i love change

...and other things i tell myself so i can fall asleep

this week’s Thought (singular)

why do we struggle to find time to do the things we love, instead of making time for them? do we not owe ourselves that much?

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hi

i have been thinking about aging.

childhood allows for a kind of invulnerability from feeling the brunt of truly tragic events. when my grandmother passed last august, it hit me that i had become too old to escape from grief. i could no longer evade its clawing grip. i had grown too much to find a spot where i’d be properly hidden from it. it made me sad and prickly and self-aware. i hated that i could comprehend that loss. i wanted to be young enough to run, but i had no choice but to confront.

i’m at a stage in my life that involves life-changing decisions and future planning. it’s all too serious and important and stuffy, and is this what they call growing up? suddenly having to be responsible for yourself, and starting to worry about your parents? wondering when you’re going to see your friends that you miss terribly, and spending too much time musing about how you should have acted out more when the consequences were negligible?

i still feel like a fourteen year old, and sometimes i wish i could still be treated like a fourteen year old. my god, how have people been doing this for centuries? how has generation after generation gone through the process of aging, and how am i supposed to go through the process of aging?

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Photo by Jae Park on Unsplash

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English Recitation Competition

1. Target Practice, Octavio Paz

   The tide, sleeping on the chest of the sun, dreaming of the moon.
   
   The tide, blue and black, green and purple, dressed in the sun and undressed in the moon, spark of noon and heaving breath of night.
   
   The tide at night, murmur of bare feet on the sand.
   
   The tide, at dawn, opens the eyelids of the day.
   
   The tide breathes in the deep night and, sleeping, speaks in dreams.

2. from Citizen, Claudia Rankine

   You are you even before you
   
   grow into understanding you
   
   are not anyone, worthless,
   
   not worth you.
   
   Even as your own weight insists
   you are here, fighting off
   the weight of nonexistence.

3. 30, Bhawna Jaimini

   You must resist the temptation to be right.
   
   Right is boring. Right is stagnant. Right is
   
   Indoctrination. Be on the wrong or in other
   
   Words, on the left side of the present. You
   
   Are exactly where you are supposed to be
   
   And even if you aren't, there is no way of
   
   Knowing where you should have been?

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Middle School Book Review

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

it’s fantasy/fiction, has dragons and swords, and a supremely well fleshed out slow-burn romance. i bought a physical copy for 800 rupees after reading it online and loving it so much. what else is there to say?

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The Good Side of the Internet

1. Lists of Note - The Anti-Flirt Club

   In the early 1920s, having been subjected to an unending stream of harassment from members of the opposite sex, a group of women in Washington, D. C. decided to form the Anti-Flirt Club, an organisation “composed of young women and girls who have been embarrassed by men in automobiles and on street corners”, its aim being to protect such ladies from any further discomfort. The club’s first meeting took place on 27th February 1923, during which it was decided that the first—and, it seems, only—Anti-Flirt Week would begin a week later, on 4th March. As with all good clubs, a list of rules was issued to its members.

2. Good Things

   A personal compilation of good sensory things in life.

3. Why We Use “lol” So Much

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this week’s Song

Songbird by Nitin and Saroj Sawhney

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thank you for reading, and see you next week <3

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