THE GRAYTER GOOD

There are those random afternoons when you are suddenly hit with deep insightful thoughts and seemingly wise realizations out of nowhere, instead of those usual “is my butt too flat or is it falling” or “did I lose more hair than the tufts reluctantly left in the sink not counting the few I willfully lost while toiling in the kitchen” or that “am I simply bloated or am I just fat” monkey mind self doubting chatter. No, these slivers of sudden wisdom just appear out of nowhere leaving you to ruminate deeply and before you know it you have put all your LV and Chanel purses and shoes along with your children on sale on Offerup, you are offering random cash to the pan handler holding a sign "Begging for Beer", googling communal properties in Himalayas and wiki-piding “Zen Buddhism for Pre-menopausal Mid Life Crisis” and Prime buying “Say NO TO SILICONE” and “LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO DIE ALONE, CALL ME” stickers.

The whole saga of my impending sober enlightenment started with a single text from Gertrude (well Kahlil sorry, about time you let go of her..) 

“I found it sprouting. A single one.”

Immediately my perversely poetic mind synapsed to …Wordsworth! Well right about that time I was revisiting Ginsberg’s HOWL  since I read somewhere in the news how a school had to publicly apologize for introducing high schoolers to sexually charged HOWL…my my…castrate castrate, back to Wordsworth's Solitary Reaper)

“Behold her, single in the field, Yon solitary Highland Lass!

Reaping and singing by herself; Stop here, or gently pass!..

Will no one tell me what she sings?—

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow

For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago:

Or is it some more humble lay, Familiar matter of to-day?

Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, That has been, and may be again?..”

Vale profound, Gertrude had found her first gray pube. There was a brief pause in texting space and time followed by carpet bombing. 

G - Happy Friday. When you find them grays down there, you realize life is too short. Too short for mind games. Too short for over-thinking. Too short for putting your manhood into all cookie jars. 
Mic drop!

Sharon chimed in - Good point G. I think sometimes you think WAY TOO MUCH!

Me, thinking bloody hell, that’s exactly what Wordsworth was crooning about…
“Or is it some more humble lay, Familiar matter of to-day? Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, That has been, and may be again…” He was referring to pubes and polygamists! A forward thinker clearly, alluding to online dating apps and the resulting bane of too many options available easily and the curse of the NEXT BEST THING syndrome! OMG, MIC DROP! 

G  - When I saw it sprouting. Beautiful. One lone gray
Me - BEHOLD HER..but how did you exactly find her??
G – Shut up! Guys this whole dating is confusing me totally, one day sleep with someone, next day coffee with another, sleep with another, tea with someone, no can’t do…monogamy that’s the operating word. MONOGRAY.
Me – have you considered total annihilation through taser I mean laser?
G – no I haven’t considered anything but “WTF”. No need for anything rash, it’s not like men are flocking to the plantation.
Sharon – (crickets)
Me – hey on the bright side, you are addressing global warming and like Norway banning deforestation.
Sharon – (crickets)
G – I mean this is how the universe is telling me not to waste time, it’s a pretty strong sign directly from God.
Me - Gorillas…we inherited Phthirus pubis from Gorillas…
Sharon – (crickets)
Me – I prefer to be bald down there. Some realities don’t need to be faced. They just need to be deferred until death. Unfortunately, my balding is un-willful when it comes to my head. G, I would recommend snipping the lone grim reaper. Before you know it, it might become the chia pet face of the last inhabitant of your virgin island?
G – hmm, still with WTF…
Me – how about you stop yoga and grow a belly like them pot-bellied men flaunting their Dad bods at 40?
G – all these men out there, seem to know what they don’t want, oh wait, correction, they want : connection, compatibility but not commitment! That was the past life mistake, now it’s lust, wanderlust, and squanderawaylovelust…bah humbug!
Sharon – Catching up! Okay, you guys know me! I planned for grey pubes PTSD by the time I turned 18. Every day I counted diligently and came up with the golden mean growth algorithm. And when I figured the growth had reached its full potential I went with researching and adopting the best eradication nuking techniques in the market back then. Sorry guys, my kitty is like a purring Sphinx cat..am currently working on Turn your Sphinx Kitty into an Albino pussycat DIY lotion…
G – MEOW!
Me – Great S! We will market that lotion to all single women in their 40’s and 50’s as part of your cult swag! 
G – I don’t know why… *I see gray people*…
Sharon – (crickets)

