The Strain(s) Of A Song

It's a sweet tune, but a sad tune. It's a tune of love, but it has strains of hurt and it's just so sad and yet so lovely and happy at once.

When I listen to it, I think of being in a fairytale. It's that feeling you get when you watch a good movie, or read a good book. When the fairytale ends and you're brought back to reality. That bittersweet feeling, of losing something you love, but know is fiction. Of losing something you know can only be a dream.

The song is a dream. I watched the movie because I couldn't bare to not know how the dream ended. It was lovely. They were lovely. They had a happy ending. But the strains of the song haunt me. I can hear the violin when I sleep and the tune causes me to lose focus and drift off into a place I don't know how to return from.

The song is hope, and love and ecstasy, but also disappointment and hurt at once. Some days I can't stand the hollow the song brings, the sheer emptiness. And yet it's there, waiting, eating into me, filling me up, seeping into my skin, sinking into my blood, haunting every thought.

I'm in a different place when I hear its melancholy strains. It's a place I used to be in, but I can't put a finger on it. The feeling is familiar but it's almost painful to hear it. And yet it's like a drug. I need to listen to it. To the point where I can't stand it anymore and I know the dream has to end.

Sometimes music has a way of making you feel what you don't want to feel, what you don't know you're feeling, reminding you of what you want to feel. Many songs have put me under a spell, but this is different. This song is an emotion. This song is a feeling. And I don't know how to listent to it anymore.



I've been listening to a song that is under my skin now and I can't sleep or wake up without listening to it. It's from a movie from three years ago. And I stumbled across it after a long time and I was taken to another place.

I'm under a spell. I'm so completely taken by this tune, I wonder if it will ever get old. It's completely riveting. It's so beautiful, it actually hurts on on some level. I close my eyes and I honestly feel the song. I am in it and it's in me. It haunts me and I can't seem to find a way to break the spell.

The Reflection

They're all pretty. They all have the perfect bodies. Their hair is mussed and their scarves are awry but they look perfect all the time. I catch my own reflection in the mirror and grimace.The girl sitting next to me at uni is just so pretty, I'm feeling lecherous.

I've always had a problem with how I look. I don't consciously think of it every single waking moment, but I wonder sometimes what it must be like to make heads turn. To be beautiful, pretty even. To be able to mesmerise with just the way you wear your hair or do your makeup.

I can't even stand myself without what K used to call 'black shit'. I don't even recognise myself without it.

The gym is every guy's dream. Women stripping naked and heading for the shower. And everybody's perfect. Sometimes I wonder if I'm in some weird little Stepford Wives-esque place. It's not helping my self-esteem.

It takes me so long to feel comfortable being naked with someone. It's just so painful to have to admit to another human being that you have flab. Even if I lose weight, my body structure is just made to make me look like a walking elephant. Nothing helps. I'm getting more annoyed at the gym.

I've learned, made a conscious attempt to like myself and I'm getting there. I have respect for me, and I like me, but some days I wish I was pretty. That facial hair, flab and a big nose would be someone else's nightmare, not mine. Some days I wish I could walk into a bar and be the one the men wanted to talk to rather than the Asian girl with the hot White one.

Then I catch myself in the mirror again and I know it's not going to change and I'm getting used to it.

Again

It still hurts.

It isn't a painful stab. It's just a dull ache. A feeling I knew would come, but one that I could very well do without, so far away from home.

I will never forget the first kiss. The searing heat and the feeling of being completely engulfed by a flame that you couldn't trace. That comfort in hugs, the phonecalls, the laughter, the idea of being a unit; something I detested towards the end.

I have never felt that hollow after that. That need to be with somebody, to see or speak to or hold or be kissed by him so badly. I have never felt like I was on fire when I was kissed after that. There have been others, but no one holds a candle to the feeling or the man.

I hear Bruce Springsteen sing Secret Garden and I am lost again. In that world where two classmates who were strangers to each other sat on a bus and got so much more than they bargained for. In that world where two people found what they were looking for and one of them threw it away on a whim.

There must be justice in the world, though. Two years on, I'm still alone and he isn't. So I suppose things even out, one way or another.

Come up on different streets, they're both the streets of shame.
Both dirty, both mean, yes, in the dream it was just the same
And I dreamed your dream for you and now your dream is real.
How can you look at me as if I was just another one of your deals?

