truth-telling, secret-keeping

For the longest time, the T has been an endless reservoir of things I could not tell the neighbours. She keeps secrets better than most people we know, except perhaps the dead, and those in the profession of keeping secrets. The T is my way out of madness. The T and all my friends.
Or has been.

I will make my first-ever appointment with a psychologist some time today.
Friends I've told have asked if I'm sure of this decision, and I wonder about it myself. I feel as one might feel who can no longer say, "I never stole.", "I never lied.", "I never cheated.". I feel as someone might who has by a single action crossed an invisible line into being a lesser person. I feel as though I've let myself down; I don't like that feeling. Part of me is afraid of being judged, I think: as though the admission that there are things that bother me that are beyond my control makes me less worthy than I was the instant before I admitted to it. And that is odd, because I have never had a problem with admitting to anything before...

I wonder what the difference is between someone who talks to friends about their issues and someone who pays to talk to a stranger about it. I wonder now, but I won't wonder for very much longer. In all my little life not one of the million events that put me into bed crying ever made me seriously consider therapy as a solution. Not one.
But now I do.
This amuses and terrifies me.

I could talk to friends again. I could call my friends and say, I need you. Please help me. and they would come. I did it, and they came. I couldn't do that now, though. I can't do that again. This is too big, and too painful, and has been festering for far too long for a single two-hour crying-jag over coffee to fix, as much as I wish it could.
Isn't it odd how one single solitary situation has affected everything else about my life?

I could validate this decision. I could break it down into constituent reasons and discover it makes perfect sense.
The simple truth is this, though. I have talked to everybody, and nobody made the pain go away. I tried very hard to will it, push it, pretend it away - to talk, pray, cry, meditate, exercise, work it away - and I failed. And it didn't go away. Well, a person who doesn't know her limitations is a fool.
At some point to solve a problem one must call in a professional.
Preferably before the house falls down.

something to look forward to

There is a letter expected. It will arrive in two weeks, yay! Yay!

There is also an email expected, but I'm not so sure about either the two weeks or the yay part. I do have a few other theories about it, though.

It will begin:
Dear (T's full name)
At this point I will get up and take a few turns about the room to try and calm myself. I will do this because my astute mind will have divined that all contents following such an unpropitious beginning will cause nothing but misery and extreme vexation (do I mean vexation?) of spirit.
The letter will then go on to say (and I paraphrase in advance):
You are young and foolish and wrong and I think you should just stay away from me for your own good etc. etc. and die. (well, it might as well say that.)
And then I will say, "Well! I knew it." and feel superior for about a minute before I indulge in a few bouts of stormy weeping and mope around for a few months on top of the months I've been moping and not feel better until perhaps I'm dating four or five gentlemen at a time and being, as the rabbit says, "promiscuous with my affections".

sigh.
I don't like my imagination much.

really rather questionable content; or, "a shrubbery!"

It has been a regular pastime of mine to moan about why people don't like me. It always seems to me that humans whose company I'm more fond of than not end up treating me as though I had life-threatening communicable diseases, and it has never yet failed to send me crying to my bed in agonies of whys and what's wrong with mes.

Over the last month, however, my standard state of despairing acceptance has been challenged by a number of romantic overtures. The actual, concrete number, from people who have actually met me in three dimensions is two, but the total, based on various vibes, and including the unofficial and unspoken, numbers closer to five. Naturally, the T urges me most strongly to disregard the promptings of my 'female intuition' on the grounds that it doesn't really exist, but I BEG TO DIFFER, T merely because now I have proof that AT LEAST TWO of those promptings weren't so awry after all...

Funnily enough, the two kind gentlemen who've asked me out to dinner and given me dizzying (because they are unprecedented, you see) compliments on my looks and interestingness are both of the kind I would have run a mile from in other circumstances. Players, in fact. And they asked me! Me! I am exhilarated, and flattered, and convinced, once and for all, that there is NOTHING ABSOLUTELY WRONG WITH ME BESIDES THE INABILITY TO CHOOSE A GOOD JOB.

The only sad part is that I am not really interested in these nice boys; though they are both smart, and funny, and talented, and really rather good looking. And while I go around in a happy haze thinking thank god someone actually *likes* me, i can't help but notice the minuscule part of my brain that's going, so why doesn't *he*? why doesn't *he*??
Oh, well. So the story goes. When this fever's gone I hope to be less delirious.
And use fewer italics; but that's not a promise, so don't count on it.

:)

incompleteds

Once in a while I have a thought that begs to be shared so pitifully that I force myself to sit in front of this here box and attempt to pull it bodily out of my brain. Alas, often my skill will not allow it to be done, and at other times it is my laziness at fault, and so I'm stuck with tens of drafts that I will never complete as long as they're sitting there unpublished.
Here they are, then. With dates attached. I think I might just keep adding to them as I go along.


