Stray Words...

"What should I do about the wild and the tame? The wild heart that wants to be free, and the tame heart that wants to come home. I want to be held. I don't want you to come too close. I want you to scoop me up and bring me home at nights. I don't want to tell you where I am. I want to keep a place among the rocks where no one can find me. I want to be with you." — Jeanette Winterson

*****

"What a strange world this is when you can have as much sex as you like but love is taboo."

— Jeanette Winterson

***** 

"I think now that being free is not being powerful or rich or well regarded or without obligation but being able to love. To love someone else enough to forget about yourself even for one moment is to be free."
— Jeanette Winterson

The Weight Of Love...

“Sometimes we love people so much that we have to be numb to it. Because if we actually felt how much we love them, it would kill us. That doesn’t make you a bad person. It just means your heart’s too big.”
—Riding in Cars with Boys

Also, sometimes, they just take advantage of your love for them.

Jazbaat...

There will be that conversation you’ve been putting off for as long as you’ve known you’ve needed to have it. There will be those words that you’ve rehearsed over and over–in your car, in front of your mirror, in your bed in total darkness while staring at your ceiling–that tumble out of your mouth inelegantly, tripping over each other to make it out just so you can get this over with. There will be that ugly ball of thoughts that hangs in front of you, the thick, opaque cloud of words that formed in between you, through which you cannot breathe. There will be that moment where you try and scoot away, wanting to disown everything you’ve just said, ready to scream at the top of your lungs just to cut the silence.

And there will be that moment, that brutally delayed moment, where they respond with a shrug, a sigh, a casual dismissal of all that you just implied. They will demonstrate with unintentional precision just how uninvolved they are, how little they have emotionally invested, just how very little this has all mattered to them. There will be the moment you struggle to physically scoop up every humiliating statement you made and all their brutal implications and cram them, hurriedly, back in your mouth. You’ll fight back tears as your cheeks fill, blotchy and red, like a veteran alcoholic. You’ll linger on the cusp of wailing, of running in any direction until your lungs ache–but you won’t. You’ll shrug and vaguely shake your head, pitifully mumbling something along the lines of, “Oh, of course…right. No, no, that’s cool.”

But it will pass.

And everything else too...it always does.

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower...

"She wasn't bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just takes time." — Stephen Chbosky

P.S: These were taken on the way to Dunnottar castle, Stonehaven, Scotland. I rarely, if ever, take photographs, but these, I love and treasure.

If You Knew...

At gate C22 in the Portland airport

a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed

a woman arriving from Orange County.

They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after

the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons

and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,

the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other

like he'd just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island,

like she'd been released at last from ICU, snapped

out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down

from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing.

Neither of them was young. His beard was gray.

She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine

her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish

kisses like the ocean in the early morning,

the way it gathers and swells, sucking

each rock under, swallowing it

again and again. We were all watching--

passengers waiting for the delayed flight

to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots,

the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling

sunglasses. We couldn't look away. We could

taste the kisses crushed in our mouths.

But the best part was his face. When he drew back

and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost

as though he were a mother still open from giving birth,

as your mother must have looked at you, no matter

what happened after--if she beat you or left you or

you're lonely now--you once lay there, the vernix

not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you

as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth.

The whole wing of the airport hushed,

all of us trying to slip into that woman's middle-aged body,

her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses,

little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.

-Ellen Bass

The Awakening...

Stumbled upon this today. I am going to frame this and hang it in my room.


*****
A time comes in your life when you finally get it …

When in the midst of all your fears and insanity you stop dead in your tracks and somewhere the voice in your head cries out- ENOUGH! Enough fighting and crying! You are tired of struggling to hold on. And, like a child quieting down after a blind tantrum, your sobs begin to subside, you shudder once or twice, you blink back your tears and through a mantle of wet lashes you begin to look at the world through new eyes.

This is your awakening.

You realize that it’s time to stop hoping and waiting for something to change or for happiness, safety and security to come galloping over the next horizon.

You come to terms with the fact that he is not Prince Charming and you are not Cinderella and that in the real world there aren’t always fairytale endings (or beginnings for that matter) and that any guarantee of “happily ever after” must begin with you and in the process a sense of serenity is born of acceptance.

You awaken to the fact that you are not perfect and that not everyone will always love, appreciate or approve of who or what you are … and that’s OK. (They are entitled to their own views and opinions.) And you learn the importance of loving and championing yourself and in the process a sense of confidence is born of self-approval.

You stop complaining and blaming other people for the things they did to you (or didn’t do for you) and you learn that the only thing you can really count on is the unexpected.

