I would never fit either.
So what's the point?
So what's the point?
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Post travel blues
In my head, I was never going to be one of 'those' travellers who come back from a trip gushing and starry-eyed, "it changed my life!". But I think I came back with a little piece of my heart still in Saigon, unironically, in the sense that I still daydream about living there. And it won't be a stretch to say that I was really swept up in the magic that was night time Hoi An. I haven't looked at the pictures since because... just because.
I don't know what more to write. I've told the stories over and over, and while Saigon and Hanoi I've shared with people openly, Hoi An and Ha Long Bay I've kept to myself.
*
What happened to the girl who couldn't get through the day without breaking down? She's been replaced by the girl who screams inside the car and runs around sounding manic on the phone. Healthier probably.
I don't know what more to write. I've told the stories over and over, and while Saigon and Hanoi I've shared with people openly, Hoi An and Ha Long Bay I've kept to myself.
*
What happened to the girl who couldn't get through the day without breaking down? She's been replaced by the girl who screams inside the car and runs around sounding manic on the phone. Healthier probably.
Friday, November 8, 2013
posting this from kl airport
because i can. now waiting to go to ho chi Minh city.
sleepy and crampy and grumpus. thank god i am not on Facebook and obligated to !!!!
there are white women here wearing skimpy tank tops that say NAM in hot pink. this has got to be interesting.
sleepy and crampy and grumpus. thank god i am not on Facebook and obligated to !!!!
there are white women here wearing skimpy tank tops that say NAM in hot pink. this has got to be interesting.
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Skin
For a few hours after being waxed, skin feels like what it really is - rubber stretched over and folded up to make your body, keep all your organs inside. There's a weird detachment in touching and poking smooth, hairless skin, and for a moment you're aware - this is not how it should be.
I've been unselfconscious enough for the past few months to walk around hairy. I can say this time it was a choice, to put my skin through trauma and myself through an hour of silent self-beration.
A year or so ago, I didn't see the same person when I stood naked in front of the mirror. Funny how things change. Funny what love does. People jump continents and people burn villages for it. Funny what love is.
I've been unselfconscious enough for the past few months to walk around hairy. I can say this time it was a choice, to put my skin through trauma and myself through an hour of silent self-beration.
A year or so ago, I didn't see the same person when I stood naked in front of the mirror. Funny how things change. Funny what love does. People jump continents and people burn villages for it. Funny what love is.
Saturday, October 26, 2013
Life lessons from Candy Crush
- If you play it for too long your wrist starts to hurt.
- Closing your eyes after playing it for half an hour, trying to clear your head of references and chapter structure and points to include and how little time is left, seriously results in psychedelic colour swirls behind your eyelids.
- After playing it for an hour the screen looks pretty psychedelic and makes no sense.
- Phone clocks get pretty messed up.
- The promise of extra lives and getting through the quests without waiting for a day in between is not enough to make me rejoin Facebook.
- That's all I got.
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
a house
Have spent the morning not working but prodigiously reading a blog, digging through her archives and everything. So comforting her posts are. Then I saw the comments on her posts and it got me thinking. This blog doesn't have comments, not even pageviews as Blogger has decided to kindly inform me.
I deleted my last few blogs because I was out of inspiration and patience. And to be honest, because I didn't get comments. Now, it's not an issue. I... don't want everyone I know to read what I write and think. When this poem got published, it gave me a panic cramp to think that it's up there, with my name on it. But then, it started to feel detached. So then I struggled for literally three hours with the decision to send out the link to people who wouldn't come across it otherwise. My friends were kind enough to reply with congratulations and "wah! I didn't know you wrote!" and I left it at that. It's not like I have some great treasure of poetry waiting to be shared. And then, of course, I very confidently showed it to a blowhard who felt the need to offer constructive criticism and like an idiot I felt totally shattered. For a while. The next morning I was detached again, but well, that solidified my decision to take a step I'd been meaning to take.
I do check back on that page to see if there are more comments. Which is very hypocritical of me, because I am AWFUL at leaving comments myself. [Attention to this is a result of my teenage years spent in LJ and many deleted LJ blogs]. Maybe I should leave a comment on that blog I was reading this morning. Or maybe I shouldn't spend the next one hour worrying about it. I don't know. These decisions shouldn't be so hard.
Maybe I should be ok with writing for myself. Even now one part of my brain is chiding me - you're using 'I' too much! There's no funny anecdotes in this post, why would anyone even WANT to read it! There's no politics, no current affairs, no analysis, no insight into the human condition! You could just write this in your diary! - well, brain, maybe I won't. Maybe I will turn my mundane, blah-thinking brain inside out on the internet.
