played back some of my interviews with people and God, I sound like an idiot.

11) Get a little bit of the bitchery back. This nice girl thing is boring for everybody.

12) STOP BUYING LIP BALM, what I have will last me until menopause. Besides 'oh but look at all the pretty colours!' will not hold up under my CA's withering stares.

That's about all the character building I can assimilate for now. I will chart my progress here and hopefully I'll have to stop soon because consecutive self‐congratulatory posts saying 'I did it, I did it' tend to lose shine very quickly.

The prettiest girl in the world...

2011-01-11T23:59:00.000-08:00

...takes the 9.58 Thane Slow each morning. She climbs in seven stops after me and I make sure I am awake to see this always. Her eyes are like water and if you lean closer, like me in the crowd, you will see they hold the ocean. Inky waves grow and grow into shimmering ghosts before they break against the insides of her head. You can trace her movement through the compartment by the way the crowd parts ever so slightly. This is the ladies compartment of the CST Slow, not much known for its give, but when she surges forward, even savages grow delicate and allow her to bear down on them. The ends of her hair , they briefly graze my arm as she goes by, 'no don't do it', I will her 'please'. But she opens her lovely, terrible mouth and the beast comes barreling forth. Ugly ugly pretty girl! Your beauty turns cold like tea on a winter morning; no longer vivifying, just deeply and solidly depressing. Gestures like spiked punches and sprays of spittle, how quickly your perfectness has turned obscene. Your skin bubbles thickly underneath and your hair's a flaccid mass of filthy slugs. Your coarseness hurts. Such unforgivable deception. You are like everything else in this life ‐ ephemeral, ruinable and ruined. I will wait for you everyday.

J,

2011-01-08T23:10:00.000-08:00

I threw my back out today. It happened while I was brushing my teeth this morning and specifically during the daily one minute I dedicate during this time to tongue cleaning.

I want to take a tick here to say a few words about this seemingly inconsequential activity. I have always, and continue to, have tongue cleaning right up there with taking vitamins and checking if the internets have recorded any activity from Kareena Kapoor. I genuinely believe that if we, as a people, recognised tongue cleaning as a vital part of our daily ablutions, it would lead to the quietest and nicest revolution ever: the end of shit breath. Think of the general reduction in the earth's level of loathing, the end of the fear and foreboding that are ever present in the prospect of close talking. Think how it would be if we each were just a little more responsible for the atmosphere in our mouths. That's the kind of world you want to bring kids into.

So anyway, there I was going about my business when I bent too low into the wash bowl and felt a sudden splash of pain about my lower lumbar. Since then I have been walking around in a most unattractive way: butt and chest thrust out, muttering. The mother's general rule‐of‐thumb is that if your ailment isn't classic to your age group, you must be faking it (more accurate than you would believe), and so she ordered me to walk it off around the colony. It didn't do much for my back, or my ego, especially when an irritating devil child whizzed by on his tricycle shouting 'Dadima!' (I'm saving my thoughts on children for when I really need the catharsis).

After I got back, I categorically refused to listen to the mother's rudimentary arguments about Jesus striking me down, changed back into my nightie and attached myself to bed. It is there that I am writing to you from. The philosophical standoff between me and the mother seems to have come to an end. This I can tell by the hot tea and rusks that have found their way to my bedside. This turned out to be an agreeable day after all.

Why did you need to know this? Because I needed to not feel alone, for just a little while.

I am yours.

T'was a very good year

2011-01-06T06:40:00.000-08:00

Twenty ten, you did well by me.

J,

2011-01-04T06:52:00.000-08:00

Do you ever wake up some days with your head feeling so light you need to hold it so it doesn't float away from your neck? It happened to me this morning and for a few seconds I wondered if I was very sick. But I didn't feel sick. The pain had left, my body felt like a spring. I then wondered if I was very sick in the head and then whether I was dead. Mother screeching in my ear right then assured me I wasn't. I got out of bed and then I didn't know what to do with this newness, so I had a bath with icy water. Then I cried for 20 minutes and polished all my shoes.

By this time I started feeling more like myself but not at all too. I thought about calling my friends and talking about it. But I realised I'd need to first spend a lot of time apologising for having not been in touch and ignoring their calls. I definitely didn't feel like doing that. So I decided to write down describing words for this feeling. I thought of 'nothing', 'cold' and 'white'. Fat lot of help that was. Then a voice - it sounded like my inner voice with a sore throat - made a very valid point: why was I trying so hard to know what it was? To know its last name and where it was coming from? Why wasn't I just enjoying it and using it to propel myself? The answer was simple enough. I didn't know how to. I was being that guy who dove into every last annotation of the scriptures because he once saw an angel and didn't know to just sit in her light and maybe ask if she had any experience with the Meaning of Life.

So I stopped and went about my day unquestioningly. And it was good. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, and it was the best ordinariness I've experienced in a while. For one, I was present. I knew what I was doing, I was inside every moment, not walled out with my nose pressed to it helplessly. It was like I could taste the tea I made (godawful), I looked at mother and saw the thousand wrinkles she''d grown while I wasn't looking. Even dog looked real and he passed some really real wind too. I promise I'm not going mental. Or maybe I am. But I don't feel so bad about it. Flailing means I'm alive. I can't even tell you just how okay I am with that.

Now that all that darkness has scooched over just a bit, I can focus again and think about you often and with all this love I didn't know I had. I'm not trying to scare you, I would never make you the victim of my light bulb moments. I just want to hold your hand once more, scratch at your calluses and not talk at all. Could this ever be?

J, I won't stop writing to you. I believe when the hammer of our desire insists upon the universe again and again, eventually it will tire and yield. I will see you again in this lifetime.

Till then,

I remain yours.

Fear and me are over

2010-12-14T06:01:00.000-08:00

Now I wait for whatever will arrive to occupy its place.

Skinny Soup

2010-11-07T23:51:00.000-08:00

2010-10-12T12:13:00.001-07:00

"Now the standard cure for one who is sunk is to consider those in actual destitution or physical suffering -- this is an all-weather beatitude for gloom in general and fairly salutary daytime advice for everyone. But at three o’clock in the morning, a forgotten package has the same tragic importance as a death sentence, and the cure doesn’t work -- and in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day. " - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Amen.

Sweet Heart. Sick Body Part.

2010-10-01T13:56:00.000-07:00

I am beginning to feel the years creep up on me. Creep up on my body, to be accurate, actually. My mind continues to stay simple enough. My problem-solving skills still pretty much involve the 3 easy steps of Repression, Passive Aggression and then eventually, Indifference or Boredom. And I am obstinate about always having the window seat.
But my body, it has begun to tell.

Everything's begun to droop juust that bit. I can no longer bludgeon my metabolism with sacks of potatoes and my eyesight is now a big ol' laugh. I feel like my body used to be this big quarterback of a thing - strong, stress-absorbent, formidable even. I could walk ridiculous distances, eat myself unholy, smoke my lungs sooty and then wash it down with a tall glass of aerated anything, no problem. But after 25 years of my punching it, it's noiselessly fallen backwards.

It feels tired and uncared for. It feels withered and drained of all that is young and good and fresh and renewable. Suddenly I am aware of its limits, its wincing and when it is telling me to put. that. bagel. down. I am terrifyingly conscious of the incredible splintery nature of the physical form. Not just mine, either.

The skin is this thin, tearable material. Everything inside is so soft and easily squishable and connected with almost unbearable delicateness. When my heels chafe against rough ground, I am aware. When I'm fitting my spine around the rude train lady with a heightened sense of entitlement, fine tickles of stress run across it so accusingly. The other day I was looking out a bus window and saw a couple of little boys play punching each other. I stared, fascinated by how it would take a single blow dealt at just the angle to kill one of them. But more importantly how I knew it wouldn't.

You cannot acknowledge life's fragility without being awestruck by its resilience. It shouldn't be possible to not die almost the instant we're born.

When we perish in car crashes, fall down and break bones or develop heart conditions, we're shocked and outraged. 'How could this be?' How could this NOT be?! These things were much more likely than years and years of staying untouched. Being able to keep as a whole, being able to continue to be alive. We're essentially bags of liquid and squiddy bits slung on a skeleton and we're still here.

It would have to be something else that's making us endure.

Still no words.

2010-09-16T09:47:00.000-07:00

I made that. It is supposed to be a chocolate cake.

Well, hello again.

2010-08-27T06:47:00.001-07:00

I think this is the longest I haven't posted on this blog in about a year and a half. I just haven't had a lot to say somehow. Been pondering life, work, weight and love with no iron conclusions, only ironic ones. I have also been under the weather, then travelling some and otherwise mucking about with work, not doing, mucking. I have recently discovered a love for cooking...potatoes, so far. I believe I am keeping the tater industry afloat in my part of the world with fried potatoes, potato pakodas, potato salad, potato vegetable and potato parathas. Correspondingly all weighing scales are being avoided with great care. This may seem most mundane and it is, just not in my world. In my world, it's like the collective relative brigade can now take a great big shit of relief - "she can cook, she can be married". Now if I'd just start combing my hair and giving a toss, I'll be well on my way to being hitched in no time at all!

Anyhow, that's about it really... here's a little more about how I've been spending my time. These pictures are about as organised as I am.

The potatoes I made today. They turned out quite well in that they were edible with no muffled gagging sounds emanating from the bathroom thereafter.

The wizards of UU have decided to play football and a dangerous orc is the appointed coach. Except he will not tear his team's heads off as is traditionally expected of his community but will scare them into compliance with his frightening erudition. As is Pratchett's own tradition, the book is a poignant scream. I did notice that he has begun to resort to puns that are cheaper than some of my friends (you know who you are) and I did stop to wonder if this is him degenerating or me starting to outgrow him. Scary thoughts both.
Sam sand dunes, Jaisalmer, Rajasthan.
En route to Mehrangarh Fort overlooking the old city, Jodhpur, Rajasthan.

Hotel Pushkar Palace, Pushkar, Rajasthan.

Feisty granny showing me I'm not the only one with a camera around there. They're not in the picture but her grandkids were facepalming furiously :)
Pushkar, Rajasthan.

This is exactly my mum's expression when I break out my threadbare harem pants. She's hoping any one of these days I'll get real. Joke's on her.
Pushkar, Rajasthan.

My monkey friends outside the popular Gayatri temple. Getting up here took a 30 minute trek and the nice corpulent pandit asked if I could read or not when I took my shoes off in the wrong place.
Pushkar, Rajasthan.

Yes I read her second book based on the first. Does she always make sense? No. Can she be a tiresome statistic-spouting paranoid idiot often? Yes yes. Is she razor-sharp, funny, tart and do her words sink like hooks into me anyway? Yes, they do. What I like about her is she belongs only to herself. Her work is self-indulgent but it always tries (and often fails) earnestly to be something more. I like that. Read Committed if you want to journey through somebody else's premarital neuroses so you feel better about yours.

Hannibal Luca. He was attacked by a couple of dogs a few weeks ago when he pranced up to them for a friendly butt sniff. Has to be kept muzzled so doesn't lick his battle wounds. Enjoys wearing it entirely too much if you ask me. Freak dog.

This is my foray into Dickens' world and already I'm breaking out in sweats. A very dehydrating experience. Let it never be said that my sentence construction is too long and cumbersome to keep up with. For I will show you Charles Dickens. Stand down.

One of us is physically sick here and the other one is just sick in an everyday overall sort of way.