You learn that people don’t always say what they mean or mean what they say and that not everyone will always be there for you and that it’s not always about you. So, you learn to stand on your own and to take care of yourself and in the process a sense of safety & security is born of self-reliance.

You stop judging and pointing fingers and you begin to accept people as they are and to overlook their shortcomings and human frailties and in the process a sense of peace & contentment is born of forgiveness. You realize that much of the way you view yourself and the world around you, is a result of all the messages and opinions that have been ingrained into your psyche.

And you begin to sift through all the crap you’ve been fed about how you should behave, how you should look, and how much you should weigh, and what you should wear, and where you should shop, and what you should drive, how and where you should live, and what you should do for a living, who you should sleep with, who you should marry, and what you should expect of a marriage, the importance of having and raising children or what you owe your parents.

You learn to open up to new worlds and different points of view. And you begin reassessing and redefining who you are, what you really stand for.

You learn the difference between wanting and needing and you begin to discard the doctrines and values you’ve outgrown, or should never have bought into to begin with and in the process you learn to go with your instincts.

You learn that it is truly in giving that we receive.

And that there is power and glory in creating and contributing and you stop maneuvering through life merely as a “consumer” looking for your next fix.

You learn that principles such as honesty and integrity are not the outdated ideals of a bygone era but mortar that holds together the foundation upon which you must build a life.

You learn that you don’t know everything, it’s not your job to save the world and that you can’t teach a pig to sing.

You learn to distinguish between guilt and responsibility and the importance of setting boundaries and learning to say NO.

You learn that the only cross to bear is the one you choose to carry and that martyrs get burned at the stake. Then you learn about love. Romantic love and familial love. How to love, how much to give in love, when to stop giving and when to walk away. You learn not to project your needs or your feelings onto a relationship.

You learn that you will not be more beautiful, more intelligent, more lovable or important because of the man (or woman) on your arm or the child that bears your name. You learn to look at relationships as they really are and not as you would have them be. You stop trying to control people, situations and outcomes.

You learn that just as people grow and change so it is with love … and you learn that you don’t have the right to demand love on your terms … just to make you happy.

You learn that alone does not mean lonely … and you look in the mirror and come to terms with the fact that you will never be a size 5 or a perfect 10, you stop trying to compete with the image inside your head and agonizing over how you ”stack up”.

You also stop working so hard at putting your feelings aside, smoothing things over and ignoring your needs.

You learn that feelings or entitlement are perfectly OK … and that it is your right to want things and to ask for the things that you want … and that sometimes it is necessary to make demands.

You come to the realization that you deserve to be treated with love, kindness, sensitivity and respect and you won’t settle for less. And, you allow only the hands of a lover who cherishes you to glorify you with his/her touch … and in the process you internalize the meaning of self-respect. You learn that your body really is your temple. And, you begin to care for it and treat it with respect. You begin eating a balanced diet, drinking more water and taking more time to exercise.

You learn that fatigue diminishes the spirit and can create doubt and fear. So you take more time to rest. And, just as food fuels the body, laughter fuels the soul. So you take more time to laugh and to play.

You learn, that for the most part, in life you get what you believe you deserve … and that much of life truly is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You learn that anything worth achieving is worth working for and that wishing for something to happen is different than working toward making it happen.

More importantly, you learn that in order to achieve success you need direction, discipline and perseverance. You also learn that no one can do it all alone and that it’s OK to risk asking for help. You learn that the only thing you must truly fear is the great robber baron of all time, FEAR ITSELF.

You learn to step right into and through your fears because you know that whatever happens you can handle it and to give in to fear is to give away the right to live life on your terms. And you learn to fight for your life and not to squander it living under a cloud of impending doom.

You learn that life isn’t always fair, you don’t always get what you think you deserve and that sometime bad things happen to unsuspecting, good people. On these occasions you learn not to personalize things. You learn that God isn’t punishing you or failing to answer your prayers.

It’s just life happening.

And you learn to deal with evil in its most primal state – the ego.

You learn that negative feelings such as anger, envy and resentment must be understood and redirected or they will suffocate the life out of you and poison the universe that surrounds you.

You learn to admit when you are wrong and to build bridges instead of walls.

You learn to be thankful and to take comfort in many of the simple things we take for granted, things that millions of people upon the earth can only dream about; a full refrigerator, clean running water, a soft warm bed, a long hot shower.

Slowly, you begin to take responsibility for yourself by yourself and you make yourself a promise to never betray yourself and to never ever settle for less than your heart’s desire.

And you hang a wind chime outside your window so you can listen to the wind. And you make it a point to keep smiling, keep trusting, and stay open to every wonderful possibility.

Finally, with courage in your heart and with God by your side you take a stand, you take a deep breath and you begin to design the life you want to live as best you can.

Two Countries...

