re practice
mostly cloudy. partly cloudy. chance of rain. chance of hurricane. thunderstorm overlooming
Went out for a smoke and it started raining. Left eye is watery and hurts. Spent the morning reading Why Look At Animals by Berger, thinking about beasts of nature, thinking about my own beastly nature.
I am quick to tears now. Eruptive, badly punctuated sobs; perhaps my writing style has seeped into everything else that I am.
I am quick to tire too. The next few months are daunting, and by next few months I mean however many months I have left to live.
The kittens have started fighting each other, clawing me in the process. I wish to be a tender, loving presence for them, whenever I do end up being at home. The walls are pink and green, one of my most favourite combinations, but the paint is cheap, so it kind of muddles the entire experience. I want brighter lights. I am not against the soft, golden glow agenda, but I don’t understand the hate against bright tube lights, white lights. It makes it easier for me to think, it is better to sleep in too.
I lie down on my mattress, the mattress we dragged from my friend’s hostel to put up in this empty room, and fantasize about what all I would like to do to the room. This is going to be the place I am in for a long time now. By long time I mean a few months, by few months – here – I don’t mean however many months…
I would like a fridge, in a neutral, un-assaulting shade. Many many curtains, the breeze billowing, the window open, rain on me on my mattress. I would have preferred a bigger, cleaner bathroom, but it is still cleaner than the mess in the hostels I have parked my body in. It is a relief to be able to shower and run out naked all around the house.
Three more hours of work, what shall I do to kill time? I could read one of the two books I am carrying, or one of the many pdfs I have already downloaded on my work laptop. I could finish Why Look At Animals. I could take four more cigarette breaks, but I only have two Marlboros left. I wish I did not sound so off-handed and trying to be cool when I wrote certain things, but that is how it ends up being.
I want to make a risky phone call, but I don’t know what to say, or whether it will be received either. Maybe I should just go for it, and spend the next three hours in debilitating anxiety about whether she will call me back.
Lately, once again, I have been wondering about why I fail to maintain female friendships. The kind that is so close, that pervades through all elements of life and beyond the concepts of love and romance. It is not hard, it is just impossible. So I leave it be. I have grown impatient and weary, which is not a good combination. I want things instantly, but I do not have it in me to raise my palms and receive.
For work, I keep reading about all these million-dollar startups. I wonder who all these people are, and how they end up working in these spaces. Who thinks about robots and trade and ships and money in a collective, cohesive manner. If I had a robot, I would probably just keep it in the corner of my room, along with the necklace made of tiny skull beads, and all the feathers and shells collected over time.
I am thinking of letting go of some friendships this year. The decision feels tough, but I think I can manage. Once the weight of obligation is lifted off of me, I will be able to exit with grace. I will not sit back to hold their hands and comfort them, my job here was to go for the kill, to damage, one last time/once again.
I hope I am able to do it. It kind of fills me with a certain kind of perverse glee, to think about exiting such situations. Like, look at me, I came to this decision, and I executed it too. Talk about impatience and weariness now.
Lunch was a sandwich, a love poem in a grey lunch box. It made me want to cry once again. I felt like a rabbitsnakeliondogcat in an enclosure chewing on my carrots and cucumbers, feeling loved by the hand that decided to feed me even though Last Night occurred.
If these issues are feeling like journal entries, it is perhaps because I have decided to let it all out in the open. Airing out my dirty laundry that also smells faintly of cat piss so that the room has space for a sentient robot who will be a stand for my necklaces and jewellery.
Words I like.
Adage.
Symposium.
Murk.
Metastatic.
Reticent.
Nostalgia and Compassion and Memory. I think of these all the time. The image in my head is reticent. I see a huge room, inside which I reside, but ultimately the image resides within me. I am turned inside out for the sake of exploration. I see another figure, naked, the hips and the curvatures looking soft, like wax, and the light is golden too. Golden light on warm skin is something delicious. I remember it on your face, brown eyes deepened in intensity but lightened in shade. I remember golden light on my mother, highlighting her wrinkles and marks, and how dry her skin is, but also showing me her insides.
Why do I remember? Why is there so much to remember? Everyday I wake up and I battle a memory. I pick it up and apart, I weave it all over myself, and then I think about it until until until… an answer is found, or I get tired of it, like a cat playing with a rag until it realises it means nothing. Nothing!
The biggest kindness that can be done is to preserve a memory with compassion. I do not visit these hallways in my heart anymore, but the people I have lived alongside, their portraits are still there, framed in rich brown wood, smiling, always smiling.
Think of good things. Practice thinking of good things. The buzz of cables overhead, the telephone towers looming over you, the jumble of clothes on the floor, tea after tea after tea after tea after tea after tea. Think of tomorrow that will come, with surety. Think of the glee you feel when fruit vendors consider you and yours a unit, making an off-handed misogynistic comment that still makes you feel seen in a lovely manner. Think of all the complaints you have within you about how the world functions, and whom you can go to with them. Think of the abandoned ideas that once felt like fuel to your body, think of where they are in you right now. Maybe pick one up. Think and ponder and wonder. Unless you think of all the things, you won’t be able to think clearly.