And thus our intellectual conversation dissipated and then struck the precise moment of temporary enlightenment. Profundity in my shallow existence strikes seldom, folks. What mirage were we all chasing after? Isn’t aging an absolute reality unless death beats you to it?  Isn’t youth a state of mind? Aren’t we all punting to get us the best deal to survive the longest, shriveled up or not? Oh wait, let’s see, the average life expectancy in the developed world is over 80 years! Aren’t we all looking to not die alone with regrets? Isn’t beauty, as relative it is, transitory? And yet it is the first visual connection and visual gratification we seek when scouting for love, intimacy and fulfilling relationships? But aren’t men more inclined and normalized to seek younger women no matter how old they themselves get? If we were all dealt with the same odds of longevity and limited life and the absolute imperative of aging, why isn’t there common ground of respect and embracing? Do relationships matter or should life be a series of encounters? Is living in the moment commonly understood as hedonism and living to self gratify only? Is true fulfillment measured only against time, and if we took away time from the equation, what are we left with? It seems like we are in this circular loop of seeking and rejecting for survival, since social conditioning has such a strong choke-hold on our abilities to break free from our own fears and cliques.

bypassing blondes and fake boobs..

We have all been there…heartbreaks and heartthrobs. The recurring feeling we attach to, of that first kiss, the first intimate sharing of bodies. But the west is different from the east when it comes to sharing of bodies. The west went free, with pretenses; the east, went repressed, no pretenses. The Kamasutra was merely a guide to point at what lovers shouldn't be practising!

I am an easterner meeting the westerner only to find myself in an internal tug of war as to what constitutes love. Is it simply lust? Interchangeable? Lust in love? Love in lust? Which precedes what and what sustains? Lust dissipates as most academics confirm. Love transcends. But what is the middle path between the vagina and the heart? And how do we abandon the mind in all this?

Recently I learnt that my ex lover has moved on rather quickly to finding his next kill, he being the hunter, never the hunted. Well, return my bloody fancy BBQ grill first, then talk the talk, before your next piece of meat gets skewered! The dating Statute of Limitation still ticks if it's less than a month since you broke up and your ex lover is still holding on (shamelessly being as frugally rich he is) to your property as he marinates his next tandoori white chicken!

But it’s the truth, men are poor, fragile beings, they move rapidly to find their next relationship, their next validation for their manhood. Of course you have to give them the handicap of being closed, emotionally bankrupt and hardened, only because society raised them as unfeeling and un-vulnerable brawns…toughen up boy!! Hunt, gather, kill, oppress, rape, conquer BUT never shed a tear…weakness …weakness, you pussy!

And talking about pussy, that existential pussy(cat) is THE toughest human body part and muscle power within mankind. You meet a man who touts he is a feminist and then you hear him refer to weaknesses as a pussy, BAH! Drop his derogatory ass right then!

You see a man type ‘your’ instead of ‘you are’ in text..drop him! It's not funny, even if he says he knows the difference..sir, how lazy are you to not correct despite knowing? There is no excuse for blatant bad grammar indolence. 

You hear a man blame your PMS as your personal insecurity as you catch his roving eyes checking out every chic and teen body that rolls by, DROP HIM! He is not worth the discussion. No honey, it wasn't the lamppost you were ogling at...yes, your head did make a complete 180 as you saw her face drive off, and yes, you did stop mid-sentence while talking to me when you saw her posterior end in a bikini...that's simply keen observation by both of us, not PMS. Definitely DROP HIM, because it reeks of a redder red flag when you are in a new relationship and yet the man is caught looking outward than being immersed in the fabulous you. 

No wait, there is another redder of the reddiest red flags, you find a man who insists on you using his disgusting, grimy, moldy guest bathroom where he washes his shiny hairless head for boxed hair color bleeds to give the illusion of youth and of the bed of thick grass that once upon a time adorned his scalp, while he uses his squeaky clean, lavish post-modern, wannabe Dadaistic master bathroom converted into a bedroom with a queen bed fitted into it congruently, then unequivocally, indubitably and unquestionably DROP HIM! You don't want to be sleeping in a weird bathroom which you are prohibited into using while you hear him trickle three times at night! That's the bizarrest of gender discrimination ever..

Sometimes we girls, are stupid and idealists. We try to reason and communicate. We try to find value within variables and objectivity and try to salvage. Hell no. Wisen up. Listen to your gut. Sometimes, communication also means that he will tear you down to every molecule of text and sentence that he can barely hold within the realms of proper english grammar, just to prove his macho-ism...

Run. 

Lola. 

Run. 

Lila. Run!

