Arghhh

The morning was late because I slept upset, woke upset and refused to do anything in the morning except my workout and now I feel awful because not only did I forfeit precious early morning time but I justified being horrible and that's not how I like me.

What can you expect? It's a Tuesday after all. Hopefully, I can turn this around tomorrow.

gah! 

Sea sure thing

Sitting next to the driver's seat with my brother in control of the wheels and we drove through a dainty garden on full speed.
Many a picnickers strewn about the sunny greenery having their siesta or doing a bit of chow down and our car threaded through them full throttle without hurting a soul.
Sure some tea cups and picnic baskets were trampled under the tyres but no one seemed to mind and we charged through the entire scenery with just a clever flick of the wrist on the steering until there came upon us a wall and we crashed against it and halted.
Not the one to give up my brother tried to race the car vertically upwards to climb the damn wall and get on the other side.
I was astonished that a car could do this and every time the car nearly clambered over it couldn't make that final acceleration to go over the other side and each time we came down falling on the same side.

It was high time I got out and took an assessment of the situation.
As I came out I realized it was raining, nay, pouring, and a typhoon of sorts was building up.
It was dark with storm clouds and most eerie when I chanced upon the wall and looking over the other side I realized it was an ocean.
Had we climbed over to the other side of the wall we'd been swallowed by depths of the immeasurably behemothic sea and gone without a trace, and thank heavens we didn't.

This thought alone chilled my bones and froze my blood and as I passed this piece of wisdom to my brother I saw another car.
Sitting on its wheels was a face I recognized and soon realized that it was the director of my previous company.
What on earth was he doing here?
Turned out we were on a Ferry that was transferring us to an airport and in the darkness of the now planet sized unceasing raindrops I saw a huge sign lit up by gaudy neons and lights that said 'Bangkok'

Was I going to Bangkok airport? why on earth?
It was then the director of my previous company stepped out of his car and started talking to me like it was the most normal thing in these circumstances while his car got filled up with water?
he told me of the gossips and who in the glitterati was hooking up with whom.

I was still raw from the thought of having toppled over into the ocean and it repeatedly played in my mind to the point I was so cold I woke up, turned off the air conditioning and realized it was almost 6:00 am and that I had my morning to take care of. Phew!

ughs

Waking up on the wrong side of the bed, one that's depressive and stressful.

It's ghastly when you overthink, only to arrive at the most negative of conclusions, painting the most dramatic pictures in your head, ones that do your head no good.

Then you try to mentally console yourself, you're being silly, it can't be as bad you make it out to be. breathe now. A cheerful facade and you get back to doing whatever it is that you were doing, with that single thought still putrefying at the back of mind..tainting your day.

Ugh, I hate such days, I hate that I let myself go on that road, I hate that I'm scared.

dream drone

Ah Mornings, though I write this in noon, I didn't seem to have the time to update about a couple peculiar things about this morning reverie.

As you might be aware, general morning discipline has been rather lackadaisical; what with waking up early to pack lunch and fix breakfast and then sleep again, only to wake up a bit (late) eightish.

Those couple winks of forty or eighty also result in rather odd dreams, and I'm certain of walking the tight rope limbo somewhere between consciousness and comatose.

This morning, as I slept (the second time after early morning kitchen roulette) I heard voices and sounds. This, when I was asleep, and the sounds slowly penetrated my zzz's. The distinct sounds of door opening and closing, feet shuffling, someone walking, someone present or generally being about the house, in the bedroom, near my bed, sitting on the edge.. and I was asleep.

All these sounds I could hear in my dream, or through my dream or that they were amplified versions of some other happenings outside I could not say, but the sneaking suspicion that someone was in my house, even if it were in a dream lurked at the back of my head, and in fact it was my dream that forced me to open my eyes.
It's no easy feat, to be asleep and wake yourself up just because a demented dream is forcing you to open your eyes. My eyes felt glued shut. Of course they wouldn't open, cuz I was asleep, fast asleep, and it was a sneaky dream that forced me to pull myself out of my morning trance.

