A kind of social awkwardness

The other day someone, a person I'm acquainted with, who, according to social protocol, I should feel more comfortable around but don't, asked me what my dreams in life are.
I was a little startled at first because I haven't been asked that question in...well, since I was 6? Maybe 10, if I was pushing it. I have been asked what I want to become or where I think I'm heading or what I want to achieve but those are questions that are easier to answer. When someone demands you to spill out your dreams, they're either trying to corner you into some vulnerable spot of yours which they can then feel triumphant about or, conversely, they mean business.
Is it more worrying to realize that this question is really a test you must pass in order to fit into some position in the order of the world?  Or for it to hit you that people truly care to know what you imagine and desire? Which would be the scarier of the two - to belong or to be understood?
So when I was asked this question a few days ago, I didn't quite have the time to mull the response in my head and plan it perfectly before replying but I did immediately freeze and wonder the true intent of this question. It was odd timing and there was a certain urgency in the person's tone that took me by surprise. If there was a quiet interested edge to the tone I would have perhaps relaxed my shoulders and opened up a little bit but there wasn't and I was reduced to a stammer and a quick attempt at salvaging myself from appearing either like a boring person who has no dreams or a naive child who knows nothing about reality.
I hate having to feel awkward or too concerned about appearances. I feel forced to do that around most people and society because I really don't feel comfortable with being too honest with everyone. The problem with this is that at the core of it all, I'm a really honest person so the constant push and pull makes the whole situation frustrating in a dramatic sort of way.
But if I were to be absolutely honest, as I would be around someone I connected with at multiple layers of our existence, I think I would still be forced to contemplate and stammer out a shoddy answer not because I'm scared to be honest but rather because I don't really know how to summarize my answer in a way that seems legible to someone else. Because the truth is that I have both beautiful larger-than-life dreams as well as an inclination these days to take each day as it comes. Literally, breathe each moment in the most full way I know because I'm realizing that the momentum required to allow one moment to smoothly flow into another is something that I must find, create, harness by myself rather than believe that it exists solely within the moments themselves. But I myself sometimes feel like such a volatile substance that finding the momentum all the time, every time is like a hit-and-miss sort of situation. So the most honest, most grounded, most real 'dream' I then have is to hope to make it through this moment on to the next and feel happy while doing all of that. The larger-than-life dreams operate too in some portion of my head but in the face of the small happy getting-by that I'm inclined to engage myself in now, they take a partial backseat.
The point though is that they exist together.

And this is why honesty is a slippery thing even with those who truly care about your heart.

A long hiatus

I'm prone to long hiatuses in life. It's not just this blog as most might assume (since blogs can be quite arduous and pretentious to be regular with) but other things too, of varying enormity.
I often take breaks from the things I love, like writing or reading interesting stuff or people and talking to them or running around town or being happy.
I also take breaks from the things I passionately dislike, like washing my hair, or writing or reading interesting stuff or people and talking to them or running around town or being happy.
Sometimes I long for a nice holiday from life. I've wondered, utterly subconsciously, what that would like. The closest to it that we seem to have come to is the passenger spaceship on which Madonna has already booked her seat. But I don't think that quite categorizes as a holiday in my book. Sometimes I think dreams edge towards the ways in which I think of 'the' holiday but even that, really, is like the brightest of the illusions, so bright that it can trick you into believing that it's not exactly what it is - an illusion.
So great is this affection for hiatuses that I also tend to - thanks to my mind that doesn't quit ticking - wonder and question why I seem to gravitate towards them, even actively look for them, as I go about living my life, doing my thing.
I don't have an answer just yet but the more energy I put into looking at this tendency of mine, I realize that it's the only thing (so far) that makes me experience utter longing and genuine devotion. And for that maybe I'm grateful.

Because maybe, maybe, there's a chance for some kind of union?

Things we wear

- Jeans
- T-shirts with graphic designs
- Glass bangles
- Shapeless skirts
- Tweed jackets
- Moonboots
- Belts of dead animals
- Piercings in the side of your nose
Your tongue
Your eyebrow
- Tattoos on your ankle
The back of your shoulder
The nape of your neck
- Paint on your nails
- Fingers that hold your nails
- Hands, legs, arms
- Lips, ears, eyes
- Skin
- Muscles under the skin
- Bones and blood
- Sweat, sometimes
- Expressions that elicit sweat
- Things bubble-wrapped in insecurity
- Smiles, laughs, frowns
- Nakedness

That which never dies

I'm reading a lot of Urdu poetry these days courtesy acquaintances and new-found friends and I can not begin to express my absolute love for the drama, the wonder, the reality captured in those words. I'm not even going to try. I'm just going to post one that I'm in love with. Thank you Iqbal:

Teri ishq ki intahaa chahataa hoon/ I want the depths of your love
Meri saadhagi dekh kya chahataa hoon/ See my simplicity, see what I want

Sitam ho ki ho vadaa-e-behijabi/I don't care if you maltreat me or promise to unveil your beauty
Koi baat sabr-aazamaa chahataa hoon/ I want something unbearable to test my fortitude

Ye jannat mubarak ho zaahidon ko/Let the God-fearing be dwelling in heaven
Ki main aapka saamana chahataa hoon/ I just want to be face to face with you

Koi dam ka mehmaan hoon ai ahal-e-mahfil/I'm only here for a few moments, like a gust
Chirag-e-sahaar hoon bhuja chahataa hoon/Like morning star I will fade and vanish in a few moments

Bhari bazm mein raaz ki baat keh di/ I disclosed the secret in public
Bada be-adaab hoon, sazaa chahataa hoon/I should be punished for being so rude.

