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.

Maybe this appeals to someone not in heels

It is 2: 18 am I am thinking about truth.

To be more precise, I am thinking about how I am unable to often say so much of what I think or feel. There is this sense of deliberate, playful dishonesty that I contain within myself - sometimes staring at someone intently during a meeting, or ordering a cup of coffee, all the while giggling because I am saying to them silently what I would never at that point say out loud.

You are cute.
You are annoying me.
Please stop speaking.
I think you are over-reacting.
Actually, you are the one who's wrong.
You are lazy.
Work harder!
This is awful.
I dreamt of you. This makes me feel weird and I don't want it to repeat.
Please, stop speaking.
Yes I am awesome.
I am hungry. Again.
I feel so fat and ugly.
I am tired.
I am tired * 100.
I wish you would email me. And I would like to stop thinking about this.

A lot of this is partly because at work I have to do big things and I wish everyone would stop talking to me so I can do them - the big things. A few minutes ago, I was lying in bed, trying to sleep, and thinking about this one work problem I have to solve. And feeling simultaneously excited and crushingly anxious. I don't doubt myself (much) but for once I am in the cosy little intersection venn spot between a circle of IMPORTANT FOR HUMANITY problems and WORK PAYS ME TO SOLVE THIS problems.

All my life has been spent in coming to this point where I have a juicy problem to solve and it is a hard one. You know what Judy says: I asked for an adventure and by god i am having it. Good ol Judy. Is there ever anyone else who I love more fictionally than her? I think not.

***

Speaking of DLL - what a fine thing is Project Gutenberg. And generally what a fine thing is the internet. I love you all strangers.

***
My new favourite poet is Akhil Katyal - see for example, this:

Our beginnings were rocky, we held hands, infrequently, and uneasily, like Def Col and Kotla,

but then, in some years, often and more breezily,like Jangpura & JangpuraExtension.

***

I am sad that the chronicles of 4, Birbal Road did not grace bloggy much - but maybe that is because not much happened? I truly think I was unhappiest in life in that most beautiful of houses. A gilded cage. With daily travel to Gurgaon and back. Life was cruel, in an ironic sort of way.

***

God so many updates on the paternal front but I can't. No energy. Another sign of old age alongside untruthiness. The ability to scoop up unwanted thoughts and vanish them because I am full as a person otherwise of thoughts and emotions and sorry but there is no space so please go away. I am waiting for someone to write me an email and for someone else to stop talking. Yes.

***
I read God of Small things. Eh.

***

Baby Boo has 4 teeth and makes vowel sounds. What a miracle. He smells adorable and his feet are so smol. He is a smol. It is all manners of enchanting.  He just woke up so I went to make some formula for him. DF is a splendid father (not just because he'll rock boo to sleep). I am almost envious. In a non creepy way. Promise.

***

Amelie Poulain is still my favourite melancholy-bittersweet-wistful-happy soundtrack. Some things never change. I listen to La La Land a lot as well. It is also melancholy.

***
Japan was lovely, btw. I bought back many flavours of Kit Kat.  And a Hello Kitty Comb and lip balm! I had a drink at the Lost in Translation Bar. I havent seen the movie. I only feel like a tiny fraud. OMG I also saw the Great Wave. IRL. It was wonderful - I was truly moved after a long time by a museum.

***
Are you there? Anyone?

Bloggy and me are like Scurvy haha

Ohmygosh.

Is bloggy my oldest and dearest friend? I suppose so, though like all of my other old and dear friends bloggy too has moved countries, and maybe gotten an iphone and an accent and a british passport and friends who it brunches with, snorkels with and posh new jobs at posh life changing institutions and generally built a life of urbane suaveness and winter coats.

Me? Hi. I'm still ...me. Angsty, curious, unable to fit into my sexy shorts, always on the lookout for great haircuts and sure there are days in which I wonder what the what the what the am i doing with my life but otherwise the same, only the Cranberries have been replaced by Mumford and Sons (Caro Emerald for when I'm feeling particularly saucy) and lullabies.

