Poems

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

T.S Eliot

I always loved this poem. It appeals to me, to a part of me that loves the dreaminess of it and the anticipation.

It is slightly like sunlight through a stained glass window. The light refracts and you are surrounded by a million different colors. You put your hand out and it is dappled with shadows and light. Out of the darkness, he says, there will come hope. All you have to do is keep the faith.

I have never really been able to understand poetry. Much of it is a garble of words to me and i cannot be bothered to make sense of it. But there are some sonnets or verses that u hear, and you stop and u will remember them forever. The Charge of the Light Brigade for the sheer stupidity that lead those poor doomed men into battle. Lochinvar for it's chivalry. Pablo Neruda's sonnet XVII ,because that's how most people (and certainly me) want to be loved. And this one. Eliot won a Nobel Prize for the Four Quartets. It is easy to see why.

Small Joys

A fork in the road. Go right. Go left. End up at the opposite corner of the universe or in front of where you wanted to be. Or a million other places in between.

Is where you wanted to be, where you are? Or where you should be? How do you decide anything? Be sure about anything? Anything could spin you around, screw up your life. Or would you be happy with what you have, whatever it is? Is contentment the enemy now, in this time and place? Do you stop striving for anything, if you are just happy? Isn't that the point? When do you give up the pursuit of happiness and just Be?

Sometimes, the small joys are what make your life worth it. A mug of coffee first thing in the morning. Discovering a new song. Sunlight behind the clouds. Laughing with your friends. It is and should be. Enough.

Fiction

There is a fiction between reality and memory, where the truth blurs and becomes something you see out of the corner of your eye. You tilt your head and it is gone and the only evidence of it ever having been there is in your mind.

Memories, for me at least, are like snapshots. A single moment in time frozen in my head, where every detail is clear and lucid and if i close my eyes and concentrate I can almost feel what I was feeling then, and I can be there. Before and after that moment is lost though. Blown away and if u reach out for it, it is like reaching for sunlight.

Sometimes they are like skeins of wool, tangled up and knotted. U cant quite remember and it is like tugging on a knot. the more you pull at it, the farther away the memory gets. It comes to you sometimes, that lost memory, in that time between sleep and wakefulness, when your dreams are mixed up and troubled. You wake up, reaching for it, and for a minute or an hour, u remember. But it fades away soon enough and u are back. Square one.

Books

I love Books.
I love the feel and smell of them. The promise of them. Sometimes i bring a whole load of them back from the library and line them up on my bookshelf. And then just look at them and cackle with glee. Sometimes i read them all. Sometimes i dont get through even one.

And I love books about books. The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason, a book i started reading on a whim, is a delight. A totally unexpected trove of metaphors and allegories and history.

Another one was Shadow of the Wind, a 2001 novel by Spanish writer Carlos Ruiz Zafón. A book about a book and a man who wanted it. A dark and somewhat twisted maze, it was, but with beautiful prose. It was a story that wrapped its arms around you and drew you in, willing or unwilling.

Books are my ordinary and extraordinary. I could come home to them, treat them like a safety blanket. They could be salvation and my nirvana. They are real. They have personalities. They are people, i think sometimes.

A Year

It's November.

I'm going to be 23 in exactly a month. It seems like yesterday that i turned 22. I don't feel any different. I wonder if i'll wake up in 20 years and still feel the same.

And what did i do this year?

I lost my phone on New Years eve.
I went to Goa in January
I broke up with my boyfriend in February.
I went river rafting in March.
I started working in April.
I loved Bombay in May.
I went back to school in June.
I made friends in August.
In September i discovered who my friends really were.
In October i saw Europe.
In November i am sitting on my windowsill and writing this post.

All of life is made up of moments. And as much as you would like to say that these moments are inconsequential and tiny in the extreme, they matter. To you. They change you, by increments and in small measures, but surely.

We live in our own tiny lives, where we matter most of all. We have people who might love us and people who do. And the most important people are the people who do. The people who, without a shadow of doubt, genuinely like who you are. And thats what iv realised in this year. Thats what has changed me. I know the people who will be there for me when I really need them. And i know how much i can ask from them.

And from my whole plethora of friends i can count 6.

6.

Warsawa

Im sitting on my window sill. It's dark out. The street is lit by the orange light. A block of flats stretches up on the other side of the road. As is much of Warsaw, it is reminiscent of the Soviet era: grey and discolored, with windows set at regular intervals. A tree, its branches right outside my window, bare of leaves.

There is no logical reason it should be beautiful. But it is.

Worrying

I'm a perennial worrier.

Sounds like the first step in a 12 step programme- acceptance of the fact. I have been on a voyage of self discovery this year and thats what i have discovered about myself. I worry about silly inconsequential things and the worst part is - i cant make myself stop. Sometimes i think there should be rehab for worrying.

There are so many things in my life that could be going down the toilet which i should be worried about and instead i worry myself sick about tiny stuff, like my weight or my grades or what the person opposite thinks of me.

Is there a cure, i wonder? There seems to be one for every small ailment these days, especially psychological stuff. I wish there was. I wish i could swallow a pill before i go to bed and wake up in the morning with the load off my mind. Life would be a helluva lot brighter.

*sigh* Life's a biatch. Except that mine really isn't. I could be living in Somalia or somewhere without a thing to eat and have AIDS or something. It's a human condition to want more than you have. It's what capitalism is based on. And i just wish i could stop.