The Chronicles of a Developing Divorcee

En(d)core

2012-01-21T13:31:00.000-08:00

Dear Readers

Plot’s up, I think.

Old yesterdays and new beginnings and a girl who has decided she’s no more a developing divorcee.
Perhaps I might come back for a visit, a scrawl…...perhaps not.
This address has aged, though- and all the while, I’m getting younger and clearer and more restless. Maybe one day, I will be brand new and not recognize a word I wrote.
Which would be a kindness in a way….and a sacrifice for the next page.
Still.
It was a lovely Adventure, falling down the Blog Hole (not to be confused with Bog Hole, mind) and I truly appreciate all the comments, the banter, and numerous kindnesses offered up to me. Utterly blessed- but more than that….changed.
I have sticky threads of your wor(l)ds looping into cotton candy around my cranium, pinking up all that solid, serious grey. Lines that suddenly sweeten the tedium of a daily task and make me laugh in the silence.
If I smile and shrug easily now, I learnt that- from you all.

I never did get round to giving a solid slice of divorce advice- forgive me?
I guess I’m more comfortable skirting around things on tiptoe than looking them face on.
But here’s my unsolicited, terribly patronizing two cents, for anyone staring down the same path:

Don’t act rashly- when in doubt, or pain- just smile.
Breathe deeply, and find a baby to hug. It really does help.

Keep quiet about it- if you must confide, let it be a source that will stay closed mouthed, a source unrelated to either of you- and obviously, of the same gender.
(Three’s a company and all that. You’ll be amazed how many people get this one wrong.)

If something can’t be got by kindness, it ain’t worth being gotten at all.
People usually respond better to praise than to criticism. Why they don’t teach that at school is utterly beyond me. And now the blog's taken over and making me sound geriatric. Lordy!

It doesn’t matter what you have to say if someone isn’t ready to listen- and when you realize that, immediate relief…..It’s also around this time that you start to have interesting conversations in your head. Please desist when a third voice begins opining.
(I am giving us all the benefit of the doubt that we aren’t shrill banshees spitting in someone’s face and telling them ‘Why won’t you listen to meeeheee!?’)

Almost forgot- learn to make a good apology.
And a good apology means admitting your mistakes, not derailing it by foisting it onto someone else and saying ‘I was provoked’…and quite often, it means lying for some peace.
A bad apology is worth spit, and usually pushes you past that point of no apology.
(And a real apology is a change in behaviour, if you’re wondering over that point.)

Cleverness might range between people, wisdom is entirely optional- but we are all capable and intuitive enough to know when someone is being sincere and when they’re not.

Most importantly- don’t reciprocate a meanness.
When you do that, you become equal to what you can not, eventually, live with.
(This might explain a bit why so many people have little emotional meltdowns post-divorce.
Suddenly, they can’t quite live with themselves.
Reality is twisted- and what was right again? Wrong? What’s left?)
And you need so very much to be clear in your head, later on, when you are stewing over the fracture and wondering where you might have avoided it.

There’s more, but I suspect it’s extra trimmings….and I do not want, on this post of all posts, for my blog to look fat.

To my fellow bloggers who allowed me into to their hallowed mindspaces- it was an absolute privilege. You were the best part of blogging.
My lovely neighbours :)

Oh. And a reparation is needed:
Mr. Conor Woodman is now a respectable blogger – I have made a point of Not googling too intently- and his page is http://www.conorwoodman.com/.
I think the line runs thus:
Buy the book, forget the movie!
Have a gander- he might have photos up.

… And that is how you frame a truly abysmal reparation.
I had no qualms on my previous becrushed posts – but now that he is a Somewhat Proper Blogging Person…I’m suffering a twinge of guilt. It can’t possibly be arthritis, I’m too young.

For anyone else I might- and probably have- offended:
My apologies.
I’d offer it on a gilt edged card, but the Recession has driven me to The Internet, which is known for its fickleness and easy delet-------------

The Astrologer

2012-01-06T14:34:00.000-08:00

She makes her own signs, that one.
She’ll wait and look- and clasp it from the sky
And word it like a vowel from God.

Oh, woman!
That poor, deluded creature!

She threads her own stars
And prods destiny with a nail
Tinted rose red.

Pserendipity

2011-12-16T11:31:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, I was planning a trip abroad, and asked an acquaintance if she knew of any places to shop.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been there, so I’m quite helpless.’
And she offered up a wide eyed look and shrugged.
So I asked another woman, one who had been to the anticipated country, and had come back terrorized by customs officials, because they were convinced that no woman could buy so many dresses without being Chinese or in Trade. Which, to many customs officials, was the same thing.
‘Oh,’ she gestured vaguely. ‘You know- you will just find stuff. Just go to the suburbs behind the touristy parks and you will see.’
‘Right.’ There was an awkward pause as I heard my mother’s voice jangling in my brain, telling me to stop being silly, people never tell such things, do they?
‘Oh well, thanks for the help. I’m sure I’ll find it.’
And we smiled at each other in duplicitous good harmony, and off I limped.

Predictively, it wasn’t as easy as my absentminded friend had indicated, but that didn’t matter because I got lost in the city of my dreams, and found myself in a crumbling building that flung out a charming merchant from the second floor, who offered us tea and coats, and who watched indulgently as two females, in the throes of materialistic rapture, tore through his tiny shop and squawked at their new golden egg.
I walked out with a guilty expression that every now and then forgot to do penance, and tickled my lips into a smile saturated with otherworldliness.
One might even have mistook said smile for contentment in a higher being, except it dissolved the second a sticky child came near me, and I splayed my hands out and hissed:
‘Begone, you little monster! This is a new coat! Come closer and I’ll smother you with a wet wipe!’
Sticky child went back to her mother looking like a well scrubbed, subdued daisy.
Smelling like one, too.

And so it was a different woman who exited the airplane and touched South African soil.
Well, metaphorically speaking. No one in South Africa actually touches the soil anymore. It’s more organic than you wish, and you’ll be wafting around with fingers reminiscent of eu de toilet.
And unfortunately, I spelt that right.
Different -in my newfound confidence (albeit of a highly superficial nature, but I would say the satin lining of my coat added a few more millimeters of depth)- and different in that delightful way that opens you- when you are just where you want to be, and know it too.
It's a holiday secret, perhaps. When someone's mundane becomes your magical...
The syrupy slide of light on a high slate roof- seagulls mooning drunkenly about and shrieking indignantly at me eating my food out of their reach...the shared smile as a friend and I sang a lullaby to her niece in a moonlit room....
Aventure kissed and houture clad.... how can a girl remain so solidly the same, with such delicious provocation?
The women held me askance- all my bouncing gave them vertigo, and my quick wet wipe trick was viewed with the barely stifled envy of one who doesn’t have a bag full of complimentary airline wet wipes….and no (new) coat to wipe, either.
‘You must be feeling hot in your coat,’ my friend's husband told me, a little sneer hovering facewise, the day I decided to visit.
I had to remind myself that he was still bitter from funding a Boeing 747 during his last stint at Customs.
'I'm just fine.'
(Ladies do not admit to feeling hot. Or even looking hot. The latter is obviously a given, though we would never, of course, phrase it so. Terribly ungenteel, that.)
He raised a disbelieving eyebrow.
'It's 33 degrees, you know.'
'Really? Well...this is a summer coat.'
And I smiled at him, albeit with narrowed eyes, and sent up a quick prayer for my makeup not to melt.

The next conversation was hardly an improvement.
‘Pserean!’ It was the lady of previously blank visage.
‘Now don’t you look smart…. today. Come inside- tell me about your trip!
Where did you shop? Oh! I hope you went to this amazing store- it has quite a few branches- but very exclusive. I always check their things online!’
She dropped a few names into the silence, and I blinked as the unknown words bounced impressively on her carpet and attempted to bludgeon me on the forehead.
I bit my tongue before it crept out and did something puerile.
‘Nope, never heard of the place.’
‘Oh!’ The woman cocked her head and smiled comfortingly.
'Pity you didn't know about them. Nevermind, though- there's always next time!’
And we showed our teeth, and she offered me cake, and I ate it.

A few months later, sorting through my winter things, I pulled out one of my coats. It was different to the others- a quick little scoop, walking through one of the upmarket areas, without any time to think and hedge. And I put it on, and smiled at the picture in front of my bedroom mirror, and stroked the lapels against my cheek, like those Maybelline ladies who gloat about foundation that never rubs off.
I might have even purred.
Packing my (not so) little number away, I stopped when I caught sight of the label.

It was the very same shop that my friend had name dropped.

‘Oh my….ohhhhh.’ I sat down.
(Sea legs are always a side effect of a good revelation.)
The shop was one I didn’t even remember, and at the time, felt unable to pronounce.
A serendipitous little discovery that was forgotten as soon as I exited its doors- it never made a dent in my consciousness.
Yet unthinkably, I had found it. And I never needed any directions, either.

God was enough.
He always is- though perhaps,sometimes, a fool might need a label to remind herself of that.
Oh..... and the name of the shop?
Tekbir*.

(Tekbir means to proclaim 'God is the Greatest.)

Requiem for Sound

2011-09-05T15:07:00.000-07:00

Her voice died long before
That final stutter of bullets
Cracked her onto the pavement
Like a broken thing.

She never uttered a word
Just a sharp gasp
At the recoil and pull
Of her soul-
And then it was gone.

I suspect she lived out
That first universal memory
Of slanted survival-
Almost transparent
Save in its motion.

(The baby’s gasp of pain
An indignant hope-steeped wait
And then –
Then…
Then?

Deep, disbelieving stillness
When no one offers
Comfort)

Her voice died
long before she did-
it came to an end
curled
around the calyx
of someone's
collective ear-

But none cared
to scratch.

So she went
quietly.

Tension Dramatique

2011-08-15T14:18:00.000-07:00

She was leaning with her throat against her palm, eyes flickering dully over the people in the restaurant. Her throat was warm, warm and heavy and pulsing like a stricken animal against her hand. It didn’t feel like her own- it was the throat of a beast, waiting for the death slice, pulsing like mad to run away, to be still, to attack, to hide-
Oh! When would it come and sever her open ?
She swallowed against the dryness of her throat, lifted a hesitant finger to the waiter who was leaning against the counter and bird watching the hen party in the window.
‘Yes, miss?’ He had glided almost begrudgingly towards her, and knew from her clothes that any tip she gave would not be large. And the girl was looking more and more strained as her prey eluded her.
‘I- I need to know something.’
The waiter raised an indifferent eyebrow.
She swallowed, clasped her throat once more, madly pulsing against her hot fingers.
‘It is a matter of life and death, you see.’ A pause- a vacuumed inhalation.
And still, the waiter remained silent, uncomprehending.
Out trembled the girl's indignant finger.
‘I know you don’t see. I know. Even now, I talk and you look as if I'm mad. You think I don't know? You see nothing!Nothing but those women there, all skirted and girded up for someone to nibble at. It’s indecent what they’re doing- how they sit and laugh and mock me. The wretches.’ She broke off in a half sob.
The waiter’s expression grew more saturnine. His gaze slid to the hen party, traveled up their collectively teetering blood red heels, up the straight, quiverless lines of tanned legs and taut thighs, up the flat expanse of stomachs and the deep provocative hills and curves of enhanced bosoms, up, up, up… to their widely parted, glistening, smeared mouths.
Even to him, they seemed gloating.
He sighed.
‘Death by chocolate, then, miss?’
The girl didn’t look at him.
‘Yes, please. Oh. And will you be so kind as to make it a double serving of sauce? I’m feeling a tad bit….parched.’

The Door of Possibility

2011-08-12T03:53:00.000-07:00

It's hard to walk away from a revolving door.
You keep turning back- waiting for the whirr of a new entry, keeping an ear out for the sudden speed of a behavioral change- or the jolt when someone sticks out a hand and stops for some peace.
You wait for the wind of a different destiny to tickle your heels- so you walk slowly, with all your attention flung behind, wondering when the door will spill out something to save you from this new path you’re dawdling upon.

But revolving doors weren't made for safety.

They were designed for hotels and restaurants- where people feast and love and lie and- then?
Then, they go home, and haul out a bunch of keys and start opening up their real lives.
Revolving doors are only for people intent on speed- and the next circle out and up, into a street glittering with possibility and varnished into newness.
Even when the street’s old and bears the imprint of hooker heels from all the yesterdays reliving something unexpected – it’s still alluring.
Those doors are for people who know all about vicious circles, and the need to walk through as quick as can be.
But plenty of folks never realise that you have to leave that halcyon misted hotel first, to walk away from the revolving door and into the next enchantment.
They just- forget to leave.
So they walk out, and fumble with their change when a cab screeches to a halt- and then they wave it along because they’ve spied a familiar face, and it’s always good to catch up, isn’t it?
And they heave a secret sigh of relief, ‘cos they weren’t too sure what directions they'd have given the driver anyways.
And perhaps that is why so many people live in the entryways, neither here nor there- looking for company to while away the hours between then and where.

It’s hard to walk away from a revolving door.
You need a map for those kinda straight lines, and you need a straighter spine too.
And you need the kind of company who will tell you to move, even when something in their eyes wishes you to stay.
And maybe then, when you do have a shiver of weakness after all those miles, and turn to look back at that revolving door, it will just be an ugly building, surrounded by drunks.
And it won’t matter, then, that your straight line doesn’t end as quick as you wanted- it’s alright to just be walking along without running from something.
And when you stop- it'll be because you're tired from your own Godgiven tread.
Not 'cos you're waiting for someone else to catch up.

Who knows?
Maybe with all that walking, you’ll even find yourself home.

Red Riding (steps out of the) Hood

2011-06-26T09:45:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I was saying goodbye to a friend, on the verge of leaving her car, when she suddenly flashed out-
'Hey! What about that thing you were gonna get back to me about? You didn't give me an answer!'
I mentally stomped my feet. I should have feigned deafness and I'd have been safely on the other side of the gate by now.
'Er. I thought I did give you an answer.'
My friend rolled her mummy eyes at me.
'Yeah. But you didn't think about it.'
I looked in vain for a moonlighting robber to save the night and scare the woman into sudden amnesia. But outside, everything was still and dark, and there wasn't even the solitary bark of a dog to make me run for thankful cover. Just the open car door and my friend looking wide eyed at me, tapping her fingers against the steering wheel.
I felt myself weakening under her mummy shrivelling look honed to pefection on four meek little children.
It's the silence that cracks me first. Give me silence and I'll miserably fill it up, even hating the filling whilst I'm doing it.
I tried to hold firm.
Stout heart, and ~~clay feet and~~ all that.
But then I realised the vague beating noise dully throbbing out time was her feet keeping in rhythm with her fingers. And then- then , I knew- it's inevitable. That's my cue to sing like a canary. Or croak.
Same thing, either way.
'I....er. You know- it's terribly flattering to be considered, of course-'
'Yeah. His mum calls me twice a week to find out what you think. She's driving me crazy. And if you agree, we'll tell her son. ' My friend mowed on, oblivious to the canary dropping an indignant squawk.
'I mean, she really likes you, Pserean. Thinks you'll fit in beautifully with the family. They're looking for someone haari.'
'How...kind of them to think of me.' Wooden -with a touch of lemonpepperpanic, that's how I'd describe my tone. My friend took it as encouragement.
'Yeah, they're looking for a nice girl. He wants to settle down and he doesn't need someone flighty. He should have someone older, you know- a mature girl who will understand that obviously his family comes first, that's what his mum says. And you know how down to earth the family is!' She beamed brightly at me.
I have no idea how she missed the exploding canary. It's not every night you get singed feather confetti falling into your open car.
'Yup.' I nodded my head, shook off whatever was left of my little golden bird (if it was on my shoulder, Destiny -being a malicious bird herself- would probably dictate that there'd be some poo), and smiled back at the prospective matchmaker who didn't know she was gonna get axed. By Red Riding Cloak, nogal.
'Very down to earth.' I grinned at my friend. No reason to disabuse her of her illusions- or inform her of my cowardice.
'Cos the family- never struck me as particularly open.
And if they did strike one, one might be billed for the great honour of their hand upon one's cheek.
And I just utilised extreme finesse and stuffiness in constructing that sentence. All those one's can be quite hard to pull off.
'Ok. I'll think about it. Thanks for considering me. Really- so kind.'
And I shut her door, nodded my head again like those tacky dog ornaments you see in people's cars in Braamfontein, and skipped to my front gate.
My friend meant well, I could see it in her expression when she wasn't trying to thrust marital bliss down my throat. Well meaning friends and well meaning family- there's no need to smite them over the head with your basket of freshly baked, steaming denials. Good intentions scorned remain bitter for almost as long as a rebuffed woman.