It's not like there was a ringing phone or doorbell or alarm, that'd jolt you from your sleep and make you take notice.
It was a calm sleep, and an idiotic morningmare forced me to wake up, to check if there really was someone in the house, if someone was actually sitting on the bed, whose feet could I hear? did someone enter my house, and my oh my, I pried my eyes open, and even then they wouldn't. I wanted so hard to give up and sleep, but NO.
giving it all the effort in my possession to sneak a peek through a slit that was wrenched through my eyelids to see nothing save my lashes, cuz that's how far I could open my eyes.

But I was awake, and the house was quieter than silence. No feet, no one on the bed..just faint distant sounds of streets being cleaned and rustling leaves.

I guess these soft tones of static everyday were strangely mutated to form a kaleidoscopic orchestra of spooky noises in my dreams.  

Shark tank

Mornings, when your thoughts wander into the fringes of the abyss and come back as mere shadows. 

They scrape in cruddy filth of loathsome dark alleys secreted away in the dingiest prisons of your memories. They excavate through blotted out and lapsed mines of ancient miseries, they unfurl iron curtains that've permanently barred an obliterated center stage of vicious thoughts. 

They tinker with mental alarm bells that you've subconsciously put on a permanent snooze and tried with a ferocious might to forget. 

Thoughts are a concrete fallacy. They exist and they don't. Deceptive, receptive, willful and wicked. 

To muse in the mornings is to thread through your veins with a blunt knife. 

In bud in bloom

a set of two 

v'la deux

you know they knew

when I thought of you 

More on tea and morning

It's difficult to find something to cheer you, when the throat you've been carrying so cocksure since forever, decides to turn sadistically sore and irritatingly inflamed. 

Faces annoy you, especially ones that're trying their best to comfort you. A low voiced murmur mouthing the words 'fuck off' is the best I could do..and I did. 

Opening my door to this, however 

cheered me immensely. Sitting at the entrance of the door, next to a couple potted plants, patiently waiting for me to let him in, warmed the cockles of my frozen heart. 

So I let him in and went about pottering for tea..

Talking of tea:

Here's my recipe:-

200mls of water (3/4cup) 

1 tsp tea leaves

1.5-2 tsp sugar

20mls milk 

Bring water to a scalding temperature (where bubbles start forming at the edge) and add tea. 

Cover and bring to a boil ( covering helps, since water comes to a boil faster)  

Once boiling, add sugar and proceed to add milk. 

I don't use much milk, courtesy lactose intolerance and also because milky tea is an abomination in my book. 

But if you feel the need to make it milky increase the milk amount to 30-40mls. 

Cover and let it boil rapidly for a couple minutes, until the colour has changed to a liquid bronze. 

Strain through sieve and serve hot. 

Alternatively for masala tea, if you're suffering from a sick throat: 

Add 1 inch stick of grated ginger, 4-5 peppercorns, 3-4 cloves along with the tea leaves. Cook as usual. Strain and serve hot. 

I could click step by step pictures next time. In fact I think I will. 

Today :)

VPN has been treacherously slow and obstinate.

The sudden change in weather, cool winds, warm sunshine and absence of cicada's wake me up to an optimistic day each morning.

There's a certain happy deja vu vibe in the air. Troubles feel like a thing of the past; I could be wrong, and maybe it's just the nice weather, perhaps as it gets colder I'll feel worse, but that's not the case right now.

The clammy quietness is pleasantly perturbed by refreshing winds permeating my house and odd spots of sunshine patterns on wooden floors and bedsheets.
I do love autumn.

The cat has taken to lounging on the bed and I find myself in possession of a beautiful plant of small white roses, that bloom everyday.

Flu still infests my system, but I don't let it bother me too much. It has considerably mellowed down, bless my WBC's.

Seasonal infections have no redeeming qualities, but this one has sort of reignited my love for tea. I'd kind of lost my desi tea mojo a while back, and stuck to mostly sipping oolong, white or similar such tea's; however after the sawing pain in my throat (courtesy flu) I got back to drinking masala tea, and no tea even comes close to its restorative qualities.

A morning mug of masala chai (no cardamom please), accompanied by the most beautiful words in verse and prose, rants and rambles, recommendations and ravings..and my day is pretty much set.

It could be that I've found the perfect synchronization for a non fussy morning.


Ah, I wrote this entire post listening to this:

Problems

Something seems to be oddly wrong with my phone. 

When I record videos etc, the background sound is barely audible. 

