Blogging helps.

So, here it is. Or, I should say, here we are. Again.

It is not enough to know a language, to be able to immerse yourself in it. It is not enough to feel every comma, taste every meaning, thrill at the touch of a sibilant. That is the plain truth. It is not enough.

What you really need is the power of flight. You need to leave the language behind you like you would shed your clothes before stepping into the shower. Because, if you must have it frankly, the language just gets in your way.

The problem is though, that you become accustomed to the language. It is easy to become expert at spelling "loquacious" or learning to distinguish between the purposes fulfilled by a semi-colon rather than a colon. It easy because it is safe. The well known warmth, like that pair of threadbare cotton panties that appreciates the roundness of your bum just so, tenderly, is welcoming. It does not require squeezing or coaxing or the commodity that is hardest to come by, the courage to squeeze and to coax.

I do not talk about the ordinary, everyday courage that you need to put on lipstick and smile at a stranger without wondering whether there's lipstick on your teeth. I talk, rather, about that particular brand of courage that you borrow from insanity.

To think, first, and then to believe that those thoughts must be not proffered but thrust in to the mind of another, it takes a special sort of something. Let us pretend it is bravery. Let us even pretend that at least in some cases it is welcome. Dickens, comes to mind. Austen is another. And yet those names themselves should frighten any but the most foolhardy, surely. To follow in the deep trenches left by those lithe footsteps. Presumption itself must tremble at the thought.

Well satisfied, chastened, even, you beat a determined retreat. The fingers might itch in passing, keys might receive lingering looks and wistful sighs but the chin remains ever defiantly raised and the heart skips hardly a beat. Some thing lies in abeyance.

But you must write e-mails, after all. People need to keep in touch. Donne, that wise man, said once I believe that no man was an island. Even less of an island is a woman. Some might say she is more an oasis where Arabs and camels talk to the palm trees, as they chew on dates. The trick is to strike the right note in the e-mail. To never cheat, never flirt, never even try to look up that tempting skirt but to keep the note informal, informative and always without a flourish. That is the way to keep that some thing abeyed.

Maybe just the tiniest quip. A quip can do no harm. It is lighthearted, aiming to do nothing but create a smile in passing. A venture at a pun, maybe. You know old So-and-So enjoys his puns. There is no malice in a pun, unless it is intended. Everyone knows that. And all too quickly, the email is done. There is only so much that can happen in one life and the telling of it tends to create reduction. Embroidering is out of the question. That argument has been argued to a conclusion. There is not even anyone else to email.

And yet, those fingers - they will itch. Those looks, they will linger and those sighs most of all will insist on wisting fully. The monitor wists back. The keys glisten. The rising flood of thoughts must leave now. Must. leave. now.!


So, here it is. Or, should I say, here we are? Again.

War

In the end, it's the self-loathing that does you in. She knew this. Or at least she pretended she knew this. That was one way of coping with it, and that was her way so least said about it the better. If you reconstruct reality pleasantly enough, it seems winkingly real and that's enough to satisfy all but the most exacting.

Ah, that man in the leather jacket checked me out in the bus, I must be pretty, she would think. Or she goes out of her way to find me and talk to me, I must be a nice person otherwise why would she like me? I got invited to their party and theirs and theirs and theirs, clearly I'm popular. Sometimes, the polish wore thin. And for a moment, the glimpse of self-loathing was confusing. Was the self-loathing the real part of reality or was the nonself-liking of her the real-er?. If her judgment couldn't be trusted then surely everyone else's could be? But a-ha, the hole in the donut of logic: if I can't trust my own judgment how can I esteem my-self.

She sometimes wondered if she was insane. But then if you wonder about your state of sanity, you have to BE sane. Or so she thought she remembered someone else saying. And other people were so sure of their opinions so they must be right. Why couldn't she be like them. Fitting in was easy, it was *knowing* that you fit in. That was the tricky bit. But that was just her opinion and she had just proved that her opinion wasn't worth much. No wonder she loathed herself. At least I'm showing good judgment in that, she would think.

And so, as Billy Pilgrim would have said, it goes.

