Kaleidoscope

Two Fused

2012-01-29T22:10:00.005-05:00

You confuse me

Bemuse me

Amuse me

Speaking in tongues

I climbed to the top of Babel

Hearing words that you speak

We speak

As we seek

To understand, comprehend,

Heaven forfend,

Speak in English,

Wait wha?

Dope, who?

Harsh, how?

The 5 W's

As your mind, life, fuse

With mine and we

Work together as a team

These lines, these lines

Floating in my brain

Running rabbits

Never backing down

Reaching for the future, we grab it

It's me and you

Confused, bemused, amused.

Browsing old files

2012-01-19T19:43:00.003-05:00

This is an old letter I found while idly wandering the cyber-house of my computer. The recipient remains unnamed for many reasons. Not least of all, because I no longer feel this way. But it was a beautiful feeling while it lasted.

This is probably going to be the beginning of a series of letters you will never receive from me. However, I’m not the type that’s good at keeping my emotions on the inside. “Sometimes my spirit’s stretched so far, you can see right through it to my beating heart…” I can’t help it. So, rather than startle you in reality, I’m going to write so that I can vent and then bottle up whatever wayward emotions seem to bubble to the surface.

I have no right to like you, love you, the way I do. That’s just reality. My place in your life is purely as your friend and any presumptions that I have otherwise are merely those, my presumptions. Knowing you for this long hasn’t meant that I’ve known you well. Each interaction with you uncovers some new aspect that I hadn’t bargained on finding. It’s like being in a discount store, where you keep diving into bins rummaging around, and pulling out something amazing and fascinating. You shout, “Look what I got! I would never have thought this store would have this” But it does. And you do.

You just fit. Into my life. And that’s sometimes a hard thing to do. It’s hard for me to find people that fit, like a hand in a glove…and not like OJ. You’ve accepted me and loved me (as your friend)…for just being me. I don’t necessarily think that that translates well into loving in a relationship.

I need to hold my horses. Line up the cards. Make sure I’ve got a good hand before I gamble. Bet a friendship against the potential for love. That’s all we ever have I think, potential. I don’t mean you and me, I mean “we” in the collective term. That’s all anyone ever has. You let one thing go, based on the hope that you’ll find another. And if it doesn’t happen, you have to believe that letting that go was still better than keeping it; before it became toxic, rotting in the gut of your soul and eating you from the inside out.

You see, I want the crazy love that I don’t believe in, the one that’s in storybooks. I want someone to prove me wrong. I don’t really believe that marriage lasts. I don’t believe that love lasts, and I feel like I’ve been waiting a long time to have someone show me that they can make me love them, fall in love with them over and over again. I don’t necessarily want romance, but a $3.99 bouquet every now and then really can make my heart do somersaults.

Ultimately, I want you to be happy. Perhaps you could be happy with me. I can’t guarantee that. There is nothing that anyone can guarantee. Especially when it comes to love.

I just see a part of my happiness possible in your smile. I see a part of my laughter tied up in your teasing. A look from you ties up my heart strings and I have to remind myself to breathe in and out before I find the knot that undoes the tangle.

And these words I carry in my heart.

2011-11-09T00:32:00.001-05:00

"There's sorrow as well as joy, now, at the end. Joy because of the life I have lived, brought two beautiful children into the world, and had a wonderful marriage, a rewarding career. Sorrow for not seeing my kids get married, hold my grandchildren, grow old with my friends." - Abhijit Guha, October 25th, 2011. Rest in Peace 11/8/2011

My apologies

2011-10-30T11:34:00.004-04:00

I'm waiting for the day that driving or seeing a Nissan doesn't make me think of Keith. Or the day that it's sunny outside with just a chill in the air, and I don't wish I could go for a walk with him. I wait for the day that I stop feeling guilty for keeping things from Keith, or blocking him out of my life when I felt like I couldn't trust him any more.

I'm tired of living with guilt. For making up for things in that one relationship by bending over backwards for other relationships. For always telling everyone everything in case they feel like I'm shutting them out too. It's a stupid way to live and a bitter drink to sip, every day, all the time.

Every person reading this blog, minus 1, will want to slap me I'm sure, for constantly feeling guilty and for constantly apologizing. So this is the last one. I'm sorry for shutting you out of my life, for keeping things from you, for keeping my relationship with you absolutely private from my family, and at the end of the day for holding on when I should have let go a long time ago.

I know what boys like...

2011-10-24T09:02:00.006-04:00

I stumbled into the bathroom Sunday morning, eyes half-closed, grumbling at my bladder for waking me up on my day off. Pulled down my pants and sat down...only to catch myself before falling into the toilet. The seat was up.

I have never had to worry about the seat being up. I grew up with my sister, my mom, and my dad. We outnumbered my dad and made sure he knew it. When we got ready for pujo-season, we'd call down to him, "Stay there! We're getting dressed!" and he would wait on the main floor until all three of us were decent before coming upstairs to fix our pleats, admire our hair, compliment the jewellery and get dressed himself.

The male to female ratio at our house currently sits at 3:2, on Sunday morning it was 4:1 (my sister hadn't come home the night before, and a friend had crashed on the couch).

Living with men has meant always having a reality check, since they are pitilessly pragmatic. It's also meant very long wait times for the bathroom. Invariably, my dad, my cousin, and my friend all take longer to get in the bathroom, shower, change, and get out than either my sister or I. It's meant having the seat up on Sunday mornings, not being able to sleep in just a t-shirt and underwear, and always wearing a bra (women know, we take them off when we go to sleep...and basically as soon as possible any other time). It's meant laughing at not knowing how to cook, or how to preheat the oven. It's meant talking about what spices need to go in daal, and sneaking into my sister's room to talk about girly things for a few minutes every day. It's meant awkwardly finding boxers in my laundry and laughing about the prospect of ties hanging off door handles.

It's been pretty awesome. I'll take falling into the toilet a few times for more of this.

Voices from the Past

2011-10-20T01:21:00.003-04:00

It was pouring rain today. The kind of rain that makes me want to curl up under a blanket with a cup of hot tea and a good book and ignore the world. As I stood waiting at Finch Station for my ride home, I watched the rain fall, literally in sheets...raindrops chasing each other across concrete.

A tap on the shoulder and I looked up, startled, from my Blackberry screen.

Picture an old man's face, craggy but gentle, "You didn't see me drive in! I'm parked over there."

We run to the car, both muttering about rain in October. "These fall rains, you know, so cold!" he exclaimed.

I shake out raindrops from my clothes as I get into the car and pause for a moment. The smell of cloves and garlic are warm and nostalgic. There's Bengali music on. I look down at the infernal Crackberry and type a quick, short response.

"Guess who's singing this one?"

It's a quavery older man's voice blending with a young woman's. Is it...wait, no, is it? It's my grandfather's voice. Literally back from the dead. Singing in Bengali. There's a lump in my throat as I remember and hang on to the notes as they take me backwards. Swinging from the ending of one to the beginning of another as I picture the room he was in while singing and the way he kept the taal with his hand.

Revisiting

2011-06-04T09:35:00.004-04:00

I haven't written in this blog in a long time. And as time goes on, I start to think that...it will fade more and more from my life. The people that I used to use it to communicate with, are either gone from cyber-world, or I know them in reality and can use my own words, spoken from my own mouth to express those things. The appeal of communicating with the world at large, anonymous, shouting to be heard, fades as I've gotten older.

It's been a long journey, for me to get where I am today, to be who I am today. It is true that in some ways, I've become more selfish, more "me" centered, more able to identify what is good for me now and in the future. Five years ago, my dad and I had a serious talk about things that I needed to work on or address as issues in my life, in no particular order:

The relationship with my mother

The relationship with my boyfriend

My weight

School/career

I've spent the last half-decade (sounds longer when I say it that way, eh?) working on, solving, improving those issues. I've lost over 60 pounds in the last year and a half. I graduated from university and went on to teacher's college. My mother and I talk on the phone once a week and instead of me lying comatose in my bed for the next day, I smile because I know she loves me. The only one I "failed" at was the boy. I say, given the last 10 years of my life, I'm a survivor. I persevered, I struggled, I wept and fought and screamed...and I survived...and then, I grew wings.

I'm still in the process of allaying the guilt from the one failure. Perhaps, in some ways, it could be called survivor's guilt. You know, when there's a car crash, and one person survives and the other doesn't? The survivor feels guilt, as in, "Why did I survive and my friend/sister/mother/brother/father...didn't?", "What right do I have to go on with my life, when he/she can't?"

I want to be clear, I don't think he is a failure. There are still many things I admire about who he is and who he has the potential to become. I don't think he "died" or that he cannot survive. I just mean that I realised, that we cannot survive together. Perhaps, this is an inadequacy on my part, to stick it through the tough parts on faith that other things will work out. I genuinely believe that we see who someone really is by watching them go through the tough stuff, by seeing who they are with others when their own life isn't on the precise road that they want. The person I saw, was hard to assimilate with the person I wanted him to be. There's the catch isn't it? "The person I wanted him to be"

I always said that I wouldn't leave until I knew I had tried everything a hundred times over. I did try everything, and it didn't work. I loved him so much that it hurt sometimes, I used to tell his best friend that I could feel my heart beating harder just because I loved him so. I think part of me will always care, it was 5 years after all. I wish I had a better explanation. I wish I could sleep better at night. Here's reality, I left, call it what you will, because of selfishness, survival, or down-right giving up.

I want him to grow wings of his own...and soar.

I'm Nobody

2010-10-22T15:27:00.002-04:00

I'm nobody, who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us - don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

- Emily Dickinson

Teaching Impact

2010-10-15T16:30:00.002-04:00

I have realized that being a teacher is an underrated profession. People take teachers for granted. No one would take a doctor for granted, because they hold your life in their hands. But, really, a teacher holds your life in their hands. In their brain. You start school when you're 4, and get out when your 17. Thirteen years of your life are devoted to teachers. What you think, learn, experience is in their power. You spend more time with a teacher than you do with your parents, and the homework they assign defines your after-school life. How then, can one discount, or overlook, a teacher? How then, is it possible to churn out a new cohort of teachers every year, after only 8 months of training?

2010-10-12T14:12:00.003-04:00

It's officially been a month since I moved to Ottawa. Something funny's been happening to my brain while I'm here. I don't watch TV here, and I don't sit at home most of the time. Suddenly my brain's alive. It does things that it hasn't done since I turned 15 and buzzing with the hormones and hyper-emotionality that is so associated with adolescence.

I've taken control of my body. Focussing on making my body do what I want it to do. I dance, I walk, I write, I get restless, and walk some more. I eat salads and enjoy them. I sleep 7 hours a night. I'm not tired. That draining tiredness that I assumed was just part of getting older.

People who haven't lived with tiredness as a daily part of being don't know what it is like to suddenly not have the weight of the neglected sleep on your shoulders. All the time. It's like carrying 2 20-pound weights around all day, everyday. Like existing and breathing through a fog.

I wake up and life has colour, not drained because I have fog-lenses on my face. Blinders that block out the real light. My kaleidoscope, has strangely and suddenly, begun to blaze.

In his eyes...

2010-08-25T10:53:00.002-04:00

I will always be the person that loved him most, and then broke his heart. I will always have the perfect smile, the easiest laugh, and the cutest nose. In his eyes, I will always be the person who could make him laugh when his world was falling apart. In his eyes, I will always see myself reflected, stronger, smarter, more beautiful than I really am. In his eyes, I will always see myself as I could be.

I have to believe that time heals, everything.

Accumulation

2010-08-24T09:06:00.002-04:00

I was at my mom's yesterday, packing up old memories. The house that my mother lives in is the one that we grew up in, and the very walls are soaked in "do-you-remember"s. Do you remember the time you fell off the railing? Do you remember the time Anshula and you tumbled down the stairs? Do you remember the funeral we had for a blade of grass because Ruby insisted on it? Do you remember the first Christmas that Ma gave you lingerie? Do you remember practicing dance in your room at 5 am? Do you remember Sunday mornings, crawling into Ma and Baba's bed and cuddling? Do you remember the moonlight shining through the back windows, when everyone was asleep, and you were the only one wandering the house? Do you remember...

I came across old assignments, old letters, old diary entries. I was an angry kid, with a strong streak of self-pity involved. One letter complained of my mother not having enough time for me... Really, the last thing that was ever an issue was lack of time or attention on my mother's part. I came across old photographs, prom, camping in grade 5, shopping trips with Arminder.

