journey

june

/ mycatisafrenchspy / Leave a comment

if a june night could talk,
it would probably boast it invented romance ~ bernard williams

bonjour a tous ! it was not so very pretty day but i got myself a bagel, a coffee and a book. weatherwise, it’s super muggy and a bit warm and on account of me being allergic to everything under the sun and including the sun, i didn’t venture out after this little trip.

i have been quite busy and occupying my time with gardening and cats as to love a cat or a flower is the most delicious form of escapism. the honeysuckles near my bedroom window started blooming and they scent my night air swirling together with gossamers of my dreams of the future and wisps and sighs of my past.

life became a blur and i am reminding myself to be still and not become a blur as well.

excuse me while i frolic in the glow of sheer happiness of my boys les warriors win the nba championship and hear me do a war cry of victory. there was a time, when i was sitting in a japanese/thai restaurant in ardmore with sandalwood on the night of game six of warriors v rockets, refusing to go home as rockets were leading 3-2 and i was so afraid that warriors may be done as they sucked for the last few games. i sat there petrified to eat even but there was a tv in the restaurant and i could clearly see the score and warriors were already lagging and my heart sank further still; but sandalwood is like i guarantee you that warriors are gonna win tonight and you must watch the game and he finally convinced me to leave the restaurant and so we packed our foods which just arrived much to the wonderment of the waitress and we raced home and yes, warriors won that game and they tied the series; and on the final game where there was 50% chance of warriors to win and again i was so terrified but sandalwood was  again supportive and told me that i should watch the game as it’s all about greatness achieved through competition and boy, was i glad to watch them win. and when they were in finals, i had no doubt that they will bulldoze cavaliers and yes and yes, my boys were brilliant and i especially loved the little facial expression of “yes” on durant’s face after he pulled the team into lead in game 3. everyone assumes that i like curry, but i actually like durant more and if i were to choose between curry and durant, i would go with durant as a romantic partner because i love strong, silent types.

in summary i don’t know about warriors but i am emotionally and physically drained but it was a glorious journey to reach the cup.

at the office i have squabbled and debated with my colleagues pete and tom as they were super fans of lebron james and i, just can’t stand him. they have this tendency to like pretty much everyone i despise. and for the record, i have no clue why i detest lebron so vehemently… i stand corrected, i think i know why; it’s because he was given a god status and i think he is so overrated and yea, that ticks me off…

i have started a gardening project after almost killing a variety of plants in the office. i would buy these little potted plants and bring them to office only to find them near dead in a couple of days (not my fault, i hastily add. it’s just that the office environment not conducive to any living organisms) and i would hurriedly bring them back home to nurse them back to health. even my cacti died. so i got a few baby spider plants from someone and now waiting for their roots to flourish so i could pot them. i brought some seeds to office and now my little seedlings are poking their itty bitty heads out of the soil and i am carefully coddling them. i really hope that they would thrive and that i could slowly transform my cubicle into a garden full of greenery and throbbing with life.

people break so easily along with their dreams and hearts. the suicides of kate spade and bourdain was awful news for me to hear. severe depression leads you to a place where pain is just too great to be awake filling you with despondency and paranoia and utter loneliness. truly it’s a hard disease to cope with not only for the person who is going through that but also to the ones in their lives.

i have made no progress what so ever on my grand plans. if i can be real with y’all for a second, the past few months have been a bit difficult of my entire fucking life second only to those right after my husband’s death. i’ve been hit with like twenty different curve balls and all at the same time, and again and again and again. i’ve realized many things like who your friends are and who i can count on, ventured out of my security zone, my family’s and my personal traumas and my oh so many allergies; i have to hold people up even when i was not able to hold myself up; but the good news is i have finally forgiven myself and come to love myself and i have wept over how precious the life is and all those lives were of my loved ones… i have wept at how we all are evolving at such a rapid & terrifying rate.

wept inconsolably when saying goodbyes to the nba games on tv and the goodbyes to my precious warriors. how i said goodbye to my best, best friend who came to visit me and, my face puffy, breaking out in hives, and cried all the way back to my home, in the mist. i have been so lonely countless times, but i have — & this is where it comes — i have never felt so tremendously proud of myself. in my entire life. there has never been a point where i felt like i am capable of anything, & i feel that now. truly, more than anything. my sense of self is so strong, and i know that this may be a momentary feeling, that i may be basking in a new-glow, a feeling of hope & opportunity like you would find in a new language, a new place, a nuevo-scape that one have yet to understand, and master but i am ready to immerse. i am ready to become. i am ready, so ready. i want to engage as intimately and meaningfully in a place, with the people that mean something to me, & i will glow, and the ones i love around me will glow, and we will be so brilliant under every single sky.

