So I went out for post-dinner caffeination with the Offender and Pink tonight. While we sat there with our two coffees (my coffee isn’t really my coffee, as Pink says), we described to her our brilliant dinner.

“So guess what we had for dinner.”
“What?”
“Chorizo, bacon, ham, sausages and prawn. Nothing else. Just that.”* 
“Why can’t you guys eat some vegetables?” she asked.
To which the Offender simply said, “Coffee is like a vegetable, right?”

Sometimes, I’m really glad about my choices of friends.

* Note: It was brilliant.

I am SO high right now.

WWHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

Okay, I needed to get that out of my system. I’ve been bouncing off the walls all evening. Why, you ask? Well, today I spent a small part of the evening speaking to my best friend from school.

This is important. Those of you who know me, know how terrible I am at keeping in touch; I’m talking mind-numbingly, earth-shatteringly bad. So, after school, as with most of my friends (except those that lived around me), I fell out of touch when we got to college. We spoke a few times a year (I remember a year when we literally only spoke to each other on our birthdays), discussing girlfriends and the like, making vague plans to meet, which obviously never happened.

He’s been in the States for a while, and recently, I’d been trying to in touch with him, to tell him something I’d much rather say in person. Anyway, that wasn’t meant to be, and I told him over a ping that I hoped he’d see soon and respond to.

And respond he did. By calling me. Clear across the globe. We skyped for a bit, but his connection was wonky. So he called me, from his cellphone, in the United States of America. And that shit costs money. So I said I’d only talk to him for a couple of minutes. And then we talked for half an hour (no, seriously. 29 minutes and 22 seconds. That shit costs money).

And it felt farking brilliant. Through the call and since, I’ve been hopping around the house with this mad grin on my face (it’s still here, 6 hours later). Since then, I’ve been drowning in this ridiculously superawesomebrilliantastic ocean of nostalgia. I’m stuck in, and never want to get out of, a never ending stream of elocution competitions (we were both good, he more so than I) and self-made comics (I seem to remember him doing all the work, yet somehow it was our comic) and English periods and ohgod.

And, as my conversations with him in recent times have made clear, I know he will read this. So anna, here’s a few things just for you:

- I hope I talk to you at least a couple of times a week.
- I’m dead serious about helping with the ideas you said you needed.
- The Li’l Lady has informed me that enough is enough and she simply HAS to meet you now that she’s heard so much about you (I cannot believe that because of my idiocy, you’ve never actually met her, in ALL these years).
- I feel like you should know about her, too, so I’m going to bore you to death talking about her.
- You talked about moving back here after your course is done. If that happens, I’m going to hope fervently that you stay here, in Bombay, and I’d want to have you over all the time, because…
- Like an idiot, I’ve only just realised how much I miss having you around.

It’s now three am, and I’m still wide awake, too excited to sleep, and still with a stupid smile plastered on my face. So all you people sleep, I’m going to be going WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! in my head a little while longer.

Hello again!

Yes, I’ve been gone too long. Yes, you miss me. Yes, you’re dying to know where I’ve been and what I’ve been up to. No? That last one? Oh. Okay. Be that way.

Anyway, yes, I’m back. However temporarily. And no, I’m not going to launch into a whole tirade of where I’ve been and how I’m really back now and whatnot. Suffice to say I am busy, and a LOT of shit is going down these days. What I *AM* here for, though, is to rant.

You see, recently, I stole from my Dad (with his permission) a beautiful Cross pencil. Now, I’ve looked for it online, and it seems to be a Cross Advantage, though I can’t be certain, because I can’t find the design anywhere. No, not even on their official website. Yes, it’s a beauty. Never you mind the crappy late night photo.

It is a thoroughly lovely pencil, heavier than I usually have a taste for, smooth as silk (though I’m sure that has to do with the lead it came with as well), and overall wonderful to write with. Except for one thing.

The lead just got over. Which is cool, it’s a mechanical pencil (or, since I’ve grown up in this country, a penpencil), so it refills easy, right?

FUCKING. WRONG.

I cannot seem to load a new lead into this thing. (Please try and ignore the slew of #TWHS/TWSSes that are about to come your way.) I’ve tried putting it in from the front, I’ve tried putting it in from the back. Nothing. I’ve looked on the official website to tell me how to put it in. Nothing. And the more I’ve searched, the more I’ve come to one shocking conclusion. There’s nothing online about how to refill this thing. Nothing. Everything I have come across seems to be about a different kind of loading mechanism. Which means only one thing: I’m an idiot. Clearly, it is so effortless to refill this pencil that no one has even bothered writing about it or making a how-to video.

Which means, simply, that I am an idiot.

I hate this. Never thought I’d see the day when stationery would make me feel stupid. =(

And yes, this is me saying I’m going to try and write more (and I mean actually write, not narrate my crappy pencil-less life). Can’t promise anything, though.

"You there?"

Two syllables. They drop off the tongue, easy as anything. Two small, innocent words. But they're not, are they?

