amor fati

Dec. 22, 2023

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Once you realize you don’t have to do a lot of things or for that matter anything at all, life becomes really simple. Every little spare moment I have, I dedicate it to frolicking with my cats or reading books or journaling. I can cook but I don’t usually. I can clean, but I don’t usually. Well, all that is necessary but I don’t usually bother.

I watched Maestro (Bradley Cooper’s) movie on Netflix while I laid down next to Sonu, as he was slightly moping. I love the way Sonu inserts his paw into my hand (see the pic)…  

I adore the little nugget ! I’m conflicted about this movie. Not because of the story, and Bradley Cooper was glorious, but because I didn’t know the personal stuff about Leonard Bernstein till this movie. I feel that we shouldn’t know about the personal crap about our heroes or those who we respect. As they were (are) also human beings, they will disappoint you tremendously. The same thing happened about Ayn Rand, who wrote Fountain Head, and Atlas Shrugged,  I was like adoring her till I read the biography and of course about Charlie Rose… Really !! I’m not comfortable to also not to acknowledge if they have any predatory patterns, but it’s so disappointing, isn’t it ? But on the other hand, I also learned great things from (auto)biographies of people like Lee Iacocca (former President of Ford), Sam Walton (Wal-Mart founder), Nick Leeson (Rogue Trader).  Best thing I learned is Sam Walton’s how to get revenge on people when they piss you off. Oh well, I dusted off my personal distaste of this movie by listening to some Handel’s Messiah !

Today (12/21)I had to post something to my family in india, and also to get some chicken for my boy, so I actually put on my pants and went out. Apparently, a truck with untucked equipment went under a low bridge of a major highway near my house and damaged the bridge and thus two highways were cordoned off and all the bloody traffic flowed into a highway, near my house which is usually very traffic-less. So I had to find alternate routes to get this couriered off via fedex and then went wading in the traffic to a KFC to get chicken for my boy Sonu as he has been moping that I’m not getting him chicken. Got home and found that the Chewy box came with my kitties nourishment, so went down to bring the heavy box up and I had to rest, half way on the stairs. One of the girls’ boyfriend in the apartment across mine, helped to bring the box up.  Update: Yesterday the police dept. posted this note saying the routes are now open: i admire the person who wrote this note. lol

After finishing up chores like feeding the kitties, clearing some stuff and cooking (yes, I do cook), I finished watching the Swedish series on Netflix, A Nearly Normal Family. It is really well done and I may even read the book to explore some emotions, a little bit triggering if you have anxiety like I do, and also trigger warning as it has rape, but gosh, while shattering and defining what it means to be a family and the dynamics of family in crisis are depicted really marvelously. I also learnt that Swedish justice system works differently than American justice system.

The fact that 2023 is nearly over is actually causing me a bit of anxiety and made me face how much I dissociated mentally and how alienated I was from my own self. I feel like I’m still asleep and just walking through life dazed. The flicker of life which got ignited by the Stranger and is warming me up slowly and helping me from going into full zombie mode. I just need to live in the moment like the animals do. I clustered the forgiving silence in my chest and let it set and fester deep down, causing a certain rot; which I let to grow enough to reach deep through my ribs to where my heart longed to be touched, even if by rot. Now that my heart is lifeless, aged but softened. Perfectly decayed enough to be tender. I just simply need to break off the mold.  I don’t know what I’m waiting for.

Just need to wake up and reap the rewards ! Darling, it’s time to live !

lost

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i was thinking of you today… and i’ve been thinking about god whether he shivers, and i continue to write about boys who don’t exist anymore. i’ve been thinking about the kindness of a stranger who still sees me as a human being. moments like these make me angry when i feel human and it is really not what i wanted. i hate being vulnerable.

i’ve been learning about different kinds of distances and the fire of longing that warms instead of burns but ends up consuming. i’ve been thinking i want to belong and i’m thinking how much i miss you, but i’m also thinking how absurd to think that i miss you.

i talk about distances like i’m a map, like i’m old and i’m hurting and my wrinkles are streets and my tears, rivers that led me everywhere but to the sun at the center of me, the memories of people and places burning underneath. i think about longing but it could only ever turn people into tragedies. i am thinking about the burnt forests and houses. how the fire annihilated everything in its path and left everything bloodied and blackened in its wake, angrily spitting out ashes and maybe i am a masochist; maybe we will end up as soot and ashes to be inhaled by unsuspecting lungs; my body hardened with sharp edges sleeping across the ceramic floors of the bathroom. like how i had to fight for it and how hard and easy and how complicated and simple. may be my story ends with me being bloody and blackened and spitting out ashes and maybe i’ll be the tragedy you watch on the local news and my name becoming news and me an old ghost like you were on my tongue and the way your name sounds as i miss you.