You want to gently suggest I take another lengthy hiatus don't you?

No questions asked.

2010-07-19T10:35:00.000-07:00

Tonight I'm thinking about love.

Ever held a live fish? Love feels like that sometimes. Like I only have a slippery hold on it at best. I tried to make a spreadsheet of it, to happen upon it nonchalantly as a flyaway strand of hair, to freewheel with it, to control it like a evil puppet master - all worked and all didn't work.

Studied love is love. Instant love is love. Fleeting love is love. And so is love that endures across many lifetimes. Love is teeth and flesh and filth. Love is silence and awkwardness and adoration. Love is revenge and hurt and self loathing. Love is abandon, recklessness and meticulousness. Love is leeches and five star bathrooms and medieval ruins.

Love will destroy you. Love will resurrect you. And love will make you wish you never lived and then make you wish you could live forever. Today a bandit, tomorrow a sage, Wednesday a gurgling infant, all for love.

I've decided to take the easy way out. I'll stand very very still and let love have its way with me.

What can all of this mean?

2010-06-22T21:44:00.000-07:00

"We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off. "

When I wake up in the morning and those fleeting moments where dreams and reality segue have dissolved, I wonder what the day will mean. Not what it will bring, mind. But what will what it brings mean.

My life could hardly be called routine or in fact, monotonous. I travel a fair bit, do different things, meet an incredible variety of people in very short spans of time and I have a mental dog. Still I have to wonder where it's all leading to. My mother thinks I spend way too much time obsessing, dissecting and generally making a kachumbar of every situation "...like that stupid woman Elizabeth Gilby..something." But then she's also a lady who believes there isn't a single case of the blues a good spot of house cleaning or a fat little financial crisis won't remedy.

But I like my experiences to be immersive. And that can't happen until I fully understand them, understand why they are and why they must be. It's like with words: I like to understand what they mean, how they're pronounced, the contexts they can be contortioned to; then only will I press them to my tongue. Sometimes I like to think, quite narcissistically, that I can derive more meaning from a single word that the next person because of how much I try.

It is this need for some greater consciousness of things, some higher understanding, a certain feeling of being-in-the-know that has me lost completely. Life has become a desperate experiment. Hold this against my inherent recklessness and masochism and I'll do anything to make them wrong.

Those who firmly believe there is no higher truth or profundity or anything. Whatever is, is whatever it is. No more, no less. All primary-coloured experiences. Work yourself to the bone for what you never really needed, just always assumed you wanted. Eat for sadness, eat for guilt, eat for love, eat for jealousy. Fuck for duty, fuck for thrills, fuck for boredom. Tell dick jokes and reduce everything to a punchline. Die for nothing at all.

Is that it?

A Row of Stiles

2010-06-10T08:10:00.000-07:00

There's an aching I feel inside these days. It doesn't matter where I am - lying in bed in the dark, on a yacht in the South China sea, or drinking beer in a ramshackle Shetty bar somewhere. The mind deflates, the hearts sags, yet another place I'm only passing through.

Goodbye.

2010-05-03T10:04:00.000-07:00

I remember you from a long time ago.

We were little. A bully was all you knew how to be. As the grown ups patiently herded us into a corner where we could make nuisances of ourselves, far away from them, you were the unspoken leader. 'He'll know what to do," was the unanimous feeling and we fell behind you as you plotted how best we could ruin everyone's evening next. I wasn't sure I liked you but I was sure I admired you. There was something equally sunny and evil about you, that we all gravitated towards in spite of ourselves. You and me, we only noticed each other from the vantage of our extremes. You were just 3 feet but your presence eclipsed the room. I was known to sit in a room without being in it at all. You were the only one who could ruffle me, I was the only one who'd never show you you could. Veiled respect I think they call it.

One day you were installed in a big car and taken away to seek your fortune in places that would rearrange themselves around you. Months lapsed into years and years lapsed into decades. In our part of the world we heard unsurprising tales of your glory. Perfect musculature, jumping out of planes, making impossible bank shots, curing sick kids. And everyone spoke of you as if somehow they had a hand to play in your greatness just by virtue of knowing you, by having once said hello to you. I had to imagine you were bored by it. The inexorable numbness of consistent perfection gives one a glassy quality.

You became a traveller and who isn't nowadays? But for some of us it isn't merely about seeing new places, having our horizons stretched taut and all those other Chicken Soup for the Wandering Soul things travel is supposed to do for you. For some of us it is simply about the Leaving and Going Away and the Farness. For some of us it's about finding new things to leave behind. Was it that way for you? Or maybe it's to do with how little currency glory has begun to have in my life that makes me think everyone dreads it. You probably were looking for new challenges. 'Been there, done something worthy of two-three-four dinner table conversations, next.'

But this is all conjecture. This is all extrapolating, romanticising and fiction writing. I didn't know you, not even in a way that could make me cry when I heard you had died. Sadness felt too farcical for this. My life remains unperturbed, I didn't even cancel my movie plans that day. But I miss you in a way you can only miss someone you never knew - like something's dropped off your consciousness. Something that made a difference to you, just you don't know how. And the only thing you're left hoping is that wherever the person's gone to has been much better than here.

Rest now brother mine, it's been a while.

I kind of love you Chloe Sevigny

2010-05-01T13:40:00.000-07:00

I don't know what it's about Chloe, but she had me from the moment I set eyes on her in Boys Don't Cry. In Big Love, as a young fervent polygamist, she blew me away. She possesses this illicit beauty that if you appreciate it, says more about you than it does about her. It's some sort of irreverence mixed with innocence mixed with seriously damaged mixed with defensive intelligence that I find so very intriguing. Although some limited experience tells me she could just well be and really probably is a dreadful bore. For now I take heart in the fact that she and I seem to share an affinity for nudes - no really, almost everything I've purchased in the last couple of months has been some shade of skin.

Don't believe everything you've heard

2010-04-30T05:45:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel like I've, in some misguided attempt at chivalry (a signature of mine), taken on everybody else' share of pessimism. I mean I think I'm being realistic, but placed against vox populi, my opinion's always the one closest to the floor.

You'd think I'd gone through some deep psychological trauma that had caused me to be diffident, wet blanketish, cynical, annoyingly even and whatever other euphemism people use when they're much too cultured to use that word that rhymes with 'runt'. And I can only hope that that is true.

Maybe some day, that epiphany will come. Maybe it will be on one of my travels. We'll be in the airport terminal awaiting the exact same flight, this serene-looking older gentleman and I. Suddenly he'll notice the spot on my chin, grow visibly pale and say, 'You...you're not Wanda are you?" And I'll be all "Ew, no." And he'll go, "You didn't by any chance used to sing O-bla-di O-bla-da at every single school talent competition till you were asked to stop...?" And I'll turn horrified and twitchy, my pupils would dilate and I'll say "Hey! You're just trying to freak me out. There's no way anyone could know that." And he'll sink into the vinyl and clutch his head in despair saying "Wanda, I'm so sorry, I'm so so sorry." And I'll shrug and say, "Well it's not your fault, I really should have had a wider musical repertoire..." And he'll stare at me, thrown by just how much I've repressed and say slowly, all ominous-like, "I'm... Dilawar." I'll turn to him slowly, tears springing to my eyes and say, "Oh my god, that must be tough." And he'll start to get agitated and say, "No! You stupid girl, it's me Dilawar. I was your backstage hand?" And I'll start to guffaw because my mind is a bit of a toilet and only stop when I realise how silent Dila...the man...has gone. He'll look at me meaningfully and I'll say 'No, no, no." and he'll says "Yes," and I'll say, "so then two bad things happened to me that dreadful night?" And he'll nod ashamed, but say quickly, "I had nothing to do with the O-bla-da O-bla-di bit, I only diddled you. The rest was your doing." And I'll sit down weakly. "So.. my affinity for double entendres? M-my...wariness of boys... my unexplained nightmares about a certain Molly and Desmond Jones were all...?" "Yes," he'll nod morosely. "What about my alarmingly low levels of faith in humanity?" I'll say. "No," he'll shake his head, slightly indignant. "That's definitely just co-incidence." "Oh," I'll say. "Well this was totally unnecessary then, wasn't it?" "Yes," he'll says. "Yes I suppose it was."

OR!

I'm just used to calling things as I see them. Haven't you ever been to a party that everyone else thought was 'INSANE!!!' and you thought was only okay? What about the first time you had sex? Was it everything Joanna Trollope said it would be? No, stop lying, it wasn't. And Tina Fey. I was in danger of riding the general orgasm over her when a friend stopped me in the nick of time. She isn't all that. In fact she's not very funny at all. And that's what life can be sometimes - it isn't all it's cranked up to be. You're not all you cranked yourself up to be either. Hey, I thought I'd be a 'loyer' or a 'none' and all I ended up being is a 'no one'. Life isn't all rainbows and Follow Fridays. It's disappointments and split-ends and boys liking you pending what you weigh and the few people you care about thinking you're disgusting.

Like my favourite fictional cynic says "Think white and get real."

Death Wish

2010-04-20T05:31:00.000-07:00

I bathed with spiders
under mournful elms
And pebbles questioned
the balls of my feet
The air singed,
rain drops dripped reproachfully
My own breath felt like cacophony
My body, an excess
Sometimes I wonder
what the last silence will sound like.

2010-04-13T22:16:00.000-07:00

I'd felt we could be something.

Yes I liked your slanted features and you, my nose ring. But our bodies were ancillary, a nice side effect, a welcome addition, nothing more. The first time I saw you, I felt my stomach flip, your force field blazed and inside it and close to you was the only place I knew I should be. Common sense slid off me and cynicism understood what it was up against and dried itself up quickly.

Every syllable that dropped from your lips collected in a pool in my mind, not one anecdote lost, not one pause forgotten. I kept my gaze trained away because I don't know what falling in love is supposed to look like and I embarrass easily. Still there was a taut sense between us that physical touch would only dilute. The jokes got you at exactly the same time they got me, the other faces at the table blurred and the alcohol had only half to do with the night's intoxication.

Usually I have my game face on but I couldn't muster it this time. Because if ever there was someone who had to be shown what lay beneath, it had to be you. I'm not excessively clever, never read the classics and am not even alluringly damaged. I'm quiet not because I'm intense, I just don't know what to say. Truly, I have never had a sense of occasion and supposed-tos have been my particular failing.

And even while I'm trying to show you all of this, I know I'm being that guy who's telling a joke his audience has heard before and they're humouring him anyway. Because you do right? You know me already and I don't know how that could be. Scares me to the bone, too much time I have spent staring from safe distances and your nearness is closing up my windpipe and if I don't get out, I'll choke.

Wriggle free.

2010-04-06T07:03:00.000-07:00

The world we're living in, by now we should've been gloriously scaling the acme of individual courage.

Think about it. We have next to no socio-cultural restraints left to speak of, just about anything goes. We've got all sorts of technology doing our work for us, whittling down our actual physical effort to a series of finger clicks. In fact we're a generation whose biggest legacy will be its ability for The Grey Area - we've rallied against stereotypes, sometimes even when we weren't sure why - don't laugh at a sensitive, philosophical biker dude; that lady is just attached to her flannel shirts and billowing leg hair, it says nothing about her sexuality.

And only recently it has dawned on me what our other big legacy is going to be - pussyfooting. Excuse my Truck Driver.