But all the same-I could hear something in my head- not a beating, not a squawking, not a barking... no. No- it was something else.
Voices.

Oh! What big eye's you have, Grandma!'
'Yes, little one. All the bigger to make you smaller!'

'Oh! What big hands you have, Grandma!'
'Yes, little one. All the bigger to catch you with!'

'Oh! What big feet you have Grandma!'
'Eh? That's not part of the lines, you devilish child!'
'No. No, it aint. But you've gotten them stuck in your mouth, so good luck chewing anything else.'
'I do not have themflugltjhlvdendeeodlsusn!'

Indeed.
Those fairy tales catch girls faster than mean, old wolves.
A few years before, I would have actually considered this skewed offer, happy that someone saw me as a worthy fit to their family puzzle.
'I will make do,' I would have said to myself.
'I will make them all adore me, and eventually, my husband might even love me too.'
That's how it worked, before- this industrious little-woman slogging,chipping, carving away at someone's prejudices, until they were acceptable to you, accepting you.
But I'm not a little woman anymore. I was once- and then found out I wasn't one for manual labour.
It's not my job to refine you.

When I was married, the Ex would say-
Pserean- you are not right for me. You are not the right person to save me.
There he was, a rigid puzzle waiting to be clicked into place.
It never occurred to him to cut off a sharp angle here and there, to add a squiggle of charm....to bend a little to fit into that corner that looked so right.
It never occurred to him that he could figure out his own puzzle.
So they wait instead, and watch and never react to change their self imposed picture- and then say-
You are a poor fit.
But of course.
There are plenty of self help books in any bookstore you decide to trawl through- haven't yet seen any saviour manuals though.
And there's plenty of books on how to be mysterious- how to be the coquette fluttering your eyelashes and putting dainty feet forward, how to be the bitch who never loses a battle and screws the war- but strangely enough, there are none on how to fix someone else's puzzle as the society-regulated haari powri.
Perhaps the haari powris were too busy trying to fit in, to write about it. And everyone knows you don't really fit in if you have to think about it, let alone write a book proclaiming how it was done.
So the silence was absolute and beautiful and cunningly validating- until you became part of the puzzle.

Little women- my little sisters...we don't have to accept everything we are offered.
Your only right to others is to treat people with courtesy, and allow them space for their beliefs.
And in that space, a picture of you will hover, clear even to the real you standing on the pavement,marvelling at the wrong coloring.
To some people, that picture will always be stronger than you. And you can adopt it willingly- if with a hint of sadness- and try to paint the real you in those shades you spied in someone else's space.
If you try hard enough, perhaps one day, it might feel like your space too.
But if you're not sure, no one is stopping you from being the little girl you once were- and rolling your eyes and shaking your head, and keeping what you have.
And then, because you are wiser than little girls, you can always smile and add a polite 'No, thank you' -and leave with a little more than what you came with.

As for myself...this post is just a little walk in the woods for me- a slow ramble away from that fire curling so delightfully out from a chimney too picturesque to be real.
I think I'll have a picnic for now- perhaps lay out my hooded cloak to catch the burrs and cushion my head when I drift off to sleep.
And maybe I shall even dream.

Please Resume Later

2011-06-12T12:22:00.000-07:00

Some people

pause

For a lifetime-

Just waiting
For the push
That must be a smile
Or a word
Or a hurt
That cuts them out
Off their rut.

But the smile
The word
That great hurt
It is never enough
To force out life
Like a mother’s
Last scream.

(That only happens once.)

And then
Some people say-
It is too much.

They shall wait-
For something else.

Ogden Nash on Social Climbers

2011-04-30T14:52:00.000-07:00

Good-By Now or Pardon My Gauntlet
by Ogden Nash

Bring down the moon for genteel Janet;
She's too refined for this gross planet.
She wears garments and you wear clothes,
You buy stockings, she purchases hose.
She say That is correct, and you say Yes,
And she disrobes and you undress.
Confronted by a mouse or moose,
You turn green, she turns chartroose.
Her speech is new-minted, freshly quarried;
She has a fore-head, you have a forehead.
Nor snake nor slowworm draweth nigh her;
You go to bed, she doth retire.
To Janet, births are blessed events,
And odors that you smell she scents.
Replete she feels, when her food is yummy,
Not in the stomach but the tummy.
If urged some novel step to show,
You say Like this, she says Like so.
Her dear ones don't die, but pass away;
Beneath her formal is lonjeray.
Of refinement she's a fount, or fountess,
And that is why she's now a countess.
She was asking for the little girls' room
And a flunky though she said the earl's room.

And now Janet really is a Lady.
All's well that beds well, as Willy Shakespeare said.*
*Not I- I'm too genteel to mention such matters.

Booty and the Beast

2011-04-17T04:33:00.000-07:00

Hehe. Stockholm Syndrome and French Candlesticks.
How can you not giggle?

The Gentleman

2011-04-14T03:32:00.000-07:00

A man like that- you didn't want to like him 'cos you knew where it led.
He had an easy smile for everyone; they all agreed- he was a rock.
And when you saw him walking in town, and chucking his head in greeting, you liked the kind of rock he was.
Stable and respectful and dependable.

Except everyone knew he wasn't that at all.
The women knew- and the men followed his progress, though it was never him who spoke of what happened every few nights by his place.
And you respected him for his complicit silence and thought- I can save this man who is almost perfect.

But his almostness touched well...almost everybody, one way or another.
So that when you saw him walking in town, a man like that, you looked the other way- and then watched jealously as he nodded his head to the woman behind you.

Almost perfect ruined more lives that downright flawed, I reckon. And women- because they're weak gamblers at best- will never figure out just how long the odds are to perfection.

That man- he had a roving eye. But the little while it was on you, it was still like a frightened bird.
And in that moment of a caught, shared gaze- it was the woman who swooped.
Now they say scornfully, but with more regret than's moral, he'll take all you have.
Yeah. A man like that, he'll take what you fling at him without a flinch.
And sometimes- he'll even say thank you.
And it was the thanks, funnily enough, that broke the woman.

You've Got- Male?

2011-04-02T02:32:00.000-07:00

wait a sec- she was happy Before she met him?

I found this email today, cleaning out my inbox.
I had written it a few years ago to a friend who was married to a Complete Cad. And because we came from relatively similar backgrounds, I felt her pain keenly.
And I never thought I'd need to read it for myself, years later.

Salaams

Any new developments? I wish I can tell you to be strong...that everything you need is within yourself...but you won't believe me. It's the kind of truth that can only be found individually.
Allah gives us all that we need-we might not think we have it in us....but it lurks there, quietly biding it's time, waiting to be found.
There must be some sort of panacea for ill love...something that switches us off completely and irrevocably. It's all very well telling yourself to remain firm....to be strong against his half-hearted attempts....but it is your own heart that is so grasping....and we can't fill up own emptiness with someone else.
I thought we could....I always felt that if only a man can come along who might see my worth...I'd believe it too.

We make these men into gods, to worship, to deny us life, to crush our hope....and we forget our own 'spark of divine fire'. Every human soul has it...that ability to be greater than we are- and the only thing stopping us is our own fear.
Not inadequacy....but the fear of inadequacy.
I sit here....waititng.
Waiting to be found...to come alive.To have someone say -Good God! You are a treasure!
But if no one comes along...do I cease being a treasure? Is my life neatly folded away and put in some convenient compartment above anyone's reach....because I'm alone?
For we are all alone. We may share our lives, we may talk our thoughts, we may sleep together - but in that final moment of reckoning....we are alone.
Allah won't ignore our spirits because 'we were waiting for someone else'. Our mistakes will be there to judge, and so will our good deeds- don't be blind and pretend that a man has created you.
We can create nothing. We can only nurture, and bring forth what is already present- and that through the Grace of Allah, and nothing else.

I don't know who I'm writing this for- myself....or you. And I'm not going to run the usual glib lines which never worked anyways....but here's something that might help...I hope.

You are your own story, to edit as you will- to fill with dry, depressing prose, or lighten with laughter.
You can change the chapters... add in more character detail....edit out some characters....plush it
with activity. Sometimes, when I think I don't know what to do with myself...I wonder...if I was reading about myself...what would I expect my character to do?

That's all we are, in the end....little snatches of stories.

So- what are you going to do about it all?

Feminine Wilds

2011-03-30T14:33:00.000-07:00

It was a seed of

Stubbornness

That caused her to

Flesh outwards

And rupture color

And leak

Precious trickles

Of fragrant sweat.

Out curled a petal

A dainty skirt

With sheen in tact.

She’d have thrust forward

Either way

But had she not learnt

The way of the world

She’d have been the

Quivering indignant thorn

Instead of the

Admired bloom.

The gorgeous artichoke flower was nabbed from http://www.kapundagarden.blogspot.com/

The Right to Forget

2011-03-23T14:50:00.000-07:00

PICTURE: © IMTIAZ CAJEE, WITS UNIVERSITY

Ahmed Timol died when my mother was still young. She knew him- they all did, she said- he had gotten himself involved in politics and things had changed for him.
'But weren't you horrified? Didn't it scare you? Weren't you sad?' I was in school, and I had just read the article of him in the Sunday Times Magazine. There was a a black and white picture of him on the cover, staring solemnly into the camera, looking staid and neat and - young.
Younger than my mother could ever be, it seemed then.
'Well?' I prodded, whilst she walked around the kitchen and stuck her finger in the curry, squinched her face.
'Not enough salt, ' She clicked her tongue, and reached for the spice rack.
I heard her sigh. She turned around, waved a hand distractedly in the air.
'Listen. Yes, we knew him. Yes, he was killed. Those things- it happened then. It was....' she paused, looking for the right word- ' it was bound to happen. And it happened often enough... for us to - move on. Now go get the salad things. And remember to dry your lettuce first! You always make it too soggy.'
I walked off in a huff, swatting the cupboards with my rolled up magazine.
I didn't understand her. She sounded callous and unconcerned and not even vaguely interested in the past that held us all aloft and asunder.
I wanted to cut out that article of him- his picture- for it was rare enough to have an Indian man on the magazine cover. But my mother might have found it, and I didn't quite know how to explain it's presence.
Monday morning strolled in, and crumpled up Ahmed Timol's face in the bin- and I didn't say a word.

A few years later I was paging through our prescribed poetry textbook, and came upon this :

In Detention

He fell from the ninth floor
He hanged himself
He slipped on a piece of soap while washing
He hanged himself
He slipped on a piece of soap while washing
He fell from the ninth floor
He hanged himself while washing
He slipped from the ninth floor
He hung from the ninth floor
He slipped on the ninth floor while washing
He fell from a piece of soap while slipping
He hung from the ninth floor
He washed from the ninth floor while slipping
He hung from a piece of soap while washing.

© Chris van Wyk

I hated it on first sight. It was a stilted, stupid poem, and it was absolute nonsense. Why was it even in our textbook? I hated it so much that I would read it everytime I shuffled the pages. Read it and curl my lip in disdain and search for e.e.cummings instead. Search for something that sounded better.
But mostly, I thought it was a stupid poem because I had forgotten about the man who had fallen from the ninth floor.
I don't even recall when I started to remember again. It was a gradual thing, reading this poem and thinking how stupid it was....to reading it and understanding it with something like a sob in my heart.
For it is a gradual process- to look and finally understand the wisdom behind the apparent stupidity of another person.
It took me years to read the words, and see the lies it contained- and call it for what it was.
And even then- someone will scoff and say - What a stupid poem. It doesn't even make sense!- and forget to connect the dots when they switch on the news at night and hear how a thousand people fell from the ninth floor and a thousand others slipped on a piece of soap.
Because the ninth floor and the soap and the hangings change names all the time.

And now - fifteen years later- I know why my mother shrugged and walked away. I know all about those phone calls that throw you into hysterical panic and force you into looking over your shoulder and wincing at every sound. I know the relief when it is someone else- and not the person you know- who has died.
And watching the news, adding up the losses ,day by day, and ignoring the excuses - I know how you can say-
It happens all the time. You get used to it.

We must look forward to survive, and to heal. To learn when to preserve our anger and indignation and pain- for when it counts.
It's alright to cry at poetry. To sniffle during a movie . To wince and shake your head during the Alcoholics Anonymous ads littering our broadcasting space.
It's worthy to worry about the homeless puppy when it rains, and gasp at the plight of pandas refusing to mate in a Chinese zoo.
It's alright.
It proves our humanity, without taking apart our hearts and wringing dry our souls.
(And if we become like placid, calm beasts nosing the ground for the next meal- so be it.)
But we're not like the others- who were slaughtered like animals, and gunned down like dogs.
We will never be them. We've evolved- with our opposable thumbs and our government issued foresight and the lack of tails .
No tails to catch the past, to make us peer behind, to scratch our ears and swat away the mass produced mist.
We've evolved- and we walk upright into the future.

Now all this introspectin' has made me hungry.

Feed me- please?

(And on a slightly different slant, here's a link down another timeline:
http://ridwanlaher.blogspot.com/2011/03/salsa-picante_17.html
Don't read if you're fasting, though... )

The Nag

2011-03-14T12:30:00.000-07:00

She talks away her life
loudly and gaily coloring
in her secret shadows:
it is a tirade
of bubbling woe
for the listener who
craves only water
and its stillness-
to look upon
and be glad
it is not her face
reflected.

It's Always an Accident

2011-03-07T03:27:00.000-08:00

Some people are just roadkill. They’re born to be smeared over tarmac and dirt roads and cracked cobblestones, born to bleed messily in the horrified public eye.
And for them, these martyrs to mischance (over and over again), there’s no ambulance fast enough to siren sweep there in time to spew out men in white coats ready to electrify frazzled nerves and beat heart into unresponsive chests.
You learn to recognize the incipient doom on their stretched faces and you swerve like hell and try to ignore the wreck of their lives shuddering in the next lane.
And when someone’s shrill voice pierces your concentration, you coil up the volume and pretend it was part of the chorus.

