Saturday 23 March 2024

Little light

I think about death and dying and life and living. The bane of human existence, of being conscious is precisely this. Not the death and dying or the life and living part. But the thinking and feeling of this undeniable truth.

One more thing has started tacking itself to my unoriginal thoughts - the shortness of it all. 

What a fucking shitshow.

Life no longer seems long and endless or whatever I believed it was, previously. Now human beings are fragile, fragile creatures. Like a hummingbird with a little light inside them, flapping its wings for 10 or 20 seconds before suddenly dying, no longer existing, its place taken by dust and light and another hummingbird.

I catch myself thinking these unoriginal thoughts - my unoriginal musings taking me nowhere new, nowhere fun. But in the last few months or maybe weeks, something floated by and brought my boring train of thought to a screeching halt. If life is short and we die and cease to exist before we can fully even comprehend who we are then perhaps our duty is to treat each other well. Or maybe it's just what I must do, regardless of whether it's a duty or obligation. Treat people well. Starting with my family. Treat them better. Hold the light inside everybody preciously. 

Maybe that's the point of existence. Not to create something great. Or to enjoy life. Definitely not to be brave and take on whatever shit life throws at us. Maybe the point of existence is to treat each other like a precious little light. 


UPDATE: Just a day later, this reached my inbox. Here's the Marginalian/Maria Popova with her deep insights on the same topic. 

'You know that the price of life is death, that the price of love is loss, and still you watch the golden afternoon light fall on a face you love, knowing that the light will soon fade, knowing that the loving face too will one day fade to indifference or bone, and you love anyway — because life is transient but possible, because love alone bridges the impossible and the eternal.'


Read up more here - Love Anyway

Saturday 16 March 2024

Sad? Food pics as balm

Feeling a bit down in the dumps. 

Looking at what I ate since the beginning of the year helps me feel a bit better. How come I don't have any pictures of our typical rice-veggies-meat-daal dinners??? 


                    Yesterday's dinner                    
                                                                                           Chicken dumplings and soup


 
Not a big drinker. Bought a case after work. It was okay.


                                                                     This was a 'second dinner' situation.




                                    My fav snack
                                                                                                In my diet era


          Back to regular programming


The achars were so good, alu dum and momos were so-so.
         



            One last hurrah for my skinny self.


                                                                   Pulled back into the world of midnight snacks. 

Wednesday 17 January 2024

trudge

it's so scary to think i have to live, exist, persist, etc., for decades....all the while, i'm slowly rotting and inching nearer to being wiped off. before i jump into the question of existence and purpose and everything futile, i just want to add that i am lost and i don't want answers. i don't even want to question. all my sorrows are puny. i am not the first nor the last nor anything consequential. my only wish would be to dim my desire for wanting anything out of life - most of all the desire to find answers to questions that have evaded all of humanity that came before me. my only consolation is the slowly forming trick i've begun to put into action whenever something pinches me - whatever i am doing is temporary, so this disgusting, challenging thing i'm doing right now is more than a figment of my imagination certainly, but it is fleeting in the vast scheme of things. goodbye! i will learn to look at it dispassionately and move on. trudge, trudge, trudge....toward death and decay.

Saturday 30 December 2023

one night in December

think about how life is haunting

how it pricks and pins you 

as you struggle

how haunting it is 

in its beauty

or is it despair

like a yellowed afternoon

that is both soft and scarred

depending on the memory it contains

do you hold on to life

do you thrash to unwrap it claws off you

what do you do

what do you do

you do not know

you do not understand

all you do

all you know

life is haunting

it haunts you

from the moment you experienced your first heartbreak

you discovered your friends gossiping about you

it broke your heart

or maybe you found your mother counting pennies

and it was a peculiar feeling seeing her stack up those coins

the slight air of helplessness permeating the air

something reared its ugly head

when your lover called you names, not of endearment

the sound of a heart breaking, into twos and fours



Wednesday 15 November 2023

are you doing well?

Spent 10 mins yesterday crying over the masterpiece that is Jaurim's 25, 21

Something about her voice and the atmosphere of the song always gets me. The words she sings can feel so simple but each one is dripping with meaning and life. This song has stood the test of time. 

This led me to think about other songs that have pulled me in. I've never thought of myself as a music lover. I think that's because I always measure passion by the yardstick of my deep love for books and stories. I love books so much. To give an example, I get teary-eyed when I come across booktubers who are clearly so excited and passionate. There was this one person who was filming his reaction to some book award and he was so nervous as if he was the one up for the award. These days I don't have the best feeling about existing so this experience made me feel glad to be alive.

Back to songs that stir my heart in inexplicable ways


sneaking in Jaurim's 25, 21 again as a reminder






Sunday 30 July 2023

hello, darkness, my old friend

some thoughts fleet by my mind suddenly, sometimes - what does it mean to die? why am I afraid of dying? why is death so interesting to me now? why do we consider death so taboo?

