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.