Three Months, It's Been. Let's Hear a Rousing Welcome Back Cheer.

A woman went to the super market. She needed a can of soup. Not just any soup but a particular kind. She didn't think she'd be able to find it in just any old super market. She looked first in Aisle 2: Soup, Noodles and Assorted Instant Foods. Not there. She then looked in Aisle 22: Asian Cuisine. Not there either. Last shot, Aisle 14: Canned Food. Not there either. She did a cursory search through the rest of the super market. She couldn't find it. She walked back home, not at all surprised that she'd been right. It happened to her all the time.

It's that time of the Year

There is no need to get flustered, dearhearts, because Flaffy hasn't disappeared. Flaffy has just temporarily gone on a Real Life Binge (where she picked up this ridiculous habit of referring to herself as Flaffy). The thing about this whole Real Life deal is that it has consequences. Because there's all these Real People and they have Real Feelings. It isn't like being here. Where anything goes, because when it comes down to it, you can always cut and run. If you think someone's getting too close, or crowding you or rushing in where angels fear to tread you needn't reply to their comments/messages/e-mails. You can just pretend they don't exist and voila they will disappear. At least they will, eventually. If they're not really psycho stalkers. And as y'all know this blog never attracts psycho stalkers. Ever!

Maybe that's the difference between the internet and real life. The internet's so much more convenient. It has built-in safeguards. And sometimes those safeguards themselves can make you do stupid things, say stupid things or be stupid things but still at the end of it, those safeguards will still be there (unless you're abysmally stupid and take it off line). I don't know (have you noticed how so many of my posts are about me explaining how i don't know the answer to almost every question in the universe? seems to me to be a recurring theme). I don't think that the internet's helpful in bettering social skills, it's a lukewarm medium of communication and at best a means of sporadically keeping in touch with people you don't really care about with as little investment of time and energy as possible. But I do think it's a lovely place to pretend that life has no consequences. Just when you need a break. Like the Bahamas.

Since it's that time of the year when we talk vacation, I thought I should put this out there. An advance Christmas thing. Hope it helps (especially all of you who get exactly two days off for Christmas unlike some of us who get a month off - just saying).

The Thing about Dreams

She lost her voice two days ago and by the end of the day she feels unable to differentiate between reality and dreams. She doesn't know anymore where her dreams start and where they end. She went to work today, met all the people she normally meets, sat through the seminars she normally sits through, smiled good morning at the shuttle driver like she normally does. But somehow she feels like she should pinch herself. See if she wakes up with a start, back in her white bed with the pink comforter pulled up to her chin. She thinks maybe it's because she isn't participating in her world anymore. She's disengaged. Whenever anyone talks to her she mouths "I've lost my voice". Before they launch into conversation. She can't converse. Which makes it all bizarre because conversation is her thing. She loves the thrust and parry of it. Their faces quickly become apologetic and they mouth back "I'm sorry". Why, she doesn't know. An empathetic loss of voice, maybe. But people don't limp when they meet a guy without a leg. Do they? Then they go back to their conversations, slipping back into the talking world, leaving her not behind but at the side. Watching, listening, smiling but not actually belonging. Maybe that's why it feels like a dream. Because she really doesn't feel all that much anymore.

She thinks this is how it must feel to float.

I am partial to Monet though I love Van Gogh for his sliced ear

Never saw so perfect a sky,
so blue. Where did those blues come from?
Even startled cypresses shriek they
never saw so perfect a sky
with boats floating on sunset rays.
The tragic inspires. Bet joy
never saw so perfect a sky.
So blue, where did those blues come from.


ShowerGod Epiphany #3: Boredom makes one do strange things, especially if one's just gone and seen too many French masterpieces (the words too many making the phrase an oxymoron).

Skinful

Some days, she can't remember who she is. Words like "And I’m not sure where I belong, And no where’s home and I'm all wrong....And all the dark and all the lies were all the empty things disguised as me" buzz around her head like peculiarly relentless bees, assuming malignant significance.

So she seeks out the sun. Lets the light wash over her face. Feels the warmth soaring through her. Watches her skin darken gradually into a deep mocha brown. Somehow this causes a release of relief. No more bewildering camouflage.