My city has become a menagerie of shouting people.
3/14/07

wts txt spk? is dat whn u tlk lik dis? i cant do it 2 wel........its tuff to think of ways to shrtn the wrds apart 4m removing vowels dammit a relapse.
But that's text speak, and I want to talk about the postrophe. Lynn Truss wrote an entire book about it, but I don't care. How do perfectly intelligent, erudite, well-read persons end up confusing its and it's?

What's the likelihood that there'll be an entire book on text-speak soon? Very high, I'd say. People talk about it all the time. Mostly the ones talking are the ones bemoaning the loss of sensible spelling, and I've read at least four newspaper editorials on the subject.

I'm not doing

What I can't get around is the staggering amount of apostrophe abuse around. I don't think I'll be able to say it any better than Lynn Truss, so I shan't try. I will just choose one certain little annoying trend I've noticed in

I can't understand its and it's, though. Some of the smartest and best read people I know make that error. It's horrendous. Its horrendous.

I hate the way it pulls you up right in the middle of whatever you're reading. Inexcusable, in my opinion, especially when they spend their time poking fun at people with poor grammar and then turn around and say "whatever" when you point the error out to them yourself....

I mean, don't you read whatever you've just written before you post it???

Damn, some people are stubborn and stupid.

3/18/07 9:07 PM


Something that was brought home to me the other day was the fact that far too much depends on appearances. How much do we change by walking down the street proclaiming we can do as we want, wear what we want, say what we want? Perhaps not as much as we aim for.
The truth is that the way you walk says so much more about you than the clothes you wear. Unless, of course, you're wearing something designed to be so eye-catching that it detracts from everything else!

Is there a line that "decent" girls should not cross? Yes. There is. But it isn't the same line for everyone. My idea of clothes I will not step out of the house wearing are different from those of my sister, for example.
Just the other day, I watched a young man at a traffic signal pull out a comb and style his hair into something closely resembling a bush of some sort, but he seemed exrtremely pleased with the result. So that's my line. Wear something that makes you look good.
Something in colours that complement. A cut that accentuates. Be pretty.
3/29/07 7:04 AM

My boss thinks women should protect themselves from male eyes.
He asked me about Blank Noise. "Why do you think men do those things? It's because of the way women dress! Between a woman wearing a miniskirt and a woman wearing a sari, who do you think is more likely to be molested? If you don't respect yourself how can a man respect you?"
"Men and women are made to attract each other", he says. He thinks women can prevent harassment by covering themselves up. "If you wear a burkha", he says, "then you're completely protected."
There was something so entirely disturbing about the way he told me this; the manner in which he posed it as a self-evident truth shocked me so much; that I found myself unable to defend my position at all.

Is it a male conspiracy, this celebrating a woman's freedom to deck her body? I do not know. Perhaps men do go along with women's rights because they think that they will get a chance to see more skin. But then again, women should be able to show their skin even if they know men will look.

What do we ask for, with the clothes we wear? Respect? Attention? Flattery?
Does it make a difference?
What we wear should reflect where we're going, what we're doing, what season it is. I think the question of poorly dressed does not arise as long as you are dressed to fit the occasion. Isn't it rude to attend a wedding in shorts, for example? It isn't about covering yourself, or being decent. It is about fitting the profile, about looking as though you belong. And as long as we are part of society, it is necessary to make sure we respect the boundaries that circumstances demand.
The only thing that's changing is the idea of everyday wear. What is it appropriate to wear, if you're not doing anything special? One wears shorts or jogging tracks to walk in the morning, to go to the gym, to play tennis. One wears a sari to a wedding, one wears formal clothes to interviews. One wears jeans to construction sites. We dress sensibly as long as we know the boundaries created by societal norms or dictated by comfort and common sense.
What happens with a regular outfit, though? What are you "allowed" to wear when you're out on the street on an ordinary day? Things that send the wrong message? Who decides that? I think each of us do. What I think every woman must do, in my opinion, is to look at herself once before she leaves the house. Stand in front of the mirror. Lift your arms, bend over. If your clothes stay where they're supposed to, and you don't expose any more skin, any fat, any hidden parts that were covered when you were standing still, then you're okay to go.
If you do expose those things, well, then, you're just not well dressed.
The women on the street I find badly dressed are the ones wearing things that don't suit their figures. Tight shirts showing tires of fat. Low pants that fit so poorly you can see underwear when they sit down. The beautiful thing about a salwar kameez is the fact that it suits anyone if cut properly, and the main reason we wear clothes is to be comfortable, isn't it?

I have rules about things I would not wear in public. I will not wear something that reveals my nipples, because of the fear of titillating the man on the street. I will not wear clothes that display cleavage, because of the same reason. I will not wear clothes that show my thighs above the knee, because I believe shorts or short skirts absolutely do not flatter my figure.