When I send voice notes on whatsapp the sound is nil. 

When, however I record voice on voice notes, the sound is pretty clear, ditto on wechat. 

So, barely any sound on camera recordings or videos and zero on whatsapp. 

But clear sounds on voice notes and wechat. 

What is this mystery and how do I solve it? 

This problem is pretty localized and only adheres to a couple of apps, instead of extending its annoyance to all. 

It can't be the speakers..I don't know how to solve it. 

I'd recorded so many videos of Phiket nightlife and Muay Thai, and there's no goddamn background music in it. 

Feels like a colourful mime show.

I'm so frustrated and angry. 

 

Intervals

Every morning ritual deserves a break. 

Staring into maps is a much needed breather of momentary calm from staring into a stove pot, cooking breakfast each  morning. 

Exhilaration, rejuvenation, jubilation.

Regular life, as decisively significant and substantially meaningful as it might be, is never as eventful as one'd want. Thank god for that. 

Imagine a life without monotony? Ugh, wouldn't that get boring to never have any uniformity; however the jaded blahs need a bit of manual overriding, rebooting and new coding every now and then. 

Daliesque mornings

I couldn't pull myself out of bed to prepare breakfast and or pack lunch. It makes me feel a bit guilty, even though it ideally shouldn't, but still. 

I woke up to my doorbell, which is rather odd, because I'm never expecting anyone to come lunging into my house in mornings. Thankfully the doorbell is a sonorous little twang and didn't manage to usurp my waking dreams.

Who could it be? Not the cat surely, he doesn't care much about the doorbell. 

There were three little kids, dripping with sweat and grinning, holding the cat. 

Apparently they intercepted the cat while coming upstairs and thought it a brilliant idea to present him to me clutched in their childish vice like grip. 

The eldest one was seven and the youngest kid was five, two boys and a girl, (Prince, Pearl and Pearce ) and they stood grinning, sweating holding out the cat, who eventually meowed himself to be let in and then disappeared in the folds of my sunlit living room. 

What am I supposed to do with three little kids, just standing outside?

Of course I know these children, I've often seen them running up and down the stairs, with their mother in tow, apologizing about their noise and generally being apologetic each time I greet her. 'I'm sorry about the din my children make' She'd say. 

'Think nothing of it, they're kids' I'd say, and with a casual wave of hands I'd dismissed her apologies. 

Well, today, seeing as the three little lucifers stood outside the door, I let them in, and offered them chocolates. 

Big mistake- the letting them in part not the chocolate part. 

They came, they saw, they turned my house upside down and it wasn't even 9:00am yet. 

I was sorry for poor Gogi, for they lifted the cat with his ears, played him like a marionette, squeezed and cajoled him like a clay figurine. 

Fiddled with my PlayStation remotes, did unspeakable things to my roomba, and pointed in every direction asking 'what is this?'..it is a cricket ball, a tube of cream, a souvenir from Vienna, a flute, a sports watch, a dumbbell, a rolling pin, a coaster, a beer keg, a pack of playing cards..

Uhh, I'd to play them my ukulele to have them quiet down and become a bit docile. 

After fifteen minutes of uke strumming, they'd finally calmed down, and decided to leave the premises and go back home to do their homework. 

Their summer vacations are on, which means I'll hear my doorbell ringing more often than I'd like. 

In the one hour that these kids flowed into my house, I felt like my whole world was going upside down. 

I realized with a heavy heart, why their mother keeps apologizing. 

They didn't misbehave, they were just naughty as kids are supposed to be. 

My heart goes to the poor cat, who looks every bit as shell shocked as me, and is now asleep under the couch. 

I'm sorry Gogi, I'll do well to hide you when these marauders embark on another giggling home invasion. 

 

Kitty and dreamscapes; Monday morn laze

Monday mornings come with the promise of warmth, sunshine and an omnipotent kitty, who manages to enter your house not through the front door anymore, but via balcony, whenever it wants. 

Imagine stepping out of your cool sleeping quarters into the ruthless sunlit living room, half yawning, eyes still shut from sleep, contemplating what ughs might this day bring, when suddenly you spy a cat stretched out on the floor, half asleep, and you wonder 'where on earth did he get in from' ? The doors haven't been opened yet, and suddenly an uncalled for epiphany. 