Browning skin reminds her elusively of something. Maybe half imagined, half remembered afternoons filled with the smell of Madras summers and the silent patter of flying feet. Long-ago tree branches conquered by dangling legs and lazy talk. Running around in pigtails, flushed and breathless, bent on some game more serious than all of life itself.
She doesn't know. But the reminder is reassuring, grounding somehow.

She steps back into the cool of air conditioning feeling like she's been reintroduced to herself. This is me, she feels like she's flying a banner. Proclaiming it contentedly to every one of the disinterested. This is me.

Like a pigmentary badge of honor, fleeting in victory, fading to anonymity in pokey disused corners of the attic, rediscovered on rainy afternoons. An affirmation of things that make a life.

Boxes Marked "Random Stuff" Are Opened At One's Own Peril

She sits surrounded by packing boxes. Most of them yet to be opened. Marked boringly "Kitchen Stuff" or "Hall Light, Parts". She's just finished with the one marked "Candles". She has her priorities right. She wonders what to start on next. It catches her eye. The little cardboard box. "Random Stuff" it proclaims in black marker filched from the lab. It's the obvious choice. She finds a mess of papers inside, piled in any which way. She sees the corner of what looks like a card sticking out. She pulls it out of the heap. She reads the little ditty scrawled in blue ink inside. Written with a smile, read with a giggle. Memories of her most recent birthday. Spent with one of her best gfs and a bunch of guys who joined the party after it had kicked off. One of the guys had given her the card the next day. Apparently insisting that everyone at the party call her Paris Hilton (!!!! Really have to lay off those martinis!!!) and declare that she's just turned nineteen had been a big hit. It had been a nice night. Atleast the bits of it she remembers. She puts the card into the Madden shoe box she keeps for memories. She picks up a letter from her baby sister, covered in sparkly sticky butterflies. An illustrated text of her sister's daily activities. She chuckles as she sees the line of XO kisses at the bottom. Into the Madden box. A letter from someone she met recently but who has become surprisingly special surprisingly quickly. Scribbled on the back of a treatise on calibration systems. Of course she has to read all three pages again. Letters from her older sister. Sketches. A recycled-paper lampshade given her by someone who had once been kinda special. A CD with a song written for her by someone who had once been more than special. A bunch of old photographs. Smiling faces set in backdrops that bring dead days back to life. A letter from her ex-roommate bitching about the current roomie situation. A continent away. The letter seems to contain within itself a whiff of cold grey English air. So many memories collected in such a short time. How does anyone manage to hold so much so close. Rain drips outside with satisfactorily depressing monotony and the yellow-grey light filters in through the window. iTunes obligingly cues Good Charlotte to sing The Chronicles of Life and Death.

But now you're old, cold, covered in blood
Right back to where you started from.

It somehow feels appropriate. Significant even. It's an afternoon designed for melancholic nostalgia. She submits. But not with good cheer. That would spoil everything.

S.O.S

She likes to leave the lights off. That way the greyness of the day seeps into the living room. Conquering surfaces. Till the red of the rug is only a remembered red. She likes looking outside, rain-gazing. Feeling it diffuse into the air around her. Soon the room will be a ghost room. Her hand holding the cup of tea a shadow. The tea a deeper ring of darkness. With every sip, it's darkness pooling inside her. She wonders why light is associated with warmth when darkness is so much more blanketing. She imagines the sun setting behind the clouds. Unheeded. Unheralded. Quietly into the sunset? All the clouds huddle together. Rumbling in bass. Flashing in tenor. She doesn't even light the candles. Suppose the flickering chases the grey into corners. She looks up at the ceiling, it's ghostly paleness hovers over her comfortingly. The constant drumming of the rain on the garage roof reigns, with panicky chatter, over the stillness. A desperate tattoo. She listens for the refrain. Three dots three dashes three dots. God patiently waiting for help, Art and Paul humming about pocketfuls of mumbles that are promises. It rains all night. Until faltering hope is finally washed away with the first rays of the sun. Maybe next time.