The mental thumb rule for me, then, is this: do not draw attention to any one part of your body as a part belonging to a woman. Not unless your objective is to do so. People attach to all outfits a purpose for wearing them. Why would you wear shorts? Or display cleavage? Why would you? If you have a reason, and one can see that reason, then i think no one can question or comment on your choice of dress.

This is just so much patriarchal rubbish. :( I'm a brainwash.
5/8/07

I once promised a friend I would write a post about the misuse of punctuation
5/9/07

I've been wondering lately about how limited all forms of expression are when compared to the real thing.
How do you describe in words the exact tilt of someone's head and the lilt in their voice and the way you feel when they smile to punctuate?
6/3/07 6:05 AM

My sister has a friend who used to call home and ask to speak to her.
She would say, "Hello, is MySister'sName there?"
My mother would later rail and rant over the loss of politeness in the young, and I? I would agree with her.
Lately, though, T has been wondering about boundaries and the way people follow rules in different places. T has been wondering this as she works in an office on the grounds of a traditional Muslim house. How true that it is only
6/11/07
Do we treat other people the way we hope, in our heart of hearts, to be treated? I submit that it is a more than distinct possibility in my own case. After all, do I not give every new and old friend the benefit of the doubt, and their space, and hugs whenever I feel like they need some? Butyes!
It's not really a solution to anything, though. If everyone went around treating everyone else the way they wished to be treated, no one would get treated the way they wanted to be treated.
7/26/07

There is a microphone in the house now.

I don't like it so much.
7/30/07

meta-letter
I think the real problem with writing with Squid Piss™ on Dead Trees™ is that
8/2/07

Brad Bird's The Incredibles has a line that might have struck me more if it hadn't been as oft-quoted as it was - "Everyone can be super. And when everyone's super, no one will be."
And again: "They keep creating new ways to celebrate mediocrity, but if someone is genuinely exceptional..."

I have watched performances by people who are disabled or autistic or children, and I never until recently questioned that a chance had to be given to those less privileged. Do we really value quality so little that we celebrate effort more than achievement?
Does all achievement have to be weighted against opportunity and upbringing and situation? When put like that, of course, it sounds a stupid question: the very basis for academic equality in the best institutions is based on that weightage.

It strikes me, however, that it is only in the field of education that merit speaks for itself - the concrete proofs of your excellence are valued as they ought to be. It is in the fields of the performing arts that the distinction has become blurred - where the mediocre gets more recognition than the
8/15/07
I had an adventure today. It was only a small adventure; minuscule, really; but I've been stuck indoors so long that anything out of the ordinary excites me...
I went for a walk today. I wore my brand new pink reebok sneakers (I know, I know. Pink sneakers. But they're new.)
And I sat there on the stone wall and wrote a letter. With a little lizard in it.
10/10/07 6:16 PM (this is a special day.)

the so-strangest thought
i have had one of those, i have.

Bear with me. My theories are often based on little more than random burblings of my mind when tired or hungry or travelling or some such, but they are usually interesting theories and this one...has promise.
I feel as though I have been...putty. Malleable,
12/18/07 11:38 PM (this is when the heart broke)

P.S. It is very nice to have three adventures in two days and then stay awake until five a.m. reading. :)

fool

I love stories. They are my escape from the world: from boredom and loneliness and panic. It is the simple story that I love the best - the one where everything works out in the end and everyone gets exactly what they deserve. I have always hated betrayals and misunderstandings - in books, in films, in television... Every story with a twist in its tale must end with the triumph of the worthy, the earnest, the good. I think, sometimes, that the kinds of stories I find myself most drawn to are the ones that end the way I wish my life would turn out - with justice for all. It shames me that I cannot, in my own life, judge people as they deserve to be judged.

It seems to me as though I choose, consistently, the wrong kind of person to place my confidence in. It is as though, even after twenty-three years on the planet, I still have no idea of how to choose a friend for all the reasons that I truly need a friend. Perhaps there is supposed to be a difference between the kind of people you admire and respect and the kind of people you love - it is just that my head cannot tell the difference.
In my head the people who are the most important to me are the ones who make me think, and wonder, and question - and so I become enamoured with them all: the smart people; the talented people; the people who are destined to make this world a brighter, bigger, more interesting place. They are the ones who make it worthwhile to wake up in the morning, the ones for whom it is sensible to give up your time, your energy, your heart. It is as though your life becomes better simply because it is lived in the outer circle of their influence.

It is hard - to find myself so often in this position, where I have misjudged and attributed to a person qualities of kindness and goodness that he or she does not have. To imagine affection and fondness where there is none. To expect attention and concern when I have no right to. To see a kindred spirit where none exists. If I am to be ruled so decisively by my emotions, what chance do I have to survive in the bold, bad world?
It has been eight years since my first introduction to the wonderful world of duplicity, and yet I continue to make the same mistakes again and again. I recognize the syptoms each time, even as the disease progresses; and each time I think this time will be different. There is no cure - I am doomed to eternal blind optimism - I will persist, until I die, in the delusion that all people are truly as wonderful as they appear to be.