wicked

/ mycatisafrenchspy / Leave a comment

when i walked into my home this evening, i was greeted by this very beautiful fragrance of glade’s enchanted garden which perfumes my home in a most glorious way…. i walked in with a handful of cat food as usual. i was thinking as i walked into the house that i’ve taken myself out of the context recently; like my family and poetry and stripped myself out of everything. stripping myself down to bare skin and coming to a new place in my life and i can actually say, i’ve started growing into a new skin, a new myself really; i keep taking selfies of myself and i can see my eyes are definitely tired, but excited and there’s a new glow in them… my shoulders are curled-in with exhaustion, but i’m arriving at a new place. i even started introducing myself to myself, laughing and there’s a new bounce in my steps and i keep humming and dancing while waiting at the printers and copiers and in front of elevators…

all i want to do these days is the opposite of everything that i have been doing. touching-and going. climbing mountains, breathless in the rain. i’m disappearing into the folds of my blankets as soon as i come home (well after i feed my kids of course) and sometimes i go for a drive through the woods.

i’ve started becoming restless again. restless feet and restless hands. and i keep exhaling and exhaling. march is difficult you know. i’m almost afraid to remember. it’s difficult and it’s still so close. i come here to write but raking through my memories which induce pain and panic attacks, and later spending hours incapacitated, face-down on my woolly rug touching the tiny ridges of the wool of it to make sure that i’m still here, that i have a body to remember to return to.

i feel brave and then suddenly i don’t feel brave at all. i want to call sandalwood and say “let’s go for a walk” and maybe we go for a walk, and treading beneath a canopy of blank branches and endless fallen leaves, and talking about the importance of the smell of dark-green to someone who will let me forget without asking too many questions.

all i want to do is sit in my room and smell the beautiful fragrance and listen to the rain coming from above. hear the rushing noise of the cars outside of my home, the pitter patter sounds of my kids’ feet on the hardwood…  my kids fill me up with warmth. there is no warmth in the memories of what has hurt, anywhere in this little space of mine. even the old letters that have been written to me are stuffed somewhere in a box. the whole of this week i kept ouching and my back still huts and i thought it’s because i pulled my back muscle while exercising but that coupled with lungs hurting as a result of flared up asthma made my life miserable.

i am trying to understand a lot of things about home-making. today i was chatting with a colleague of mine and i was telling her that i am not domestic at all. i am looking for a man who would make me a cup of coffee in the morning and do my laundry; like jace used to. she laughed and i told her that i’m a card carrying feminist. she later emailed me a few webinars from women.

recently i came very close to telling off american boy and that he can go fuck himself. i also would have drawn a diagram of the same. but i didn’t and i swallowed my anger and grew more patient. sandalwood laughed and made fun of me and asked me when i finally tell him off, i should record it on my iphone and that he would provide me the newest version possible.

he is looking to buy an apartment in downtown philly so we can split time between city and country and i’m looking to buy an investment property but not sure if i could afford but i must. but it’s sure is fun though to go and look for houses. he is good to me you know. he keeps me stable and this scares me. i’m a wild child and i’m used to getting hurt and i don’t want to hurt him.

yesterday i was completely pissed and furious, as i was hungry and went to café and that had no decent food and it just pushed all my buttons.. my cafeteria has increasingly became unfriendly towards vegetarians and i see the same stuff day in day out and man, if i have to describe myself as a cartoon, i would be having steam coming out of my reddened ears, eyes and nose, etc. and when i came back to my office, i wrote a very nasty feedback and so, when i went downstairs to get food this afternoon, there were more vegetarian dishes ! squeaky wheel and grease and all that good stuff !

oh here’s an annoying detail of my life. i had a big argument with tom from my work re. pull ups (chin-ups) v pull downs and boy, he just doesn’t seem to understand the difference. he kept telling me that it’s the same motion and i kept explaining the science and i even sent him an article. all this came about as i was bleating to him about my inability to do pull ups and how i would like to be able to do at least one respectable pull-up. i think he was just trying to annoy me.

and here’s a funny detail. today my boss was trying to mail an infant girl dress to someone and i was helping her and she is like, you can’t have that one as you won’t fully fit into it and so i told her, “sometimes you don’t want to fully get covered by anything” and i winked at her while giving her my most wicked and naughtiest smile you could imagine. she laughed so hard at that. she has this belief that i’m very nice and i don’t curse, and the worst curse to come out of my mouth would be shucks etc etc. and gosh if only she knew. to be fair i keep warning her about me that i’m not that nice or innocent and that i’m a total bitch; but she doesn’t believe me.

all my life has been fascinating to me. maybe i should explain, all this learning i do and learning how to live safely and comfortably in a space i designed for myself. i keep picturing open windows and doors in a house with wooden floors and somewhere set in a mountain and the curtains gently swinging with the breeze.

