The Love That I Will Choose To Keep

Where desires will be throttled, and hearts shall weep,
that is the love I will choose to keep.
When the nights are quiet and the moon hangs low in the sky,
when it's dark enough for the stars to cry,
I imagine I will stand in curious wonder
and give myself in wonderous surrender.

My Ruling Planet

Mercury is a heavy metal. It's quite flippant as well. The moment you touch it, it disintegrates into tiny silver balls which go rolling in every direction. Mercurial people are no different. We're too restless from within. And those who are mistaken with the appearance of a calm surface waste no time in trying to plunge through it. They don't realize that they can't. We simply vanish in anger and disintegrate from within. There's no looking whole again unless collected and stored in a different container. Once spilled, we remain spilled... for quite a while.

All the stuff about Geminis and birth signs is crap. But our ruling planet is Mercury and that isn't crap. We're little silver balls rolled into one and till yesterday I didn't realize that inner strength has nothing to do with how fragile you are on the outside. You can collect it all in one place but you can't change it's nature or it's reaction to temperature changes. The volatile defense mechanism in which we give out small pieces of ourselves rather than the whole thing is because we're scared someone will be tempted to spear the unstable surface and leave us to disintegrate. We're afraid that we'll be unable to put it back together again.

Mercury is a very heavy metal but it lacks depth. When you bring all of it together it'll look whole and good but it's always ready to fall apart. It lacks resilience but is quite cunning. It makes itself smaller and numerous to withstand the necessary prodding and touching until one is forced to give up. But that's the thing with mercury. You can't give up on it. You can't leave it to exist as a small version of a bigger blob or in tiny silver balls underneath the fridge. It's a very broken metal. But it's always eager to be put together again. All you have to do is find a way to contain it. In one place. And it reaches out and puts itself back together again for you. As good as new.

Disengage

It is mindless, mind numbing and boring. I think I have begun to pity him. I hate that he looks spent. There are no more conversations and the words seem broken. All that I feel is wasteful. Wasting and wasted.

L'amour

"I love him." She says. And she says it over and over and day in and day out.

Makes me think of the lyrics from a song I used to sing a long time ago: "Where is love? Does it fall from skies above?"

I've been accused of not understanding it. To scoff with disdain at the futility of dates and silly simpering stares in coffee shops. Guilty as charged. Dating is not love. Setting a date to meet up and then going frantic waiting for the day to arrive when you wash your hair with the good shampoo that makes it bounce, and then turn up in something you think you look good in but which the guy will barely notice is not love! It is however, one hell of an effort!

What I think love means...

Time. It means having all the time in the world to give and waste. To count hours. To count minutes or even seconds before you get to see them. To ponder over days or weeks or months. To spend together countless years and decades perhaps. To live in moments big and small when everything seems to unfold as if only for the two of you.

It means long walks in absolute silence on lost roads and warm hands with entwined fingers. When you stop looking for stops and signs and transport and conversation.

It means caterpillars, moths and butterflies, the works! It means a warm fuzzy feeling at the goofiness and the intimacy and the hugs and scents.

It means pain. It means heart wrenching sobs which tear you up on the inside and which you still do for that one person. It means an ache which grows and smoulders within.

Love lasts. It's as simple as that. You either know that feeling or you don't. It's not a story or a fairytale. It doesn't always have happy endings. It's as simple as the feeling of warmth.

Us, Girls

Quick to judge and quicker to love. That's what we are, us carefree girls. Careworn too sometimes. Seemingly innocent, with shadows of doubts beneath our eyes, we get lost in our own various defences.
My trail of charm is different than hers and hers and hers. Maybe someone picked up the wrong scent and traced it back to the wrong girl. We hold our heads high in our fathomless mistakes made for and by others and secretly flounder.
I know I am always slightly confused and secretly alert. As I watch the others I know that they are too. All of us are on the lookout for the signs from each other about our own trails and travails.
Sometimes the most innocuous of words become infested with a plethora of meanings and then we ponder and think and construe.

Praha

I miss Prague. Some things more than most.

- Snow outside. A few hares on the football field. All of us in Mr. Ackerman's stifling hot room strumming away on our guitars. Blueberry muffins on the table and hot steaming mugs of hot chocolate. Me, the expert in taking picks out of guitar cavities and the seniors always wanting to attempt "Smells like Teen Spirit" even though we're meant to be perfecting "Scarborough Fair" (Simon and Garfunkel).

- Grossetos. This amazing restaurant off of Dejvice where we'd land up after school and order a pizza each. Followed by grape ice cream with whipped cream. Begimai, the scatterbrain, Ayla, the GAP wearing artist and Eileen, the prim and proper Singaporean with the numerous music lessons. We were so oblivious to everything else but us. I miss them.