I will always tell people just exactly what they mean to me, and they will always care not one whit.
Why is desperation so utterly despicable?

covert operations

Perhaps a week ago, I read in a newspaper an article that advised its readers to find new ways to make friends. The suggestion was that the readers go out and strike up conversations with people they met on their city's public transport. Accompanying this charming article (that included such tips as "try smiling pleasantly" and "comment on the book the person is reading") was a tiny picture of some commuters on a shiny metal subway train.
Now, I do realize that the people who put together the Lifestyle sections of daily newspapers often do not have enough celebrity gossip to go around, but I do wish Indian tabloids would stop printing such articles lifted directly from the non-Indian papers where they were originally featured without even checking that the content is relevant.

Not that I have a problem with making new friends, mind you. I'm all for it; I do it all the time. The problem with this charming suggestion, however, is that the writers have conveniently forgotten to actually imagine the type of public transport that their average reader might take.

It is not very hard to think of the problems that might accompany an attempt to chat up the person nearest to you on an average BMTC vehicle. The very first obstacle to finding a person to develop a lifelong friendship with is the fact that it is very unusual to actually find someone who speaks the same language you do, let alone speaks it well enough to carry on an entire conversation. The other obstacle lies in the way uninvited overtures of friendship are viewed by most people: the women think you want their money, and the men think you want their goods.
(haha, I made teh jokes)

The best way to travel, therefore; and in such a manner that you avoid stares from greasy men and fat old ladies alike; is to pretend you have absolutely no interest whatsoever in your fellow human beings. If you can cultivate a great interest in something no one else can see, so much the better. Develop a laugh you can use: be amused at your surroundings; intrigue everybody!
It is, after all, preferable to be stared at in curiosity and envy than in disapproval and lust lechery.

Edit: This is not a suggestion on how to make friends. This a suggestion that will help you get through your evening without unpleasant incident.

In my opinion, anyway.
:)

eventually phone calls

I have always been one of those people (I assume there are such people) whose lives seem to be spent more in their own company than in anyone else's. I do not remember that it was a voluntary decision; all I know is that I woke up one day and realised that it was so.

The tendency to sit in dark corners and construct imaginary conversations is, however, relatively new (though still of long standing - probably dating back to my discovery of myself as a real person, some time in the eighth standard). It was the time I first realized I wanted friends and thought I hadn't any, and was dimly aware that I was neither prepared nor able to put in the effort needed to be part of a 'gang'.
I resorted, then, to rewriting my life in my head, because of course the reason I was unhappy was not because I was timid and shy and naïve and choosy in the matter of the company I kept, but rather because I was somewhere surrounded by people who could never understand or appreciate me as I deserved. And so I dreamed day-dreams to remove the sour taste of loneliness from my mind. The place I usually chose for my ruminations was my bed; and not necessarily at bed-time - I retreated to my room whenever bruised in spirit and ego, and pretended my life was entirely other than it was. (and perhaps this is the reason I love Montgomery's Anne so much, because she knew how to step out of her own life into her own head)
In these day-dreams I was always smarter and wiser and altogether more noble than I felt my real life persona to be. In these day-dreams I braved plane crashes and earthquakes and all manner of other disasters and always won the love of the most handsome and dashing male of the piece by being a down-to-earth earnest honest-to-goodness heroine.


It has been perhaps two years since I last saw my imaginary hero, and it is not because I have come to my senses and realized that living in dream worlds does not really make for real-life successes. It is, I think, because I found I liked my life and myself better than I had previously realized.
So now I restrict myself to sitting in the dark or out on my little balcony staring at stars making conversation with people who are actually in my real live life at the moment. And sometimes they are imaginary conversations that I create; and the people aren't really real people at all - merely constructs of humans made up in my head around the ideas of people I know.
I smile and cry over these as much as I ever did over all my burning buildings and sinking submarines and alien invasions.
I'm to assume this is an improvement.

