Aint nobody be pooping in my pot

'Babe, are we having a Christmas party this year?'

'Yep, of course we are.'

'Um, really? After last year?'

'Especially after last year,' I stretched out my legs from my position on the couch and smirked satisfactorily.

Christmas last year:

House guest: Hi where's your bathroom?

Me: go out the backdoor, through the backyard, then let yourself out the backyard gate, then head left along the field fence, then when you reach the opening, turn right into the football fields, walk thirty paces straight ahead, when you reach a copse of five deciduous trees and seven coniferous trees, count the third tree from the north and underneath you shall find a hole dug for your defecatory purposes.

Houseguest:


...

This year:

'Well, whose coming to the party?'

'You, me, and the cat.' I popped a pretzel in my mouth and listened to it crunch contentedly.

Just a Little Bit Tarnished

Me: You notice I've been wearing the first necklace you gave me everyday.
Him: Oh, I thought you didn't like wearing necklaces.
Me: Then why did you get it for me?
Him: I knew you would wear it.
Me: But you didn't notice me wearing it.
Him: Nope.


Never try to make sense of love.

323

And again, it's a beautiful day. I just want to say that I have been opening each and every day (still) by observing that it's a beautiful day.  Despite the general existential sense of disintegration and epistemological dissonance, externally and quite personally, somehow through it all I can still come out and tell myself it's a beautiful day. Even in heartbreak, calamity, destruction, bereavement, maybe this is the ruler we actually use to measure our status of survival.

"How to Choose a Husband"

"How to Choose a Husband; or, All is Not Gold that Glitters. An Eastern Tale" (23 February 1850)

Zeila and Amedan are blessed by a good marriage because Amedan doesn't surround Zeila with guards "as was the custom of his country". But Zeila is bored with her man and confides in an old woman from a nearby village that her husband "'has no brilliancy; there is such a sameness in his character that it makes me die of ennui', he never rises above the generality of men, nor do I ever hear him praised for his talents or his wit... I perceive with grief that my husband will never make a figure in the world'". The old woman uses a magic mirror to display various men who might excite Zeila. Predictably, Zeila decides after all that Amadan has "the only qualities that can ensure the happiness of a wife - kindness, delicacy of mind, implicit confidence ... and good common sense - a treasure far more precious, and which is daily becoming more rare, than great or splendid talents" . Thus the tale praises righteousness, simplicity, and humility in a husband, qualities inherent in the average "unexceptional" partner. 

Contentment

Sitting here alone with the blue sky and white clouds, autumnal winds blowing, and the sun shining on my head, whilst really great music is playing and keeping me and the elements company. Despite the context of the song playing and the very state of being up here watching the tips of the evergreens alone, I'm smiling.

TBT: 5 Years Ago Today...

Palindrome

I’ve sat for an hour trying to write a poem. And it goes without saying – for it’s been already been said – that it just hasn’t come. Oh, I had one, ready to fly off my pen when I put it to paper – on week ago. Now I’ve got flickers of what it was, random words that were the structure of what it was supposed to be, but no poem. In one week, where did my poem go? In one week, how did so much change? Not in just one week only – in a day, an hour, a blink of an eye – when the change happened, even I do not know. How is it possible? Words want to put this experience in record, a memorial of some sort, but the experience itself defies expression.

I sit here alone. Surrounded by crowds, all going this way and that, on their business, and all I can think is of that over clichéd saying about the world and that one person. That one person who becomes your entire world. It is very scary. It’s the scariest feeling in the world – because you know once you let it happen, the second you lose them – that’s it. It. Poof. Bam. Ow.

Just thinking about it, it gives me shivers. Butterflies. Cold hands. I’m scared. I admit it. For all my bluster and bravado about love being nonsense, and marriage a sham, I confess ( I confess!) it’s only that – a sham of its own. Bluster and bravado. My shield of some sort. I don’t know. I guess you tend to want to, try to, need to, protect the very thing most close to heart. In my case, it’s exactly that – my heart.

I am scared. Because I know that if I let myself go, I will keep falling. I know, I know, I need to learn to bungee jump. And there I go again, my humour; what’s with that, right? Is it another self-constructed defence? I suppose, but then again, I do believe you’ve got to laugh at yourself first. It’s what I do. When I slip on ice and land on my glutes in public, yeah, I laugh! So do I take a page from my own book, and learn something? Fall, laugh? Fall, laugh!

No, I’m still scared. Maybe more than ever.

Tell me, does this love at first sight thing really happen? I believe in it. But believing in something, and it occurring to you, they’re really different things. When it happens if?) you go, “Wow.”, you go, “Whoa.”, you might go, “Watda?!” Well, I believe in it, but what I want to know is, how do you KNOW? Seriously, not fooling yourself into believing it’s what you wish it would be- how do you know? That’s the scary part.

Now, you’re going to want to know why I believe in such a thing, right. I may as well believe in Santa Clause, right? (Well, for your information, I do. Ha!). Ok. Love at first sight. Not infatuation, not lust, not eye candy. Love at first sight. Why? Because I do. Why do I do? Because, simply, I believe in soulmates. I do! I’ve wrote about this before. I believe someone has got that missing part of you out there, the muniute you meet, you feel something. Like a piece that’s clicked back in place. And you sort of don’t know why. It’s just one of those things that are beyond reason. You might know why. You might know sooner or later. But the feeling itself, damn, beyond explanation. The hard part is knowing for sure. Because you’re going to have been wrong that many times before.

I guess I've just got to find out.                   

Lectures To Self

NEVER depend on someone else to heal and complete you - you will always be left heartbroken.

If you feel that there is a part of you that is broken, or a part of you that is missing, that crack and that hole can only be perfectly replaced by what it originated of: yourself.

Yes. You will meet someone who feels like they complete you. And you will feel that way, until you realize they don't. They can't. The only you that can be you, is you.

Yes. You feel better with the friendship and love of others. That is the point of said relationships; they give you the opportunity to recognize yourself in how others see you, by their words, actions and behaviour.  What they are giving you is not completion but an opportunity.

That opportunity is how you make yourself become your best you. They will laugh at something you say, making you feel amazing because you're funny. They will give you a hug, and you will feel a sense of belonging. Yes, you belong in this earth with all of us. They will give you attitude, rudeness, anger and reprobation. You will feel hurt, angry, offended, vengeful. Thats OK. That's fine. Youre feeling. But these are still opportunities, even when it's a bit harder to see through the dimming fog of these emotions. It will take some practise, but even here you can wipe the condensation of the glass, and seek that reflection that will tell you if you like what you see - not them, but yourself.

More significantly, you will fall in love and you will fall and hurt. Again, and again. There is something wrong with all these people you are falling for, right? Maybe. But more likely, this too is the opportunity for you to recognize what is happening to yourself, how you are feeling and how you are behaving. And this way you will actually discover how much potential you possess to rise up.

When you're down, its hard to make sense of all this. When you're hurt it is difficult to even see. When you're depressed, the last thing you want to do is really look in the mirror.

So break it.

Smash it to pieces. Stomp it to smithereens. Dropkick it. Powerbomb it.

That was you. All that's left is dust.

But you're still there. Looking at that dust. So who are you?

You be whoever you want to be.