I realized I was a better writer then, as I skimmed old assignments. Somewhere along the way, I really was a high achiever, but I was never good at science until grade 10. In retrospect, I have no idea why I decided on science, even my grade 8 marks for chemistry were middling at best. Failing out of biology was probably a logical conclusion.

It's funny how 20 years of living in a place can be shrunk down to 3 small boxes and garbage bags. So much of what we keep is disposable. It was the closing of a very long chapter. One with wonderful highlights, and some very low, lowlights.

Time and Place

2010-08-21T09:36:00.002-04:00

I'm a believer in the timeliness of events. I don't mean being on time, because I never am, I just mean, that there's a time and place for certain events, and if they don't happen in that allotted time when all the stars align and the earth is on that very specific axis, they never will. There's a moment when there's 2 paths to travel, and if you take the one to the right there is no backtracking to find out what could have happened along the one to the left.

The same holds true for honesty. There's a time when it is best to be honest, and then, most of the time, it's better to just keep it inside. I think what a lot of people deem as "being honest" is really just a version of verbal diarrhea. It's to make the sooth sayer feel better rather than the listener.

For my Shining Through girls

2010-08-20T18:26:00.000-04:00

Thank you, for an amazing, hilarious, gut-wrenching, mind-blowing year and a half. When I started, I never dreamed, imagined, or hoped that this would become what it has. You've become my second family, and given me unconditional love, so precious that I could never imagine trading it in, or letting it fade. Thank you for being my shoulder, my rock, my reality check, my hand to hold. Thank you for helping me pick up the pieces, and putting them back together, even when they don't all fit together anymore! Thanks for listening to all the small and big melodramas, and letting me listen to snippets of your life. For including me in your journey, thank you. You really are a mind-boggling collection of girls, and having you around has been the greatest boon.

2010-08-09T20:07:00.003-04:00

I've reached a point in my life when I suddenly realized that I've woken up, and I've been dreaming all along. Case in point, that sentence was previously written as, "Sometimes you reach a point in your life when you realize you've woken up, and you've been dreaming all along." I think I've realized that I need to start living my life, this life, instead of referring to that all encompassing "you" as a pseudo-self-referral. Really it just ends up being one more layer to avoid talking about myself (yourself).

A friend of mine once told me years ago, "The best relationship you can ever hope to have better be with yourself because at the end of the day, there is nobody else." I thought I was doing that, and suddenly the blinders are gone and I need to take the driver's seat, except I'm about to go around a hairpin bend and the steering wheel's still going straight. Hit the brakes, use quick reflexes, and breathe. Another friend said to me, "You just need to be honest, no matter who it hurts." Not brutal honesty, although that has it's time and place, but honest at the right time and the right place with the right person.

I think that's why I've been avoiding blogging for so long, there's a part of me that balked at the idea of being dishonest, and I've finally reached a point when I have to be. That bend in the road that I'm always rambling about, it's here and it's now. Not 4 months from now, or coming up, I haven't even had a chance to "plateau" this time, but it's my turn to drive and I'm ready for the accelerator.

Saturday morning

2010-03-27T12:38:00.000-04:00

Lounging around on the couch with an orange plaid blanket and my laptop (of course) on my lap. The Notebook's on the W Network It's one of those movies that are bad for the female psyche. It makes you want romance, deep, passionate romance. The kind that grabs your heartstrings and ties them up. When you wake up in the morning, there's a flower on the pillow next to you and arrows pointing to a surprise. Movies like these create an expectation that no man can hope to fulfill. Flowers are simply not enough, and with strong independent women (I am proud to say I am one), men simply don't know how to measure up anymore.

What's a man gotta do to sweep you off your feet?

Medulla oblangata

2010-03-10T12:45:00.003-05:00

Medulla oblangata - the lower part of the brainstem that regulates primary functions, such as breathing, heart rate and blood pressure.

I've always loved the term. There's something almost exotic about it med-uuuu-la OB-long-ga-ta.

This, ultimately, has nothing to do with my blog entry today. I just thought I'd share. I've been waiting rather impatiently for my grad school responses. One rejection in, 6 to go. Except they won't be rejections. I refuse to believe that they will be rejections. I will go somewhere. I just need to know WHERE. Perhaps my medulla oblangata is having to work harder than usual to keep my blood pressure steady and my heart rate normal.

On the plus side, I've lost 30 pounds! Maybe the minus side? I have 50 to go and I'll be supremely happy. The diet's hard sometimes...but I try to focus on the long-term. That's one of my goals this year, to learn to focus on the long-term. I honestly believe that people naturally focus on the short-term, it may be evolutionary. I mean, focus on the short-term to ensure immediate survival. Long-term thinking became more prominent as humans began living longer lives. This is my personal theory, I know nothing about the validity of it.

Since this entry is turning into a series of short updates, I have also started making beaded jewellery. It's fun, and fills some creative side of me that I neglect very easily.

Saturday Mornings

2009-12-12T10:47:00.004-05:00

I was up at dawn today. I tried really hard to snuggle into my warm duvet and close my eyes and drift off on a warm thought on the river that leads to Slumberland. The first thought in my head was the research I want to pursue at the University of Waterloo. I pushed it away, I shoved it inside the "Deal with later" box of my mind. It popped back up. Right next to the whisperings of a car motor and a warm sunset drive. I grappled it back into the box and sat on it. "I want to dream!" I shouted as I threw my duvet over my head and plunged towards that warm thought boat that was leaving without me.

Stupid research. It knocked on the box so that every time I came near the boat to Slumberland, I tripped and stumbled and couldn't catch it in time. I heard the car motor and warm sunset drive go off for someone else's warm-thought-ticket.

...So I threw back the covers, took a hot shower, made a cup of tea and cracked open the developmental psychology textbook to review the basis of my research proposal for my grad school application to University of Waterloo. I suppose...ultimately, the drive into the sunset can wait. Applications have deadlines.

Recipe for Magic

2009-12-09T20:22:00.003-05:00

10 kids with autism
13 Instructor Therapists
1 Taylor Swift CD
1 Birthday
7 lines of lyrics
5 students doing placement
2 teaspoons of the impossible
1/2 tablespoon of hope
Sprinkle liberally with love

Put the 5 students to bake at 350F. Mix the kids with autism with the Instructor Therapists, beat until seamless. When the students are golden brown, stir in Taylor Swift CD and Birthday. In one room, whip up the Autism/InstructorTherapist mixture, and students/TaylorSwift/Birthday mixture. Sprinkle well with hope and love. Magic will be apparent when child who never enjoys birthday begins dancing and makes eye contact.

Weight Lifting

2009-10-05T19:56:00.003-04:00

After a brief and hasty perusal of blogs that I follow, I don't feel so bad about not writing in my blog for the last month and a half. Like everyone else, my life seems to have taken a busy turn. Hectically so.

I've moved out on my own. I live with a fabulous roommate. We have a wonderful apartment. The biggest adjustment has been getting used to having to do stuff for myself. For example, grocery shopping. I did that today. I also carried my four grocery bags on the subway and then the bus. It's my new method of weight lifting.

I will be stronger by the end of the year.

And then the insomnia set in...

2009-08-11T02:32:00.001-04:00

Highly personal, read at your own risk.

I hate writing at 2 in the morning. It's usually indicative of some highly distraught state of mind (how's that for vocabulary?). It's also usually something that I regret by the cold, hard, logical light of day. I thought showering would unwind me enough to go back to bed and sleep. I can't sleep. My blanket smells of male cologne and brings memories of a certain male who, at this moment, I think would rather I NOT think of him. I think, I would rather not think of him. Even Teddy can't banish those thoughts.

I'm trying rather desperately to hold onto my sense of self at the moment. I think I'm quite liable of being that girl in a bad Nicholas Sparks' Hollywood movie, driving over to her love's home in the rain and pounding on the door to fall down on her knees and beg. I will not beg. Nor do I have access to a car to drive in the rain. Good, I'm safe.

What a mess all of this is.

It's sad because I've just spent a rather utopian month. I was beginning to hope that something was being resuscitated that I had buried. There was lots of hand-holding, gazing into each others' eyes, watching sunrises and sunsets, daydreaming, phone calling, going to the zoo and planning of roadtrips.

We are both in rather unique positions to hurt the other. Unfortunately, we both use those positions for "leverage" on a regular basis. The problem is, I don't know how to stop. It is very easy, when mad to simply say what will hit hardest. Fighting is ugly. I've developed a rather thick skin to it lately and simply lash back harder when I feel that first blood has been drawn. Part of me recognizes that this is not healthy. The other part of me needs to hurt as I feel I hurt. Which, I also recognize as unhealthy.

I wonder at the consequences of this, to each other and as the whole "us". Are we making each other worse people? Once in a pattern of behaviour, as a couple, once that dynamic has been put into play, how do we change it? Will it be, ultimately, better if we simply walk away from this, from us, and at least leave behind some form of the human beings we were before this got messy?

I have written and deleted the same paragraph 3 times. Even if I don't sleep, I believe that is a sign that I should no longer be writing. Hopefully the sunrise brings new moods, good moods.

Sex

2009-07-19T16:56:00.002-04:00

How important is sex in a relationship? On a scale of 1 to 10. I don't mean those lusty, just-beginning relationships, but rather then ones that are slowly plodding along and have been for some time. Does passion really dissipate after a given period of time? Is it impossible to expect eager groping and excitement simply because time has passed and partners know what to expect from each other now? OR is lack of excitment merely the symptom of the disease, where the "disease" is an ending relationship?

Lasagna

2009-07-07T21:19:00.002-04:00

"You got me running around in circles, I just can't keep up with your love..."

Bum bouncing, hips shaking, head swaying, I read the instructions for making lasagna...about 3 hours ago. If someone had told me that making lasagna takes 3 hours I probably wouldn't have tried it at the tail-end of an already full day.

Then I realized I had no ricotta cheese. No worries, I breeze, I'm going to use parmesan and cheddar cheese.

I don't have enough tomatoes. No worries, I'm going to use left over salsa and red soup from Knorr.

And I'm cooking the meat, and I'm cooking the sauce...and...I'm still cooking. The combination of two recipes that I'm using (because just one didn't have the steps that I wanted) say that I should be done in approximately 40 minutes...and I'm still cooking 1 hour into it.

I realized an hour and a half into it that I'd forgotten to boil the lasagna pasta bit.

Oh dear...

Although my father and sister say it was really good.

Whimsy

2009-07-05T07:30:00.000-04:00

A secret, a secret, a secret. How desperately we all want a secret, one that is precious and all our own. Something beautiful and tender and sweet. I have two secrets that I've always wanted, and hope to have one day. One is my own secret garden, one where "though the lovely wild place was not likely to become a 'gardener's garden', it would be a wilderness of growing things before the springtime was over." (The Secret Garden)

I used to pretend that I'd found one at Paroma's house when we were little. The vines had so overgrown the little walkway to the backyard, and buttercups grew in profusion in the grass. The idea that simple gardening can make new friends, restore health, bring a family together...was just the romance that I loved. I'm a sap and I know it. I like happy endings, the sappier, the better. I want my secret garden, something with walls and a key and vines covering the entrance. It will have a low seated swing, and a tree house.

I've never overcome my childhood wanting for a treehouse, and now that I'm an adult (more or less) the treehouse has only grown in proportion. In my mind's-eye it is high up in a tree, without walls, but nets that can be pulled down to keep mosquitoes out. A mattress for reclining and reading. A lantern to ready by. A bug-proof, animal-proof, snack container. A pull-up ladder. I'm not entirely sure where the tree-house daydream came from, somewhere between The Swiss Family Robinson and the Elves of Laureloin (Tolkien) I dreamt up this little refuge.

Some day...

Solitude

2009-06-11T22:41:00.003-04:00

I look forward to solitude. To drinking a cup of tea with a book in my lap and music in the background. To not "needing" to socialize.

It is absolutely amazing to me how people are always connected to each other in this era. We're never alone. With our BlackBerry's and our MSN and Facebook and Twitter and portable computers and portable phones, we never ever miss a beat. We are never unavailable, for gossip, for emergencies, for minor meltdowns that snowball into major meltdowns as we agonize over them.

Lately, I've started only turning on my laptop every 2-3 days, checking my phone (a CrackBerry by the way) only before bedtime, and being "tuned in" only at specific times.

My solitude is precious to me. My tea is more savoury with quiet unbroken by typing on keys, my book more enticing without the "ping"ing of my phone.

Maybe it's just me, but isn't the human condition essentially to be alone? Is that why our modern society fights against the state of "alone" so persistently? And is our generation less developed because we simply fall in line with the assault on our human boundaries? Does it, somehow take away from an individual's sense of self, because he or she is always connected to a humming, busy, droning collective mind?

