Stable Beauty

I am finally back in Chennai after quite a long while. I had not even realised that I had unconsciously missed it quite a bit, the different sights and sounds inside my own house. I think I am also consciously holding myself back from proclaiming it as my “home” because I know that right now, I probably don’t have a material interpretation for “home.” But that is not to say I don’t feel at home in multiple places, just Ashoka, for example. I feel comfortable and at home there, like I belong there (which is sometimes hard to find even within my own family). I live and thrive in the material space, I am very earthly in that way (also, fun star thing, I am apparently a Taurus and this is how they are supposed to behave, apparently).

I think one of the deals about quite a bit of travelling like I did today is that I am left completely exhausted to the bone. But my brain is still running fast inside my skull and I feel completely out of my body in a weird weird way. Today was an extremely fun day and I absolutely enjoyed it. Moreover, I put an effort to look pretty and I think it paid off quite nicely, I did feel pretty. And it felt nice to feel pretty because that is not something I feel very often. Especially not recently, and well, I don’t have anyone else to blame but myself because I let things affect me and make myself feel things. There are times when someone might say something because they don’t necessarily know that it could affect me. It could be a completely normal thing for them to say, something they have said before, but I could blow up for that because I don’t like it or it pricks a part of me that I am not very keen on getting pricked.

But regardless, coming back to the question of feeling pretty and putting an effort. I have always been a very materially rooted person, I define a lot of things in my life based on material and physical terms and ideas. I love photos, for example, and I love the small things that people might do unconsciously for me. It could be a simple thing as getting my phone for me when I leave it somewhere by mistake, moving without even thinking about it to accommodate me in a particular space, a hug, an unexpected text message, and so on. The concept of beauty too, in my head, has been strongly rooted in this material and physical world. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t mean this in an “I condone the idea of objective standards for beauty or I only accept conventional beauty standards” way. I mean it more in an “I believe that a person’s beauty comes in their physical self” way. This beauty is not objective, it cannot be defined. So, if I find someone beautiful, I find their physical self beautiful and if I know them well enough, this beauty I find on their outside and on the inside converge and become a concrete whole that I cannot differentiate between. This happens with me with almost all my friends, especially those that I grow close to.

So, for me to find myself pretty today meant a lot of things. But the most important thing for me was that I found what was inside of me beautiful too. I was surprisingly happy with myself, I didn’t hate myself (as I tend to do at times). That is a strong feeling, to be able to smile at yourself in the mirror (and no, let’s not get into the whole image/real, other/self question). This didn’t have anything to do with an objective view of my own prettiness today, it had to do with my own response to what I was seeing. I could have looked hideous to anyone else’s eyes, but if I found myself pretty then that was key. Am I even making sense? I am in a terribly sleepy state and I feel like I am not making as much sense as I would like. But then, if we all made perfect sense all the time, then we would be doubly critical of people who make mistakes. And honestly, I don’t think they need to berated more, not when they probably berate themselves for it more than others do. We all make mistakes, forget where we are rooted and lose our footing, but then, at the core of it all, there does exist the stability we crave and maybe one day, I will find it for myself?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Raw Materials

Getting adequate sleep has become somewhat of a luxury these days. I find myself collapsing in the unlikeliest of places, falling asleep almost everywhere and embarrassing myself when I end up sleeping in the middle of doing something important. Even right now, I am extremely sleepy and I have readings to do. It is quite annoying because it feels like work never ends and the last week, I ended up leaving quite a bit of slack. So this weekend, I really need to work hard to get back on track. The thing with a course like Literary Theory is that all these texts mingle and talk and converse with each other. If you haven’t read any text, chances are you might get extremely lost in class.

I don’t like feeling lost in class because it makes me feel more dumber than I do on a daily basis. I then need to constantly tell myself, in quite an unconvincing way might I add, that I am not dumb. It just loses its meaning after a while, it just starts sounding extremely insincere and stupid. Anyway, it is not a big task to sound stupid, at least from my limited experience. I can sound extremely stupid without even trying, case in point, some of my own blog posts from the past and well, I still don’t know how this one is going to turn out so this one might add itself to that list. Regardless, I am quite stupid many times and today might just as well be one of those days.

What gives me some modicum of joy is the fact that I am quite wonderfully writing a story (around 500 words) every week. I have ended up writing quite a bit and that feels good, to have something to look at and say that I wrote them. Now, whether those are good pieces or not are yet to be seen. But regardless of the worth/value I assign them, they are still written pieces that can be worked on. They are extremely useful raw material and in the world of writing, raw material is great, it means there is something to work with. It takes a lot of pressure off the writer. You don’t feel as sad when you are not churning out something from time to time, you can work on stuff you started in a moment of inspiration (or compulsion, which is also a good inspiration sometimes, I feel) and never brought to fruition.

One of the primary problems with this blog itself is the fact that every day I write without much raw material to work with. The only raw material I have is the memories of the day and sometimes even that is extremely sketchy. With such a precarious position, it is quite no wonder that most of the time I have to force myself to type words. this compromises on stuff that I could be saying. It is really not about how frequently you’re producing, but rather, what you’re producing and how you’re producing. But anyway, this blog has been going on every day so far and hopefully shall continue to do that until the end of this year. Maybe next year, I can limit myself to weekly stuff. have a theme every week and write one post each time. It is all quite far off into the future and now is not the time to ponder over them. But nonetheless, sometimes the future and the raw material it promises, sound exciting and worth dreaming about, doesn’t it?

And that’s my memory for the day.