- The tennis tournament. Where he turned up to watch and promptly got escorted off the courts for yelling at someone in Russian for dissing on me.

- Phys. Ed. Class and softball. A spectacular catch by anyone's standards ruined by the fact that I threw the ball straight at Sharkey's head in an attempt to get another out. Him lying sprawled on the ground while I sprint for an ice pack and come back to find a frantic Begimai trying to get him to count her fingers.

- The architecture. Beautiful.

Romantic at Heart

To Alex.
You're so far away. And I never told you. I never told you that I cared. That you mattered. That you made me smile and still do. I never told you that those roses I left in a lonely bush on my way home from school were the most beautiful flowers I have ever received. I never told you that I was scared that it would go away. That perhaps you'd finally see me properly and realise something I never wanted you to. I never told you that you made me happy. And now, when you sit oceans away and cultures apart, now when I know that we will never meet, I feel that you should know what I never told you. I never told you that I think I always loved you too.

Two and a Half Men

How do men do it? How do they always have their radars reading signals that are not even there? It's disappointing. Some things I'd like the men to know:

1. When we call you up to get someone else's number it is not an excuse! Honestly we're just not bothered enough to find a better way to do it.

2. Also if we call you up at a certain time of the night there is no need to read too much into it. Most of us are insomniacs and sleep during the day if ever and need someone to stay up with them.

3. If we laugh at something you say it is not because you are funny but because we find you and your sense of humour pathetic and ridiculous. Most of us who are above 20 no longer do the seductive giggle tactics on the phone! Especially never to prolong sleepless nights!

4. If you think you are witty and you are not please do not try to drive the person up the wall by simply repeating the thing you think is witty in different tones!

5. If you are aware that your wit is below average and your humour stale, resist the temptation to tell a well practised joke. The chances are that you will mess that up as well.

6. If you own a goldfish and somehow never tire of talking about it, marry it. Do not invite the person you are talking to to the ceremony.

7. If you have past girlfriends that were just like you, marry them and chuck the goldfish. Do not obsess about them to the other person over and over until they wish to kill you both.

8. If you think you are like any of the characters in Boston Legal, keep it to yourself. Constantly saying "Denny Crane" in little bursts does not give you the right to be so annoying.

9. If you think certain parts of my anatomy are appealing try not to make it obvious by staring. When I catch you staring do not try to stare me down. It is not polite.

10. If you believe in getting laid simply say so. No one is going to judge you. We will judge you if you declare you do not believe in it, because then you're just a weird guy.

Here, There and Everywhere

It was high school. I was ugly. I saw it every day in the mirror before leaving for school. I remember walking down the longest corridor, with sweaty hands clutching a binder tightly to the chest as I tried my best to slink past the group of senior boys without getting noticed. Of course, it was not to be. I was the weird Indian girl, the one who read all the time curled up in secluded corners and ate her lunches alone because she was told Indian food smelled. One of them winked as I walked past and my stomach lurched. It was all I could do to keep from bursting into tears right there and then. I hated them. I guess they didn't like me very much either. It would have been the uncool thing to do.

I began to dread opening my locker. On Valentine's Day everyone had a red carnation sent to them by someone or the other (school initiave) inside their locker. I opened mine to find a bunch of smelly socks and a note which said : you won't notice the smell anyway.
I think I still carry that rage somewhere.

A year later. I had another note. It said: "You're beautiful". I mistrusted it instantly. I imagined a bunch of people were standing around waiting for me to smile before they started jeering. I threw it in the trash. The next day there was a red rose inside. I went to the school counselor to ask her for a lock for my locker becaues someone seemed to know my code. I cried at night. I couldn't understand why someone would mock me so.

What happened afterwards is a blur. I was in love... with the way he felt. I was everything I wanted to be because he could see me that way.
Seven months later.. there was another note: "I don't think you're pretty enough to be mine".
This time I smiled. It was the longest prank anyone had played. You had to give some credit.

I came back to India. Outside my car window a small child held up a rose and grinned. "Aap bahut sundar ho didi". I smiled. I loved my country instantly.

Full Circle

Complacency with lack of...and high horses and defensive yelling.. all seem to have such a simple explanation.
I was right about certain things in life being pointless. There are too many people on this planet. Not to mention in this country alone. You can sit in your room and have endless phone conversations with someone and be blissfully unaware that there is someone out there who got in between.. or maybe got there first.
It happens to people. In fact it happens to them right under their nose and they're busy worrying about stupid things like lies and hurt and doing the right thing.

Faces aren't easy to read. Not even when they're close enough for noses to bump. You can look into someone's eyes and see your own longing reflected back and happily accept. Even though there will always be visions of midnight kisses with others and perhaps more...