It’s not unsympathetic, though it sounds so. Survival means something else dying in your place. It can mean ignoring roadkill, and getting where you have to go without stopping to lend a hand and lose a life.
Roadkill might be the person sitting next to you, calmly talking, but with an eye out for the next curve to fling themselves over.
Because it’s hardly ever an accident.
That’s what you need to realize- you -the driver, the passenger, the pedestrian.
That person lying there all cussed up- if they survive, they’ll be limping for the next highway soon as your back is turned.
And perhaps what no one wants to acknowledge- though we fear it deep within our beings- is that we’re all roadkill to someone.

Falling so we can be saved in the nick of time. Maybe waiting to draw eternal remorse.
And sometimes- because it’s easier to be smeared rather than stretched.

There’s those cars that lose control and flash over you before you can gasp. And then there’s you stepping off the sidewalk like a modern day Karenina, waiting for a face you can recognize.
Let’s have a moment of silence- no. No.
Let’s hoot with all the clamour of a cut off taxi for the one whose life is stippled across the streets.
Let’s grant this loss all the dignity it deserved, and avert our faces from the dead.
And let's drive home quickly, because supper’s ready, and someone has to catch their favourite show, someone has to call a friend to share the grisly details, someone has to sleep....and someone else -
it's always someone else- has to identify the body.

On Wounded Tendrils

2011-02-20T09:36:00.000-08:00

We reach for too much, sometimes.
That's all.
All there within our grasp- the things that matter.
A lazy Sunday afternoon, with the breeze curling through my ears and under my arms, and the light humoring my unspoken request and glinting golden for a while.
And I sat and listened to the man child near me, and unwrapped a chocolate and watched as his fingers tried to hold it, clawed it ineffectually- fumbling and faltering, until he finally had it gripped- painfully, slippery- and shoved it into his gaping mouth.
He thinks he's going to walk one day, this man child. That his curled up shell will learn to uncurl and unsnap and remember its origins of sinew. Confided it to me, like the world's greatest secret ,on a previous visit.
A good secret as secrets go, for the world doesn't know an inkling of what he wants.
That's all, really.

Now you know his secret- and mine too.
Today, the world was enough.

And tomorrow?
Tomorrow, the man child will awaken, and wiggle his toes and try to touch his nose- and then- he'll wait.
Like he did yesterday.

Fight like a ...Lady!

2011-02-05T16:16:00.000-08:00

The thing about being a Lady – and a decently, conservatively brought up one at that- is that it’s sometimes synonymous with being a Bore.

(Them people: Bore? Bore rhymes with-
Myself, hastily: Floor!
Them people: Well. I suppose that works too-
Myself closes the Door on them.)

You can’t really say what’s on your mind. Or retaliate as you wish.
And you spend far too much time pretending to be stupid so that you skim over slights and keep the peace.
Also, you get deep smile lines that are more the result of mind numbing tedium than any indication of good spirits.
Because I subscribe to that worthy adage of ‘Smile when in doubt.’
Except I’ve added to it- ‘Smile even when you know for sure.’
You smile and you shut up. That’s the way it goes.
After all, who wants a girl who might actually share her mind…and still have leftovers?

'Cos a Lady's always quiet.
That’s what my mother used to tell me, growing up.
I had my own theories about that. In all likelihood, said quietness was probably because the other girls had clonked the sanctimonious cow over the head with a Mills ‘n Boons hardcover when she was neatening her skirts over her ankles.
Concussion and quiet are bosom buddies, I would think.
(Not aloud, of course.)
And if, at this point, my delightful Readers are entertaining visions of Kate Winslet’s heaving bosom and charming bonnets- let me hasten to remind you that I’m a Muslim Lady.
This means that any tempting scene on offer….would be solely from the Mills n Boon’s book peeking guiltily under the perfect head of the perfectly still Lady.
A Muslim Lady is always decorous, and shy and guileless.
Not guileless in that fascinatingly flirtatious way of being a doodlehead with elephant eyelashes- but guileless in that you have to stalk the moral high ground and stick to rigid Duty and clamp your lips over any ruckus causing repartees. And you have to keep your gaze lowered, so your eyelashes will be quite wasted.
I try my best to adhere to these principles.... but I have to admit there's been some....lapses.

(And if any of you Readers snort and say you're not surprised, I shall attack you with my rose scented reticule. )

But I learnt something vitally important during one of those lapses.
The less said, the better.
My mother, bless her, has been saying it for years. Expounded on it for hours and hours.
Allow me to illustrate:

‘Come here, bitch.’

‘What?’

‘You heard me. Come here!’

‘You did not just call me a bitch .’

‘Yeah, I did.You’re mah bitch.’

‘I can't believe you just said that!'

‘You gonna get all upset? I mean it….lovingly.’

I pondered. Was this the right time for a gentle-verging-on-maniacal lecture on spousal etiquette? Righteous indignation and hints/threats on what ladies expect? How could I show my repugnance at this disturbing form of address?
But more importantly....Which ghetto did my husband escape from?
(Was it possible to send him back?)

‘You gonna come here or not?’

‘Ok, arsewipe.’

‘What did you just say!?’

‘Arsewipe. But don’t worry. I mean it lovingly.’

He never called me 'Bitch' again.

(Them people : Not lovingly, at any rate...
Myself coughs.)

Lady –nil.
Bitch – one.

And of course, I was a good loser and kept my smile firmly in place.

Metamorphosis

2011-02-02T04:04:00.000-08:00

Twitterflitterjitterbittery
Is how she started
Twittering and chirruping
Until the mocking silence
Swallowed all the cheeps
And she became self conscious
Cheep contorted into cheap
And she faltered
Lost her way and
Flittered into a
Different room
A high room with blue painted
Ceilings like the sky
Flashing color and shedding
Feathers and feinting
Any which way she wanted to go
Until the laughter
Skimmed a patchy wing
And she saw the
Onlookers expressions
Waiting for her
To hit the ceiling
Not feint in time-
Faint instead-
Fall flat into the eyes
Of the death they shivered
In excitement to see
And flight shuddered
And stuttered
And jittered into a soft jingle
Of collapsed feathers and hope
The last one
So she hopped
But it didn’t feel right
Then she thought to walk
But she couldn’t
At last she fell
Short fall, though it
Hurt like ceiling blown
And twitched
(But the onlookers
Didn’t see
They were looking
Up at something else)
And only bitter
Was left behind.

Posthumorous Mention...

2011-01-02T13:48:00.000-08:00

Here are some doodads on love, courtship and marriage.

Enjoy!

Husband( during a quarrel) : Stop talking like an idiot.

Wife : I have to talk that way so you can understand me.

Percy (after the proposal) : Have you ever loved before?

Edith : Nope. I have often admired men for their strength, courage, beauty, intelligence or something like that, you know, but with you, Percy, it's love- nothing else.

Father : Remember, son, beauty is only skin deep.

Son : That's good enough for me. I ain't no cannibal.

Accepted Suitor : I know I'm not much to look at-
Girl : Still, you'll be at work all day.

He : What would I have to give you for just one little kiss?
She : Chloroform

He : Sweetheart, will you marry me?
She : No. But I will always admire your good taste.

He : I wonder why women pay more attention to beauty than they do to brains?
She : 'Cos no matter how stupid a man is, he is seldom blind.

Hubby : You are affectionate only when you want money!

Wifey : And isn't that often enough?

'Some women believe everything a man tells them,'

'Yes, ' replied Harry. 'Before I married Sarah I told her I'd be her slave for life, and her trusting nature refuses to accept any compromise.'

Husband : You're half an hour late! What do you mean keeping me standing around like a fool?
Wife : I can't help the way you stand.

(And my favourite...)

He (after a long argument) : I wonder what would happen if you and I agreed on anything.

She : I'd be wrong.

The Caveman Effect

2010-12-13T12:59:00.000-08:00

I fell in love with him the day he took me outside and asked me to pretend to be his mother.
My shoe, which I had been struggling with, thunked onto the pavement.
I looked up into his solemn face.
‘Why?’
‘Just because. And you mussa call me Ebrahim, ok?’
‘Oh heavens. That’s rather awkward- I know your father. Can’t I just call you by your name?’
‘Nope.'
He swaggered up to me.
'If you gonna be naughty, I won’ letcha play with me.’

My brows (usually impassive observers to my conversations) suddenly scrabbled up and gargled to my forehead that someone had obviously lost the plot.
And someone – in the form of the brown haired cherub in front of me- grimly clutched his little bow and arrow and stared back.
The brows slowly crept down and pretended to be dead
(And then remembered, that technically, they were.)

‘Uhh. Call me Fatima.’
‘Come on, Fatima. Let’s go kill some food. You can clean it.’
‘Rightyo, Ebrahim. But I’m not touching any frogs.’
The boy threw me a look sludged in disgust.
‘You gotta pretend !’
‘Thank bloody God for that.’
He swivelled in his tracks, eyes two large, accusing orbs.
‘Haw-awww!You said a bad word! I’m gonna tell my mummy!’
‘Ooohhhhooowww cra-’
I cringed. Smiled halfheartedly. Then abandoned the effort as he eyeballed me back.
‘Well, I’m her right now. Sjoe. Bad girl. I’m such a bad girl. There! Scolded myself for you. Let’s be off then, shall we. Oooh. I see a buck! Go shoot it!’
And after twitching his nose at me (and- it must be said- exploring it rather thoroughly), Mummy's boy galloped of in search of his highly elusive prey.

(He didn’t expect that one at least. Still makes me smile when I think of it:
Ebrahim: I killed it!
Fatima, firmly: No, you did not. I don’t see a corpse anywhere.
Ebrahim: Iss dead! There! I’m pointing at it!
Fatima: Nope. That buck died out of old age. See the white hairs? Can’t eat it. Ain’t halal. Your one ran off.
Ebrahim, whining and throwing down his bow: But I killed it!
Fatima: I can’t clean something I can’t see. Ooh! There it is by the tree. Go run.
Ebrahim: Now I killed it! See?
Fatima: With what? You forgot your bow. )

He caught the mythical buck - eventually- and I cleaned it, all the while expecting him to nitpick at me for not removing the entrails. Get me back for making him run around in circles for the better part of the hour. But instead, my little hunter smacked his lips and ate my food and told me it was lovely. And then he asked me what I would be doing the next day.

'Err.. working. But maybe I might have time to kill a crocodile or something. Depends. You know how it is.'
'Yah. I know.'
He stopped, suddenly shy.
'You want help- if you're going hunting?'
'I expect I'll need it- if I go. Remind me in case I forget.'

We grinned at each other.
And the next day (after many pointed reminders from his side), we went hunting.
And he let me keep my own name.

Writer's Block

2010-11-30T01:12:00.000-08:00

Nothingness is hard to write away
It stamps an empty page
With transparent words
That are bolder
Than the one’s in your head.
Not good enough
Is what it reads
Here and there and
Everywhere
In between
No lines
To contain the sentiment
It blots the entire page
With the whiteness
Of the trammeled.

The Matchmaker

2010-11-28T12:56:00.000-08:00

The man spoke
the language of love
but the woman was a foreigner.
And the Indian
in the corner shop
said-
I've watched this one before.
There’s a tree-
and pointed.

The woman left to
sit in it's shade
whilst the man watched,
baffled.

Here ,
said the Indian
and handed him
a dictionary.

This will help.
It’s on sale.

But it’s used,
the man protested.

Yes
said the Indian-
Tried and tested.

But I don't know
either of the languages,
the man pointed out.

The Indian held out
his hand-
That will be fifty rand
please.

For what!?
The man recoiled.

The Indian looked
down his nose at the man-

Understanding don't come cheap.

A pause...

2010-10-11T13:59:00.000-07:00

Lovely Readers

This blogger is going on a short hiatus. Hopefully when I return - God Willing- I will be brimming with delicious stories and insights and...that All-important perspective.
But between you and I - I do hope I come back Nicer.
In the meantime, make yourself comfy, take a look -fleeting or glue-eyed , I'm not fussy- browse through my abbreviated archives...and drop some comments if you are feeling kind . Or talkative. Or even mean.
(That way we can see if I gulped down some perspective and learnt to shrug my shoulders without suffering a fatal hitch:)

*Ahem*
Though I hope you aren't feeling mean. I say this for your own welfare, of course- it is the most trying thing ever to blast someone to cyber smithereens and then have to wait- day by dripping day by staggering week - for a reply.
And in any case, I shall probably feed you my generic ' Me no speakee no Engleeesh' reply.
Yes. I'm utterly sympathetic to the bursting of your spleen and the bulging of your veins... such idiocy quite stirs you to a grand old fit of apoplexy, eh?

Bugger. I'm losing the Atmosphere.
I thought I'd do a bit of a royal adieu, flutter away with grace and a trailing hem of black jet beads and raven feathers (setting the stage, you ken...) but this won't do at all.
*sigh*
No one would believe it- doesn't fit well with my current role as court jester.
When I return though- Ah! Beware....

Shehrezade might have some competition.

:)

(But I don't want her husband.)

Ruddy Ramblings o'er Resentment (Forsooth!)

2010-10-04T13:28:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking. And whilst this isn’t at all strange or rare or even predisposing towards an aneurysm, I know already that I won’t be able to do justice to this post matter.
See, I didn’t write it before, even though it was begging to be inked down and given life. 'Cos it needs a defter touch. Someone gentler- with nimble mind-fingers to knit everything together and make sure you can see the pattern of the thing.
But the gentler, more capable person is unavailable at the moment.
Forging world peace, perhaps- or figuring out where to start. All those important questions quite block one’s creativity, you know.
Like how to save the world and still manage to jingle some pocket change. Or how to liberate a people without liberating their souls from their bodies.
Ah. Tricky one, that.

On the other hand, the more capable one could just be contemplating the meaning of existence in a cave and sharing lodgings with a nimble footed, benign goat. And realizing, to his great satisfaction and relief, that the secret to his existence is just that. A secret he can’t possibly unravel.
But in the meantime, the mountain air is gloriously fresh, and his goat needs it’s daily trot and jump, and if the ascetic isn’t around to keep an eye on the mountains, they might very well crumble up and disappear in awkward sheepishness (because everyone knows it’s not a mountain unless you look up, gasp, and go –Cor! Did you see the size of that thing!?).

So the gentler, nobler person is far away from wireless connectivity, his Bluetooth issues were resolved after concentracted chewing of cloves….and his telepathic abilities are solely focused on the goat, who appreciates the effort but would rather not know how it’s going to end. (For him, at least.)
Which leaves Me.
Very embarrassing for the rest of humanity, and quite nerve wracking for the goats…but there you have it.

So I’ve been thinking about Resentment.
The word itself seems innocuous enough. Sterile and professional and comfortably dry. Not a fluttering thing, certainly.
Just a slow implacable displacement of comfort.
Resentment is that allegedly diluted emotion that hints at a grievance, but then purses his mouth into a pious pucker and refuses to talk anymore over it. He is a prudish martyr, fit for prudish professors who haven’t received tenure, fit for prudish old women who are locked out of the favoured dressmaker’s store.
Yes. Resentment takes his time- he's a methodical, thoughtful plodder.
The daily favour to the eternity of hate.
But he looks so dull, and sounds so dull, that you don’t notice him coming inside, and neatly placing his hat on a hook and sitting elbow to elbow at your table.
You don’t notice until you leave, hungry, and wonder why.
And even then, it is hard to suspect the polite man with the watchful eyes.

(Them people: Wotter other kind eyes do ye get, then?
Myself, irritably: All kinds. I’m using my dramatic licence here.
Them people guffaw: In tha’ case, we’re revoking it!
Myself glares.)

