after who knows

I tend towards the meta in all my talk posts; it's part of the reason I call them that - it is a remnant of the days when I thought I could be clever.

I am reaching a point in my life where most things tend to do a lot of looming over my head: my age, my lack of a job, my inability to make something great of myself, my refusal to be married. This is the first time I can remember, however, when mild-panicky reactions and feelings of inadequacy haven't sent me scurrying to words. Well, it is now, but it hasn't been for a while. I am afraid to look at the dates for fear that realizing exactly how long it has been might actually cause irreparable brain damage.

I went by The Cat's home today, the virtual one where I first met him. I miss the way conversations with that person made me feel, as though there were secrets that I was privy to by virtue of things I had done inadvertently; as though I was smarter, and funnier, and wittier than so many others because someone seemed to see me that way.

The odd thing is that there is someone in my life now who loves me very much, but in whose company I never feel anything extraordinary about myself except for the fact that I am very loved.

I realized today that I have grasped very few opportunities to talk about him, my mystery boyfriend: this person with whom I have so much in common and so little; about whom I am asked every day and about whom I return noncommittal platitude-phrases (potter indian michigan kannada jewish 28 5'8" ) because I haven't given myself a chance to talk about him with myself yet.

There isn't much I can say about him without feeling as though I am violating spaces; I have not yet found a way to talk of someone without imagining them in the audience as well.

(It was something that made it easy with the others I spoke of and wrote of, the fact that I thought I knew the way they read things... Of course sometimes I was wrong in the readings of those readings, and that was when I was visited by my dear friends confusion, embarrassment, and shame (good times, good times) and after that it was just splendid fun for all concerned, of course.)

I ramble. I think I can vaguely remember a time when my posts had points, and beginnings and ends and a couple of clever sentences somewhere along the way, but for now I am willing to wait and see what getting back to writing feels like.

internal audits

The snow is here. The light is bright.

There are big changes around the corner, and I am aching with the waiting of it. There was a secret medicine ball that fell open before I could pretend I had not guessed what it was, and now I must pretend I never heard; my very bones turn to mush at the thought.

It has been four months since I left my home behind; did you know, my dear? I have grown in ways I did not anticipate; and those are the best ways to grow (and the best ways to listen to new music). And I have been singing lullabies across states, seated on balconies in the dark.

from my love and to my love

Oh look! I let go of somebody. Not completely; I have graduated only to that point where looking at his name causes the littlest of heart-pangs and a but oh, have you forgotten? and then I am sensible (and the merest littlest teeniest bit homicidal) again. Someday he will return a letter, and then I will forgive him and move on. Stealing my creativity without any reciprocals is not a crime I am ready to pardon yet, and I have already allowed far too many to get away with it.

I have been dreaming of ways to sneak into somebody's round house.

Unforeseen, this most sweet, beautiful change.

women's days

I have been working three weeks without a holiday, and yet I have found the time to visit India Gate at midnight and eat meetha paan while boys with accents played hotel California on out-of-tune acoustic guitars nearby and great shiny lights lit shiny construction sites; and I have found the time to take walks through the market during Tuesday haat with flatmates and drink bitter carrot juice at roadside stalls and be overcharged by fruitsellers; and I have found the time to be a Shoulder to people who told me and told me and then told me they felt better because they'd told me; and I have found the time to watch Slumdog Millionaire on somebody's laptop on a bed with people i had known for less than a week; and I have found the time to split a meal four ways with strangers when I ordered vegetarian and the others did not, and the time to complain to other strangers about it.

And today and tonight I met old and new geeks I would be a groupie for; and made hypocritical conversations on the bejewelled sofa of my landlady; and wandered the streets alone in the dark with clenched fists afraid that someone would step out of the shadows and I would be stuck in a strange city with nobody to turn to; and I called and called the one person whom I promised I would not, because I knew he would be the Shoulder I needed when I needed, and I needed him.

I am tired and sleep-deprived and overworked and underpaid and all I'm thinking is that I miss the one I love.
What does it mean to be a woman?

And I have to speculate that God himself
Did make us into corresponding shapes like
Puzzle pieces from the clay
True, it may seem like a stretch, but
Its thoughts like this that catch my troubled
Head when you're away when I am missing you to death

:) Ow.