Ya. Also I had a baby. Also I moved. Also new house. Also somewhat new friends. Also more social media and less reading. In the last few months I have:


1) Read the Annihilation series and some other trashy scifi and fantasy and eh

2) Read Sacred Games and wow

3) Had my insides tickled in order by DF, a gynac, multiple speculum, ultrasound wands, scrape-y instruments, what felt like (and was I think) an entire arm of an entire human doctor, a moving baby boy (whose head, a few days before he was born, I compared to a musk melon sitting on the counter) and some needles.
(I say tickled but you and I dear reader know, that I do NOT mean tickled. This is classic, what do they call it? Understatement. Yes this old dog knows new trix haha.)

4) Watched Mad Men and Marvellous Mrs Maisel and some other soppy TV shows day and night  while nursing (this is the polite word for breastfeeding or as they should accurately call it breast plucking pulling nipple roughening milk clogs glass sandpaper bruising feeling cow like sweating).

***
The thing is, there's been more angst on this blog about an unfairly graded history paper (21/50 - come on!) than ...life since 2017 Delhi. Which, in all of its glory has been ANGSTONIUS ANGTAMAXIMUS. You should have been there, or rather, bloggy should have been there.

I'll say this, I'm only sad I didn't chronicle it all because so much spectacular lazing around was done and fun was had and assholery was dealt with. DF is still around. I think I saw Amelie lying around somewhere. And 202 has not one mummy now but two. Smoke that.

***

I said yesterday to one old friend that I had dropped the ball and he said so did he and I wanted to say YES YOU DID YOU DROPPED IT YOU WERENT SUPPOSED TO but instead I shrugged and sent him baby photos. It is truth but then what else does one do at a point in life when truths are self evident but the conclusions they take you on are anything but?

Love me pick me choose me? But time zones. And time sheets.

***
I confessed I was in a maudlin mood to a somewhat new friend but then I realised it was because I missed bloggy and being able to loudly shoutily complain here. So I'm back.

***
So apparently a deficiency of Vitamin C causes the collagen that repaired old wounds to dissolve, leading to bleeding and aches, which was thought of as a new disease called scurvy but was mainly just the old wounds coming up knock knock and saying hi hello ji whether vitamin C? Odd but nice. Just how I like em ailments and boys.

***
I must go, baby will beckon shortly. But I cant stop thinking of the Butterfly, Christina Tosi, and the gentleness of Sroyon's blog. Duly we are of course grateful to Double A.

***
Hai koi hamein yeh hatecopy ke chai plates toh dilwaein?

Hug me

World,

I'm having a crisis of confidence.  I'm trying to put up a brave face, and in fact, right now, I am on my two and a third mojito, trying to be calm, and measured and brave - and not give in to weeping, but its not easy. And sometimes, a good cry is really worth its weight in tea and sugar.

But mojitos, and nachos are all I have. Yes, its the middle of the day but since I am Founder/ CEO whatever title title, I can decide to work out of a innocently named "Market Cafe" where they have many plugpoints and oneplusone drinks at 3 in the afternoon.

Also, I have listened to Glee's Halo / Walking on Sunshine on LOOP for over two days now, and  I have all the adrenalin I need, I swear, but no answers, no hugs, and no solutions.

I have an email from ten years ago that I go back to when I'm sad. It contains many gems, including the now famous line: "If one is offered chocolate, one must always take it, unless its five star, which is yucky"

How do you think I find this email? By searching for "five star yucky", of course.

Mold

I have this obsessive need to work towards a Zero-Inbox*. This need materialised sometime late last year, and since then I have spent hours (HOURS NO REALLY HOURS) every week trying to label, and archive every single email in my primary email account (15000 +emails).

This is the stuff that filing nightmares are made off!

