one of those people.

Summer is so beautiful - I never thought I'd ever get to say this, considering I am from the tropics, where the only '-ful' used to describe Summer is 'pain-'. This, of-course, is a personal opinion - its my blog you are reading!

I should perhaps apologize for not having ventured here in a while (so much for resolutions) but if you'd see how colorful my life is, you'd know. The unfinished thought lines that litter my draft basket are quite interesting reads in themselves. So, I bet a cardamom tea I will not finish this (if I lose, I will make tea for myself; and if I win, then, well, this post will be another draft I will not want to delete.)

So the thought string that I want to trap in words is actually something that happened yesterday. I had had a very unproductive day (most days that are more than twenty-four hours away from a deadline fall in that category) I decide to go and shop for food (I have a pretty exciting life - my facebook pictures can prove that!)

I always buy more food things than I can comfortably carry - but my other option is to go food shopping every week - which is not a great use of time. So I went shopping at this store in Lake City my friend had told me about, and it was close to 9 pm by the time I was done.

I am very quick to lose my way, and on occasions that I have tried to take time to figure out local maps in my head I have been known (by me, and some other people I want to amuse) to have wandered for a considerable bit *before* reaching where I had originally intended to. So, yesterday, I decided to not take the risk ( I had five heavy bags full of food) and turned around to ask the first person who got out of the store with me for the directions to the closest bus stop.

The first person was this man and his young daughter. I asked him if he could direct me to the nearest bus-stop where I could catch a 75 - and he smiled and made a little air-map for me to follow. I nodded along- I usually don't understand directions completely in the first instance of being told- and then flashed my generous toothy smile. The man offered to walk me to the stop as he was concerned about how late it was, and told me he had four daughters and he'd do the same for any of them.

My heart turned human when he said that - he said it so simply. He offered to help me with my shopping bags - which I politely declined as I am used to doing my own work, carrying my own weight ( metaphorically and literally), and he patiently agreed. So he, his ten-year old daughter, and I headed in the direction from where I could take the bus ( he could have taken his bus from much closer than what he was willing to walk with me). We talked along the way, about my work and how trying it can be, and how the school wants to make you deserve your PhD, and therefore the system is almost brutal. We reached the intersection from where we had to go in opposite directions (I had to just cross over to the other side for my bus stop) and he gave me his card - saying he'd be happy to help if I needed anything - I smiled and said I was a big girl and I can pretty much take care of everything that concerns me. Then he smiled back ( I love conversations that are full of smiles) and said that if I had some time I should google him, that he has written a book and that he was a retired NBA player.

The amber-'don't-walk'-hand turned into the white-'walk'- man and I thanked him and walked to my bus stop, very touched by the generosity of this man, and the patience of his daughter. My bus arrived in a couple of minutes and I got home soon after. I typed his name- Zaid Abdul-Aziz - in my browser and there is a lot of stuff about him on the web.

I meet the nicest, most generous people, who feed my tendency to be optimistic about everything every time it starts to drain out. And I have to stop to wonder in awe about how much love this world holds. ( I know this is slightly soppy - but I am soppy only some of the times.)

I think I will now go and make me some tea.

and so

It has again been a while since I wrote something, anything, that was not a part of a report, an assignment, a critique. It has been a while since I have indulged myself in word-play. My journal waits patiently too. There's so much I want to write, so much I should not let pass without some mention that will help me relive it again - the thrill of the memory, or its heartbreak, or both. So, I will try not to venture into the really very vague with this.

I have been so overwhelmed with work lately that every time I see myself running out of time (its more often than where 'often' averages) that I subject myself to some serious questioning, on my true intention to get a PhD.

"If this continues I will die, I will die a spinster in this room", with books and my computer and other meager possessions I have cared to bring with me, or acquired in the process of living on my own (the Calvin and Hobbes comic book, for example)

"PLEASE love me more, God... I am a very nice person you know"

My self-confidence, the precious little of it that I have, shaves another layer off itself every time I am not where I expect myself to be. People who know me well have observed that I am too hard on myself. I don't know if that opinion is not completely biased with their affection for me. So it never really figures in my life agenda - to take it easy.  (Also, I am incapable of taking it easy.) 

Mondays are when I have to talk at length about my progress, and this particular Monday meeting was especially brutal. I had been running away from my research work for the entire week (because I hate how lost I feel trying to find a direction). I don't know how to do research, yet. I feel especially cheated because I am not being given the time to learn. It was such a defeat- my incapacity to communicate my frustration, and their incomprehensibility.