We're going to go down in history for our sheer wealth of cowardice. For our talent for talking endlessly in circles without ever concluding with or even intending a solution. For being victims of our personal histories and for recognising that and continuing to stay that way. We've learned to say everything it takes to say nothing at all. But most importantly for turning the Appropriate Thing To Do into Whatever's Easiest.

Don't get me wrong. I will never trade the loosed leash I have today with what my mother had at 25. I love that my dark jeans can qualify as formals and sex before marriage no longer occupies a top place in Fallen Woman 101. But the things that require heart, you know? That require a strong stomach? They're gone. Buried under layers of diplomacy, suffocating self-consciousness and a misplaced sense of modernity.

Invisible mode on Gchat, silent mode on your mobile phone and accumulating lightweight, feel-good, micro relationships on Twitter are all the totems of our generation. "All touch-me-nots" says my mother, blunt, brave lady that she is and always has been.

But I don't want to end this as a rant. I want to make a choice, I want to take a decision. Any decision. I want to start saying what I really think. I want to start telling strangers they helped me without worrying that it comes off as needy. I want to tell a man I love that I'm going to be there forever without worrying that I'm overstating. I want to tell a joke and then be okay when noone gets the punchline. I want to stop scaring myself every day.

To that end I will start with one truth. Here goes. I have been meaning to write a book for four years now but have still not managed it. I have written untruthful samples that were bad. And truthful samples that were worse. And I still don't even have an outline yet. The real reason is that I am terrified that it will bomb catastrophically and that I will never recover from my own awfulness. So instead I sit and rib on Chetan Bhagat. But as of this moment, I want it to stop being my concern. I feel I have done my part and issued the world a sufficient warning. I am now free to start writing My Great Big Failure Of A Novel with reasonable abandon.

There, all better. Now you tell me something. I am a stranger and I'm asking you to tell me something. I realise you might think I'm due my stay at the funny farm, but I'm asking anyway.

"Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded."

2010-02-25T21:31:00.000-08:00

We are not in the business of bursting bubbles. And we should not accept such a mantle. In these times, it is the highest feat of the imagination to be able to preserve your own faith. These are not people to be torn down, but people to be admired.

When, and less cynically, if, fall they must, let it be at someone else' hand. Bursting bubbles is the easiest thing in the world. But have you ever tried to preserve one? It takes the meticulousness of a surgeon. And then you get to walk away knowing you just bent time. You extended a moment by the sheer force of your goodwill.

That's at least a week's worth of that good feeling, right there.

Careful.

2010-02-23T07:05:00.000-08:00

People have often told me I'm a sucker for pain. That in my dealings with people, I show a worrying lack of self-preservation. "Are you crazy? Do you not remember what she said to you?" "How far do you need to fall before you realise he's not good for you? What will it take?" And I have always said that grudges are not my thing. Neither are hostility, vengeance and issuing comeuppances. I'm not very good at any of those and I'd much rather read comics and worry my dog than hatch complicated plots to bring about someone's downfall.

And that is the truth but it's not the whole truth. Because I have been to the other side. Experienced the kind of anger, hurt and bitterness that you can will to become something physical and tangible because calling them 'feelings' doesn't even begin to describe their potency. And they caused me to say things that, to this day make me wilt a little even if I just hear them used randomly or playfully. One day, that person on the receiving end dropped dead. And how bitterly theatrical is it that earlier that very morning, I'd woken up to the vacant, white, summery feeling of forgiveness?

Then on I promised myself I'd let go, a kind of atonement if you will. And once I began, I didn't stop. In time, quite Gyuri-ly, I lost sight of my reason and took it to the extreme. Soon it became a game of 'show me what you got, I'll still come back. You cannot shock me.' And to my horror I found that there is no dearth of people willing to take you up on that kind of challenge. A point that was finally brought home to me only very recently.

For the first time in years, my very dormant sense of self-preservation took over and the only words I could hear myself think were, "you went too far."

Good thing is I'll never be that angry 17-year-old again, screaming, thrashing and foaming at the mouth. Because she grew up and was introduced to their effortless replacements: sarcasm, irony and stone-cold indifference. Don't get me wrong, I still have impossibly high levels of endurance but now they come with a tipping point. Just that you won't see it coming, you'll only know when it's there.

You went too far.

The colour of Not There

2010-02-17T08:43:00.000-08:00

You paint houses for a living. Wash walls with colour. Bring life to something listless and dull.
So what happens when the child of the house stumbles up to you, and asks if she can paint too?
Your hands inside her pants in exchange for a few brushstrokes seems a steep bargain.
You're a painter and with your bare hands you've painted her over forever.

Stay still

2010-02-15T21:43:00.000-08:00

I find it's all very well to say that you must keep the ground beneath your feet. But what if all you've ever been standing on has been broken tiles at precarious angles? These days I have mustered a level of quietness that is a far screech from just a while ago when I was climbing up walls. Still I cannot say I know how to...be.

There's too much going on around us. A couple of kids walked into their favourite bakery and got blown to smithereens. A baby who doesn't know that his longstanding Tummy Ache is actually liver cancer. Less dramatic events like excruciating deadlines, falling hair, heart marauding loneliness.

There is greatness too, I'd be a fool to deny it. Complete strangers being able to spot in you what only should have been visible to lifelong companions. People showing up to their jobs every day for love and precious little else. Supernatural endurance? All miraculous.

It's just marrying the two that has got me in knots, you know. How do you make it through your day? What do you focus on? If it's just everything close to you, you stand in danger of becoming grossly insulated. If it's the world at large, you could start feeling very badly like a whiskey at 10 in the morning. Is the ability for balance a talent - you either have it or you don't?

It seems to me we all have to reconcile what we thought everything would be to what everything is. For now I take respite in the fact that I try, every day, I try.

2010-02-02T21:52:00.000-08:00

If there is anything I want right now, it's the ability for grace. I think in my dealings with people I've managed to let near me, I generally think it's alright to have them see that unfettered, potentially vile side of me. I imagine that if they've come this far, they're willing to be privy to the awfulness as well.
Which they often have been and grateful as I am for that, I have abused it from time to time too. In the process I have been nicer to people who've never really cared for me, and the handful that have, I have tested them over and over again.
I always feel the need to test people who make it halfway across that moat that separates me from the general noise of the world. In the bargain I've let go of grace. I have spat, hissed and pummeled at them with fists, detailing their every failing, poking crudely at their every weakness. To fall like that from your own grace is painful. To step out of yourself and watch yourself become everything you hate, is frightening.
Over the years, after the disappointments and going through the motions, it gives me some solace that I have begun to get better but I'm not nearly as close as I'd like to be.

Grievance

2010-02-01T04:57:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading Marguerite Alexander's Grievance and it has been quite a revelation. Apart from its actual plot, politics and characters, the larger strain of the book is grief and how people deal with it. On being dealt a personal blow, some people might spend years walking about with a sense of injury, believing that that particular incident has forever entitled them to no longer be accountable for what they do thereon. If such dastardly fate has been visited upon them, then it's only right that they go through life with more concessions than those who've had it better.

Others spend the rest of their days dealing with it with exemplary forbearance. But dealing with it so consciously that it erodes their naturalness, because every moment is spent on guard, manually and mindfully 'managing' their emotions. They can't relinquish control and ironically have done the exact opposite of what they'd set out to do - let the incident define them.

And then there is, in my personal experience, people who do neither, choosing instead temporarily gratifying and often self-destructive diversions. Still others will ply themselves with self-assurances so hollow, meaningless, even facetious, that you're frightened to think about what will happen when they do eventually crumble.

So what is the right way to deal with something bad that has happened to you? Do you keep running till you find you're all alone? Do you make it you get-out-of-jail card for everything? Or do you just let time take the reins, letting it choose how and when you will finally be free?

You live, you learn

2010-01-19T22:59:00.000-08:00

"You have ugly fingers for a girl. Actually for a human being."

"Your brain is ugly."

"Anyway what's your mom's maiden name?"

"D'Silva."

"And your dad's?"

"My dad's not a maiden."

"Sorry."

"You're weird."

"I'm falling for you."

"You're really weird."

"Slut."

"I hate you."

There's stranger relationships to be in than the one you're currently in.

Why?

2010-01-17T07:35:00.000-08:00

I stared down at my foot.

A blunt, dry twig had pierced through the skin at the top and now poked out the other side. Bright blood had risen and pooled around its girth where the skin had split. It looked like it should've hurt but it didn't.

I bent down and loosed the offender till it came free, a fascinatingly exact circular hole in its place. The torn film of skin had dissolved in the sanguine mess.

I stood back up to find A's horrified expression: "Are you..." she gulped, "...okay?"

"Yes, are YOU?" I spat back, slightly shocked at myself. Her wet eyes had irritated me more than they should have.

"We've got to get you to a doctor," she continued shakily, completely missing me. "This could turn septic."

"Just ask this guy where we'll find one," I told her, nodding towards the bored looking cashier of the chemist in front of us.

She hurried off and I turned around, hailed a taxi and left.

Here today, gone today

2010-01-14T09:11:00.000-08:00

I feel very worried and vexed lately and I blame it on love. Lately it has got me thinking, which if you've been in love, I don't need to tell you is a pretty rare occurrence.
I just think the emotion has become much too fashionable for me. Everyday I feel like it just gets that much more ephemeral, that much more conditional and that much easier to just snap.
I heard of a man who changed his mind overnight, about the woman he was to marry. 'Too screechy', he said and walked away unhurriedly.
Another one, the day he found a woman whose favourite book was his favourite book. "Her favourite book is my favourite book," he cried defensively, "you don't even read books!" And he too was gone.
The woman was certain she'd found the one. Very easy on the eye, loves her parakeet and made her autistic cousin smile. Then the sex happened. His saliva is too cold and he's not thorough, if you know what I mean.
I once decided I wasn't gung ho about a rather nice boy because his jokes were too obvious.
Like I said, love's gotten trendy. It has its own zip code and favourite brand of post-modern poetry and if you don't fit, you don't fit, sorry chappie, go get an upgrade.
D'you think it's the reason we don't hear of those terribly romantic woodcutter-weds-princess style stories anymore? I think we just threw up our hands at some point and let it all go to hell. Sameness is comforting, sameness doesn't need work and when you come home after a 9 hour day + 2 hours of fighting for standing space in the Thane Fast, and he wants to watch cricket and you want to watch Dexter, you're just through.

Oh waily waily waily!

2010-01-08T00:08:00.001-08:00

Is anyone else sick of how much I've been whining of late? I know I am. All this slippery emotional BS needs to stop. I am going to go back to being hardcore. If this was five years ago, at this point I'd have been done with sarcasm and moving on to irony already instead of breaking my bangles and wiping my nose with the dog's ear.I was perfectly okay with not being liked/ understood, etc as long as I got to say what I really truly meant. And when I didn't have anything to say I wouldn't. And it was nice. And simple. And cooler. Way cooler.

I read something very simple and straightforward by one of my favourite authors. It was something to this effect. He says that it doesn't matter to the universe whether we live or we die, whether we're good or evil, whether we have runny noses or whether we nicked that eraser way back in 2nd grade when that land whale Jodanna wasn't looking. We invented Mattering. We're the only ones who think we matter, we're the reason we're upset, proud, elitist, euphoric and so on and so forth. The world was here before us, and will continue to keep once we've unwittingly stepped into the street and been leveled by an oil tanker.