lately, i’ve been memorizing your memories. stuffing them in my lint filled shirt pockets for safe keeping and gentle old age. i’m binding your story with the skin of my heart to surpass the notion of time. i lay awake and keep still to hear you breathe gently and softly like you used to. i can still feel me snuggling up to your arms and resting in the coveted space between your neck and shoulder and trying to warm up and waiting for sun to rise and moon to set. how many eons has it been ? circulating the lost moments till the breaking of light. i know how to reminisce. or i know how to lie.

bringing up the blueprints of your anatomy and tracing your silhouette. my eyes have gone weary and paling the colors and isn’t always interpreted the way i mean them to. there are only sound waves and the speed of light dragging their heels in the sand of your arms to leave marks of where we have been. and i am, always searching for you in these lost moments and found times.

i’m sitting here thinking if god shivers the way i do. i’m thinking i love you more than i love sweet sweet mangoes. i’m thinking i love your more than my ralph lauren comforter. i am thinking how much i miss you, but i’m also thinking how absurd to think that i miss you. you and i were everything and i became nothing. how can i then miss you ? and then again, how can i not miss you ? i think of you every moment, and i hear you on the other end of my thoughts and i hear your voice and i want to hang up on you. i hate saying goodbyes especially if they are forever. i ache for you and my eyes miss your form and tear up. i want your arms around me, keeping me safe and i want to hear you say i miss you. but these are just a sad girl’s lonely musings. the night just started and as it grows, you’re on my mind and when the night fades into day you’ll fade from my mind as well. but, then again, another night will be born, and you’ll be on my mind again.

the day i met you, i lost myself. the day you died, i disappeared.

 

here & now

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it’s snowing this morning but no accumulations because it’s warm out. i walked around my neighborhood with a cup of cocoa for a bit and caught snowflakes in my hair. (i’ve asthma and i shouldn’t do stupid things like this, but i’m being stupid for a change…. pneumonia, you are welcome). i stayed home as i needed to bring my kid horus to ze vet for his f/u blood work to make sure he doesn’t have internal bleeding.

i’m happy to be home to be surrounded by my cats as i’m kind of sad. i’ve been thinking about the american boy and how he talks about his girlfriend and i was thinking he is happy with who and what he got and while i’m happy for him, i’m sad as i’d have to push pause and explore couple of other boys who actually seem to be interested. i just need to find out if any of them is worth having a relationship ie that they are not neanderthals and all too much bloody americans as i find all americans loud, relatively obnoxious, unromantic and too chauvinistic and me being a highly intellectual, educated and feminist being, we are not a good mix. all this came about as how these boys keep wanting to do stuff with me and its not fair for them i think as even though i do go out, my mind is always on the unknown. and having said that, i’m planning to get a passport so i could go away for a weekend… anyway, american boy has to wait for a bit while i pursue other avenues… oh well, life goes on…

i often find myself falling into an overwhelming grief and by some coincidence, like when i’m chilling in my car or my bed or listening to music so it’s not that bad.  my brain warps and warbles when i’m in a mood like this and my thoughts go like: “the world in general is very much fucked and i’m running low on hummus; are those yellow flowers on that open bush; why is that woman wearing that awful dress and oh my car has great speakers and this is a great gift to be immersed in the greenness of the traffic light and so on and so forth. the mere multiplicity of it all… and ding ding ding…

being in the present moment. there’s full immersion and magical things like attending concerts, having sex, and skydiving (i never get to do this because i found out i was pregnant the day i was to jump) or bungee jumping or going scuba diving; participants in these activities are completely and utterly immersed to their bones in these moments. there’s no pausing in the past no stress for future and just living, breathing and absorbing every detail like a thirsty, bone-dry sponge; highly tuned to the smells, the sights, the tastes, the touches and the sounds become rich and colorful and alive; is there a better way to live than being in the present moment ? that’s why i love animals as they live in the present moment. just acknowledge and appreciate your current situation with eyes wide open and even more wide open heart. such liberation, such life !

