Rest today

There's this image that shows up to one of the You Tube videos-- it is of a person resting at the desk with a book in the lap and a cat up by the window. Here's the image: 

Image by Hyunhyun from Youtube

On my worst days, I've looked at it and listened to the loop and felt held. It's music that holdS you somedays, rather than people. And images of inanimate things. They are capable of stirring something in you. Sometimes, filling you with longing for the animate. 

But today,  have a terrible backache and even though I seem to be thinking about people I love, I want to just be and rest. By the window, at my desk...

Just some unfinished tea

 Dear Germie,

I'm sitting here in a cafe near my home, where I normally come to sit and work from and be alone. Sometimes, to meet friends. Today, to be the invisible companion of a film star (Rajesh Hamal)

I met a friend today, who had a warm conversation with me about the ways he thinks he's weird. And he gave me some examples of how he has small difficulties that can become major-- like drinking water. He has the fear of drinking water. Like I have the fear of crowded spaces.

My fears are abundant-- most of them are related to just being and loving. I've always felt deprived of love even when I was loved to death. But I'm learning now that much of how I feel comes from being neurodivergent. It's been such a revelation!

I wish I was sitting here writing you a nice letter. Instead, this is just me rambling and giving you life updates. I wish you would give me yours. I wish you would use your witch powers to manifest a meeting for us in Malaysia. I've never been to Malaysia. And I haven't seen you for fifteen years. It would be quite nice.

I imagine we would spend every day of our time there talking into the night and then fall asleep surrounded by books and things. That's how our dorm room was back in Katipunan. Books, biscuit and chocolate wrappers and us. Your sprawled on the bed reading. Me, gathered in my corner of the room, writing away on my new acer. You, speaking Taglish and sometimes Visayas on the phone, as early as 6am. Me, stuttering away in Newa once in a while when we got Skype to work. 

Small pleasures that made us whole.

I miss you, Germie. And I miss talking to you about things. About how I'm tired of seeking love. How I wish men came with a sense of loyalty and how I know I don't need men to love me and yet I seek so much. I wish I could tell you: I'm tired of having my heart broken and yet, I offer it to be broken every single time. Maybe it's time to find my own version of Ja.

For now, here's some unfinished tea for you. I miss you.

We are release

My days are a little out of shape again. I sit at my desk now, craning my neck once in a while to keep an eye on wisps of cloud hovering above Tarebhir. They change their forms so quickly, the clouds. Constantly morphing into shapes twisted beyond imagination.

Between sitting at my desk and ignoring the sounds around me, I try to hold myself. It's incredibly hard, but I might have learned slowly to let go of things. Of drifted friendships, of clothes my waist and my bust have outgrown, of caffeine, of spices, of loves that no longer come looking for me. I'm learning to let go.

Dear Germie,

I'm coming here after reading your blog. Yes, it's still a place I visit.

Since we always promise to make calls and don't, it has become a good way for me to get updates on your life. I like it that you're still on your blog instead of Instagram and other spaces. I want to take inspiration.

So, updates on my end:

1. I'm still recovering from ligament injury on my left foot. It's Day 12 today and I'm so restless. I miss walking. I've spent my time reading, working, lolling in bed. 

I'm finally able to sit at my desk today and I'm suddenly a happier person. Do you feel that way, too? Completely lit, the moment you sit on your desk, before your computer, the possibilities suddenly open before you and you feel like it's not so bad to be alive, after all?

2. We found Babubagh. It was Nhooja who spotted him, sitting on the 12 feet wall where he had first climbed the day he fled from the vet's, three days ago. Bandana and I rode on her scooter as soon as Nhooja called. I rode behind her, despite my leg injury. As we rode, she said the road from home to Chapali main has never felt so long to her. 

When we got there, Babu was on the wall, going Ma ma... and Nhooja was standing below, talking to him from the road. 

Nhooja, Bandana and Baa had been going back several times every day to search for Babu and had spoken to residents in the hood and requested that they call us if he appeared in sight. But the night he was found, Nhooja said he had a strange intuition that Babu would be there  at the wall and while returning home from an event, he went to the wall directly, instead of riding home.

The ginger cat, who we had asked during our search days to keep an eye on Babu was present, as though she had understood exactly what was asked of her. And I think she did. For, the whole time, she stayed with us following us around, cajoling Babu to climb down the wall. 

Getting him to climb down became impossible and he was probably famished from three days of being marooned on a high wall in torrential, incessant rain. He would not climb down. So, Bandana, my new superhero, used an unfinished column against the high wall to climb up to to rescue Babu. How she climbed it, is still beyond me. She's an almost 5ft tall woman. But when she climbed, she suddenly became tall, in spirit. Nhooja gave her foot backing and pushed her up and there she was standing precariously on a wall three times her height, coaxing Babu to come to her.

