hazy reminsicings of a slow day

what’s weird is how little we seem to remember and retain. I doubt most of us would remember what we had for lunch 3 days ago, of what we woke up feeling that morning and what the day meant to us. memories are fleeting, and i have been thinking about this for days now, how days churn up together in a mill, each becoming less important than they are now, how days if not dates, seemingly lose meanings, becoming a pulp of raw nothingness, did we even live those days? if so, how?

dates.

birthdays, anniversaries, mournversaries. we remember those, we remember what we had to eat and what we woke up feeling, and what the day meant to us. isn’t this a conundrum on its own? how we have to force a label or a meaning for a day to become what it is not, to retain meaning otherwise that it will lose? lose to become a hazy thought, foggy meaning and a full-throttle effort on your brain-to remember, forcing it to remember what had happened that had happened.

at 16, i had GCSEs aka board exams. for 12 hours, the last 2 months, i would be found head bent pouring over my books, making notes, promising myself good food, trying my hardest to keep myself motivated. little slips of ‘you can do it!’, ‘just 3 more days of torture’ and ‘i believe in you’s scribbled along on tiny slips of torn paper on my workstation at the library. little would my self-motivational tricks help than perhaps hearing back then, another say of how i was doing okay, that it was okay to take breaks and that it wasn’t an end of the world as it felt back in the moment, but that’s all in the past now. i acknowledge that i worked hard, got scholarships and perhaps somehow still ended up being where i am now.

is hardwork all down the drain if you don’t end up being where you first promised yourself? is the end product, the ending itself is what’s important than the churned-up balled effort that it took? no, it is not.

i’m turning 22 this year. that steps that i have taken become me.

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Warm Glow of Red Glass

Sybaritic

there was a forlorn gray silence in this city, that presided over us for a week before dissipating. what it reminded me of was:

  1. get some warm thick clothes because winter’s apparently isn’t over.
  2. to get some reading done, now that we were shut off in the spaces of us.

i picked up books again, then. hoping to reconnect, and reconnect, i did. it was easy as it hasn’t been for quite a long while. it wasn’t me that was gobbling up the words, the words were gorging on me and i was exactly back there, what i’d thought i had lost. gleeful, were i. victorious, i felt. i hadn’t lost the love for words and sentences, and the rediscovery brought me relief i have seldom felt these past months.

it’s an indescribable feeling when what was lost, is found. relief is just the tip, it’s reassurance, consolation, and even…

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Another Year’s End

the year’s ending again. it’s another end of the month of all ends, december and another end to a neverending paradox of time.

no, i did not see the last sun of 2021 devoured by the horizon today and no i have no plans to commemorate the last night of the year. fireworks, have never mesmerized me. words, however, have.

there’s not much to say, not even in retrospection, nothing that tingles my brain as of the moment. i tried several times to write, 5 different drafts of 5 different happenings that justcouldn’t get to see meanings or ends. 2021 as another full year of covid-19 & variants but the almost 2 year long’s blip had started to uplift, had started to melt, the hysteria and the fear. restaurants and lives had started to pick up, the restrictions uplifted as the cases dwindled and for once, we had hope for normalcy again. not pre-covid normalcy but a new sort. and then baam! omniunicorn:)

happy new year, folks! let’s survive this joyride once again!

Stale Yellow of Yolk

it’s quite something else entirely to shower after you’ve waken up from 2 consecutive days of high fever, it’s an altogether another feat, picking up your laptop and typing out what’s on your mind after said period of illness.

i’ve herbal tea swirling right at my left side, twitter tab on my right and a boring view of the dinning room at my front. the city wakes up around me and it’s palpable because of the humdrum that’s been gaining momentum all around me. the window that overlooks to the outside, the only glance of mine to the outside world, is a stale yellow of that of an egg yolk, the sun’s just waking up. i have too many drafts and unfinished words left over here and i cant deal with an another heartbreak of another unpublished post of mine. i am on my second cup of tea, this time jasmin and it’s a lot less opaque and a whole lot swirly.

there’s no real purpose to this blog post, nothing much to communicate and be heard about or read of. the new semester’s started and i haven’t been able to pay the tuition fee, not yet, but soon, soon when the family feud dies down and somebody starts caring about my education. or i guess, i’ll just sit this one out, huh?