One of those days...

2009-06-01T23:35:00.003-04:00

Today's been one of those days. You know the one. By the end of it all you want is a warm shoulder to cry on. No speaking, please and thank you. Just someone who will hold your hand while you cry. It's only crying of sheer exhaustion. Therefore, speaking only makes you more exhausted.

I work with 8 other people. We're supposed to be 1:1 with our kids; 8 kids, 8 people. How many people showed up today? Four. Including, yours truly. Increase said ratio to 2:1, factor in the aggression, and the supervision needs, the individual programs and the balancing act between keeping kids occuppied but hitting all targets all the time. By the end of the day, not only were we exhausted, I had lost the ability to speak coherently.

Then, I show up to my second job. I sign in at 4:52. My shift begins at 5. I run to the booth, drop off my things, then I run to the bathroom (we don't have changerooms) to change into my uniform. I end up at our booth by 5:08. I get a call from my supervisor with a "verbal warning" because I arrived at the booth late. Ummmm...wha??

I'm frustrated, I'm annoyed, I can't speak in full sentences, and my supervisor for a measly part-time job is telling me I'm getting a verbal warning for being early and changing into my uniform?

Then a man comes up to the booth and starts telling my friend that she's beautiful and therefore she deserves an amazing life. Don't get me wrong. She's an amazing human being, gorgeous inside and out. But what about us girls who aren't beautiful? We don't deserve to be happy and have an amazing life?

By the end of the night, I sat in front of the movie theatres, put my face in my hands and sobbed for a brief 20 seconds. Sometimes, it's good to cry.

Woman-Talk

2009-04-26T21:42:00.003-04:00

Two conversations today. One with a man, one with a woman. The man happens to have been my friend since we were little kids in singing class together. The woman happens to have been one of my closest friends since high school. Both were essentially about the same thing. Women talk.

We talk and talk and talk and really, we never stop talking. We talk to our parents, our siblings, our friends, our lovers, our ex's, our teachers, our cab drivers, our bus drivers. We talk to people standing in line and people standing at a bar. We talk on the phone, on MSN, on Skype, on Facebook, on blogs, and face-to-face. Give us a mode of communication and we will use it.

I don't think men really ever understand what we talk about all the time. To the casual observer, women talk about work and boys and clothing and family. But we talk about things because we are trying to find a solution. Solve it and move on. "This is what's bothering me" and this conversation will help me find the best way to either make it stop bothering me, or make what is bothering me go away.

(Here is where my rant begins):
Men, oh those men, claiming that us women are too emotive, too hysterical (damn Freud and his Elektra complex...wandering womb indeed), too illogical to be problem solvers. Let me tell you that we are emotive, and we do not use cold, hard, logic. We are emotional. Those emotions colour our every decision and every move. We live in the moment because that is where our emotions lie.

But those emotions are the reasons that we can define ourselves at 24 as fully grown, capable, self-aware human beings, completely cognizant of the fact that we each have our foibles and faults and picadilloes. Every conversation that we have in our silly "woman-talk" brings us a little closer to understanding each of those, and managing them.

Men, oh those men, who grow up without woman-talk. Men who are sensitive and insecure. And have no idea that they ARE sensitive or insecure. Men who do not problem solve, because they spend their whole lives making decisions based on their sensitivities and insecurities and therefore never really move ON with their lives. Women really just want to talk about it so that they can fix it and move on.

Really, that is all we want. Fix it, move on, have fun.

Disclaimer: Not all men are sensitive and insecure, i.e. my father is very good at woman-talk. I mostly mean those men between my age and 40 who don't know their own head and make it very difficult for women to figure it out. It's hard to figure out something when that something doesn't know how to figure itself out.

Smorgasbord

2009-04-12T08:34:00.003-04:00

This entry is going to be a smorgasbord of topics. I've been awake most of the night thinking about them. Rather, whenever I did wake up at night, I thought about them.

1. I fall asleep most consistently with Teddy by my side and in my arms, and after speaking loving words to Sabrina.

2. Sabrina really deserves a love letter. From me. I think I'm mildly infatuated. Possibly, more than mildly, and more than infatuated.

3. I highly dislike being a lard a$$. I hate looking in the mirror and seeing the beginnings of a double chin. I hate that people offer me their seats on public transportation because they think I'm PREGNANT.

4. Because of the above statement, I am refusing to sit on my bum and eat Spring Rolls whenever I'm upset, lonely, angry, frustrated, bored, ANYMORE. So, as of tomorrow morning folks, I will be waking up at 5:30am on Mondays and Wednesdays and going to the gym before work. Tuesdays and Fridays I work out after work, from 5pm-8pm. Saturday, before or after work. Of all the toughest mountains to climb, I think I found the one for me.

5. Pettiness irritates me, most especially in me. I need to work on that. This whole, you said, "________" therefore, I'm going to say, "________". It is hard to not degrade to that level. I think the first step will be backing away from the "winning" goal of an argument. Rather, moving towards a, "I need to solve this issue" goal of a discussion. See the completely different feel of the wording? I wonder if it really all comes down to wording, or is it really more about the mindset?

6. I'm just going to power through the summer and finish my courses at Seneca. What's the point in dragging something on? I want to finish with my 3.8 GPA and start applying for grants and the OGS and studying for my GREs. I want grad school. Really really want it. I wonder if I tempt fate by wanting it so much?

7. I miss my sisters. I miss them, miss them, miss them. It's been 3 years since I've really lived with Anshula. And I haven't lived with Paroma ever. So, why exactly am I missing them? I want a good Disney movie night. I want to stay up late and talk about boys, and poke mild fun at our parents' picadilloes. I want to tease Paroma and go on loving her just as hard. I want to get mad at Anshula and slam the door in her face until I calm down. And then, at some point I will go back to both of them and sheepishly smile and apologize. Because they are the one thing that I'm really really really good at. Loving them, laughing with them, being their friend and their big sister. Twelve more days...

8. I miss my old house. Just the house. I miss my Mr. BigTree, and my Land of the Willows, and my DreamCatcher Valley and Crystal River. I think I will start writing (in this blog or another one) my childhood stories of my secret magical kingdom. I miss racing up the hill to the hydro fields to watch a particularly gorgeous sunset. And there were many.

9. I realize that this entry sounds a little down and out for the count. Underneath all this whining, I still feel... very content with life. We're good friends. Life just likes to shake me up every now and then, like all good friends do, for my own sake.

Vacation?

2009-04-09T18:07:00.002-04:00

So...I've been thinking...about this school thing that I'm supposed to be doing. I'm currently doing an "Ontario Graduate Certificate" which sounds all fancy-shmancy, but it's not really all that fun. I love theoretical work, things like research and writing papers and puting together hypotheses. This...not so much. I realize that it's useful, I just don't do "applied knowledge" so well. Not to sound like a snob (really I don't mean to sound like a snob) but applied just comes too easily. You just do the role play and there it is. There isn't really any blood, sweat and very real tears behind it.

Here's my current debate: 3 more courses to complete, 2 field placements, I could be done by the end of August. OR do I let myself have a break for 4 months, work like...like...I don't know, work like ME and earn lots of money and then start fresh in September to finish in December? The plus side: time to study for the dreaded GREs and rough copies of grad school apps in the summer. The downside: having this course hanging over my head for another 8 months.

I sometimes wonder why us 20-somethings feel like we have so much to do all the time. I talk about taking 4 months "off" of school and already I have other things I need to do in that time. I haven't even decided if I'm taking that time off yet! I wish I could say it comes from having immigrant parents, but it doesn't. Not really. It was my grandparents that immigrated here. The truth is, if I took a break to breathe I might find that I really think that the world is right and I'm a lazy sloth who has nothing between her ears but masses of mush that can only think in terms of bad poetry and boys.

Unsung Hero

2009-04-08T19:05:00.004-04:00

I'm singing your song
Because the world slept
When you moved mountains.
Because the world blinked
When you brought in the tide.

I'm singing your song
From mountaintops
I'm whispering your song
To waves you brought to shore.

I'm singing your song
To ears that are
Unattuned to the rhythms
Of seismic underactivity.

I'm singing your song
Because it's
Something to sing about.

Love Notes

2009-02-26T19:45:00.001-05:00

I read your note yesterday.
My cheeks flamed
A smiled tiptoed across my face.

I read your note yesterday.
A thousand butterflies took the skies.
Orange against blue;
Joy against the canvas of me.

I read your note yesterday.
I saw it when you lifted your head,
As I ran to meet you.
I read the lines as your hand
Reached out to clasp mine.

I read your note yesterday.
Can I read your note tomorrow?

Love thyself...naturally

2009-02-07T20:21:00.004-05:00

As I'm getting ready to head out for the evening, I'm assessing different facets of my life, as they are today. As of tomorrow I will have been at this work place for 2 months. It's an interesting place to work, and I'm still feeling my ways around the personal and professional boundaries that seem to be unspoken and unacknowledged but critical.

One repeated argument, or discussion, that has surfaced during our lunch breaks has been centered around a certain T.V. show. One of those ones that offer a makeover with the guidance and advice of "experts". Side A argues that people should not all be made to look a certain way, and that people should love themselves just as they are; people should be judged not on appearance but on things such as level of education and tastes in movies or books. Side B argues that the realities of society are that people judge others based on their looks, and therefore in order to survive and indeed, succeed, in society one must look the part. The first few times I have been a quiet observer to Side A & B. I'm not really one to state my opinions unless specifically asked.

I've mulled it over, for some reason this question was one that irked me and I needed to settle it within myself. I found that every time I put on make up, I wondered whether I was simply following the norms of society without thinking for myself. So, I conducted a little experiment. I went for a week to work without make up on. I wore my hair in nicely straightened, and I wore flattering clothing but refrained from putting on anything that would accentuate any particular feature on my face. For one thing, it was much easier getting ready in the morning. For another, I didn't have to think so much.

But then, is wearing unflattering clothing (as this show teaches people NOT to do) loving yourself more? Personally, the opposite is true. If you love who you are, warts and all, you will gravitate towards clothes that flatter you. If you look in the mirror completely naked and love what you see, you will dress to show those points of your body that are loveliest, in your opinion. If you are self-aware and still love yourself, you will also camouflage those parts of you that may need "hiding". Loving oneself does not need to be a blind love. In fact, it is best if it is a tempered love, with an awareness of faults and foibles; internal and external.

It is not superficial to look in the mirror and get joy from clothes that fit well and make up that shows off luminous eyes or clear skin or whatever other part of you that you want to accentuate. And that's all I have to say about it.

Now, ask me if I'll actually air my views at work...

Contentment

2009-01-18T17:33:00.004-05:00

Sunday afternoon, and I'm sitting with a big mug of tea, rambling the many waves of the internet. This weekend has been particularly fulfilling. Spent girl face-time on Friday night. We had an interesting conversation, Maya, Jenna and I. Or an interesting set of conversations; however you want to put it. Maya asked, "Are you happy?" It was startling to find myself hesitating over the answer. Psychologically, I am aeons ahead of where I was a scant 5 years ago. I've learned, as Maya put it, "at the end of the day, the strongest relationship has to be with myself". Am I happy? 80% of the time, I really am. Even though the pause between the question and my answer was alarmingly long (both Mags and Jen raised their eyebrows as I stared up at the ceiling, pushing myself to be honest with myself). More than happiness, the beginning of this year has brought a sense that, where ever I am right now on my journey, I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be; and everything else will fall into place.

Saturday, I actually spent alone time. As in, I got pampered and I spent an amount of money on pampering that I'm ashamed to admit. I actually spent 2 hours in a spa. As in, 2 hours with just my thoughts as my body was massaged. In the evening I went to my Boudi's place for a birthday party for Dada. As always, we stayed awake until 2 am doing adda.

Sunday evening, I'm going to be with someone special. As always, late. But good things are always worth waiting for.

The End

2009-01-06T18:48:00.004-05:00

The problem with books is that they always end. Only the telling of a story, but then they're finished and there is no more to look forward to. "Happily Ever After" so rarely cuts it. I want to be a busy-body and constantly look through that little window the author has cut into someone else's life. Even a fictional life is real in some form. Its existence only on the page and in my brain, or yours, does not make it less real. Real tears have been cried over pathos found in pages, real heart beats have been skipped at the sight of true love, real laughter, real fright, real joy. And the ending of a book suddenly means that this acquaintanceship or friendship or love affair is over as abruptly as it began.

