Seattle loves them who love Seattle II

It is that time again when nothing feels right. Nothing, except the place and its faint cry of belongingness. Hence the sequel.

Before chaos gets to me full throttle and warps my grey cells with life's little surprises, I better scribble away the updates. True, after wasting almost half a year cocooned in a monotonous hotel suite, one does become somewhat disoriented with spaces. And I am no different. Having said that, howsoever greedy it sounds, I am insanely preoccupied with hoarding every single minute of domestic bliss; etching my presence in every nook and corner of the apartment as if I never ever lived in one.

Since food plays the utmost important role in man's comfort, our story must begin from the kitchen. I had missed my baking sorely, but mostly it was the aimless loitering around in quest of ideas and ingredients. Nothing feels more cathartic than basking in swirls of aromatic goodness crawling out from the oven, and watching the sun set amidst a cluster of mossy pines. To put it in an elegant way, the calm reverberates T.S. Eliot's evening - "a patient estherized upon a table..." During such moments one does wish the reverie to continue, for the calm to live forever. Unfortunately, I am a creature of the real world and return must I to it.

The most precious icing to my perfectly baked Seattle cake is the thrilling proximity of the dramatic Cascade mountains, aka "America's Alps". While returning from an evening stroll a few days back, we spotted it for the first time in all its glory. There it was, hovering like a spreadeagled creature on the evening sky, humbling and towering at the same time. The best part is, on sunny days (which are oh-so-rare here) when the skies shine, I can catch a glimpse of the magnificent snow-caped peaks from our patio. What more could a mountain lover ask for?!

If the mountains humble and soothe my frayed self, spring does a beautiful patchwork on my ever tattering quilt of hope. The burst of colours in my patio infuse an unknown courage in me, one that I wouldn't know otherwise. What else is life after all? You dream, you fly, you fall and before you know you are dreaming again!

In the manner of a true bedouin, I'm guarding every inch of my newfound space, soaking in its every single drop - decorating, gardening, baking and of course ruminating. Like a caterpillar devouring a leaf's green life, I, too hold on to these little quotidian moments ferociously before life comes knocking again. The caterpillar knows being a butterfly ain't easy after all! Beautiful? Yes. But certainly not easy.

To have a room of one's own is probably the greatest of all joys. I have learnt that well during all these years of the on and off living out of suitcases. Virginia Woolf once wrote, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction". Since I own no bank, a room would do just fine. For the moment.

November, faithfully yours

It is a beautiful, very beautiful yet desolate November afternoon. The dramatic melange of the pristine, white snow and the blood red winter-berries makes my heart melt. Despite the absence of the sun. Despite the want of warmth.

There is something contagiously ominous about joblessness. First, you scream bloody murder for every lost opportunity of glory. Second, slowly but steadily self-pity replaces self-respect. Not to forget the all and sundry's opinion of you as the sole person inhabiting planet Earth living an idyllic life, where everyday is a Sunday. Then certain expectations from distant quarters of the globe just crawl their way into your space, that carefully constructed comfort zone of absolute anarchy. Of course, the last nail in the coffin is the obnoxious label - 'jobless'. And the rest of the regrets just follow, one after the other, like a continuous line of resolute ants.

Lately, I have been at my wits end for no particular reason, except for a bunch of unsolicited destinies that have tumbled down my way. Perhaps we all tread this autumnal path, only some must endure it for a longer period. We drift along with the tides unwarily and attach ourselves to a whole new existence, one that must always walk as a shadow behind us. There is a tacit beauty in namelessness, in the terrible truths that certain revelations carry. They ensnare you in a world where one is left with very little of one's own, except for a futile bunch of 'what ifs' and the obvious layer by layer of emotional corrosion.

Words have always comforted me during such moments of utter despair, both the spoken and the written form. They work like an emollient on my fractured hopes. But of late, each time I have tried to give voice to my woes, (and mind you, I choose my people well) the content as well as the context just melt away into a clumsy - "Oh, I'm good. And you?" The moment I try to scribble something sane they disappear, back into the riotous corridors of my mind. I have realised my vulnerability, that arrant disappointment that crushes you when you have a whole kingdom of raging thoughts inside that just refuse to cascade out. And by the time I am done unhinging them, there is an impatient nascent batch waiting to join the pandemonium.

I have been struggling to keep up to the one promise that I had quite nonchalantly made to myself on the day I had created this blog - to at least publish one tolerable post every month. Now, howsoever perfect a procrastinator I might be, this is one thing that I have tried to stick to in spite of my reputation. In spite of the fact that promises are darn fragile.

November, faithfully yours.

Tired and bruised!

There are days when you feel broken and torn and everything around you just goes on to contribute to this hard, knotty feeling. Moving to a new place is really tiresome and this was our fourth move in just two years. It has been a week since we moved into our new apartment and I, who is otherwise smart with new places, is struggling to find my way around. The built up lethargy of our longish hotel stay prior to our moving here is showing up. Now when I am back to my mundane do-it-on-your-own life, with no blessed "housekeeping" knocking at the door, I am at my wit's end. Nicknamed "queen of orderliness" by Sam, I find difficult to live up to it in the present circumstances. The 'queen', who loved to cook, now dreads the kitchen because that is where most of the disasters take place. I spill, drop, scatter and even manage to turn on the wrong stove while the pot is sitting on the other. Dinners which I could fix in no time are taking hours with my sluggish pace. I am a complete sight!

While browsing through the gardening isle in Walmart yesterday, I chanced upon this lovely sham bamboo sitting pretty in a ceramic arrangement. The tag said "Let luck shower on you", so there it was on my kitchen window, sipping sunlight through the blinds. I could never understand Feng Shui and the only reason I get lured by these items is because they represent the colourful, exotic Orient. It was simply a fake assurance, something to bring a smile to my careworn face.

But this was not the end to my string of maladies. It also happened to be the much dreaded time for one of these blinding migraine headaches which made things worse. At such times I become this ultra sensitive person who would flinch from any kind of light or noise and would just prefer to lie down in a dark corner with a cold gel pack pressed on the forehead. There was a saviour for my disappointing afternoon in the name of Julie & Julia. I finally got to watch the movie and could relate to Julie in more than one way. Like me she loved to cook and also happened to blog. Like me she too felt that her dreary life had no purpose and that she just lived her days one after the other. The movie cheered me up like any other Meryl Streep starrer does. I felt revived and was looking forward to an evening walk with Sam by the lake side, which happens to be right in front of our apartment. So there I was promising myself to be cheerful and positive, surrounded by dogwood flowers and paddling geese. Everything was perfect until this cute little Dalmatian came along with its owner. Normally pets here are very friendly and well trained. But this one, for no apparent reason, lunged forward at me with a nasty snarl which made me grab on to the hedge behind as a desperate measure. Just then I felt a stabbing pain in my thigh and almost for a second thought the canine had managed to get a chunk off me. Instead it was the fence which I had bumped into hence resulting in a big painful bruise. The puzzled owner just offered a polite American 'sorry' and marched off with her leashed fury.

It has been more than four hours since this harrowing incident and I still wonder what made that dog behave in such a strange manner. I am utterly crushed because I am a major dog lover. I am tired of this horrible day and I want it to end. Without further ado, the best thing would be to go to bed. I might have a perfect sleep with the perfect dream as Dumbledore says "In dreams, we enter a world that's entirely our own". I hope when I wake up I will find my lost world of order and reign as the 'queen' again.