The Truth Is A Black Hole

(I've decided to add a new feature called Suggested Listening to the blogposts. Songs I like and think go well with each piece. 

For today it is this wicked, wicked interpretation of With/Without You on cellos)

----

because if everyone is out looking for answers, someone has to stay back and ask the questions.


can you spot each other in a crowd after all these years? Will you fall in love again if he made his way to you? Does it count as 'first sight' if enough time has passed? What does enough time look like? Do you think we have some before global warming takes over?



Would you agree with her if she told you that we're all on a rebound? Did we ever get over anyone? Do you get a new hairstyle when you're finally over someone? Do you still wear that red sweater because you're convinced it brings out your eyes? Or because he loved it and you're hoping to run into him again?



Did your first date begin when he picked you up from the door, or when he asked you out? Do you always magnify every insignificant detail? If it didn't sound so plebeian would you tell everyone you want to leave your day job to write vampire fiction? Can you voice every thought coursing through your veins? Do you think your closest friends would still like you, if you did?



Do you like surprises on days other than your birthdays? Would you be able to tell that a surprise and a shock are interchangeable depending on what side of the planet you occupy? Is there any right answer to the 'what kind of music you like?' 

What kind of questions do you ask people when you're first getting to know them? Do the questions tell you more about them, or are they disguised answers to who you are?


If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be? If you know it why do you still hold on to it for dear life? Are you afraid of feeling empty when you're finally rid of your 'faults'? 

Do you recognize in others faults you wish you had? Does it make you think of sex? Doesn't everything?


Will you admit to your mentor that the only news you've read since the last 2 years was on Twitter? Do you wish you stopped that too? Have you ever wished you could see a therapist? Called your friend who makes equally bad choices, instead? Why do you prefer a water bed to an air mattress? Do all your choices say something about you? Does that question still hold if you subscribe to chaos theory? 

Are you always looking for answers?

Or do you wish you could just stop?

                                           (Picture Credit: RyTy and The Portret Project, New Delhi)

Date A Girl Who Has ADD !!

This post started out as a conversation with a very dear, befuddled guy friend.
This guy had been online considerably during work hours
(by online I mean Facebook. By considerably I mean constantly. Which is why his identity must remain anonymous, all those who have a guilty flush reading this right now- That's all on you).


His dilemma was fairly straightforward. Well meaning friends had tagged him on several illuminating but conflicting posts.
There was his friend who warned him about not dating the girl who travels apparently her skin was too sunburnt, she couldn't hold a steady job and got bored too quickly. A contrarian friend insisted that dating a girl who travels is a smart life choice, there's all that life broadening experience, her ability to fall asleep anywhere (no kidding, it's listed in the article) and the fact that she could carry a fully loaded backpack made her a stellar choice for a companion.

His mum of course, insisted he date a girl who reads. But as mums go she made this point passive-aggressively by telling him that he should in fact date an illiterate girl because she won't be able to articulate or understand the emptiness that their punctuation-less life will eventually be.
Dear dad, sweetly to the point told his son to date a girl who writes because they make you look good (I'm not making this stuff up).

So, on the near occasion of Valentine's day (and for those of my friends who're pretending to not remember that it's here- why else does the mall look like one giant, ugly, heart?!).


Here's what I think all those guys confused about the right girl should do:


Date a girl who has ADD !! 

(It stands for Attention Deficit Disorder. Scroll quickly to the bottom if this offended you already)

If you've read any of the above articles closely, they go to show why any interest a girl may have is mostly a hidden tool for you to better your life. 
She travels?  Great, will be less fussy and open to squalid, backpacking-dorm-like conditions which is what a boys room sometimes looks like. 
She reads?  Super! It means your children will be able to string a sentence together. 
She doesn't travel?  Great. It means she will have a steady job, will wear a watch and will fight and communicate with you in only one language. 
She doesn't read?  Excellent. She will save you money on coffee. Girls who read forget to drink their beverage on time, forcing you to buy them two cups of coffee. 