Right. Back to resentment.

I don’t like it. It’s an awkward emotion and it squats on my forehead in the most maddening way and forces me to conjure up desperate odes to Botox.
And it impinges upon my natural friendships because I always feel the scurrying, frothing, toadying need to include a cosmetic surgeon within that hallowed group.
So yes. Being resentful interferes with my superficial peace – as betokened by the mirror- and muddles up my murky depths as well. Just a slight roiling of resentment and I begin to see the mortar of my soul.
How very undeep, to be sure! I almost scraped my toe there. Which is dreadful- one should never admit to having a shallow foundation.
It isn’t genteel. It’s not done.
Even Jordan talks about her soul and it’s unknown depths. Though if you actually listen to what she’s saying, her soul and her other enhanced assets can often be interchanged without noticing the discrepancy. But at least she makes the effort.
Which simply proves how important depth is.
Therefore the urge to release my resentment . I want to be serene and calm and without an annoying involuntary twitch attacking my left eyelid whenever a certain person’s name is mentioned.
Oh. And I want to be Deep.

Now-as expected, all this emotional twiddling set me upon a course of detection.
A veritable Hercule Poirot and all that, I decided to do some investigating….question the common denominators, so to speak.
The Usual Suspects, without Keyser Soze there to twist everything around at the last minute.
(I’d tell you who Keyer Soze is, but a close friend is still bitter about that spoiler , and takes malicious, unfading joy in disclosing the endings of all the movies I want to see. I don’t need any more vengeful victims trying to wreak havoc on my cinematic pleasures….)

And like the Great Poirot- but without the twirly moustache and slicked back forehead and even slicker French accent- I uncovered something quite devastating in it's repercussions.
(But no one was going to jail.)
In fact, my sleuthing abilities shocked even myself.
I had a Eureka moment, you see.
A sudden clearing of the clouds and the sun pointing a golden edged finger on the crux of the matter and then giving it a good prod, so that I Got The Message.
All very dramatic, yes, and set to Wagner's opera, for the musically retarded:

Resentment only visits the man apart.

He is a quiet, old devil who will only be noticed by those quieter. By those who sit on the boundaries-
‘ No, further please, little bit further. Yes, yes, more than that. Oh wait. Shakespeare says it better-get thee to a shrubbery!’-
or lurking in the hedges, desperate for a chance at the game and being told there are no openings.
‘And no. It isn’t a spectator game, either. Those people watching? Well, they’re different. Off you go, then…’

Yes.
Resentment is the invitation card held just two fingers out of reach, and swaying lazily to the beat of your indignant heart.
Thinking back to the times I’ve suffered its sordid rape upon my peace; they were all times when I was conscious of being estranged.
Kept apart or smiled and dismissed- without even the dubious courtesy of dissimilation, sometimes.
I became the unwanted particle defying the encounters of Brownian motion.There were surges forward and behind, over and under- yet never through me.
I, alone, remained unchanged or untouched- and I did not understand the exclusion.

If it is ignorance that makes enemies of men, then it is segregation that starves them into hungering for that destruction.

Oh dear. That’s too grand for me. I admit, I blinked when I wrote that down.
Let’s back up, shall we?

(Them people, whining : This here is the longest revelation we ever got. Moses was quicker…
Myself gasps: Heathens!)

Alright. A simple list for the simple minded -

I never resented the one who gave me grace.

I never resented the one who shared their joy or their pain with me.

I never resented the one who gave me the answers without having to ask.

I never resented the one who turned and filled in the details when my own card was blank.

I never resented the one who kept my confidences.

I never resented the one who faced me with an unchanging face. A face others recognised because it was always the same.

Equality- in treatment, in judgement, in deference- and Inclusion. These were the two things that Resentment could not breach.

Ofcourse, there will always be the others- the one’s who find fault and grievance and cockroaches in every corner. Every stranger, to them, is an enemy waiting to be discovered.
But there need not be as many as all that, if you care to deal roundly with people.
No acutely constricting angles cornering someone in an unhappy place, see?
Resentment never knocks on an open door- there is no need.
He knows already that the food will be indigestible. Something will invariably stick in his gut, and keep him remembering the person who sweetly offered it to him, until he is sick and humiliated in front of the crowd.
So Resentment strolls past, stops, takes a slow look around.... and visits the house that's bolted from the outside.

Now you can’t say, Patient Readers, that no one ever took the time to show you how to avoid the curse of the ever-watchful eyes.

You can close your own,of course, or you can open them a little wider- so that the outlines takes in the sidelines-
and your periphery changes to include all.

The Loving Li(f)e

2010-09-30T11:28:00.000-07:00

Love can blind you
sometimes-
tying a veil to
your pain and
naming it faith.

And you find yourself
holding someone's
clawed hand
and overseeing
the death watch
never realising
that the gurgling gasps
and the rattling of
air in aching alveoli
isn't the wanted
surge of new life.

Love can trick you like that-
thinking the pain
is in the rebirth-
and you never knowing
that Death sits clasping
the other claw.

Even when he leaves
you never notice
(for your hands changed
into claws
when you weren't looking)
and you didn't feel
the corpse
let go.

Yenith, Zenith and Moonshine

2010-09-22T13:56:00.000-07:00

The cricket outside wanted to come in. I’m sure it did.
It was a croaking, whining, rasping cricket, ticking out time with it’s throat.
It thought it had the best of me- waiting for the inevitable irritation that would cause me to fling open my curtains and bang my window shut.
A little opportunity to sneak past the guarding spools of net and cotton, and tumble onto the russet colored carpet and be hopelessly lost to sight.
(Orrr.... it could have been a mating call. And nothing at all to do with a paltry endeavor to be my roommate.)

But I was too clever this time. The mosquito net was in place, and I opened it wide enough to only wriggle my wrist through, keeping a watchful eye for any immigrants of the entomological persuasion.
(Ahem. That's insects for the ignorant.)

And then I stopped and gasped. The moon- a golden sickle- lay straight ahead of me.
Even the cricket stopped croaking.
I looked at the moon- and tried to remember where it was on the lunar cycle. Seemed a bit thin.
But no matter. Thin, tired and bleached bone white- or a full girded body glistening gold, whatever it’s state-it was still the moon.
Cut in half and sewn up tight. Still the moon of our miracles.
I closed my window and the moon disappeared. Literally.
I blinked.
I’d like to say the cricket stopped in midrasp, but it had lapsed into a stealthy silence the second I had opened my window…and was, by now, probably engaging in a fatal row with the spider who had taken up lodging in the eastern corner of my room.
(Or the cricket could have been mating.)
(But not with the spider.)
I opened my window again- and there the moon shifted, in line with my eyesight.
I closed my window. Opened it. Closed it again to be sure.
I couldn’t help smiling.

It wasn’t the moon I had been looking at. It was the reflection of the moon from my window.
A mirror image.
Not quite the real thing, then. A bit of a cheat. Distilled and sieved through glass.
But that was infinitely better than no moon at all, I thought to myself, smug and safe in the comfort of my own probing mind.
But still.
Very yen like in the sudden flowering of consciousness, and all that.
A second hand glance of beauty is better than a blank sky, yes?
I felt pleased. Self satisfied. Deep.

(Them people, through the corners of their mouths: Zen!
Myself, startled: Eh?
Them people: Zen, ye utter looby! Yen is the boodle!
Myself, reddening: Right. I knew that. Appreciate the tip.)

As I was saying. Deep.
(Though my ~~yen~~zen like conclusion was still hovering between the seven skies. No matter. It will transpire in time. Or expire. Either way- I was in harmony with my God-given world.)
I looked around once more, before closing my window for the last time.
And then started to whimper.

DeeDeee the Deep had been marvelling over a street light.

Dee Dee's Doormat Detour

2010-09-21T08:30:00.000-07:00

My sister and I walked away from the gathering.
‘So what do you think?’ she asked, struggling to open her car door whilst still holding on to all her bags.

‘About what?’

‘The people there. That Lea for one thing. You think she was telling the truth about being so wealthy? And how about Hannah? What a whacko!’ My sister started to laugh.

I considered, as we reversed out of the driveway. Some of the stragglers waved at us. We waved back.
‘Well. I think Lea probably is telling the truth. Why lie? There’s no point. We were all strangers there. She’s so funny and deadpan. And I really liked Hannah. She was full of energy. But still graceful. Did you see her hands? I like her. I do. Why would you think she’s whacked?’

I could sense my sister rolling her eyes in the dark.
‘Because she is. She annoyed me. And someone who comes in trackies and trainers isn’t graceful.’

I didn’t say anything. We had already had this conversation many times over. Whilst I tend to skim around personalities and hover between curiosity and affection- sometimes apathy and innate dislike - my sister almost always cuts scathingly to the point.
She slices and dissects and sticks people into labeled Tupperwares and then smiles at her handiwork when they prove her right. If they prove her wrong, she waves an irritable hand and feigns instant amnesia and waits- with pitbull patience and doggedness and a finger trembling on the brink of triumphant wagging- for them to prove her right in the future.
( My sister, bless her, is a staunch believer in adaptability. Even if it only applies to her memory. And her age.)

I don’t know whose system is better. She might be editing to her desired mix, but I know her social circle- and it makes me weep in sympathy.
On the other hand, I am quite often stuck with unwanted personalities- and utterly no inspiration as to how to drop them without having them realize I’m dropping them.
(No sense in hurting anyone’s feelings. Emotional tidiness is just as close to Godliness. Yes, it is.)

‘Do you know what’s your problem?’ My sister said suddenly, in rhythm with her tyre-screeching turn around the corner .

'Ow!'
I scowled at her and rubbed my head. I had knocked it on the dashboard, leaning forward to retrieve the water bottle near my feet.
‘Idiot beast maniac driver!’

My sister snorted.
‘Sorry.’

I waited for the inevitable. Ah. There it was…

‘…But it’s your fault for being so stupid as to lean down when you knew I was going to turn. Don’t blame other people for your behaviour.’

I gritted my teeth. My headache, which had begun tentatively trying out the cranial cymbals during the gathering, was now engaged in a fully charged Wagner overture.

‘Anyways,’ my sister carried on, oblivious to the cacophony in my head, ‘I know what’s your problem. I figured it out today. Though I think I always knew it.’

‘I do not have a problem’, I lied frostily.

‘But you do! It’s so glaringly blatant. Listen. You always want to know why people treat you as if you’re a retard! Well! I’ve figured it out!’

I was hooked despite myself. I always am- just in case. This is my besetting sin- to gather up all the ‘just in cases’ and be led askew and astray by anyone with a firm tone of voice and a firmer conviction.
My sister has both.
And as a tea pourer of opinions, she looks so ferociously confident, that I almost always forget to say ‘stop’. My teacup , invariably- though it still suprises me, thus proving my giddying gullibility-overfloweth and so forth.
(And my fingers burneth.)

‘Alright. Take Hannah.’

‘Yes? What about her?’

‘She’s a kook. And you liked her! And whilst you might be the only one noticing her hands, everyone else was probably thinking that her hair looked as if it were styled by Eskom.’
(Eskom is our national electrical supplier.)

‘She had lovely hair!’ I gasped. Because she did. It was a mass of riotous curls the color of a burnt sunset. Not just red, but all the hues in between. Feathers of fly away fire, if you were feeling poetically inclined.

‘It was a mess. And I can assure you everyone else thought the same. You see what you’re doing?’

‘Um. No…?’

‘Yes. I’m not surprised. You never do….so stupid.’ My sister sighed. I felt rather like an unachieving hamster who couldn’t quite manage the wheel and was trying to hide behind it in embarrassed exhaustion.

‘What’s so stupid? All I said was that she had nice hands. And I liked her hair. And-’

‘Listen. This woman is not a child. You don’t have to gush. You don’t have to find something nice or interesting. There is no need to build up enthusiasm. Sometimes people are irritating or dumb or absolute nutjobs and that’s what they are. But when you come along, you’re so gullible and gushing that you really believe what they tell you or you suspend everything and then later come back all shocked and wounded. When you literally ran towards the lie with open arms.’

I was flabbergasted.
‘You got all of this from Hannah’s hair!?’

‘No. I got it from your expression.’

My flabbergastion became utter betwattlement.
‘Wooh! What did you say?’ I hurriedly pulled down the mirror and examined my face.
A somewhat bleary eyed individual goggled back at me. I noticed with disgruntlement that my lip color had faded back to its original light pink.

‘I don’t know why I bother. See? There is no such thing as day long lipstick! In fact, I’

My sister was making a sound that wouldn’t be unfamiliar in a toilet. Or a labour ward.

‘What?’ I broke off.

‘That is Exactly your problem. You have the attention span of a goldfish. Shut up.’
She had seen my mouth opening.

‘Listen. You have more than one problem. We both know this. But your Main one…is the way you come across. I saw your expression talking to Hannah and the others. It’s the same expression you use on children. All that eager gushing and immersing yourself. It’s dying out for a kick, that’s what it is. These are people you are talking to. Not kids. This isn’t work, where you have to make someone comfortable or give them the benefit of the doubt. It’s ok to just- box people up and avoid them.’

This made me pause in my reflex denial.

‘Ok. But what does that have to do with my treatment?’

‘You come across like an always smiling doormat. Who will believe anything. And then you wonder why you get treated so.’

Bugger. Her words were tinged with something that did a pretty good impersonation of the truth.
But I didn’t like the meaning behind it. That, in perhaps giving someone the credit and potential to be more or be who they say they are, we automatically lessen ourselves in their very eyes.
Credit , potential, respect, interest….- in the adult world, they must be earned and given grudgingly, with lots of trumpeting and warning codicils attached. Only children have the freedom of easy entitlement. I suppose everyone else gives it generously, for they know it will soon be taken away.
Time to face what I’ve been avoiding for so long.

‘I guess I have to grow up.’

My sister smiled approvingly.

'Yes. Start off with reserve. Start off cold and then you can always work yourself warmer if you want to. People should work for a good opinion. Even for a smile. They should work for it otherwise it means nothing.'

'But!' I added softly, taking pleasure in my sister's expression of dismay at her short lived superiority-'just so you know, I Also think you're jealous.'

'Jealous!' my sister spluttered. The car did a nervous tic-swerve.

'Yes. Jealous. Hannah invited me - and not you- to her wedding. So perhaps all this is mere pique.'

I didn't mistake the gurgling that came from my sister's direction.

'She doesn't even know who she is going to marry yet, you dolt!'

Oh. Right. Well, I concede half a point there.
I settled into disgruntled silence and stewed over my sister's words. Tasted it,puckered up my face... and added a pinch more of salt.

I have spent twenty seven years giving away nothings. How very dreary.
In the immortal words of Eliza Doolittle -'What an addlepated fool I've been!'

But from today, Gentle Readers, I am going to be a Reserved fool.
I am going to drip disdain from every pore. I am going to be positively mysterious and cold and highly deserving of Respect.
The Gusher is officially Gone.

(Them people: Sorry to barge in, lass, but reserved people don' tell others they're reserved. Ye just outed yerself.)

Bugger.
Well then.
Tomorrow I am going to start being reserved.

(And you didn't hear it from me.)

Friend, Foe, or Fauna?

2010-09-16T13:34:00.000-07:00

Someone wrote that you know you have written a story well, when there is nothing more to take away.
I like the idea of paring and clipping and shearing until only pure form slivers through. Or the shadow of the form.
But it doesn’t only apply to stories.
Perhaps I will change my mind- but I think it means people too.