You remember, how lazily you were reluctant to shut the door to balcony entirely last night, risking the march of cicada's into your house. The door was left slightly ajar, and this is how and where the cat comes in. 

--

I had a whole lotta dreams, many in succession. It's like when you fall asleep again after waking up momentarily, not only do you get the sweetest sleep but also a bundle of such odd dreams that they stick to parts of your waking moments. 

I remember them in bits but they were so unbelievably real. 

Dreams: I'm living with a man, and apparently I can't get enough of him (now we know this IS a dream). Seems like I'm madly in love with that person and he eats maggots. There's something wrong with him, like he's a demonic entity or something, and since his arrival my beautiful tidy house has turned into a screaming mess of unreal things. 

Not only are the clothes and furniture in disarray but my kitchen looks and smells like a dumpster, and he keeps finding maggots to eat in there. 

In my next dream my mom and I decide to play bongos the entire day? We make a timetable about who's to play when, but I'm sleepy. So my mom tells me to sleep while she plays percussions but also tells me to wear shoes or at least socks, cuz the weather is chilly today. 

In my final dream I am hounding my cousin to take a bath, but she's so reluctant. So I decide to hide in a bathroom and call her on some pretext and when she does, I'll pull her into the bath and throw her under a shower. 

This proves futile because when I'm hiding in the bathroom and calling her. She refuses to step inside and keeps standing out. And I realize I'm taking a shower now. 

-of course there's a lot more that went on in these dreams, but this is just all I can remember, and I'd probably forget this by the time I'm breakfasting. 

Ah, this post is so long, I didn't realize..I'm sipping on goji berries infused hot water, and feel kinda sleepy still. 

The joke's on the universe.

I cannot forgive myself for the rookie mistake I committed today. No sir, I cannot.

I might do and have done a fair number of idiotic things, yes I have, and I'm admitting it, but what I ended up doing today deserves no mercy, no quarter. 

Here are the premises.

 Taking advantage of the fact that I was up and about much too early, I decided to haul myself up from cat haze and saunter into the vegetable market and do some much needed green gazing and shopping. 

Starting serenely at mute vegetables is much too joyous an occasion to be missed, and an early morning jaunt when everything is green and fresh and clean is just what your system needs. 

So out and about, braving the harsh morning sun, I decided a long brisk walk would do me a world of good. 

I'd not breakfasted yet, it was pretty early morning you see, and I'd thought of infusing fresh bought veggies into my breakfasting ritual, so there I was, walking to the big market, which is much farther off from the small veggie market. About half a kilometer from my house. 

Alright, so in I go, look around, spot something I like and get the vegetables weighed—the usual procedure, except when I dig my hand into my bag to extract my wallet, I'm mystified. 

My faithful every day cloth bag, that stays hung and is habitually plucked from a coat rack, one that has Portuguese architecture printed on its face (my bag, not my coat rack), is nothing short of a labyrinthine to an ordinary man, but not to me. 

I've only to push my hand in and pull out whatever I need, like a magicians hat. 

But today was not to be that day. I intended to pull out my wallet, and oh dear, it wasn't there. 

The woman was holding out a bag of vegetables and repeating the amount, and I dived head first into my bag, searching for my wallet and I couldn't find it. 

There was my little spare umbrella, a set of car keys, goggles case, a diary, two pens, subway card, house keys, eye liner, lip balm, pack of tissue paper, hand sanitizer and zero wallet. 

I almost felt dizzy for a second. Why? What? Where is it? Did I drop it? Did I lose it? Or did I forget it at home? How could I forget it at home, I never ever take out my wallet, then where is it? 

The woman was repeating what I owed her for veggies. 

I asked her to excuse me, to keep the veggies for me, that I'll be back in a minute. 

She blinked, looked puzzled and promised me she'd guard the packet of veggies with her life. 

Goddamit it, summoning all my stamina, I broke into an Usain Bolt dash to my house, and ran, crossed roads, jaywalked or rather sprinted and stood outside my door, hoping the wallet was in my house, that it wasn't lost in some blackhole. 

Okay, I let myself in, sweating profusely, wondering if I'd ever see my wallet, training my eyes into a compound vision I was hoping for the worst when I saw that my wallet sat nonchalantly on the sofa. 