Liberating isn't it? Can you imagine a world where we died unto ourselves and therefore really, really lived for the first time? No wars, no heartbreak, no Paulo Coelho. What a beautiful thought.

My rebound relationship

2010-01-07T10:26:00.000-08:00

I've realised that every time I'm really happy and occupied in my life, I stop updating this blog.
When I'm happy I have this feeling inside me of being very near the edge - a little too much goodness and I could keel over. It's this breathless, excited rush - I'm grinning all the time, letting all those doubts and niggles fall by the wayside. I am much too busy handling that happy explosion to get my thoughts in one line.
And when things fall apart, I come back here, tail between my legs, slightly sheepish and more than willing to spill my woes.
To come to it actually, I write most when I'm feeling badly which inhabits that cliche I've been shrinking away from years - I do not want to feel creative or expressive only when I'm miserable. Because I like writing and if the atmosphere that best brings that from me is maudlin, then I am doomed to be a very, very lonesome unhappy person indeed.
So to that end, the next time I feel euphoric, this blog is going to be my first stop. This is the year for breaking old cycles after all.

A few thoughts

2010-01-06T05:04:00.000-08:00

To begin with, people who tell me I think too much. Usually you are people who don't think nearly enough. I'm carrying your assigned mental load, so instead of bitching about it, be grateful and buy me lots of beer. And you know when it comes to it, I like thinking. I enjoy thinking. I enjoy thinking so much I want to flirt with it, get drunk with it, make some stupid decisions with it, have an unplanned thought baby. So shut the hell up. Go back to your stupid dark little dingy rooms illuminated only by the wan light of your TV/comp/game console and the piddly dialogues you will then parrot with so much ownership, it's really quite frightening. You are usually the sort with precious little regard for consequence, accountability or other people. And you pat yourself on the back because you mistake it for spontaneity and single-mindedness never once realising what an absolute germ it makes you. The good bit is your stubborn unwillingness to think will protect you from your own douchebaggery. I guess it all works out in the end.

I'm thinking of starting a food blog. From a very early age, I knew eating was what I wanted to grow up to do. And chronicling it seems like the next level. I've begun taking pictures of food. Haven't managed enough though, because I have a huge SLR-style camera. Not SLR mind, SLR*style* camera. 'Why Gyuri, that sounds absolutely daft,' you say? Blind adoration will do that to you. All mental faculties shut down when you're smitten enough and you begin to think with your loins. Only the proven WORST state in which to make decisions. I have grown up since then (somewhat). Anyhoo the camera is large and I have retired it temporarily after the third time I got asked if I was with Mid-day. At my own office party. Yeah. Maybe I'll sell it and buy one of those tinier, sleek ones which totally don't suit my personality.

You may have had the mild discomfort of reading the post where I went all Bjork on New Year's. Well I am happy to report that I have a great support system in place, albeit one that will wring the 'sharing' out of you, but once you do that, they'll rally around you, all dead ringers for maternal hens, many online hugs and 'hmms'. Even the guys :D. These are some of the helpful suggestions I received:
- 'You're a strong woman with good looks, talent and a great personality. Are you really going to let someone make you feel this terrible? Think positive, send positive vibes into the universe. Sometimes *cough* takes a bit longer for some, but you will be happy.'
- 'If this is making you feel like shit, you have more problems than I originally thought.'
- 'Positive vibes. Take, listen to AR Rahman."
- 'Life's too short to date every nice guy you meet. And you still haven't made it past the a-holes.'
- 'HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHH I'm sorry but Hhhahahhahahahhahaha he SAID that?! Dude that is awesome! That has to go up in your Hall of Rejection.'
- 'Positive vibes.'
- 'Jesus will never leave you.'
- 'Hello Leftover!!'

If I haven't said this before, I'll say it now. Books saved my life and continue to do so every day. When I am through enduring relentless support (I mean this in the nicest way possible :D), my books let me forget everything. My own life is suspended and the people in my books will walk that stretch of nonthingness for me. I am not one of those people whose books are covered with newspaper and are immaculate. All my books are dog-eared, discoloured and slightly tainted with drool. I have travelled with everyone of them and they're worse for the wear, having done what they were there to do - engulf and uplift the mind.

That's that.

If you have not heard New Slang by The Shins, you must.

Keeping it elementary

2010-01-02T20:27:00.000-08:00

Have you noticed how songs today are just clusters of obscure words strung together? I wonder why that is. We don't think in clever puns, far fetched analogies and turns of phrases, no? Or say 'tree' when we mean boy and 'boy' when we mean chair. I don't. It's why I think no matter how much great new music I listen to, I'll never stop going back to the old simple stuff. Seems like back then words were used to express, not hide behind. It's why I like Colin Hay so much. Because it feels like he's conversing honestly and just happened to be strumming his guitar at the time. So here, this is my song.

I like you
I like you
I hear every word that you say
I know every pause that you take
I like it when you fumble
I like it when you stumble
I like it when you pretend I didn't see it.
I like you

Your hair is so nice
I can't help but think about your shampoo
And grey is your colour,
oh how it is your colour!
When you smile at me
Even my intestines feel special
When you forget about me
I stop existing a little.

I sound like a twat
but I like it
And I like you.
You know what the scariest word in love is?
It's not 'over'
It's 'technically'
You'll be happy soon,
light sabres and ice blondes.
I'll be happy soon,
my guitar and a burger.

But right now I like you
And not just technically.

*Okay, yeah so maybe I see why obscure lyrics are preferred :D

Until I find you

2009-12-31T22:41:00.000-08:00

2008 ended with a loud thunderous silence. Something inside me died then. That presence inside you that holds on to faith by the skin of its teeth even when you're sure it has no reason to. That presence died. In 2009 I proceeded to destroy myself completely. 365 days spent kicking myself in the ribs - it was like that beach cliche, little hopeful kid painstakingly builds a sandcastle and a bigger brutish chap comes along and cruelly kicks it down. That was me and myself all of 2009.

I forged on or atleast I thought I did. I didn't believe in anything or anyone and if I managed to give the impression that I did, it was because I started to make an exercise of suspending disbelief. 'If I can't believe it, atleast I won't disbelieve it until proven otherwise.' What that meant was I was holding my breath, waiting for something to go wrong. Which ofcourse it did because I looked at everything as potential hurt and so I willed it to become that. I did that. Noone else did that, I did it.

By the end of 2009, I was struggling. I was barely there anymore. It was someone I didn't recognise. It was someone I'd set out not to be. The worst night came, dramatically enough, last night. The last night of the year. I had been hanging on to someone for dear life and realised he was already gone. And I slumped to the floor. Those many tears shouldn't be biologically possible. This time there was no silence, there was only screaming. "Love me love ME LOVE ME LOVE ME LOVE ME LOVE ME PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE" I begged at the darkness. I begged... of myself.

This was new. I thought I was crying for him but I wasn't. I hadn't realised up until then how badly I missed me, how much I wanted to feel like a living breathing emotional person again. I don't remember how I got to bed, when I changed into my nightclothes and snuggled upto my dog. But that's how I found myself this morning.

And so here I am, nothingness except a thin pinhole of hope, suddenly and very very slowly making the darkness lighter. I had banana milkshake this morning. And it was wonderful.

Happy New Year. I hope you find your truest self too.

Waiting in line

2009-12-05T22:22:00.000-08:00

When I was really young, my idea of perfect love was straight out of the pages of my aunt’s meticulous collection of Mill & Boon books. A man (and oh what a man he was) and a woman met in imperfect circumstances and waded through their disdain for each other inspite of their initial attraction. Eventually they fell so deeply in love that they were alright with losing those parts of themselves that had been most vital to their earlier identities. Yes there were the bits where they compromised on self respect and addressed each others’ genitals quite a lot more florally than feels right - but those were the bits you appreciated because you hadn’t yet been introduced to the internet and its vast reserves of porn.

Years later, when I had graduated to more important literature (and had internet access), I too scoffed along with everyone else at ‘those crappy softcore porn books’ but somewhere I knew it was still the kind of romance I longed for. Then I met a man (and oh what a man he was), disdain inspite of attraction happened, and eventually…well I fell in love. I have to believe he did too, just not like in the Harlequin romances.That was the first time I felt faith falter.

I realised that love is not as easy as just waking up from a coma after 2 years to find yourself in the arms of the woman who put you there in the first place. Or taking over a multinational conglomerate only to fall hard for your archrival’s disreputable lawyer. Love takes time, and effort and bus tickets and cold dinners and clipped conversations and did you pay the bill because I didn’t and if we have to bathe in icy water one more time I’m leaving you.

That was when I met another man. Make that boy, I met a boy. There wasn’t initial disdain or attraction. But the conversations were refreshing, the jokes original, the comfort unbelievable. And I wondered if those M&B writers weren’t being too single-minded – uneventful romances can be just as exhilarating. Here there were embarrassingly floral descriptions too. Only not out of passion, or even lust. But because we both knew a lot of different words. In the end, they were the death of us, especially since he was saying all those words to someone else too. And faith took a tumble good and proper.

I gave up on even tidy romances. I started taking solace in being left to my own devices because while they made for ennui sometimes, they never hurt. Then I met another boy. Our conversations were stilted, just like me he was smarting from his previous relationships, our interests couldn’t be more diverse and he was…vegetarian. Still we co-existed, enjoyed each others' unfamiliarity and I’ll say it: if this were indeed a Mills & Boon, I’d want to very badly skip to the unholy parts. But it never caught and I don’t know why. With each passing day, I saw our potential for being the love of each others’ lives dim.

And so here I am once more. Come full circle you might say. Wondering if Harlequin romances do happen and if I just need to wait it out. On the other hand, and not to put too fine a point on it, my aunt did die a spinster.

Woulda coulda shoulda

2009-11-12T09:53:00.000-08:00

Soon I will start my new job and I did a test run today, to see how long it'd take me to get to it. Considering I live outside Mumbai city, I should have known that it would take me either long or if there wasn't too much traffic, long.

I didn't mind it too much because I had my headphones on, my book slid comfortingly from one side to the other in my bag and watching the world go by on mute does really have it's own very special charm. In times like these I find I experience a silence that has very little to do with the absence of sound. It's a stillness that feels almost unbearable and sometimes quite frightening to experience. Especially because it lets me be absent from what is happening around me and invariably is the time the mind uses to say 'Okay you're here, shall we do some cleaning today? You really mustn't put it off any longer.'

Today I thought about regret. About the countless times I've heard people say 'if I had done things differently, I wouldn't be here today.' Heck, I've said it a few times and I thought today, well what's so special about here? Am I just afraid to let my mind even imagine the way my life might have played itself out had I done the things I most wish I had?

Years ago an easy decision I didn't make could have saved somebody's life.
Years ago just a little kindness might have made a man feel less wretched.
Years ago a little self forgiveness might have saved the best friendship I've ever known and never had again.

'Tch, why look back at what you cannot change?' chides the part of me that hates these unnerving processes. But to me these regrets aren't a way of berating myself any longer. They're my way of, on some really non-human level, letting those people know I still think about them, that they alone can allow me to visit those parts of myself that I can't stand to consider for more than a few minutes at a time. It's my way of letting them know I am becoming the person they had needed me to be all those times.

I'm unravelling!

2009-11-04T10:03:00.000-08:00

My closest friends are divided down the middle. There's the Meryl Streeps and the Steven Seagals.