But then…if the purity is what you aim for, you must still begin with the ambiguity and layeredness of different personalities, before you begin to edit.

Which leaves one- where exactly?

(Just a meandering thought. A Sunday meander through nowhere unexpected. But for any who are kind enough to comment- when do you know it is time to stop gathering and time to pick up the scythe? And most importantly....how does one give fully of themselves without being vulnerable? To give and then say- Ah. Now it is time to stop and snip?
But as I said, just a meandering thought. I suppose we make up the answers as we go along. Though it would be nice to read someone else's.)

The Kid Revisited

2010-09-16T02:27:00.000-07:00

The need to belong can often land us in sticky situations. Potentially humiliating situations. Or- in the case of The Kid- itchy situations. I don’t try to change her. She must learn as we all did- as we are all still trying- just when to submit and when to hold yourself apart. But sometimes, she needs a helping hand. A shove and a pinch to point out the obvious error of her ways.
( And a Chappie to quieten her indignation.)

The Kid: Guess what!

Myself, sighing: What?

The Kid: You havta guess!

Myself: You’re getting a new brother or sister?

The Kid gasps: I am!?

Myself, quickly: No, no. I’m being silly. Don’t get excited for nothing. Just… tell me. Or else I shall tie your ears up around your nose and force you to go to school like that.
(The Kid always finds this amusing. I have no idea why.)

The Kid- with misplaced relish: I have Athlete’s Foot!

Myself sits up in horror: Eh?

The Kid, chortling: Yes! Yes, isn’t it exciting? I think I got it from my daddy. His feet always itch, you know.

Myself blinks: Um. No. I’m sure you don’t have it.

The Kid, with gleeful conviction: I’m sure I do.

Myself: Trust me. You don’t want this.

The Kid: Everyone has it. I think even my mummy got it.

Myself: I’m never using your bathroom again. That’s utterly disgusting.

The Kid, happily: Is’nt it!

Myself notices The Kid’s toes crinkling into her shirt with undisguised pleasure: Um. Can you please remove your foot from my lap?

The Kid’s expression changes : But why?

Myself, drily: You need to ask?

The Kid: You’re supposed to love me, you know.

Myself: Yes. Yes, I do. But since you’re wedded to itchy, smelly, reddened toes- I have to choose. And I think- whilst I love you an awful lot… I just don’t love Athlete’s foot. Something's gotta go, you know?

The Kid stays silent for a bit: Hmm. Know what?

Myself: What?

The Kid: I don’t have it anymore.

Myself grins.

(My mother should have learnt from me. Though that isn’t possible. When I would try to wheedle her into giving me something that everyone else had, she would plant her hands on her hips and pucker up her mouth-
‘You! You want it just ‘cos your friends have it, eh? Well, if your friends jumped off a cliff, would you do it too? Huh? Tell me that!’
Her expression was too triumphant to last.

‘I don’t know. I guess it would depend.’

‘Depend!’ (The last bit would be snorted out and her hands would be moving stealthily away from their pelvic home.)

“Well. It might be abseiling. Or they could be parachuting down and an observer-like an old person with bad eyesight- maybe never noticed they had parachutes. And I think that would be-”

It was around this part of the reply that my mother got out her vellan.)

His Name

2010-09-03T14:26:00.000-07:00

It seems a mockery, somehow- the slow, poignant unfurling of his name in my head. It happens every day- and I don’t know why.
I don’t understand why my remembrance of him must be so punctual.
I don’t understand why his name should echo in my head when I wake up…or uncoil and reach towards me when I’m quiet and busy with a household chore.
His name lingers….settles down and squats in the dust and waits for me to uncover it again- good, cobweb-ripping maid that I am. But when I do- I never know what to do with it.
I have been cleaning...scouring...scraping..for some time now.
A very dedicated maid. And if I could throw his name out, I would. But it always finds a way back. As if it’s home.

And the thought makes me shiver.

(Them People: Och lass.... donna fash yourself. It coulda been worse!
Myself : Oh? To have a name gaily clanging and tolling in your head and scaring off all your other thoughts? The name of someone who should mean less-
Them People, backing away warily: Now, now, calm yerself, lass. Be grateful for small mercies!
Myself, a bit too politely: And that would be?
Them People: He coulda been a Goolam!
*Them People shudder*
Myself, after a horror stricken pause: I never thought I'd say this...but you have a point.)

The Kid and I

2010-08-31T02:24:00.000-07:00

Kid: Hullo.

Myself: Hullo.

Kid: Are you going to buy me a Oreo McFlully?

Myself: An Oreo Mcflurry.

Kid: Tha’s what I said.

Myself: No, you said Mcflully.

Kid: Are you going to buy it or not!?

Myself: Say it right first.

Kid: Oreo Mcflully.

Myself: Flurrrrrrreeeeee.

Kid: Flurrrrrllllleeeee.

Myself: Just rrrrrrrrrrrr!

Kid: Just rrrrllllllllll!

Myself :Stop putting an L where it doesn’t belong! Now try again- FLURRY

Kid: Flully.

Myself sighs: Ok. Ok. I’ll buy you your Mclully. But tell me one thing first.

Kid: Hyumm?

Myself: How come you say Oreo and not Oleo?

*silence*

Kid: I’m not your fwend anymore.

The Cross of X

2010-08-26T04:17:00.000-07:00

X was like any other alphabet, except she was X. You could see her lines easily, and you knew just where to cross her so that she would think she did it all by herself.
X was a bit sillier than the others. X thought that her lines shouldn’t have mattered so much. She wanted to be all swirls and curliques and deep valley bends.
‘You can’t. You are an X.’ The others told her. They didn’t like X and her piping ways.
They didn’t like her inability to stop. X didn’t always come to a graceful end- she screeched to a halt and then tried to eke out further when no one was looking.
(Y often accused her of pretending to be him)
So the company talked to her –over and over again.
‘You must be an X. You have no choice. Be the X that everyone recognizes. And an X is two strong lines bisecting each other halfway.’
‘That’s a plus,’ X told them coldly. She hated it when the company defined her as she was not.
‘Whatever. Just remember- straight lines. Nothing fancy. You can’t go ahead confusing the other letters.’
‘But why can’t I be a variant? I can write myself into cursive. There were illuminators who made me into something different but still X. Why do I have to be two ugly lines all the time?’
But the others would not answer further, they only said she was an X- and an X she had to stay.
But X looked at the fluttering ribbons of Y’s tail, and the deep shell of C’s mouth and the perfect triangles of A’s head- and X was jealous.
Mostly, X was jealous of A, who often adopted other forms, and everyone recognized him just the same.
X told the company- ‘If you just leave me be for a bit, wearing my new curls and crossings, you will get used to me and see that I’m still the old X. Just more.’
‘But you are just an X,’ the company gravely informed her. There were no angry voices or indignant gasps. X was asking something so obviously stupid, that they pitied her for her foolishness. And in their perfect understanding of what was, they knew what could never be.
(Even if X claimed otherwise. If the company could not collectively remember, than the individual, who did, was at fault. It was a dream, not a memory.)
Only O showed her some sympathy, but quietly, when the others had left to make a haiku.
‘Want to play a game?’ He asked. Though he meant more than that.
‘No, thank you,’ X replied primly. She thought O was a bit too close for comfort. He always seemed to push in on her space until she was pressed into a line and almost formed an I. And even though she was grateful for his sympathy, it made her itch. He looked at her as if he were sure of something that she was still trying to avoid.
Yet when the company gathered, he never spared her a glance.
O pressed in at her side.
‘Listen,’ X said, exasperated. ‘Just because there was some preschool legend of some perfect game, does not mean we have to spend our lives living it. You are not my soulmate, O.K?’ She smirked at the last bit.
O got to his feet quickly. X could see his round bulk distending with anger and felt ashamed for being so forthright.
‘ You listen. Don’t think you were ever my anything. You’re just this stupid letter I felt sorry for. You’re just this dumb kid who doesn’t even know her letters. You know what you are, X? You really want to know? You’re a nothing.’

O stomped off. X was too shocked to reply. In a moment of exquisite, rare perception-she realized what the comfort of O meant. The shuffled glances that he shared with her alone- two of a kind.
O was always having to fend off the yapping, excitable numbers. They insisted he was their kind. Sometimes, the company of letters laughed at him for looking so alike to the menial numbers.
‘A zero!’
X knew then why O avoided her in public. He had never wanted to be the outsider- the accidental alien. And in his parting words, X heard the hatred of O. He couldn’t understand why she would shove herself out of something she could easily have belonged to. But still- he was drawn to her because through her own making, she was living in the same place. Except that X knew it wasn’t.
O’s place was another world to X.
O and his innate distrust of the peeping, giggling numbers. They were so small, reaching only to his deep, round waist. And still, they would get confused and insist he was there’s. Insist on being his kindred- whilst the company of letters laughed snidely at his expense.
But X loved the numers- for their eagerness to always climb over her and bury themselves in her lines, for their willingness to share and giggle and change without thought. The numbers liked her more than their own Times, who looked very similar to X, but never laughed.
(Times was too busy calculating her tables and worrying if she had missed out a number. Ironically, Times hated Zero with a passion. Though her face often softened when O approached. O, on the other hand, was clearly spooked by Times. She looked at him in a way that was too knowing and made him itch. )

X thought- ‘perhaps I am more an O than O is.O who thinks he is nothing.’

So she went to see The Great Divider. The Great Divider lived close to the numbers, though they always approached him with caution. Even the company of letters tried to avoid him when passing- he made everyone feel as if they didn’t belong. Yet there was only one of him. X knocked on his door.

'Go away'
The voice was like the rasping edge of a branch , rasping against a closed window.
It sounded old.

X knocked again.

‘Go away unless you are One.'

‘I’m X.’ She touched the door lightly.

‘But how many X’s?’

‘Just X. Just me.’

Inside, the Great Divider considered.
'Just you?'

‘Yes.’

‘Go away. There are too many to keep count.’

X slumped at The Great Divider’s door. What the hell did he mean? Why was he always so obtuse? Except when he wasn’t and then you wished you didn’t know what he meant for you left being lesser.

‘I need help.’ She gritted her teeth.

There was a barking laugh from inside the house. It lapsed into a wheeze- and even that contained secret amusement.

‘X. You don’t want help. You want identity.’

‘Yes!’ X sprang up, she put her face to the door. ‘You understand! How did you know what I wanted?

‘Sooner or later, everyone knocks on my door. X. You are a stupid girl.’
X heard the smile in The Great Divider’s voice.

‘The letters say that. They say I am an X and I’ve got to be an X . A plain X without any flourishes and corseted waists and flounces. They say X’s are plain.’

The Great Divide snorted. And then wheezed.
‘They aren’t X, you idiot. You are. I can’t tell you what you are, for that would defeat you still. Go away. I’ve told you too much already.’

X started.

‘Wait! X.’

She could hear the kindness in that eternally ravaged, dying voice.
‘Yes?’

‘You are a pivot. With space in between. Now go.’

X wanted to open the door and ask The Great Divider what he meant. But the sound of coughing from inside the house increased, and she felt ashamed at how selfishly she probed, when it was obvious he needed his strength.
Yet he never died.
X tried not to think about that as she walked away.

Revelation didn’t come that day. Or the next. Sometimes, the letters would come across X, sitting quietly, with a thoughtful look on her face.
‘What are you thinking about?’ they would ask, because she had stopped piping so much.
‘Spaces.’ X would answer, and turn to look at them earnestly.
The others felt uneasy at her look.
The knew it was leading up to something, that look. A remarked surreptitiously that it was as if X had filled in his triangle with a big grey mark. She had filled his space with an awareness of something uncomfortable. But when A spoke about this to the others, and they all started to laugh and relay their experiences- the feeling went away. In the company of the letters, with everyone jovial and brave and together, X’s look didn’t mean anything.

But one day, X joined the company looking different. She had on a bright, trailing ribbon tied to her waist. The others stared- true, the ribbon was pretty, and X moved differently. But she wasn’t supposed to be this way!
They wanted to tell her something- this silliness must be stopped! X hadn’t changed after all! But that she had dared to come adorned!
A lead the way.
‘What’s the meaning of this?’ he asked roughly. He didn’t meet her eyes. His gaze stayed on the bright red ribbon that X had looped and flaunted at her waist.

‘We told you before- the rules. You know them.’

‘Yes. Yes, I know them. But I’m an X.’

‘Exactly!’

‘And who better to know what an X is, than an X? I am a pivot. I am space. I am the lines between a circle.’
At this, O turned away.
‘I am the lines between a revolution.’

‘But what does that mean?’ the others clamoured.

X grasped the head of A, she pulled it down to her height.
Then she did something that, years later, the company would still shudder when remembering. She hit A hard, blightingly, thumpingly hard- right on his point.
His triangle had become a hill!

‘What are you!’
Her voice was like the soft rasp of a branch against a closed window pane.

‘I’m A, dammit.’

‘Even without your point?’

‘I’m A.’

At this, X smiled. She reached up and touched A’s bowl head fondly, lovingly.
‘Yes. You are an A. Even without a triangle. And I am X.’

And the letters realized then, that even though they knew she was just X, they also knew that they had never known just what an X really was.

But X – X of the trailing ribbons and exuberant curlicues and movable pivots, X of the unheld, unknown spaces- X would show them.

(And they all started to live. Not happily ever after, because this isn’t a fairy tale. But live. Without any justs to make them exist. And O finally sat down next to Times, and realized she was far nicer than X-to him-, and wasn’t sarcastic at all.)

Love Thy Neighbour

2010-08-23T10:36:00.000-07:00

There is an old Arabian proverb-
The neighbour before thy house, the companion before thy journey.

Growing up in middle class suburbia, I never knew my neighbours. Yes, I could recognize them- but our interactions started and stopped with a smile and a comfortable distance between the families.
(I never liked the distance.)
I was a curious, inquisitive, desperately yearning child- yearning for adventure, for company… yearning for anything new and wonderful to pierce through the tedium of always being in the company of far older people.
See- this is how it is:
Older people can be wise and wonderful and are known for dispensing dry, thoughtful passion-tempered advice- they make comfortable, soft bosomed harbours and are always ready to fill your emptiness with samoosas and hot curries- and sometimes- when the light is just right, and their feet are warm and uncramped with fear and gouty regret …they remember, aloud, whimsical stories that make you wonder at their very core.
But quite often, as they age, the old ones’ forget the stage they used to belong to. Those past ages are like wax crayons that still bring forth a nostalgic smile- but without the earnest, childish excitement to once more own and unwrap and smear those colors-to the adult,they're just wax crayons that don't color very well and seem rather overpriced.
The elderly stayed still too long- and their natures changed over time. Being a good, safe harbour takes prominent place, now, in their nature. It is one of the few things they can do better with age.
But the horribly self-defeating thing about harbours- is that they’re built facing the sea and the endless, rolling horizon. You’re supposed to sweep in for rest and relief- and then, after tending to your cracks and rubbing off the insinuating rust and garnering up rations- you leave, to track down that exact line between sea and sky- and push it further. Smudge it some more. Change it so that the horizon bears your stamp-even for a day.
The harbour’s love for the horizon is a doomed affair- doomed to relive its moment of vanquishment over and over and still- yearn for the unity of being the succour and reason for the horizon.
And harbours- to little children- are well padded, deeply cosseted, constrained entities. All comfort and caution and a trailing voice for the one who didn’t come back.