Well you can fall for chains of silver,
You can fall for chains of gold,
You can fall for pretty strangers
And the promises they hold.
You promised me everything, you promised me thick and thin, yeah!
Now you just say, Oh Romeo? Yeah, you know I used to have a scene with him.

And all I do is miss you and the way we used to be.
All I do is keep the beat... and bad company.
Now all I do is kiss you through the bars of a rhyme,
Juliet, I'd do the stars with you any time!

I can only hope I will feel it all again someday. I have hope, but there are days when I tire of being alone. Of being so lonely and so incomplete. I don't need a man to complete me, I need another soul to listen, to depend on, to be held by. Just someone to share me and mine with.

I have hope. But I'm tired of hoping.

One More

And another one bites the dust.

But with each failure, with each let-down and with every single disappointment, comes a heightened sense of hope. Of an anticipation so strong that the present cold, lonely dark spaces fade away, pale into the horizon.

There is somebody out there. There is somebody for me. To hold and love and give myself to. There is somebody. With every failure, that is a fact that is engraved deeper and deeper into my head. With every let-down, that is something I get surer about.

And so I continue holding out.

Melancholy Musings

Melancholy musings drift across a room, floating gently on the strains of a piano, wafting towards the open window. As they float into the night air, they shiver gently in the cold and spread out, warming his heart as he sits by his window.

And quietly, as the wind carries her sadness in a tune familiar to them both, they begin to hum together;he as he sits by the window and she as she lies in bed watching the shadows dance on the walls. The melancholy that was hers is now his.

They sing together, two strangers on a moonlit night, longing and loving an idea in the distance. So far, and yet so, so, close. They sing together.

Magical Weekend

So we meet people along the way and make little memories, snapshots in time that could fill a whole album in itself. Sometimes you know you won't see them again and once they leave, things will have changed in that one moment when you say goodbye. The magic is over. The fairytale is left incomplete.

I had one such weekend, filled with memories and snapshots made with newfound friends from what seems to me now is a different world altogether. Two warm, funny, genuine, intelligent and insanely witty boys who brought a little sunshine, a little hope and a lot of laughs into a weekend. Sunshine and laughs because it was a pleasure spending time with them. Hope, because they are, as one remarked, a dying breed-- gentlemen, and truly good, wonderful folk. Girls can usually tell.

And as I woke this morning, knowing they'd gone back to where they came from, where they belong, in spite of myself, I feel like I miss old friends. Sometimes you connect with people, you share a wavelength and you think that's all there is to it. Sure, it happens, perhaps more often than you think. But when they're gone you realise, that to do so even when you're from two entirely different parts of the world, from cultures that differ so vastly from one another, it's a much more beautiful thing.

And sometimes there's more magic in the fairytale than you bargained for. In a style true to myself, I embarrassed myself twice in the same evening, which most people will admit is a hard thing to do, even once. But maybe the slip (literally and figuratively) wasn't so bad. I got to kiss and hold and dance (albeit embarrassedly) with a boy who, within 24 hours proved to be a real gem of a person. In all my time in this country, I haven't met a single bloke who I could laugh with, talk to, and enjoy doing so without worrying whether I would be expected to go to bed with him.

This weekend was a fairytale. If I remember correctly, it started with me asking for the time at the concert. What followed was a magic and madness. Laughter and learning. Dancing, singing, handstands on grassy patches, and running after buses. Kissing a wonderful stranger and making new friends. In the end, the fairytale was, as all fairytales are- unexpected, beautiful, a wonderful story to share, an experience to speak of. This one has a bittersweet ending, but oh well, what fairytales do best is give you what you most need.

Hope.

Birthday Blues

It's 12:00 am on the seventh of September, 2009. I have never felt so far away from everything I know and love and hold dear in this world. I check my FB for messages and keep refreshing my gmail in the hope that some one will remember. My phone is next to me, silent and still, screensaver intact. Not a single message, not a single call.

Today I feel forgotten. Like driftwood that's found its way into an ocean where nobody remembers where it came from, where it belongs. I know that I am loved, and that I am remembered and nobody has really forgotten. But life is all about the where and when. Timing is everything. It's why we call people when we know they are sick, upset, or to share in their joy. It's why we celebrate a certain day and it's why we say and do things as we are supposed to. It's why, when the timing isn't right, when we miss a big moment, we feel bad about ourselves.