What? On the so..fa?watcha doin' on the sofa mon petite? Who let you out of the confines of your bag my darling? Who had the gall to drag you out of the bag and..I realized it was moi. Oui, it was me.

I'd taken out my wallet to empty one of its chamber of all the coinage it'd collected. 

Throwing my mind back to these morning events, I navigated my memories through hard panting breaths and matted hair, and figured I'd forgotten to replace the wallet into my bag, because Monsieur cat had spilled his bowl of water, which then I mopped, after which I decided to go to the vegetable market, following which I changed into travel appropriate garb and let myself and cat out of the house; leaving the wallet sit on the sofa. 

Breathing hard still, sweating like a broken water fountain, I cursed so hard I might have caused an earthquake someplace. 

Well, what could be done now? Goddamn I was hungry, but I had to go back and buy veggies, from the same market. There was a vendor safekeeping my veggies. 

So back on the same path, my walk of gargantuan shame, my stomach growling  from hunger pangs. I'd exerted much too much this morning without as much as a single morsel. 

Back to market, vegetables didn't look half as appealing now. Shopped, realized I'd gone a bit overboard, that my bag was heavier than a baby whale. 

I carried it on my shoulder, aching, hating. I had to atone for my morning sins goddamit. 

Man oh man was I hungry. 

I stopped at a shop selling something greasy. 

Salivated and caved in. 

breakfasted and cursed myself all the way back. 

Got back home, peeled off my clothes and my epidermal layer. 

Cursed myself some more. 

Made coffee, cursing myself to the moon and back and wrote this long ass post, cuz goddamit my head was buzzing with all the grease and caffeine. 

Mon morn..and things read

Another morn, another Monday. Weekday..one can be left to their own devices to wreck havoc and do as they displease. 

The list of things left undone during weekend has slowly compiled and congealed into a glutinous mass of dust covered jelly, that I now intend to wibble wobble with haste; in order to deconstruct it to its most gelatinous state. 

---

I'd kept on my person some stories and poems enqued to be read at a time when I was freer and alone, and my oh my. 

Sigh. 

Words, like hidden nooks in enigmatic crannies, woven in a rhythm that's been sand blasted to smooth edges on razor surface. 

They taste of blood, they taste of sand, they taste of petals. 

Celestial roses that bite your fingers off when touched. 

Always, a greedy reader..more..more. 

--

My heart caves at every subtle reference, a blush so Crimson, I have no use for makeup. 

Rains 'n' Yu

Bracing moisture in the air, precipitated to fat globes of daunting water droplets. Cascading down aimlessly; a slow desultory trickle at first, catching momentum into a disorganized waterfall..and how it falls and flows. 

 

How it wets the air, drenching it to its last atom. Pouring through invisible winds, saturating each molecule of nitrogen infested flutter into wet whiffs of aqueous earth and slimy sidewalks. 

I can't see it, but I can feel it. 

As can you. 

Torrential downpour, masquerading as an infant typhoon, it rages against my window panes. A steady stream of transparent pearls, tapping against the glass, In a voice so sonorous, it makes me ache. 

This madness outside, in chaotic symphony of glorious sounds, beckoning me to be a little foolish; perhaps step out of my cocoon or drench the invisible shroud. 

The window panes are cleansed. Spotless..not nearly as flawless..but unblemished still. Enough for me to peer out into your universe..and see you, through your glass walls. 

Feelings

Feeling a bit like Madame De Farge today. 

Washing a sink full of dishes is one thing and then arranging those dishes and glasses, and myriad of washed cutlery and clutter is another. 

It gets on my nerves, doing this first thing in the morning when I wake up. It's impossible to tolerate a cheerful human being (irrespective of your relation to them) in the morning let alone drag yourself into the kitchen and arrange dishes that're only going to come off their rack in a while when you're serving breakfast. 

Myth of Sisyphus at its most microscopic level, lives on. Sigh 

Playing house

Mornings are bright

and dark is each night

Oh the hopeful smiles that light each morning with the rising sun, then collapse into a puddle of decaying lichen when each night I cook for one.

Blankets that stay sizzling on one end of the bed while the other is vacant icy deserted dread.

Haunting an empty house with solitary breaths, turning on every noisy gadget to drown the hush.