But never let someone else be the one to break your mirror. And never ever expect anyone else to be the one to save you. They will help you on your way. They will stand by you even through it all. They will give you all the inspiration, hope, love and fulfillment you think you could ever wish for. But always remember that they're only there for you because you're you. They aren't you.

And if you realize that you're the only one who can fulfill you, you will truly never be alone. People don't like being depended on day in day out for hand patting, back rubbing, self-esteem caressing, no really. It becomes a chore. Who wants to be someone's emotional janitor? Love is meant for living in today, with the I scratch your back you scratch mine mutual agreement, knowing that you're secure in becoming a better person for yourself first and therefore for whomever else.

That's the 'gift that keeps on giving.'  You're going to discover that dust just keeps on coming back together again, and if you look close enough even the tiny glitches in the glass start looking really sexy.

#465134

It came down to wearing the thicker black or lighter olive green. When I don the olive, that's when I am in my true element. 

It means the weather isn't that briskly cold as yet, that the caresses of breezes along the collarbones - even wrapping around the waist as buttoning hasn't yet been enforced - is permitted. That is when the winds swirl upward and outward, taking with it the long tendrils of my hair, bestowing Medusa-esque powers, if only in appearances.  This Medusa's antipathy for the mortal man is only a fluid and shifting one, never at any one time truly palpable. The snakes hiss in ecstasy of exposure to the intertwining of  all elements and seasons at once; perhaps they have summoned them through the mind they are interconnected to.

Today was an olive green day.

Soar

As much as I strive to absorb all the knowledge that is out there, however much as I revel in how this knowledge makes me here with my feet on the earth, the more I learn the more I realize that there is that one thing I could never really know: the measure of 'how much' there is to love. Even the oceans start and end. Even the sky starts here on this very earth and expands to a certain distances above before it ends. But this...even I don't know how to start to comprehend it, I don't know where to place the ruler to its beginning - how could I know where the end is?

Day 308

Maybe I jinxed myself when I related to doing just that in yesterday's post, because I ended up doing just that. Not the same context but still that, "Oh no, come back!" belatedly grasping onto the email last sent.

Hate when that happens.


It is again a beautiful day. I have a whole cartload of work piled up and I am right at this moment lost in a splendiferous mellow daze upon a cloud of floaty buoyed up by really great music. There is something to be said about not choosing your music yourself and letting yourself hand over the reins to another entity, even if it is a robot or radio. Funnily, I am not too worried about the cartload. It actually accentuates my sense of contentment not just by contrast but as an additive.

Day 307

Of course today had to be such a gorgeous day. I'm totally in love with November's weather right now, even though this comes with the knowledge that winter is ever-approaching, sitting on the sidelines just biding its time, letting everyone get warmed and toasted with this gorgeous summer-like autumn. 

There was a story on the front page of the paper today about this womangirl who decided to propose to her boyfriend and wrote an email discussing her plans to her best friend and inadvertently cc'd the email to her said boyfriend without realizing what she did until he brought it up later in the evening at which she screamed and ran out of the room mortified. 

It's certainly not your typical stop-the-press type of news; nothing about plane crashes, poverty, nor new prime ministers, but the story made my day because that's totally what I would do, including the screaming and running out of the room.

Or maybe it's nice to know that love can still make the headlines.

Regression Analysis

Honestly, I was on my way to setting a world record. I really thought so. I hadn't cried in a few weeks. And after the hurricane (no, the intensely personal one preceding Patricia) I was adamant that I would remain affixed in my nonchalant and cheery facade for reason that by continued upkeep it would become the true thing. But then today out of nowhere, it had to happen.

I was doing the damn dishes, and the kettle was on, and I was singing as one does while doing chores (I just sidestepped using 'choring' ahem). To be fair, I don't really pay attention to what I'm singing, because after all it is an absentminded thing. Then it hit me as I was singing 'kyun koi paas hai, door hai' that I was singing that goddamn Dooriyan breakup song from Love Aajkal. And I was crying. Wth.

So I shut my mouth for awhile. Then somehow it starts up again, this time singing Main Tainu Samjhawan. And then I had to throw the damn sponge down and go sob to myself. My cat was like, wtf? This again? Human you are screwed.

I'm writing this to make it separate and not an unexplored part of me. And to make fun of myself in my throes of deep unmitigated anguish. Personal catharsis.

In other news, the weather is just gone bonkers today, in a totally good way. Its revolving around the four seasons every hour. Bright sunshine. Dark gloomy spalls of rain. Cold windy dropzones with suspicious white precipitation and mild moments of sun and cloud. Five million threads of subtext happening in this post. I'll quit while I'm ahead.

Patricia decided to have an affair with the arctic winds today, and thats what I woke up to. Thunder and darkness. Thunder, yes I love. Mornings that are dark, no thank you. That's just the reminder I need that winter is not that far away. The goddamn darkness! Dark mornings, dark afternoons. GROAN.

And my umbrella broke. My beautiful Burberry umbrella that matches my Burberry scarf. Seriously, Patricia, you could have ransacked a warehouse instead of my umbrella. Now my scarf is lonely.

I muttered, moaned and cursed a lot today. Sorta. I mean, more than I usually do. I'm still nice. But really really whipping cold winds that make me defy gravity and rains that soak me to the skin are not user-friendly.

The irony is that of course me being the hopeless romantic, I used to argue that walking in the rain is, no really, so fun! And now. I can't argue with you. You're not here.

Rain makes me morose and depressed. Sorry. This kind of rain. What was I thinking when I thought it would be a great idea to write about my day?

Oh. Actually, there was something nice. The rain stopped.

And then it wasn't so dark.

And then I was walking over this super lush vivid green field, glowing with verdant 'cause it just got a super watershake to glug all day.

And the leaves were on the grass. And they were yellow and they were red.

And it was twilight and the sky was sort of glowing like a pink grapefruit with its greying blue dolphin backdrop.

And OK.

It was beautiful.

Meowthematics

Déjà Vecu

Watch when this girl goes back in time to meet her ten-year-younger self who gives her the lecture of a lifetime she forgot she ever gave and needed.

Live to Love - Back To The Future

Speechless.

Bereft

I hid in darkness for fear of tainting the world with my poison for as long as I could. I felt it almost tangibly, a black inkiness extending its tentacles glibly and fluidly in all dimensions, temporal and spatial. The hooks embedded inside of me tugged me apart violently yet still holding me together. Pain had no realm, dancing over physical and emotional and blurring the lines so much I no longer felt the pain because of the sheer numbing agony.

There were too many people who cared. Who shook their heads sadly. Offering tissues. I don't need help.

I have gotten off the train before its left behind the past for too long, just so I dont break down in the crushing claustrophia of the scant crowds. It didn't matter if it was one or a thousand. It was too much. Instead, I walked the two hour commute back, lost and rambling, and in the newly arrived cold.

A child patting my hand to tell me it's OK only reminds me of the child we have lost. It's not safe to talk to strangers I tell her with my eyes. She's just learnt to walk, how has she leant to decipher pain?

Small steps, he said. Small steps. But I've fallen. I'm down. I'm walking. But where is home?

Thanksgiving Love Letter

A few posts ago, I wrote about being my own hero. I still stand by that - maybe more than ever. The thing is, I didn't count on the cavalry stampeding in.