And there I was, getting older and more wizened by day- mature, they call it- and trying not resent being lovingly manacled to the harbour.
I wanted company. I wanted the neighbour’s children to open their doors and invite me in, so that I could see what being wild looked like, up close and in your face. I wanted to have the confidence of the bold- bold because they’re in a group of smooth talking, rambunctious siblings who will always lend you a backbone if you’ve misplaced your own.
But instead, I sat nestled in my harbour and listened to stories of Jinn attacking girls as they went out during the call of the Azaan, of children who lost themselves because they broke out of their mother's grasp….of robbers falling upon unsuspecting idiots who wanted to stand outside and squint at the moon…or worse! Of moths who entered the house whilst said idiots stood outside and ate up the curtains of the doomed idiot until- horror upon horrors!- you had no privacy.
(At the time, this really did strike fear in my childish little heart...)

And because the old, querulous voices made me ashamed of my own youth and afraid of that dark, still horizon with its vague terrors (all the more terrible for being so vague) and lost compasses...and more importantly, they made me feel guilty for not being content with my lot...for wanting younger company who could possibly eclipse them... I went back into my home and closed the door and secretly started to hate the company that never offered me in.

I was eighteen when my neighbours’ doors’ opened.
I was away from home, and in a tiny little flat, and I couldn’t stop myself from running upstairs and in and out and cherishing every second of trespassing. Though because I was welcomed, perhaps, trespassing isn’t the right word…even if my mother, no doubt, would call it that.
Better yet, my neighbours were young- vibrant, opinionated and utterly alien in almost every conceivable way. But we shared the same address, and miraculously,that was enough excuse to barge into each other’s flats, and demand company. To borrow courage on an outing...or drag someone along to liven the hours roaming through the malls.
But then an older family moved in next door to me. I hadn’t even met them, but I already resented the perceived change. It seemed as if I had just had a taste of youth, and it was going to be quickly swallowed and forgotten. I didn’t want staidness and starched propriety next door to me. And I certainly didn’t want a self contained universe so close to my ever encroaching exploratory one. Because families come complete, without the need to extend borders and open doors and relinquish a little comfort to the outsider.

And on that first day, climbing up the stairs and wincing at the sound of strangers, I turned the corner and came face-to-derriere with my new neighbour. A softly rounded woman with haphazard hair, a big smile, and a friendly face. She didn’t look the age I was expecting. She was trying to organize the flotsam of belongings that eddied around her knees and threatened to trip us both. I looked at the mess outside my door and mentally sighed, even whilst proffering up my hand to greet her.
My neighbour introduced herself, pushed away an errant curl of hair from her eyes and then tilted her head towards her flat.
‘So sorry. Moving in… you know how it is. Do come visit. Door’s open anytime.’
‘Yes, yes,’ I murmured and smiled politely, insincerely… and hopped and stumbled my way across the landing to my own place of refuge. But I noticed the open door, all the same, and the mish mash of dark, ugly furniture that was spilling out of the flat.

A few days later, there was a knock on my door, and the sounds of someone trying very hard not to giggle.
The neighbour’s children. They had come with a gift platter of biscuits and pastries, and wide eyed curiosity and a driving hunger for all things Bollywood. I couldn’t help but be charmed ….even though my status as possible goddess had splintered like my cracked tiles when I informed the brood that I hadn’t yet been able to stay awake for a single Indian movie.
And before very long, my door opened again….and my cupboards were under attack from prying, pudgy fingers… my jewellery was taken out and used as props for playing Kalla Kalla (aunty aunty)-or sometimes, just the right ornament to make the snobbish girls from the other flats deeply jealous- and my handbags and scarves were redistributed and coveted with more appeal and anticipation than I could ever have mustered up for the old things…
(My lipsticks, alas, did not survive the invasion. Neither did my carpets, come to that…)
But I loved it. Every second I relished….every second of chaos and comfortable irritation and the eternal litany of questions beginning and ending with- ‘But WHY?’ from solemn interrogators with suspiciously bulging pockets and carefully blank expressions.

It’s Ramadhaan. And I wanted to post something nice.
So even though my neighbour will never see this post- I write this for her. She was the harbour God sent me- different from the kind I’m used to- but all the same, wonderfully comfortable, with her ubiquitous bottles of pickles and chutneys and long-lasting help and remarks on the latest weight loss craze.
My neighbour came when I needed her the most, when I would have died rather than utter the desire for a mother figure. I never needed to cook in Ramadhan- because she always met me, a shuffling, exhausted student, trudging up the stairs…and would greet me and casually press a plate of food into my hands. She lived in a dark, poky hole of a flat, with no space for her children-let alone the gloomy furniture it was her misfortune to inherit-..…and her door was always open. Biscuits and trifle and savouries spilled out from her kitchen into mine. And even after we had both moved on, she never stopped phoning and visiting.

I lived in a dodgy area, in a tiny flat with no security, no perks. But I loved it, because it was the first place that I ever had the opportunity of making mine. It was also the first time…I could be someone without another person telling me who exactly that was. I like to think that it was so warm and comfortable and cosy because some of my soul had seeped into the old bones of the flat. That it spoke of me. But when my neighbour left, my flat- not hers, mine- felt a little bit darker. A little bit emptier.
I learnt a lot from my neighbour- but I think the most important thing she unwittingly taught me…was that we should never do too little today, in the fear that we might be expected to do too much on the morrow.
She was generous with herself – and for that, I’m infinitely grateful.
A splendid harbour- and all the more splendid for never having a manacle in sight.

So you want to know what was the best thing about my flat?
It was my neighbour.

She taught me how to open my door.

May God grant her Jannatul Firdaus, Ameen.

To Ponder...

2010-08-10T14:44:00.000-07:00

the ink from a writer's hands
is never the blood from his heart
nor the sigh from his soul

it is just ink
all battened up in
a book
to read over
and perhaps
remember

just ink-
not the other thing-
not an inkling
of what the writer is about
for he writes
as he dreams
and mostly-

he forgets
his dreams
(even if you
remember)

The Aspiring Tree

2010-08-09T15:02:00.000-07:00

We once had a large garden surrounding our house.
But my mother hated the work- worrying about insects and blank eyed lizards, sinfully exuberant weeds …and errant flowers that insisted on growing outside her decree. She didn’t want nature when she could have order instead. So she ordered our green moat to be paved, and now, instead of prickly spears of grass and bald patches of chocolate earth, there is a dreary pavement that insists on graying with the days. But behind the house, there are still some straggling reminders of the garden we once had.
A little tree bricked in at all sides- a little dream of a kumquat tree. I call it that because I once found lemons hanging from its upper boughs and it tickled my fancy…I could already see the title of a children’s story -‘The kumquat that became a lemon’….something along those optimistic lines. I couldn’t understand how two different fruits could be hanging from the same tree…and I didn’t want to understand it.
The fact before the mechanism is so much more enchanting-sometimes.
But it filled me with a little hope…a little magic I thought I had forgotten…that perhaps something in that little fruit wanted to be greater…bigger…more tart.
Lemons are like little suns, dripping with strength and scent and something….quietly fierce. Something that, every now and then, unfurls and prickles you into shivering.
And I like that. They fit firmly in your palm, begging to be lovingly pressed and used and drained- so utterly giving of their generous juice…and suddenly, sliding past your palate, they leave you with a swirl of shocking tartness….just to remind you of what they are.
But kumquats are just sour. No earnest suns for them! No heavy weight, no deep diastemas and troughs bisecting their skins like proud war wounds...no lush sacrifice into the spirit of things.
Kumquats are just quiet, sour oblong spheres…not enough to fill the mouth, yet too overpowering for the sleeping senses. They never reach their goal, always missing just-just- by a drop or two.

But still- they shared branches with a lemon.
And that means – forget those who say differently- that something in that poor, wondering kumquat swelled….swelled and ripened and burst into another form…a dream.

If a kumquat can manage it- so can I.

The Ghost

2010-08-09T14:59:00.000-07:00

I never wanted to be invisible.
I just didn't know how
To see myself
Unless someone saw me first.

DeeDee's Take on Higher Connections

2010-07-30T14:34:00.000-07:00

I was going to plumb
The depths of his soul
Dive deep, head first
Through his consciousness-

Instead-

I got a concussion.

Tension Relievers

2010-07-28T13:52:00.000-07:00

One of my childhood dreams was to open up a warehouse. A huge multitiered affair of corrugated iron and Gotham city lighting and secret passwords for entry into its hallowed hall.
This warehouse was going to be the stuff of dreams. Boys dreams, mainly-

(Them people, excitedly: Ye mean blow up dolls and Pamela?
Myself: Um. Not quite.
Them people: Hmmmph. Not the good kind, then. Och lass... could ye be thinkin' of - can it be?
Them people mutter happily amongst themselves.
Them people: Is it... ye know?
Myself: Eh?
Them people, leaning towards Myself as a unit of barely suppressed glee: Horses!
Myself grins weakly.)

No horses then. But if Murdoch from the A-team were to reveal his secret dreams, I'm sure my warehouse would have fitted in beautifully alongside his tanks.
Because it wasn't going to hint at anything vaguely Roald Dahlish in it's purpose-
My warehouse was going to be more special than just mere amusement-

It was going to be built for the express purpose of Relieving Tension.
I wanted rooms filled with sheets of glass and ceramics , and perhaps, even deluxe suites where one could order certain types of breakables to be placed temptingly on pedestals-all laid out in pristine marble glory, waiting to be wreaked upon.
A warehouse of controlled, highly lucrative Destruction.
Obviously, safety gear would have to be provided( no one wants bits of glass sticking to skin- or worse - eyeballs...not to mention the risk of severed toes. Besides...blood never adds to the ambience of a place -unless it's a hospital. Or Eldorado Park.)...and I was going to have a list of of Relievers that would tempt even Hannibal in it's variety- baseball bats, hockey sticks, sjamboks, vellans, knitting needles, scalpels, textbooks, frying pans, dental probes, watering hoses.... Basically, crosscultural, interprofessional goodies that would obviously have general appeal.

But the Japanese beat me to it. I saw a similar version of my idea on CNN one day, and had to sit down and shake my head at the sheer horror of their unoriginality.
*Sigh*
At least though, their angsty-cafe take on my idea doesn't carry the label- 'Made In China'. Now that would have been a hard knock to suffer....

But still. There is a niche here for that sort of thing...practically a gaping hole begging to be filled. Any business partners lurking about with a shovel and deep pockets?

( Time Warp Alert!!!
I tried a tension reliever once....after a particularly bad exam and attack of vampire lecturers, during my university days -duh. I came home, stifled with despair and fury and teenage hormones.....and picked up the nearest thing at hand- which turned out to be a lovely, deep red candle- and threw it against the wall. It was satisfying for all of two minutes....
Whereupon I learnt a few things-
1.Round objects ricochet off walls
2.Red candles smear.
3.Beige carpets remember.
4. Red smears on a beige carpet next to the bathroom door look very incriminating in a females-only apartment.

On the plus side- my flat had Ambience.)

The Fake Lady

2010-07-27T16:28:00.000-07:00

I am a closet swearer. This does not fit with my being a Lady and holding my teacup with a poised pinkie. It certainly doesn't fit with my air of carefully established serenity and acceptance of desinty.
Because Ladies do not bang their elbows and then hop up and down and mutter- fuckity fuck fuck. And then kick the offending article and say - Bugger. That should serve you right.

After all. Ladies know that furniture does not talk back.
Which begs the troubling question-

Am I holding my teacup wrong?

Alice Through the Magnifying Glass

2010-06-16T02:44:00.000-07:00

Tim Burton can only be described as kooky. Wonderfully, exuberantly kooky- and I, for the most part, adore his creations. 'Alice in Wonderland' was no exception. I did first wonder at Anne Hathaway's dark eyebrows and practically purple lipstick during the trailers...but I figured- I'll no doubt get used to it. (And I did....)

And I knew I would love it when my sister called to give me her solid gold criticism and said that the movie was hideous and macabre, and Johnny Depp was just plain weird.

(This is the same sister who thought Love Actually was depressing....and didn't watch Pirates of the Caribbean, because Johnny Depp looks too dirty.)

Admittedly, he is plain weird. But that is exactly what's so attractive! Here's a man who has became insanely rich by acting completely bonkers for the most part. It gives me a nice gooey feeling, contemplating his career..( though honesty compels me to admit that I'm not sure he would be so wildly successful if he had been ..ahem...you know.Ugly.)

But the movie was all it promised to be. Utterly futterwacken amazing.
Except...I would have added a little something to the ending. Because even though I scoff at Real Life Romance, I am also the same person who moons over Georgette Heyer novels, and thinks words like 'chivalry' should come back into fashion.

So this is my alternate ending....just a wee dash of spice:

Alice is standing on the prow of the ship, when the captain comes over to welcome her. She turns, and it is a 'normal' looking Johnny Depp with neat hair and a little beard- very solemn and staid- and when he speaks-with a British accent-, she cocks her head at him and squints her eyes-
'You look awfully familiar- do I know you?'
'I have one of those faces, ma'am. Everyone tells me so.'

And then the camera zooms in on Alice looking out towards the horizon,somewhat puzzled but still happy... and then catches on Johnny Depp walking away, with a little smile on his mouth, and just before the screen goes black, his dark brown eyes...flash...very quickly...a vivid green.

So. What do you think? Too manufactured.... or just right?

*ahem*

A slight warning though....I might tell you to bugger off if you don't agree with me. But it's not personal- it's just show biz:P

Open the damn door!

2010-06-15T08:59:00.000-07:00

Patience is only a virtue when its twin is Action. Otherwise, being patient with no end in sight has as much virtue as sitting in the corner of a room, waiting for destiny to befall.
Melodramatic and dimwitted and lazy as spit.

I don’t like the word anymore. It’s been ringing in my head my entire life, and it sounds very much like a death knell. A whimpering, sleepy , cowardly death knell. I don’t want to wait. I’ve done that already- I’ve done it with a shrug of my shoulders and a little smile and desperate eyes….and it just meant more waiting.

I wait for the smallest of things too. Things others take for granted, I sit and wait for. Or forgo. Everything slips through my self righteous fingers, because- I will get better. I will have patience. Things change. You will be rewarded for your stance.

And the times when I’m filled with conviction…when I’m excited at the prospect of doing and being, the guilt trippers come to visit and suck up my joy.

Who am I waiting for? What am I waiting for?
Someone to make my life exciting? Someone to take me places and share experiences with me? Someone to save me from boredom….from myself?
I did that already. I shook my head at all the possibly bad notions and temptations and whisperings. I said- It’s fine. I’ll wait.
And then I got married, and I sat and waited.
And the death knell rang loudly, gaily in my ears.

I am through waiting. And I am through living my life feeling guilty at every timid pleasure…and terrified at every new experience. Waiting has made my soul curl inwards upon itself. I’ve stopped …even wanting things to happen, now. I have that cold, blank knowledge of impossibility sitting inside me.

This post…..it’s not a whining post. Or a claiming post. It’s an almost giving up post.
I need to get out. I’m not here anymore. All this waiting …has sucked out whatever there was.

At what point does waiting ever translate to action? At what point...after a lifetime of waiting, do you recognise when to stop waiting....and start doing? When you've folded yourself into such a harsh, tight seam ....and something is going to tear before you can open up enough to live...is that when you know?

Or is it too late?

