Thought spill

18.12.07

It is one of my ‘must-write’ days again – one of the rarer instances when my need to write takes priority even over my need to sleep. I’ve started alright, but there is nothing I have to particularly write about; yet so many thoughts/ideas are swarming in my head. So I’ve decided to follow my train of thoughts…

Right now my first thoughts are about V who is sitting here, right next to me, checking his mails (an 800 something backlog!!) The guy’s fantasy of birds is fascinating. His eyes seem to be completely drinking up those bird images on the monitor.

We are precisely only a month away from being man and wife - lawfully. We got our pre-nuptial enquiry at church and application for marriage registration at court done yesterday. In exactly a month from today, i.e. the 18^th Jan ’08, we will be civilly marriage – having finished just one of the several weddings that we’ll undergo. A reaffirmation of certain vows will have to be made again (in the Hindu way) and yet again (in the Catholic way) over the week after. Having to confirm in the eyes of the various societies we’re part of, what we have already affirmed to each other.

I was reminded yet again of the number-game that destiny has been playing in the constant with us. 18^th January – a day of the month that I’ve always strongly associated with A. That was supposedly the date of my first meeting with him. Now when I marry V on the very same date, each of my previous associations will be erased – completely. Thereafter, every 18^th will belong to V. Sorry A, looks like even my future doesn’t want you in it, even as memories. And of the dates of our weddings, 17^th will be the last one- a date on which V confessed his “love” for me – the final seal. Wow! This is really uncanny – down to the last detail. If these aren’t signs from up above, I ask, what else are? There could be no better example of a ‘meant-to-be’!!

Life in the last month with V has given me a preview of what I’m getting into – a preview I quite like. Sure we have had our share of disagreements and near fights, but it looks real nice from where I stand today. I hope I am living up as much / more or less to the visions of V as he is to mine. Doing it all together – cooking, eating, sleeping, washing dishes, watching movies – oh yes, it has been good.

Part of the reason for picking up this journal today was to write my review/reflections for the movie 15 Park Avenue – a movie that V and I watched together and one that made for a lot of soul searching stuff. Also, we’d promised each other that we would write reviews of movies that we see together which would be part of our creative learning process. Yes, the movie has a lot to write about, but procrastination has led to a fainted memory and I’m afraid the review will have to wait till I’ve watched it again and refreshed my remembrance.

Yet another thought that’s competing for the number one spot as I’m nearing tomorrow is about meeting Aj. Aj will be in town tomorrow and I’m supposed to be meeting him. This will be my first interface with him – months after I got to know him. From where it started to where it has reached now makes for very unsettling sentiments. They bother me. V knows, for the greater part, what Aj is all about and thus justifiably uncomfortable.

I know what I want, where I stand and where I’m headed – very sure – for the first time in my life. There still is some anxiety though. Is it because first times cause fear? In this case, the pertinent first is my surety of myself. I am tough to trust in my own eyes…or am I?

The force of vacuum

26.9.07

I’m back to my baby again…my journal I mean. It has been quite some time since I’ve written. Feels like homecoming - homecoming for comfort, for refuge. I’ve come back to my journal to seek refuge. Come back to it, pressed by the force of vacuum.

V left for Bombay (yes, I prefer it to Mumbai) today. My confidante, my confession box, my punching bag…GONE! For two whole weeks!!! It was only natural that I turned to my journal for my release. I wonder if it is this way with all writers. Are inspirations always had in moments of crisis or emptiness? I’ve not written in a while (just turned the pages to see that it has been a precise two months and a week); didn’t feel the push, not even slight traces of that mad urge that I’ve sometimes experienced. The spoken word has taken precedence in V’s presence. With him, everything felt is almost immediately ejaculated in words – spoken ones, heard ones, understood ones.

My relationship with V has obviously changed in the last couple of months since we started seeing each other. Only yesterday, we were discussing how the frequency of our written communication has reduced to a zilch in so short a time. I was fretting over how the nature of our communication has changed so rapidly implying perhaps that we don’t communicate as much as I would like to. Only a day later, today, I realise where my argument was flawed. As V points out too, only the mode/style of our communication has changed; the volume hasn’t. It has increased rather. Today, when he’s not around, my awareness of his absence overwhelms me so much that it has pushed me over the brink and made me gush on paper. And as always, it’s proving therapeutic.

