Miles to go...

"Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing."
~ Sylvia Plath

Just when I was submitting a creative writing assignment yesterday, something hit me with a quiet yet brutal force. Why is it so hard to believe in oneself? This question does not just ring in my doubt-prone ever fretting head, but the each one of us who has tried to be creative in whichever way. There are times when we just fall flat on our faces refusing to get up. But then we always do, for so huge is the urge to carry on, on this never-ending journey of dejection and lucklessness. The in-between moments, the ones between applaud and despair, are the ones where we question, fear and sometimes lose all hope. For someone like me who suffers from chronic pessimism, that 'sometimes' becomes most of the times. I don't know how good or bad a writer I am (or if I am a 'writer' at all!), but I do want to be someone some day. Even if it is through just one story. Just once. Thus the battle must continue, for how long who can say.

A tiny fragment from a lost moment (it just flew in while I was halfway my rant!):

"She was late that day. Again. Bus no. 256 had left. For someone as blindly confident as a race horse when amid friends, she often found herself miserably vulnerable in such situations. Standing neat in a cerulean dress and black heels, she could sense her flagging self clam up like a morning glory at night. The bus would not be here before another hour. Even the hands of her watch crawled labouriously, ticking reluctantly. Her eager eyes scoured the almost empty bus-stop hoping for someone to appear, for a flicker of that sudden surprise, like a deer appearing on the middle of the road out of green nothingness. She fumbled inside her trendy taupe tote, fidgeting through the tangled mass of keys, Kleenex and cosmetics, fishing out a book. It was a collection of short stories by Margaret Atwood. Books had always comforted her like a mother comforts her bruised child. Words gave her strength, cleared the clutter of emotions in her doubting head. The nagging unease receded into the background like a stale story of the past. She was a lover of words, after all."

Pre-holiday jitters

This morning I woke up with a throbbing migraine which is normally accompanied by an irritable temper. Although painful, I am quite used to such depressing days at least once in every fortnight. So here I am, sitting with a cold compress balanced on my head and typing away my frustration. And ginger tea isn't much of a help always. I need to vent it on somebody and who better than my mute, eternally tolerant blog. I wish I could fix these tormenting headaches with the 'swish and flick' of a magic wand. But unfortunately this is a real world that I live in, where mortals have to deal with pain that could be anything from a skinned knee to a broken heart. The cause of my ordeals are mostly my nerves, a bundle of gnawing raw nerves. Therefore losing my calm and being perfectly obsessive-compulsive comes naturally to me. With only two days left for the journey home, I should be thrilled, which I am. But what actually rules my hours now is my fretting and peeving over inessential trifles. It is quite a raging battle of the dos and don'ts, the will happens and won't happens inside me. Surely our apartment will not perish to the lakeside spiders who just crawl up and love making their tiny webs in our living room. I know my blooming geraniums won't die of Sam's friend's neglect, who actually is a very nice person. Why on earth should anyone, who breaks into our apartment, steal my cute decorative mug that says 'cat lover' out of all things! Also it isn't all that complicated to be a daughter-in-law, or is it? Whooop!!!
Before I come across as a complete raving lunatic, I must stop my worry marathon here. I wish I could borrow some steely nerves from somebody. I also wish 'obsession' didn't always have to come with its annoying twin 'compulsion'. Sigh!!

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.