I wasn't looted or ravaged (well...ahem...not quite). I was doing a good job of that myself, emotionally speaking. No: the cavalry stampeded in to my rescue.

Said cavalry is enumerated briefly by certain best friends (autocorrect+sloppy fingers made that butt fiends, which is also sort of correct). Not many. Not even a hand - and I am quite seriously including my cat to this list.

However small their number though, their force is legion.

To be sure, by dint of their very positions as bffs, it could just as well said to be a protracted outcome of my very selfsame heroism. Cuz, theyre my best friends cuz like I'm so totally cool right. (Should clarification be required, that was not a question. At all.) So, just by my awesomeness I perpetuated my own personal saving by cavalry therefore I am still my own hero. (Don't argue. Close your mouth. More on this later.)

There are three of you, plus my cat. And my cat is sleeping on the notebook I originally started writing this love letter upon which she settled very meaningfully: human, you give me all thy love, screw the others.

I actually sent a very cheesy ecard to thank one of you. Apparently it didn't go through or something, so yeah, if you didn't get it that was you.

Really though. Thank you. I still stand by being my own hero, but I also really do have some other heroes I never implicitly asked for and who really actually inspire me. Because, if you have to put up with me.....geez, you're a star.

My own star might fade today or tomorrow, or in the next 30 years, but in the last several days especially...well, if I have ever needed hope, it isn't as far off as I might think. In each moment I've been able to laugh, or make someone laugh, or share a thought that is so amazingly understood without further discourse, or engage in really weird languages and conversations, or to bother the next person's sleep and boss them around, or threaten to punch the light out of your boss, or kiss your warm, soft tummy....( THAT ONE WAS FOR MY CAT, LOSERS). These are instances right there that each moment, as miserable and dementingly depressed I think it is, is still being lived. Hallmark card dorkiness, I know! But trust me its the tip of the... tip of the iceberg of love I feel, and I really could never express how much love I feel in my heart so will thereby refrain from doing so herein.

Thank you bums for being my Justice League.

With love and hugs and OK enough now get lost, ugh.

Poem of the Day: Longfellow - Endymion

Endymion
(Ballads and Other Poems 1842)


The rising moon has hid the stars;
Her level rays, like golden bars,
   Lie on the landscape green,
   With shadows brown between.

And silver white the river gleams,
As if Diana, in her dreams
   Had dropt her silver bow
   Upon the meadows low.

On such a tranquil night as this,
She woke Endymion with a kiss,
   When, sleeping in the grove,
   He dreamed not of her love.

Like Dian's kiss, unasked, unsought,
Love gives itself, but is not bought;
   Nor voice, nor sound betrays
   Its deep, impassioned gaze.

It comes,--the beautiful, the free,
The crown of all humanity,--
   In silence and alone
   To seek the elected one.

It lifts the boughs, whose shadows deep
Are Life's oblivion, the soul's sleep,
   And kisses the closed eyes
   Of him who slumbering lies.

O weary hearts! O slumbering eyes!
O drooping souls, whose destinies
   Are fraught with fear and pain,
   Ye shall be loved again!

No one is so accursed by fate,
No one so utterly desolate,
   But some heart, though unknown,
   Responds unto his own.

Responds,--as if with unseen wings,
An angel touched its quivering strings;
   And whispers, in its song,
   "Where hast thou stayed so long?"

Lucubration

Today, I randomly pulled out one of my many old notebooks. It was one where I would write down pieces or excerpts from whatever I was reading at that time, and is about ten years old.

Passage therefrom:

"She was so lucky. So few people really had the love of their lives with them. Most people yearned for lost chances. For opportunities missed. It would be a stupid woman who would give away one moment of this time by fretting and agonizing and trying to redefine the past"

(The Glass Lake, Maeve Binchy)

tbt: 5 Years Ago...

Thursday, October 07, 2010 Sprig

SUNSHINEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
After such a long long time, I've been infected with the sunshine bug! It feels so great, I honestly can't describe this feeling. Despite everything else that may be pulling me down and around and around, there it is, me living through it all
I miss those good old days, everyone used to call me Sunshine ehehe just hearing it being called from far and around the corner and everything, it was like my new name, it replaced my name. Just got a dose of flashback - I miss it, but like someone who was one of the best friends I had, for however short that time - it's up to me to live it, now! A whole bunch of songs from Aashayein are playing and all of a sudden, it's like a butterfly flying around me and then finally landing and its like CLICK its back home where it belongs.

For however short this feeling lasts, at least I'll have it down for record.

Originally posted at Lucid Iridescence.

Caryatid

Love: a feeling, promise, or contract?

At the very simplest form, we understand love to be a feeling. What else is love if it weren’t for feelings; what is felt; experienced?

But it isn’t just quite that exactly. The feelings itself is exclusive to the other party: it’s all about the personal experience even if stimulated by an externalizing factor.

As a promise, love takes a step up: it could be still purely personal and isolated in giving all to the sentiments of the feeling, but more often than not this signifies a transfer of something from one to another.

And yet a promise - could that also be a contract? A contract implies an agreement between two (or more) parties, and somehow there is something being exchanged – a two-way connection is developed.

But what happens when circumstances alter the very entity of that love? When things cannot be the same, when the exchange of that something isn’t exactly as dynamic as it once was? Is that still love?

Does love mean you abide and adhere to that something no matter what? That you hang on just because of something that existed in the past, and in anticipation of a tomorrow that would provide rational for simply hanging on today?

But what if every today keeps adding up, and soon all the weight of the past todays accumulated suddenly outweigh what once used to be the past? What if every today is hanging on, alone?

Suddenly this contract, be it signed in blood or tears, seems null and void. Even promises break. Feelings disperse. Even blood and tears dissipate into nothingness once again. Maybe love does too.

Perfer et Obdura....

The thing is, I forget that I'm my own hero.

I kept falling and kept having to eventually -after the period of laughing at myself while down - pick myself up again each time. Even if I got hurt, I had to heal. But somehow the very fact that I was always my own doctor cut open a wound of itself. A wound that maybe was always there for various traumatic reasons, but it widened and became more raw and festering each time I healed myself. I feel it right now; sometimes it is deep, deep inside, sometimes it's the very physical ache in my bones, or the way my chest tightens in a pain that is like having a metal vise around me. But the wound is always there.

Even still, I realize now that subconsciously I feel that the girl I was in the past was weaker and today somehow I am stronger to her. Maybe simply because I have endured this wound to date, and the latent knowledge of everything I have gone through has made me therefore better equipped by the very fact of existence. 

But the funniest thing is that today I went back in time. And all of a sudden I was looking at this beautiful, happy, cheerful, positive, and err, cheesy bundle of joy -- and she was me. She was me.

But I look at that me: I was so happy. And yet that was a time in my life when I literally had nothing.

And I wonder, who was this girl who had so much courage? Was she really so brave, so hopeful? -- Or was she delusional?

I mean, this was right at the edge of a period where I was in a pit so deep and dark, it wasn't even a pit anymore. I was buried under the fragments of my life, and it was as if all the physical world was the burden of rubble atop me. I had nothing and no one. But I had myself.

I still had myself. And I dug out. I climbed out. Suffocating. Blind. Reincarnated. I lived again.