It's rough that a guy must have to choose from all these wonderful services that different girls with different interests provide. So here's my submission: 
Date a girl who has ADD. 
As English sitcoms (reference the Zoey Deschanel empire) go to show, most of them will be wide-eyed and chasing birds while baking cupcakes. This lets them fit the just-right mould of “cuteness”. Independent and/or sexy girls may not apply. 
After all, which Mummy-ji can take offence to a cupcake baking, bird chasing daughter-in-law ? 
Date a girl who has ADD, for her medical condition will ensure that she will have forgotten any douchebag remark/action that you might've made. 

Most fights will sound like:

Her: How Could You Speak To Me Like That? 

You: Err.. You Shouldn't Have Angered Me About...

Her: Oh My God, I love pink. Let's talk about colours.


When you're with a girl who has ADD, you don't have to choose anymore. She can travel/not travel/read/and write but not so much that her hobby is in anyway debilitating or limiting to your life. 

She will never love anything long enough for it to consume her time. Which means that she can spend her leftover time, loving you and doodling your name on the side of her notebook. With hearts. Girls with ADD love hearts and exclamation marks. 

“!!” These are way cuter than anything else a reader/writer/traveler can bring to the table.

Unlike other demanding and difficult girls-  for e.g.: The girl who reads will hold you to some high standards she read in her favourite book, the girl who writes will be mentally spell checking your angry texts, the girl who travels might be difficult to keep in one place-  The girl with ADD will be all of the above, but not for too long. Not long enough for you to alter your lifestyle. 

Unlike girls who travel, a girl who has ADD might have a stamped passport but will not have the patience to actually be able to read maps and correct you. 
Like the girls who write, the girl who has ADD will demonstrate suitable command over the language but not so much that she will get lost in the middle of a book and forget to meet you for dates. She will prefer not to travel because too much adventure never did anyone much good. 


This girl who has ADD will never be consumed or be defined by any one single thing. Which means you will almost be dating more than one woman at a time. (Please don't stand up in excitement. Remain seated for the entire length of this article). 

Her constantly shifting attention will ensure that she keeps the mystery alive in the relationship, and you don't have to settle for any singular “type”. Guys, really date a girl who has ADD. If you forget her birthday, chances are she might have too. 


She will be misplacing things all the time giving you a chance to save the day and be her hero by finding her lost keys, or reminding her that her scarf is already around her neck. (Admit it, you're smiling just thinking about how cute she is!). 
A girl with ADD will not have enough focus to have a singular career, but a mind intelligent enough to definitely get out there and work 
(9 to 5 only, nothing longer or more constricting). 

Dear confused men, who have been tormented by the question of which girl to date.

Date a girl who has ADD and you won't get bored. 
However, chances are she probably will. 




(Non Disclaimer: No animals were prosecuted/put on trial during the typing of this rant. My aforementioned guy friend may or may not be fictitious.
Basically I love reading, writing, traveling and sometimes not traveling. All the other wonderful blog posts referenced above were limiting my options.  
Consider this the longest personals ad ever. 

ADD is a real life condition, which half of my friends are afflicted with. This article is merely a plea to stop the "Date a girl who.." rants.
Date anyone you want.
I can't share my personal, completely biased opinion any longer- 

Oh. Look. Butterflies. 

I have to go bake some cupcakes!!) 

                               (customary picture of a woman near the beach with a book. Credit: here)




Start.

This year I hope you keep your eyes skyward. Bold, almost challenging. Because looking down or back is no way to live.

This year I hope you move forward, if only in the tiniest of increments. Hell, shuffle where you are, if you must, but travel both inside and out. Take a leap of faith. And when you do, I hope you find new, unexplored places.

This year, like all other years, I hope you love defiantly. Reach beyond what you've been told is right/smart/will happen/can/should/be. Love like you're in a movie. Get your hair done if that helps you play the part. Do ridiculous, grand things for love because of all the things you underplay, this shouldn't be one of them.

Of the things you lose this year and you will- your keys, that second sock, a jacket in a party, your wallet and your heart- don't lose yourself. Be true to the oddball, goofy version of you there is. Celebrate him/her each time you discover a new neurosis or eccentricity and know that just you living each day out is one hell of a good story.

