pain Performs, patience Persists
i started a dispatch yesterday titled Aliens and Artists.
i wrote it quite a bit when it started off. the pain.
that old friend paid a visit along with some dizziness and fainting sensations and some palpitations. so, i had to get off the desk and also that thought train of feeling alienated when you are an artist.
i have come to terms with that term, that i am. i am an artist.
i feel and i express that feeling in different ways. so, i am an artist, i have to be. because i don’t know how to be a person, in all honesty.
and yesterday’s feelings were about being an artist and feeling alienated about it even with the people you love, because they don’t see the colors of sunset the way you do or they don’t occupy their minds with the ideas of trees be-ing a being.
those thoughts and feelings now lie in the drafts here as i start off today on a different train.
the train of pain and patience and all that i could try to tell in the simplest of ways.
i have been resting since yesterday, clutched to my bed, with a heating pad on top, legs and arms straight, as if already in a grave.
(do people get to turn in their graves? they do turn, no? they turn to dust.)
and i finished watching Virgin River and marvelling at the complications that we humans have. i couldn’t sleep, despite wanting to. couldn’t eat.
and in the evening when the pain was unbearable, i dialled a number before my fingers hovered and lingered over another name. the friend picked up and from that first greeting itself i’d know what kind of call we’re going to have. yesterday, his hello told me that the call won’t last more than a minute. because he was leaving his office and so i said okay, bye. but, i was crying. i was crying a little, because that’s all that happens now. i can’t cry rivers. trust me, i want to. there’s an ocean worth of stock my eyes are carrying.
and then he asked a few questions to try and be there his way, for whatever time he could be. but i don’t like being a bother to people, even those close to me and even those on whom i could have that birthright of being a bother. i couldn’t keep up the call. i thought of ordering myself some ice cream because my stomach burned equal parts of hunger and pain. then i texted an apology to this friend telling him that usually talking to him makes me feel better, NORMAL. that’s why i’d called. i’d called to be comforted. probably even pampered?
you know what i did next?
i called that name over which my fingers had lingered and then my hand had hovered. i didn’t want to, but i just did.
the voice sounded occupied as i knew it would. and, within just a minute, that voice was okay in saying bye. no call back, no text asking how am i? i was expecting, yes. because that voice knows what i go through. maybe, the voice would have wanted to, but that mind would have denied the voice. or maybe not. i don’t want to go there right now. the hovering hand is no more going for that hello now. that’s all i promise myself in this moment.
pain. and, pain killers.
i ordered myself a chocolate brownie shake to feel whatever it would make me feel, what i was looking for in that voice, i’d be switching it for an ice cream, because that ice cream would come, even when the voice doesn’t.
i hardly talked in yes-s and no-s yesterday.
around 9.00 PM, i was already on my way to sleep, but sleep and pain don’t share a bed, you know?
after much twists and turns and pleas and patience and a whole lot of pain and moans, i decided i’m going to pop a pill if the pain still persists. i kept waking up every 1-2 hours. finally at around 2.15 AM, i woke up with the intent to take a pill, ended up having just water instead. i decided to keep more patience.
and, today after waking up, i’d been at the heating pad since morning. the only difference being my phone played a documentary i was supposed to check out a while back.
Frida.
i watched it till lunch. i couldn’t eat much. then continued watching the documentary again. and, Frida’s life and her pain and her passion for painting made me write so many notes in my phone and in my notepad whenever i could sit up a bit.
i wrote and wrote and wrote.
and then i wrote something on IG as a way to let out my pain in front of an audience.
pain needs audience.
patience doesn’t.
after a while, i tried sitting at my desk to write notes from the documentary, things that stayed with me from Frida.
i share an intimate relationship with pain.
pain lets me feel the parts of my body which i’d otherwise have never known, unless i were to be a doctor.
i once observed during one such painful sleep-outs of mine that we feel our bodies in so many different ways.
the most common being sexual experiences. followed by exercises and dancing.
i’ve felt my body even while singing. when i sing, i feel my body melt, i don’t quite know how that is, but i feel very fluid, i feel atomic.
and, then there’s meditation. i’ve felt that too. through Vipassana. that threadbare existence of ours through just a breath.
but, there’s something else too, that i realised that day.
pain.
pain takes you to the places of your body like the one that sits in the pocket between your diaphragm between your stomach and rib on the left side. you don’t know it through a name, you just know its existence through a spasm, a ticking pain.
or that one that runs from the middle of your left foot to your upper hip. just the left side.
pain, it lets you feel your body in ways that’s so you.
i am not romanticising this. this one shouldn’t be the way to feel your body. i wish this upon no one.
i am merely sharing an observation.
NORMAL.
something i feel only on a few days, roughly a week each month. because the rest of the days of the month, there’s a close and constant companion. pain. in different magnitudes and frequencies. i try to do whatever i can in those days. be it writing, sitting at the desk and looking for jobs or any random thing that i fancy. i’d dance at night or go for cycling in the evening. and, i’d do those things whole-heartedly knowing that i’d not be able to do them in a few days.
i have been tired of answering “how are you? how’s your health now?”
because i can’t explain these things to people. that i’m always angry and irritated. always penduluming between extremes. and, i have stopped finding that solace in telling somehow. i am more comfortable in writing it out. writing is my friend. writing is a companion i can rely on. writing is like crying without those tears that are too stubborn to leave.
i don’t even know what i’ve told you here honestly because i lost the track of which train i’m on right now.
i know how Frida would have felt. trapped in a body.
trapped in a body wanting to do so much and yet summing up to not a lot.
and despite all that, she still painted. she painted because painting brought her immense pleasure.
and we live for pleasure. don’t we?
talking of artists, i came across a beautiful pianist on my random YouTube shuffle as i was dancing to Ólafur and some Ludovico - Dustin O’Halloran. i’m listening to his live performance right now as i write this. but, his creations are beauty.
and beauty brings me to
how despite all this pain and suffering there’s so much beauty in our world and our lives.
i know in just 2 days, when i’d be able to sitting, and taking bath, and going about my day as usual, i’d take my rides, i’d end up feeling the freedom that the open roads offer.
because that’s life.
i couldn’t write last week. i think that’s my first miss this year so far (in my weekly writings here)
- flaky sends the coolness and freshness you feel after a long and good cold bath