The former lot is always experiencing some manner of dramatic upheaval on any given day. Life is all deep emotions and obscure lyrics. There will be drunk-calling exes, initiating internet flame wars, identifying with Julia Roberts in every role she's ever played and working up phone bills that hurt to even say out loud. Not ones to shy away from a good solid controversy, their currency is tears and pointed Tweets. This faction abides by a more...elastic..code and is all heart because "let's face it, the other way is dead boring."

For the latter, any heightened form of expression is just being unnecessary and they have practically no use for interjections. They believe in emotional decorum and underplaying everything. To them, life would be no less lived, if pointless hugging were to be removed once and for all. Hard to ruffle and harder to please, this is not the lot you want to call when you've done something incredibly stupid. Not because they'll judge you even though they probably will, but because they remain maddeningly even. Something that really makes the Meryl Streep camp lose their shit.

Organically, I'm a Steven Seagal. I'm awful at discussing issues, I'd rather let them ferment until one day someone goes "Hey you!" and I take a knife to their jugular. I loathe confrontations because they feel incredibly stupid and defensive and if there's one thing more uncomfortable than getting defensive, it's watching someone else squirm defensively.
In recent years though, due to prolonged exposure to some of my friends, I've found I can sometimes out-emote Meryl Streep. In The Hours. I get all wimpy and my nose twitches and moderate length impassioned speeches just, you know, ebb from me. On occasion I've had to physically stop myself from seeking out James Blunt on my iTunes.

It's really very confusing. It makes my inner Steven Seagal want to, without a single facial expression, place some lead between my eyes. But I'm afraid this will make Meryl Streep-me go into overdrive analysing my childhood and then it all gets very Wind Beneath My Wings.

Somehow I'd imagined I'd be having more complicated and important thoughts by the time I turned 24. Just goes to show, age is very distantly related to maturity.

* Ten meeelion dollahs to anyone who can tell me where the title of this post is from. Don't pretend you don't care!

When I have time, I wonder

2009-10-29T12:26:00.000-07:00

Too many times in the past week I've gone 'I know! Exactly!' while watching Dexter. Commiserating with a vigilante serial killer. For someone who is so dead against even capital punishment, this is brand new.

Sometimes I wonder if, as a generation, we're all pansies or getting there quickly. I think the people I know alone keep the hand sanitizer industry afloat and not attending close family funerals because you 'cannot deal with it'? When did it get okay to indulge your neuroses so much?

This has been a bad month for trust. Sometimes all you can hear is the empty clanking sounds of long cherished concepts as they fall about your feet. Is it still trust if you know you won't be surprised if the things you're most afraid will happen, do?

Writing is not therapeutic for me anymore, it's become this anxious, regimented farce. I feel terribly close to just letting it all go to hell.

I haven't touched a cigarette in nearly two weeks now. Now that I'm a non-smoker, I want my testimony to be heard: This sucks. It's more sanitary, sure, but more suffocating too. Giving up was the easy bit. Making your peace with now being on the side of The Righteous Twats is harder.

How much do the choices of the people close to us, reflect on us? Think about it. If your boyfriend's last love made Fatal Attraction seem adorable and one of your closest friends adores someone who calls everyone 'babes' - what does that say about you? Are you the antidote? Or more frighteningly, do you share something in common with those people? Ever think, how could he/she have loved them and me?

Phase In, Phase Out

2009-10-05T13:40:00.000-07:00

You know, the more I think about it, the more certain I get that I'm a Phase Person. A Phase Person is somebody whose personality is so far from well-rounded and wholesome that he/she can only ever be a passing phase in another person's life before the latter senses the need to detox. Clearly my self esteem levels are at full mast here. More seriously though, I don't think this a bad thing.

Longevity has never really been my strong point. I have noticed that most everything in life has a shelf life and pushed beyond its expiry date, a relationship, a yellow ointment for problems of the embarrassing kind and your favourite sitcom, will all eventually become a force of habit. In a word: tedious. And I'd just rather eat a washcloth.

Being a Phase Person has some very attractive perks - you don't have to give up smoking or swearing like a truck driver. All your worst habits like chewing your nails, your acute discomfort with brightly lit coffee shops and your endless reserves of self deprecating humour will seem cute/different/quirky. Some strange sexual caveat would probably bump you right up to 'exotic'.
For that short period of time, this is paradise for the kind of Twilight Zone person you are.

Until it all starts to go a bit runny.

One day your Phasees wake up and realise you are a very dysfunctional person indeed. Your obsession with toiletries, all in various nauseating floral scents, are the cause of their headaches. Your deep interest in their mothers' maiden names unsettles them slightly, and can they ever really trust someone who doesn't care for ice-cream? Don't even get them started on your tendency for having your few meaningful conversations with your bilingual, fruitcake of a dog.

From there it's only a matter of time before you become the star of their 'This one time...' stories which will most likely end in '...and then I met my wife/ turned to drugs/ found Jesus."

That's my least favourite part about being a Phase Person. It just never lasts.

Dating question.

2009-10-02T14:09:00.000-07:00

Is the right person for you the one who puts up with you inspite of your idiosyncrasies, or because of them?

I have found the latter to be true for myself. I am one of those 'love is blind and loins are blurry' kind of people. If I like somebody, every 'do want' and 'don't want' checklist goes through the mind's paper shredder. I'll put up with pisspoor attitude, terrible pronunciations, various psychological complexes and barely satisfactory hygiene. Once I even kissed a guy right after he told me he beat his dog.

Sounds a mite tragic, yeah. Usually I am really very wise. Wise beyond my years. I'm like where the wisdom's at, usually. And granted my 'I wuvz youu no matter what' tendency has got me wading through piles of emotional excrement on more than one occasion but I can't imagine it any other way, you know?

I love the feeling that I could listen to someone ramble endlessly without once experiencing the need to roll my eyes, stifle a yawn or worst, cut 'im short. That I'd happily laugh at an awful joke just because it gets him all aflutter to tell it. That I'd pretend his keen interest in ferrets doesn't concern me slightly. In fact, I think some sort of weird habit involving coffee cup Feng Shui and an extensive collection of something totally useless would probably turn me on (Understanding a little more about why I loved As Good As It Gets so much). It's the nitty gritties that noone on superficial interaction with him could possibly know of. It's those little things I know about because I have the privilege of being this close to him, that make all the difference to me.

This 'staying with someone inspite of their shortcomings' business is all very charitable but it just sounds like a big ol' bag of Settling. I you don't love it, it's going to always be there, on the edge of your consciousness, messing with your confidence every time one of his 'shortcomings' surfaces. Too much trouble, if you ask me.

Note: All of this profundity is only valid until such a time as he stays a gem. All bets are off in the events of adultery, lie-telling and overall douchebaggery.

Habitat

2009-09-01T10:42:00.000-07:00

You told me my silence unnerved you the first time we met. That for a stranger you'd met only moments ago, I stared so far into your eyes, it was as though I was looking for what was behind them. We laughed about it later but I never stopped staring. Every day I looked at you like I'd never seen you before. You're the only stranger I've known for so many years.

And when you lie, it makes me smile. Because I know what you'll do before you do it. You'll talk faster, louder and you'll rub your right eye with your index finger and say my name too many times. And I'll keep staring at you nodding ever so slightly, letting you believe I believe you. Because I've come to enjoy the nuances of this charade. It's like we're in a movie scene, you're a much younger, much better looking Michael Douglas. And I never leave a performance before the very end.

You're not one to disappoint either.

Midway through the routine you'll realise you're being fidgety and slow down consciously. Except I should tell you you slow down just a touch too much. Don't enunciate so much, stare into my eyes with conviction for 1 second, not 3, and don't grip the table's edge so hard. That's it, you're doing good. Go on.

Tell me your life made little sense before me, tell me your loneliness only left when I walked into that room all those years ago. Now pause to let out a little laugh like you're remembering it - my blue dress, the way my hair flopped across my forehead, how you noticed the scar on my knee. You'd never seen anything lovelier, haha, I know. Not a word out of place. Have you got all of this written down somewhere? Because that would be too much, even for you.

I wish you'd hurry though, I feel slightly bored and I want to get back to my book. Come sit by me, hold my hand gently and pat it softly with your other hand. Pull me closer and throw your arms around me. Give me that reassuring hug and kiss the top of my head. I lov...that's right... I love you, yeah say it. So much? You love me so much? Well, that's new. Improv. Brava! Now collect me to your chest and we'll stare at the tailor's across the street, as he loses himself to the rhythm of his Singer machine.

...

2009-08-25T07:48:00.000-07:00

I am not generally given to loud, expressive fits of anger. This might be in part because I think loud fits of anything are genuinely warranted only in very rare cases. Also, I despise confrontations like I despise Criss Angel, that no talent, goth fuck. And usually before I work up to that kind of anger, I get distracted by whatever social networking site I’m using indiscriminately at the time or say like, a potato chip. Then there’s the fact that I stay calm to spite those people who say ‘let it out’ with those infuriating hand actions, heads cocked to one side, voice all calm and soothing-like. No bugger off, I’m keeping it in, I’m keeping it ALL in, go be Oprah some place else and get out of my face.
But a big reason, you’ll almost never hear me screaming or typing in angry caps, and I’m aware of how cutesy and made up this sounds even though it’s a 100% true, is the Old Spice song.

Remember that one? Unfortunately I can’t find it on Youtube so for those who can’t remember it, you may use Chariots of Fire as stand in, it has the same effect. If you haven’t heard Chariots of Fire, you’re probably deaf. In which case, nevermind the rest of this post.

Anyway.

Everytime I’m on the brink of blowing off some serious steam, the song starts playing in my head. Its rising crescendo perfectly accompanying the gradual slowing down of the words and expressions until it’s all very comical, I stop to chuckle and in the process the loud anger has dissipated. What’s left can well be dialed down to sarcasm, the odd snide comment and some heavy duty passive-aggressive bullshit like eating the last muffin I knew the person really wanted or uploading unnecessarily cheerful status updates that I know will piss him/her off.

Only recently it occurred to me that the latter method is long drawn, tedious and even more laughable than being caught Old Spicing. Also less fulfilling, because honestly, while I’m plotting all these abstruse ways of putting it across, the person concerned probably just thinks I’m having my period. Whereas a well-timed ‘Fuck you’ said at a higher decibel is succinct yet descriptive and clear as a bell.

That settles it. Come Monday (I hate starting new resolutions mid-week) and I’m really getting into this whole 'expressing self' business. I may end up feeling better or I may end up halving the number of people who put up with me always, to one. But that’s okay. No longer is a men’s aftershave lotion going to come between me and my true feelings.

I'm going to have to let you go

2009-08-19T12:13:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me yesterday, during a particularly tiresome conversation when my brain came up for some air, that firing someone should not be restricted to jobs alone. Imagine how easy relationships would be if you could just eject people from your life without having to wade through the emotional afterbirth.

You cordially invite them into a safe (for you) space, make nice for a few minutes - "Your hair looks neat", "That leopard print really suits you.", "No you don't come off as a pretentious self-serving twat at all!" - and then you go in for the kill or in this case, an excruciatingly polite rejection.

"So I'm sure you're wondering why I called you out to this sardine tin of a coffee shop, in broad daylight, with all these pretty prospective witnesses. It's just that your performance has been slipping lately. I've tried to cover up for you with the others - I told them you had a shitty childhood, you have extremely low self esteem crossed with a puzzling narcissism and your mom always loved your sister more. That kept them quiet for a while. But it got harder for me to cover your back, you know. All the lies, all the incessant mooching off, all the general douchebaggery and this complete disregard for personal hygiene? I mean give me something to work with for chrissake!