This time last year I had my favourite people around me. Song and dance and joy and the silly dreams of a 21 year old. One year on, I feel too grown up, less like a child and more like an adult. The girl seems to have died and the woman is unsure and undecided. In one year, too much has happened, and much too soon.

One year on, and the first year without you. I could have expected a card. Maybe a funny email with a few laughs. This year I am reminded to be lucky enough to have got through another year in life. All in all, since I know two people who didn't live to see another year go by, I am grateful to be alive.

So on the seventh of September, 2009, I lie here on my 22nd birthday, with the internet and Grey's Anatomy for company- a little lost, a little forgotten and one year older.

Of Dandelions and Lighthouses

Remember the good,
in all things past.
Love, and beauty and hope,
Of tableaus in time,
Holding hands,
baring souls,
sharing dreams,
Tracing names in the sky.

I love you still,
My lighthouse on the shore,
But when every flighty petal
Of the dandelion has flown,
The wind can do little
But carry it away,
Into the sun.

And my heart is broken too,
For I can see you,
In every waking moment,
And every breathless dream.
But I must know what I want,
Before I choose anymore.

Because then, when the rainclouds have cleared,
And the sunshine shimmers through,
I will see the lighthouse,
If it is really meant to be,
And the dandelion will grow again,
Around every inch of the lighthouse,
Strong and pure and true.

And if,
The sunshine should bring no lighthouse,
Among the silhouettes of dawn,
Know that my heart will always wonder,
If my path was right or wrong.

And every single lighthouse,
Along the cliffs of my life,
Will make my eyes wander,
Into the mistakes of the past.

Remember my sweet love,
We are part of one another,
For ever, ever more
And you will always be my lighthouse,
In the darkness,
And the light.


I miss you.

In a way that reminds me of where I was and where I am today. What I could have had and what I don't have and worst of all, what I may never have again. It's not regret. I knew I had to do what I did, I know I needed to do it. But there's clarity in hindsight, and it often makes for a good teacher.

I'm sorry I let a beautiful thing die. I'm sorry I didn't try harder to push through the fog. I know this is pointless, late and pointless. But it makes me feel better to write it out. To give structure and form to a feeling so intense, questions so difficult, to give different hues to shades of grey.

I sometimes feel I'm blessed to know what it was like to be loved like you loved me. Nobody has even come close. Nobody can, the bar is raised too high. I compare, contrast, lay down conditions in my own head, and nobody can even come close. I'm happy you found someone, I'm happy you could go more than a month without the thought that she isn't me. Because for me, there hasn't been a single soul who I could stand the sight of for more than a month. Because nobody was good enough.

I loved you in a way that overwhelmed me sometimes. I can close my eyes and I remember than rush, that feeling of being overpowered by an emotion so strong, there was nothing that came close to it. I'm happy because I know I am capable of loving someone unconditionally.

If there was one person who I would choose to hold me after the accident, it would be you. I think back and sometimes I wish I had just come to you. You would have held me like you did at A's cremation. Like we fit, like you knew where it hurt.

What makes me write this late and pointless and pathetic admission, you ask? The question of whether I will ever find it again. If I will ever feel that rush again, if I will ever lie nestled next to somebody and feel a sense of contentment so strong, if I will ever be able to love and be loved like that again. I know it's a silly question to ask at 22. But I see people all around me- adults, my parents, uncles, aunts, friends, who have gone through an entire lifetime without feeling that feeling. So I think it's a question that warrants asking.

So we've moved on. It's how the world works. Life goes on. We live and we love and we sail through. I only want to say thank you. For being my best friend. For being a lover, friend and a human being with a heart of gold. For showing me that that fairytale kind of love, where you give your heart and soul to another, really does exist.

I remember telling you I would always love you. In some capacity or the other. And I do. I hope you and I can always be part of each others' lives. When I think back, I feel I've given a large part of me away. When you love the way I loved you, you never really become whole again.

I know this will be awkward, and odd, to say the very least. But you must know all of this. I'm sorry if you feel it's not my place anymore to tell you what's in my head. And I hope you read this, and take it in good stead, and know why I needed to say all this.