Skin remembers how long the years grow

when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel

of singleness, feather lost from the tail

of a bird, swirling onto a step,

swept away by someone who never saw

it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,

slept by itself, knew how to raise a

see-you-later hand. But skin felt

it was never seen, never known as

a land on the map, nose like a city,

hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque

and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.

Skin had hope, that's what skin does.

Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.

Love means you breathe in two countries.

And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass,

deep in the pocket that is skin's secret own.

Even now, when skin is not alone,

it remembers being alone and thanks something larger

that there are travelers, that people go places

larger than themselves.

- Naomi Shihab Nye

June...

"When we hold each other, in the darkness, it doesn’t make the darkness go away. The bad things are still out there. The nightmares still walking. When we hold each other we feel not safe, but better. “It’s all right” we whisper, “I’m here, I love you.” and we lie: “I’ll never leave you.” For just a moment or two the darkness doesn’t seem so bad." — Neil Gaiman

Hereafter...

duur ek gaon hai 

wahan thandi chaon hai

behti nadiya hai

jaana hai nadiya k paar

The Future Is Full Of Fingertips...

“The broken part heals even stronger than

the rest,”

they say. But that takes awhile.

And, “Hurry up,” the whole world says.

They tap their feet. And it still hurts on rainy

afternoons when the same absent sun

gives no sign it will ever come back.

“What difference in a hundred years?”

The barn where Agnes hanged her child

will fall by then, and the scrawled words

erase themselves on the floor where rats’ feet

run. Boards curl up. Whole new trees

drink what the rivers bring. Things die.

“No good thing is easy.” They told us that,

while we dug our fingers into the stones

and looked beseechingly into their eyes.

They say the hurt is good for you. It makes

what comes later a gift all the more

precious in your bleeding hands.

- WILLIAM STAFFORD

Unbuttoned & Attentive Red Lips...

Throughout history, women have been depicted in great works of art. There’s the Venus de Milo, Mona Lisa, Virgin Mary and even the Statue of Liberty. One thing they had in common: They were all the vision of perfection through the eyes of a man. “Society has a problem with female nudity when it is not . . . ”—Badu pauses to get her words together; she wants this point to be very clear—“. . . when it is not packaged for the consumption of male entertainment. Then it becomes confusing.”

(Source)

True enough, womanly beauty has always been depicted and painted and poetised and talked about in terms that would appeal to men. You'll argue that beauty's whole purpose is to appeal to and attract the opposite sex, for a whole lot of evolutionary reasons. And fine, I understand the whole science behind "attraction". But we have been so brainwashed by what "men" find attractive in women, that we, women, have forgotten what we find attractive in us. We have come to see woman's beauty only through the male perspective. We don't understand beauty any way else. And everything from hair shampoo to foot crack cream is sold with a promise that it would make us women beautiful to men.


Ask me and I would talk about a woman's slender neck. Those delicate shoulders, those striking collarbones, the hollows at the base of her throat, the foot arch. I love curvy feet or then shapely calves or even a beautiful navel.


Why aren't there any women artists, women poets, women writers, women sculptors showing us what feminine beauty means to them? Has no one ever found it necessary to find out what women find beautiful about themselves?


Is a woman beautiful only if men find her beautiful?

We Are All Going Forward. None Of Us Are Going Back...

Dear Forgiveness, you know that recently

we have had our difficulties and there are many things

I want to ask you.

I tried that one time, high school, second lunch, and then again,

years later, in the chlorinated pool.

I am still talking to you about help. I still do not have

these luxuries.

I have told you where I’m coming from, so put it together.

I want more applesauce. I want more seats reserved for heroes.

Dear Forgiveness, I saved a plate for you.

Quit milling around the yard and come inside."

— Richard Siken

*****

"I’ve been rereading your story. I think it’s about me in a way that might not be flattering, but that’s okay. We dream and dream of being seen as we really are and then finally someone looks at us and sees us truly and we fail to measure up. Anyway: story received, story included. You looked at me long enough to see something mysterious under all the gruff and bluster. Thanks. Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them."

— Richard Siken

*****

"All night I streched my arms across

him, rivers of blood, the dark woods, singing

with all my skin and bone ''Please keep him safe.

Let him lay his head on my chest and we will be

like sailors, swimming in the sound of it, dashed

to pieces.'' Makes a cathedral, him pressing against

me, his lips at my neck, and yes, I do believe

his mouth is heaven, his kisses falling over me like stars."

— Richard Siken

Cupcakes...

Viva La Vida...

10 Things...

"I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it."
— Joan Didion



"Perhaps everybody has a garden of Eden, I don't know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it. Either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare."
— James Baldwin

I Fought For A Long Time Now...