2008

2009-01-01T13:27:00.002-05:00

People who have been following my blog for the last couple of years know, at the beginning of each year, I recap the previous one. I feel a sense of relief at the prospect of 2009. 2008 tried my paces and pushed me to be faster, stronger, smarter. I look back at 2008 with a sense of accomplishment. Perhaps, I feel that 2009 is my year to reap the rewards.

Catch up

2008-12-30T14:06:00.000-05:00

It has been four months since I wrote in this blog. My life, has suddenly and happily, taken an up-turn. Life, real life, has finally started. It's funny, because I think psychologically, I'm still lagging behind. Oh, but I am so satisfied with myself, comfortable in my brain, assured of a future.

What is all this happiness you say?

I GOT THE JOB!!!!

Yes indeed folks. THE job. I officially work with children with autism. Really. As in, they actually pay me. As in, I am with kids all day, and they PAY ME to be there. And I can already feel it, I will be a better human being for being there...being HERE. This space in my life, is wonderful.

I, miraculously, have time. I have evenings and weekends. Really, truly, cross my heart and hope to die. Of course, me being me, I'm already trying to fill up that time. Badminton, the gym, class. I think I'm terrified of sitting at home; somehow that will label me as a failure and a sloth. But, I reason logically, I'm NOT a failure OR a sloth...I'm 24 with a B.Sc. and I have a REAL job, for which I do background readings and study and practice. It will take no small amount of time to argue myself into giving myself permission to be at home...and get to know myself, just a little bit...all over again.

I know how I like my eggs, and what my favourite colour to wear is. But there are kinks in my brain that need ironing out. And self-esteem issues that have been folded in the back of the closet that is my brain, those need to be taken, shaken out and finally burned. There is that children's book that needs to be finally written. And the anthology of poetry that I have let slide.

Life beckons and I can finally, really, grab it and ride it...hard.

Moving towards horizon

2008-08-26T07:44:00.001-04:00

There are new decisions on the horizon. Paths that I thought I'd never need to travel suddenly beckon. Not only do I need to travel them, I want to. Somewhere, somehow, in some distant sleep of mine, my kaleidoscope shifted again. It is a time of renewal and leave-takings. I do not know if I am strong enough. Only, I know that if I don't walk that path, face that fear, I will become what I've most feared becoming: gutless.

I want, I want, I want. My life is filled with wants. It is time to begin fulfilling them. It is time to let that go, and let this take over. Whatever this and that are.

It is time for some more soul-growth. That oh-so-uncomfortable growth that I dread and look forward to in equal proportions.

A Good Day

2008-07-22T12:41:00.000-04:00

Today is a good day. I think it is an important fact to record. I actually woke up today, not struggling out of bed, but awake and I'm listening to music. "When everything's made to be broken, I just want you to know who I am."

I know, I know that I exist, that I am a force to be reckoned with. I know that I love, and who I love. For today, that is enough. For now, this is enough. For always? No, I want more from my life: I want to swallow it whole and taste the myriad flavours on my tongue, to experience all the textures of this life because I don't know what's next.

I will be okay, I will be better than okay, I will grow wings and fly.

Redefinition

2008-06-21T15:21:00.000-04:00

The kaleidoscope shimmers in an effusion of colours. Dazzling contortions and convolutions that mean I'm never sure of which surreal world I'm living in. There is an element of absence...of reality. A redefinition of self that I am afraid of and excited by.

When does redefinition end? I suppose living is the definition of redefinition. There is no beginning and there is no end, just somersaults in the air and you're not sure where your self will land next.

I am lacking an anchor and mixing metaphors in the process. Meandering with no defined pattern. A drive with no destination. After so much ambition, and falling short, it is difficult to look in the mirror. Keep busy with no intent of arriving at the preset goal.

My goals for the summer:
1. Have the time of my life
2. Prepare for my GREs
3. Get a real career

Home!

2008-05-26T05:29:00.000-04:00

It's been a surreal, interesting, intense, laid-back month. Between hair-touching, creepy tram-men, foot injuries, bottles falling off the top bunk and nearly hitting Ruby, very talkative roommates to absentee roommates in hostels, narrow blue stairs, restaurant boyfriends, silent arguments, not-so-silent arguments, laughing until our tummies hurt, and muddled up words...somewhere in the spaces was our holiday.

There was site-seeing and huge old ruins that began to be indistinguishable between one and the next. There were beaches and freezing cold water, and a do-or-die attempt to swim at every island (we failed in Santorini...and Athens had a syringe-beach that wasn't very inviting). There was cursing my huge navy blue suitcase (it should never see the light of day again). There were boats capsizing and panicked calls for each other's safety. There were gangrene and tetanus worries (that were quickly laughed away).

And at the end of it all, there was a week in England that was wonderful for sheer family value. A bonding time with cousins that I see too rarely.

It was all lovely, but as always, I'm glad to be home.

Greece

2008-05-02T02:23:00.000-04:00

Meandering stone streets and mountains on every side. Except, here they're hills and not mountains. Waking up laughing because it feels like we've been given the gods' own wine and life is beautiful...everything is beautiful. The buildings exude a beauty that no one prepared me for. Scrambling for the computer when I feel the need to connect with home...and cursing slow internet. It's lovely, and just the break I needed.

Protection

2008-04-22T11:36:00.000-04:00

"Were you close?"
I hate the question.
What do you mean?
Implying that I mourn
For a man I never knew.
Yes, we were close -
You have no idea
The words, the love that
Hung in the air
Like many gossamer cobwebs
Unspoken, but reflecting
The sunlight.

"Life is precious"
Yeah, I figured that
Long before you were conscious
Long before you
Dared to think.
You, who did not care for it.
You, who wanted to throw it away.
Don't quote to me
Words that are too big
For your brain
Squeezing out sideways
Through the revolving door
Of your mouth.

Death?
What Death?
What do you mean,
He still stalks the world
Still takes the ones
I love?
What right has He?
What right have I?
My love, I cry.
Let my love protect
You and I
From the stalkings
The ominous mutterings
As Death, hears the ticking clock
Of my precious
Closely held
Life.

Tentative

2008-04-18T14:46:00.000-04:00

I know where he comes from,
I think I know
I thought I knew.
The split moment -
Hand graze.
The half a breath
Eye contact.
Unacknowledged,
Knowing, hidden
Flutterings
From parts we never
Admit to.

Cry me a river

2008-04-09T14:15:00.000-04:00

With your eyes wide open,
Pretend for a moment
That you see the future
That you’re able to divine
That foggy, filmy, fantasy
Of future years.

Rivers,
Torrential,
With deep currents
Unfathomable,
Unpredictable.

Divine the future,
See the currents and
The eddies.
Cry the river.

Cry that river for me.
Make sure I see it,
Posted on Youtube,
Because once I get to the future,
That foggy, filmy, fantasy.
I’ll need reminding.

Self-Talk

2008-03-04T10:59:00.000-05:00

Forget the time remaining and do what needs to be done to the best of your ability. Stop talking about the "burden" of work and start focussing on each individual aspect as a list of to-do's. Time doesn't exist, only your mental, physical, and emotional health. In order to be mentally healthy, you need to know that you are performing to what you consider your absolute best. In order to be physically healthy, you need to sleep, drink, eat appropriately. In order for you to be emotionally healthy, you need to acknowledge that you are tired, that you are frustrated, that life is good and that this is an exciting ending to an even greater beginning. These are the things you need to look after.

Forgive yourself. Forgive yourself the mood swings and the hopelessness. Forgive yourself for being an overachiever. Forgive yourself for taking the little things for granted. You're allowed. For a brief period of time, you are allowed to do all of these things.

You are a capable, compassionate, intelligent woman. You are emotion driven and centered. You are capable of carving hours out of a day simply because it is what you must do. You do what needs to be done to be proud of yourself. Above all, be proud of the work that you are doing.

2008-02-24T18:27:00.000-05:00

And these few precepts in thy memory
Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar:
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,
Bear't that th' opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are most select and generous, chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all- to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

- William Shakespeare, Hamlet.

A Mouthful

2008-02-20T12:28:00.000-05:00

I'm officially swamped. I've bitten off more than I can chew, but I can't spit it out either. So I tuck bits and pieces of my life into my cheeks and concentrate on breathing through my nose. Slow and steady chewing, with careful rolling under the tongue. Heaven forbid I get a cold, I'd have to breathe through my mouth.

6 weeks. I can do this. I hope. On a good day, I know. This morning is not a good morning. Therefore I resort to hoping and praying. Waking up at 6:45 am and falling asleep at 12. 7 hours is a luxury. A luxury I do not have.

Things to do:
-thesis
-5 exams
- 3 presentations
- 2 papers
- 20.25 hours per week part-time work (for 6 weeks!)
- 4 hours per week volunteer work (for 6 weeks!)
- spend time with family, friends, and my very patient Keith.

If any of you have any extra wishes lying around that you haven't used yet. Please use them on me. Wish that I get A's. 5 very straight A's.

An Australian Definition of a Canadian

2008-01-29T18:00:00.000-05:00

Personal Note: This was an email from my father. To the unknown Australian, thank you.

** **Proud to be a Canadian! An Australian Definition of a Canadian - Written by an Australian Dentist

You probably missed it in the local news, but there was a report that someone in Pakistan had advertised in a newspaper an offer of a reward to anyone who killed a Canadian - any Canadian. An Australian dentist wrote the following editorial to help define what a Canadian is, so they would know one when they found one:

A Canadian can be English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek. A Canadian can be Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, Arab, Pakistani or Afghan. A Canadian may also be a Cree, Métis, Mohawk, Blackfoot, Sioux, or one of the many other tribes known as native Canadians.

A Canadian's religious beliefs range from Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu or none. In fact, there are more Muslims in Canada than in Afghanistan. The key difference is that in Canada they are free to worship as each of them chooses. Whether they have a religion or no religion, each Canadian ultimately answers only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.

A Canadian lives in one of the most prosperous lands in the history of the world. The root of that prosperity can be found in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which recognize the right of each person to the pursuit of happiness. A Canadian is generous and Canadians have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need, never asking a thing in return.

Canadians welcome the best of everything, the best products, the best books, the best music, the best food, the best services and the best minds. But they also welcome the least - the oppressed, the outcast and the rejected. These are the people who built Canada.

You can try to kill a Canadian if you must, as other blood-thirsty tyrants in the world have tried, but in doing so you could just be killing a relative, or a neighbour. This is because Canadians are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom.

Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, can be a Canadian.

2008

2008-01-04T01:40:00.000-05:00

The new year. Disjointed, discombobulated, disharmonious. Pieces that don't quite fit. Emotions that are no longer important. A future that feels like shifting sand. Tired old metaphors that I've used before. Burying the rainbow born hopes and dreams that I have. Not, that they have ceased to exist, simply in hiding. My world only extends to the next four months. Beyond that, abyss. Uncertainty that is mind-numbingly refreshing. A lack of clarity beyond five little A's lined up neatly in a row. Knowing that I don't know. Resolutions that are purely career driven. Emotional or personal goals scare the sh!t out of me. I just want peace. That's a lie. I don't know what I want. To love without excuses.

Recap 2007? Never. A year of hard choices and dizzying successes. Of yelling matches and intense orgasms. A year of distance from people I have always claimed mattered the most to me. The beginning of a growing phase. The beginning...of many things. Not all pleasant. Certainly not unpleasant.

'07 left me satiated, full. Exhausted in parts of my brain that I didn't know existed. Now I look for respite. And 5 little A's...

Loyalty

2007-11-24T13:15:00.000-05:00

It is wrong to suggest that there is one form of loyalty. Wrong to intimate that my way of being loyal is somehow less because it is not another way of being loyal. It is true that I am not open and above board about my loyalties and my disloyalties. I have never been one to lay them out on a table and stipulate the use and misuse of trust. To say that expression is the only form of being loyal, to see the world in black and white and therefore act in black and white, is wrong.

On the other hand (there is always another hand you see, but that is beside the point) I know and understand the reasons for being open and above board about loyalty. It makes it easier, somehow, to accept actions that would not be otherwise comprehensible, when a person's method of demonstrating loyalty is clear. Much less has to be explained when loyalty is waved like a flag and detailed thoroughly.

The issues that are deeply personal to me, I avoid discussing. The decisions that I make that effect who I am and how I am and how my internal mirrors reflects me, are decisions that are kept very private. My nearest and dearest quite frequently will not know my thought processes on them...or even the final decision. Those whom my decisions regard, will most likely never know a decision has been made at all.