American manners and polite-ness are so glossy that it takes a while to recover from their blinding effects and hear what is *really* being said. I am a long way from becoming deft at translations.   

It seemed like I needed to talk to someone who could be more objective than was in my power. I did, and worded (not very tactfully I am afraid) all that was troubling me. I was listened to, and on being asked whether I was being hysterical, told that I was not. The conversation ended in a warm, comforting hug. I felt blessed, and at ease, and could find my feet again. Being away from familiar places people and things can be so lonesome. This, was a heartwarming exception. 

Some moments in life can be such happy surprises! 

This week, now.

I am studying for my upcoming Java final exam with such sincerity that I feel like I am thirteen again. So earnest, so innocent. The grown up, cynical me has given up (its called depressive realism, in psychological terms). But my soul is a little girl- the starry-eyed optimist (I am always told that I am one, maybe because I grin too much-despite having such big teeth) And she is instructing the grown-up me to keep at it.

In about thirty-six hours from now the future will have come and gone.

I treat this blog as a space where I come to dump all the excessive emotions that make everything underneath the epidermis a homogeneous mixture, where you cannot make out the lungs from muscles from blood capillaries from bones. Its a sludge, thick, murky, sticky and very difficult to take off of you. And, I am the victim. (applause!) My aim for each day is to physically tire myself out so much that I am left with no energy, or will, to get into a fight in my mind, with myself.

Its 2:22 am Monday night, I was trying to (finally) (hopefully) get some sleep and get my body clock running on Pacific Time, but of-course it has a mind of its own. No one listens to me, not my head, not my heart, not my body. Like they are individually and collectively smarter than I am. (That's not making much sense)

I'm going nowhere with this. (ugh!) Isn't everything supposed to have a conclusion. If you took the class on theories of built environment with me you'd say, "No, not necessarily" , and you'd be right (Well, at least in the world of thinkers and theorists *that* is how the universe is constructed, and de-constructed..... and we end it with a food session!) With Java, I have to sacrifice the wings and be hard coded into reality. I don't know what I like more, its bits of both I think.

I hope for my next quarter I will ease out on the masochism. I really should like myself more.

And I will definitely make my next post more reader friendly. My last post, (which was very unsympathetic to the readers, my apologies) got me some peculiar reactions. I got hug emails, advice emails, unexpected adjectives, a whole bunch of things. One of my closest friends does not like my blog, and I send him links everytime I write something. Maybe I should like others more too!

I turn twenty nine

Its my birthday in India! and will be my birthday in the US in eight hours one minute for the time zone where I live. I don't know why I am writing this post. I am sitting in my rented room, feeling so alone at this very moment. There's only the wall clock ticking away seconds from this day and the sound of my fingertips hitting the keys to write the words my mind is dictating. A lot of these keys have similar sounds, and a lot of them have very distinct sounds. I've noticed this on other occasions too, but the sounds seem to be filling the silence around me more completely right now. 


I wish to hide myself from the love that will come my way, especially tomorrow. I feel so unworthy of it. I've felt on several occasions that I am not doing a great job growing older. There's come to be a strange (almost alien, for where I come from) desire to keep myself as the starting point of all that concerns me. What I want, how I want it, comes first. (When did I become so selfish, I wasn't taught to live this way)  Everything else comes second, third, fourth, or not at all. 


I just read an email from my father. I never knew Arial font could hold so much affection. Actually I do, Pa regularly writes to me. He fleetingly mentions a few moments from my childhood, they are such small insignificant stories, but he has talked about them with so much pride it just makes me question if I deserve so much unconditional love. 


I think I will call him right now.  

I come and go

I come and go and come and go, brimming with a million ideas about the million things I want to write. I start, and lose steam within seconds. Who exactly am I writing for? I would give anything to hear my heart say, "for me!" Oh well!

My journal looks forlorn, I haven't inked any of its beautiful white pages in my un-architect-like script, and un-grown-up thoughts, for a significant while now. It's an 11-years old's notebook, with sparkles on the cover, the size that can fit into a little purse, the kind that should be used to preserve beautiful leaves and memories within its pages.

Instead it holds, on occasions that I've felt generous enough to write, the accounts of my daily life. I'd vowed to myself that I will not be as heartless as to pour my heart bleedings into it and I've kept my promise. There aren't any emotional outbursts to hide myself from (and look back at, years later, amused at their innocence)

I like my account unworthy life. Lately I've been trying too hard to make it look golden, lately it has looked too grey to me. I should just let it be. Just be.