Keep busy with a book, with a screen, swirling smoke from between fingers in ashen hope this grim peace lays in tatters—tortured and torn seam to seam. 

In stale air a wisp of smoke still lingers, until I blow it away in a tornado of lonely exhale. It disappears into a negated territory of created noises that fill a house of gadgets I've just switched on. 

A steady churn of washing machine like a derelict plane about to take off, gibberish on tv left unattended just so this place fills up with useless dialogues, a stranger's laugh/cough. 

Patterned suction noises of a tired vacuum cleaner too jaded to feed on insipid cleanliness, relentlessly plugged in..uselessly turned on. 

Oh I could do with some noises cacophonic screams and strange voices. A warm breath or two that aren't always mine. 

I'm painting the walls with solitary shadows, playing charades with it like a mime.

Anything that fills its cold gut, because it's quieter than a dead mouse..I could do with some babel..just so I'm not alone in my white walled house.

Noneday

Just when you'd started to believe in the power of spring to colour the landscape with overzealous vibrance, you're reminded just how stupid you are with your fanciful wishes. The weather which was just momentarily sunlit orange is now restored to a ghostly kiss of grey cold and incessant rains. Ah! Rains. 

There isn't a spring thaw in sight. This week promises to stay wet, cold and cheerless. Black skies, bleak horizons and irritated souls by the power of grayskull. 

The pallid aura of this season is rather suicide friendly, and the insides of your house rather resemble an anal cavity of a dead cave.

Middle of the afternoon and it feels like dawn forgot to break ( great name for a band) and all you can do is switch on every which light to feel there's a bit of sunshine in this dreary existence. 

Mehning

Here it is, a dusk colored morning.

The night forgot to fade away, dolefully approached by a new day—angrily stepping in to take over its duty sans sun.

Facade morning..because if I scratch the surface, it's stil night someplace; its residue diffusing through parchment  space and flexible time from lovers lane.

A veil overhead of skeletal clouds..grey emaciated shroud; a mechanic cry, acid rain song.

Bracing moisture..aqueous fog. Mosaic museum of collective raindrops, fleeting languorously, gliding hurriedly..streaking transparent water lines on my window top. 

My unmade bed shabbily crowned by a crumpled blue bedspread, still warm from fickle laziness, pretending to curve the universe so our galaxies mingle, our times zones coalesce. 

An enlightenment for this purposeless Tuesday..the insides are artificially lit this morning to keep the day from withering away and the outside is dismally prophetic, dreadful dull grey. 

Songs of morning note

Another Mondayne, and boy do I love it so..not that there's anything logical about loving any day of the week, but then logic is made of thin air and almost invisible and almost certainly one of the least fun things we've come up with. 

So another Monday, and I usually begin this day by staring at an immaculate white wall from the warmth of my bed. Stuck in smouldering recesses of my morning duvet, I stare and stare at this white wall that stays unmoved, expressionless, dead faced, resolute..stuck fastidiously to my ceiling (another favorite thing to stare at, usually at nighttimes)..it's callous, cold and calming. 

Some mornings you wake and hate, while some, you wake and ache. I like them both..the hating ones and the aching ones.

Weekdays, specifically Monday's feel like a thin white rivulet, you're free to do with it as you please, you could muddy your toes with a kaleidoscope of colours and smudge the white waters into a vibgyor sludge, or dip a finger soiled with coal black soot, and watch the white assume a monochromatic hue..or just enjoy the view of the white rivulet flow into the vast ocean of everyday empty while you get on with routinely flinging stones into its abysmal waters. 

But this is just another weekday, in the long line of remaining weekdays you're yet to see, and some say you should unwrap each day like a present, which kind of feels a bit underwhelming because for some reason presents have always been something I've never loved unwrapping—simply because they're usually disappointing, more so because I've never really known what I've actually seriously wanted for a present.

So unwrapping presents is no fun, but opening little notes..now that's a treasure. More fun, exciting even breathtaking, heart palpitating than any present I've ever known to exist. Shrouded in mist, cloaked in allegory and allusion, dressed in symbol and euphemism—little notes with a picture or a line, little notes with a thousand rambling words or poetic smile, little notes with an emoji wink or whispering voice. Each perfumed note redolent of a sigh, intensity that sings in chorus, passion simpatico and blahs of life.