In the process, I often come across cryptic one-two line, no subject emails that trigger my curiosity, I stop to read, and before you know it, I'm reading everything I wrote to people in November 2012 and I am filled with eye-rolling + happiness at my stupid poetry-sending, guardian-discovering and mildly panicking self.

For example, this gem I sent to DF:

Sub: I ATE MOLD

am I going to die? What if it had mycotoxins (wiki says they are poisonous). My throat feels realy dry and sore, honestly. DRY and SORE.

(I feel like weeping a little).

I ATE MOLD - FACEPALM FACEPALM. 


As if you didn't guess already, DF sent back a "you're not going to die. I eat mouldy bread all the time' type terse response from a _blackberry_.

As you can see, I indeed did not die from (wtf are these?) mycotoxins. Hurrah.

I would laugh and poke fun at myself even more if only I hadn't had a similar outburst in Goa recently. Also, I'm not certain why I spelt it 'mold'. Also, I must have had a pretty sad day to eat mouldy bread for dinner - definitely one of the crazy deal-closing weeks.

A week in my own

Everyone says to me: "But you're _from_ here! How can there be a culture shock? You're _from_ _here_!"

And then I sigh wearily (verily, I sigh) and try to change the issue. To a select few (two) I moan in deep detail about how I miss pavements (sidewalks) and queues. I miss buying cheap alcohol. I miss daily cupcake routines. I miss the folks, oh, I miss them so much. +44 calls make me _so_ happy. I miss the email chains that begin on a bored Monday morning - about Sanskrit poems, about Rumi, about burritos for lunch from the van, or Ram Guha's speech at LSE, or the chammak challo trainee's very short skirt. 

I said in my leaving email that I was sad to be leaving, but it was not nearly the truth. What I should have said, is that 2010 to 2012 made me a whole happy person. A very nice cheery mildly crazy happy person.  I really liked who I had become (whom?) and for the first time in a long time, I was so comfortable and happy that I didn't want to leave, as such.

Coming to Delhi is a forceful acknowledgment of Ubuntu-ness. It is a lot less about the I and a lot more about the we. In the sense that India can be a we. It has now been eight days and while I am not struggling, uncomfortable, or unhappy, I am thoughtful more than I was. Crazy less than I was.

I guess I used up all of the craziness in deciding to make the move.
I asked for an adventure, an intellectual powerhouse of an office, and a stable relationship time, and GODAMMIT I think I have it all.


 

Hello, is it me you're looking for?

Righto.

1) Firstly, I'm really sorry if you have me on Google Reader (why, why would you do that when this header and bloggy design are so pretty?) and I've 'published' about 131 posts today and you missed out on the important news-bloggy stories out there.

Anyway, calm down. I, even I, am not that prolific. They're re-posts (as you already know).

2) Secondly, I know I went away, but I couldn't write on my new secret blog on wordpress. It was a short-lived affair but I am back to my current and usual true love - blogspot bloggy.
(Also, I like tinkering around here better). Also, I heard you missed me. I missed me. So I had to come back by popular demand. Sigh - fandom.


3) Thirdly, like, have you been reading the news? What an AWFUL world we seem to live in. There's been way too much abuse and grief and sadness on the news for my liking. Only the Higgsteria made up for it. And Aung San Suu Kyi. And Santorum withdrawing (horrid man obssessed with vaginas and foetuses and uteruses). America - don't become the Knife of Never Letting Go.
(shudder)

4) Fourthly, I have been reading a lot. Feed by MT Anderson was brutal and honest in a way that little else I've read recently. Except Charles Stross's science fiction which I liked and then immediately unliked and you'll see why.