cat lady

I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to unravel the mystery that I believe my mind is. The unfortunate side-effect of this is that I spend a lot less time on the more important things in life, i.e. studying, working hard, making a name for myself in life, planning my future. ( :( )
On the other hand, the upshot of all this deep thinking has led me to make some rather stunning discoveries as far as humankind are concerned. (They all seem to be discoveries that people have already made generation after generation through time, but when has that ever stopped someone from trying to find something out for their own dear self?)
Here is the latest I've wrapped my head around: my elders aren't really all wiser than me. Sure, I always knew they were probably less equipped to deal with the emergencies of life e.g. how to create a PowerPoint presentation with pictures of grandchildren, but I'd always assumed they were wiser than me, see? Because that's what I was told. It is what I was brought up to believe. Teachers, parents, grandparents - they all know better than us because they have (oh holy whisper) experience. They have seen life. Their advice is to be carefully considered before you make any decisions in life at all.
And now I spend more and more time around elders in the family and out of it, and I listen to all the things they say to see if anything makes sense, and I find that the wisdom of our elders is a myth that I believed in only because I was far too naïve to do otherwise.
Alas, the sad truth is that adults are often just older, uglier, more wrinkled versions of their misguided childhood selves. And it is galling to have to bow and scrape before them in mockery of respect merely because they are older than I am. And yet I will, and I do, because anarchy solves nothing.
I'm just going to make damn sure I'm a wise old woman and not a prattling idiot, is all.

ladies and gentlemen

Some day I will wake up in the morning and treat the day as mundane and ordinary and not worthy of wild, passionate interest. Some day I will walk through my life on tiptoe, without ripples and without messes. Some day I will grow old and grow up and grow smart. Some day I will believe, as Manu says, that life is a "spiral of despair, and your only hope is piling one distraction on top of another, and hoping that your massive heap of delusion doesn't collapse before you die."
Just not any time soon.

Perhaps maturity lies in recognizing the everyday as ordinary, perhaps it does. Perhaps it is the greatest sign of my immaturity, this tendency to revel in incident and accident and coincidence. Perhaps it is true that a twenty-something female in a big city cannot afford to go through her life with eyes open and heart open, inviting everyone she meets into it.

There is a part of my brain that recognizes this, that sends me the customary warning signals every time I do something abysmally, shockingly stupid and reckless. There is a part of my brain wired with every ounce of cynicism culled from my wise mother (don't talk to strangers, avoid eye contact, don't reveal any personal information!!!). There is permanent commentary that dogs my every move, that stares in horrified fascination as I agree to lunches with people I have never seen, and strike up conversations with strangers, and stare at a man on a bus in an attempt to shame him into giving up the seat he is in (fun fact from T's oh-coincidental universe: actually had a pleasant conversation with aforementioned, and ended up on the same bus as him the day immediately after. this is irony.)
There is a part of me that knows in chilling detail all that could go wrong, that imagines scenarios where strangers follow me home, to work, into dark alleyways. There is a part of me that has imagined, in technicolour blurs, all the things strange men can do to unprotected females. There is a part of me that realizes I could be robbed raped killed every time I leave myself vulnerable, open, accessible.
And yet.
And yet.

Trying to convince the rest of my brain to follow any of these wise instructions feels to me like kicking a small and confiding puppy. It is as though I'm trying my utmost to retain that part of me that persists in believing that good things will happen. I have so much trust in the world that it seems unbearably cruel to break it when it remains so resilient to all that it faces.
Oh, I am aware. Aware that one day I will realize the hard way that the world is not a nice place. Some day I will learn through bitter experience that it is probably not a good idea to stare at a gentleman on the bus until he relinquishes his seat to me. Some day I will discover that strangers do not, in general, turn out to be pleasant people at the end of a long day. Some day I will stop marvelling at the wonder of other people. Some day I will stop remembering the kindness of strangers. Someday I will stop hoping and agree in entirety with that part of me that expects only pain and misery and heartbreak.
Just... not yet, please not yet.

I want to know. In the end, if I die hoping, against all evidence and in spite of always expecting the worst, that the world is a wonderful, beautiful, hopeful place, is that so very bad?

on strangeness

Weddings are such unexpected places, aren't they?
I don't mean the kinds of weddings where you're related to half the invitees and remotely connected by a number of familial ties to the other half (not to mention the fact that you are probably eligible to be married to most of the single gentlemen present. :) Erm.) Those weddings are wonderful if only because they bring home extremely forcefully the immutability of families and traditions and the fact that any more than two old ladies together equals a dissection of past, present and future that will mesmerise and terrify and leave you wishing you never turn out like your grandmother.
No, I do not mean that kind of wedding. I mean, rather, the kind of wedding where you wander in with feelings of great trepidation, holding the colourful invitation in front of you like a shield; the kind of wedding where you walk around the reception hall and are slowly but surely overwhelmed by the feeling that you recognize absolutely nobody present, and you cannot find the bride, who is in all probability the only person who actually knows you were invited.
The few forays you make into discussions reveals that everyone present is either Bengali, or Oriya, or worked for Wipro at some point of time in their life. Which is when you walk up and down an edge of the hall in as discreet a manner as possible (getting in the way of all the waiters), muttering to yourself about how you shouldn't have come and do i know *nobody* here except the bride? and how am i supposed to get home *now*? until you run into people you know, and suddenly there are things to talk about and you feel less like a great gaby in a sari.
And then you greet the bride and groom and you run into a number of persons you haven't seen in years and make a few new friends and end up with nice boys flirting with you.
Probably. :)
And the day ends in DC after dessert, which is the way all good days should end, yes.