i miss being a kid, don’t you? my fondest childhood year ought to be my 10th. 5th grade, at top of my game, the teacher’s pet, the shining kid of the grade. i miss being in the lime light, i thought i was built for the limelight. until, i grew out of my sleeves, cut my hair short and smeared red tint all over my face.

it takes time to realize you’re not the main character after all. and it’s perfectly okay to admit it. but in my case, this isn’t the case. i am to shine, the stage has always been mine.

in pits of great D

i actually have nothing to talk about here. i guess i should begin with, that’s what my depression is telling me and get started on a spiel of something or the other. but yeah, how are you all doing? i am hoping you’re all doing better than i am? and what exactly am i doing? i am actually not doing anything and that’s exactly why there’s nothing to talk about. lets see did i do anything productive today? yes well, i took out my toothbrush from the cupboard and brushed my teeth upon waking up.

now, toothbrushing is viscerally important to the whereabouts of us here and now. and that too, since for the last past week or two have been difficulties in…conducting out the act of toothbrushing. now, erm that was something difficult to admit and come on now ya’ll dont look at me all condescendingly, i care about my hygiene and am a clean freak but. the last past few weeks? well, yes mmm,

i gave up on myself.

and, by that dramatic of a statement i meant, things have been very poor, we are shoulder-depth in the pits of the Great Depression and i. i. i stopped caring. i just stopped. yup, a full stop. a pause. i am paused, im static, we are very stationery right now.

mmm, so i guess that’s where things are right now. on a red light. and it’s okay, i got this and i’ll let you know when things pick up again. but for now, that’s all.

Rose Late of the Blue

i have a philosophy in life. it’s quite simple folks, and it’s just that – life has to be lived to be considered a life. in the entirety of the last past two years (3 in counting) – i’ve lived in metrics of moments more than days or months. in retrospect, if i were to narrow it down, it boils down to 3 very distinct happenings:

  1. the becoming,
  2. the being,
  3. the reborn.

i chose fancy names because i wanted this post to have the thought-beforehand and professionally planned look to it, instead of this one new young adult’s incessant whimsical and vague ramblings and rants.

boyfriend dearest, 1200 kms, away, asked me yesterday what had i achieved in the year 2021, the one that i had offhandedly described, “melted away in the in the blink of an eye.” i had intended to make it look that way, unimportant and extremely unimpressionable, unmemorable. to make light of things. we then had a back and forth on this. ‘if years are to pass by in blinks of the eye, have they really been truly lived?’ was what he was insinuating. that take wasn’t something i was alien to, i too, believed religiously in that very outlook towards living and have lived. perhaps in the undertones what he really was seem to be asking was this, what of the year of us, this one year you and i came together? have we not lived in the moments of ours?

i should’ve been more attentive back then but i wasn’t and what i was dismissive and nonchalant, callous, absolutely too much into the grim mental spaces of mine that little nuances were of little importance to me. so i had typed back, in manner of as if shrugging, some thing or other and the conversation had continued as if this moment wasn’t of some profound importance.

the distance has forced us to meander around alot of hard topics and even harder talks which we awkwardly crab dance around, tripping on eggshells, waiting with baited breath. but how long? just how long, before one of us snaps.

usually, it never takes long.

a battle of hurried, furiously-pounded, biting words aimed to cut and a few or one too many hurt feelings. something; both of us quickly have alarmingly grown accustomed to, and desensitized towards.

on the slanted rooftop where the birds perched and the cat socks.

so. what have i gained? did i gain or did i really lose the whole of this year? seokjin of bts, recently said something like, ‘this world is a cruel place, it remembers only the winners. so if you lost, please reflect.’ i was 20, this year was of 20th year of my life. I was 20 and i had moved to another province, had put my foot down after years of struggle against my family, made a life out of the new foreign city around me, braved through lonesomeness, braved through fears of mine, made friends, traveled solo to the north, cried maybe 5 times the whole of the year, found you and the me of you, and made some enemies, blew money carelessly, made some mistakes that eventually brought me down from nearly 8000 feet of where i begun this year down to a 0 feet. i am at sea again, i’m the sea again, forlorn and lonesome and foolish and alot deep than that what i seem, alot more blue than what meets the eye.