i love being surrounded by my cats when i’m sad. i long for the velvety silk milk warmth of loving by a human, which is currently in hibernation. it faintly translates to getting caught in a deluge and getting drenched and just laughing but the sky was black as my grief; and when the rain ended the color of the sky and there’s no way i can describe how clean and how clear  and how crisp and how surreal the world seems; it amazes me what these violent storms do to the colourscape and it amazes me what ends up radiating. i don’t necessarily feel sad; i just feel like …. oh what are the words ? … i just feel like, my heart is buried somewhere deep, deep and going pitter pitter pitter… who knows about relations, or who knows what love is or even whether i’m equipped for it or whether it’s enough ? i’m sure i’m not gonna die of an aching heart, or loathsome loneliness; i’m sure i’m going to laugh those big laughs again while hanging off of a loved one and catch snowflakes in the hair while holding hands with someone who loves me and i’m sure there will be days for me with cozy comfort but i’m here, now and thinking about not running away; there will be days we can meet in a garden where cats roam chasing squirrels and there will be days, and yes, we have to meet there again.

i wish us all sudden and unpredictable velvety silk comfort.

i will now go and put on a sweater.

unspoken

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think of me as a love letter between your fingers. cradle me and caress me. imagine that my spine is aged with a love that is older than my time on this earth. that my corners crinkle when i blush and that the creases in my body are similar to the scars on my thighs – i ‘ve been folded in two, in four. i don’t always fit my surroundings. imagine that i’m that ink stain that rests on your fingertips and that i carry permanent promises when you mark me and that i’m carved on paper and on bark, on bare walls and on crowded skies.

that i ‘m here for you to read on your loneliest nights. imagine that i weave my love through my words when i’m not there to weave my fingers through yours or toss your hair. that there is so much to say that my sentences run off the page. that despite this, i’m always ready to sign “yours” with a steady hand. i’m always ready to love you with a confident heart.

think of me as a love letter between your fingertips. come kiss my lips and open my lines. remember that i’m written in a language just for you; sometimes in braille, run your fingers on my body and read me; sometimes i’m written digitally, and that i stutter more when i write than when i speak – i’m still learning how to use certain words when you are around. be patient with me. know that my love screams louder than the pauses between unfinished syllables, the same way that it is more prominent than the miles between our souls and bodies. come and say hello to me and share your story with me.

share yourself with me.

love apparently

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i’m here and here are somethings i want you to know, all you lovely people of the internet…. i’m fully exhausted with my scheduled feedings of horus and every day is another misery and i’m wondering how long would it take to finally break me with this sleeplessness…. but seeing my kid come to my bed when i stir in the wee morning and then purr happily with the anticipation of nourishment, is a magnificent sight and he comes meowing and cooing and rubs his head against my face and i’m happy. he is still showing no interest in eating on his own except couple of times when he licked a bit of some chicken flavored food. i so need to get a variety of foods to see which one he would like to eat, but i’m exhausted. i think it’s partly because my lungs are not working as well as they should in spite of inhaler and i can’t wait for the weather to turn a bit warm and bring me fresh set of allergies..

so robbie (the boy who just turned 30) wanted to take me to canada for valentine’s day… but i said no as it requires me getting a passport and i’m planning not to get a passport for a while as i am still on steroids for my breathing and it makes me look bloaty and passports have expiration dates for like ten years or so… and therefore, we probably may end up at la croix, my favorite french restaurant in philly..

i was talking to tim (my mentor) about negative results or negative learning. this is something where you find out that you don’t like to do xyz. for example, one may do something like gardening for the first time and decide it’s not their cup of tea.. in this regard i was telling him how jace (my husband) did two things in the name of science and experiment. well, we scientists are suckers for data and so we collect for everything. when he was fifteen, he worked with a farmer for a summer to find out how farming life is and he found that farming was hard labor and that he never would be a farmer. another time, when he was doing his post doc in paris, france, jace  dressed up as a homeless man and he stood in a corner and begged for money (not even that, he told me, he just stood there with a hat in his hand) and he found out that beggars made lot more than his student stipend… 😊 i was so filled with happiness from talking about jace…

my american boy keeps circling my cubicle… i was standing way too close to him today and it’s hard not to flirt or seduce him… in spite of the cold weather, i was warm. sober and whole and innocent. in the most natural of states. with him, like his presence made me something better, newer, cleaner. like this was all i had needed. a balm for my scars… something so familiar with a foreign thrill, the spits of water burning off the scars. they seem to fade when he touches them. i forget they exist. and i forget that i live in an imaginary world.

little warning my lovely boy…

seduction is both a science and an art.  in order to perfect it, one must construct a hypothesis based on extensive research and subject that hypothesis to rigorous testing. ultimately, though, the key to seduction is the communication of your results.  therein lies the art.  the manner of presentation rests within the curl of my lips and eyes and discretion. and i’m quite an expert in communicating with my curves and lips and eyes.