Meanwhile, I would like to give thanks for the amply padded posterior that saved my spine from permanent injury during my undignified tumble down a set of stairs yesterday on the way to my exam.
Yes. :(
But nothing was broken, not even any bones, so yay.

When somebody says at the end of a viva, "You didn't make a view? Birds-eye view... Such a nice project, you don't want to show it off?", you know the review has gone well, do you not?
:D

grown ups

The question is not whether I am right, but rather whether it is right to try and find answers from others. Is it not strange that someone who does not believe in the power of a holy man to tell her how to live her life will happily take advice from ordinary people?
The mistake I make, perhaps, is in thinking that others are wiser than me. The mistake I make is in assuming that something is true only because lots of people say it is.
Does that not make sense?

There are things I must realize on my own, and decisions I must make. Hoping that someone else will show me the way to do that is foolish. There are always things we can learn from other people, always. The things we learn, though, are not the things they tell us.
(I learn more from words not said. Do not you? I feel as though words are just so much illusion - they give you nothing but new confusions and new ways to say things that mean the same and not. They are tools we use to hide what we really feel. How is obscurity worth more than clarity?)

I am the age I am. I have been alive for twenty two years. that makes me an adult, you say? Why does it? My being any age does not mean I will behave (or think, or feel, or speak) the way you (or you or you or you) think I should; purely because of the fact of how long I've inhabited this space in and around my body. It does not even mean I should.
The things people forgive each other may be what makes them wise. There is nothing but stupidity in prejudice and arrogance and bigotry, so how can tolerance not be wisdom? And if someone cannot not forgive me a moment of selfishness or doubt or fear, it reflects not my immaturity, but theirs.

Doesn't being your self mean you decide what that actually means? How else am I wise one moment and not wise another? Or patient one day and impatient another?
Being mere words (mature, responsible, selfish, cruel) that other people will find easier to understand makes you less than you are.
Is what I think, anyway.
:)

weekend guests

There is a code of conduct that parents expect from their children, isn't there? there is certainly a pattern of behaviour that my mother expects from me unconsciously, or subconsciously; and it seems as though I rarely seem to live up to that code. It is not a conscious neglect on my part, rather it is my determination to always behave the same way in all circumstances. Is that so wrong?
As long as I am within the four walls of the house, and as long as I am outside the house with sufficient distance between me and my parent, I am a terribly model child. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't have a boyfriend. I don't spend too much money, I rarely come out late without a call home first, I don't stay out at all hours of the night.
The problem arises, of course, when my mother and I occupy the same pace and time with anyone not in the nuclear family, and incidentally, always someone who happens to be extended family or close to that. Why this should be, I have no idea. And then there are fights and recriminations and I end up crying about what a weird inhuman non-person I am.

talking analogies

If I were to imagine it, it would begin with the balance. The scales. The accounting.
(backlog, bank balance, accumulation)
Karma.
And if I were to imagine it, I would have a plan written out for me; my fate, my destiny.
I see it as... plans. Perhaps - of a house.
But then, I think, it seems more. More than a plan - a concept. A hint of a house, a wish of a house - basic spatial arrangements - a requirement, an instruction, a brief. Flexible.
And when I imagine it, the purpose of life is to get this house built. And keep it built.
So I will find people who will help me with the blueprints. And the materials. And the curtains, furniture, windows, carpets, paint, wallpaper... And the plumbing.
And when I imagine it, I find someone somewhere with whom plans overlap so that we can build our houses over and beside and inside and outside and through each other's.

Hmm. Analogies are really very unwieldy things. Because now I'm thinking neighbours, and countries and walls and fences and apple trees in the garden; and I'm thinking maintenance and home loans and who will mow the lawn after the house is built; and frankly, frankly - this analogy can be carried a long way. Pretty boring way, too.
I just thought it up because I could. Isn't that the best reason?
Life as a House. Somebody already even made the movie.

this is VERY IMPORTANT

Does anyone else get miserable this time of year?
Clinically depressed, I mean.
I want to know.

dreaming

The most important thing about imaginary kisses is the fact that they need to be imagined.
I cull from scenes in movies, and scenes in novels, and the way a friend will describe the first time she made out with her boyfriend in a seat of a movie theatre. In my loneliest moments I string them together in fits and starts, and I construct disjoint details of lips and teeth and tongues, stubble and nose and fingers.
(and chins and cheeks and hair and eyelashes)

It's strange, imagining. You can pay attention to just whichever specific part of the experience you want to - knowing that you need never have annoying smells or sounds or unexpected laughtracks; body odour and halitosis and inappropriate music. You can use replay and rewind and fast forward and lose all the boring parts whenever you want to. You change location and setting and weather; clothing and shoes and hairstyle. You can be taller, shorter, thinner, fatter; simultaneously, separately, in a matter of moments!
One wonders if porn allows those without imaginations to develop some fantasies of their own.