Especially if they are borgs with titanium body parts, hunting for comfort zone blondes with equitable fake booby parts to match their fake hearts, but suddenly they stumble upon extraordinary brilliant brunettes with wit, versatility and passion…run...I ran - 5 months too late.

“Masculinity is what you believe it to be. I think masculinity and femininity is something that's very old-fashioned. There's a whole new generation of people who aren't defined by their sex or race or who they like to sleep with. “Johnny Weir – American Olympian figure skater, fashion designer, commentator.

The obsessive chatter of too much Romano-Parmesan - a story

When Van Gogh decided to self-mutilate by chopping off his entire left ear, it wasn’t coming from a place of self-preservation from incessant nagging by his lover. He was coming from a place of relating to his lover’s scars and giving her a gift of sacrifice to establish that human connection…also known as madness.

Personally I deem madness as, as understated as Apple Cider Vinegar. But the topic of this post is not about the versatility of ACV but rather the versatility of madness that which we all exude time to time, a gift of sorts, no one is immune, madness does not discriminate. Tell me you are sane and you join Loonville as our president! No, not Trump. He is just the Nero-God we loons pray when we subconsciously run out of Gods, okay,  I don’t want to go there…lend me your ears on this story…(chopped is fine too)…

Captains Log Stardate November 8, 2018, a budding romantic love: Antonio was leaving early to hike with his friends. He left her two slices of bread to toast when she woke up, for breakfast. Arya was feeling good, Saturday, beautiful, breathtaking ocean views, a cup of Darjeeling tea, and those toasts eventually to get lathered in some generous Costco jelly that Arya was toasting in that swanky machine at Antonio’s place. Somehow within the soaking of the views and the sipping of the perfect cuppa tea, Arya had missed monitoring the bread and the end product that greeted her was alas, black carcasses of what once could be called gluten.

She panicked. Arya didn’t want to rummage through his refrigerator looking for replacements. She was starving. The Indian in her took over, the meditative act of scraping the carbon and salvaging the remnants was all that mattered as Arya deftly armed herself with a butter knife and consecrated the process, only to realize that that very act of innocent scraping was going to result in her being viewed as the Bride in Kill Bill …causing mayhem in a white man’s perfect white kitchen. And then, there was blood …also known as black crumbs all over the sink, the window sill, the countertop, the floors! And Arya, the Bride, perceived as cold blooded, without any compelling urgency to clean up, or to plan her kills meticulously like Dexter, but to enjoy in peace, organic chemistry, what she had successfully salvaged…as the minority…slightly browned yet not blackened.

When Ant(onio) walked into the kitchen Arya was cluelessly bantering with her family, and then she saw him as his eyes scanned the kitchen like an insidious drone. His lips tightened, eyeballs bulging from their resident sockets as if they were experiencing serious trama..genocide…doomsday…castration?? Arya quickly hung up.

“Sorry babe, I burnt the toast..”

“I can smell it.”

He teleported himself to the kitchen cleaning rapidly…

“I was gonna clean it but I was still eating breakfast..”

“Why didn’t you just toast new bread..what did you do!”

“I didn’t want to rummage through the refrigerator and thought I could save something off the bread and so I scraped…”

“The crumbs are all over the sink, the windows..you destroyed my house!”

“Sorry…I was just going to clean…”

“where all did you go?”…as he started mapping her movements, her imaginative brain raced as she saw a crowd gather over the yellow tape quarantining the kitchen. Arya envisioned him as Sherlock Holmes with large magnifying glasses tracking coordinates of burnt bread crumbs. On the bright side they were easier to spot!

“well…I sat here and then I touched that…I went over there and then back here…”

But wait a second. What in the holy matrimony of holy cows had just happened?? All she did was scrape burnt toast …then why did she feel like being interrogated by Gestapo??

She started crying. She didn’t know how else to react.

Ant eventually cleaned up the entire kitchen and living room to his satisfaction while Arya watched like a scared inmate. Then came the revelation…

“Arya, I am ocd. I can’t stand crumbs, they attract ants, I hate ants.”

“Well, what does that mean? I don’t want to feel like I did something criminal…?”

“look many people who have ocd don’t even acknowledge that as an issue…infact they see it as a positive. They are clean, organized, meticulous, disciplined, and successful. But I have tried mindfulness and other things and I still hate crumbs and ants.”

“Okay but this so hard…I feel like shit…all I did was burn toast…but the reaction, you turned into a different person, your face, your eyes... changed.”

“you were disrespecting and destroying my home…why didn’t you just trash that and take a new one?”