and also, seduction is like boxing.  it requires both endurance and persistence.

breathe deeply, my darling boy…  i’ve only just put on my gloves.

missing you

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i paint you with my words when i’m not with you so i don’t miss you that much.

i don’t know why i keep finding it so strange not to be bent over with the weight of missing you. i guess maybe i’ve been prepared for so long to ache terribly being across this vastness from you – as if the physical separation alone could break my bones. there is no doubt that this is one of the easier nights and that there are times when i tangle myself in these sheets and ache for you in all senses – mind, heart, body, hands, tongue. but i am finding that it is not as tho i left half of myself with you, but rather that i left my best friend, my unwavering companion, a partner to nap with and cook with and to run-through-parking-lots and water fountains. and maybe things are sometimes easier because i am forced to live. i am learning a certain spontaneity and acceptance of the unknown just by trudging through this every day.

but the ache of missing, the very physical act of yearning to be with someone that you can’t quite reach (if not now, ever) is mutual, that there are things i am unable to explain in eloquent terms or be poetic, to make any of this feel better because it has already manifested itself into my heart too, quietly but firmly, all the heaviness and exhaustion from being away from you.

i keep wanting to curl into you and my mind keep tracing over the notion that this is it, above all things, and how soon we would be bracing ourselves for the contrast between absolute certainty in a future with another human being and the spaces separating us which gape and protrude unfairly.

every night, i miss your body pressed against mine and i know that is just the start of an ache which linger and fade, the ebb and flow of missing someone.

tu me manques !

breathe !

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i was waiting impatiently at the elevators looking to get a coffee and my impatience turned to marvel when the doors opened and you walked out. i was speechless as i entered the elevator passing you and murmuring something vaguely like a hello to your ‘good morning’.

back at my desk, started reading the paper you left for me so as to distract myself away from the thoughts of you coursing through my body and then you were there. standing next to the printer and asking me questions and we had this conversation before. but you, standing near me, always jump start my heart and i now can distinctly hear my heart beating to the rhythm of your breathing.

my hope breathes and grows like a midsummer’s dream and waits with me in the coldest days of winter and under all these fluffs of snow.

but this time i impatiently waited for you to leave. not that i wanted you to leave but i wanted to make sure of what i already know.

i quickly took out a ruler and measured the small spaces between your words which hung around me like diamonds in a necklace. millimeters adding up to centimeters then adding up to inches until i nearly had a foot of white space. i then took the ruler, pressed it against my chest, you know just underside of my breast and measured it till the side of my right clavicle. i then multiplied it by two and it was roughly a foot ! i knew it before i got the sum and i wasn’t surprised at all. because into all those spaces between your words, i emptied all my breath from every single alveolus of my lungs.

lover, you always take my breath away !

rain

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2018/01/17

i could blame the rain or the electricity in a cloud which loomed gently over my head. my heart aches at the mention of your name. i’ll always remember the fire behind your eyes burning brightly, enough to keep us both warm. the thoughts of you drench my skin wet, but wither my hopes. they asked me to implicate the intoxication of lust as the reason for my missing you.

but i couldn’t do it, i want you and crave your skin since the time you left me imagining your hands on my body under my sheets. i keep grabbing harder still at my own skin, and silently hoping a part of you may have materialized. nothing you have done or will do, will ever change the fact that i love you.  i am trying to remember how to forget you. i started penning a list of ways on how to lose the ones i love and all i end up writing is ‘ i love you’.

bisous !

amor fati – part deux

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the sunbeams sparkled prettily in your eyes when words came out as whispers from my curled lips with the softness of velvety wine. “you may kiss me when the light is right”, i breathed and i blushed heavily. it may be winter air pinching me pink or it may be that i was fully drunk in the sweet liquid you were soaked in as i fell in love. you breathed out my name into the air scenting it delicately and from then on every touch became a divine secret. my giggles took a silver bell tone tinkling with every breeze. you brushed my hair as though they are like a silken whisper. you are still a familiar unknown to me; your texture, tastes and touches i can’t identify; so vivid, so familiar, so out of this earth; savoring your splendor in the glow of the stars cast over our skins; our colors have bled and blended to create a new hue. we twine around each other without breaking. i’m comfortable. you are the exotic tastes, smells and tingles. you are the colors, sounds and shadows. your heartbeats are oceans whispering my name and i dream of seashells.  i still find myself aching for those hues, whispers and time hasn’t faded that memory or that familiarity.

