A little to the right

I am very pleased with this title, because it too, like my hassled sense of self right now, is one thing that actually is many things.

(I spent a whole minute here gentle reader, trying to figure out what this type of phrase could be. A pun? Too simple. A wordy clever misnomer. Not disguise-y enough. A metaphor? Perhaps a smidge. A midsummer gin induced hallucination by our friendly neighbourhood LLM? Alas. I concede. )

It is a merely the one thing that is many things. IT IS THE SWISS ARMY KNIFE of titles yes it has come to me now.

Firstly: 

(excuse me I am being told by my watch to stand so I shall take a stroll and be right back). 

 

Right, I am back 8 days later. Firstly:

1. Delays such as this happen when my time is not my own to waste anymore. Others now freely and happily make demands on me, requiring that I put aside the decisions and plans made of my own will, to instead say, check if all teeth have been brushed, and to immediately answer what word is queyey (queue) and why is it queyey.

2. I have had a few months of extemely stressful events. I am now on a work break. It is a beautiful time, if only to look back and see how close to death DH was, and to look forward and try to think of making the world beautiful.

3. Before my work break, that exact week before, in fact, life was wonderful, idyllic, and everything I ever wanted. If you hadn't guessed, it was on a beach with family and good food and sun and spray and water and sprinklers.

***

What I have been reading:

1. Life's lessons in the form of "Frank was a Monster Who Loved to Dance", and Frank, let me warn you, surreptitiously says "What the heck" on page 13, when he thinks we are not paying attention to him, but rather to his brains which have spilled on the floor, and I am sorry to say, we paid the mostest of attention, and we are most scandalized.

2. A few pages of Panthers in Parliament. The introduction alone makes for such fascinating reading,  and there is no much thinky material crammed into these first 3 pages alone, I despair of finishing this book. Reading, requires, some stillness? Some, stretches of breathing space? I do not know, or have. I persevere still. I am the main character of a sea shanty.

3. Ali Hazelwood's Bride. Ridiculously exciting smutty love story between a vampire and a werewolf. 

4.  Heather Fawcett's -  Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries and the sequel. Cute.

Every book I now read, after the initial euphoria of being part of a story well told, then leaves me with unhappiness and fear. Why, when, how will I find the time to write? Universe, help.

***

Bruno has constant itchy scratchy fits in his ear. Bigsmol has some weird insect bites on his forearm. Smolsmol (still the same amount of teef) has an itchy forehead from the summer sweat in his hair. Me? Itchy feet.

Send relief and soothing lotion and cold compresses and lay us all up in bed alongside a healing river. Barring which, send rains. Bangalore is hot and parched and dusty, and we are forever on the lookout for storms. Mainly climate kind.

Oh, lest I forget.

1. To the right - > I have a new hair parting, and after about 3 decades of wearing my hair in ONLY side parts, I am now moving closer to centre. Not so politically, but I have long since made my peace with my weakness on political matters. My portfolio holdings in large crony polluters are in the double digits. So it swings. I forgot what all else it was supposed to signify but 8 days will do that.

Galloping is the time is Brownian

 How is it September? (inevitable passage of time etc, yes yes). 

I read somewhere that if you do the same boring things, time will pass faster. Fine. FINE.

I've slowly started to feel (since I've made a little addition to my financial goals), that my life is lacking purpose. This always happens when I meet friends who have (some) purpose. I hate it.

There is an essay lurking around somewhere on the tribulations of authenticity - those who make it, those who bear it, those who look for it, and this essay splutters into life in couplets, haikus and late night switch pauses when I look around at my living room.

Who lives here? A person with kids, a person who reads, a person who likes interesting geometric art and moody perspective-shift pictures. A person who likes clean lines, and the odd burst of colour. But mainly, the person who lives here is a mom to kids and a very hairy very sheddy Labrador? (and a dad, don't forget DH). And mainly, the people who really use the space are the kids? Is there a me that is not subsumed by the mom-piece?

In watercolour painting, there is this concept of a wash, and how you add water to an area and gently let the colour seep around and watch Brownian motion. A darker wash next to a lighter area means you're in for some osmosis. Is this me? Is the mom piece the darker wash? Which piece in my life is lighter? Or is it like salt solution, a pinch means the glass is forever slightly salty? Or sugar, or lime juice, but you get my drift? (Why did I put salt first there's a story).

I've been wondering why I haven't been wondering. Why I haven't been getting itchy feet. Why I'm just being. I put it down to being physically numb, exhausted, a bone-crushing weariness that is the foreverness of child-rearing. There isn't space for clarity (or any really) of thought, but when that does come. What will those winds bring? Will it be more being, or more movement?

I've been reading:
1. Dragons love Tacos (and boy what a hoot it is!) + sequel
2. All of Sharon King-Chai's books - they're so delicious, the first thing I said to bigsmol was I want to eat each page
3. Every single Tom Norman book on FEELINGS of which we are seeing a lot
4. A bunch more of touch and feel books.
5. Babel by RF Kuange moved me in a real and rough way more than anything I've read recently and I liked it - I liked how intense it made me feel. I enjoyed it, much like slight bondage. Its rasping and uncomfortable but only slightly and in that space you find new things to look at (also exactly like Pilates?)

I met someone recently who has unsettled my life slightly, like a miniscule BLUE paintbrush splittersplatter spot in a wash of gentle azure sky. Its there, you can see it, you're trying to ignore it, and you can, but its there. I don't like it. 