Perhaps we'll never be lovers again. Maybe if it happened, we wouldn't be the same two
people who sat next to each other on a bus and found something that would become a beautiful, beautiful part of us. But for that one chance, I will always be grateful.

Of Greys And Shades In Between

It's been a rough week. One where I wished I just had one of my 'persons' with me.

I don't see the world in black and white. Very few things appear in those colours. I believe in the greys. But I found myself in the middle of one such area recently. Where the grey was missing. And I have never been more afraid in my life.

I was wrong. I judged harshly. And I was put in the same spot. And I learned my lesson. I am not completely to blame, but as long as I live, there are some shades of black and white that I will try and look for the grey in.

I would not be able to forgive myself, not in a hundred lifetimes if the answer was a yes. I wouldn't be able to live with myself. After all the heated discussions, the arguments, the debates, the stories and the painful reminders from the outside in, when you find yourself in a spot that you have never, ever, in your wildest dreams believed you would be in, your world not only comes crashing down, it stops spinning.

From now on, I will look closely before I judge what is black and what is white. And I will look more closely for the greys, even where I think they may not exist. Especially where I think they may not exist.

Holding Out

Too late for cold feet now. Hindsight teaches you a number of things.

I know, in my worst moments of self-doubt, for instance, that I have felt love. If I die tomorrow, I will die knowing that at least once in my entire lifetime, I knew what it felt like to have been loved. I knew what it was like to love. To feel that overwhelming rush of emotion when you feel like a part of somebody.

I am not who I was. There will be more faces to add to the montage, maybe. But not without them reaching a certain standard. I have wasted too much of me. I have spent so much of what I have to give. There is much more, I know. But now the bar's been raised so far and so high that only the best will do. You can't just be better than somebody who loved you. You have to be the best one for the job.

I'm holding out now. I'm building walls for the first time. I'm not accepting second best. I'm not settling. I will not compromise. I will not take what is offered and leave the rest to the wind. I am not going to throw caution to the wind. I am not going to just embrace a possibility. I won't lose hope but I can wait. I'm holding out now.

The Montage

It was as if my mind had spontaneously made a montage.

He sat and talked. And while he talked, I was so far away, watching the images flip by one by one. The seat opposite me was the same. So was the bar. Only the face of the person opposite changed.

So many faces, each one yapping away while I just watched the montage silently. Alphabets popped up next to each face. A and his cynical self. D drawling some rubbish about only he knew what. Another A, and a happy-sad face asking me why I said no. P and his annoyingly pompous tone. R and his cloying sympathy seeking stories. There were other faces, each one with a tone and an alphabet and a snippet of conversation.

I shook my head a bit and I was back. In a nice bar with S (charming and very boring). While he spoke to me of his musical taste and how he found hip-hop profound. I believe that devastating oxymoron in itself was what brought me my montage of epiphany.

There was only one person who didn't figure in that line of images. The alphabet K never did come up.

I could have been in a movie. I'm going to have to figure out a good song for that moment in my OST.

Unfairness

I don't think it's fair somehow.

For them to live on, while he died. For them to laugh and love and have beauty to behold everyday, while he must watch from somewhere that does not allow him to feel any of it.

I know it's a terrible thought. I try not to grudge them any happiness. But it is just not fair that some stay and some go, and the ones who stay enjoy everything life has to give. The feeling of hope, the thrill of a dream come true, the wonders of just living every day as it comes. Some days the beauty of what I see around me makes me wonder if it's fair that I'm living and seeing and breathing and doing all of what he will never get a chance to.

It's not fair at all.

The Danseuse Returns

Nearly one whole year since I blogged here.

So much has happened, and yet, the feelings that prompted the birth of this blog haven't changed.

There are some things the dandelion cannot speak of, for fear of being outed. Yet now, more than ever, she needs her space. The dance is getting harder. The lows are lower than ever before and the wind isn't carrying her out of the abyss as easily as before.

Yes, the dance has become harder.

But the dandelion is tough. And in her infinite wisdom (time will tell if this holds true), she has decided to make the most of her dancing space in the quiet of anonymity, and she will need this hideout. A space to vent freely, without her soul in shackles.

And so she is back, the dancing dandelion.