But being myself meant that I was the me that still had that everlasting wound. That wound was me. It festered in my old life, and it threw me into freefall.

Yet it also taught me to fly.

Today I find it so much harder to be that brave girl who could be so happy in the darkest of times. The irony is that I am not alone in the personal sense and yet in this knowledge I am so much more. 

When I was in high-school, my motto was staunchly 'expectation is the cause of disappointment'. This was my internal warning  to prevent any collision. Yet being human, how it could it have ever be prevented except in a vacuum? In university, the dude who eventually became my best friend told me that for the first year before our actual mutual acquaintancy, he had this certain impression of me because of the way I did what I had to do without any nonsense - studied, classed, worked out, socialized politely yet aloofly - and that I was some kickass tough girl. But really I was just trying hard not to give a damn lest I get hurt (again). But of course, I gave a damn.

Do I regret it? I'm not sure I do. In fact, I'm pretty damn sure I don't. I've gone through so many cycles of heartbreak and despair that counting is just nonviable. In each of these experiences the crux is not what I've learnt from them, but rather what I have learnt of myself.

Just for some context, right now my heart is broken over giving a damn - a bit too much of a damn - over someone who says they also do but their actions and words signify otherwise. To be honest, it actually is not their fault - yet it is.

But this time, I'm not going to let my heartbreak break me, or even define me. It's a tough battle because I want them to see and understand that I am not alright: that I am hurting and I am hurting because of them. And yet, I want to be strong - and if that is what they see they will find some solace in knowing that despite their actions and their behaviour, it's OK, that I am and will be OK.

But you know what? It's not OK. I'm not OK.  However, a person who actually cares will know, or make an effort to really know, even if I seem OK. 

I look back at the happy girl I was, even when I was the saddest girl inside, and it's me who really knows. 

So dudes and dudettes, there is no holding back. I am my own hero. 

All I have to do is look back at who I was and I inspire myself, to continue to be inspiring to the girl I will be.

Because I am my own hero.

Grief

What do you do when the one you thought was your lifelong companion forsakes you? Had swept away without a backward glance, dropping you like a fragile glass to smash into infinites shards, and in leaving you behind, trods upon everything that once was: hope, honour, dignity, consolation, love.

When you are left with echoes of your own voice calling and calling them, only to return to you empty and cold...what do you do?

When this love that once filled every thing so much that gold could not outweigh its riches, why now do I feel like a homeless begger sitting on the street, craving, hungry and thirsty for one ounce of your notice?

Originally posted on my private personal blog on Friday, 21 August 2015. Re-posted with my own heart's permission. 

Si vis pacem, para bellum

Like most people, there are two sides of me, generally speaking. The nice side and the not-so-nice.  The ideal is usually to remain on the path of goodness, therefore the 'nice side' is what we should strive for. Kindness, forgiveness, altruism.

But what if we're wrong?

We've got this 'bad angel' and 'good angel' on either of our shoulders respectively, guiding us to good or goading us to evil. And we assume the good is telling us to be self-effacing and turn the other cheek. But really, what if we've all got it mixed up?

Suppose being good was really a device of the devil - to make us weak, reliant on others through our dependency of our good acts toward them. What if each time we hold a door open for another creature, the army of 'good angels' are groaning, because they know that we are succumbing to the manipulations of a very well-executed plan of action by the spawn of hell.

What if the good angel is the one actually telling us to not move over and give your seat to the next dude, and is telling us to just tell the fellow to fecking find another seat because there are lots of them all over the damn bus? Because we got to put our feet down and do unto others as we ought to because everyone is goddamn different.

I'm not even going to elaborate. I'm just going to leave this here to chew on.

Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris

We love to be miserable. Not really: we actually tell each other, and ourselves, it's miserable being miserable, but that's the point: we're only adding to that state of what we love.

Misery, melancholy, sadness, tragedy - why is it so much more meaningful to us to be within these states of minds, as opposed to being happy or fine or just in a good mood? The latter are so much more transient and we acknowledge that they aren't likely to last before the former comes back. And yet, it is our self-professed ambition to achieve the latter.

But really, we kinda revel in being miserable. It's a channel of its own where we can express whatever negative energies in an act that is actually an expenditure. Through the act of synthesizing these energies we achieve paradise through catharsis.

If we don't have this up and down motion, we don't feel like we're moving. The dynamics of emotion remind us that we are alive.

Selfie Improvements

Lately we've become all the more preoccupied by the superficial. So much that we've sort of lost touch with who we really are. Sure, there are all the more articles, slideshows, and hey, blogs, devoted toward the proliferating topic of self-improvements,  but this too has only been a contributing factor to our loss of identity.

We are surfing upon the surface of survival - and one tactic of this is to avoid delving too deep lest we are not able to resurface. Our musculature has atrophied in the process, not exercised in the processes of the act. Similarly our synapses, our neurons has not been taxed with the red-zone activity of 'over-thinking'.

The process of self-development is sadly undermined now by the advancement of our identity as demanded by society and culture, furthermore infiltrated into our very subconscious by technology.

We devote more time to creating the 'perfect' selfie - and not for individual purposes: the whole point of taking selfies is to publish on various social media instrumental in putting forward ourselves as a subject for interpretation by society. And it is on this very basis that we recalibrate our very image of ourselves in our eyes.

Is it any wonder that we're now a collection of instability? Teetering on the edge of tools which could take us forward if used correctly, these same tools are those which will make or break us. But we're more likely to break; and are in the process of breaking. There are cracks around the mirrors that we try to cover up with snapshots of better created artifices, or smooth over with anti-wrinkling ointments (or better yet, photoshop). But at the same time, we have this internal struggle to reconcile the person we might actually be inside to the person we try to be as demanded by external expectations.  We assimilate these expectations so much into our very psyche that they have superimposed upon our original ideas of identity.

Our self-esteem is tenuous. Even those of us who aver we don't give a rat's tail about what society thinks of us are not immune. The toughest facade really has grown so due to necessity. The way a person blinks at us, or smiles at us, or walks past us without another glance makes something underneath, even insubstantial or subconsciously, quiver. When we look at ourselves in the mirror, we see what needs improvement or what is to be admired after improvements and through other people's eyes. Underneath this skin, we don't really know who we are.

Sorrows of Stagnation

I dread that sensation of waking up with that deeply rooted sense of dread. And it usually happens when the days have settled into mundane routine. When the new things have lost their shine and the permeated odour of freshness has become stale.

Things have sucked for a long time, and as you can probably tell, I refuse to let them remain so. I mean, things can suck in context, but I am determined to let my perception similarly cloud and distort. If things aren't new, maybe I just gotta infuse that newness into the day myself. Even if I have to kickbox it in.

Vemödalen

Why spend money on botox and also spend money on eradicating household pests - just get yourself bitten by a spider on your goddamn lips already.

Why feast like a glutton on junk food and more calories than is needed per meal and also spend on gym membership?

Why poison yourself with tonnes of chemicals - pesticides, preservatives  - only to have to spend just as much, and more, on more chemicals - prescriptions, pharmaceuticals - to counteract the effects.

I find myself perplexed by the ignominious state we have deluded ourselves into as a species. We waste so much. We buy into this whole practice of what makes us this modernized society and yet, we have in the very same process sold ourselves short. 

