On August

August could never be a good parent. Too many mood swings for someone so old; too hot one day, rainy the next, windy and cold the day after. August could not even pick out it’s own clothes. August stayed in bed for far too long, self indulgent in a way that can only spell disaster; ice cream for breakfast and concerts at dawn, nights out in the town and marijuana on weekdays, missing work because it was gloomy at 8 in the morning.
August was one half terror, and one half exhilaration; searching for a grand way to live while writing throwaway poetry. August wanted to be a thing of fevers and enthusiasm, but couldn’t help reaching for the nearest cliches. Always arrived with good intentions, arms loaded with self help books, to-do lists and neon highlighters for each day of the week. But August was a compulsive liar and a stress eater. August cheated, on more days than it was allowed. The sheets were soon on the floor, the dish pile growing taller on the kitchen top. August was the first detected, labelled case of bipolar.
Lived in a house where the floorboards creaked, unsteady on it’s feet and weary of being fragile. Clutter was not fertile ground. Told to be stronger, grasp a firmer hold on reality; it went looking. August started digging, tunnelling its way to the core, expecting to find its promised piece of gold. But August is gone now, lost in the depths of oblivion, it’s spirit stifled. And we keep visiting its grave, year after year, returning to make the same mistakes, looking for the famed treasure; find meaning where perhaps, none ever existed.

A private thunder

As the speed meter shot over 170, she noticed a storm brewing on the horizon. There was a particular shade of gray, gainsboro, that never failed to take her back to memories of road trips in another time, another season.

They would have been driving for hours but as soon as the sun was shrouded in the shadowy affections of big, dark clouds, playing hide and seek with tall, dense trees; she would stir in the back seat, head resting on someone's lap or the other, and sit upright, delighted. She loved those road trips to distant places for the mystery of these moments. She loved to imagine the car with a flat tire; rain pouring so hard, it got difficult to drive; a fallen tree trunk, a blocked road - any number of reasons that would leave them stranded in the middle of nowhere, on narrow, dusty roads without any end in sight. When she would voice these fanciful thoughts, the fellow passengers would laugh nervously, for a moment playing along with her little fantasy, and light heartedly threaten to stop the car and let her out. As dutiful parents, they would follow the drill of questioning her on how she'd find her way back home, make her recite all the emergency numbers they had her memorized; never asking 'if' she wanted to be found. Maybe this was for fear she would reply in the negative, and they would have to ask themselves what they could have possibly done, to have raised such a curiously morbid child.

Twenty two years, later, some deep part of her soul still rumbled at gray skies and the pitter patter of the rain against the wind shield; her vacant emotions clambering over the ruins of loud car rides, the nest of dawns that had flooded so many mornings, unfiltered and reach the place where the sun had no business in the sky. She would find herself jarringly, ungovernably emotional yet again, a deer in headlights. Such was her wasteful, indulgent relationship with the battered, terrible sky. The seductive allure of getting thoroughly lost, making the familiar strange again and walking on forever into the horizon.

“For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away. The color of that distance is the color of an emotion, the color of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. And the color of where you can never go.” 
― Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

A wasted ode to hope

I have been trying to write about the kind of book I want to write. I want to write about a certain type of girl. She has such high hopes from me that everything I try to pen down about who she is, seems like a lyric disappointment. I have waited too long to bring her back to life through my words, in the naive assumption that some day the black mantle of silence around her entire being would lift of its own.
She requested me, you know, after the systematic disintegration of her thoughts; the slow disempowerment of her perception.
I have no choice; I hope you will bear with the limitations of my language.

I know that she wants to write stories about the hardest things she's re-learning to say, leaf by scattered leaf. She sits down in a chair that faces the sun. But it's the time of the year when the sun still feels too cold, and she clicks her tongue at the passing day; disapproving even while a funeral pyre burns in her mind. I know she's a sad girl and I want to give her a story that fills her wheelbarrow with all the joys a girl her age ought to have known. She grew up faster than I intended her to.
It's the 13th of the month; (it takes a while to persuade her from her moods) and she feels brave this particular Monday morning. Brave enough to let me welcome you, my make-believe reader, to her empty estate. The call of the void; pick any seat in the shadows and they will whisper to you their histories.
In the daylight, she is an echo of a long forgotten memory. She is more blue than orange, she speaks in season. But on afternoons like these, when everyone else prefers to stay indoors, I let her conquer the narrow streets. On days like these, I let the poor child howl. 

Winter's invite

An aging night
breathes its last
Gives way to a weekday morning
The doorbell rings.
On the porch,
a parch white envelope sleeps
The last of Autumn
addressed to me
Winter's early invitation.
That decorous lady,
the perfect host
In keeping with my ways,
she sends along
a hint of mist,
the touch of chill
year after year
everyday until I'm ready;
Wrapping around me,
pulling my sullen moods
off all the hangers in the house

Apathy comes

Apathy comes in twin ponytails,
irony in her little bounce
She comes wearing a red dress
Distress.
Out for a stroll, she captivates
A sight for sore eyes, a warning
The clouds turn grey
in vindication of her mood
Cold drizzle.
She parts her lips,
drowning out the soft song
that makes the backdrop,
the only substantial magic
in this frail human life
She takes my hand, firmly
all beauty falling into disarray
She pulls me into her embrace
and it is more than my belief can bear

Notes to the insomniac

When you're up at 4am yet again and you feel like life is in shambles and that you'll never be able to pull the pieces together, remind yourself that routine is over rated. Tell yourself you don't conform, and if post midnight is your time to reign, so be it. Don't fall apart because you can't fall asleep; you're too inspired by what you just read or watched or because you can't stop playing a song on repeat. You're anxious and a little high strung and very fidgety but you're also at your most creative, emotionally transformative self. Write yourself a tutorial on how to glow; don't fret about the murdered naps. Tell yourself you're an artist, a philosopher, a thinker and maybe your best ideas come out of your most vulnerable self, out of the spiting darkness. Have a little faith, and a little more courage because what is breathing if not the thin string of connection to this world. Tell yourself that you don't need to feel safe and believe it; who has ever conquered the world from behind gates? Find your own version of normal; resist the temptation to reprimand yourself. Remember that you're at war and it's your time to tear off the bandages. 