Anyway, I'm sure you have your reasons for being such a conscience-free prick. And for why your personality is only the tragic imitation of everybody around you. Maybe your skill-set will be more employable some place else, say like...in a...um...well I'm sure you'll figure it out.
I wish you only the best. Don't let this small hurdle change who you are. Lots of people are sociopaths. And maybe someday you'll end up killing someone just because you felt bored but that's way into the future. And what's important is, I won't know you then.

I was told to release you with immediate effect but I got you seven days notice. I figured you'd need time to finally return my clothes/books/CDs/money. You can keep that framed picture of us - I already have a tonne of uncomfortable pictures with people I don't really like lying around. I'd return the stuff you gave me too, but can you ever really fit deep mistrust and disillusion into a paper bag? I'm not sure.

Anyway I think I'm going to go now because this has already been half an hour of my life I'm never getting back. And just to paraphrase our relationship, as usual I'm going to pay for this elaborate and expensive meal you had no qualms ordering even though your er, dog ate your wallet. You might want to go easy on the grease though, you're looking a bit fat. Bye now."

Yeah I think this could work. You should try it. I would but we all know those who can't do, write.

28 years

2009-08-15T11:08:00.000-07:00

He saw her, he saw she was sublime.
She saw him, she liked his shoes.
"She made me want to start over," he'd later say,
"They were *really* nice shoes," she'd shrug.
The other men stood beneath their windows
Wooing her friends with spangly trinkets.
He came for her twice a month.
5 chikus were his offering.
"Did you know they're also called sapota?"
She stared at him, then shook her head slowly.

They went through the motions
Got married.
She for a roof, he for a second chance.
Had children.
She for companionship,
he to prove he could.
Left.
She from despair, he from indifference.
Returned.
Because they both keep promises.

The worst has passed,
for the first time they notice each other.
His mangled hands,
her maddening pronunciations.
His emotional stutter,
her unbelievable strength.
The story is told that
for the five days she wasn't home once,
he went hungry.
"She didn't make it, it wasn't worth eating."

The beautiful bits always stop short
so you never forget just how good it got.
She awoke one afternoon with the deafening silence,
his breath had stilled for the last time.
For as long as she lives,
she will never forget his slumped head
or that feeling of being well and truly alone.

The years fan out.
Some worth remembering,
some just disappear into others.
There are no smiling portraits on the wall.
No gracefully yellowed black and white photographs.
And the mind's moths continue uninterrupted.

The hallmarks of true love
have changed since 1981 too.
"Of course he loves me but he listens to bhangra-pop!"
"She's perfect except for her beer belly."
"I think I love him. Or do I?
No, I do, I do. But what if I don't?"
Thank God she's hard of hearing.
These eedyets wouldn't know love
if it smacked them full in the face.
She'd tell them her story
but devotion isn't part of their vocabulary.

Be yourself

2009-08-12T05:19:00.000-07:00

That's a big bag of crap, let me clear that up once and for all. I learnt this important lesson early.

Right from the time you're a kid, it's what adults are always prattling on about.
Like Mrs. Rose, my second standard teacher. Rose only in name, I might add.
So when she cracked one of her really obvious, middle-aged jokes, I, being myself, rolled my eyes.

Let's just say I didn't see that backhanded slap coming.

Moral: Be yourself, you get slapped so hard your brain rearranges itself.

Still my naivete prevailed. Maybe Rose is just the exception, I fooled myself and stuck to my guns. Until it happened again.

Now when you're a quiet kid and you sing to yourself, people take that to mean many different things. But boiled down to their concentrate, all these opinions generally end up at 'weirdo' or 'asshole'. I've always got the latter. So between totally missing the boat on teacher humour and not being related to anyone who had "pull" in the staff room, I was the farthest thing from teacher's pet.

Cut to standard 9. I get called into the staff room minutes before break time. Nothing too ominous, just a whole bunch of underpaid, predominantly single women in their late 30s, gathered in one place, looking for an outlet.

Me: Can I come in?
Degenerate 1: It's MAY I come in, not can.
Me: Sorry. May I come in?
D1: No.
Me: Okay.
D2: You have an attitude problem.
Me: ...
D1: See? This is what I'm talking about.
D2: *nodding happily*
Me: Okay.
D1: Okay?! She's saying okay! Do you have a problem or not?!
Me: I don't know. No.
D2: Not even owning up to it, trying to defy us.
Me: Can I go? (break time was coming to a close! Those delicious cream biscuits weren't going to eat themselves!)
D1: Don't act too smart, you will not go anywhere.
D2 : Admit you have an attitude problem and say you're sorry.
Me: ...
D2: Say you're sorry!
Me: ....
D1: Say you're sorry or no break.
Me: I'm sorry.
*Bell rings*
D1: Looks like you're going to have to wait for the next break.

Moral: Be yourself and you miss snack time. No go. NO. GO.

Then I grew up, got a tonne of bad haircuts, made a tonne of bad decisions, had a tonne of personality crises, you know, usual teenage stuff. But through it all, I refused to act. Why? Because it takes effort and time. Time that could be spent watching Superhuman Samurai Syber Squad. So that's what I did. Until I got slapped in the face again. This time metaphorically.

The year was 1999. I remember this because every time Summer of 69 came on, I'd shout 99. Yeah. I know. Take a moment.
The boy was wiry, he was tanned, he had dirty brown hair and cute mispronunciations. When we finally talked (he caught me on one of my blank calls to his house. He said 'Gyuri?', I said 'ye..NO!' and the jig was up) and told me I was awesome. He liked me for me - androgynous, bushy eyebrowed, bespectacled and kicking his ass at carrom. Best moment of my teenage life. Also the last time I ever heard from him.
The next time I saw him, he was with a girl who, if this were a highschool movie, would be the main sidekick atleast.

Moral: Be yourself and you'll be with yourself too.

Now I could keep the examples coming but I think I've made my point and more importantly, I'm irritating myself. The bottomline folks, is this: Stop lying to kids. Or if you must make overly simplistic remarks like 'be yourself' atleast have the courtesy to emphasise on the 'as long as you're not making anyone mad, as long as you're not swimming too far from the stereotype and as long as you're doing it on your own time".
Kids have a hard enough time reading, nevermind reading between the lines.

Sometimes my mind don't shake and shift, but most of the time it does.

2009-08-01T04:58:00.000-07:00

Everything has a place. Everybody has a place. Our lives are like a labyrinth of people and the experiences they bring along, all crisscrossing in a mindboggling fashion. Some tiny doorways lead to light so blinding you have to shield your eyes and others go and and on before you realise those flickers of light you kept moving towards were just fireflies doing what they do, completely oblivious of how much you're betting on them.
Each day you try to simplify. For such a complex species, we're very simple. It's what we like to do, simplify. Some days you draw a connection - 'Aha! So this is where that door was leading to!' - and you feel pleased - 'I've come close to solving the puzzle', you think - until this turns out to be yet another little passageway with a series of indistinguishable doors all lined up, waiting for you to see where they take you.
Behind one, there's sedate 2+2=4 happiness and people with smiles that are kind but dispassionate. Behind the other there's no floors, this place has no need for them, it's like a tornado and promises to be euphoric and exciting and very very lonely. And behind the third, time seems to slow, it's all like a big moving sepia toned picture. You've been here, you've done this, it's comfortable. Just cash in your chips and say I'm too weak to wander down all these little alleyways.
Or sometimes you can just squat in the hallway for a bit, light up a cigarette and examine the cracks in the wall. Let the fireflies do their thing.

I'm sorry.

2009-07-27T10:30:00.000-07:00

Being angry made me do things I would never do in good faith. Or in love. Or in friendship. Being hurt brought out the most petulant, vindictive version of me - a place I go to only when I'm unable to man up to what I'm feeling and just, you know, say it.
No, I have never steered away from the truth because even anger won't make me do that. But I presented the facts knowing fully well that minus the little inflections, pauses, circumstances and contexts that give words their potency and true meaning, the cold colourless facts would get you the worst sentence. I did that intentionally and I'm sorry.
Sure, there were times I feebly protested at the harsh judgments that were being meted out to you based on my words and my words alone, but I didn't mean it. That was me pandering to my own guilt and self pity. I'm sorry.
The truth is you were the best and worst thing for me. How much you gave equalled how much you took. Not more, not less. You made promises you never kept but you also did so much that you never promised.
You're not the bad guy. You actually never were. And is it twisted that though you didn't eventually accept me, you've accepted me more than anyone I've ever known? And you betrayed me the way only someone who has come to be your second nature can.
And to date when I have a joke to tell, it is not until you have laughed that I feel pleased with myself.

Disquiet

2009-07-19T13:30:00.000-07:00

Colder than dry ice
Quieter than silence
Less frightening than horror
more unnerving than fear
Smudges of consciousness
Told only by the hair on the back of your neck
that prickles slightly
And by wakeful sleep

Here's what I'm going to do for You

2009-07-15T04:33:00.000-07:00

I'm going to make you feel lovely.

I'm going to make you feel smart.

I'm going to make you feel kind.

I'm going to make you feel worthy.

I'm going to make you feel wanted.

I'm going to make you feel funny.

I'm going to make you feel musical.

I'm going to make you feel thin.

I'm going to make you feel interesting.

I'm going to make you feel quirky.

I'm going to make you feel alive.

I'm going to make you feel calm.

I'm going to make you feel valid.

I'm going to make you feel bloody fantastic.

Why? Because it's the least I owe you. The very least.

2009-07-13T05:46:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it takes a swift kick in the pants before you realise you've got to learn yourself and fast if you're to keep your head above water.

I have decided I don't know myself very well. Or at all, for that matter. I'm one of those people whose answers to anything have always been something to the effect of "I don't know, could go either way." Which is why, too often, I end up relying on other people to tell me what to do or give their opinion way more consideration than I should.

Then it occurred to me that a big reason for this lack of self awareness is that I'm very hillbilly shit-kickerish with my introspection. For example I'll ask myself broad generic questions like "What do you want?" and I'll get broad generic rejoinders like "To be happy." And then I start thinking about potato chips and we all know how that story goes.

I'm very generic the few times I make a courtesy calls to God even - "Dear Jesus, give me everything I want. And also give everyone else everything they want. Thankyou." If I'm specific, I strongly suspect it's not the right kind of specific - "Dear Jesus, please don't let her (the parlour chick) fuck my eyebrows up. Thankyou."

I think the other reason I have failed to know myself enough so far is that I tend to judge my answers very harshly. The classic 'Damn, everyone else is asking for the cure for cancer and I'm asking for weight loss' syndrome. I feel guilty and lame and superficial and then I'll kid myself into thinking I want all those deep things when really I just want to very badly look smoking in my new pencil dress. Is that so wrong? I am coming to think not. I have just come out the other side of a very bad phase and even though I'm seeing lights in the distance, the repair takes time. I read these words recently and they made perfect sense to me:

"When you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after such dark times you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt - this is not selfishness, but obligation. You were given life, it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight."

So I have decided to ask myself a series of very pointed questions to which the only rules of answering are - Specificity and truthfulness. Wish me luck. And if I feel brave enough, I'll put 'em up here. Now I go hold down my day job.