at what point loneliness morphs into something that exists as something bearable ? i find myself missing you, missing your conversations, missing our moments; miss the curl of your tongue and the press of your teeth into my flesh; miss the way my soul sways to your smiles as your smiles wash over me affectionately; so fluid, so subtle and so mesmerizing. you should know that i can never bring myself to ecstasy the way you would; miss you, miss you , miss you a lot, a lot, lover ! please please come back ! melt with me one more time ! there’s always space for you in my heart, between my thighs, beneath my finger-nails, atop my tongue and inside my eyelids.  i breathe your name into the dark sky, pleading with the stars to carry my secrets and my tears to god.

i know none of this will translate into reality and i don’t mean for my words to be profound or planned or poetic. it’s just that i tucked you away in every atom of my body for times i need to feel alive; it’s just that i’m captivated and alas, i’m nothing more than a shadow thirsting to kiss you once more; it’s just that i still can’t remember my dreams. it’s just that tonight, i will bundle up all of the pain that exists inside of me which tugs at my heart’s skin and knead it until i’ve created something beautiful.

time is watching on and smiling as my tiny heart aches and aches and aches….

 

anatomy of me being scared and being brave

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12/02/2017

i write stories to survive… i write stories to remember that i am still alive. this year is weird. this year is being scared and being brave. a few years ago, when i found myself all alone, i thought it was like the whole universe was shaking its fists at me, at us (my kids and me). sometimes i forget about the times silence filled up the house, and sometimes i forget about the nights i didn’t sleep and sometimes i forget about my shaky legs carrying me around from one empty room to another empty room trying to find comfort.

people probably are under the impression that i walk around with these things tucked in my pockets, and that i wake to my sadness and greet them in the morning; but i think my grief, and sorrow has a way of hiding themselves in the gaps of my bones, living under my skin like a itch that doesn’t go away and they only rears their head now and then.

there are other things hiding there as well…. things i don’t talk about, because when you give them words, you give them weight and they are already heavy enough on the nape of my neck pushing me down into the earth. i don’t need to share the weight. and i’m not afraid of them, but they are unnecessary, unerasable reminders on the path behind me. i am not claiming i won’t look back. but i’m trying to not let the things from my past falter my steps forward. there are a lot of things i could tell you about.

like all those sliced up thighs and thin red lines on my wrists and the time the only boy i ever loved telling me to turn around and never look back. there are a lot of things i could tell you about, you know ? my friend screaming at me to stop me doing something stupid and the night at the hospital i sat next to julien knowing that it was the last chance to say goodbye.

but i don’t think it’s something that i’ve got to do because those stories are just stories and their effect has already been filled.  i am what i am but i am filling into the details and i am still learning. like how i’m realizing how there’s something attractive in distance, to me. there’s something harrowing and beautiful about getting in the car and just going. which is what i do. often. and, one day, what i think i’ll do. i think, because of the ways that changed me, running as far away from things as possible and holding them at arms length feels right, even if it stifles the way my eyes shine, and the way i am trying, ceaselessly, to bridge all of these gaps and stitch up these miles. it’s not just about love. it’s about owning up to all of the things that i feel, which is something i am bad at and which makes my lips stutter and my hands shake.

so the things i’m learning to be brave about? they’re not about the suicides or the hasty goodbyes or leaving a home i thought i knew. and not about all those things that people shoot me sideways glances about. it’s about the feelings i tucked inside my chest and didn’t tell anybody about–not because i was ashamed but because i didn’t think they were relevant or that anyone cared.

so i’m growing up and still learning, and i’m getting to the place where words are always burning that the tips of my tongue. it feels a little uncomfortable, but how else am i supposed to deal? i’m gonna find a way to let them go. and it’s not brave in a “baring your soul for the world to judge” type way. it’s brave in a “finally becoming comfortable with being who you are and not letting anyone, namely yourself, tell you that there isn’t worth in that.”

i have been trying to be brave for a few years now and i do this over and over again every december… i have a little post it note on my bathroom mirror which says “become committed to being scared and being braver” and i’m gonna start living by it, or i’m going to be doomed to a life of sidelining myself, and only ever being brave for other people.

so i’m showing up here again with my heart on my sleeve and a handful of things i want to tell myself and to let go. i hope i’m ready to listen, i hope i’m ready to believe. it’s not a process, it’s not a step-by-step program. it starts the second i want it to, the second i step up, and that second, for me, is right here. right now.

hello again, december !