that’s what i want to achieve this summer. i have started a memorial garden you know, for jace… i want to build again this summer and put in a water fountain or may be a koi pond. i  want to plant all kinds of colorful plants with beautiful flowers and i want to romp on the grass with my cats or have a picnic in my front yard with sandalwood and i want to read a bunch of books while listening to the birds sing. looking forward to my june monsoons and july summers.

i want to make vegetable stew and homemade banana bread. last night i took down a piece of fabric i pinned into my wall. i’m planning to fill my house with vases of flowers sandalwood keeps bringing me and i made food. for two ! i took photos. a signifier of my home-making. of my ability to settle. i am not a runner, but i hid before. not anymore. all i want to do is stay, to stay and to have that be okay.

all i want is this smallness, the gentle, tender thing of chopping a potatos and peppers. and preparing something, something small and savory to eat with our hands afterwards. i fantasize about the warm lighting, about the cold rain falling outside, of someone i love looking at me and knowing that he loves me too.

i feel simple and fragile and very small. maybe my dreams have always been leading me to this. to a place that resembles home. safety. where i’m myself, first and foremost, before i’m a daughter, a sibling, a lover and a friend. i’ve got no money. only a mortgage on a good house, nestled in a good neighborhood. nobody knows what i went through to get here. mostly falling, crawling and terrified. hiding a lot. picking myself up, dusting and shaking off loose scales and i’m emerging tho. and in all this i must remember to thank god over and over again; and i think my cats and i (and may be sandalwood) can build happiness and a world with roses, rainbows and glitter… a lot of glitter and, i think my kitties and i are gonna be okay ! i really really think so.

star dust and fluid self

/ mycatisafrenchspy / Leave a comment

i dream of you in delicate images, of fragile portraits built only in sleepy dreamy hazes, shivering at the sight of tumbling walls and shattered mirrors. yet i’m not built of glass, i’m an individual tracing outlines of you, a familiar stranger, sadly inaccessible, and i’m prying open the cracks within me only slightly, because if i expose the gaps, i illuminate the flaws and risks i’m (trying) and willing to take. my eyelashes flutter shut and i imagine the bits and pieces of star dust that created me, you and us, wondering if i’ll ever learn how to stop cowering behind the things i should say and start spilling the hastily formed sentiments; the words i tried to catch early in the morning, composing love letters in fog from the shower, before the wind blew them out of me. because sometimes you can’t keep it safe anymore, sometimes you have to take a risk, sometimes you have to be really goddamn honest with (or without) the promise of any reassurance or guarantee.

i may write great paragraphs about learning how to be brave, the twisted way i’ve thought that by shouting all of my secrets, i might become something bolder. but maybe i’m still not ready to say some things out loud yet, afraid my voice will quiver and my jumbled words will become nervous laughter, my mind falling into apologies and excuses. if i had the guts though, if i could gather the courage to look you in the eye and tell you everything that has been on my mind when you were standing in front of me all those times, and all those times i kept talking to you with my mouth full of bees so you couldn’t hear what i’m saying and tonight while sitting in the cold wind that wakes us up from the tingling skin to the core of our hearts, i would tell you this:

this is absolutely terrifying and i’m tapping my fingers in a steadying rhythm against my wrist to remember not to run away and not to destroy, not to repeat a passive aggressive path. because to me, this is big and this is heavy and i’m incredibly unprepared for it all. i feel all of this emotion welling up inside of me, a knot in my stomach, the swarm of bees in my chest and it has been so long since i felt a happiness that sits like a lump in my throat. so i claw my way through slowly unfolding ready to shout or cry or bury myself into a slight solitude so it will burn out with a small pop! but no matter the conflict of emotions, the net of protective keeping i’ve placed you into, there are some things that no matter how mixed up or complicated they might be, they fucking mean something. you can’t just ignore that and you can’t wonder where they might take you. you just have to lay it all out.

so here i’m. i’m ready to give you everything i’ve got, all the broken pieces and parts i’ve stitched back together with high hopes and good intentions. here are all my poorly told stories and histories i hoped to hide within myself, but shared too soon. here are my mistakes and successes, my flaws and my promises. here is all i’m, with shaking hands and an unsteady heart. here are my fearful thoughts and things i can’t quite articulate yet, my trust and my willingness to uncover everything ahead of us. because i’m tired of being safe and i’m tired of pretending it isn’t happening and i’m tired of wanting things and i’m tired of second guessing what all of this might mean;i’m keeping every goddamn finger i’ve, crossed that it is worth it in the end, when i want to believe in this so fully and deeply that it shakes me to my core.

i am crooked. i am old. i am placing all of my bets with pocket change. i am hoping to find you soon, and even from my deepest slumber and daylight moments spent wide-eyed, i know i will.

somehow i always am forgetting how difficult it can be to love fully, and to remain open armed and grateful.  how i don’t think my heart could get any bigger. and how i could fall farther in love with you than before. but here i’m, again and again.

how wonderful !