2009-07-06T13:36:00.000-07:00

"Cellphones are the Devil incarnate. The sooner they all perish in a brute fire, the better mankind shall be," she said downing a bunch of inordinately sour grapes.

I'm hideous. Confirmed.

2009-07-02T09:07:00.000-07:00

It has happened folks. I know what the worst haircut in the world looks like. I've been staring in the mirror for some time.

It all started with an innocent enough trim at noon today. Then came the words 'broad forehead' quickly followed by the words 'shorter in the front' and nodding from both me and the stylist. Then I choose that moment to look down at the phone in my lap and text someone and only stop short when I hear a metallic snip. Now picture the next bit in slow-mo except that was the actual speed I was moving at. I look up very very slowly, hoping with EVERYTHING I hold holy, that that snip wasn't as near as I thought it sounded.

I stare into the mirror so intently, it's like I'm seeing myself for the first time. And I am. Where there used to be a broad, but unoffensively so, forehead is now a broad forehead with a tuft of hair curling so maddeningly, it's making me teethe.

"That is... short."

"I'm not done yet."

"No?"

*Two minutes later*

"Now, I'm done."

He moves aside and I see the formerly unruly tuft has been tamed. Except now my hair is looking like the bastard child of The Kate Gosselin and Elaine Benes' hair from early Seinfeld. It is flattened in front and starts running amok as you follow it to the back of my head.

No, seriously.

You know how people always say 'It could've been worse'? THIS haircut is what they're referring to. This is like the worst case scenario of haircuts. It's like the Amy Winehouse of addicted musicians, it is like the Rakhi Sawant of reality TV whores, it is like the Josef Fritzl of bad parents.

I hopped into church on the way back from the parlour to collect my house keys from the mother. This is church right? Place of worship? Communion with Jesus? Solemnity guaranteed? She. Laughs. She looks at me, midway through the Hail Mary, and laughs.

I'm not meeting anyone till next year. And by next year, I mean tomorrow. And by tomorrow I mean drunk.

I'm bringin' appreciation back!

2009-07-01T05:46:00.000-07:00

Call me a slut for encouragement (Today I asked a friend to transfer her appreciation for my blog from Gchat to here so I could have ‘comments’ [This is your mention Shwetters! *waves*]) or just freakishly addicted to American sitcoms, but I am really dismayed by just how rarely people high-five each other anymore.

We’re dedicated to keeping internet dialects of English alive and kicking, in spoken conversation, no less! We haven’t gotten sick of uploading heavily photoshopped pictures of every last mundane activity of our lives (and nature) to Facebook. Some of us *wretches slightly* are still giving the middle finger whenever faced with a camera lens. Excruciatingly cool.

So then what happened to high-fiving?

What caused the death of this sublime culture of expressing encouragement and appreciation via well-coordinated claps of the hands at a slightly higher altitude? Is there any way that is less pre-meditated and quite so spontaneous as The High-Five? Are we afraid it makes us look stupid? People are still actively wearing Crocs, so that can’t be it. Why will we 'Like this' the crap out of people's Facebook status messages but are unwilling to lift an appreciative palm to let someone know they did good? Is it somehow too juvenile for us now? I don't know about you, but I still laugh at names like ‘Wang’ and videos of kittens head-butting each other endlessly. I’m a fully paid up member of Juvenileville. So what happened then?

I thought I’d leave space to accommodate that deafening silence.

Fine. Nevermind why. I’ve decided to be part of the solution. From now on I’m bringing back high-fiving. Every time I hear a good punch line henceforth, I’m high-fiving! Every time a friend of mine fits perfectly into an outfit, I’m high-fiving! Every time less that a friend of mine (you know who you are) says ‘Lol’, I’M HIGH-FIVING.

High-five me back ok? Don't leave me hanging now!

I just had a really good day.

2009-06-30T12:58:00.001-07:00

That almost never happens!

Wrapped up alot of work, worked out (WADDUP!), ate no junk food or in between meals and talked to my favourite people :). Now I'm going to bed. At 1.30am. That's about three hours earlier than I usually do.

Huzzah!

For an introvert, I sure yap alot.

2009-06-29T12:33:00.000-07:00

I remember these soul-sapping conversations I used to have with this one acquaintend (She was my acquaintance, I was her friend) of mine back in college. And by conversations I mean I would emit a series of 'hmms' at various pitches and different intonations while she would painstakingly drone over every last tedious detail of her life.

There was the one time I ended up lying next to her at a sleepover (Nothing sexual. Though I would have considered it in exchange for her silence) and she had been talking for about 3 hours straight. The others in the room (one tiny mutant and Tata Young's lookalike) excused themselves with a simple "sleepy now, bye" but yours truly, going-to-be-canonised-any-minute-now-wait-for-the-invitation was feeling bad to interrupt her. The all pervading night didn't interrupt her, what chance did I have?
Finally, about an hour later, long after I'd safety-pinned my eye-lids to my forehead to hold them open, she fell silent. I would have screamed 'Hallelujah' except my brain threw in its chips, sat down stubbornly and refused to have a single other thought. This girl had actually talked herself to sleep. The sound of her own voice had lulled her brain into a coma.

So why am I putting you through this agonising anecdote?
To point out that sometimes you can become what you laugh at.

I have become my acquaintend! These days I talk involuntarily. The brain is willing me to recognise the weariness in the listener's face, its saying "Don't say that, DON'T SAY THAT. Dammit you said it! Okay, it's alright, just don't say that next thing! DON'T SAY THA...". The mouth has gone batshit crazy and is swinging recklessly from one topic to the other leaving in its wake a loud resounding "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" Tarzan style.
I feel like I'm constantly in one of those badly synced Chinese films. I can say what I want in 2 words but I'm prattling on regardless.

To those who've chosen to endure, remember, death comes eventually.

Some things never change

2009-06-28T07:53:00.000-07:00

When we were little, my best friend and I drew up a prototype of what our perfect guy would be like. We were dorks, it goes without saying except I must say it - we were dorks.

There were detailed physical descriptions:
Must be taller than but not tall enough to make you feel short. Must NOT be shorter than at any cost. Same height is frowned upon and will only be excused in exceptional cases.
Must be big built but not muscular in that when he hugs you, you feel safe but not endangered.
Must have Bryan Backstreetboy (for her) and Kevin Backstreetboy (for me) hair, no compromises.
Must not have strange girly voice like those NSync faggots.
Must have more hair than us. (This was before either of us had experienced the sweet pain of waxing and after we'd had a couple of embarrassing incidents with our main crushes.)
Must not sweat. But if he does, he must sweat sexily.
Must dance awkwardly. Super smooth, hectic dancers were not for us.

Behavioural descriptions:
Should not patronise us or let us win. Except, he must. But do it in such a way that we never find out.
Must have a foul temper that only we can dissolve.
MUST.NOT.CRY. Yeah this one was underlined so much, she tore the page and I broke my pencil point. Then we added brackets: (Can well up. Slightly. But if tears leave the eyes, then it's just very over.)
Must be possessive. For example, broodingly nursing his glass of Pepsi while watching other guys make a play for us and then looking appropriately crestfallen is good. Holding hand protectively to let people know we're with him, even. But wear-your-salwar-kameez-in-the-pool possessive and expect some serious laughing and pointing.
Must be take-charge because that's responsible. But more importantly, hot.
Must not be named Prakash, Monty, Leslie or Kiran. Yes, this is a behavioural trait. Think about it. An amazonian, guitar-playing, sexily-sweating Prakash is just not the same as say, an amazonian, guitar-playing, sexily-sweating Nick/Kevin/Bryan/NOT-AJ.

Ability descriptions:
Must be musically inclined. Must play an instrument so he can tour with us when we're on the road. Must carry all the Grammys we win. Must sing like a Backstreet boy with a hint of any of the Code Red dudes and if we're being unrealistic, then the 98 Degrees fellows thrown in for good measure.
Must have a sense of humour. If not, why're we even talking?
Must play a sport. Preferably football because cricketers are unattractive. Uno and carrom don't count. Table tennis totally counts (you had to know the context) for like a hundred meellion points. Especially "doubles".
Must speak perfect English. There are many deep, accepting girls in the world who wouldn't mind 'a-POR-tunity' and 'I propose her and she say me this and that'. We weren't two of them.
Must...(then we got distracted and started practising our Ya Mustafa Ya Mustafa Raveena Tandon moves. I'm fairly certain that somewhere some guy has that on his 'Must Not' list.)

I want to say times have changed and the list is not relevant at all. I really want to say that.

The Wooden Four Post Bed

2009-06-24T04:53:00.000-07:00

Noone will ever guess, is magical. It changes shape and form and everything around it. Last night it closed in on itself and turned a canoe. Fat black waves slapped against its hull but it endured. Cold, hard and unrelenting.

One forgettable June day it looked like a coffin, no jokes. Everyone would've laughed at me. But the body lent it credence. The four posters made over it like protective arms. This bed has intent, imagine that.

Other days it just lies there. Pretending it's ordinary, pretending it does only what it's meant to do. Be a bed. On those days thumping fists, heels dug in and soaking faces cannot elicit an answer. "I'm a bed," it rolls its eyes, "what did you expect?"

Yet yesterday as I approached it, only a door between us, I thought I heard an engine rev. I tip toed without a sound and then started running faster than I knew I could. I kicked the door down and screamed "Take me with you!". The silence didn't resound, it ricocheted. Off the four posts, grazed my shoulder and bounced out of the room taking the words with it. "I'm not magical," it laughs, "that's not petrol you smell and I am not talking to you. Beds don't talk. People are saying you're crazy. Stop it."

So I lay down and sank slowly into it. Into its big rumbling belly. That was the last night.

Today in its place lies a duffel bag bursting at its seams. I look into it. Nuts and bolts and wooden planks - it's the magic bed like I've never seen it before. Vulnerable. "It happens to the best of us," it says in a chorus of thin, smaller voices.

Yes, this is a magic bed. Because everyone knows that the most powerful magic is the most unobtrusive. It doesn't make a production of itself. It just leaves in the conciousness the conviction that something has changed.

"Good luck finding out," it's saying as I zip the bag.

Gut instinct or just my lunch?

2009-06-21T04:57:00.000-07:00

I have always envied people for whom their gut instinct is like a lighthouse, helping them navigate through the choppy waters of contradiction and indecision onto the shores of resolution and clarity. These people always tell me their gut instinct is audible to them, ringing clear like a bell. For example, my friend, who I will hereon refer to as Fat Pants, is one of these people who as a rule functions on merciless logic to get him to that point just before he makes his final decision. Then he lets his gut (HEH) take it from there. I asked him once how he's sure it is his instinct that he's listening to and not just another line of reasoning. His said two very powerful words to me. "Fucking. Introspect."

"Lock yourself up in a room, cry your eyes out if you have to, scream if you must. But don't get out till you have your answers," he explains.

Now here's where it all starts to go pear-shaped.
For someone who blogs about what she's feeling and thinking and opining, I really suck at introspection. It just doesn't come naturally to me. I blame it on my daily-diminishing attention span, my soaring propensity for procrastination and my tendency to second guess myself all the time.
Plus I am someone who's always been unable to delay gratification - it's why I smoke, it's why I'm overweight, it's why I stay up late watching back-to-back episodes of Mother instead of writing my stories for work. So there's a very good chance that I could be mistaking what I really want to happen in a situation (want to feel the comfort of being in a relationship, want to eat fries, want to be liked) as my gut instinct. A very obvious and a very real trap.

