I am open walking wounds. I’m awash in the pain of those who hurt me. Because to bleed is to also stain & to infect. But you know, it hurts much more to fester alone, to bear wounds silently, to hide sores in pretence. In the feeling will there be…
You can be grateful for the beauty & also upset at the ugliness. The things that inspire these co-exist & sometimes in the same place. Why would the feelings that these bring up, not be able to occupy the same mind simultaneously? Human beings can feel more than one feeling…
We are raw from sharp experienceCarrying knives of words& chisels of pain My jealousy is smoothly curvedAnd you stick pinpoints of insight into itLeaving them to harden overnight Then, as I ripple its edgeswith vulnerabilityYou fill the holes with trust I chip away at your craggy, unformed notionsAnd sand-blast the…
Try it. It’s a lesson in what trust is & what we mean when we say we trust someone. It’s really hard to say “Trust me” to yourself. So we build up people who can say it to us. When we call someone trustworthy, aren’t we really saying we are…
Healing is messy. So is art. So is living. With lots of love to @senseslenses and @shaunakde for helping make my life & healing, art.
I said to myself. Hate, violence, abuse – these breed more of their own when left unchecked. It’s easy to use them to explain why you inflict them on others. That explains it, it doesn’t justify it. So I say no. No to addiction, no to promiscuity, no to easy…
I’ve been examining the concept of labels this week – why we need them, why I resist them so much. No denying labels play an important role in the human experience. A name is a label & it’s the first building block of our identity. Therein lie some answers. Labels…
As a kid, I was adrift in a sea of cultural influences, linguistic, communal, regional & personal. Maybe that’s a metropolitan childhood but life has always felt like a search for an identity anchor. I took to books early because an only child is a lonely child but words never…
A few years ago, I fell in with an activist group. I was out of an abusive relationship with no way to process. I was being blamed, urged to hide it, shamed for saying it did happen. I could barely think through the pain & gaslighting. When the group named…
When it hurts, and you aren’t even allowed to bleed, turn it into art. When they have encoded hatred into every thing that touches you, every gaze, every fabric, every brushstroke, every word, let the burn power you. If you are a child of pain or even a vehicle for…
On Tuesday, I had lunch with Annapoorna. She ran late but the meal was sumptuous & between us, slightly overspiced. She is known for dramatic excesses, after all. I told her I wanted out. She nodded & picked out a ber. We both know what grows in this city stays…
At some point, you have to let go of the people who you think healed you because they’re no more than crutches. Maybe you needed them once but letting them go is part of growth. There is no glory in suffering, no love in neediness. Shared pain is an opportunity,…
I found my kinship with green things when I was 8, watching fascinated as baby shoots poked out of the mud laid on a try, where I’d sprinkled mustard seeds a few days earlier. About 10 years ago, a doctor having his yard renovated, handed me a sprig of ajwain,…
I’ve loved painting since I was young enough to find joy leaving my fingerprints on walls & my own face. That has not changed. Something about the interplay of colour & the feel of pigment in every form just makes me sit right. I feel like I tap into a…
I’ve been thinking a lot about the different kinds of shaming (including the variations of body-shaming). Shame hides inside you, showing itself only in the ways you distance yourself from others. Condescension. Envy. Snark. Inconsideration. Exploitation. Bullying. Trolling. Shaming. Untended shame breeds more of itself. The ashamed becomes the shamer….
People don’t like you because you’re superlative. More often than not, that causes the opposite reaction. Efficiency never won friends. It might cause you to be picked sometimes but it’s not liking that drives this choice; it’s need. I think we all like someone who makes us feel good. Maybe…
I picked up the crochet needle today. I began crocheting in 2002 after I heard it was calming. My impatient younger self had been bored by the labor but in 2002 I found something else. I was struggling through something I did not understand, had no support or idea how…
What does loneliness sound like? A scream that no one seems to hear. Gasps that don’t make it past the throat. Sentences written in invisible ink. The redacted words on a page. It’s feeling unwanted, unnecessary, irrelevent even. Then you remember. You still exist. The print under the graffiti, the face…
Much gets said about the frenzied pace of a metropolis and its coldness. But every big city is an organism of parallel layers, bubbles even, that jostle along, seemingly oblivious to the others’ presence. My city is Tinsel Town, it’s the financial capital, it’s the safest city, it’s a port,…
Why do we look back when the natural way of things is to move forward? Because it’s easy? Because it’s nicer? Life never seems quite as wonderful when it is being lived. But in comparison with what we’re feeling and facing and surviving at this moment, the heydays seem like…