Hot Lemon Tea

i was coloring today for quite a long while today. i mean in the sense of coloring pens and a coloring book. i mean not in the sense of a children’s coloring book tho, mind you, not that i’ve anything against those, just – i like to be specific about things and this thing was an adult affair altogether – and i mean it literally as it was an adult coloring book.

so naturally i came across a quote by Roosevelt and it made me pause my ferocious coloring for exactly 2 reasons. let me first share the quote with you.

when you find yourself at the end of the rope, just hang on.

roosevelt

i’m quoting by mind, mind you, so please expect a lot of rephrasing. but the gist of it is in the quoted block. anyway, the two reasons:

  • what a weird name Roosevelt. Velt. Belt. Roosebelt. rouse a welt. a welt. a belt. (sorry to any one of you who takes offense but I play this game a lot, where I break a word into two words and then it starts a cascade of rhymes and weird phonics and words that sometime lead me to the depths of Tartarus. anywho.)

thinking all of that naturally took some time and I had paused enough on the page that the ink had nearly eaten through the page. the second reason was about the quote itself.

  • how much can one hold on to the end of the rope, for there is no rope afterwards, and a fall is ascertained.

how long can a person hold on for? is the real question. how long until the rope slips, blistering your hands, and you fall? a fall is inevitable. human brain, tires out. human body too, tires out. human will power and drive, human hope and desire….all tire out and die, eventually. so until when?

boyfriend dearest wrinkles his nose at a writing I show him.

“so funny, isn’t it?” I ask, confused at his reaction.

and he says, “this just screams pessimism.”

it takes me a while to see it from fresh eyes, and when i do see, i go, oh.

and an oh, it is.

to see from fresh eyes, to think from a fresh mind, to breathe from a fresh nose, to be with a fresh soul to be so fresh and to be not so much of self. so you’re not self but fresh and fresh isn’t self at all. and,

oh.

i think i think alot.

horizons and fires

i’ve been trying to write all this while for some time now but couldn’t for some reason. world and words, themselves, are fleeing me. I’ve let a wake of half finished, incomplete words and half baked ideas – creations and stories without endings and meanings attached to themselves, nameless, miserable creations of no recall.

it has been taxing, this blockade, this writer’s block, (if anything, I am not but a writer) this temporary gap. you know the feeling? when you’ve procrastinated enough, that you actually start hating yourself, the more and more as the time goes on but you’re so awful and wretched that you’d have feeling self loathe over actually finishing/starting a venture.

i tell myself, another day, another rebirth with the sun itself, another remake and remodel of self, itself. however, the shadows grow stronger and stronger, longer and craftier, and then some weak and dim, blurring at the edges, losing focus as the day goes on and soon the sun would befallen and would die, the will in me drowning too, in the Horizon.

don’t you think horizon, the concept of something so intangible and yet so evident and beseeching in its nature, alluring like that of a siren’s call – something that’s always unreachable, untouchable, unconquerable, invincible – is that of a human greed? we want and we want and we want some more, so we tread and walk for something, always something in the distance and out of our reach. this threshold of human satisfaction, that we’d never reach? piling on coins after coins, and mountains of material gains and yet the fire never dies down and it’s an internal one. this fire. this fire that won’t die down.

of words and no action

i wake up and see that it’s another afternoon. there’s a todo list gathering dust by my bedside, there’s so much to do, to express, to reach out for. another 3 hours that have past me by. i have watched an episode of a tv show that i have lost interest in but continue to watch just for sake of doing something. and there’s my todo list that sits there ominously and i have so much to do. i have so much to prove, so much to gain, so much to see through. what good are words if not translated into the world? and i have eaten another meal, seen another sun setting through the shadows on the walls of the 4 walls around me, i have so much to do. they are not my shadows yet they cling heavily to me, and i have been thinking of doing what i have to do. the shadows they are speaking to me and i am not listening, i won’t listen. they’re not my shadows but they have been clingy and if anything, i hate clinginess and there’s just so much to do. but i am meandering through words. and headspaces, mindpalaces. there’s something that has to be done but it’s slipping past my fingers and i am falling through another storey of another story of my brain. i am dreaming, i’m on my bed, asleep.