Speaking of living, I also hope you die in tiny, tiny bits at key moments this year.
Die inside and watch yourself come back to life. Then hold this beautiful and softly tragic truth in your palms. That you will probably survive most things. You, right now, decked out in pajamas and padded in winter weight, you will not die of a broken heart (even though it might feel like you might), you won't die if you're made redundant or if you lose your mortgage. You will survive loss and pain, even when you may not want to.

And each time you find yourself in the centre of some loss or pain. Make a joke. Find something to laugh about, because when you do you've unknowingly already crossed over to the sunny side.

But more than anything else, this year make your own choices, don't sit on a fence of confusion, complacency, comfort and fear. Don't let life choose for you. Take a chance, put your wishes out there in the Universe, and irrespective of how it turns out, this year would have been yours to own.

                                                               (Photo Credit: Here)

Words: Strange & Otherwise. Part- II

Almost six months ago, I'd written Part 1 of this post. Out of part laziness, too many scribbled half-ideas on paper napkins and more words than notebooks could contain, I'm sending out Part 2.

Like last time, I've linked the books to their Amazon copies (buy them and read!).  The list is arbid, but if you read it with one eye closed (preferably your left one), it reads like a short story.

***

“And the flavor of Pippa's kiss--bittersweet and strange--stayed with me all the way back uptown, swaying and sleepy as I sailed home on the bus, melting with sorrow and loveliness, a starry ache that lifted me up above the windswept city like a kite: my head in the rainclouds, my heart in the sky.”
~Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“My heart goes out to him. Sort of. Because empathy depends on how you've spent your day.”
~ George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone  (also read his brilliant short story collection here).


“And because there is something they can’t see people think it has to be special, because people always think there is something special about what they can’t see, like the dark side of the moon, or the other side of a black hole, or in the dark when they wake up at night and they’re scared.”
~Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time


“She said she knew she was able to fly because when she came down she always had dust on her fingers from touching the light bulbs.”
~J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.”
~Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar (read my review on this gorgeous book here).


“It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”
~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the time of Cholera.

“He died violent and young and desperate, just like we all knew he'd die someday.”
~S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders



“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
~C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (and the gorgeous Zen comics version of this quote, here)


“Remember: that giants sleep too soundly; that witches are often betrayed by their appetites; dragons have one soft spot, somewhere, always; hearts can be well-hidden, and you can betray them with your tongue. (from "Instructions") 
~Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things: short fictions and wonders



“I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel, world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go.”
~Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go


“The essential matrimonial facts: that to be happy you have to find variety in repetition; that to go forward you have to come back to where you begin.”
~Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex


“No matter where I go, I still end up me. What's missing never changes. The scenery may change, but I'm still the same incomplete person. The same missing elements torture me with a hunger that I can never satisfy. I think that lack itself is as close as i'll come to defining myself.”
~Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun



"Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know—because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot. And when I got it it turned to dust in my hands.”
~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned



“[E]verywhere I'm looking at kids, adults mostly don't seem to like them, not even the parents do. They call the kids gorgeous and so cute, they make the kids do the thing all over again so they can take a photo, but they don't want to actually play with them, they'd rather drink coffee talking to other adults. Sometimes there's a small kid crying and the Ma of it doesn't even hear.”
~Emma Donoghue, Room



"If at any time you find it necessary to correct your brother, do not correct him with mud — never, on any account, throw mud at him, because it will spoil his clothes. It is better to scald him a little, for then you obtain desirable results. You secure his immediate attention to the lessons you are inculcating, and at the same time the hot water will have a tendency to move impurities from his person, and possibly the skin, in spots."

~Mark Twain in ' Advice to little girls


“Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.”
~ Rumi



“It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.” 

~Raymond Carver, What we talk about when we talk about love.



“there is a place in the heart that
will never be filled 

a space

and even during the
best moments
and
the greatest times

times

we will know it
we will know it
more than
ever

there is a place in the heart that

will never be filled
and
we will wait
and
wait

in that space.” 

~Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone At Times.

“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” 

~Leonardo da Vinci


“And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been”
~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to A Young Poet