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.

Common Mistakes

Well, here’s the deal. I screw up a lot, I make too many mistakes because I do not know how to act and react in many situations. Case in point, when a message came from C, I was having dinner with my friends. One of my friends sees it and asks me a perfectly valid, innocent question, “who is it?” and I react immediately. I make a move to take my phone away from her, my face heats up (even though I don’t blush in the technical sense) and I end up escalating the issue enough that now, four other people know about it. And I feel like crying because I never intended for so many people to know and I cannot help but resent myself for my own stupidity and incompetence. In my defence though, this is the first time something like that has happened in my life and maybe hopefully, with more experience, I shall handle this much better.

But aside from that, I also have a tendency to do things I probably should not, all because I think I am doing someone something good. It is a case of misplaced generosity and it almost always comes back to bite my derriere, despite all my preparation to save myself from the inevitable pain in my derriere. But as I said, my interventional skills coupled with an exasperating memory (which can sometimes remember the dumbest things for ages and important things for a millisecond) is a disastrous combination that has left insane destruction in its wake before. Today, another such situation arose and well, I was so close to ruining everything for everyone. But I managed to somewhat control the situation and now, I think I should try my best to keep it there within the careful confines of rationality. Again, in my defence, I have never done this before and maybe hopefully, with more experience, I will handle it much better.

But aside from these completely sad states of existence is the fact that I keep on forgetting the simplest things. It could be something like forgetting my ID card and standing sadly in the mess during mealtime, it could quite literally be one of the so many things I do on a day-to-day basis. In fact, this blog post itself would not have been written had I persisted with my sleep. I have been doing that a lot lately, I end up sleeping as I am writing my post and I wake up much later, reminded of this endeavour I need to see to fruition and then I have to work again.

Sometimes I wonder how better my life would be if I were not obliged to write a blog post every day. But I also tell myself that we are near the end, almost, of this year. There are not many more months left, I have crossed a majority of it. Maybe I won’t continue this next year, or maybe I shall experiment with themes and things like that next year. But again, next year is still quite far off, nearer, but still far enough. And sometimes, I think, that is something we need to remind ourselves of. Sometimes boundaries are so thin, they can be non-existent. But that doesn’t mean the boundaries don’t exist. It is a very easy mistake to make, something I have made too many times, that has led me to quite a few situations, including the ones that happened today. Maybe I can take this as a lesson and move on?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Pens, Pencils and Erasabilities

A pen is a tool, that is what it is at its most fundamental level. It helps people write on paper, on cloth, on skin, on most surfaces. I have reached a point now in this blog and this semester, that I have stopped finding things that remind me of happy childhood memories and days. I have to make a constant, conscious effort to find something to write about every day. What a distance I have moved from everything. But I have also come to realise this constant writing is helping me a lot.

I have only heard people talk about how writing often helped them. Most of the time, I would walk away because it would sound too good to be true. Write every day? Who has got time for that amidst their busy schedules? And it is a difficult task, I struggle with days when I am so tempted to not write a post for the day. I would be so close to losing consciousness and it would feel like a chore just to open my eyes, let alone open my laptop and start typing. But I am glad I have persevered so far. And I really hope it continues on for the year (touch wood).

The pen, for me, was a sign of growing up. In my school, we had to use only pencils till 3rd standard. When we went to the 4th standard, I got my first pen. And how fascinated I was with that contraption! It was a pain to handle, I used an ink pen and the constant leakage and the non-erasability of pens added to my curiosity and interest. I owned a pink, shiny, metal-framed, hero tip pen. It was beautiful to look at and it was a pen I carried around with pride.

I remember the day I got the pen. My parents had gone out and when they came back home, my mom called me to her. She gave me a gift-wrapped box (yes, the pen came in a pretty box). I was very excited, mainly because this was a surprise gift and I loved surprises. I was also kind of sceptical about it because I had been, by then, used to finding many of their gift-wrapped packages to be pretty useless things that they had received at some conference. I did not set my expectations high and I was caught completely off-guard. It was a gift, for me, that they had bought for me. Not something they had received and gave to me to humour me. And I was delighted with the present.

The pen had a beautifully painted bird on its body. It was painted in shades of dark blue, green and violet, contrasting beautifully with the light pink, metallic body. And I proudly filled ink in it and took it with me to school. When I was in 6th grade, one day, I lost my pen. I was pretty sure that I had left in the neighbouring classroom where I went for language (Tamil) periods. When I went there, I found a girl holding my pen and writing it with it. I went to her and told her that it was my pen, but she refused, telling me that it was her pen that she’d bought recently. What I did next is something that I felt very ashamed of, but I convinced myself that it was necessary. I stole the pen back from her. The girl had a history of stealing things and I knew for a fact that she hadn’t had the pen before. But what I did may never be justified and it is something even I struggle to come to terms with, at times.

But regardless, I had my pen back and the pen served me faithfully for the next 3 years before a new pen came into my life. It was called Grippy and it was very weightless and perfect for holding. I used it from 8th standard up until 12th standard. When 12th standard came though, I was forced to move to ball-point pens because they apparently offered more speed. And board exams required speed more than anything else. Nevertheless, I still used pencils a lot. Whenever I wrote anything, I first wrote in pencil because I hated that pens were unerasable. I would then write on top of what I had written with a pencil with a pen. It cost me a lot of extra work but I didn’t mind. I hated striking out of any kind and this was the only way I could handle things. Moreover, the pencil also helped me first put my thoughts down before I started working on the actual.

In many ways, I hate making mistakes. Or slacking. Both of which I am doing here in college. I would prefer not making the pen mark first and then striking it out because I cannot cleanly erase it. Actions are also a lot like those pen marks. You cannot erase them. My pencils therefore also gave me a space to make mistakes, to correct myself. And I guess, in our life, it won’t hurt to use pencils even though we may be allowed to use pens, would it?

And that’s my memory for the day.