call for a four-lined notebook

from a Life in the Margins

i am sitting and wondering and wandering (all in my mind). it’s 6.42 PM in Vallabh Vidhyanagar, Anand in Gujarat where i am currently stationed and spaced out. my closest friend’s penthouse where the two of us moved in together.

two adults in their early 30s. both wanting to live on their own.

it’s been a good and peaceful month so far since i moved here. more focused on work. really good sleep (goodbye insomnia), waking up earlier and with a fresh mind than i did at home. food compromised slightly, but that will get better too. daily walks and quite a decluttered mind, at least on most days.

it almost feels like retirement. only with an account not even close to the safety of retirement and a heart still looking for adventures but with a tired breath.

i have surrendered to not knowing who i am right now.

because the fights and the conflicts had gone on way too long, so i did what being a adult you’re supposed to do, work.

i haven’t written anything in this past month, just one essay in pen and paper. and, then today.

i remember as i write this how the earlier months from Sept had been. i’d fill in pages. hands all tattooed in dots and dashes from all the spilled ink and smashed letters on the pages of a fullscape which i can’t even call a fullscape because that’s not the same size as the one that came in when we were in school. it’s something in the middle, something between a fullscape and a little primary school notebook four-lined, so that the alphabets we write in are disciplined. not going haywire. is there anything that we can have for our lives though? a margin? a four-lined page, beyond which you can’t go, because otherwise you’d not know what’s going on.

out of rule, out of margins. that’s how living life on your terms feel like.

almost living in the margins and trying to make it to the four-lined, getting disciplined, tamed, bred, taking away the wild, on and so forth.

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another close friend of mine was 20 days early to her pregnancy ward. she was taken yesterday night and i woke up to that message. the GIF that she sent when the baby was out was from Lion King. i can’t imagine anyone else other than her sharing this news like that. classic her. to the ‘T’.

makes you believe, people don’t change THAT much.

i’m happy and excited, at least in theory, if not in spirits.

i have this feeling of missing out on these things, first her marriage, then her leaving the country, then being there with her during her pregnancy and now the little guy whom i’m going to so spoil!

i am happy, it’s not loud happiness this time. maybe because i don’t have anyone around to show it, share it with?

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how easy or how difficult are habits if we’re called creatures of habits?

what makes a habit an addiction?

i know you’d say when it starts getting harmful, it’s addiction.

if it’s conducive to life, it’s a habit.

so with that in mind, how would you define love?

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i haven’t felt the need to write, maybe because i’ve not had that lingering sadness all these days, but yesterday night something happened and i am back to this coping mechanism.

how much of art is pain? i wonder.

they say pain is active, you feel it and then after some time it turns to suffering. which is a choice. not something that happens to you, but something you choose to do.

but, who decides how much pain felt is enough to convert it to a choice of whether you want to suffer or not?

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i’ll keep going on and on about things as they keep coming, without agenda or direction. not in a straight line, but almost everywhere, here and there.

no ruler to keep my ‘As’ lined up and my ‘Is’ dotted in place.

all my ‘Ls swaying all over those four lines, as my life feels like a boat flag in a tornado.

but, i won’t go on, because i am going to go in the kitchen and make dinner for two.

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until the next Friday (i’m showing up, no matter what)

- flaky sends that excitement and zeal that the new days of a new year have