For this I feel grateful.

I'm also tempted to post another poem here. It's by Neruda and my friend sent it to me the other day after one of our long conversations about life and living and going crazy. It's so beautiful.

Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig
and I lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips :
maybe it was the voice of the rain crying,
a cracked bell, or a torn heart.

Something from far off: it seemed
deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth,
a shout muffled by huge autumns,
by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves.

Waking from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig
sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance
climbed up through my conscious mind

as if suddenly the roots I had left behind
cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood-
and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent.

I read it and read it and re-read it. And started falling in love with the forest. To be lost in it is perhaps all that I desire now from life. For this I shall not apologize. I'll ask for the grace to encounter my twigs and maybe I'll encounter little drops of sun too. Or better yet, maybe I'll be to the twigs the light that it needs.

After all, fireworks are wonderful, but they can't compare to the sun.

Mysteries

There are secrets within me. Because I am aware, I try and unravel them. I try and unravel me, I try and unravel the world, I try and unravel people. The elusiveness of secrets fascinates me. I want to know more. I want to know everything.

But my mind alone can not will everything into reality. My mind can not engage with these secrets. No, it is not enough, it never was, it never will be. My mind is the most useless tool in this regard.

For these secrets need all of me. In effect, they need the parts most sacred to me. The sacred ones are the most sensitive ones, yet they're not strong enough.

And the only way of strengthening is an absolute complete shattering. The most sensitive must be thrown into all the turmoil there is out in this universe. Only then perhaps will the secrets become remotely familiar.

I imagine

What did I imagine as a little kid? Of course, I had to have imagined for isn't that what little kids are best at? But I think at that young, tender age, I imagined of the most impossible fantasies, the most unreal stories, like little butterflies growing out of my pillow. My imagination had no bounds.

But even with that boundless imagination, not once did I ever fathom the possibility of a reality I now live. I could not imagine these things, maybe because my mind was obsessed only with the most unreal of sagas. And this right now is real. Me, typing on my Apple laptop, in my bed on the floor is real.

Wait.

Is it?

No, this isn't a trick question nor am I pretending to be smart. All I am is deeply curious about the possibility of this moment right now being merely a figment of my imagination. No, not the fact that I'm sitting because, yes, I am sitting. I am typing. That, I agree, is very real. But this context, everything around me right now which is not me seems merely an extension of something that I once imagined. For in a way, am I not in this little messy college room because I had once imagined, dreamed so much that I willed it into reality?

Maybe I had imagined many other things that do not exist in any real shape or form now but I don't remember those things anymore. The process that transformed my imagination into my reality was so gradual and insidious that I can't trace its progression. So insidious that I wonder if it even matters what I had initially imagined or when or how or why. That slow process which transformed my imagination into a full-fledged animal has made those initial details irrelevant. All that matters now is this big animal that sits in front of me, around me, in me. Even athraaf, as we'd say in Urdu. This big animal called Reality.

Yet this big animal right now that is making me consciously type furiously can't stop some part of my brain from imagining and dreaming completely unbeknownst to this conscious, furiously-typing me. The imagination is happening, regardless of Reality. And the slow process with which it transforms into Reality is also happening.
But of course I don't know of it.

Yet tomorrow Reality is going to strike again. The big animal that some part of me is creating right now is going to hit me like it's something new and unfamiliar. And it is. It is an entirely new being but its disguise of independence can not hide its humble origins, can not untie itself from the imagination, the part of me that created it. So I feel like I have a right to know, because a part of me already does. I have a right to know what tomorrow shall hold for me but my boundless imagination, cultivated ever since my days of childhood, shall not tell me. It says, "Have patience, Aditi. Have patience. Wait and watch."

There is no other time when my being feels as incongruously assembled or disjointed.

For this is how it must be

Everything seems to be a flight, a phone call or a few mouse clicks away.

Does that reduce insecurity or merely the distance?

My friends on the side of the world see me on Skype, in BBMs, in the Mango store near their home. But I am 1000s of miles away.

Shall we simplify, forget complexity, collectivize our experiences to feel some proximity?

I walk in the snow, pass people and smile. Sometimes we pretend not to have seen each other. Sometimes we are too busy.

Shall I sink into a sea of faces for the sake of assimilation?