Once it was money that really demarcated the disparity in class heirarchy. Either you had way too much or you had none, and if you were in between - which most of us were - you still compared your dollar to your neighbour and resented or gloated. To truly and honestly not care about the weight of a dollar you had to either have too much or none. 

Now, it's technology that  becomes a telling identifier. It has, by the same means of furthering our society as a whole in the name of progress, simultaneously dumbified its individuals.

We don't think anymore. Like really think. Now computers think for us. We just take what we are given and recycle-reuse-reduce it even further. We repackage what has trickled down to us through osmosis, and wait for our recognition and praise for doing so.

Maybe technology only heightens this; maybe we've always done this, and are no more than glorified hairless monkeys that only do as we see. Maybe imitation is all we are capable of, and to rise above is an escape from a cycle of the mundane to a state of intellectual nirvana. We've invented this thing, and patted our own backs, but at the same time we collude at the other corner of the room to send us right back to where we began. 

We've become so less efficient and so bloody lazy.  We've become hostages to our own lack of will-power. Slaves to those seven masters - wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony - who we thought that by just identifying and recognizing them as enemies on the radar we preempted their subcutaneous encroachment into our psyches - and fail to in spades by the consequential lax state of awareness without the diligent vigilance warranted. The smallest dose has already made us too lazy and too unconcerned to make the effort to repair ourselves.

We have the potentiality to go far but we won't. We won't really make a long-lasting flavour of gum because then our buyers won't buy more. We won't create a  tungsten filament that won't break because then our bulbs won't sell as fast. And it's not just at the top. We won't let ourselves have a dollar more because then we won't get social assistance. We're OK with being down there if we just have to work a little less and get smaller income if it means the taxpayers will provide the rest. And we won't create a cure for cancer because, hey then who will buy our medicines and who will pay us doctors for our services? Let's all remain sick! It's okay! We can buy an iPhone that will tell us how to fix our symptoms.

Peripeteia

Yesterday I had a conversation with one of my oldest friends that lasted way into the early hours - way past my usual bedtime anyway.

This is one of my friends who fall into that special category wherein you can not talk/communicate for a lengthy period of time and yet when you do connect, there are no hangups - no recriminations about why didn't you stay in touch, I won't talk to you if you don't, etc. - and it's as if that long period of radio silence had never existed.

Coming after my last post, it seems sort of like I have no idea what I'm talking about. Having no one, being nobody vs. having these kind of friends who know that there is absolutely no chance of being taken for granted, either way of the relationship. But strangely, it's all the same. 

One topic we went over was the corroded mental states we both were experiencing; both similarly disparaged and yet both on two different sides of a coin. One, the state of perpetual loneliness and the aching void that remains yet unfulfilled despite the growing residual feeling of yearning. The other, the agonies of being in a relationship that seems to be fracturing with a multitude of deeply felt problems.  And somehow in the meeting of minds we realized the commonality that there is never a meadow of permanent happiness (chorus: the grass is greener...). 

Happiness is so fleeting. And it is thus because we have made it so. Fleeting indicates the passage of time. And in this day and age everything is so temporally dependent. Time is money etc., etc. But what if we had the ability to live forever? We wouldn't have this embedded calendar of time ticking away, of the grains of sand depleting, of racing to accomplish x number of things by x units of time. Perhaps we would have no need for happiness; contentment would be king. (Or queen, if you prefer.)

If I lived forever, I would know that I had a tomorrow. I would have a tomorrow to wait for if today it could not happen. I could wait for love forever, because there would be no ending in loneliness. And I would have no end of patience. And patience is that which we all need a whole whopping load of.

I can feel my heartbeat slow down, my very breaths calm at the very thought of taking things slowly, at the idea of a forever forever. And yet, why can't I apply the ideal to our specimen of mortality?

Why am I building up these walls of bricks made of instances of time, effectively barricading myself into a cube of claustrophobia? Why am I resenting everything around me with my own conceived and self-constructed perceptions? I don't know. It is like shooting myself in the foot. Then shooting myself in the foot. Then shooting myself in the foot. And blaming everything else that brought me to that moment; without realizing maybe there is something I can be doing differently.  

Again, I don't know. But I've promised myself to put my energies into something productive, and not let them fester and become infected. Maybe if I think hard enough I will discover the way to foreverhood.

Elusive

Those who know me will recognize that I can tend to be elusive - a ghost - for the very purpose of not being known.

There are periods, therefore, where I will be less communicative; I will less likely be around. My absence can indicate some sort of cognitive clouding, a pulling away from opportunities to express what is on my mind, a retraction into myself due to some person disassociation.

Yes, it is true. I, like most people perhaps, attempt to hide my sadness. Whereas I have long dreamt and wished for the fulfillment of having another being to completely satisfy an innate yearning of empathy and compassion, I have simultaneously refrained from opening up as a form of self-preservation.

In the instances where I have mistakenly believed that I had found such a person, my tendency toward self-preservation had been further strengthened by the act of disillusionment; broken trust, a broken heart, the irreparable damage of being left behind, and perhaps somehow worse, the cold apathy experienced in a state of emotional vulnerability.

It is interesting to consider how more generally inclined our psyches are to holding compassion, patience and kindness toward those visibly impaired, whether it be psychological or physical disability. Anecdotal evidence rather proves this. However, why is it that when another being, not so as aforesaid disabled, experiences sorrow, suffering, and general weakness of spirit and mind, our threshold to compassion is so different. The latter soon becomes an emotional liability; to put it simply, putting up with their suffering becomes a pain in the ass.

I am as guilty of this as the next person. I will have been found to have sighed in exasperation and said, 'Get over it, already!' You know you have. But where is the line? That which differentiates a petty bout of complaints versus a long-standing promise to be there, no matter what?

For said reason maybe I hesitate at being that burden. The funny thing is, I have a chronic psychological phobia of being left behind by someone I have invested emotionally in -left behind not just in the physical act, but being displaced cognitively - and yet once I have opened up, that's it, that person's capacity to deal with this not-so-strong, not-so-independent girl evaporates. Catch-22, in a way.

The list of these experiences is longer than anyone could ever know, longer than could be known by even the one person in whom I placed everything, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, personally, on the basis that finally I found the elusive soulmate.

But maybe it's not just elusive. Maybe it just does not exist.

Right now I am broken and still breaking. And I admit this, the girl who would rather die before admit this. But I am already a ghost - unseen, unattended, invisible- after all. 

Fu...d

Eight days into September, I have to slap myself each time I reach for a snack.

Most people, according to folklore, put on the weight in December. Apparently, that's when all the Christmas treats start sprouting, baskets of red and green aluminum-wrapped, snowflake-spangled, silver-lined chocolates become omnipresent, and face-stuffing becomes a form of seasonal substance-abuse. 

I'm..ehhh...not so much a fan of sugary treats. Sure, I relish the occasional chocolate or slice of cake as much as the next dude. But, something about sugary things kind of makes me internally cringe. I don't know what it is; I often get nausea just contemplating a super sweet bite. My teeth hurt. My tongue feels gross. Maybe I'm a Superwoman and sugar is my kryptonite. Yeah, I'm from the planet Glucon/ite, yo. 

