braving the elements
(neutral)
this week’s Thought (singular)
sometimes you have to sit in the dark of your room at midnight and hum made-up songs to yourself
a very warm welcome to all new readers. i love new readers so much that whenever i get an email about a new reader, i manifest that they find the nail-cutter when they need it. thank you for joining us. may you not roam the house, triple-checking every shelf in growing frustration. where is the nail-cutter.
hi
i was braving the elements last week, so i couldn’t arrive in your inbox per schedule (more on that below). in apology, i am sending over some of my favourite smells - freshly baked bread, new book, guitar taken out of storage, petrichor, garlic onion capsicum sizzling on a pan. if you could be so kind as to inhale and forgive, that would be super.
what follows is something i had drafted in a moment of cynicism, and agonised over releasing for the last two weeks. i know we largely talk about ‘good’ things here, and as this little community has grown, i’ve found myself getting increasingly reluctant to put out anything even slightly negative. but, thodi has always, first and foremost, been a place for me to think and feel out loud without ascribing any negativity or positivity to those thoughts and feelings. i’d like to return to that authenticity of being open and not attributing mood-qualifiers to the subject matter. so this is what i was thinking and feeling. onward!
a few weeks ago, i had spoken about joy lists. i made a list of things that made me happy and shared it with you all, and some of you were kind enough to reply with your own lovely lists. thank you. i am delighted at your joy.
later, i realised that two of the points i had mentioned on my list are somewhat related -
having something to look forward to. every bad day being a fleeting period that flashes in your peripheral vision, because you’ve got your eyes set on something exciting in the future. a dear friend coming back to town. a wedding in the family to attend. payday. the weekend. dinner. tea time.
getting done with something you were dreading. all the new space in your brain, all the free room devoid of worry and stress. the vision of the future no longer being blocked by a dark, looming terror, opening up once more to admit relief and joy with the lightness.
i find myself increasingly thinking about time these days. the passage of it, the control over it, the form we perceive it as, the ownership of it.
lately, i feel as if i’m free-falling in a spiral and can’t gain enough friction to slow down. i grab desperately at the air around me, frantic in my search for an anchor but always coming up empty. i feel as if time is moving too fast and i’m there for the ride, unable to step off and take a breather. which would be alright if i were comfortably ensconced and strapped inside the carriage, but i’m not. i can feel the wind whipping at my arms and my hair is flying into my mouth and i’m haphazardly batting at incessantly whirring insects. i’m braving the elements and i’m not feeling very brave about it. it feels like a grit that i don’t possess is being demanded of me and i’m plucking sharp grains of the stuff from the whoosh threatening to knock me down, scraping at the very bottom of my reserves even when i know that there are none to speak of. i can’t get the train to slow down. i’ve never been on one this fast before. i can’t find the controls. i don’t know what the lever looks like, don’t know how to get a solid grip on the thing to push it, don’t know where to look for the big red button. all i want is for the speed to decrease a bit. just enough for me to catch my breath, to re-calibrate, to assess what i know and what i have so i can take stock and make a plan instead of acting with what feels like a necessary impetuousness. i want to be back inside the carriage. how can i get back inside the carriage? there’s mosquito blood on my palms that i haven’t been able to clean off, too busy with swatting the endless stream of them.
the wind brings bad news, sometimes. it howls with the weight of it, shrieking in my ear, throwing me off-balance. all my movements get jerky, imprecise. i can’t seem to focus on anything other than the dread. what the wind screamed at me gets larger, looming over everything else as we speed up. the carriage’s movement gets disorderly, and my position becomes more precarious with every jolt. the elements are out to get me. or perhaps, i can’t tear my concentration away from the black cloud up ahead long enough to pay attention to the smaller agonies. but there’s no breeze quite as cool as the one on the other side of that cloud, and the only way to get there is through.
sometimes, in the middle of the violent, whipping aeolian sound, the wind susurrates good news from the tracks up ahead as well. suddenly, things feel marginally more stable. there is something to look forward to somewhere in front, and that makes all the difference to the intent of moving forward. the search for the carriage door is momentarily halted. i tie my hair and the air around me doesn’t seem so vicious now. i’m too focussed on reaching that point in the tracks. on reaching the good news that the wind rushed to me. the flies are smaller. or perhaps, i am momentarily braver.
is this what being an adult is? the lack of control constantly fluctuating in significance? will the train ever slow down, or will i just find my balance and learn to co-exist with the mosquitoes? most importantly, most significantly, as my wretched, stupid heart questions over and over and over again - is this it?
ps: happy belated diwali!
pps: as i finish editing this, i can’t stop thinking about the phrase ‘braving the elements’ (hence, the title). somewhere in the future, there’s a thodi being drafted entirely about it.
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this week’s Song
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thank you for reading, and see you next week <3
yea im gonna keep this one in my heart for a while