I've been listening to a lot of Rafi - I sang it to smolsmol who was so unwell, he's better now, but I am forever bent and slightly broken in the way one is, when you leave your heart with someone and then they throw themselves off a bridge and ok now they're all fine and dandy but you never forget that one moment of heartstopping vomit inducing panic when they leapt. Don't jump you try to say, but you can't because first its I want to walk no matter I'll fall back and hit my head on the floor and you'll have to see it over and over and drink tea the 30th time it happens, and then its, I'll jump two stairs when you're not looking and before you know it, you're making peace with all the peace you've relinquished and all the control you've carefully divvied up.

  God, please can I have no more drama? Just love and forehead kisses. And more tea.

today i am sad

 quietly sad.

sadness that is useless - no real outlet, no real trigger (who am i kidding, look at the date), a low level fuzzy thin blanket sadness. 

im going to wear socks and drink tea. is this life. be sad. be adult, wear warm socks. drink tea. do laundry. 

 

i could cry.

Ta fete 2023

That song from a decade ago in Singapore is on my mind as I sit now in KL. 

 

Its time for some music, a little cruising on the yellow couch (not orange but then, that particularly dated colour fetish has passed), and daze-looking at the Petronas Towers. 

 

A view to die for. 

 

A song thats just universal enough - it could be English, it could be Portuguese, it could be Bahasa, or Nigerian, or Punjabi. Is there anything better? Peace, quiet, bigsmol and DH out on an errand, me, my fantasy book (Leigh Bardugo, Ninth House) and my germs sit and rest. Listen.

And watch the clouds go by and feel happy. 

Happy, right?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am the largest size I have ever been and if this holiday is not an exercise in practiced self love and affirmation, I don't know what is. Fat and fabulous? Nope. Just fabulous.

Loop de loop

And so it seems that years have passed. Well over a decade. Welp. Here we are, thinking better, happier, but in some ways, so much the same.

Every year or so, or every five years or so, I mean who's keeping track really, I claim to have found the answer except now, five years past the first smol and the little teeth onto the new smol and the old smol-big and the big-dogsmol, I think I know the question?

This affectation, recently acquired is only charming when flirting. Elsewise it is thoroughly annoying. Be sure or be done with it etc. One never had much patience, and now one has parceled out the reserves for the smol and the smol-big and the big-dogsmol and the household staff (YES ONE HAS A STAFF!) and dear old DH who through it all has somehow remained constant (Truly, did we think we would be here?), and one has miniscule portions left to give and often not even that.

To be a real adult is really a terrifying and demanding experience. 

Onto the headlines then: 

I am happy
I know the questions
I went to therapy and why didn't I go sooner?
Dad has died.

So much has happened and we have much to talk about, though, really you might have gone away for a decade and come back and large parts are still the same. I took a walk in the rain, I wished I had a brighter umbrella but settled for an IKEA black. I drank tea and I felt very good about my place in the world.

Time to buy some shoes? This place has good bones, and I guess its time to roll up sleeves and begin to type.


Speaking of, in my inexhaustible drive to buy ALL THE BOOKS, I am contemplating buying a whole book just because I loved in it, one essay. Mary Oliver's Power and Time in her book Upstream has made such a profound impact. Doubly so because, gentle reader would you believe it, a real live Daddy Long Legs made its way upto my mountain retreat and sat gently on a wall next to me. How lucky am I!

Harrison

The secret to winning in life has been staring me in the face all along. And it is discipline.

If only they'd said so straight out in school, instead of making it seem like discipline was some rubbish rule that convent school nuns wanted to instill in you because it would make God love you more or some nonsense.

Anyway, I have decided, I will be the most disciplined.

***
As I write this, I look out a window, onto some other apartments, but the sunshine that falls on my table is pure california.

San Francisco is unlike any city I've been to.  Its squat. And there isn't atleast on the 18 streets I've been on so far, any visible manic energy. This Friday I am going to seek it out - try and find the Soho of SF, as it were.

I live close to a very popular gay bar called the Stud, and I want to explore it.

I want to buy a book at City Lights bookstore.

And I want to eat an ice-cream as I walk down the pier.

I want to scrunch a penny in the machine for Kabir. And I want him to know when Amma went to raise a ton of money - this is where she made a wish for good fortune and tossed a dollar into the sea.

***

high apple pie in the sky hopes

How much has happened, reader, since the last time I was here. As a marker of the passage of time, just imagine how many new gmail ids I have created since - leading to my entry into bloggy here via a maze of incognito windows, forgotten passwords and a gentle scolding from Google.
You entered your current password in the forgot password window doofus.

Khair, anyway, I am here now, and that is what counts?

***
It is a beautiful night in Bangalore - rains, quiet signs of some late night travels from the street, the rush of the wind. Bangalore is a city for falling in love. Only question is, with whom?

***
List of some books i read:
Andaleeb Wajid - my brothers wedding
Goblin Emperor
multiple readings of Crazy Rich Asians
a book on negotiation, as well as a book on raising toddlers (content almost same ! :))

***
Work is challenging, I am happy.

***
I so badly want to meet someone like myself.

***
I am getting much much MUCH better at life. This is good. I can almost always tell when I've done well, ok, or ugh. I can also trust my feelings more - and I'm beginning to learn how to become more centred - I can't explain it well, but its like a kind of noticing my innerpointstomach and drawing in my feelings and forcing them to stay there till I feel like I can be effective again.

***
I am slowly losing weight - I am happy about this.

***
I'm trying something to get back in the friendship books of someone I'm very fond of. I'm trying to message them almost everyday. I miss them - and I wonder - do they - miss me? Really truly?

***
I feel like a fake CEO and there is not one person I can say this aloud to - so gentle reader if you are here and reading this, feel special. You now know.

***
I can't see a way I might fail. So I am going to assume stupendous success. Just you wait.