Rime

When they were newly married, they'd sleep in positions which ensured physical contact throughout the night. Sometimes, they'd be face to face so that their foreheads would touch, sometimes, he'd put his arm around her waist and draw her close. She would always end up saying his name out loud in deep sleep.

One morning, she awoke to find him looking her and was thrilled that he'd been watching her sleep. He kissed her on the nose and then lay back looking forlorn.
"What is it my love?" she asked.
"Why do you say his name every night, night after night?" he whispered sadly.
________________________________________________________

I hold his hand for lack of something better to do. The distance between where we are and where we should be is immense. The restlessness, anguish and pain of both our beating hearts creates a cocoon inside which we exist in each other's solitude.

If I find what I am looking for, I fear it may be something that will be the manifestation of my vilest most horrid beliefs.
His rancor, through which I have discovered a void within myself where I wish to be buried alive, has made my soul splinter into little pieces which do not feel complete anymore.

They say live... with it.... and without it...

I wish they'd tell me how.

End of the Night

"This is the end, beautiful friend.
It hurts to set you free,
but you'll never follow me.
The end of laughter and soft lies.
The end of nights we tried to die.
This is the... end."

There's pictures of Morrison all around and I smile at the irony. I declare I don't drink and find myself staring moodily into a glass of rum and coke (rum hardly, coke loads) ten minutes later.
There's a boy there with witty banter and sexual innuendos and he makes me laugh.. but then he can never make me smile and that, I suppose is the true test.

I get a polite query about a refill and realise I'd rather just have coke instead. Lots of coke, lots of ice, and lots of lemon. I brood over my second drink and smile at how there used to be someone who would have known that without having to be told.

Sleep Visions

She smoothens his hair back from his forehead and leans in to kiss him. A deep slow embrace with hesitant whispers in his ears which leaves me with an emptiness that makes my sleep pretend to slumber and wakefulness a dream..
I hate drunk people.

Sometimes when I lie with my eyes shut and breathing regular, I can feel sleep tossing and turning inside me. Dark men in dark clothing stand and whisper sullenly by my bedside. Once I have even felt a gentle carressing of the neck and frigid kisses from lips belonging to someone with a voice made of velvet.

Often the room is filled with the weeping sounds of a small boy. Afraid of the dark he is. He tells me that people follow him around the dark house and he unwittingly leads them back to my bed and into his sleep visions. I hold him in tight embrace and sing him a lullaby about mine.

When it's finally pink outside, sleep discards us...

hIM

It made the mornings worth it. Just to see him saunter in like that. Of course, in the end I wasn't pretty enough to be his anyway.
Over the past few days I have come to the sickening realisation that I look for others to define me. However, despite all of that... I would still give a lot to be acknowledged as good looking by him.

Sleep Slow

Kiss on the lips and my tears too,
Draw the blinds and lie with me,
Cover me with a blanket of darkness
And tap the wood for good measure.
Green and red,
and lavender,
plunge into the vortex with me.

Laugh a little bit softer and then let me sleep.

Cover

Water bubbles in the air and dim lights. There's me and someone else. Time flies for it is prudent. Stagnant would be two if I had my way. There is music and it grows louder slowly because it knows I am Scared. I decide to dance and the lights get dimmer until I know it's alright to kick off my shoes. I begin to twirl. Barefoot.

Love

Love...is a race. It's an adrenaline fueled competition. We're kidding ourselves. It's all about us. It's not about the other person. It's all about how good we feel, or how bad. We thus use people as mediums of psychological gratification and then subconsciously pretend that they are the centre of our universe. They're not. We are the centre of our universe. In reality, we don't give a damn about the other person. We give a damn about what will happen to us and the insatiable emptiness if that person steps out of our little dream box and a replacement is slow in coming.

Love is basically a sadistic little game based on ego. You win if yours is bigger! You lose if you're responsible for inflating another's. You should be ashamed of yourself if someone is able to count on you. You are supposed to be proud as can be if someone is driving others crazy because of you. Love exists because not everyone is a hero. Because nowadays there's not enough things going wrong to engage people in sword duels and be done with little bursts of frustration. Today, it's people against people. Weapon against Weapon.

So can love last forever? Yes, and no. It doesn't last if the game's played by the rules. It lasts if the game has elements of cheating, intrigue and stale mates.

Love Letter

Dear You,

I write this to assauge the wounded sensibilities of the demons of my soul. I desire the last word.It has never mattered and it never will. The attempts to salvage will always be futile. It is something I will never regret, although I refuse to cherish it. It has ended in disappointment, yes, but that was never supposed to be your responsibility anyway. In my more lucid moments, I may just look back and smile.

With lots of leftover love,
Me