To suggest therefore, that I do nothing when faced with an issue of "loyalty" leads to a fundamental misunderstanding of who I am. To suggest that I am somehow being "disloyal" because my decision has not been openly discussed (while I understand why it would be thought that I would discuss it, considering I discuss everything) is to miss the fact that issues that are core to who I am are never discussed without a great deal of hesitation, and many prior mental somersaults....and revisions on how, why, and what parts of my decision will be explained.

I have purposely kept this entry as vague as possible, simply because it is a process that I hesitate to be overt about. If you read very carefully between the lines, I do believe though, you will understand.

And they thought Jane Eyre was written by a man!

2007-10-21T18:17:00.001-04:00

I've read Jane Eyre a hundred times, and I've always loved this paragraph of it:

"It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex."

page 95. Charlotte Bronte

This is my reality

2007-10-20T18:42:00.000-04:00

The rustling as I flick my sari over the ironing board, the pale yellow sunshine filtering through the vertical blinds, the hair I'm desperately trying to keep straight because it can go wavy at the slightest hint of moisture. This is my reality. My gut as it bulges over the shaya and my breasts as they are covered in a blouse, reflected back at me in 2D through my closet mirrors.

"Om Hrim Doong Durgayai Namah Swaha" we chant 108 times. The breathless intake . The sound of a hundred voices making the same plea to the same goddess. For a hundred different reasons. The semi-sweet smell of incense as it carries up the unspoken wishes, the unseen demands, the myriad of hopes, dreams and worries of people only brought together by a shared language, upbringing and belief. The joining of palms, the bending of heads, the reaching for the blessing of agni, the knots mothers make in the corners of their saris for their children who didn't come.

The quiet whispering and smothered giggling of women. The crying of babies and running of children. The dry bhog with khichuri, shobji, and mishtee. The bending over plates and quick plate to mouth movement to avoid spillage onto saris that are embroidered in gold. The compliments on how beautiful you look, or how grown up, or graduating.

The once a year opportunity to reconnect with that distant part of me, buried deep beneath the layers, but an unalienable part of my internal definition. My definition of my parents, my grandparents and my family in India. Once a year, this is my reality.

2007-09-25T08:52:00.000-04:00

"An now, having cried my cry and said my say I shall take a brace, and if I cannot look pleasant I will look as pleasant as I can."
Rilla of Ingleside, pp. 121

21st century woman

2007-08-27T23:32:00.000-04:00

I'm an aberration in the 21st century. Perhaps the biggest feminist, pro-choice girl out there, but with no intention of taking advantage of the benefits reaped by my fellow feminists. It pisses me off when I read the old books saying that women don't need an education and they're too weak to handle it.

But I want a home. I want kids. I want a husband who comes home to a fresh meal every night. I know, I know, these are concepts that died with the previous generation. Maybe even the generation before them. I try and try to reason with myself.

On the other hand, it would be fun to travel, to see the world, to LIVE, vibrantly, vivaciously, and leave a purple, red stain on everyone's life around me for the short amount of time that I spent with each of them. It would be nice to be lauded as having an amazing career and credited with many advances. And these are things that I have been taught, are worth the having, if you can do the asking.

I don't want to bottle my life up in a few short years, I want to live every moment of it. To say, I'll do the one until I'm married, and the other afterwards, demands that I get all of ONE done before the other. There has to be a route found for doing both. But doing both, as we have all seen, has meant the breakdown of either the family or the woman. It takes a stronger woman than I to make that work.

Things to Do (with my life)

2007-05-18T17:24:00.000-04:00

-Travel: see Egypt, Australia, Spain, Italy, Thailand.
-Dance: start dance classes
-Write a novel, and never publish it - to be found when I die, and published post-mortem.
-Put together a collection of poems and short stories and publish it.
-Own a house with no mortgage.
-Have a previous client approach me, while I'm having dinner with a friend, and tell me how much I helped her/him with her/his life.
-Be invited to speak at a conference.
-Get married and have 3 kids: 2 girls and 1 boy.
-Hold hands with my husband when I'm 80 years old.
-Plant a garden, and build a gazebo with my own hands.
-Have a 28-inch waist, and flaunt it.
-Be a bridesmaid at Ruby's, Shalini's and Arminder's weddings.
-Have a swing from a tree in my backyard.
-Own a cottage.
-Have branches of Operation: Education working in each continent.

Wait

2007-04-15T15:45:00.000-04:00

If I read one more blog about how "love is when you shed a tear and you still love him..." I'm going to throw something at the computer screen. Something large, black, and heavy enough to break it.

Love isn't about the crying and the begging and the pleading. It's not about the heartbreak. Love is about all the moments in between.

The moment you wake up next to him and trace his face with your index finger. The instant that he looks over his shoulder at you while he's in the kitchen.

Falling in love is in the small gestures. The way he's passionate about Star Wars and gets completely serious in his analysis of it. It's in the way he lays his head in your lap as a show of complete vulnerability.

Yes, love is about being able to be happy in someone else's happiness, regardless of your personal feelings. But it's also being able to communicate honestly, openly, with no defenses.

How can you love someone if you can't show them your red, green, blue, black, yellow insides? How can you love someone thinking that maybe they won't understand you? Or being afraid of not being heard?

All you 15, 16 year olds who think THAT'S what love is about. Wait, please, just wait. Be patient. If I could go back in time, and tell myself something at 15 or 16, that's what I would say. Wait for it to happen. Believe that love is all gold and roses and rainbows. Don't be so eager for heartbreak.

When you think that love is about the tears more than it is about the laughter, wait, wait, because one day you will find that it's not about the heartbreak and the disaster and the tears and the falling apart.

My Visual DNA

2007-03-21T11:14:00.000-04:00

Gotten from confused, single and brown at http://burntroti.blogspot.com/, I decided to try it myself. Here's my results. :)

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

When did you grow up?

2007-03-21T04:10:00.000-04:00

Shalini and I were talking recently about when we grew up. When did you grow up? When was that turning point when you first took responsibilty for yourself and your actions? When did you look around you and say, "This is me, this is who I am, and this is what I want, and goddammit, I'm going to go through hell and high water to get it."?

My turning point was when my grandfather died. Everything crystallized after he died.

Before my grandfather died, I was a bit of an aimless wanderer. I had ambitions and dreams and no idea of how to get there. I knew what it was to be passionate, but nothing to be passionate about. I liked many boys, but loved none.

After my grandfather died, I became focussed, and goal-oriented. I knew what I wanted and the path I would take to get there. I knew what I was passionate about (psychology) and knew I lived and breathed it. I fell in love...

Perhaps it was a culmination of events (I was failing biology, I was lonely, I was working in a job I hated). And my grandfather's death came at the right psychological moment.

Perhaps it was that one day...when my dad woke me up, telling me my grandfather was in the hospital and the doctors thought he only had hours to live, and if I could go to the hospital to be there with him...and I couldn't get time off from work, and no one would cover my shift...so I went to the hospital, went to work, went to take care of details for an event I was organizing at York...only to find that my email had been hacked into and everything deleted...and realizing...there was only ME to do the job, do what had to be done, and there wasn't anyone to step in my place.

Whatever it was, I'm grateful. I'm not saying my life is perfect. Heaven knows, it's not. I have deep, long-lasting bonds with those people close to me. I know what I want to do with my life, in my career and personally; how and with whom I want to get there. I've learned that at the end of the day, there's only you, and you're the one who's going to have to push the hardest and fight the longest, regardless of how many friends you have. You might as well live to do what you do, because otherwise it just ain't worth it.

Did you feel the world stop spinning?

2007-02-01T19:04:00.000-05:00

I caught a moment today, when time stood still. An instant, when most of the world is asleep, hanging suspended reality, between dawn and moonset. Atlas shrugged and for a moment the world stopped spinning, hanging precariously in the balance between rising and falling. Two opposing lights, the cold distance of the moon and the warm embrace of the sun warred...and for a split moment, I caught it, I saw it...while the world still slept.

Professor Leonard's Commencement Address 2006 University of Toronto

2007-01-24T10:53:00.000-05:00

So, what is a commencement address? (pause) OK, good, you don't know either. I have three degrees, so I must have heard commencement addresses. (pause) I know I did. (pause) I can't remember them. One thing I know about commencement addresses: you're expected to give advice. I know that because I looked some up on google and read them. They all gave advice, but the advice was sometimes crazy. Here's one example: "When you fall down, don't be afraid to laugh at yourself." . That's terrible advice. don't do that. "When you fall down laugh at yourself"-- people will think you're drunk. So I thought, OK, give useful advice, advice that could not possibly be wrong. The problem with good advice is that usually you already know it, you just don't feel like doing it, but here goes: Don't read fashion magazines. they will make you feel ugly and fat. So there, argue with that. You can't. But you're not going to take that advice. Nobody follows good advice. I kept reading through address after address--make lemonade from lemons. . . . . if someone loves you let them go--and I thought, who are these people? lonely people sitting off by themselves bravely sipping lemonade---

...

I hadn't always planned to be a Professor. It never even occurred to me to go to graduate school until I realized the only alternative was to get a job. My goal was never to get a job, but to get paid for doing what I want, and everyone said if you go to graduate school in English, you'll never get a job. And I said, OK, I'm in. So what's the difference between getting paid and getting a job? A job is doing something you don't want to do, so you'll get paid. I get paid for doing what I want. I don't have a job. and that's what I want you to do to--not get a job. -- Please don't quote me out of context here. I can see the headline: Professor Leonard's address to the class of 2006: "don't get a job." -- But I mean it. Get paid, but get paid for doing what you want, if not right away, then as soon as you can. Let that impulse drive the arc of your career. What sustains success is partly seizing opportunity, partly working hard, but mostly it’s passion, it's doing what you do--not to stay alive--but because it makes you feel alive. Insist on your value, not your price. Insist on what you're worth, not what someone else thinks you're worth. Real success is not the avoidance of failure; Real success is a life-affirming accumulation of everything you learned about yourself each time you failed. Real success is being where you are because you know who you are. I credit all my success to failure. Nobody ever encouraged me to fail, but, luckily, I had a special talent.

Discovering your own value is difficult today because we are encouraged to equate our value with what other people think we are worth, what they are willing to pay--whether in salary, or in compliments. But, as Oscar Wilde put it, "nowadays we know the price of everything and the value of nothing." The price you are able to command is not your value. Price is what you're worth to other people; your value is what you know your worth. Your price is what you get, your value is what you become. The real tragedy will be not if your income fails to grow, but if it grows, and you don't. Money doesn't teach. Sure, it talks, but all it ever says is "goodbye".

Thanks Shal, for sending this to me.

For Subji

2007-01-19T03:00:00.000-05:00

You don’t see her,
Standing there.
No, there –
See?
Under the lamplight
Bathed in that golden
“American moon.”

I tell you,
She’s there
You don’t see her
But I do.

No, I’m not crazy.
I tell you,
She’s right there.
Her long black hair
Curls so softly over her shoulders.

See? You can’t see her
Her long pink jacket
And her neatly manicured fingers.
Her soft, sad, smile,
Because she knows, you see,
That you don’t see.

For pity’s sake!
See her!
Look at her!
Or miss forever,
Her faint shadow
As she turns and walks
Away.

You didn’t see her.
I tell you, she was there.
What was she like, you ask?

She was the sand
In your hourglass
With all the captured potential
Of each grain.

She was the nestling robin
Shuddering before her first flight.
Crying as she stumbled over the brink
Only to discover the wind beneath her wings.

She was that army general
Wounded in both legs
And still carrying on
For the sake of those around her.

She was that shimmering
Rainbow.
Untouchable, even on film.
But perfect, evasive, beautiful.

She was all this
And you didn’t see her
Bathed in the light of
An American Moon.

And you will never know
What you missed.

Animal Lust

2007-01-12T16:50:00.000-05:00

I'm swaying to the music, the beat is my universe, my soul, my existence. The movement starting at my hips, slides up, between my breasts and sinuously curls around my shoulders. On and on and on, my back arches, my feet find the rhythm. My legs are glistening in the brilliant strobe lights and a smile softly curves my lips. At this moment in time, I'm no longer human, but an animal of sheer lust and movement.

Falling in Love

2006-12-09T03:53:00.000-05:00

My sister and I always liked coming to India. To us, India has always meant family, food and Diwali. It's staying up late and hearing stories about our mamas, mamis, kakous, jethus, mashis, meshos, pishis, pishos, kakis, jethis and the myriad cousins we got to connect with once every five years. It's meant mosquito nets and bucket baths and paan from around the corner. It's meant patakas and food until we burst and children running around barefoot. It's meant the Red Fort and waking up at 6 am to catch a bus going God-knows-where and cricket. It's meant not wearing jackets at the end of November and kacha aloo and bad stomachs. It's meant being coddled, kissed and thoroughly spoiled.