They're laced with so much meaning, so much promise. And they say so much in so little time. The words sound like a whisper in the dark, one that assumes your presence, almost to the point where the question is rhetorical. "You there?" says, "This is where I last saw you, and I assume you're still here. You are, aren't you?" It's almost as if the words reference an age-old contract, reminding you that you have a duty you have sworn to perform, one you're neglecting, because the question needs to be asked.

Perhaps I'm just losing my mind, reading far too much into what is actually a perfectly innocent question. All I know is, for the first time in a long time, as an answer to the question, I would really like not to be.

Hotel

It was a different place every time. He drove three hours or more, looking for a hotel he hadn't already been to. He was ashamed of what he did, but couldn’t stop. Same story, every time.

Mess up the bed, call for room service. And then just watch the maid.

 

Still writing for that top secret 55 word thing. Shhhhh.

Red

It started with crayons. She’d use up the one colour and ask for a new box. Then her toothbrush. Pillows. Wallpaper. Schoolbag. Lunchbox.

Then her wardrobe. Shoes. Dresses. Lipstick.

At ten, she found a razor. Her mother screamed when she found her, but she grinned. “So much red!” she squealed.

 

(Ssh. Secretly taking part in this 55 fiction thing.)

Anything You Want

You can have anything you want. That's what everyone says. Anything you want. How often do they mean it, though?

More than anything in my life, I have clung on to my ideals. No, that's inaccurate. I should say I've clung on to my idealism. I've always thought of it as holding on to my innocence, retaining that eight year old child in my head.

I have been called a lot of things for it. Naïve. Childish. Stupid. You just don't know how the world works, they said. No, I know how the world works. I know all too well how it takes any semblance of innocence and systematically wrings it out of you. And it does this obviously at first. It bombards you with this knowledge. With most people, that is enough. They crumble, all too easily.

But if you can weather it, that's when life gets smart. It gets subtle. From corners you'd never expect, it sneaks up on you with a chisel and hammer and politely chips away at you. At those little weak junctions, those keystones.

But I don't want to submit. This one's too close to home. Too much a part of me. You can't take this.

So, to life, and to 'them', I say this: You can have anything you like. Anything. Except this.

Inside a writer’s bedroom, late at night

A book on the side table. Novel. Towel drying in the corner. Clothes piled carelessly…

This stinks.

Dust swirls in untraceable patterns on the floor, pushed around by the breeze the fan cuts through the cold air. It has settled on every surface, almost becoming a living breathing entity with a life of its own.

Wow. That was possibly even worse.

The thing that stinks the most about being a writer isn’t the lack of money, or the apparent subconscious necessity to live in appropriate squalor, or the fact that at parties, you’re the one standing off to a side, sipping a beer by yourself, profiling, drawing character maps, gaining inspifuckingration, when you could instead be using your ceaseless wit to impress one of the more geeky looking girls the jocks aren’t going for (ones that you might actually have a chance with), or the fact that the only reason you’re not is a crippling case of l’esprit d’escalier, or even the realisation that ‘English teacher’ is probably your best bet professionally.

It’s not the fact that you’re going to spend entire nights awake, staring at a blank piece of paper or a blinking cursor, waiting for inspiration to creep up on you and slit your throat like an assassin in the dark, or even the fact that half of everything you read will fill you with the insufferable hope that you can do so much better (I mean, come on! A monkey probably could), and the other half will leave you wondering why you didn’t pay more attention in science class and become a doctor or a fucking scumbag lawyer like everyone else in school, all of whom are going to give you that pathetic smile, that sympathetic simper at the reunion, telling you politely that they thought you’d become a senator or something important while secretly laughing at you in their heads and applauding their own life choices.

It’s not even the raging spirals, when you slip over the edge into alcoholism, hoping you’ll write something sad enough to make Nietzsche cry, or when you start popping pills, snorting powder, shooting up, hoping for a trip that shows you something amazing, some universal truth so powerful, nations of people will look up to you for wisdom and guidance, or that low sinking feeling in your gut every time you’re at a rock concert and you see with blinding clarity that these sixteen year-olds are probably better writers now than you will ever be.

And it’s not the cynics, the haters, the spouses who hope telling you gently that it’s not that good will someday snap you out of this stupor and make you get a real job, one that actually puts money on the table. It’s not the publishers, telling you that it’s just not the kind of story that they’re looking for right now, or that some of the themes are too bold and if you could please tone them down a little, maybe they could do something, or that it’s a great story, it really is, but they just can’t seem to find a way to market it that’ll ensure sales that will cover the cost of actually printing it, or even editors who think they know your ideas, your stories, your characters better than you and tell you what to do, what to write, to the point where you have to look really, really hard to recognize even the slightest part of the text as yours.

No. It’s none of that. The thing that stinks the most about being a writer is that someday, you will write something truly magical, truly special, take one look at it, and tell yourself it’s crap.

The Effects of a Modified Insomnia

I have been plagued, of late, with the affliction of the most irregular sleep patterns I have ever had. Result? I'm up at 7 am, on my porch, cup of chai in hand, watching the colony wake up.

Still, I think I could get used to this.