[05:51, 1/30/2018] +91 0: “Detachment,” writes May Sarton, “must be cultivated against the longing to be perfectly open and receptive.”
[06:33, 1/30/2018] +91 0: These minutes here are all my own
[06:33, 1/30/2018] +91 0: I am inside the quilt. In the dim light of my phone, I read an essay on Thumri and queer love and how disconcertion is also a form of connection
[06:33, 1/30/2018] +91 0: My house here doesn’t have wifi and the network reception of my service provider is really bad too
[06:33, 1/30/2018] +91 0: So during the day am unable to do much.
[06:33, 1/30/2018] +91 0: As much as I love daylight, this house where I was born and where I return to each time I say am “going home” has a lot of it.
[06:33, 1/30/2018] +91 0: Sometimes so much of it that it does not give much space to other things.
[06:33, 1/30/2018] +91 0: Darkness also needs as much space as light does. Don’t you think?
[06:33, 1/30/2018] +91 0: As much as I love sitting in the sun, relaxing my body in this cold, I love the solemn quiet of the dark. Of no questions being asked, no sentences being said, no words, no noise, just a solemn, still quiet.
[06:33, 1/30/2018] +910: Right now though it’s dark in here and my mother sleeps next to me and the morning azaan plays on the loudspeaker outside and all the wall clocks in the house tick together and my father snores and the bells of the temple chime and the street puppies get into a small squibble and I can hear the distant echo of the train’s horn... yet still, these minutes are all mine. No one speaks to me, no one replies on these chat bubbles. I say, I type, I pour and I disappear..
[06:33, 1/30/2018] +91 0: These words slip out of my my mind through my thumbs on to this placid screen and reach you, not knowing when you’re gonna read them. I love these minutes. I live for these too, as much as I live and long for the sun and the cosy confines of the knowledge of the presence of others.
[06:33, 1/30/2018] +91 0: We are still knee deep into the plodding of winters here, it gets frigid cold if you keep your head outside the quilt for too long, but the fun lies in the chill. In experiencing the nip in the air. The quietness, the nimble thawing of time not affecting you.
[06:33, 1/30/2018] +91 0: I think of light, daylight, the yellow light of the tungsten street lamps, the dull rumble of a low voltage bulb hanging from the ceiling of one of rooms in this very house.. I think of the incandescence that light brings with it. And then I think of the dark. How much of joy does darkness hide within it. Why don’t we have a name for the pitch darkness of the night light? On moonless pale still nights, what is the dark outside called and why don’t we seek more pleasure in it?
[06:33, 1/30/2018] +91 0: These smallities, tinctures that have somehow punctured my sleep tonight, I am trying to think a little bit more.
[06:33, 1/30/2018] +91 0: I met a friend last evening, we drank some rum in his car. His brand new SUV which he had a lot of trouble manoeuvring within the city. We smoked a cigarette each. And now I think that maybe that small quantity of alcohol is the reason behind this sleep break. Why do we drink? To forget time or to enjoy it more? To live more deeply or to float around for a bit? I have experienced both and a lot more in between. My fight with time has been a long one. I had always been a very regular child, with a keen ear to instructions, I was always on time. Reaching places before time, being punctual. In that I had tried to beat time. To leave it behind. I had wanted so badly to grow up and get out of this house, which rooms me tonight. Wanting to break free, go anywhere I had made myself water. Without even realising it. And now I am water. Every time I come home I do feel that pang, that urge again to break free and I think that’s what’s keeping a lot of life alive in me. Constant dissonance, never ending dissatisfaction, not wanting to settle at anything... I am on the brink of taking another life altering decision, and maybe it’s to the nervousness of that that I’ve lost sleep tonight and maybe that’s why am not sleeping too soundly as mum pointed out an hour ago, but maybe something always comes out of losing sleep, losing rest, losing track and at times by losing ambition too.
[06:33, 1/30/2018] +910: Tincture
[08:54, 1/30/2018] +91 30: clueless about the strange memory-laden psoriasis that’s my cross to bear. H
Two more thoughts:
What is the grammar of your sleep?
What colour do you sleep in?
[11:20, 1/30/2018] +91 0: My grammar would be triptych, technicolor, white noise...mostly, on other days like a smooth highway leading up to a comfortable destination like home... a non stop journey on the road... quietly alone in the company of someone who also likes to stay mum and yet share a communion
https://youtu.be/a4QQ7HYYdWw