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Silence Reclaimed

These days I am cherishing the silence around the workplace, and the leisure as well. Coworkers are busy with their own visits and projects, hence, no chitter chatter, no ringing phones and mobile phones, no gossip, no visitors. This is the beauty of silence, the blissful solitude. It won’t last long because they would be back soon enough. I am listening to Endless Summer Nights right now by Richard Marx. The weather was amazing uptill today. The flu is all gone but a nasty headache or backache kicks in at times. I guess managing to strike all those sexy pillate posses at the exercise mat in the gym infront of all those women struggling on the treadmill, didn’t work!
I am getting back to people who got back to me, kept in touch all this while; patiently riding the roller coasters of my moods, waiting as the dramas of my life unfold, the strands unravel. I can be only one thing to them: thankful….People whom you are only beginning to know can crack you up and make you laugh for a very long time. While sometimes even your best friend forgets your birthday and you have to shrug your shoulder and tell him/her: “It’s ok!”, even when deep down you know that it is not, because it’s the sign of time, a reminder that things aren’t the same anymore.

This week, I finally I managed to drag myself to the salon for a trim. I do like to carry around the weight of the dead tresses as much as carrying nay pushing forward the weight of my dead dreams. Internalizing things is toxic, but that’s also what fuels some of us to keep on moving forward –anger, disappointments, reliance, and stubbornness! A different kind of dark energy!

At the salon, my regular gal wasn’t around and I came to know that her already-out-of-work husband doesn’t want her to work anymore. He suspected her of having an affair, as she was staying back at the salon as late as 10 pm. “But why?” I asked the owner. “She has been doing that since her father’s death a few months back.” I guess everyone is trying to come to terms with some inner wound. I hope she would sort the stuff in her life and get back soon.

A different kind of negative energy is in the air; suicide bombing, strife, clashes, violence, planes and trains exploding, colliding, tsunami, earthquake, Israel and Palestine in an open and unequal war. It’s crazy, it’s scary. I don’t want to read newspapers or switch on a news channel. At the end of the day I want to clutch my tea mug, close my eyes and tell myself: “None of this is real!” Those who have been effected by this violence might not be my father, mother, brother or sister, but they were of some body. So I want to bury my head in the sand and pretend that the world is a good place to be. I want silence and I want peace!

115322323167044412

Silence Reclaimed

These days I am cherishing the silence around the workplace, and the leisure as well. Coworkers are busy with their own visits and projects, hence, no chitter chatter, no ringing phones and mobile phones, no gossip, no visitors. This is the beauty of silence, the blissful solitude. It won’t last long because they would be back soon enough. I am listening to Endless Summer Nights right now by Richard Marx. The weather was amazing uptill today. The flu is all gone but a nasty headache or backache kicks in at times. I guess managing to strike all those sexy pillate posses at the exercise mat in the gym infront of all those women struggling on the treadmill, didn’t work!
I am getting back to people who got back to me, kept in touch all this while; patiently riding the roller coasters of my moods, waiting as the dramas of my life unfold, the strands unravel. I can be only one thing to them: thankful….People whom you are only beginning to know can crack you up and make you laugh for a very long time. While sometimes even your best friend forgets your birthday and you have to shrug your shoulder and tell him/her: “It’s ok!”, even when deep down you know that it is not, because it’s the sign of time, a reminder that things aren’t the same anymore.

This week, I finally I managed to drag myself to the salon for a trim. I do like to carry around the weight of the dead tresses as much as carrying nay pushing forward the weight of my dead dreams. Internalizing things is toxic, but that’s also what fuels some of us to keep on moving forward –anger, disappointments, reliance, and stubbornness! A different kind of dark energy!

At the salon, my regular gal wasn’t around and I came to know that her already-out-of-work husband doesn’t want her to work anymore. He suspected her of having an affair, as she was staying back at the salon as late as 10 pm. “But why?” I asked the owner. “She has been doing that since her father’s death a few months back.” I guess everyone is trying to come to terms with some inner wound. I hope she would sort the stuff in her life and get back soon.

A different kind of negative energy is in the air; suicide bombing, strife, clashes, violence, planes and trains exploding, colliding, tsunami, earthquake, Israel and Palestine in an open and unequal war. It’s crazy, it’s scary. I don’t want to read newspapers or switch on a news channel. At the end of the day I want to clutch my tea mug, close my eyes and tell myself: “None of this is real!” Those who have been effected by this violence might not be my father, mother, brother or sister, but they were of some body. So I want to bury my head in the sand and pretend that the world is a good place to be. I want silence and I want peace!

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Black Zodiac

The unexamined life’s no different from
the examined life -
Unanswerable questions, small talk,
Unprovable theorems, long-abandoned arguments
You’ve got to write it all down.
Landscape or waterscape, light-length on evergreen, dark sidebar of evening,
you’ve got to write it down.

Charles Wright

There are 3 types of situations in life; those that you can let go of, those that you can ignore, and finally those you have to live with, because frankly there isn’t much that you can do about it. Parents and their hang ups come in the third category (and so do most of the things in life – sigh!).
Sure enough, the past few days have been strange for me in certain ways. In attempting to get rid of things that don’t work for me anymore. I took a break from thinking. Yes somehow it happened. People usually see breakdowns as something where the person just stops functioning and breaks down like a juke box. However, for me, the normalcy of my routines and my idiosyncrasies never cease function. I can’t afford to, I am too responsible for that. Hence, I worked through neck crunching deadlines, through appointments, through coworkers, students etc who were vying for my attention. I listened to them, solved their language and writing related problems, all the while curbing the instinct to plant a big fat slap on their cheeks. Why many of these adult learners chose to get pregnant during this study period when they already are struggling through so many aspects of the academic life is beyond me. And why I have to accommodate, and try to knock some sense into these ultra pregnant women is also beyond me. While at home, I slogged through my routine at home, cooking, laundering, cleaning up, and listening to my parents’ rants and appeasing them (we may try NOT talking for two to three days and then fall back into the routine). Yet that out-of-body and out-of-my-own- mind feeling was there, as if I am looking at the world inside out, submerged under water. I was aware of people’s existence, and yet no one or nothing mattered to me. Whether they were in touch, were caring about me or not, were there or not, didn’t matter. Although I have always wanted to be feeling-less, emotionless, yet when it finally happened, it didn’t feel right. It felt weird. Being overtly sensitive might kill you, but being insensitive or getting thru life without feeling anything, just might kill me too.

Thanks for writing and getting in touch all of you! I am ok. I have decided that now I would have several small squabbles with my folks, then having one big confrontation. Not that the confrontation solves anything. They would continue to see life from their own lens, and I would continue to look through mine. The other day I walked in the mid of some unnamed movie on TV and the finale sort of struck a note with me. It was something to the effect: We are all injured! We have to figure out how injured we are. Because it’s always the less injured who have to go carry the more injured through.

And I know I am the less injured one, only because I have the guts to walk through the rut of my life, making it work everyday, every other moment.