"It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us; because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing. That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has been added, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there, - is already in our bloodstream. And we don't know what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, and yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes. We can't say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens. And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate."
— Rainer Maria Rilke

*****
Much like that, one morning I woke up and realised I had changed. I still wore clips in my hair, much like a school girl, and still measured 26 at the waist, and I have it from a 19 year old guy that I can easily pass off as a 23 year old, if not 22(of course I am vain, darling); but my inner landscape had completely changed. So much so, that I now felt nothing like I did just 2 days back. When I told this to AP, he gave me that you're-crazy smile, ignoring my admission as some female whim, but inside I was struggling even as I said those words, I wish it was some whim. I feel like a woman these days. I don't feel like a girl anymore. How does that feel you ask me, the skeptical you, the curious you, and I say, I don't know, except that I know I am different now. Age is now a tangible thing. I can feel it between my fingers, heavy, I can smell it, like burning rubber, I can see it snaking through my life cutting my dreams short, and I can hear it constantly talking to me, telling me to calm the fuck down. It is driving me mad.


For the first time in my life, I sat down and sketched my future. For a person like me, who lives life as it comes, impulsive, I planned. I wrote down on a piece of paper- 2011, 2012, 2015....


That broke my heart. You'll argue that planning ahead is a good thing, but to me that was cheating. That was compromising. That was...dare I say...choosing what to dream?


All these years, I realise I was stuck at 22, blithely unconcerned about the hours ticking by...and then I suddenly realise I am 26 now.


It's safe to say I am freaking out like a pig that knows it is going to be butchered.


I remember waking up at an odd hour in the morn to loud cries one day. I was late in enrolling, and so my college had put me in a hotel outside the college premises. It was almost a dump, the hostel, and to add to that, there was an open field next to the hostel building where many pigs made home. My room window opened to dirty pigs for the whole one week I stayed there. And I remember waking up to loud unfamiliar cries, on the first day itself. I opened the window and I saw some two men trying to drag a pig into a tempo sort of a vehicle, the sun was just rising behind them. I almost wanted to cry for the pig, it desperately struggling to get away and run away and not die, its cries painful.


I feel pretty much like that pig now.


I can not be a free spirit anymore. I will be tied down. I just pray I have the fortitude to go through with what will come next.


But god, I am miserable. 

Enough Rope...

And then the day came,

when the risk

to remain tight

in a bud

was more painful

than the risk

it took

to Blossom.

-Anaïs Nin

A Puddle...

"People often change for two reasons: either you have learned enough that you want to change or you have been hurt enough that you need to change"

A Casualty...

With each passing year, my list of favourite people grows smaller. Sad.

*****
 Is sexiness a lost art to the happily married?

After marriage, the whole equation changes. Sexiness becomes muted. Those navel-baring miniskirts that seemed perfect for the nightclub when you were 20 somehow appear pathetic and desperate when you wear them post 40. Those fishnet stockings that were perfect for your office when you were a rookie, now appear gaudy when you wear them as the boss.
It isn’t just about clothes, though. It is also about morphing equations with the whole notion of sexiness. You want to appear attractive but also want to be perceived as dignified. You want to appear desirable but only to a bandwidth of people that keeps getting narrower with every passing year. You don’t seek catcalls from hunks or come-hither looks from interns. You want—oh, I don’t know—class, maybe? You may enjoy being checked out, but you want their respect and admiration.

And it's not limited to just marriage.

*****
Once you turn a certain number on your age graph, things begin to change; your perspectives, ideas about life. Some gentler, kinder changes take place, some as subtle as Govinda's dressing. But thing to remember is that it's all good. And in time, you'll learn to accept these changes with the grace, and even, one might hope, joy.

*****

“It isn’t normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement.”

Don't beat yourself on the head if you don't know what you want to do with your life just yet. Yep, it's normal. Treasure hunt by Alain De Botton.

Broken Stuff...

"Girls are taught a lot of stuff growing up. If a guy punches you he likes you. Never try to trim your own bangs and someday you will meet a wonderful guy and get your very own happy ending. Every movie we see, Every story we're told implores us to wait for it, the third act twist, the unexpected declaration of love, the exception to the rule. But sometimes we're so focused on finding our happy ending we don't learn how to read the signs. How to tell from the ones who want us and the ones who don't, the ones who will stay and the ones who will leave. And maybe a happy ending doesn't include a guy, maybe... it's you, on your own, picking up the pieces and starting over, freeing yourself up for something better in the future. Maybe the happy ending is... just... moving on. Or maybe the happy ending is this, knowing after all the unreturned phone calls, broken-hearts, through the blunders and misread signals, through all the pain and embarrassment you never gave up hope." --He's Just Not That Into You