Heigh ho and off on holiday I go!

2010-05-02T14:48:00.000-07:00

To my faithful, ever-patient, possibly suffering Readers....

I am off for yonder seas -and whatever adventures may befall one travelling economy class over the umber'd dawn.....
(Them people: Umbered dawn? UMBERED DAWN? Wha' the bleeding hell is umbe-
Myself hastily : Nevermind! I'm going on a little holiday, that's all!
Them people: Why dint you just say so?
Myself- through gritted teeth: I just did.
Them people looks around- blank confusion on all faces: No. We listened verra carefully, lass. We got stuck at yonder an-
Myself covers face in hands -muffled, broken voice: I'm off for a bit. Need holiday. Will check in when I can.

Exit Myself, pursued by Them people.)

On Old Flames and Empty Matchboxes

2010-04-24T03:27:00.000-07:00

Them People: Can we introdooce ye, then?
Myself:(loftily) I've already done that..ages ago.No one knows who You are though.
Them People: Don' be daft. We're in everyone's heads. We knows evverathin'..
Myself: I see. And with a Scottish accent to boot. How interesting.
Them people beam and show off their kilts.

I saw an old crush recently. It was just the barest glance at his face and a sudden, mangled confusion of whether to greet or ignore him- and then my world tilted back to it's slow, plodding axis.
I steadfastly refused eye contact with him...and carried on with my purchases, only pausing to smile at his mother and tickle the baby she was carrying, and politely ask after her family.
And even though I wouldn't want to be in his wife's place now, I couldn't help but feel aggrieved that I wasn't looking better (My accident has been an inexhaustible topic of conversation for anyone who sees me. From their side, not mine.)
But he was looking chubby, and that gave me... a happy curdle of secret amusement.
(For he was not at All an amiable crush to have. Arrogant, older men with secret smiles- who have no reservations in flirting with young, idealistic, terminally stupid girls and dropping ambiquous lines about marriage and princes - should be garotted. Or at least cursed with a double dose of gonorrhea. And herpetic mouth ulcers for good measure*.
* This is a generalisation. Obviously, I wasn't referring to any past, unresolved feelings from my side. I am all at one with the universe, karma, the Secret , ying and yang, Murphy and his laws, etc. Really. The universe and I- we're like this.
And even if I - hypothetically, of course- Wasn't so well-adjusted....seeing his features disappear into self-content folds of flesh....would be Just the panacea for any emotional indigestion I might- but I'm not, I told you that already- be suffering from.)

So there I was, with not even an echo of that old panic to bind me to him and make me steal another glance- and quite happy to be so placid.
Wouldn't it be awful- if our emotions lasted like some eternally damned, red apple? To always bait and tempt us, and remain coyly out of reach?For it to catch the light just so, and show our pained reflection on it's gleaming skin...always perfect and unknown and whole...and we'd be the only one's wrinkling and fading desperately away.

I am glad our emotions age with us. I am glad that that turmoil of feeling can crease into a simple giggle, instead of always being the fruit we never tasted- yet always wanted.

And I am mangling up my metaphors but- today...I just don't care. I want to be glad for something silly. Something silly and as character-dropping as seeing an old crush go to seed.
(Them People: Tha's not very elevating of ye, then.
Myself: This post is not about elevation. It's a girl pique thing that you obviously Won't get.
Them People: Pig thing, huh? We can tell you some stories about pigs! Remember that time-
Myself flees)

As for the pudginess- I'm told that men do that when they're happily wed.
(But take it from me- that doesn't always hold true... my own Hansel picked up a generous 12 kg's during our short stint at marriage- which Proves that theory wrong!)

Them People: Och, lass- if he's Hansel, then tha' makes yooouu-
Myself : Shurrup.

William Carlos Williams Revised

2010-04-24T03:24:00.000-07:00

This is just to say
That I really do not like
People
invadingmypersonalspace
In banks or restaurants or libraries.
And I Especially do not like
Heavy mucous dripping breathers
Who cough on my scarf
And then edge closer
When I turn to glare at them.

So I’m going to take
A hula-hoop the next time
I get in a queue.

Thank You for the Exchange

2010-04-12T04:17:00.000-07:00

What do I say to you-
The other woman
The stained victor?

You have taken him away
And swayed him to your side:
He moved like nature on
The tip of an autumn wind.

But winds change, my dear-
And shape themselves
Into unknown flickering sands
That his branches won’t always recognize.

He is prone to dancing,
My husband-
He likes to catch an errant breeze
And shake off as many blushing petals
As he can.

I will stand still
Amidst your migration
And watch your compass
Twirl and stutter and
Point to my past.

My north is fast approaching
You, my dear-
That chill stinging your nostrils
Is wintry doubt
And icy resolve.

The mistress and the husband
Must learn a new dance
To welcome the change of season
Whilst familiar petals fray
And fall to the hard ground.

And all the time
I will stand still
To flower in sunshine
Planted deep in soil moist
With past tears
- And wait.

There is nothing to fear
My dear
I never wanted to
Steal my own
But I’ll stand patiently
So that I may
Refuse him.

And then-
You may gladly bind
His branches to you
Even whilst he seeks my sunshine.

And no. Art doesn't imitate Life.

Spectator Support... Who's got the remote control?

2010-04-07T10:25:00.000-07:00

There are some emotions that do not fit tidily in the boxes we build for them. The lids are forever falling off at the slightest touch, or the bottoms collapse when we try to lift up the heavy load- or sometimes- we look at an emotion and we have no idea how to box it up.
How to package it so tight that no one will smell its rancour?
How to stow it out of sight on a shelf high enough and strong enough to be ignored forever?
What label do we give it- what warning do we affix, when we are still on the edge of confusion and haven’t yet reached that fall into consciousness?
Do we wait then- and let the emotion roam free for all to see?
Do we call it a name we know it isn’t, in the hope that it will obey our deepest yearnings?

There are so many unanswered questions. They remain unanswered not because we do not know the answers, but because we don’t like the answers.
The question that looks down at me, smiling with ill-concealed puritanical glee, is simply this:
How do you forgive someone?
Being the better person is a gut wrenching thing when you are comparing yourself to someone you’re not sure you can beat. Because then, being the better person might just be the mental balm you apply to your wounded ego- for losing.

Which leads to my topic.
Support.

It’s amazing how something as simple as another person standing up for you, is all it takes to keep silent and shrug off the hardship. Forgiveness is easy when our righteousness is validated and accepted by others. When the opponent is shamed by public opinion- and you forgive them -not because they apologise, but because their hardship is evident to see.
It was deserved and justified.
The scales tipped in your favour and you didn’t bribe a single soul for that swoop towards you.
The people have voted, and you’re still standing.
We don’t need to defend ourselves when there are other, stronger voices ready at our disposal.
So even if the deed was particularly horrible and insensitive or vitriol-feuled- we can shrug our shoulders and put all those sordid emotions in a pretty box with feminine loops and bows and label it ‘Resolved Issues’.
We even feel good looking at the boxes.
And if we lose them one day, in a fit of spring-cleaning madness or just indifference- we never notice because we really did throw them away the day we closed their lids and tied gaudy bows onto our pain.

But quite often, we end up fighting our battles alone, or keeping silent, expecting help and grace and receiving none. I usually opt for the latter, not because of any sense of dignity or decency- but because of my overwhelming terror at confrontation.
Enter dilated pupils, sweaty palms, trembling voice… and The Palpitations.
So for obvious health reasons, I tend to overlook a lot of things in the hope that one day, all this bottled emotion will rupture into a bestselling Pulitzer-prize-winning novel.
(A highly charged operatic piece -rivaling Beethoven’s 9th SymphonyJ- sounds even better, but then I wouldn’t be able to spend my haraam income, and the resentment and regret would no doubt finish me off…. Not to mention I’m tone deaf. But apparently, that helps in opera…)

Right.
Does anyone believe this waffling? Didn’t think so….

I keep quiet out of cowardliness. There might be peace- but not for me. My peace is meringue hard and likely to shatter at any moment, revealing all the resentment within. But still- I keep quiet.
The few confrontations I’ve had, only made me feel worse and very doubtful at first of my actions, and then anger at the sudden twist in plot.
Truth is- there aren’t many people who will come out and say-‘I’m sorry’ and mean it.
And by that, they don’t abuse your trust again with the same weak-willed action.
They allow you space to grow towards them again, in a different atmosphere- so that your wariness is understood and not belittled for going against their sense of easy entitlement.
Forgiveness needs to be earned.
But for most of us, we get stuck at the mere words of apology and never enter a new atmosphere.

So the only justice to be received often comes from a third party. The onlookers.
The witnesses.
Except the awkward majority adhere to the Seinfeld Samaritan Theory of Help.
Don’t get involved. Have a good look, perhaps an even better laugh- but don’t you dare get involved!
I can understand this need for protecting oneself. None of us want the mud from someone else’s battle to land on our faces. And we all know what happens to the messenger….

But what happens when we know what we are hearing is false and we still keep silent?
When the account that we get, does not tally up with the account of the person we know?

Do we keep silent and sit on the fence and avert our faces from the damage?
Or do we stand up- even against family and friends- and offer the truth? Not in a damaging way, or in a way that will cause more dissension- but as a sweet token of peace and understanding?
There are many ways to talk the truth. But only one way for others to believe it.
So we need to learn how to offer the truth in a palatable form, but still with it’s purity intact.
And we need to realize that whilst we don’t have to stand up for ourselves, we owe it to others to stand up for them.
Because we are better than onlookers with a bag of popcorn and a snide comment.
And because when the day arises when we need a little support- and that day will come for all-we can honestly say to ourselves-
‘I was the person someone needed then. So today, even if none come forward to help- I can be that person again for Myself.’
Support is never a done deal. It can be hoped for, it can be expected…. But it can never be promised.
We humans are pretty fickle beings. But there is Godly hope in us, and that, alone, should suffice us to be better than just frail appendages to oppression. Of any kind.

Back to my boxes.
So here I am, dusty with grimy thoughts and unresolved issues- unable to push them into the black hole they belong. The black hole of unwanted boxes.
I wish there was such a thing. Without the mass disintegration of bodily parts and combustion of every little atom.
I wish I could forgive and let go and pulled into a force greater than gravitational anger.
I want to shrug my shoulders and smile at whoever it was that upset me- because I Really don't care.
And despite assumptions to the obvious, I'm not even referring to my husband.

But for now, I’m going to lock up this particular room and nod at all my judges.
Because whilst I might not have support, I DO have a Voice.
And I can tell the truth- perhaps even make my judges believe me.

But it’s a catch 22 situation.
You see, this truth isn’t mine alone to tell. The ruins of my marriage isn’t a tourist attraction to be ogled and photographed and wondered about. So even though I might gain my support then, I would have lost something I still have- something unmangled and still thrumming lighty, deep within the heart of all my problems.

My self respect.

So, Dear Readers, the next time you encounter a divorcee with a weak excuse for the breakdown of her marriage, remember that Truth, in all her stark, naked glory- must often be clothed in Discretion.
Otherwise, it's just Malice.

On Shakespeare, Bad Hair Days and De-continuing Conor

2010-03-30T03:56:00.000-07:00

When a womanhater comes along- and you can tell him from the sneer quivering around the edges of his mouth, the accusatory finger wagging under your nose... and the helpless desire to leer at you and Then sniff in contempt- I don't take it personally.
I know that this poor misogynist had no choice in his particular fork in the road. His habitual hatred was practically drilled into his susceptible, trembling mind... and because centres of higher learning have a Curriculum to follow, which must -at all times-be endorsed as the Perfect Educational Compass, our involuntary villain succumbed to the perils of the Institution, and before you know it, started spouting Shakespeare. In American.
But still- it's impossible to ignore that Master Misogynist's hand at work.So yes, I blame ole Will.
If it weren't for his literary machinations, us women might just have come out off the sixteenth century ( or sometime along there...I cant be expected to remember Everything. It's bad enough trying to discern Right from Wrong) with our trust intact. But William Shakespeare, in his infinite contrariness and malice- decided to Paint us Red. Scarlet A's and blood-smeared lipstick trailing through his pages.
Frailty, thy name is woman!
He wrote that sentence and then proceeded to reiterate it in every possible way. Poor innocent lads all over the world drank up his words and tainted ideas via overzealous teachers/drunks/stand up comedians without ever meaning to. It's Education, they said to themselves. And because we all Want to be educated- its a good conversation piece and fills out all the acres of blank space on our Cv's- we'll just go the extra mile and quote a dead bard. And if we end up becoming rather prejudiced against the fairer sex- so be it.
Frailty, thy name is woman!
How insulting!
How demeaning!
How utterly trite and typical of a man who left his wife to live in domesticated miss!
Frailty, thy name is woman!

.....How true.
But just for Today.
Go ahead. You can call me Frailty. Because I've changed my mind. And I dont even feel bad about it. Woman's prerogative, and all that.
There I was, crushing on Conor Woodman of 'Around the World in 80 Trades' fame, and sinking into the embarrassed depths of Google stalking {Very Overrated! Masses of articles which you read over, thinking you're finally on the verge of a breakthrough (some attention to his private life i.e. girlfriend status) and All the beastly articles are the same}, when I came across a clip on Youtube.
Something about a new emovie called Nefarious.....newcomer Conor Woodman plays the part of a likable (eh, say what?) drug dealer/user in a low budget movie- about karma, something else, and the hypocrisy of drug laws. Obviously, this isnt MY Conor. My Conor is an ex financial analyst, known for his easy banter, dreamy blue/grey eyes and his take on being an adventure capitalist. You know- just reeking of Quality. All above board and good sounding stats for being welcomed into the heaving bosom of an Indian family. (If only he had a medical degree to add to the list…)
So obviously, this was someone else. But I was bored ( that’s how most fatal things start- affairs, smoking, children... addiction to soap operas..) and I gave it a look.
And then a blink.
And another still optimistic-hopefully-im-mistaken look.
Followed by a googly eyed stare and a pained whimper.
And then I watched it again on pause so I could be Sure.
Double Bugger.
Gone was the beautiful crisply cut hair and clean jawline. Someone had hijacked my Conor and switched him for a bandmember from Oasis-those horrid unibrow Gallagher boys who always look like they need a good scrubbing up with steel wool and borax!
And hair simply screaming for a ban by Greenpeace. All that oil can't be good! I sincerely hope it was a wig. But seeing as how this was an extremely low budget production... he might just have grown it and ..... it attacked him and took over his personality like horror movie hair does (refer to Johnny Depp's hair in Secret Window. No one was surprised when he ended up being the psycho killer..)

Why did my poor anti-crush have to go and play cops and robbers at This advanced age? And worse... have it TAPED. This is almost as bad as appearing on Bold and the Beautiful as Brooke's love interest/petri dish conceived son. Brutal, that’s what it is. Damn Google for raining on my crush parade. And I was having such a hearty time of it, too!So that's it for me. Crush, boom... ba-haang. Shot down in the height of cyber obsession.
(In Real Life, I'm so well mannered and seemingly staid (duplicitous?) that no one would dream I had a crush on him.)I don't know if this crush can be salvaged. Right now, im tottering from the memory of his awful hair and strange accent. What was he Doing in that bizarre movie!? This will KILL all credibility in his tv business ventures. And yes- I understand.... you want to go into television. Well- so do porn stars. And Jerry Springer guests. (Connect the dots...) There's a very legitimate pattern to follow in T.V. Get the good roles first, and THEN you can skew off after you've established your acting worth/drooliness. (Think Charlize Theron in Monster. Or Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain (Eugh. Rather not).

