this week’s Thought (singular)
every night i wander from room to room, trudging in the dark with my pillows and blanket trailing behind me, looking for a place that’s cool enough for me to fall asleep, like a ghost haunting a victorian mansion, occasionally grumbling out miscellaneous sounds of discontent
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 get an adrenaline rush so good that they feel like they could do anything. thank you for joining us. may you feel alive.
a very warm welcome to old readers as well. may good sense continue to prevail.
hi
before we begin–i’m trying something new this week. i will not be telling you what that something new is. if somebody figures it out, please don’t tell the others (i am sure you all interact with each other regularly #fandom). onward!
i stood in the balcony for the entirety of the first real rainfall of summer. i watched the lightning, and i heard the thunder, and i took off my glasses and tipped my face up towards the rolling clouds and felt like something close to crying. i saw two young girls shriek with delight in the initial drizzle, preliminary panic and a mad dash to get indoors followed by joyful giggles as they chose to stay under the fat droplets instead. i saw a woman about to enter the safety of shelter, before instead dropping her bag on a nearby bench, removing her hair-tie, and standing in the middle of the rain with her eyes closed and a smile on her lips. it felt like witnessing some sort of private rebirth.
april was an odd month. i quit my job. i got a measure of clarity about the immediate future. i began to find joy in the things that i had been meaning to start but had never really gotten around to starting until now–crocheting (a blanket for a baby), painting (on a paint by numbers canvas), running (for the rush, adrenaline, community, accomplishment). i celebrated functions with family and birthdays with friends, and surrounded myself with the love, awkwardness, and grace of both. i voted for the first time. i never missed an opportunity to take a picture of the sky–however sunny, however blue, however devastatingly cloud-less. i took pictures of leafless trees, browning in the heat, and i took pictures of lush branches that were a relief to step under. i realised a new appreciation for coconut water and buttermilk and fruit juice. i had something called strawberry tender from a tiny stall set up on a dining table outside cubbon park on a sunny saturday morning, and observed the crushed ice travelling down my esophagus like a blessing. the month marked a year since my grandfather had passed away, and i sat with his spectre hovering over my consciousness. april was an odd month.
things that have been transforming under the surface, things that have been hacked and hawed at for months have begun to emerge in different forms, with different results. i feel a purge and i feel a relief and i feel a renewal and i feel a grief.
some days, i feel like a bud, tender and green, struggling to stay upright in wind, however gentle. beauty hidden and resilience only a matter of habit. some days, i am a tree. a large, sturdy bark, like the one on the pavement that i always pass on the way to the metro station near my house. unshakeable, solid. i am realising a new reverence for nature, for trees in particular. i find their weightiness aspirational, their quiet wisdom more audible to me. i think i am learning to listen to the plants and the birds, to the clouds that seem so rare these days and the large snails that come out in the late evenings on the pebbled footpath.
a stray cat in my block gave birth to three kittens one afternoon. somebody had put up a cardboard box on the stair case landing, lined it with a blanket. my mother and i watched the three wiggling fur-piles, still with their eyes closed. i remember running a single finger, just the tip of my index, over the new mother’s forehead, along her spine, before coming back to slowly scratch the back of her ear, under her neck. the fur-piles continued wiggling as they fed. the mother yawned.
i imagine myself transferring love and kindness when i witness an animal. i imagine that they can sense me repeating in my head ‘thank you for letting me pet you can you feel my gentleness can you feel that i am capable of tenderness’ and try to establish some sort of connection between their slow-blinking eyes and my babbling coos.
i watch a tiny bird sitting in my balcony, head tilted towards the flashing lights on the television, and extend an invisible tether towards its small, twittering body. when it flies away, i let the cord go with it. i let myself soar.
in the midst of this emergence, i fight through self-critique of being bad at things that i’ve just begun doing. i hear them, those pesky reminders that i’m not running as fast or as long as i should be, that my stitches are too tight or not fluid enough, and i remind myself that i am learning. i remind myself that the search for perfection is a lost cause, particularly so while picking up activities for the first time in my life. i am not always successful–self-beratement is violently simple, like a ruinous second nature–but still, i try.
and in the midst of this emergence, i also fight worry. i reprobate myself for feeling Scared and Tired when i should be feeling Excited and Happy, and get into an ouroboro-esque cycle of thinking about what i should be and what i am instead of that. i feel shaken up, like i’ve had to pull myself up by my bootstraps and now i don’t know how to stay upright. in this fight, i attempt forgiveness and Letting Things Happen.
i am trying to simply allow. i am trying to channel the gentleness of flower buds towards myself, wrapping my Self in layers of soft petals until even i can’t break through to strike my most vulnerable parts. i am trying to take my hands off the wheel, or, at the very least, unclench my fingers from the leather a little bit. both activities sting, seem unnatural and unintuitive in a way only growth can.
i am always thinking about growth.
ps: happy may :D
if you liked this post, please hit the like button! it’ll help more readers discover thodi and join this lovely community. thank you!
The Good Side of the Internet
… has been permanently shifted to The Good Side of the Internet. subscribe for many many links at the end of each month, and tell your friends about it :D
this week’s Song
Good Looking by Suki Waterhouse
find all shared songs here.
thank you for reading, and see you next week <3