Yes, we've always liked coming to India.

But I remember the moment I fell in love with India. Or the series of moments.

The first was being caught in a traffic jam, on the back of a co-worker's bike, both of us loudly cursing the construction preventing traffic of the opposite direction from driving on their side of the road. Drinking in the fumes of idling cars around us, my coworker finally decided she'd had enough and muttering, pushed the bike onto the sidewalk and past the traffic.

And I thought, "Only in India."

The second was the first time I came to Niwara. It's an old-age home in Pune and when I came here with my cousin, I felt as though I'd stepped back in time. The homes are painted a pastel green. There are banana tree orchards (are they called orchards in India?) And trees! Centuries old, whispering with the wind. Calm in the middle of a growing metropolis.

The third was being on the back of my cousin-sister's bike and the two of us were singing a song from Apna Sapna Money Money "Dekha to tujhe yaar, dil mein aajib hu tha" at the top of our lungs...only to realize that there were a pair of young boys on their scooter ahead of us thinking we were singing to them. I love role reversal.

The fourth was one evening when I was coming home late from work. The auto rickshaw was bouncing along and the sun was setting. When I got home I could here "tha they they that, dit they they that" and the sounds of feet slapping the floor. Walking to the back of the house, I saw sixty children dancing Bharat Natyam, with my aunt beating out the rhythm on the tatakali. When my aunt saw me she said, "Pritha! How was your day? Go eat, wash up, and come down to dance."

To dance! As though a dance form that's taken centuries to develop is the easiest and most attainable form of nirvana.

These were my moments of falling in love with India. Insignificant? Maybe.

The culmination of them means that I've put down rootlets, tiny strings have tied me to this place, this time, these people. And now, my journey is almost done and I'm going "home"...and I don't know when I'll be back again.

The things I've learned in the past year

2006-11-22T02:15:00.000-05:00

I was thinking today, about everything that's happened in the past year, so I thought I'd share a list.

I've learned:

- that my friends really do want to help.
- to listen...really listen...when someone's talking to me.
- to ask questions, even when it seems like people don't want to answer.
- that it is possible to love, and still lose.
- to love myself, for everything I have.
- that having a small group of friends is better than having a large group of acquaintances.
- to trust my instincts.
- to NOT trust my instincts.
- when in doubt, always ask.
- when in need, always ask.
- when unsure, find a way to become sure.
- never, ever, take a relationship for granted. Any relationship.
- to forget the small hurts, at the end of the day, it only makes your day worse.
- to let go, and just enjoy a moment.

There's more...I just can't remember it.

Marriage

2006-11-22T02:14:00.000-05:00

I never thought I'd be one to say this, but I think parents have a point about some things. Call it the Indian influence, I'm living here, in India, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week all I hear is how important it is that the family matches. I might not agree with it whole-heartedly, partly because I'm Canadian born and bred, partly because I understand that our generation is moving forward in living styles and standards and progressing (if it can be called "progress") towards nuclear families and households.

So, I've thought about it carefully, and these are the aspects I agree with:
-the man must have a good educational background.
-he should be from a family with morals and values that agree with yours, typically because parents raise children to have similar values.
- he must have the similar ambitions for his career, family and economic status.

The things I don't agree with are:
- the caste system
- the way he looks
- the absolute and total disregard for the type of human being he is.

There is something to be said for family traits, and what kind of job he has. I hate admitting it because I'm one of those people who have always believed that you should look at the man and the man alone. But you stop to think about it...this is someone you want to spend the rest of your life with, and you're going to be seeing his parents on a regular basis for the next 30 years of your life...wouldn't it be easier if you all got along?

Dancers Dancing

2006-11-18T00:19:00.000-05:00

"It is a myth that only dancers can dance, given that all human movement eventually leads to the creation of dances. As we take the first few steps, we realize our bodies are formidable powerhouses that generate limitless patterns of movements. Dance, in all its vitality, need never be confined within unidimensional forms or parameters. It is an open-ended discipline within which many branches and alternatives are coninuously explored and extended."

Pg. 6 My Body, My Wisdom; Tripura Kashyap

Conversations

2006-11-14T21:55:00.000-05:00

We were having lunch together today (yummy...masala dosa!) and one of the volunteers (Jill) started a conversation that I thought was noteworthy.

Jill:
What do you think of the new legislation on women and children?

Anjali:
On domestic violence?

Jill:
Yes.

Anjali:
The problem ith these laws is enforcing them. Take for example, the law passed against child labour. India is the best country on paper, we have the most advanced and fair laws, the problem has always been implementation.

Vidula:
The problem is, everyone passes these laws, but no one gives an alternative. Okay, so we ban child labour, but what alternative are we giving parents? No schools are free, there's no option for where the child is to go. Just because the law's been passed, parents won't sit at home and out of fear say, "Oh no, I won't send my child to work now."

Anjali:
At least, it's good that we now have the weapon. At least now, what was understood implicitly by a few is known explicitly by everyone. It's not everything, but it's a start.

Children's Day, India

2006-11-14T21:48:00.000-05:00

It’s Baldin with Swadhar and with volunteers from MPHSIS BPO. We’ve chosen a science theme, so kids come from table to table, listening wide-eyed as volunteers explain colours, compost waste, air, light refraction and sound. The kids are so happy, fascinated by the new information. Even better, it’s information they can use when they get home. There is a certain vitality to these kids, an infectious excitement that one can’t ignore. You only realize your wide smile when your cheeks start hurting.

They start with a game, as Krishna says, “The Indian version of musical chairs.” Then the circulation of young minds begins.

The groups of children are all so different from each other. As individual from each as each within the group. Some are excited, some shy, some heartbreakingly eager to please.

Canadian Born Confused Desi

2006-11-10T22:44:00.000-05:00

I've always found myself somewhere between two worlds. Not quite Indian, not quite Canadian. It's a strange duality that doesn't complement. I admire Indian culture, but I live according to Canadian or "Western" values. When I'm in Canada I don't "look Canadian", but I have an "accent-free" English. When I'm in India I "look Indian" but I don't speak the language. Where do I fit? As I coined the phrase, where do we "mixed breeds" fit?

There's an entire generation like me. There are some, like me, forging an identity made up of two vastly different cultures. There are others who are strictly Canadian, knowing very little about their culture and even less about how to balance the disparity between their parents’ culture and the one they grew up in. Then, still, others who choose to be completely and totally Indian, identifying not with the greater Canadian population, but with those that come from India, born and bred.

Almost, none of us have anything in common. We’ve separated ourselves from others of our generation, depending on what their choice versus our choice has been. I don’t know which is the “right” way. Perhaps, like so many other things, there is no “right” way. You choose depending on your family, your exposures and your beliefs.

I was speaking with an American woman working at Swadhar (an NGO in Pune) about this constant clash of cultures that I face. She suggested, rather than trying to identify with only one culture or the other, why not call myself a “Citizen of the World”? I have always identified with PEOPLE, regardless of background, ethnicity or culture. Perhaps, it is a new route to try out.

Thanks to Yasin

2006-11-02T23:58:00.000-05:00

He asked me to describe India. And it's because of him I can finally write it down:

I've been trying to understand and explain India for the past month. It's a welter of sights, sounds, smells, textures and emotions.

On one hand, the home I'm living in, is my aunt's and they have marble and granite floors and carpets that are silk and hand-knotted. The rooms are self-designed and each bedroom has it's own bathroom.

I look out my window in the morning, and invariably I'll see someone s--tting across the street...squatting on a pile of rocks smoking something (cigarettes are too expensive for it to be tabacco)...with their back turned to me. I look down about a kilometer and there are slums. These are unauthorized homes that families have put up because they can't afford any other housing and all the jobs are in the city. They don't pay tax so they don't have heating, running water, or electricity. The mothers and fathers generally work in construction and leave the eldest daughter to take care of the children, the cooking, cleaning and general running of the home.

So a lot of girls drop out of school by 4th standard (our equivalent of grade 4) to take care of a family of four or five other children.

It's a country where animal rights activists campaign against animal sterilization because of supposed cruelty to the animals (to be born a dog in India is the worst curse). But no one blinks when old women buy children from the orphanages and teach them to beg from car to car, sometimes holding an infant in their arms...their hair bleached from hours in the sun and their skin darkened, a combination of sun and dirt and poverty. The children do not keep any of the money given to them, it is taken by the women.

Cardinal rule: never give money to the children, rather give them food or water.

It's a country where all the store fronts use neon lights and air conditioning, but most houses have power outages at least once, if not twice a day.

It's a country where malls are a new concept, but they blast Alicia Keyes, Usher, Ciara, Alanis Morrissette and Nickleback without knowing or understanding what the lyrics mean. It's a country desperate to become developed, and apes the United States in order to achieve this aim, treating them with a combination of contempt and idolatry.

And still there are people trying desperately to fight it all. There are organizations that are fighting to change this flood of humanity and bring a population of 1 billion to it's feet. These organizations are largely religion-ethnicity-caste-blind. People who believe in educating girls on their rights as wives, mothers and daughters will result in women capable caring for themselves. People who are fighting for public schooling, to mix children of different economic strata, so that all of them benefit. These people make me proud to say that I am Indian. They go into the slums and start schools, where the attendance rate is poor, but they fight to have these children re-introduced to regular schools. They cajole, beg, plead governments, higher class citizens and the slum-dwellers to let their children go to school...banking on education as their hope for the future.

I'm still struggling to grasp the magnitude of this country. To understand all the hundreds of millions of things that are so very different from what I know and what I'm familiar with. I miss home. I miss turning on the tap to get hot water. I miss drinking water right out of the tap. I miss snow(and Whatever Powers that Be will make me eat those words when I'm home). I miss wearing t-shirts and jeans without having my chest gawked at. But I am so very very glad I came.

I'm leaving on a jet plane...

2006-09-28T17:44:00.000-04:00

7 days...5 hours and counting.

I'm excited, anxious, nervous, scared sh!tless, happy, eager, sad, anticipatory all at once. It's very nerve-wracking. I seem to be made up of 5 different people all at once (and no, I do NOT have Multiple Personality Disorder).

There's a list a mile long that I have to finish before I leave. I don't know what to pack. All I know is I can't forget my toothbrush.

I've been getting blinding headaches all week, probably from a combination of stress, lack of food and lack of sleep. The first time I felt like really ME this week was when I was working out. And now my a$$ hurts because I pushed myself so hard.

Sounds are hurting my ears and lights hurt my eyes. I'm sleepy a lot. I keep dreaming that I've forgotten something crucial, like my medication, or my visa, or my passport.

I don't have a suitcase to pack things in yet. I don't know what make-up to take. Oh, I should DEFINITELY not forget deodorant.

I'm making a lot of lists. Lists of "Things to do before departure", "Things to pack", "Gifts to buy for people in India", "Gifts to buy while in India"...it goes on.

I try not to think about all the people I'm leaving behind. They literally are my safety nets, my soul's arms and legs, my supports, my shelters. I'm going to be flying solo with nothing under me to catch me if I fall.

Cat's Yowl

2006-09-20T00:38:00.000-04:00

I'm not usually one to sit and complain about my life. I actually have it pretty darn good. I have clothes on my back, shoes on my feet, free healthcare, I'm literate, I can see, touch, feel, taste, hear with little or no help, parents who love me, a sister who I'm unbelievably close to, a great set of cousins, great friends and a growing relationship. I know this. I thank whatever Powers that Be for it everyday. Really.

But please, can I rant about the utter pits my life has recently fallen to? Just for a moment let me wallow in shameless self-pity. And while you sit there and shake your head at my "woe-is-me" claims, please try to understand...an optimist really must have a cry to herself every now and then. And make it public...like in a blog.