One also wishes... to try the real thing.
It's as though the skin is easily imagined with (someday i will wonder more about this. it is an idea i like), but the rest of the senses take some doing. Sounds are not too hard, tastes are harder, and smell is the hardest of all.
The eyes? Oh the eyes are always closed. Why, but, that's how they do it on TV!


for j. for the inspiration :)


Okay, and because I'm now imagining. waist. and hips. and jaw line. and ears, neck, nape.
the exploration of asymmetry. chest and shoulders and arms and palms. walls and water and outside. shoulder bones and collar bones and backbones. right down to the base of.
thank you for details.

illusion

I told someone the other day - I cannot write fiction.
I have tried, sure. I have tried, but not very hard. I have tried, but there has never been that spark of imagination in me that makes for the truly wonderful stories. I cannot see them in entirety, the stories; the stories like complete bubbles, free to coalesce with others outside and inside and beside. I can think of nothing new, nothing, and it is not just in the writing.
(what is anything worth if you have nothing new of your own to offer?)
I do tell stories well, though. I can tell you stories I know. Stories I imbibe and refashion to make them, in my head, lighter or snappier or more interesting.
I can make things read well.

I just cannot write them.


I won every inter-house creative writing competition in my school. Perhaps it was because of my flair for words.
(I do have one, don't I? I do, don't I? Oh, someone please say yes.)
My stories weren't ever original. They were, almost all of them, stories about mysterious and malignant dark forces à la every trashy horror story I'd ever read or watched. I always used themes from things I'd read, or seen, or heard. People say all art is imitation, but I couldn't write without themes. I couldn't write a story unless I had a boundary within which to fit it - a first line, a last line, a title. I needed hints, or I didn't know where I was going.
I want to believe this does not make me any less of a person, I do; but I can't. What is the use of anything if you can't imagine? What is the use? People who cannot write can think of stories that have so much potential that I burn with jealousy and futility and impotence.
All I have ever imagined has already been in here. So tell me.
Why bother wonder at all?

later letter

Darling,
If I had my way this would be in paper and pen and pencil, because that's what I've been thinking of all day - paper and pen and pencil; and molecules of myself that go spinning out into the great unknown never to return to me unless you will it so. Did I not send them to you, molecules of me in paper and pencil and ink?

I wrote to people in the last week without a thought for what I was writing beyond the fact that I was writing to them and today I cannot remember a word not a word except that I think I told someone I loved him.
Perhaps it is better this way, when the words I write out of my pain and joy escape from me forever and ever and not a word remains to mock me with memories of my own stupidity. Perhaps the letters that will mean the most to us will be the ones we remember in spite of ourselves; without any records or copies or memorandums - the ones that we will remember, perhaps remember all wrong, except for that one perfect sentence we slaved over for two minutes.
Then again, perhaps we will not remember them at all.

See, I've been thinking. Is a relationship that is entirely electronic better than ones you have in real life because of all the ways you can remember it; and all the ways you will never never need to? For I cannot remember when I first wrote you, or when you first said hello, or when you first asked to get in my pants. I cannot remember, but I can find out. I can find out when, and what, and quote; and I can calculate the number of times you said any of the numerous stupid things you said and draw pretty graphs of proportion if I wanted to.

Do we say the things we say to each other because no one will never know unless we tell? Because passwords protect but letters can be found by anybody? Is that why the blog is like an alternative - a public private personal letter that any random person can find; one of those interrupted stories that people stumble across in old apartments - overlapping edges of lives that remind you of things in your own? Is that why it tugs at the heartstrings so to read of someone else, someone like you, doing the things you did or the things you want to do, falling in love and falling out of love and doubting and believing and winning and losing and living?
Perhaps it is. I like to think so. I like to think of all the stories I've read here in this place; the ones I've loved; as windows into lives of people not very different from me - people who could have been my friends, or my sisters, or my soul mates. We all look for soul mates, after all. I've just found some for myself, see, all accidental-like.
Lucky, lucky me.

fractures

where are we supposed to go from here? emergency? it isn't an emergency? casualty? perhaps, but only of my own clumsiness. and how long do i have to wait here among all these people whose blood is all on the outside instead of where self-respecting blood should be?
wheelchair, downstairs, elevator to the OPD. forms to fill, and cards to fill, down stairs, down stairs, but Father, I am not 23 yet, and who's listening?
doctor, it has been two hours since I got here and an hour since the X-ray and the upstairs downstairs, is there nobody with this girl, and where is the man with the plaster cast? i have eaten my stale idlis in my hot sambhar while Father stood by smelling of smoke and am i surprised? and where? where is my bandage?
i have read all the charts, sister, and i have redesigned the administrative block, and i am dying for a bit of construction paper and a pair of scissors and could you get me some tape with that? and i watch you wrap those instruments in cloth and i ask, sister, are those to be boiled and you nod yes; i doubt you understood me, but you smile prettily, congratulations.
and sister, sister, o Nurse? see, i can see that run in your stocking.

it's up to three hours now, doctor, close to three and a half, and why must i pay an entire month's salary for a cast in fibreglass that will not even give me a canvas on which to get people to spout drivel to show their love for me, no substitutes i bet you get a hefty commission doctor, but so it goes so it goes, and i spend half my Sunday being ignored in a hospital and the other half being ignored at home
(no, i will not apologize.)
and Coventry is not such a bad place to be if you have the internet and a phone.