He refused at first, then came when she put some pellets before him. He was starving. She eventually grabbed him but he wailed and fought and scratched her all over her shoulders and it tore her jacket. But she would not give up. She picked him by the neck, pressed him to herself and eventually passed her down to me, during which time, she almost fell off the wall and I died for a second right there, worried she would be hurt.

I managed to grab Babu and now pressed him to myself. He protested first, scratched my arms. Then I talked to him, said it's okay and he relaxed and then we put him in his basket, while the ginger cat watched, concerned and now suddenly unsure if she might have led her fellow being from being stranded to being trapped. But we left her some treats and she talked to us in meows for a bit and seemed alright.

We rode home with Babu. It was 10:40ishPM when we got home. 

Babu ate, purred and purred and purred.

(My foot had started to hurt more than ever and was swollen quite a bit from dragging it around to help Babu.)

Babu, the moment he arrived home after the rescue.

I'm not a cat person, Germie. I connect with dogs and am in my element around them. I find cats clingy. Or at least Babu is. He can't stop touching me and calling out to me and I'm not used to that kind of attention. I guess I've always found show a affection a little bit cringe. My love language is taking care of practical needs of those I love. For instance, I would die if someone sent me flowers. But I'd be happy if someone helped clean up my phone. 

It's starting to rain as I type this note to you. It has rained the year, more than it did past monsoons. And while it's pretty, sitting at my desk and just watching the clouds morph into a thousand things, I am filled with a deep sadness over all the people who have died because of landslides and flooding brought on by rains. It's one of the reasons I no longer wanted to work as a reporter. I was writing about events I could not prevent. Does it make sense? I guess no. But it's true.

Talk to me soon. This is the year we shall meet. As witches in our own right, we have to manifest it.

Love,

Prateeish

Babu, come back home

 Babubagh has gone missing and I want him to be found. 

He ran away from the vet's. I hope he's there somewhere, waiting for us to come find him. 

Please be found. Please come home, Babubagh.

Caring for my foot

Today is Day Five of sitting on my bed, feeling the heat on my left foot, spreading like a sting. It's a familiar feeling, this. I've been through it before.

The first time I fractured my left foot was when I was 18 and had lied about my age to get on a research gig with Dr. Vegard Iversen. Somewhere along the slopes of Ilam, before we reached Jamuna, I slipped and hurt my left foot. I didn't have the right shoes. 

Dr. Iversen asked if I would cut short my trip and return to KTM to see a doctor. I said I would continue. I was an annoying teenager. Too stoic for my own good. And so I limped from village to village in Ilam, dragging a swollen foot, a crepe bandage woven around it, taking notes for the report I would eventually write.

It took several weeks after I was back in KTM for the foot to heal. 

And what has happened since is, it's become my Achilles' Heel. In a very literal sense. It's the first thing to give way on difficult paths. I trip easily and end up with a swollen ankle. Oh, so often! Injured tendons and torn ligaments.

But it's nice to have things to watch and beautiful words to read. I've been reading Prawin's manuscript and it just makes me cry endlessly so taking a break from it today.

I've been watching an eclectic collection of films-- Past Lives being the one I liked most.

And mostly, I've been dreaming of things I will do before this year is over. Write my essays. Travel to China and Malaysia and to Goa. And...

And go back and sit at that desk in Sanepa to write my essays.

Happiness has to come from things I do for myself.

(This image, by Sahina Shrestha. My June flat-mate, in our Sanepa apartment)

 

Pain

My therapist left me a couple of questions to answer: 

1. Have you ever noticed how feelings manifest in our bodies? Sometimes in form of sensations, sometimes vibrations and sometimes pain.

 2. When you feel discomfort in your body can you specify or identify the areas in your body.

I'm going to try and answer the first one:

I've always been very aware of how feelings manifest in our body in the form of pain. The tension accumulates in my neck when I'm deeply stressed. In fact, I think that's what it has been all these years, several years of tension and stress, all stored in my neck and shoulders in the form of knots. My physiotherapist says he hasn't seen anyone with my kind of knots and wonders how I live with them.

Stress, anxiety have also become backpain for me over the years. I've had years when I couldn't sit up straight because everything I felt had manifested itself as lower-back pain. 

My body has been through so many years of suffering-- all the emotional and physical trauma. I don't even know how I've survived everything. So much gratitude to my body for not giving up on me. 

Now, to answer the second question my therapist asked me:

When I feel discomfort, it's mostly my breathing. I get restless and my breathing becomes heavy. I also have backaches and a heaviness settles upon my shoulders and neck.

Lately, my belly feel bloated. My period hasn't come in 20 days and it looks like my body is starting to prepare for menopause.