uninspired

i can be wrong and you
you

can be
beautiful.

lost
(in the space of you)
between two heartbeats
is a reckless
wish

come on,
let’s go.

(the space of you
is
an ache)

26/06/06

I am a hundred different shades of tired tonight. A hundred kinds of lonesome.
In the back of my mind I have a feeling that I have lost something.
(And I suspect I know what it is.)

Tonight I am resigned the way a pebble meeting the toe of a kicking shoe is resigned.

Escape just might be one flight away. But what hurts is the knowledge that I have myself to return to.

space/older

I don't have the heart to tell them that they are old and I have a crippling, morbid fear of leaving them all alone.


(Ammi says life is like the GRE; the harder you try to become a better person, the more difficult it becomes to do the right thing. Ammi says the 'right thing' is determined by your heart, not your brain. Ammi still knows everything.)


If I reach out far enough, will I touch you?

1:21 a.m

I need to mark this day.
Puppho passed away, and I learned another billion things.
This bridge crossing over from childhood to adulthood just won't come to an end.

: )

Uff khudaya everybody needs to be in my head right now because I have Third Eye Blind and Sarah Mchlachlan playing inside.
A baby lizard is dancing on the kitchen floor.
I am going to miss my deadline.
I need to take a bath.

~ t h e e n d ~

All the obvious answers are wrong.

I am torn between the desire to let this pass, and to dissect it.
Positivity’s on vacation.

(The blue arc'd, rising quickly up in the air and then descending, slowly at first then gathering speed, ending with an oddly satisfying, almost melodic ch-ing and I know milnayjulnay are dead in their rain-proof wrapping paper. That’s the end of that source of dissonance.)

I re-read bits of The Lovely Bones, that pedestrian hollywood-esque story where all ends are tied up neatly eventually and still it wrenches my heart which is not in its place already because

this is the aftermath ... and everything dissolves.
I clean the inside of the microwave with the world’s biggest lump in my throat.

Everything that is no that is not right that is given up that is smoothed over that is compensated for that is made okay because of this is wrong again today and I am distraught. Despite this studied, carefully embraced detachment I am unaccustomed to new kinds of silence, a new type of loneliness, a new sort of independence that leaves my knees buckling. The one long moment of simultaneous betrayal and elation behind the flats when Papa let go of the blue bicycle and it kept going under me over the gravel is happening again. I am left debating whether or not I can do it, do I run, or do I hide? I am left debating who I am, am I strong enough?

I am left debating. I am left.

In my peripheral vision I see myself closing doors.

14th June 2006

I stood outside the door to Asma's living room for two slow minutes. Hysterical giggling obscure remixed Indian songs and shrieks spilled out from under the door and I said to Allah Mian 'please make this easy' and in fifteen minutes I had the perfect exit strategy, of course Ali and Umair weren't coming over to study, of course I went home and slept, relieved.

I call Apya at her house and she's really at our house and she says these two people were asking about you and that's exactly who they are: People. Two little persons, so very real, Yumna's hugs are real and warm and fat and Abdullah watches clean and they smell clean and beautiful.

I GREed and the essays are my favourite part I want to do this again they leave the doors open for sociologists and psychologists and dreamers and economists and isn't that just my niche.

But this score I don't have the heart to tell Bhayya and fuck this music filling up my brain again slowing me down filling out the empty spaces where t h o u g h t s should be.

And I don't have the heart to say it but there's just so many things happening at the same time and yet as the urgency disappears rapidly and expectation dies one germ at a time I give myself time and this too shall pass but I feel like a helium balloon with a stone in the middle. I'm grounded, but dude, I could float.

So whatisitwhatisitwhatisitthatkeepsmesofuckingedgy? I can understand this feeling of my life falling into place and the dislocation this unfamiliarity of having myself as the vortex the very centre of my universe the clarity the feeling of never belonging in a place for more than five minutes easily bored and shifting and twisting myself in new directions to find out who I am but what I don't understand is really, how light my body feels on the mattress.

exhaling

I am thinking doctorate now I am thinking settling down I am thinking solitude and then


There's a song by Frou Frou on the radio that does it. In the dying light of the setting sun in the darkened room I hold my fake redbrown hair away from my forehead in the mirror and today

I could be a post-modernist's vision of deconstructed, shattered beauty with manicured hands I could
and my face melts into the shadows and I let myself fall on the bed delicately

my bones must be tinkling inaudibly somewhere

Deep into the night we sit in the basement working on squares inscribed in circles and circles inscribed in squares and I think of how it takes Ammi just one hour of cupboard cleaning to leave me so completely displaced.



(Someone wrote: I'm nowhere and there's nothing. It's as if there's no time and space here. Just the moment, with no hint in my mind as to what might have preceded it. It's not that I am, it's more like I merely do.)