I've swung by the seat of my pants for so long, but for the first time I'm feeling the weight of my malformed opinions and underdeveloped decisions weighing down on me. I'm tired of 'definitely, maybe' and I'm ready for 'definitely'.

To this end I've decided I need to first shut out the physical noise before I'm able to shut out the noise in my head. I'm withdrawing my cards, I'm leaving the building, I'm putting out the 'closed for business' sign. For a while anyway.

5.08 am.

2009-06-20T16:38:00.000-07:00

Project Get Shit Together (TM) not going so good.

Some truths in the world of Gyuri

2009-06-17T12:16:00.000-07:00

You're only as good as your last thing you said to me. You will not be held to what you did or said before that. It doesn't matter.

Having someone unexpected drive two hours, through backed up traffic just to come see how you're doing is humbling. Thank you, you made my day.

We are all like water. At some level, we're all able to change, adapt and still be refreshing.

Last night I thought my search for the perfect maxi-dress was over. Then I tried it on. The search continues.

Sometimes the suffocating familiarity of friends is furthest from what you need. Thank god there's the comfort of virtual strangers.

If you wake up to people watching you having drooled on your own hand, own it. Act like it was the plan all along.

Pretending you care can, on occasion, be the nicest, kindest thing you could do for people.

It's probably best not to accuse someone you want to date of paying for sex.

Watching friends take a turn for the pretentious or turn even more pretentious is painful. In a better-you-than-me kind of way.

My eyes are quitting me, one font size at a time.

I do not know the first thing about boys. I don't know if they want to be kissed, if they want to be pursued, if they want to be ignored, if they want to be smothered. They're like sensitive aliens.

I read recently that every city, every person, every experience has its own word. A word that belongs to it and it to the word. If Europe's is Flamboyance and Obama's is Charisma, what is yours? I think mine maybe Whimsy but I'm not sure.

Where do you get the best chocolate cake in this city? I want to know.

Delicious dread

2009-06-09T04:24:00.000-07:00

I don't store most people's numbers because then I'd lose all reason to pick up my phone. I really love and hate not knowing who's going to be on the line. Everytime my phone rings, I get nervous. Until I see a name and then it's all shot to shit.

Everybody's somebody's fool

2009-06-07T10:58:00.000-07:00

My aunt used to wistfully sing this Connie Francis song to me from a tattered book that had taken her through her loneliest times in the army. I was just about six, or maybe eight, but even I could tell there was a sad story in there somewhere. Over the years we heard murmurs of a certain Captain Y and a Lieutenant X and a whole string of other designations but she took her secret with her when she died an old spinster four years ago.

Cut to 2009, and I am finally seeing that this Connie person was really onto something there. Everybody IS somebody's fool, everybody IS somebody's play-thing! And there are no exceptions to the ru-u-ule. Yes everybody's somebody's foo-ool! It really is a very catchy song.

Anyway.

Like I was saying. I've realised the hard way, that we all have one person who makes self-respect seem like a bell and whistle. It doesn't matter that you can list ten reasons for why this person doesn't deserve even your memory, without batting an eyelid. It matters even less that your friends are wincing at just how many times he/she shuts you down. And should this person make a gesture that only technically, after really having searched for it, qualifies as a nice thing, to you it's the equivalent of a kitten and a puppy baby, a kittuppy! You can't remember why you even considered considering cutting this person out of your life. Until he/she does it again.

Are these people walking genital warts? I don't think so. Are they awesomeness-incarnate? Nope, that they're not. It's what we ascribe to them that makes them so irreplaceable. And when you figure what that is, this person begins to unravel before your eyes. And suddenly it's blindingly clear that this person is just another person. And you were here before him/her and you will continue to be here now that he/she is gone.

That is closure.

Need. Air. Now.

2009-06-06T02:07:00.000-07:00

In my observations of human behaviour (which generally involves watching friends through the comforting haze of beer and then extrapolating the conclusions to cover the whole of humanity - yep, it's a science), people derive almost sexual pleasure from knowing they have friends in common. There's gasping, impassioned name-calling, heavy breathing and such other excited noises.

I used to understand this peculiar behaviour once. Who doesn't like a good co-incidence to break the drudgery of the day? Noone likes to turn down a 'What?! Really?!' moment. But once, thanks to Facebook, BMM, a suffocatingly small media industry and overzealous Contact Whores, knowing people in common becomes the rule rather than the exception, I'd expect the thrill would wear thin. Not so.

As for me, I've come to dread this particular strain of conversation. EVERYBODY knows EVERYBODY. It used to be that you could just hang with another group to escape hearing the same anecdotes, the same names, the same thoughts. Now you must physically saddle up and ride out of town to find people who haven't heard of you or 'know your second cousin from your Mama's side, what a slut she is!'

I remember my Junior college self and how I longed to be on backslapping terms with everyone. It's funny how you can hate the things you think you want most. Now I just want to stop people when I sense they're about to know someone I know.

'NO.'
'No what?'
'No you don't!'
'No I don't what?'
'No you don't. Want to order the um, platter?'

Life's a clown.

Do you think that maybe?

2009-06-04T12:22:00.000-07:00

Our biological clocks are bitterly divorced from our psychological clocks?

If English were a brothel, 'I Love You' would be its most hard-working trick? Costs almost nothing, takes instructions and is dead in the eyes.

Euphemistically speaking, we're all assholes?

Life should keep its lemons and hand you a stiff drink instead?

Billy Joel had the right idea?

Panic is a necessary precursor to the best things to happen to us?

That the power of speech would be more apt in reverse? As you grow and your mind gets more sophisticated (baseless claim, I know) you need words to get you by, less and less?

This blog has run its course?

I do.

I'd like one sense of humour to go, thankyou.

2009-06-01T14:37:00.001-07:00

I've lost the funny, I have. I'm just not funny anymore.

I say things and I think "Well, that's not funny. Did you mean it to be funny? Because it's not. It's unfunny and tedious and practised and you should just stop talking."

I am finally that person I have feared I would some day become - A funny sounding person who suspects, and is joined by a great many in this suspicion, that she is not really funny. She falls just short of hitting the spot. Every single time.

I'm actually talking about being unfunny. Now a naturally funny person would not have to talk about being or not. It would just be something she did or didn't do.

If I had a dime for every time I said the word 'funny' here, I would BUY a sense of humour.

You see what I mean? Do you think this is how Russel Peters feels?

2009-05-31T10:36:00.000-07:00

You know how everybody keeps saying Hrithik Roshan dances like a dream? Whose dream does he dance like? No no I should really like to know. Who dreams of what is essentially one big human bicep with unnecessarily long appendages, doing what is essentially hectic slithering, whose eleventh finger you keep catching glimpses of, every third frame or so?

We need to rethink our phraseology.

It was lovely, it was awful.

2009-05-26T02:57:00.000-07:00

I do not know when or how I turned so nocturnal but the trappings came early. I started pushing 1am long before I was out of school and by the time college came around, 3am had become the norm. Being employed caused a lapse in the sleep pattern but not for long. Currently I am pushing 5am everyday and even then, I have to talk myself to sleep. Waking up late comes with its set of pangs but I feel like I am rarely able to be of much use during the day. It's too bright, it's too noisy, the mind cannot latch onto a single focal point.

At night I'm a better version of myself. I start to look better, the anecdotes seem to assume colour, the punch lines come easier and the cogs suddenly loose and fall out and the wheels begin to whirr with soothing steadyness. At night I always feel closer to the person I imagine I'm trying to be.

And yet the nights are always much too short, the half hours pass feverishly and before I know it daytime has begun to make itself known. In those moments when it begins to get light again, the feeling is strangely calming. To know you're privy to the experience of the night jerkily making its way out as daylight replaces it irreverently. But there is also panic. A sense of futility, the world suddenly seeming like one big inside joke that try as you might, you just can't get. They'll reference purpose and meaning and 5 year plans and discipline with self-congratulatory smiles and all you're thinking is 'Christ, any minute now, the punchline." It doesn't come and you call it a day.

Does it matter?

2009-05-22T12:10:00.000-07:00

No.

Enjambment.

2009-05-16T11:40:00.000-07:00

There are no neat lines, no end stops, no numbers, no symmetry. Only minutes melting into minutes and sleep into wakefulness into sleep again. Pondering too much by half and feeling too little by half. Forgotten characters coming back to play leading roles in one big mental epic. Fact and horror fiction bearing uncanny resemblance. And new voices subsiding to a distant general buzz.

It's Just a Ride

2009-05-11T00:30:00.000-07:00

You know I'm often asked why I'm so apathetic towards my own life. "Why don't you have a bigger reaction?" "I'm sorry, is this not bothering you?" "How could you just let that go?"

And I want to be cool and say I'm laconic because I'm above it all. Not true. Because hey, not having things go the way you picture them in your head, no matter how limited and skewed that picture is, makes anybody smart. I'm no different. To a point. After that point has been reached - it generally takes lots of swallowing to keep the bile down, mental cursing and a quick call to my friend Parge - it passes and then I'm above it. And cool. And laconic.

Because you see, in the bigger scheme of things, it doesn't matter. Because time is more potent than any of this. And over the days, it stretches every memory, every experience like a rubber band till one day that band is so taut, it gives and it's over. When you wake up one morning and realise you've forgotten your ex's phone number. That's time. When you realise 'your song' has gone back to being 'a song'. That's time. When you realise you don't feel bitter the person is happy and you don't feel pleased if the person is sad. That's time right there. And it works like that for everything - divorce, death, getting fired, getting rejected, getting fat - without exception. Isn't that a wonderful constant to have?

So when you have made your peace with the fact that everything, good and bad, passes eventually, you figure why not start being okay sooner? Time's got enough work on hand with all those emotionally-constipated people who just. won't. let. it go.

That said, I know people who read 'Laconic' as 'Pushover'. These people are, and I quote someone I can't remember here, 'mediocre at best and suffused with feelings of entitlement.' This lot is a complete waste of time and space, sullying the gene pool one hyper-sensitive, neurotic second at a time and should be lined up and shot at close range with a BB gun so it hurts like a bitch and they don't even get to die afterwards. Them and those fucking Zoozoos.

And since it turned out to be the weekend of Bill Hicks, I'll let him end this post for me.

"The world is like a ride at an amusement park. It goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it’s very brightly coloured and it’s very loud and it’s fun, for a while.

Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question, is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, “Hey - don’t worry, don’t be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride…” And we… kill those people. Ha ha “Shut him up.” “We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up. Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This just has to be real.” It’s just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok.

But it doesn’t matter because: It’s just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It’s only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one. Here’s what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defences each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace. Thank you very much, you’ve been great.”

Jeezus God!

2009-05-05T07:58:00.000-07:00

I'm struggling to not shut down. When the mind is put through these levels of ridiculousness, it just wants to self-preserve and collapse in on itself. I'm trying my best to avoid house-of-card analogies here because cliches must be reserved for more deserving occasions like death. Or the annual family get together. This would be a golden time to do some actual writing if it weren't for these blasted exams that I can't, for the life of me, remember why I'm taking. I write best when I'm fucked up. True story. Misery breeds creativity and wotsits.

At this point the only thing that would make me feel better is a really cruel joke at someone else's expense (Yeah tried Dlisted. No, not cruel enough) or unholy amounts of whiskey and a one way ticket to The Fuck Out of Here.