Now, give me salty kinda snacks. Did someone say kryptonite? Chips, nachos, popcorn, samosas (SAMOSAAA), fries... Hello, weakness.

I love potatoes. I love pizza. I know, I know: who doesn't?And honestly, for the most part, as those of you who know me will already know, I usually eat pretty healthfully. Like, saladdddddd! Oh yes, that's my other weakness, but that's another story for another day. 

Now. The month of August is my month of shame. As it culminates in the greatest event of humankind in the history of the universe, i.e. MY BIRTHDAY.. Ahem, thank you autocorrect thingy for putting that in capitals. Goes to show how universal that truth is. ... I tend to develop a subconscious tendency toward snacking...profligately. Truly and admittedly, it is a shame.

I try to rationalize the month away by asserting that it was just an experiment to observe the effects of eating food from outside sources daily. In full-disclosure, the girls at each foodstop location knew my order by rote, just at the very sight of me. And in fuller disclosure I evilly tried tripping them up by deciding to change things up and going with different choices. I still got a smiley face drawn on my coffee cup, and still got called love/hun/darling..at least to my face. But to the point, I ate out every single day for a month..

And I'm squidgy. Wth! My abs are gone. My triceps are squishy soft. My thighs!...well thank the Force for stretchable denim.

Even though this wasn't really an experiment, I still have results that tell me that this fastfooding thing sucks. I don't even know what my arteries look like. On second thought, maybe I don't want to know. But now that my month has come ans gone, that's it. No more.

Time to get back in my Superwoman lycra...

Offline

For three months - or more accurately, two - I was off the internet, and it was glorious.

By some stroke of luck, all my personal gadgets cumulatively ceased working, and after some perfunctory attempts at repair, I sat back and decided to let it all go. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't difficult.

Despite all our angst about Change - things changing, people changing, people coming, people going, getting older, life changing - we are remarkably so attuned to the process of habituation that we  often lose out on the experience of actualization, the process itself of transformation, of really noticing what we are becoming.

I was reading actual newspapers. Reading actual, physical, books. So used was I to my tablet's e-reader functionalities that severally I found myself pressing my finger to a word on paper waiting for the browser function to materialize.

I was walking around listening to my surroundings. Sitting and hearing the people around me, or just that sound of outsideness that comes with the act of walking down the street. No longer was I selectively excluding the natural soundtrack with a neverending playlist that went on as soon as I stepped out and went off as soon as I stepped in.

No longer were my eyes diverted to a polygon of illuminated text or graphics that had somehow superimposed itself over the actual vast universe. I revelled again in the swaying of trees, in finding five million variations to the blue of the skies, in experiencing the secrets of the wind on my face without distraction. I watched clouds, counted birds in their flocks, watched ants trek the arduous distance of one foot.

Certainly, I had to use the computer at work, which accounted for 8 hours of a day, but suddenly I had overcome the inexplicable trance that infects us all; that strange urgency to have to stay in touch with x number of people contacts. For the period I relinquished technology I almost simultaneously became a hermit. Yet in this regard I was not exactly lonely. Perhaps that's where the urgency arises - we find import in the communication of others: each text message, email, ping is an instance of verification of our own very existence.

Is it troubling that our very being is thus reliant? Or simply inevitable? I couldn't say; only that for a period of time life became a little less superficial and more easygoing. For whatever it was worth, I had let go of something that until then subconsciously I must have given it permission to make me feel as if it was the thing which had a grip on me.

It was only when I stopped struggling with the withdrawal, accepted being offline, and embraced my surroundings and therein myself, that I made the trip to the electronics store, purchased soldering equipment and set to working fixing my gadgets that I am able to say: hello, I'm back.

Summer or Love

Sometimes I forget that it is summer. I keep waiting, but it's an ambiguous wait. A wait for something that is not yet definitive and without definition remains unfulfilled for the very reason that when it is had it will not be recognized.


Instead, time tiptoes by. The clouds hover low and whisper winds that deny warmth. We hide away in our darkened rooms, backs turned to the glaring brightness of heat outside. We hop tentatively into air conditioned units thwarting away what we spend most of our year craving. And suddenly, we turn it off. We are perplexed to find that we don't need it. That suddenly, summer passed, but it was as if summer never came. The leaves change colour, die, and fall.


What were we waiting for? Why did we not embrace it while it was there? Why did we fix our gazes to our futures and ignore the moment that we actually had? How was it possible that we keep waiting for something that was in a future that we had already trodden on and left in the past?


Everything we are waiting for, maybe we already have it. Maybe it's there and has started before we even knew it begun. Maybe we should stop waiting for something that will never be because in waiting we forget that it is here now.

It's spelt c o l g a t e

I'm at the back of the bus, having just gotten on a few stops ago, when a guy gets on and slams himself into the seat next to me. I  hear a loud "HEY MAN" from him and the other guy who is sitting to my right, and their fists come together uncomfortably in front my face to meet and execute a weird and elorabate bro-type handshake-dance. Which is fine, y'all know each other, great. But it doesn't stop there. They proceed to have a VERY loud conversation across me, involving the exchange of niceties, asking about mutual acquaintances, telling each other about where they're going, what they are studying in school, what they plan to take in university, about their Nike shoes, the colour of their Calvin Klein knockoffs, the size of their mint condition ballers caps with sticker still affixed, what size of pant is best to hang off their kneecaps the proper way, ...the usual crap. Which is...sort of annoying to be in the middle of, but still tolerable. HOWEVER, its not OK. No, it is not. Because the minute they open their mouths, this huge ball of green gas starts evacuating out of them. Morning breath. Horrible disgusting vomit-inducing bad breathe.

I can't help it. I cough. And cough some more. I wave my fingers in the air and wrinkle my nose. I even go as far as holding my nose.  The problem is, that after a week of being sick, the main symptom of which was a stuffy nose wherein I could not smell anything, I was finally getting better. Which would have been a good thing, except I just had to have the luck of sitting between two dudes who did not understand the concept of personal hygeine.

This is a very full bus and if I could have relocated to another seat, or even a space to stand, I would have. Instead, I did what common sense would dictate: I offered to change places with one of them.

"Oh, no! Its OK!" assures the dude to my left.

"No. It's not OK. I dont want to be in the middle of your conversation, with you talking over my face, with your extremely bad breath directed at my face. I think one thing both of you SHOULD be talking about is personal hygeine, learning how to brush your teeth and clean you mouth before leaving the house in the morning, and also perhaps the possibilities of investing in Colgate before Nike or whatever.

Silence.

"Oh. And this is where I say in the lingo you understand: Jus sayin."

Poopy Talk

I find it quite interesting the way we innately are repulsed by the smell of poop. I mean, how does our mind know that it's something yucky? Is it something associated by the nature of it being a waste product? But then, as far back as I can recall, the very smell itself, without knowing what it is (say as a very young child) was always something to go 'Eww' at.

From the outset, sure, the topic itself is something perhaps to 'ew' at. But the reason I am in fact considering it is because, if it's something beyond the logical thought process of concluding that something which is a waste product must be yucky, therefore all qualities associated with it must also be yucky, therefore its smell is yucky, then, well isn't that just so much more interesting?