*
Someone told me the story of Amrita Pritam last week. Women who make unconventional choices, girls who don't compromise, will be rewarded; with rewarding lives. A girl called me up yesterday and her problems mirrored mine, but with far worse circumstances, and she needs help in getting out of the house. I should be thankful, I should be strong.
*
[There are some things I don't tell you. Please understand.]
*
I titled this post so because one of things I like to think about when trying to de-stress is a house of my own. How it would look, from the inside and the outside, with what furniture and what food and bookshelves and potted plants I would populate it. I shared that with J one day to help him calm down enough to sleep and I think he liked that. He brought it up in normal conversations afterwards.
In times like these I feel a cold sense of superstition settling on my shoulders. What if what if what if my brain chants. Don't think don't talk don't want it says.
Well, traditionally, superstitions that are sanctified - lucky days on the Telugu calendar, rituals for the spring and all - result from a sense of insecurity and instability in the face of very high stakes. Harvests could fail, lives could be lost as a result of a single snake bite, each child born was a liability, whether alive or dead. All these practices and rituals and beliefs were to hopefully even out the uncertainties of capricious life with no systems of redress and no reliance on man-made justice.
One of the bong bigwigs, I think Dipesh Chakrabarty, wrote about superstitions once - that private superstitions are fine, from sports day practices to pre-take off rituals, as long as they're not public and don't influence public behaviour, something like that. So, footnoting that then, now the stakes feel so high in my head, and in my puny little individual life bound up in ambitions and relationships of love.
I deleted my last few blogs because I was out of inspiration and patience. And to be honest, because I didn't get comments. Now, it's not an issue. I... don't want everyone I know to read what I write and think. When this poem got published, it gave me a panic cramp to think that it's up there, with my name on it. But then, it started to feel detached. So then I struggled for literally three hours with the decision to send out the link to people who wouldn't come across it otherwise. My friends were kind enough to reply with congratulations and "wah! I didn't know you wrote!" and I left it at that. It's not like I have some great treasure of poetry waiting to be shared. And then, of course, I very confidently showed it to a blowhard who felt the need to offer constructive criticism and like an idiot I felt totally shattered. For a while. The next morning I was detached again, but well, that solidified my decision to take a step I'd been meaning to take.
I do check back on that page to see if there are more comments. Which is very hypocritical of me, because I am AWFUL at leaving comments myself. [Attention to this is a result of my teenage years spent in LJ and many deleted LJ blogs]. Maybe I should leave a comment on that blog I was reading this morning. Or maybe I shouldn't spend the next one hour worrying about it. I don't know. These decisions shouldn't be so hard.
Maybe I should be ok with writing for myself. Even now one part of my brain is chiding me - you're using 'I' too much! There's no funny anecdotes in this post, why would anyone even WANT to read it! There's no politics, no current affairs, no analysis, no insight into the human condition! You could just write this in your diary! - well, brain, maybe I won't. Maybe I will turn my mundane, blah-thinking brain inside out on the internet.
*
Someone told me the story of Amrita Pritam last week. Women who make unconventional choices, girls who don't compromise, will be rewarded; with rewarding lives. A girl called me up yesterday and her problems mirrored mine, but with far worse circumstances, and she needs help in getting out of the house. I should be thankful, I should be strong.
*
[There are some things I don't tell you. Please understand.]
*
I titled this post so because one of things I like to think about when trying to de-stress is a house of my own. How it would look, from the inside and the outside, with what furniture and what food and bookshelves and potted plants I would populate it. I shared that with J one day to help him calm down enough to sleep and I think he liked that. He brought it up in normal conversations afterwards.
In times like these I feel a cold sense of superstition settling on my shoulders. What if what if what if my brain chants. Don't think don't talk don't want it says.
Well, traditionally, superstitions that are sanctified - lucky days on the Telugu calendar, rituals for the spring and all - result from a sense of insecurity and instability in the face of very high stakes. Harvests could fail, lives could be lost as a result of a single snake bite, each child born was a liability, whether alive or dead. All these practices and rituals and beliefs were to hopefully even out the uncertainties of capricious life with no systems of redress and no reliance on man-made justice.
One of the bong bigwigs, I think Dipesh Chakrabarty, wrote about superstitions once - that private superstitions are fine, from sports day practices to pre-take off rituals, as long as they're not public and don't influence public behaviour, something like that. So, footnoting that then, now the stakes feel so high in my head, and in my puny little individual life bound up in ambitions and relationships of love.
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