Let me list the things that are going wrong in my life:

My parents are getting divorced. Now, I realize, I'm 22, realistically it shouldn't affect me as much as say...a 13 year old. But now, suddenly, when I thought I was in the clear and that being over 18 or hell, 21, meant that I don't have to take a side - here I am wrangling with the choice no offspring wants to make - which parent do I choose?
I haven't enrolled in my January courses. Now, I have a reason for this. I didn't finish paying off my last year's tuition. Which means I still owe York University a couple of thousand dollars. Wonderful institution that York is, I can't enroll without paying that off. Forget that I told them a year ago that I wouldn't be able to because of family concerns, and that I wanted to set up a special payment plan. Forget that I've been paying it off slowly, painfully month by month, I can't enroll!
I haven't heard from OSAP yet. Now, normally, that's no big deal. I don't have school until January. So there's plenty of time. Except I need the OSAP to pay off last year's tuition debt and then I can enroll in my courses. Did I mention that I actually have to be physically present to pick up my OSAP loan? Did I also mention I'm leaving for India in 2 weeks? Peachy. (FYI: This isn't for lack of trying to contact ANYONE from York OR OSAP...everyone goes MIA when I'm in the vicinity apparently).
Weight loss takes way too long. I went to my doctor yesterday, he did a lot of head shaking and tsk'ing. I told him I go to the gym 5 days a week now (I just got in actually). And he said, "Pritha, you MUST lose weight!". So now, I have blood tests and X-rays on the way. FUN!
I'm going to India in 2 weeks but I don't think my family in Lucknow has been contacted yet. If I go to India, and they find out...oooooohhh there will be hell to pay. And believe you me, it won't be anyone but ME paying that hell. Despite the fact that I told my mother last week to PLEASE get in touch with people there because I want to spend some days with them before I begin my internship.
I still don't have my Visa or a letter from York for my trip to India. I don't even know my aunt's address in Pune.

I think 6 is enough for any one person, no? Of course I have my daily tiny stresses, what to wear in the morning, "Oh no, I woke up late again", to wash my hair or not? the typical stuff. But honestly, would it be so hard to simplify it all? Apparently, because I don't know my head or tail in this quagmire.

My optimism WILL re-assert itself in a couple of days. I firmly trust my optimism. It has yet to fail me...permanently anyway.

Growth Spurt

2006-09-06T16:50:00.000-04:00

My sister left for Nova Scotia this morning, on the 7:20am flight. Which meant we had to be at the airport by 6 am. Which meant that we had to leave the house at 5:30 am. Which meant I had to be up at 5 am. Which, in turn, means that I’ve been up since 5 am and I still have…oh…another 12 hours to go.

She’s gone for six months: three months in Nova Scotia, and three months in Jamaica. It’s a relief knowing that I’m leaving for India in one month. There are too many things going on that I need to escape.

Looking back, I thought that these eight months would be a time of enormous change for me. I thought that there would be all sorts of new things I’d find out about myself. It’s true I’ve had an opportunity to mourn the loss of both grandparents. It’s true that I’ve gained a lot of work experience. It’s true that I’ve been able to deepen my relationships, especially *that* relationship. It’s true that I’ve been thinking a lot.

All of this is true.

But a “pricking in my thumbs” tells me that the next six months will determine the course of my life for the next year and a half. All of this thinking is going to amount to something. I don’t know what yet, but it bodes well that I’m excited for this next phase.

There’s another catharsis on the way people. Perhaps I won’t be getting on a plane and disappearing for six months. But I will be changing. Little sister, I’m catching up on the growth spurt as fast as I can.

Believe me...

2006-08-25T19:48:00.000-04:00

Help!
Why?
Because I need it.
I don't think so.
Can't you see it in my eyes?
I see desperation in your eyes...
But you don't need my help.
If you see desperation, then how
Can you deny it?
I'm not denying anything.
Why don't you believe me?
Why don't you believe me?
No. I believe in you though.
Why?
Because I need to.

I write because I have to

2006-08-24T16:19:00.000-04:00

Keith. Breaking up with Keith. Loving Keith. Being frustrated with Keith. Please, help him pull himself out of this quagmire. He puts butterflies in my stomach. He puts a smile on my face. He makes me cry and beg for answers. Doing the right thing is never easy. But no path on this journey is easy. Keith not knowing the right things about cars. Keith never succeeding. Keith holding me at night. Keith kissing my neck. Keith listening to my plans. Keith telling me I'm the best thing in his life. Keith giving me the freedom to dance in his living room. Keith celebrating all my victories. Keith talking to my parents. Keith asking me to marry him. Keith laughing. Keith beating up his computer. Keith racing on his computer. Keith making big plans and never following through. I pray. Time is forever ours.

Hello, World

2006-08-22T13:00:00.000-04:00

Hello World.

It's been a little over a month since I started working for this software company. The hours have been insane, sometimes being at work at 7:30 am and going home at 12:30 am. The comforting thought was that our VP was working more than we were, there were nights he just didn't go home, spent the night at the office working until 6 am and then when we came in at 9 am there he was at his desk working again.

But now, we've met our deadline, and while work never ends...I can breathe again. The normal rhythm exists again. Rather than some frenetic ant-like activity.

There's been a lot going on in the background of work as well, a certain struggle for growth, a certain searching for a place to belong, a different way of looking at my identity.

That's me, world.
Pritha

Observations:

2006-08-10T23:26:00.000-04:00

-I dance when no one's watching.

-Dogs are the best animals to have around when you want someone to love you.

-I think too much.

-I'm never alone. I can be lonely.

-Funniest quote I read today:

"What has he to offer that a lesbian lover doesn't?...Oh, apart from the c0ck. They all have the c0ck. But do they know what to do with it?...No, because women are all fair and good and charming dying to fix their own drains and take responsibility for their own orgasms so there's no point in the man even trying to be a man anymore."

Thoughts

2006-08-10T20:51:00.000-04:00

I'm falling apart. Highs and lows, force this goodbye. I push and you pull. I beg for forgiveness. But it's in a language you don't understand. You laugh as you absolve me of my sins. But it's you who sinned. You, who drew first blood. You, who watched me die. I did everything I did because of you. I cried, I laughed, I danced to the beat that your highs and lows beat out on the drums of the earth.

How can you stand there, laughing, thinking everything's going to be okay? I stand here, my hands hang by my sides, they're bleeding because I tried to save you from yourself. And somehow, I needed you to save me from saving you, from saving yourself.

You stand aside and watch me spin out of control. Spinning so fast that everything's blurred. And suddenly I see only you clearly. You're only clear if nothing else is focused. And you absolve me of my sins.

You absolve me of my sins but you're only clear when the world's blurred. You absolve me of my sins but I'm begging for forgiveness in a language you don't know. You watch me crumble. These highs and lows are pulling me apart. You pushed and I pulled.

And somehow you should have saved me from saving you, from yourself.

If I knew

2006-08-09T14:48:00.000-04:00

If I knew, if I knew
If I knew the words to speak
If I knew the looks to give,
If I knew the exact way to tilt
My smile.
Would you love me more?

If I knew, if I knew
If I knew the clothes to wear
If I knew the job to have
If I knew the people
Worth knowing.
Would you give me a second chance?

If I knew, if I knew
If I knew how to hold you hand
If I knew precisely how to laugh
If I knew to see only what you
Want me to see.
Would it make understanding easier?

If I knew, if I knew
If I knew how to keep your love,
If I knew how to keep the right job
If I knew how to make the right friends
And introduce you to them.
Would you accept me more?

If I knew,
But I don’t
You remain fathomless
And I can’t seem to grasp
What I did wrong.

If he can't be mad at me...

2006-08-04T04:28:00.000-04:00

Raja says:

being mad at you is like being mad at sunshine and nice beaches
it just simply can not be done

Sappiness

2006-07-30T04:39:00.000-04:00

I'm sitting here listening to:

"You're the reason I feel so alive...you're my greatest love..."

while *he's* in the shower. (LOL and I just fell through the chair). One year. Somehow, it still works. I thought, that by the time you hit the one year mark, you're bored. I was wrong. I wish I had words for all...of this.

He's not my everything. I don't believe in that. I love knowing that we both have our individual lives, with our own interests and past-times and friends.

But he's the one I turn to when everything is crashing down around me. He's the one who celebrates every little victory of mine. He's the hand that I reach out for when I have one more battle to fight. He's the only person I could have an anniversary with, where there's no wine, no fancy restaurant, no five-star hotel and it still feels absolutely perfect.

I would rather dance in his living room to Michael Buble and eat Shawarma from the corner store with *him* than be waking up in a five-star hotel in Paris with anyone else.

Good Lord, I'm such a sap in love...

Tired

2006-07-28T12:33:00.000-04:00

Please be patient with me. I've just transferred jobs and this one requires ridiculous over-time so I can't write by the end of the day. My brain's too fried to put a creative, legible sentence together. I'm sorry I'm not writing. Just give me some time.

On a quick (non-creative, non-descriptive) update:

1. I changed jobs. No more telemarketing. I work for a software company now.

2. I'm realizing, when things are good...there's nowhere else I'd rather be.

3. I've found friends in unexpected places.

4. My sister and I are both waiting for certain changes, and underneath all the dissimilarities, we really are alike in our goals, ambitions and hopes.

5. I may end up going to India all alone because my dad may not get the 8 weeks off from work (yikes!)

6. Fighting with fire can be a *little* bit fun.

7. I miss my loves: Shalini, Ruby, Arminder, Sabrina. I haven't been able to spend quality time with them in far too long.

Let me cry Your tears

2006-07-21T02:25:00.000-04:00

Let me cry those tears
That you seek to weep.
Silently, hidden behind
The shining of the moon.

Etching their cliched path
Down my cheeks,
Burning, they travel their
Surest way to hell.

But the moon
Doesn't shine in hell.
Let me cry in dark corners
Let me cry in hidden alleys.
Let me cry in all those places
That hide from light.

I used to cry in the light.
Unafraid of watching eyes.
But crying these tears for you...

I've forgotten how to find it.
I've forgotten how to cry
And not silently hide
Hidden by light.

Could you please bring it back?
The light, I mean?
So that these tears can glisten
Like so many diamonds, upon my cheeks.

I'll cry,
I'll cry for you,
For your tears that you seek
To hide.

I can cry for you,
Just let me cry
In the moonlight
So that my tears may glisten.

Mourning

2006-07-18T21:37:00.000-04:00

I realized, I miss my Dadai. I miss the way he used to talk; like he was really thinking about what he was saying. I miss slipping my hand between his old boxer hands and feeling that grip that could still cut off the circulation to my fingers at the age of 84. I miss his walk, a stuttering, shambling, shuffle.

I remember once, my sister and I were over at my grandparents place and we put on a song by Dido. Me, being the random person I am, grabbed my sister and starting dancing with her. My grandparents sat watching us (there's a background story to that too). So then I pulled up my Dadai, and asked him for a dance. My sister asked my grandma for a dance. And there we were, the four of us, ballroom dancing to Dido with the smell of curry in the background. People looking at us would have seen two young girls and an old couple, bouncing around to some pop artist. But there was no one there to watch.

I remember that when my Thamu would leave the room, he'd lean in, grab my wrist, look over his shoulder and whisper, "So, do you have a boyfriend yet?" I would laugh and shrug and say, "How can I? I'm not as pretty as Thamu was when she was my age and had married you." To which he'd lean back, nod his head and say, "Yes, but you know, I knew when your Thamu was 12 that she would be beautiful."

I remember telling him that he would have to save a dance for me at my wedding, because I wasn't about to beat off all the old aunties that would be fighting for his attention. I remember holding his hand in the hospital and singing raagas to him. I remember telling I was sorry I hadn't visited him in the old-age home. I remember holding my Thamu after he died as she whispered about not having been able to say good-bye because the doctors said she would be at risk of infection.

I remember, I miss him, but sometimes people talk about the past so they can remember.

Dance with Me

2006-06-30T01:58:00.000-04:00

Hands on hips, and fisted,
Legs akimbo,
Chin up, shooting that red glare
Throwing dishes against the wall.

Spinning wildly out of control.

There’s this deadly dance
I’m flying through it,
The steps I’ve known for years
But only now do I dance it.

Spinning wildly out of control.

And somehow, it’s you I’m entwined with
It’s you I throw dishes at –
It’s you I glare at –
Hoping you’ll wake up one day
And notice I’m not dancing alone.

Spinning wildly out of control.

This upheaval,
I could shake the ground you walk on;
Grab and pull it from under you
And yet I choose not to,
Because your downfall would be mine.

So we’re spinning
Wildly out of control.

Rantings of a Telemarketer

2006-06-30T01:57:00.000-04:00

I’m a telemarketer. Yes, I’m one of those people you love to hate. I call you when you’re finally sitting down to dinner, or when you’re finally having that heart-to-heart with that special someone, or when you’re swinging up your children and playing with them. I call and I say, “Hi Mr. Smith, my name’s Pritha, I’m calling on behalf of ******bank and was wondering if you have a moment?” And you say, “Yes, of course.” Because most people are too stupid to notice the “on behalf of” clause and just think I’m calling from ******bank.