To wit: that we were actually programmed to be repelled by this waste product. A definitive coding in our system of survival. So, if this is something we're born with, some pre-installed app in our brains to know what is yuck and what is not, then we can postulate that this goes for quite some very many things that guides us to survive.

Poopy smells? Yuck. Smelly burps? Yuck. Burning tar on the roof? Yuck. But why have we been programmed to even discriminate in what we find appealling or not? Pretty much, these things are toxic to us, and therefore we have no need to associate with it, and get rid of it or get as far as it as possible.

So, could we then hypothesize that our other senses also come equipped with similar GPS systems? Not just our sense of smell. Our sense of taste for example. Maybe our sense of sight.

And if our sense of sight, does this somehow provide explanation to why we find certain people attractive, and others not? And then, not just our sense of sight, but our sense of....feeling. Perception. That intangible sense of gauging another person, not by physical sight but by cognitive sight.

Reasonably we recognize that we somehow are repelled by one person and are attracted to another. We acknowledge that there might be toxic qualities about a person, so that we try to avoid them. But attraction - we find ourselves drawn to certain features, and more so, to certain sensibilities in personality.

 So we stay away from poop because we instinctively know that poop stinks. But alternatively maybe somewhere inside us we have that one smell that is tailored to be perfect to our minds. The smell of fresh baked bread, the smell of vanilla, the smell of spring or impending summer rain.


Is there some pre-installed app, some programmed system or GPS signal that's telling us that what our destination is meant to look like? Or not what, but who?

Enduring

Sometimes in the middle of this everyday life, while everything is bustling about, carrying on, a pause comes over me, and I remember.

When you've been with someone so long, things tend to settle. Settle down, settle in place... less of the tremulous, less of the hovering and less of the unknown.

It peeks out at me sometimes, a memory of the thrill of falling. When things were new, and unknown, when the merest presence, the sensation of meeting, was beyond words to describe.

Feelings relegated to memories. And yet, not entirely gone. Sometimes in the middle of looking across the room to you, something stirs. It's partly memory and yet partly something still new.

Sometimes my breath stops, and my heart quickens. And that's when my mind tells me this is so familiar and yet --- when I inhale it feels as if it is not air that is filling me up but everything that is you.

Why should I write a story? A different story, that's not you and me?
Why shouldn't I just let down the gates and let the words flow; so much more that has yet to be told
What more would there be in fictional characters, giving them a happily ever after
Giving them a story that's something we wish we had
But we have it all.
This is our story, our story we keep waiting to happen
When things are finally better and when things are finally calm
This is our story; a story of waiting for our story to start
But in the meantime we have been apart
If I can open my eyes today and you can close yours
If my sun sets to your sunrise, and the distance remains this far
With the hours stacked up and yet clocked in synchronity
The world keeps turning   And the heart keeps beating
Your heart
Then mine
Your heart
My heart
This is no silence. What are we waiting for?
Our story has already begun.

Free

I have found myself wrapping myself around the idea of you. Around the idea of us. Why, I am not really sure. Yet; because suddenly I have only realized this. Perhaps it is to wrap up close what this you and I is, so that nothing escapes, nothing floats away.

But in this I have become so molded in the frame of you, in the grooves, valleys, chasms, hills that are your landscape. Have I changed my own to better fit to yours? Have I lost something that was myself in becoming myself-with-you?


Why has it become my responsibility to wrap us up and protect, why has it been me that has settled to walking a steady pace instead of flying, soaring wildly, to ease your fear of heights? And it is true, you did not ask:

Maybe it is my fear that has always been at fault. A fear of losing what may be lost. Maybe holding on so tight is already the cause of having now lost so much.

What will happen if I unwrap this gift? Let the air flow, and let us fly free. What if I make you stand on the edge and open your arms and fall; maybe you too will fly with me.

Breakout

YESTERDAY- For some reason, my face had erupted into the moon. Overnight. All those bollywood 'chand' songs could now be dedicated to me. Y'all, begin.  *poses*

Okay, well no. It's not thaaat bad, but for a person who relishes good skincare (...but then again, who doesn't?...) it was a problem for me. But you know how it is, when we find some little blemish on ourselves its a BIG deal, but noone else even notices. Right?

"WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR FACE?" The accountant at work asked.

Wrong.

"Geez," I deadpanned, "that was so polite."

"No really, what happened to it?"

"I think my cat kissed me a few times too many, or pawed at my face with her dirty paws."

I'd take a picture for you, but.....no.

The problem was that it was basically a few...wait, for full disclosure, let me count for you....yep, four spots. And all on my right side. Which also correlates to the side of my face which my kitty nuzzles. Also the side where the accountant comes to sit when he attends my office.

But anyways, I figured it was Easter Monday. Noone was really hanging about. Traffic was sparse. The transit commute was sparse. I never really bump into anyone I know when I'm travelling normally, so noooo problem.

The bus stops at the town center. Girl gets on empty seat beside me. I'm reading on my tablet when my elbow is jogged a few times by this girl. That's when I notice she's not just being fat, but trying to get my attention.

"Hi, I know you right?"

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO DONT LOOK AT MY FACEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Well, to be honest, no I did not say that.

Not like that. It was like, "Great! I was hoping I wouldn't bump into anyone I know but now you've gone and did it, don't look at my face will ya, it's gone and had itself a breakout."

So I had to resort to preemptive measures and did what I could only do in this circumstance. I proceeded to yapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyap. Hey, I knew her twenty years ago so there was a lot of ground to cover in the reuniting-comparing-contrasting-reminiscing-catchingup process. So I yapped so much in the short span of 3 and a half minutes that there was nothing more to say and I had successfully forestalled her by making her look the other way in fear that if she turned her head even a small fraction of an angle I would start again.

Then I got home and sank into the heaven that was washing my face with my Exfo-brusher rolling it with Yes-to-Tomatoes and dousing it with ACV. Phewww.

Re-Awakening

This morning after a long Long-Weekend I had to arise again at the early morning hour to resume the routine of the work-bound. This time however, I had to leave the insidious realms of a very vivid and realistic dream...

Planes were zooming across the sky, so much that the blue was obscured by white, grey, black of metallic machinery... was this war?

I stood at the top of an office building's balcony and watched the chaos down below. I was worried, because I had not heard from my Special Someone in a few days, and I wasn't sure if the whole world was going to blow up or not.

I paced this way and that. Suddenly I was in a airport, waiting at a terminal. Was I waiting for someone to arrive or was I about to embark on a journey of my own? All I knew was that I was waiting for someone.

Crowds went this way and that, people were shouting, people were pushing through. I spotted an old high-school crush, who now lives and works abroad in India, coming through with a wheelie-bag, and he waved. I waved back, but still worriedly, because he was not the one I was waiting for.

Suddenly, an official of some sort approached me and told me that the one I was waiting for was over there. I got up and turned around and there was this random dude who has no place in my real waking life standing there. He started to profess his feelings for me, stating that he didn't realize what a beauty I had turned out to be and that as we were growing older and were still single...blah blah blah... I was stunned and found a voice inside me worrying what the time was...

I looked about and saw that the date was a long long time in the future and I still hadn't found the person I was searching for. I also realized with a start that this dude was lying. I'm not single! I started to say, but then my best friend from highschool was standing behind me, in a show of support.

