the great unsettling
(mostly neutral)
this week’s Thought (singular)
it’s 2:16am, must you force me to have a thought during these ungodly hours
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 sleep on time the night before an 8:30am class. thank you for joining us. may you feel well-rested and not struggle to keep your eyes open in the morning. i’m going to regret not drafting this tomorrow instead of staying up to do it now as i am.
a very warm welcome to old readers as well. may good sense continue to prevail.
Before We Begin
last issue, i had introduced thodi together (TT) - where i ask you a question, you give me an answer, and we have a community edition of thodi.
all the answers i’ve gotten so far have been so incredibly delightful. i decided to keep the space for responses open for a bit longer, so if anybody missed it last week, my enthusiasm to know your answer is no less diminished.
let me know!
hi
things have been going off the axis a bit lately - whatever the axis is. it reminded me of a thodi from last year that i had written, and i thought i’d try to do something similar this time.
i’m not sure where i’m facing. it feels like i’m standing in a 3-D space with no axes, just whiteness all around me. no backwards, no forwards, no left or right - just me in the middle (can there be a middle in an emptiness?) of an endless space. i am all out of frames of reference for growth. i can’t tell if what i’m doing is growing or shrinking, speeding up or slowing down, getting better or getting worse.
if i take a step in any direction, something gets triggered and there’s an impact on my body, some physical feeling of a great force knocking the wind out of me. i don’t know if the aftermath makes me fall to the ground, or stand taller. all i know is that a weight has been added, and there is no floor to set it down.
very often, i think some big celestial joke is happening that everybody is a part of except me. like the universe is pointing and laughing at me and i’m a silly little girl in the middle of a circle of standing and pointing and laughing people and i am small small small. there is no gap at the circumference, and whatever is outside the laughter is just more whiteness. this feeling of foolishness grows and grows until the colour of the space tinges green with my envy for the people at the edges. is there anybody else this small in this vastness?
if something concrete begins to take shape in the middle of the empty space, it is struck down by an invisible sniper just when i begin to seek solace in its presence. any and all certainty is wrenched away by harsh truths that enter with an almost casual terror and simplicity. no nonsense, no fluff. joys and prides that once were, things that were as familiar to my skin and person as the froth of sea waves are to the grains of sand on the shore, are similarly half-formed and quashed. it’s like waving goodbye to a dear friend on loop, and being forced to relive the snatching away of the warmth of their parting hug.
i am discovering new things about others and about myself and about the world everyday, and all these things are beautiful and terrible, and before i can swallow and digest one of them, the others are shot at me out of a cartoonish cannon, like some sort of twisted joke. i struggle to juggle all the discoveries, and those that i cannot hold are strewn around me in a chalk outline, getting more stale with every passing day that they aren’t consumed. by the time i get around to them, they’re bland and grey, going down my gullet untasted and sitting heavy in my aching belly.
this feels like a great unsettling. i have been unceremoniously lifted up by a cosmic claw machine and dropped in the middle of this openness, and somewhere in the process, all my organs have jumbled and gotten entangled inside me. my trains of thought are running on bent, intersecting tracks, and my heart is so full to the brim, that sometimes it feels empty. everything has been dislodged. with the energy of a child throwing a tantrum in a candy store, i want it all to go back to how it was. put me back in place. put everything in me back in place.
ps: thodi hit 250 subscribers last week! in gratitude and joy, i send you some of my favourite sounds–the plop of fat raindrops falling onto the leaves of a tree, the gentle rumble of a sleepy cat purring when you pet her, the soft and relieved exhale of a friend when you hug them, and the sizzling of onion, garlic, and capsicum on a pan. i hope you hear these sounds, and all the love that they’re bundled in.
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
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this week’s Song
find all shared songs here.
thank you for reading, and see you next week <3