Really, it's not.
So. Someone call me, please?

building thoughts

Architecture is perhaps the most unexpectedly rewarding mistake I ever made.
I could imagine a life doing something else, struggling less, worrying less, panicking less. Perhaps I could. I could imagine a life where I entered college fresh from school to do something I actually had a chance of being good at - literature, mathematics, engineering, law, journalism. Perhaps I could.
People who knew T in school always said, architecture? in the tones of people watching chickens swimming. T was talented in school, yes. She was smart, and she loved to learn, and her English was the stuff of legend. But I preen, and I wanted to talk of architecture.

I could imagine some other field where I would learn more about life, and people, and words that sell ideas. I could imagine a field where I talk to a person in Hindi, another in Kannada and a third in English; all within the same four walls; as mediator and arbitrator and umpire. I could imagine some other world where I would be responsible to each and every one of those people, the one held accountable, the one in charge...and still, in all probability, the one who gets the least return for her investment.
Perhaps I could, but I doubt it.
I wonder how many other fields require you to be at once responsible to everybody. And I mean everybody. To the client - to get the job done on time, within budget, as per specification. To the contractor, the carpenter, the plumber, the electrician, the mason - to get them their drawings, their instructions, their money.
To yourself - because that's the point of design, isn't it?
I fear I will never be a great architect. I fear I lack the vision, the skill, the willingness to spend three days on a single room. I have dreams of buildings that I cannot draw and I talk about spaces that I cannot see, and it breaks my heart. I have ideas that I do not put down on paper because I am too lazy, too afraid of the work any design entails.
I see people around me who talk of architecture the way I talk of writing, and I wish for the least fraction of that passion.
If I could design the way I write, I'd be a happier architect. Not better, not necessarily. Just...happier. I'd be happy just to try.

love letters, dammit

I first watched the movie Love Letters around seven years ago, more or less. I found it during one of the aimless channel-flipping exercises - the ones that end in you stopping for five minutes at something that seems mildly interesting; and then ending up being completely hooked even though you've missed the beginning and you have no idea what you've missed so far and you have to pick things up as you go along.
That happened to me with Finder's Fee, too. :) Surprises are better.

Now I never knew what the movie was called, and I had no idea who the actors were, and the movie more or less drifted away from the instant recall part of my brain. There was one scene from the movie, though, that I incorporated into my list of near-perfect celluloid moments - a scene where our (for lack of a better word) hero walks away from our (ditto) heroine, forever, you think, forever and ever no! but then, he stops at the doorway, turns around and comes right back and kisses her, oh.
I remembered that scene. I still remember it, though the background is white and the other people in the room are grey and the edges are fuzzy and our hero looks more like James Woods than Steven Weber. Laura Linney's still Laura Linney, though.

Love Letters started out as a play. A play by A.R. Gurney that was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. There's a bit of trivia for you! Put it in your pipe and smoke it. I found this out when I went to watch it. Love Letters, by Evam. Here's the synopsis, for people who care:

The play centers on two characters, Melissa Gardner and Andrew Makepiece Ladd III. Using the epistolary form sometimes found in novels, they sit side by side at tables and read the correspondence - in which they discuss their hopes and ambitions, dreams and disappointments, and victories and defeats - that has passed between them throughout their lives. It is only at the end that they both realize they were really love letters at their core.

It was halfway through the first half that I realized that I knew this script. I knew these words, I knew this story. And Boom, like that, I remembered.
Love Letters is better as a play.
Without attendant explanation with other characters and detail and setting. Because in essence the story is about letters more than about people. A love story about Love Letters. How could I not love it?
One can see how much better it can be, though. One can imagine the actors doing less, moving less, distracting less. One of the things I loved most about the play was the expression on the face of the person reading the letter as the person who wrote it told the audience what was in it. What else is in a letter but the hope that the person on the other side reads it as you want them to read it, sees the things you've sent them, packaged in your words, your heart to theirs?
Perhaps I love the story so much because letters have always been my way of letting people into my heart.
But then who writes letters any more anyway?

(First begun 22/2/07 8:48 AM. As a letter to someone. How perfectly ironic.)