Hey, she asked this fellow, isn't that the smell of marijuana on your shirt? He stopped and looked sheepish. Yes, to be honest it is, but I can stop. I can clean up this label if you will allow me to be in your life, he said to me.

I blinked, and blinked again. What the hell was happening?

Next thing I knew, Falak's Oh Sajna was playing, and it was time to wake up.

Note to self: I have forgotten most of the dream.

I Am Dying

In these countless moments so many tears and fears have been, and so many have they fallen and arose that I have lost myself. So deeply the tears have rendered me apart, gaping wounds so raw and rot. So disfigured my visage upon reflection blurred in shattered glass that sightless I have also become. Inward this gaze, total oblivion yet pulsing pulsing a pain undeterred. So often have these sorrows breathed that they have burrowed deeply embedded under my skin. Deep in the marrow, in the breast, these sorrows keen softly, yet growing, growing. Oh mother these lumps have lost you to. If I don't die of these too, I shall die of my sorrows.

The Conditions of the Sun Shining

Out from my palms my blood flowed, but it was without pain I had let the wound open for you; it was after all straight and genuinely from the heart.

This was the heart that beat quietly in pursuit of you, in the rhythm fulfilled by the existence of you. And so the constant flow dripped off my fingertips to give and give and give.

I lived this far with the knowledge that you would be mine. Somehow and someday. And to do so I have navigated these uncharted paths by living as good a person I could have tried to be, all things considered, because somehow, someday I had to be worthy of my desires.

My desire was you, and to love you the way ki have alwaysmdone, before I even knew you and before we had ever met. Constantly and unconditionally.

My belief in you existing solely for me has been tried and tested in more ways than even you could know. Even in the knowledge that everything was shared as we became one, I shrugged off the layers of scar tissue and scabs to better embrace you and be stronger for you. And though I has hurt to attempt to remove, these same scars were blessed with my gratitude if only because my strong belief that they had to exist as a test of fire in order to endure and experience the obtainment of you.

My belief is that you are for me and I am for you. But stronger still is that you be eased of all pains and burdens, and at peace of mind; with or without me. Because, this my love, is without condition.

But you don't want my beliefs until they safeguard yours.

If i have asked of you to alter or amend, this too is in belief that you would be better off. Health and emotion so intertwined they have fed off each other, eating and eating until nothing was left except the raw, rotting and bleeding. To prevent and heal, I have asked of you may things which my prayers alone have no been enough to assuage. And my belief in you recognizing the goodness of my requests for the sake of our love had to withstand the powerful resistance to change.

My heart has waited, in all the heartbeats it had lost in waiting, and with each beat sighed the unwavering prayer that was you. Then to spend each moment in fervent hope that each moment of yours was better. To give each waking moment to praying for your state if being, instead of mine.

How is it that this blood, pouring steadfastly from my palms has started to turn from red to black? That this snow upon which I have tread so as not to stain it from its purity now betrays my footsteps, seeping cold and unmercifully into my skin, burning my beliefs with icy cold acidity? Why now, the fulfillment of loving you comes at the precipice of your rejecting the very same power which brought me to you?

Perhaps from henceforth I will not pray that your every moment is fulfilled to your own wishes, perhaps now I will not pray that you hardships ease and that the sun will shine upon you in you on darkness or for the things you yourself want for you. I will pray that you learn to believe in your own stead and believe with as much as I did in you, that you learn to believe in yourself without me so that you own prayers will come true with the same faith we had in mine. Instead of the amount of energy I have spent in your smaller things coming true, I will pray that you own come true, so that you will no longer need mine, nor me.

The blood will continue to flow. Black or red. It will not abate, nor is it possible that I can stop it. It flowing for you has become the definition of my being, so much that to press down on the wound, to stitch in up, will sooner choke me as if my breath itself has stopped. But thus, my beliefs, they have crippled. I continue to walk despite the frostbitten soles, but only so in a direction far away from where I had left my heart.

Day 33

The snowstorm of the year (I suppose the headlines demarcating it the "worst" were written by snow-haters: another instance of perspective being arbitrary) set my day back by a four-hour commute, a day that began with a long hike through the neighbourhood's accumulated knee-high snowdrifts, missing in the process two busses (buses?!) that apparently decided to declare undying love and proceed along the route back to back enforcing a prolonged wait for the next - sigh - but the walk itself was beautiful.

The evening sky as we head home was a paintbrush of rainbow; blue, yellow, orange,pink and violet, streaking across the frozen tabloid as if denying the stark white of our earth its monochrome supremacy.

Wiarton Willie, in Groundhog day tradition, decided to contest the findings of his colleague. Jury is still out on whether Spring will arrive early.

But who needs our furry friends to tell us? Spring, I have decided is already here. Its peeking under the snow piles, and winking from behind the frostbitten pines. It is waiting for us to notice that its already hidden in the icicles hanging on the bare branches, and doing the boogie under the eaves.

It was here all along, and in fact never left. So many times I have suspiciously looked around, with that sensation of someone watching you, hearing a tee-hee in the breeze, and catching a glimpse in peripheral vision. Sometimes you could not help but notice, like the day I left the office to be stunned by daylight - daylight at 5 pm! - or when I happened to step outside and encountered Spring chilling at the dumpster in the back of the building like your typical teenager skipping class. I tell you.

Sunshine

On an otherwise grey, gloomy and extremely cold day, the sun came out for two minutes and shone a shine so bright you could almost believe it was spring or summer, a brightness that had not existed in this neighbourhood for a very long time, yet nevertheless for two minutes it happened and I just happened to be at the window washing dishes to witness it. Makes you wonder how much else we fail to notice or tend to miss, or rather the beauty and splendour we don't realize exists because we have not witnessed it ourselves.

Life

We started with something small. Almost imperceptible. Maybe it derived from an iota of curiosity: something different, something to explore. Something therefore, interesting. And it hooked our interest and we found it to be something pleasing and to our liking. Soon it became a habit.

We formed new perceptions, we learnt to adapt and how to facilitate better and easier solutions by our actions in conjuction with our situation. It stopped being a new thing, it was something we were very used to now, and something we had made our very own. The something small it started from became a bigger thing. Each time we achieved new goals, lost some, but gained a lot more, and our realm expanded. And expanded.

Soon things became more complex. More complicated. And as such, more difficult. Goals became bigger, and therefore more difficult. Time became a commodity that we had only started this way to pass, however was now never enough. Issues became prolonged, when they used to be resolved in minutes, or even hours, and now it took to staying open for resolution even after we lay our heads down and woke up still trying to solve it.

Sometimes we found ourselves wishing it was as simple the way it used to be, before things got bigger and things became so much more. We had gained so much ground, so much more had been discovered, but at what cost? There were more responsibilities, more chores, more duties to execute in order to achieve and maintain what we have.

Certainly we had no true obligation to continue, for this was our choice. We could always stop, decide that we would not go on. But the ability to gain and achieve and enjoy the fruits of having succeeded and having conquered the tasks assigned was greater.

Had it remained the something small, perhaps we would have walked away. Had it been easy, and trivial, we should not have enjoyed ourselves as much. Looking at what we have achieved from the small something was a sensation that was greater than the accumulation of our losses.

A lesson rediscovered thanks to Farmville 2: Country Escape.