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Easy: tucking flower in hair, making three cups of tea after midnight, walking the dog, saying I love you, taking an hour-long bath, laughing.

Not easy: waiting for morning, making it meaningful, drawing it like you see it, saying I love you, wishing you didn't wish you were dead.

hold applause till end

Illuminating friend who has changed much about life and perception often points out the redundancy of, and even harm in, too much and too easily-given approbation.

True, approval is a beautiful and affirming thing - who's above wanting a pat on the overworked back? - but perhaps the recognition is only incidental to the work done to deserve it.

The need to achieve is perhaps not so much a necessity because a source of pride and joy of friends, siblings, parents, lovers, pets, self - but because in it lies the key to our less-small selves. We are made more by what we do because for a moment there is revealed in us the propensity to act instead of not, to take the less lazy route. And every such step is but a step that the flood of feelgood feedback might sometimes cause to overlook.

While thoughts as this might be sponsored by show of extravagant congratulations on news feeds - which in themselves are worthy of apathy - the lesson is not unimportant for ravenous little heart such as that belongs to this writer.

The idea is to turn that twinge of jealousy into something more useful. To not find corner to sulk in and wish to be the centre of such unbridled showers of blessing oneself, but to rein in such futile and destructive longing. To remember never to make desire for recognition the end in itself. For one is unfortunately wont to do so. =)

Timely reminder that must move on not in the hope of that Hollywood Ending where everyone with tears in eyes is all apology, exuding hearty, hearty love - but because this is what we must do, all that we must do, whether or not there is a participation certificate at the end.

bright blessed day, dark sacred night

Futile, burrowing in like this but need from time to time to remember that despite it all one is quite inescapably alone. Alone and uncertain as to how to feel about this.

Relieved, on one hand, for it to be this simple. Apprehensive, as to what long-term fallout may entail. Atrophied heart? Unexploited potential? Or, that worst of worst, having not lived a 'full' life (whatever that may mean)?

Ah. This is when voices like Ms. Kent's, unavoidable burden of 'work' and ceaseless rain helps. Not to say that the people one loves so desperately mean any less, just to remind oneself of one's complete lack of consequence in the big picture. 

Yes, I love.

So what? =)

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EDIT:

Since too often only the melancholy registers here and not enough of the content, this merits updating. Serendipitous reconnecting with old friends - sudden phone calls, unexpected e-mails that leave feverish heart even toastier - What can I say?

Alone. Forever, yes, but never really.

that which must be forgiven

All at once, I miss college terribly. Apart from the early morning visitors - ranging from the hoarding and the weaving to the ultrasonic variety - this room also comes with hyperbolic acoustics. So this song comes on, not one I have ever much wondered about or remarked upon, but it comes on and all at once, I miss it. I thought it would never come.

This oppressive revisiting. Longing for inexplicable things like bus rides at sunset, alone. Like walks in between canteens, stopping for coffee only as an excuse to keep walking, running into old faces from school, from unexpected places. The strange way how everyone seemed to own the campus and be owned by it in turn. Every junkie, every geek, every scowling politico - as if organic growths, rational fallouts of that maze of asphalt and recycled flora. That strange sense of floating through knowing that this was how I would remember it. Aware of the memories hardening, often skewed, perhaps inaccurate, but settling nonetheless for good. Those born under Revati were meant to make an art out of leaving.

The smell of rain, thin coffee, books, ammonia, mulch, cement dust and sometimes skin. Earphones seem to be the refrain in these flashbacks. Sitting on the stairs, not needing conversation but happy in the soft glow of others talking. The easy distance that had replaced the first passionate ardour. Not that I disown the love, the attachment. Never had there been such closeness, such belonging. Not that I don't remember with a shudder the equally disembowelling periods. Times of total discomfiture when people, books, this self skin seemed grossly alien and designed to kill. But keener are these times of neither love nor hate, these times of blessed contentedness spent in solitude, sometimes shared solitude, which only like minds can understand. The absence of guilt, doubt, fear, intolerance. The ballooning joy of everything from a three-and-a-half-legged dog that followed one around the lake to a sudden flower offered. How the littlest of life's touches seemed to brim over.

I had a migraine when I started this. But now the song's over and Ma's just returned with a bucket load of haleem so all maudlin writing must be ended herewith. =)

In short, there is in life an element of elfin coincidence which people reckoning on the prosaic may perpetually miss.

- G. K. Chesterton, 'The Blue Cross'

lesson o' de day

Definite danger to too much disclosure. Delving deep is met with deft but deliberate change in discussion. Detours don't work; debarred is debarred.

social interaction

Take the time between aching facial muscles and taut cranial, to thank god for the few who don't need smiles, nods or conversation.

a brief meditation on the concerns that crowd hours of alleged study

It's called Bitch I know but the more I see of you the faster I recoil. Overwhelming gratitude at having fled while there was time. Internal Assessments have a nonpareil way of skewing schedules and priorities and making dust of mountains. You who were frightened of what would have been at Sixty-Four, can you see tomorrow? Too much solipsistic, this. I suppose because this is the Sorting after whole days of Picking. Besides, metonymy, dears. When I inspect my fingernail, it is in troth the landscape of your mind I ponder.

Now be nice and say Hell-oh.

Say Aum.

Meditating always gives me a migraine. Heightened hearing and razor reflexes, but also migraine. Beautiful or not, Truth warrants migraines. As well it should.

How else is one to be pinched awake from time to time? How else do you send packing the last few years in a much-stamped suitcase to Abu Dhabi?

Pop an aspirin and keep your x-ray vision on, troopers. Illusions, though happy, are treacherous places to make camp.

Wheels > Toes

Driving is an alienating experience. The car is not me, and yet I am it. Perhaps it slowly becomes us; like our heels or our lashes. Like every irrational foreign protuberance we learn to control, learn to accept gratefully as our indispensable, shiny, supple limbs.

We (in time) learn to part our hair, smile whenever the occasion needs us to. And although we still blink, sneeze, we no longer cry out in alarm. We accept our eructations and flatulence and usually let them pass without much comment.

Perhaps I too shall one day accept my swerves, near schoolgirl road kill, that one too-wide turn. Till then, let me draw the utmost satisfaction from the steady steer, gentle over-riding of speed breakers, umbrella insurance for dogs. It has only been four lessons, after all.

excuse me, i'm in the wrong room.

I sprint through the world blindly with family-shaped stencil in hand.

Cutting out all excesses, misfits, everything. Of course, nothing except grotesque remains.

Can you imagine trying to grate slate?

Back home I squint through my worldly-wise eyeglass.

The kind that magnifies all exceptions, variations, gradients. Of course, I am never content.

Can you imagine what a rose looks like under a microscope?

The agonies of compulsive efficiency. 

The inevitable tragedy of being hardwired far too skilfully to concede time to rust over 

these matters that with ourselves we too much discuss, too much explain. 

The absolute fatality of being the Sensible one, 

of blowing one’s nose and distress into (nothing but) 

a clean handkerchief and 

walking on in sober black pumps: 

none but the brisk tight-lipped ones know.