I used to think all months had personality traits, characteristics defining them. October was for fine weather, August was when the smog disappeared, September was for crimson, murky red sunsets.
November was always numb, the month when you needed a little darkness to get you going.A month representing a transitory life; a work in progress; spinning out ignorant tales that made you lonesome for a storm - covering up footprints that you did not leave. The cold seeping in through the blankets, lurking behind the curtains, resting cautiously on the outskirts of your life, waiting for its window of opportunity. It was the month when snakes shed their skin, dreams fell like dried leaves. I forgot though, that it's where the sparks fly, the fire catches.

Querencia

(taken from http://wordstuck.co.vu/)

I often get the distinct feeling that time is catching up on me. Or rather that I am not catching up with time, a billion black oceans between us if I choose to paint a picture. I'm always two steps behind, but not in the way that offers solace. Contrast waking up rested and with the sun, to the feeling of having hit the snooze button one too many times.
It is slowly dawning upon me that now is the time when I really have to decide what type of adult I'm going to be. Am I going to be someone who writes letters and postcards to distant relatives and friends, going out of my way to buy stamps at the post office or do I let it go because I can say as much in a whatsapp message. Am I going to be the kind of person who still makes birthday cards for the people I care about or do I drop it because it is acceptable to be busy and because a phone call would suffice. It hits me suddenly on my way back home, on the bus, that my mother isn't going to handle relationships on my behalf anymore; I have to define my own manners, my own standards of what a human interaction must be like. Should I give up on getting something back from my trip overseas for my father because he's always projected that he doesn't need anything, laugh it off with a shrug because my spiritually inclined brother is so difficult to shop for or do I decorate his walls, his cupboards, his fridge, my parents' home ... my home with memories that I made alone but which have the whiff of me wishing they were there, that I always remember them. Will I get a cook and order take away when he takes a leave or will I let my house fill up with the aroma of my mother's recipe, let my friends and family savour the taste of her indulgent care, labor of love. Will I be able to protect and preserve the rituals that I grew up with, will I be able to create habits that could be of sacramental value, create a life peppered with beautiful metaphors.
Everyday, there is a future to be zealously vaguer about, that could just turn out to be like the salt accident in my coffee this morning if Im not careful; I hang in a precarious balance, leaning against a flimsy wall. The fact that I continue to densely treasure my loneliness, peek from under the luxury of my pessimism, and justify myself because I've just begun reading Nietzshe doesn't help. 

Then

When we were very very young, so young that life just meant today and it was like a pop song turned on in my head. We were bewildered and chaotic and clumsy and had muck everywhere and food spilled on our shirts and only knew how to join sentences with 'and'. 
With rain in our hair, the sun beckoned, and we turned, smiling. I was warm and you felt like kin. We surrendered to the outside, with a mouthful of joy that we sucked out of a straw. It was a day for lingering and lounging in the sand. You called me a wackadoo and we giggled until we were warm.

What I did today

What did you do today, darling?

Well, let me see. I woke up to the sound of hammering in my head and pulled the curtains close to stop the bright light that was hurting my eyes. After an hour of convincing myself to get up from the bed, I dragged myself over to the refrigerator, craving for some cold milk, which was surprising because I don't crave anything these days. When it's horrendously dark, I don't crave the light. When it's painstakingly quite, I don't crave the sound of music, or people talking or the sound of my thoughts. But today I craved cold milk. In my world, this marked a turning point. I decided this was some sort of sign the universe was sending my way, so I pulled on my robe and walked out of my little apartment. You'll be glad to know I didn't lock the door.

What did you do today, darling ?

Well hold on. So I walked out into the bright light and somehow managed to reach the little shop on the corner of the street. He was out of milk. I realized something about the world today, mid day is a bad time to crave milk. Apparently, most of the world has already been to the moon and back, circled the Earth three times, enjoyed their breakfast and made love by the time you've woken up, groggy from sleep. They are ahead of you. After this, I felt abandoned on those busy streets, and I shut my eyes and walked back as fast as I could. The one idea I'd had in the day and it was a bad one. The world had indeed become heavier, don't you think? Dull as concrete.

What did you do today, darling ?

Well, if you must know, I think I died ninety seven times. You haven't been listening.

Personal Histories

Time passes by in lurches, not like water out of a leaky tap that keeps dripping at a constant rate but like the winds of this city, unbearably static at times and violently strong at others. It depends on the mood of the weather and things remembered. There are those that find themselves too busy to be courteous. How could they possibly find the meaning of love ? Left only with a trace of a memory that cant be remembered, left staring at a rocking chair still moving to the heartbeat of someone who left, never to return. I always thought those brain molds were not to be trusted. Every time I step out, the first hot gush of air seems familiar, like someone's breath on a summer night - puff, puff. I try to imagine my days without this familiar, barely discernible presence, without that depth of feeling. How could I though, when it is the only thing that gets me through the day.