But go the Other Route.... and you might as well be doing adverts for Snickers. Pun Intended.(Even if I do rather love Snickers. But then, so do grizzlies.)

{To any readers of the female persuasion- my pain- whilst brief- can certainly be helpful...i.e. you can use this as a marker for your relationship. If your man ever trots up, resembling a junkie from an 80's rock song that no one remembers the tune to- and you STILL manage to smile at him and run a hand through his hair without thinking of the possible migration of an invisible ecosystem from his head to yours…. Then Congratulations! This just might be the Real Thing.)

So from my side- I admit defeat. My tv crush kept beautiful company for three, fantasy filled- (not That kind! I’m a decent girl, I am!)-weeks. And now I've woken up.

Obviously, it would Never have worked out between us. But I'm grateful for the feeling.

And the back of his neck. Not to mention his crinkly eyes. And the way his hair curled around his ear.

And his wide gri- Shitze! I think It's starting again. Bugger this post!

P.S. Conor, dear ,if you're reading this- don’t act. Please.

P.P.S. Unless it's Shakespeare

Click here to share my horror....

Heroes

2010-03-26T08:16:00.000-07:00

Walking out of my sister's apartment, I notice her neighbours' three children sitting on the stairs and pecking with each other.
Me: Ah! Yusuf! You're dressed up as Spiderman, again.
Yusuf: Yeth I am.
Me to his friend: Oho! and who are you, Ayesha?
Ayesha: I'm Superwoman!
Me to last little boy: Wow. Spiderman and Superwoman. Let me guess... you must be Batman?
Little One: Nope. I'm the garden service.

Crush Boom Bang!

2010-03-25T05:22:00.000-07:00

I don't crush easily .But when I do- I'm in it 100% ( 99% mad and 1% horrified at madness and trying to appear sane- or at least look like I understand the concept, if not the actual mechanism).

I'm the kind of faithful monogamous crusher that can go for years on a few smiles and slightly ambiguous sentences. Um. Even if it were something banal and trite and so unambiguous that you'd have to be a split personality to read it in two different ways. And yet somehow- I manage. (She does, too.)

So even if it were something as ordinary as 'Excuse me, ma'am, you're standing on my foot.'... I'd probably extrapolate that sentence into how amazingly well-mannered said crush is (he called me ma'am!!! he said excuse me!!!) and then reminisce with a smile and a slightly crazed glint in my eye that we established 'bodily contact'. Regardless of the greasy fact that my shoe probably stood on a whole lot of other organic unmentionble things in my daily forays into city/town/village life. Cow poo and glueboy debris pervades . (But still- I stood on his Foot! it's Contact!)

Which means that I'm quite thankful that my crushes take ages in making an appearance. Because after they've established themselves, they're as hard to knock off as poor relatives hanging on a nabob's sleeve. Leechlike in their persistency, they would probably shock Darwin by their great ability to survive on - barely nothing. I wish I could focus all their single minded devotion onto something like... studying. Career. Exercise. Wiggling both my ears.

You know- something WORTHY.

But in the meantime, if worthiness won’t come along, I might as well enjoy sinking into a (Google only!)stalker's paradise and enjoy my crush for all it's worth.

(Has any gentle, discerning, possibly non-tender reader realised the reason I'm waffling on so much is because I'm embarrassed of even writing this? This is my first real confession...)

So I have just come out of the strangest relationship ever. You know Beetlejuice trying to marry Winona Ryder-? Well, it might just have been stranger than even that relationship. But I'm trying to keep the past in the past (Admittedly, it's only 5 months old as a past, but if I can forget what I ate 2 days ago, forgetting a pseudo-marriage won’t be that strenuous.)Besides, I’m drinking in motivational books like mother’s milk…and all these happy half-full glassholders write The Same Thing.

Try to see the silver lining. Salvage what you can. If it was a mistake, it can become an experience. And the only way for it to be an experience is if you learnt from it and crawled out a wee bit wiser.

Which leads me to my Crush. ( I can hear a trumpet!)

After a horrid hiatus of being numbed out and tottering around in post-marital funk, I've .... got my emotional groove back.
I can gaze with fond eyes at my crush and remember how his hair swirled into wavy curlicues over his forehead- and I don't have that almost instinctive response of reaching for a blunt object. Or even a hair straighener.
Instead, I sigh dreamily, and reach for a thin slab of Dairy Milk and the word Romance pops into my head and takes a casual look around, and gives me a distinct wink before strolling out again.
We shouldn't have to propel ourselves into emotion- not all the time. It should start without effort- and then if a helpful nudge is needed, that's fine to prolong a wave.
But a good beginning- a good beginning is what you remember and keeps you afloat when you're not sure if there ever was a loveboat in the first place.
And I've had a better beginning with this paragon of all superficial virtues....than my real live prince.
(Of the Underworld. Not that Underworld. There's no seductive demon or leather clad vampire with shining biceps and a leer seeped in lust. Pffffft. I'd have eaten scores of pomegranates if that were the case...
Nope. Just a fake prince with fake words and fake emotion- and a dowry riddled with bad endings.)

As for my crush- well. I don't think it's him, so much as what he embodies, that I yumm at. {Um. But it was his face that drew me first. I always admit to my sidewalk superficiality when she rears her pretty (empty) head. In fact... today I’m going to relish being so superficial as to actually like someone for their looks first. No more being Ms. Nice a.k.a. I’ll-always-look-deeper. At least, not for the next 6 months. But since I hardly ever approach my crushes, such superficiality can remain a secret. Besides... this time… he’s unapproachable.} Now for the sparkly bits:

My crush has this look I find infinitely appealing- tall, lean, dark crisply cut hair and crinkly eyes... and the back of his neck- gives me shivers. Of the delicious kind! And he looks so wholesome and clean and easygoing. I love his passion for what he’s doing. He seems to fit right into his skin and when he makes a mistake, admits it. Unafraid of being in the unknown - or perhaps just... with enough determination to swim through it. And he can laugh at himself. I find that ever so endearing.

He would be just perfect if he lived on my continent. And a few other things too. It would help if my interaction with him was more than flicking on the t.v and going- Ooooh. And then watching in dazed awe as he proceeds to charm(crush speak for plead) his way through the business world(And no. it’s not Mr. Trump. Please.I’m quite discerning, I’ll have you know *frosty look*)

So yes. I’m crushing on a tv person in a business documentary. I feel quite -QUITE- stupid. I know precisely how daft I sound... and I simply can’t help it. Which is why I’d rather be daft online in cyber obscurity than have a friend scrunch up her face at me and offer to take my temperature.

Conor Woodman

{I said his name!!! I said his name!!!}

you might just have saved me.

(And me too!)

Night as a Wife

2010-03-14T03:27:00.000-07:00

I sleep easily next to you
without a dream to flicker
between our souls
my night is as black
as my day.

Caution has a tail- and it's wagging goodbye.

2010-03-11T14:58:00.000-08:00

Bitching is never as fun as it sounds.
And being a woebegone, badly treated woman doesn't suit me. It sounds very victim-orientated and cries out for a bevy of supporting roles from all manners of strangers - not to mention the dire moanings from old hags who creak upon their shelves and pat the place beside them.
So I pandered to my poor, frail Self- and decided to simply wade in. Be the bitter woman for a while. Be the newly recognised Giver of Good Advice. Be the slighlty vitriolic, highly admired scorned woman (well. getting there, at any rate. ). Be the Indian version of Stella with More Groove and Better Hair.
And it was a nice escape for a while, separating myself into tidy categories and playing Auntie with all of them.
But now I've had my few hours of being a Dr. Phyllis to unknown cyber strangers, dispensing my gems of hard experience- usually starting with a 'Don't do this...'- and it bores me. I feel old.
Being a cautionary tale is rather macabre and bleak.
And I always thought if I had to do bleak, I could rig out as a Morticia Addams and slant mysterious looks at anyone coming my way and blow perfectly round smoke rings in their direction. With a Dubai-esqu slate of foundation cementing my face into geisha purity.
And red lips of course.
It's all to do with Atmosphere.

But my cautionary tales, for the moment, are just dripping with suburban limescale and window grease. Bleak and boring like home made clothing with buckling seams and shoulderpads.
You see- I've become a desperate housewife without a bloody house.

Oh.
And no husband, either.

But
This is progress. At least I've decided on a voice I don't want.
So watch out, tender -if any- Readers.
I'm changing my title Tomorrow.

The Weakness of a Better Man

2010-03-09T15:10:00.000-08:00

I don’t want to be that happy thought
That keeps you afloat
In all your muck
That happy thought
Shining bright amidst the
Wreckage of your life.

I say-
Fling it away-
Oh!
Be brave and fling it away
See if you can swim without
My golden rope
Cut away those garments
Of glittering hope.

Oh my weak Peter
No clapping of hands for me!
Grow up-
Up and more and high
Grow into a man
Who doesn’t need rainbows for luck
And warm eyed girls for rocks.

I don’t want to be your strength
Your happy thought
Your personal charm of light
And all things sweet and bright-

Give me rather the man
With steel for soul
And eyes that mirror mine
Someone standing solidly
Uncaring of my strengths
For his own are better.

Give me the man
Who fears my cure
And scorns my hope
Whose shadow falls like an anchor
Heavy against his feet.

Oh my Peter!
Tell the lost boys
To find another mother-
One who will never tire
of her ever-yearning orphan
And his keening for sunshine.

I’d rather take the man
Who shrugs off the rain
Ill take him as his loss
Becomes my gain
Ill take him as he struggles
To cast me off
As his hard face
Becomes harder still
Ill take this man
Who turns away from the rose
He turns and turns
And gets a thorn
A thorn and a trickle of something torn
For all his woes.

So keep your happy thoughts
Let them wander in any place
Any place but mine
Have your happiness stowed
Safely above my reach
Far above the wine
(But know when I smile
My deep corner reaches
Higher than any shelf.)

Go away, Peter!
Fly off to your happy land
Aim for that star
In the corner of your sky
Find someone else
To build castles in the sand-

I’d rather be the darkness
in another mans’eye.

Oh Peter, my poor boy
Don’t you see?
I want the man who’d
Choose to flee
He’d take one look
Not two
Not three-

He’d take one look
And choose to flee
He’d map out a route
And find it leading to me.
And when people ask
Why?
In all that's holy
And all that's hell-
Why?

He will say
With rage in his eyes
And hope like hate in his heart
‘She was never my choice.’

And they will think
That everything has tilted right
That he threw me over
And I lost the fight.

And none will know
Save him and I
The truth between omission and a lie.

You look familiar...have i seen you somewhere?

2010-03-09T13:23:00.000-08:00

Someone once wrote that people are often depressed in the present- not because they're unhappy- but because they can't visualise a future that's better. They miss the fleeting present all too quickly and they honestly- just can't see any possibility of something that might bring greater happiness. It's a downhill slide and you can already see everything from where you're standing. Or you think you see it, which is different and possibly more dangerous.
I'm at that point now.
I'm not particularly happy but I'm not miserable either. I'm better now as a divorcee than as a married woman.But when i think of what my future holds, I get a twinge in my being- deep where all my fears hover- and my breath comes out like little staccato stops.
You see, I know that we teach people how to treat us. We show them all the time what we will accept and what we will reject- and as a Serial Smiler and Seeker of Shit- I attract people like old reruns on Groundhogs Day. Same personality, different face, constant deja vu.
And i'm not certain how to set it aright. Which switch to rip off and burn?

I want to change the future the Present Me holds. And that means I have to change the Present Me. But even though I would love to kick her out, bags flying- I've grown so used to her commentary in my head that I'm not sure I won't take pity on her, if she crawls back to my threshold, knocking on my door and begging to be let in. I've taken pity on everyone else so far... so I don't trust myself to ignore this sneaky little baggage and tell her where to go (in astericks and lots of exclamation marks).

So I'm poised on an uneasy precipice of self-doubt ...and alliteration. Because even though this might be Present Me gargling out her poison... she sounds so convincing when she points out that- if Execrable (husband) was his nickname- why do I need to change? If I'm in the right, there's no need to start stirring up a new personality. Because changing is admitting a fault. Changing means there was something wrong with me that I have to fix.And soon enough, with my overactive guilt complex...i'll be holding the reins of my broken marriage in my hands and admitting to everyone that it was I who strangled my exhusband with them. Behold the murder weapon.

And no one will notice the little smile quivering around the edges of his mouth. That big fake.

I don't want another person like him in my life. He was just the end face in a long line of taunting reruns.
So I think- it's time to try something different. Perhaps my Voice will help when I find it. She doesn't have to be loud, but she had better be firm.

So to all the future ghosts who will never haunt me-
I don't want you in my life. I might have just met you, but I've known you for ever.
And you have nothing that I might possibly want. So go away- and let my rudeness be a sharp message to others like you, that I won't humour their entry into my life. There is no welcome here for your kind. Find someone else to piece up- I'm too tightly wound in masking tape to break down anytime soon.

On Old Times and New Beginnings

2010-03-07T12:10:00.000-08:00

Old Times and New Beginnings sound very civilised. Some might think they are friends; they hug and hold on to each other so tightly. But look a little closer and you see the sheen of sweat that lashes them together, and the quivering cords of muscle that bind and release- and suddenly, you see not a reunion, but a desperate act of parting. Because Old Times and New Beginnings are the oldest sumo wrestlers still to lumber around this earth.

And they are fighting over Me.

My money is on Old Times, but my hope is for New Beginnings. Except NB seems a bit flighty and weak and apt to giggle at inopportune moments. It will take time for NB to win anything with his awkwardness and uneasy awareness of himself. He is too often the hero of tomorrow without standing his ground today.

But Old times and New Beginnings must part ways- one must give in to the other. This eternal battle can only last as long as my eternity- and i am ever so tired of sunday afternoons of old regrets and restless naps!
So I write for the sake of helping NB.

This blog is for tomorrow's sake. It is so that I can awake and whisper to my pillow- I am this much closer to finding my Voice. You see, voices are easily replaced or ignored or deafened. Like clothing in a charity shop, you poke through them and find one you can afford, even if it means pulling and yanking and tucking it in.Releasing the edge here, and hemming the bottom so it doesn't drag you down to someone else's low. Pretending that it's yours and not an unknown person's second rate leftovers. Sometimes, we might think ourselves lucky to find a voice we recognise. We know the old owner, and we think it will be a comfortable fit- but it never is. And only when you see them, wearing their voice, only a paler shade, a tad too tight- do you notice the slight smirk in the old owner's eyes. They know where you got it from.
And they take pity on you, as good charity giver's do- except for that sudden flash of an amused glint, when your voice doesn't behave and others can see the foil between old, comfortable owner and new host.

So I am looking for my Voice. I'm not sure if she must be found or created yet.I don't know if I can recognise her from when I cast her off. It was such a long time ago- and I was scared. I didn't want a solitary voice that held only echoes of herself. So I bundled her up and hid her so deep, that I can't even remember the color of my Voice now.
She might even be taken by another imposter- and I would never know it.

But still.
I want my Voice back. I want my Voice to cheer on New Beginnings, and to scream like a wailing banshee at Old Time's painful death.
A wailing banshee of a voice to croon a song of sleeplike death for a silly, stupid girl- and hum something light for the woman who must shrug her off.

Not just any voice- but Mine.