The battle gets bigger everyday. The magnitude that's coming into focus now makes me so aware of being terribly out-scaled. Of-course the battle gets bigger everyday. "Surrender!! You fool!" "You've no idea how huge this is!"

Perhaps I want to know. And so I will fight. Don't worry about me being alone, I have a fantastic support system to tap into whenever it gets too dark to see. And I'm buoyed enough to breathe-in oxygen for whatever's next.

here again!

I cannot exactly tell when I started to write to be read. I was reading my posts a few days ago and it hit me hard, that I had given-in to the pressure of being a sunflower on my blog. Perhaps it is another reason why I have stopped coming here as often as I did at one point in time (I had decided to write at least one post each week, managed it in January, reasoned with myself that two posts weren't too bad for February, it was a short month after all, and that March will see more of me here.)


Well.


I am also behind on my (ahem!) daily journal entries by a couple of weeks now. Everyday that I miss (or deliberately chicken out of writing) takes me further away from the hopes of ever being able to catch up. (My enthusiasm falls behind quickly when I am unable to do something in the exact manner in which I idealize it.) I cannot boast of an enviable success rate.


There has been a dichotomy of sorts in my approach to keeping a blog. I had started with the desire to keep everyone I know abreast with everything thats happening with me (I abandoned it, it was just too much work and I already had enough on my plate with my studies and living on my own for the first time in twenty something years.) I decided to use it to clear my head (it was all hush-hush, no one knew, I had it hidden from showing up in search results.) It proved quite effective, especially when even a visit to the UW art gallery didn't help.


I changed my blog settings on just an impulse one day. I am not exactly sure how I feel about it. While its not a life altering event by any measure, I am unable to use this as a release anymore. Perhaps the medium was wrong to begin with. (In my defense, since Architecture happened, my fingers can hold a pencil and draw more effectively than write; and with the fraction of my day spent in-front of my computer, it just seemed like an easy thing to do.)


Perhaps, perhaps not.


I don't like being the subject of photographs, am slightly uncomfortable with the attention they garner (I am hoping the innocence with which I have penned this will be appreciated, and not perceived as a 'hence-proved' of my conceit.) No one likes bad pictures, and its especially difficult for women to handle their unflattering documentation. I am very proud of the moment when I stopped buckling under the pressure of looking nice in photos.


I will *really* *really* welcome a similar breakthrough in my writing.  

something. something nebulous.

Today, I was just ambling around in my mind (whats new?), and my brain drew a picture for me explaining how it functions. It was strange to see it graphically, but it made sense when I added the missing bits. I wanted to write it down in words.(I am not promising that this will make a lot of sense.)


One of my resolutions for the new year was to document each day before my goodnights; all the significant (or not) things that I feel would be nice to look back at, stuff like the food I eat or something I notice....just about anything I my fingers want to write in one page or more of a square notebook. The insides of my head feel scrubbed clean post spending some time outside of me (when I am writing about the day). 


Lately, the entries have become sporadic and I have begun to bunch a couple of days up and write about them in a single go. Its a terrible terrible thing to do, because I miss a lot of details that I would have otherwise written, and most of my entries begin thus, 'I have no recollection of what happened that day (so I will make some stuff up)....' 


This defeats the purpose of keeping a journal. But I know me, and I know me very well. I find it impossible to stick to a good habit and require jet propellant thrust to get me off my procrastinating butt. 


What flashed in front of my eyes was this; after I have poured my mind out, the next time I am binging on thoughts (its involuntary, a sand-clock that is programed to flip over every-time the lower chamber fills up) (This is beginning to not make sense already) 


So, the next time when thoughts knock around in me, they scribble themselves on a fresh page (in my head), with a sharp pencil (again in my head). Eventually,with thought overload, the scribble becomes illegible, the pencil becomes blunt, and my head feels heavier. Thought strings get entangled and lose legibility, and are pretty much ready to burst out of me. Usually at such moments I am absolutely willing to trade my brain for a new, tame one. The pattern is recurring, with no set time limit for any aspect of this phenomenon. 


The point is,(I think), that it will be nice if I get into the habit of regular clean-ups of my mind. I think I owe it to myself. I am very heartless while dealing with me, and this can perhaps be my first step towards being less cruel. I could also try and accomplish this with better accountability of my time, but I cannot claim to have lately done anything about this more than a couple of half hearted attempts. I keep telling myself that I will be back to being me once I engage myself in something productive (like a job, for instance). 


I don't have a concluding statement for this post.