This gap, this vacuum – his absence has also made me see clearly what he has come to mean to me. Beyond that breakneck speed that our relationship is moving in, beyond those plans of a proposal/engagement/parents-meet-parents/and wedding, beyond my defensive statements of “It’s not like I can’t live without him, blah, blah, blah, beyond it all, I realise that V is much more. I love him. I respect him – immensely. Respect him for what he has become, for what he is and what he chooses to be. I adore his openness to the new, his willingness to learn. There is so much promise in imagining a life with him – a life of learning, a life of teaching. A life of looking forward to a myriad possibilities, encouragements, criticisms, fulfillments, pride, and not to say the least, a life of mature love. I love him for questioning me till my confusions have cleared. I love him for not allowing me to take for granted even those things that I rightfully own. I love him for making me constantly compete with myself – to want to grow, to be smarter, funnier, better read, more knowledgeable. I love him because he taught me his not-so-good jiving and admitting and admitting that he doesn’t know it too well. And well, so much more. This is what I miss – this is the name of this vacuum.

Huh? (Undated, untitled and…incomplete?)

Sometimes I wonder if my bouts of restlessness represent anything greater than the classical example of an idle mind leasing itself to the works of a devil. It has gripped me again today – that unnameable, inexplicable restlessness - a restlessness that gives rise to unreasonable irritability, causeless questions and useless feelings. The devil’s workshop theory came about because today has been one of my perfectly idle days – not one thought worked upon, not one word written. The urge to write here, in ink, in this journal makes itself felt as and when these spells make their rounds.

It started quite early this day, as I was riding back home, I guess. First it was just some memories of A that floated up to my consciousness as casually as much as my being is capable of casualness. I started from being mildly amused at their appearance in the first place and more so at their timing. I was just returning from V’s place and my head was ‘supposed-to-be’ filled by his thoughts. Yet, A continued to insist on being present on the first line of my thoughts, leading to my amusement turning to discomfort. “He must be thinking about me…it’s just those vibrations...” I offered to myself my current favourite argument, but in vain – I realised a little later. I busied myself with getting ready for work and got to office in seemingly good spirits; and must have pushed A to the back of my mind for a while.

With the passing of those unbearable empty hours, the thoughts re-emerged. This time around, the form of the thoughts had apparently changed and with it had changed the accompanying feelings. It wasn’t A anymore – not at least distinctly. I cannot quite place what thoughts might have buzzed in my head then, but I know I can tag those feelings as a mounting irritation - irritation and anger and malice towards everyone and everything. No one’s crossed my path hence and has therefore been spared of my reasonless ire – no one but V. One fearfully innocent message stating a fact was enough for me to explode and spew it all on him. I used the same tricks I’d learnt from him and regressed through the day asking a series of “whys” till it brought be back to the ride home. So, I find myself asking the question if it is a case of comparison.

(Dunno what I was thinking and the last bit makes no sense to me.. The facts are lost and so are the feelings..but the words remain – and I like them)

WHOOPIE!!!

17.07.07

I can’t stop smiling, giggling actually; and feeling ticklish in the tummy and silly. It must be happiness in all its splendour. Pure joy this must be. V said the words this morning. I knew he would eventually, but like all other things he does, he managed to throw me off guard this time around too. J That’s his style: inconspicuous, jet-speed hints (ones that you miss if you’re not on tenterhooks all the time), and a no-drama delivery. And it hits you like, BANG! When you’re least expecting it.

We were talking only last night about it; and he got me to believe that I was risking a premature admission or worse still, a belief of prematurity when he did say it. Yet another of his defences was that I was supposedly pre-empting his wanting to say it. Hah!

Um…well, guess I was, and I decided to stop doing whatever pre-empting means. I told him that it was hurting for me to love him and not have him love me back; but I didn’t say the words; haven’t said them yet, tra la!!!

I wanted so much to share this joy with someone and the effective choice turned out to be, as it always does, V. One call later, I’m settled. We have this strange trade of calm and restlessness that comes from him being inherently rational and me being inherently emotional. He gives me the calm, and I him the restlessness. He injects a thought, and I a feeling. Fair play and perfect foil.

But there are flashes of fear. But well, what joy hasn’t fear mixed with it? The fear of losing the worth of something attained so laboriously, the fear of altered meanings and the fear of an expected routine. I hope the ‘I love you’ doesn’t become as meaningless as a “heyyy” for me; again, for him too, again. I’m hoping with all I’ve got that V is not another one of those guys who become uninteresting the minute I get them to say the words. Damn! What am I saying? I know he isn’t one of them. This, as he puts it, is just one of the tinier missions of mine to get the whole of him.

A spiritual journey is what I’m offering him: a quest for him to integrate his self as a whole. I’m afraid there too. He’s rather complete as a man already. What if he needs me no more after completing his soul? But do I want him to need me? Or simply want me because he wants to. That has been a great honour and I reckon it will be so. I hope I also love him because I want him and not because I need him. Love ought not to be price paid for ones needs. I’ve paid it once. He’s paid it too. Thus, this time around, these words bring about a great deal of responsibility with them. I hope we’ve understood each other enough to respect that.

For this time though, I’ll just sit back and be happy, knowing that it is not premature.