I don't know where it started or how, but I found myself suddenly wanting not to live. Not because I had anything terrible going on in my life. In fact, even during my darkest moments, I never contemplated dying to avoid the pain. But now I am gaining morbid curiosity about death, dying, the effect on those we leave behind when we die.

who will I hurt when I die? my parents, for sure. my siblings, yes. friends, only the closest ones.

but how long will they grieve? I wonder not because I want them to grieve for me for a long time but because I am calculating if my not being alive will only inflict unnecessary and a long drawn out pain for them. I want people to forget me when I am no longer around.

yet, I worry my parents will carry pain shaped like my void around with them, forever and ever until they die. I worry that in seeing my parents, my siblings will then grieve twice as hard as they normally would if my parents were not around with the ghost of my once-existence lingering around them.

for my friends, I hope they forget me soon and build better memories with their loved ones to replace the ones marked 'me'.

I wonder if everyone I think of also thinks of dying. 

Monday 27 February 2023

how to be happy

 I find myself typing 'how to be happy' - seeking answers on the internet, hoping someone smarter and wiser than me has already found the answer and will teach me.

I don't know what I'm looking for. 

I can't manage my stress levels the way the internet tells me I should.

I hate exercising so that's out.

I think I have a good handle on my negative thoughts and typically practice 'good thoughts' quite well but that's got me nowhere.

So, I am back to square one. I have nothing to do but type 'how to be happy'.

There's no answer. No human has found the answer, it seems.

We were all forced to exist. We make do because that's all we can do. Then we die. Death isn't even a relief according to what some people say. Apparently, our consciousness continues to exist in the ether. And that's somehow worse. Floating and floating. Cursed to be aware of everything for eternity. 

I'm so glad I don't have a child cursed with the burden of existence

Monday 13 February 2023

trying to clutch at something

there's a truth that is poking at the corners of my brain and my subconsciousness, but it is still raw and doesn't feel fully informed. I wish I could tell you what it is.

Monday 2 January 2023

new year, old me

 I thought I'd make 10 million resolutions to turn into a new person this new year. But I don't have anything I want to try. I mean I do but I don't really want to make resolutions.

new year, old me is the theme. but if there's something I want to do, it is this - take each day as it comes.

nothing exciting about this but that's the whole purpose of this. I don't want any excitement in my life because with excitement comes stress and anxiety and I want to stop thinking about the future and reduce stress and anger. So, I'll live in the today and stop worrying about tomorrow. 

that's the 2023 me.

Sunday 16 October 2022

things I want to know

The onset of winter has always been the cruellest month for some people I know. As the days quickly grow darker and the gust of wind blows coldly, it is a reminder to me to remain vigilant. Not just to bundle up. Take care of that cold. Return home before the sun vanishes from the sky. But also to check in and see if there's anything I can do. How to grate less on someone's nerves? How to subtly remind someone that May, by contrast to the approaching cold, is the doorway to the warm summer days that has always acted as a balm to me? That this long, wintry tussle with the demons is a fight worth winning to usher in the next year?


Wednesday 20 April 2022

Conscious uncoupling

So I learned something new today. 

This term - Conscious uncoupling - was not coined by Gwyneth Paltrow. Rather, it was Katherine Woodward Thomas who introduced this phrase in 2009 as a better alternative to a messy divorce.



I think this conscious uncoupling can apply to any long term relationship - married or unmarried. 


But I wonder if only one person can be party to this? 

My twist on this phrase is the slow, untangling one needs to do in order to step away from a relationship that has two people intertwined emotionally, physically, socially, financially.

My relationship ended over two years ago. The financial detachment was pretty quick because we were both in a foreign country and didn't have a chance to merge our finances like we did back home. 

The physical separation was of course aided by covid and the ensuing lockdown rules. That made it pretty easy for me to sit in my room and stew in the marinade of my anger, sadness, memories, confusion, etc.

The emotional dissolution has been a pretty crazy ride as I'm certain anyone can guess. I am actually doing great, except when I'm not. Two years down the line and you may still catch me feeling a bit cuckoo over everything and nothing.

I realised I still pray to the god his family introduced me to. Little male characters in anime remind me of his little brother who was tiny when I first met him. Some older woman on TikTok resembles his mother, I think. And the biggest thing that makes me stop in shock is how i feel when I come across his cousins' social media posts/stories and wonder why they didn't bring him along for their fun times. He used to include them in all his activities back home. Are they not taking him along for their fun nights out on town and stuff? I feel a bit of resentment. Then I catch myself. And I am like WTFFF. Should I be caring to this extent?

That's what I mean - is it conscious uncoupling if only one person is actively trying to disentangle themselves slowly?

I came across this documentary about minimalism on Netflix and there was a person there who spoke about how they felt trapped when they got a promotion and wondered if that's what their entire life was going to be like. There was instant recognition there because that's what I felt towards the end of my relationship and when I was battling with myself about staying or leaving. Staying for the familiarity or leaving because I love myself. I am so glad 2020 me took the big decision to be brave and chose myself. 

So, while I am still a bit raw emotionally, I am very happy where I am today.

Just wondering how long till I see the end of this one person conscious uncoupling thing?


Little light

I think about death and dying and life and living. The bane of human existence, of being conscious is precisely this. Not the death and dyin...