wanting and waiting
of lovers and of writing
it’s over a month and a half since i’ve been wanting and waiting to write a dispatch and also as much time in me failing to meet these desires even half-way.
the first MIA Friday was when i was throat-deep and drowning in my hardly packed bags for a 7-month stint in Canada and the next one went in arriving oceans apart from home and the next one probably came and went and it kept going on till this Friday, despite deciding hardcore to make it to this space, i still couldn’t. almost like inertia or almost the fear of what to write or how will i even write with a head full of things to write and a heart full of things it lived and lived through.
while curating my Book-2 which is comprised of essays written here, most of these one-side dialogues circled around writing or wanting to write and ending up not doing that and then while reading through them finally as i compile, feeling that WHY AM I NOT WRITING?
and, in the meantime, as i read this book Walking with Beth, i see the first page read this -
and i immediately take a screenshot and share it with a dear friend, Saif whom i met this Sunday because his words “my life would be a waste if i don’t write” reverberated through my head. how his earnest eyes reflected the agony of not having written anything or much or of substance in the last 3 or so years. and i also go back to my own little comment besides one of these Substack essays that i’m putting in a Google Doc in which i was comparing my desire to write with that desire of seeing your beau.
this desire to write is so immense on days that i feel i could go without food or sleep but not without the feeling of having written. and at the same time, not writing and just feeling this urge to write occupies all that space in my head, just like it’d be filled with that above-mentioned memories of all the right touches of your lover on your body. it’s as sadistic as hedonist i think. do you think that, too?
writing, reading, and making people read for a living, selling flowers and coffee and some cookies and muffins and khari and nankhatai, isn’t that the perfect way to spend time here? our time that most of us are now scrolling through the day and not flipping and dragging through it?
i wish i had a bookstore.
and i wish the only job i had was to read as much as i can and talk and write about it and make people fall in love with reading books.
time. it’s already 36 days to coming here. i didn’t even realize a month has gone by and only 6 are left.
time = light < blink of an eye
a few days back my papa was asking me on call, “what do you do whole day? how are you passing your time?”
and i said, papa, “time j kya chhe?” (who has time?)
whole day comes and goes in a swoooooooopppppphhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
and when another person asked me what they can do for me, i told them to extend my day to more than 24 hours so that i can get back to my writing and reading and repeat that and i also get time to do nothing at all, because as much as i enjoy doing things, i also enjoy not doing things and just lying there, like a cloud? floating?
yeah, more or less. like a puffy puffy cotton candy white cloud.
in my current visit to Canada which is for 7 months this time (now only 6 left), i had decided that i’d travel because i hadn’t during my last time here as i was working my ass off doing 8-8 hours shift at the Home Depot. i totally enjoyed my time there, no complains. but because of that last time, i wanted this time to be spent outdoors and not making paint for people’s homes.
but you know what? life has to be life and that reality of having money strikes you like lightening to bring you back to your life on Earth where you need money for everything. even to make your travels possible. despite deciding that i’d not be taking up work at any retail stores, my anxiety for having some money at hand made me apply to any and all kinds of odd jobs. and just like the last time, i haven’t heard from even the retailers yet. is the job market that sad or it’s just that they would rather have waiting customers over having people from a particular ethnicity? i don’t know. i am still hopeful that i'll have something to put in my pockets.
why i say it? because no matter how much you try not wanting to be a part of this race you didn’t sign up for, you still end up finding yourself on the race track on even days.
something will happen, i am sure of that.
and oh, i applied to a position in a library too. fingers crossed!
what a heaven of a work place it’d be, no?
we’ll see :)
rounding myself up to writing now - we’re done with Book 2 compilation too. YAYYYYY!
Book - 1 is a compilation of all the captions, snippets, and vignettes i’ve written so far from 2017 into a breathable, holdable, lovely book <3
my editor is already on it and together we’re trying to make a book out of it. and every few days, this doubt in me would rise up from somewhere within - can it really be turned to a book? and that’s when thankfully, bless this girl, we’d talk and my editor would leave traces of confidence and hope in me that it is indeed a BOOK!
and Book - 2 is a compilation of everything i’ve written here so far. and hand-written essays too. although i’m still thinking whether i should be adding the hand-written ones to the compilation or not. still thinking…
but, my real life and all my bets right now are piggy-banking behind this novel i want to write. the characters are out there already, doing their thing in that story and yet here i am, writing about how i want to write so much and keep writing and i’d dread like the weakest branch, shivering as she stares at the document with a few words scattered on it - not doing what she wants to do so badly, putting one word after the other.
anyway, let’s put a ‘.’
- flaky sends the ambitions of her first novel and the dread of staring at that document