Gathering

I stole this image from NYT because I coveted that moment (I forget the name of the photographer, so in that sense, this makes it theft )--I wanted to be a woman standing in a random street, just after a storm, gathering fallen leaves. I found enormous comfort in that thought.

Lately, I've been unsure about everything. Everything. And yet so comfortable in becoming this woman who's a hermit, living everyday inside my parents' home, cooking, cleaning, eating, sleeping, reading, writing nothing worth reading. That's me. It's like all the awful things that happened to me in life were leading me to this moment of quietness. Maybe death is like that, too?

I often think about the horrible things that happened to me. I am probably not past the abuse in my marriage, the gaslighting in certain relationships, the sexual exploitation by men who claimed it was stemming from love. I haven't gotten over those things and I think sometimes that writing about them might help. Perhaps if I write about how frightened I was that afternoon when he parked his scooter outside Gyanedra's residence and called me a bahunphile and how I was coerced into going to his friend's house to have sex. It was the beginning of something horrible. How is it that even for women who are educated and wise and who know good from bad, it often ends up becoming just the physical fear of a man. How come?

 

Vacancy announcements: Husband

2018

2023

2024

2026

Mid-day blues

 I live in a battered body--battered by time, by illnesses, by accidents, by men I loved in the past. My body is mine, but sometimes, feels like a stranger, sometimes an enemy. Still, my best friend. I was thinking about how the closest someone else comes to knowing or cherishing your body are the following people (and in pecking order):

1. Your mother

2. Your lovers

3. Masseuse at different times

Children probably appear at the end of this pecking order. They depend on your body while young, but never really grow to know it, cherish it. As you age, they might even think of your body as something they owe filial piety to and not more. 

Not sure why I was thinking about all this, but this morning, I felt like I was brimming with sadness and so decided to have some fun writing a vacancy announcement. It's the latest one on the next post. But here's a stray thought:

Today, I feel like I'm a line

broad, uneven 

drifting through the noise

the chatter at teatime

the need to say, to say

I'm a line, that lands nowhere.