5) Fifthly, I have had a lot of time to think. Serious think. Like, I read Saturn's Children and I was like wtf is it with female sex robots and why tf do sci-fi writers write semi-porno-sadistic-abuse crap about them? (See below). I mean, is it because you won't be respectable if you write about semi-porno-sadistic abuse crap of male sex robots?  Why dude, why? And The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. Why talk about their perfect breasts and mango smooth skin and perpetuate body imagery that is patently illogical. WTF is mango smooth skin? And these books are insanely famous. Promethues, Hugo, Locus, Nebula - you name it they've been nominated.
This is not fiction. This is Cosmo + Fifty Shades of Grey.

And lets not even get into gaming and quizzing.

From Wiki, a little intro:

"Emiko is a Japanese-designed windup girl (a humanoid GM organism, used as a slave, and programmed to seek a master and obey him; windups call themselves "New People") abandoned by her Japanese master. As such, she is illegal in Thailand. Raleigh, a sex club owner, gives her some measure of safety by bribing the police to let her live, but at the price of forcing her to work in his club, where she is routinely abused and sexually humiliated." - The Windup Girl


 6) Sixthly, the internet is a wonderful place because there are so many important ways to say what you can about the issues that anger you. Like, you can ready about the Bechdel Test and then say: I will legally only own copies of stuff that passes the Bechdel Test. And you can tell people about it on-the-line :). How wonderful a place is the internet. Also I am now a wiki editor. And a news junkie; seriously, I've read SO much news in the past few months. I've also completely STOPPED buying hard copy books. Ok, if I go on in this rein, this blogpost will not end.

7) Seventhly, I have not been shoe-shopping at all. I have disavowed the excessive materialism which characterised my life for the past couple of years. I like my simple (non shoe-shopping life now). I thought I should tell you this, in case you thought I was buying every pair of flat happy open-toed shoes I could find here

8) Eightly, I am in Singapore - did you already know this? I can never go back to living in a non-sun non-swimming pool place anymore. There is also less Asian vegetarian food in Singapore than in London (also less cupcakes - sigh) so I have been cooking more and I am an excellent chef. Really truly. I am on a new crazy eating and exercise plan though so I haven't eaten a cupcake in about four months. I didn't even eat one when I found out about my new job - though I skipped the gym for 8 days in celebration.

9) Ninthly, I am going to need to make new friends because I will be moving to Delhi.
(Sad face * 453867)

10) Tenthly, hey, hello, gentle reader!!!! Are you well?

And some more

As if it weren't enough that the miles and the oceans and continents between us keep us apart, as if it weren't enough that reason more than emotion, (or is it the other way around?) keeps us apart, and as if it weren't enough that there is this vast chasm of irregular human connections (191 at last count), a hundred-odd ways for you and I to keep tabs on each other, to consume this desperate need to peek into lives on quiet sunday mornings, when the newspaper simply won't cut it and you stare (or I stare) hungrily at the phone, willing it simultaneously to ring and not ring, to simulaneously want to call and not call you, when the subscribed datafeeds throw up an array of things, to cherry-pick the crucial data packages I know you and I will find more amusing and to share and not want to share these with you, to want you to laugh or not laugh at a common comment of a common connection that means little to those not in the know and then wishing that either you or I were not either or or in the know so that the the commoness of the comment was to us, either or or, nothing more than a comment of commonness,  to wonder how much more music is yet to be discovered or not, and upon chancing to find something individually, not pointed to by the feed gods that control the data flood, to wonder if or if not, I would have unlike how unaided I am now, found it otherwise, to tell myself, soothe myself, occasionally, by affirming to myself that I like more than not like not having, more than having, a virtual together space, that I want, more than I not want to go out there and create more such virtual spaces and populate them as chance and otherness will will it and not feel a deep longing at the loss of a regular, much-loved arm, maybe, or spoke in the web that we each draw, creating such virtually mutual datapools that perhaps, though less than perhaps not, I find that each day the irreplaceability waxes and wanes in sync as much with the eurozone woes as of tremulous phone messages from the eastcoast to londontown to back home and from back home to london town to the eastcoast and all the other variables in between, tracked closely.

As if it weren't enough.