What you lot don’t know is that I think you’re all stupid. Anyone on the other end of the phone doesn’t have the information I have. I could spew out the stats by the hour. Did you know that last year alone, 136,000 people were hospitalized for major accidents that required hospitalization of more than 24 hours? Therefore, you NEED our hospitalization plan that will pay you $100 per day for every day that you’re in the hospital. Of course, I don’t mention that it has to be hospitalization due to an accident more than once. There’s no need to remind you of it.

What you lot also don’t know is that I hate what I’m doing. The enthusiasm in my voice? I was trained for it. The gentle but blunt way I talk about death? I was taught how.

“Let’s face it sir, things like involuntary job loss, disability, hospitalization, loss of life and accidental dismemberment can happen at any time; and while they are not things you can plan for, they are things you want to be prepared for. That’s why Account Balance Protection was designed specifically for you.”

It’s all for you, of course. We care about the little people. We’re for the people who can’t speak for themselves in a global economy that only seems to want their money.

Superstitious? Wow! My mom is too, I understand where you’re coming from. Don’t like talking about death? Of course not, who does? But that’s why I make this short and sweet. Feel like you’re just a number in a haystack? No, no, you’re a valued customer, of course we only offer this to exclusive clientele.

Understand this: We don’t really want to talk to you. But you’re there, and you’re the reason we have jobs. If you don’t take the product, honestly, some poor schmuck from BC will probably take it.

Milestone

2006-06-07T15:10:00.000-04:00

Today was the first day I defended *him* to a close friend. Of course I defend him when people say things that just aren't true about him. That's a given. But my close friends have a strange penchant for pulling a Dr. Phil and "telling it like it is", so, many times I just nod because I know that what they're saying isn't to cast aspersion on him, but to make me realize what I've got.

Today was different. She's a friend I've had since I was 13, and she was pulling a Dr. Phil. Except she didn't understand what I was trying to say.

So I said, "No, you're not listening. He does work hard. He is supportive. He does understand. He stands by me in every instance. There is nothing he would not do for me. So, no, in this case there is nothing for YOU to understand, because your understanding on this matter is not relevant."

To me this is a milestone, because I pick my close friends carefully. They number in five and usually it is very hard for me to stand up to them, because their opinions are so important to me. Perhaps it seems a small thing, but it was the culmination of several months.

Matrimonial Ad for Raja

2006-05-25T14:44:00.000-04:00

Raja is 22 years old, studying political science at Carleton University. He's sweet, caring and honest. I'm his closest friend, so I'm singularly experienced at picking the right girl for Raja. We've been through a lot together, Raja and I, and now I'm to find him a girl. So, I appeal to you, my limited Blogger world, to help me find someone for him.

The perfect girl for Raja must be a reader, someone who reads anyone from Chomsky to McCaffrey. Someone who's well-versed in politics, philosophy, and comedy. To match his interests, she must be a political activist and humanitarian. She must be willing to turn a blind-eye to some of his "habits", but preferrably, be able to join in with him. She has to have an inquisitive mind, a constant challenge to Raja, questioning the world around her.

Under NO circumstances can she be clingy. She needs to be able to take things slowly, be okay with an open-relationship...at least initially.

Coming Soon

2006-05-19T03:12:00.000-04:00

to a blog near you...

I have some plans for a 3 blog entries. No time to write them now...too busy...long weekend and all. BUT just so you have something to look forward to:

1. A matrimonial ad for Raja
2. Rantings of a Telemarketer
3. My imaginary telling off of *J*

Soon, my darling, soon.

Cooking

2006-05-11T14:25:00.000-04:00

I tried cooking today. Operative word, "tried". Normally I'm pretty good at it...but that's only when I have Campbell's soup and pasta on hand. Today I had to make do with Mr. Noodle and stirfry vegetables. No Campbell's soup. No pasta. No chicken, only tuna.

Oy vay.

I can do this though, I can. I put the frozen vegetables in a skillet, add some olive oil. Put the Mr. Noodle on the other burner with water added. Toss the tuna in with the vegetables. Add chili to the Mr. Noodle. Toss the water out of the Mr. Noodle. Mix together the Mr. Noodle/Vegetable/Tuna. Add Kikkoman sauce. Taste...

wait...

it's sweet. That can't be right. Look at Kikkoman bottle. Bottle says, "Sauce for sweet cooking". Oh dammit. Kikkoman's only supposed to make soya sauce. Why are they making sweet sauce?! Damn. Damn. Damn.

Now I have a sweet batch of Mr. Noodle/stirfry vegetable/tuna.

Oy vay...

Add Chinese rice vinegar. Pray it works.

Now I have vinegary sweet Mr. Noodle/stirfry vegetable/tuna.

Anyone know anyone hungry enough to not mind the taste of food?

Inside Man

2006-05-03T02:08:00.000-04:00

I went to see it with my mom and sister today. It was a lot of fun actually, the movie as well as the company. Half way through I ripped open my Dentyne ice pack and used the inside for paper, fished around my purse for a pen and started writing down notes.

The movie started out with "Chaiyya" from Dil Se. The mental imposition of one movie (Dil Se) and it's story line over a movie I haven't seen yet and it's projected story line was very strange. It was disorienting because on one hand I started thinking about Dil Se, the whole concept of rebels blowing themselves up for the greater good (or something to that extent); and on the other hand it was a movie about the perfect bank robbery.

Lines/Dialogue that stood out:

Scene 1

Sikh man steps out of bank, immediately surrounded by police officers.
Police Officer 1:
Oh my god, he has a turban! He's a fcuking Arab!

*shouting* On the ground NOW!
*his turban is removed*

Later

Detective 1:
We apologize on behalf of the NYPD. But right now, we need your help, if you could tell us everything you konw about what's going on in that bank.
Man:
First you guys take my turban, and now you need my help. It's part of my religion, I need my turban. What happened to civil rights? I go to the airport and have to go through hell because of some "random check". Random check my a$$.
Detective 1:
but I bet it's easy for you to get a cab.

Scene 2:

*after a confrontation with the robbers*
Detective 1:
How'd it go?
Detective 2:
I've got him right where I want him.
Detective 1:
Which is...?
Detective 2:
Right behind me with my pants around my ankles...but we're getting there.

Scene 3:

Mayor:
My dear, you are a magnificent c.unt.
Foster:
Why, thank you.

8 months

2006-04-24T20:25:00.000-04:00

This is an update for my few avid blog readers:

I finished my last exam on Friday. Psychology of Women. NO I didn't learn anything I didn't know already, NO it was not interesting, and NO it didn't tell me how women think. The only reason I survived that course was because of my prof, Dr. Stuckless. Her anecdotes and worldly wisdom carried the day. Here's to hoping I did well. Here's to hoping.

NOW on to the fun stuff. I'm taking 8 months off of school. Sounds like nice big chunk doesn't it? But I have plans my darlings, I have plans. And, typical of me, I already have a "To-do" list set up and full. Briefly, it is as following:

1. Find 2 volunteer positions, preferrably allowing me to gain experience with counselling and/or adolescents. Shelters might be a good place to start.
2. Lose weight. I have about 60 pounds to lose (yikes!) but with this time off...sweet sexy TINY body, here I come.
3. Write, and organize a collection of short stories for publishing, including some of my grandmother's stories.
4. Mourn.
5. Go to: the zoo, MarineLand, African Lion Safari, Niagra Falls, the spa, Centre Island, Canada's Wonderland, Science Centre, ROM, a planetarium, Wasaga Beach, Montreal...there's more.
6. Save up money for next year's grand move.
7. Prepare, invite, plan my summer kickoff barbeque.
8. Save up for tuition, as well as everything else.
9. Take my little half-sister out for a day (it's an annual thing)
10. Meet *his* parents.
11. Finally tan my legs the same colour as my arms
12. Try rock climbing
13. Convince people to go camping
14. Go to India for 8 weeks! (I'm excited)

There's more...but I'll leave it at that for now. If anyone's interested in any of it, let me know!

It's going to be a great summer darling, a great summer...

2006-04-06T17:30:00.000-04:00

I broke 20 laps!

YEAY today's a good day...

Next up...25 laps...

go me go!

Now to get down to studying...

boo

2006-04-06T13:14:00.000-04:00

I'm having girl guide cookies dipped in milk

and listening to ABBA!

*reminisces about being 5 years old*

weeeee I'm so happy at this moment...right now...right here...

2006-04-06T13:09:00.000-04:00

You Are 30% Evil

A bit of evil lurks in your heart, but you hide it well.

In some ways, you are the most dangerous kind of evil.

How Evil Are You?

2006-04-06T13:06:00.000-04:00

You Are a Visionary Soul

You are a curious person, always in a state of awareness.

Connected to all things spiritual, you are very connected to your soul.

You are wise and bright: able to reason and be reasonable.

Occasionally, you get quite depressed and have dark feelings.

You have great vision and can be very insightful.

In fact, you are often profound in a way that surprises yourself.

Visionary souls like you can be the best type of friend.

You are intuitive, understanding, sympathetic, and a good healer.

Souls you are most compatible with: Old Soul and Peacemaker Soul

What Kind of Soul Are You?

Heart on sleeve action

2006-04-03T03:36:00.000-04:00

This has catapulted me into a new area that I never thought I'd know. It's out of my comfort zone and it's nothing like what I was prepared for. I think about *you* and it's like my heart's suddenly on my sleeve...and I didn't mean to pin it there. It was supposed to stay firmly glued on the inside of my armour. The armour that's several inches thick, impenetrable and impermeable. My heart was supposed to stay there.

Dammit.

I sit here, staring at this computer screen and my mind drifts to *you* inexorably. It's like *you* somehow, managed to get in, between these cracks...and now you fill them up...so there aren't any cracks, but you're in here now.

So...now what?

Because this kaleidoscope I live in keeps spinning. The colours keep falling into new patterns and I'm mesmerized by them. I can't tear my eyes off of them...off you. And it's because *you're* here that they keep changing...and I realize I wouldn't have it any other way...you won me over, in spite of me...

Definition of Marriage

2006-03-16T06:20:00.000-05:00

~*S a b r i n a*~ says:
when you're the only one who can tell him to shutup and he'll be like
~*S a b r i n a*~ says:
"yes ma'am"
~*S a b r i n a*~ says:
and that's what marriage is all about basically
þ r ï t h ã says:
LOL
~*S a b r i n a*~ says:
its about control
~*S a b r i n a*~ says:
and who has more
~*S a b r i n a*~ says:
and who wins more arguements
~*S a b r i n a*~ says:
and having sex before bed
þ r ï t h ã says:
hahahaha i think it's abt a little more than that
~*S a b r i n a*~ says:
no no, that's all there is
~*S a b r i n a*~ says:
you'll see it one day little one

Everlasting Transition

2006-03-13T20:54:00.000-05:00

As though we stand
Between the doors of
Today and Yesterday
On the staircase of Tomorrow;
Tiptoeing warily on
The Breath of Hope.
Everlasting transition,
Standing at the precipice
Balancing on the pinnacle.
Whether, to grow wings:
Launching to unconceived heights
Daring to be burned,
And flaming, fall -
Or to be thrown
Tumbling, chaotic; abandoned
Lying in the
Confined abyss.

As though no other moment
Will equal this - swirling
Swiveling, moving
Back and forth on a chair
Wheeling from one end to another
Only for this moment, caught
Inside a magnified world.
It will not come again
And it's only a moment
The quick snap of the finger,
And the sudden tap of the foot,
And the Everlasting transition
Must become a
Plateau'd decision.

Please let me know what you think...

Finished

2006-03-02T04:15:00.000-05:00

When something's done, it's done. Like the novel that's finished, the flower that's faded, the...there's a dozen metaphors I could give you. The bottom line doesn't change, it's finished, and it can't be re-started.

Sure, you could try resuscitating. Pumping desparately at the heart of a relationship that's already died. It may beat faintly for a little while, struggling to recover the vigour it held earlier. But that too, fades eventually.

So there is no choice but to have a decent burial. Shake hands cordially. Everyone in their best black outfits and plastic, gentle, smiles on their faces, bobbing their heads saying, "Oh, I'm so sorry it ended this way." But really, neither of you are sorry. It's just finished. You tried shocking life into the system and that didn't work, so now you're relieved. At least this is closure. At least at the end of it you could smile and shake hands; even though what you wanted to be doing was cutting off the hand that was shaking, and throw that plastic smile in the wastebasket.

But you're shaking hands and smiling, and underneath it all, you're relieved. You have that at least.