“But only I wasn’t…I was just trying to salvage…”

Of course Arya had had not much experience with OCDs - Organized Cautious Dude? Overtly Clever Dialectologist? Obsessive Coital Desires? Oddly Cloned Dick? She could go on in her quirky, crazy, creative brain coming up with suitable expansions of that acronym. Perhaps she was OCD too! Would repeated thoughts in the brain qualify, for she did have those when she was attached to someone? Or a song that would keep playing in loops in her head or the nag of her mother reminding her to eat more and put on some meat in her bones… for this was all new to her. But then humor kicked in as a coping deviation as she conjured up the possibility that there was great business and marketing potential here, SCREW BREAD, imagine all the relationships one could salvage instead with a few inventions, she thought:

1    Wormhole: A time bending smart app. According to particle physicist James Beacham, one proposed method of time travel was via wormholes. “We know that space can be bent. If space can be bent by, say, gravity, then spacetime can be bent,” Space is the three-dimensional body in which all things in the universe move. Spacetime, however, is the combined concepts of space and time into a four-dimensional continuum. If spacetime can be bent, Beacham says, it’s theoretically possible that time can be bent. Okay, so now, given that premise, imagine, Arya sees the precise moment of Ant’s face changing as his brain sees the bloodbath, she hangs up, clicks the app, pauses him like they show in the sci-fi movies Arya was addicted to, Arya DOESNT eat toast that day, she eats a banana, sorry, she eats two bananas. Then Arya restarts the app. Life is good. Thank you wormholes.

2    Pelican Beak Bibs (not Pelican Briefs) – laid out right with your table arrangements, an adult catch it all bib, for those unsuspecting lovers and guests. “No offence, please leave shoes outside door, please put this bib on prior to eating.” Kapisce?

3   Glow in the dark bread – this is self-explanatory, especially when one is burning toast during midnight snacks, easy to track.

4   Glow in the dark bread crumb magnet – self-explanatory again. With a bit of research we can figure out the exact frequency and electricity to attract glowing crumbs. Should mitigate night conflicts, those were the tough ones. Arya hated going to bed mad.

5   Toaster Ovens that auto destruct burnt bread – the next gen of toaster ovens. They will save love lives. These toaster ovens also vaporize crumbs to a poof. An inbuilt crematorium. Ventless. No cleaning needed. Side effect – could make kitchen towels a bit less needed.

6   Tornado vacuum – this is an inconspicuous vacuum that micro targets your entire home through your home circulation system. It creates a mini tornado, soundless, tasteless, odorless that whizzes and dances around your target area picking up with it a dust storm of crumbs and missed cheerios, including under the bed, sofa, refrigerator, corners of ovens, and then rises towards the ceiling and dissipates through the vents. The vacuum itself sits in some offsite server like area, say your garage. No traces are left behind. No dna altered. On second thought, about soundless, replace that thought with some ethereal Enya music, hmm!

Anyways, long story short (as Ant always said), they let that pass. It was something Arya had to let go to move forward. While in her mind, Arya had watched the entire Kurukshetra unfold before her eventually leading to Arjuna asking the profound questions to Krishna as to the futility of it all..and bizarrely enough, Enrique Eglasias butting in saying “she’s gonna make you move to Miami …she got that ass”..

INSIDE OUT

Lately I haven’t talked much. It’s not that I am turning over a new leaf and have conveniently run out of material to post. For a social bee like moi, that’s unheard of. So this post is dedicated to all lovers, all ocd people and divorcees who don’t share their stories..

The D word. It plagues, for the institution of marriage has such heavy and deep roots. It defines family. It sets purpose and an end game, for a collective to thrive in harmony, to further similar mindsets and to propagate.

Somewhere down the line I ended up alone. Not because the marriage bug hadn’t bit me but because it did and then it morphed because it was a virus..haha…not a bacteria.

But this post is not about me. (Refer to other posts about me in my previous posts). This post raises more questions than answers because the answers lie embedded in the questions itself..

Love: The most compelling question that pops up is “how do we know that we found love or we are in love”

My beautiful yoga teacher Viktoria opines…we are not “in love” we “are love”…which to me means, that love is not something external exemplified but internal manifested and encompassing. I pondered over that much today as I replayed certain scenarios and events in my head. How can I “be in love” without love being outside of me? If love is outside of me, then there are bound to be gaps. But if I AM love, there is unison, there is no separation, I am love manifest and I do as love does. Where is the room for “being in” but rather to “be’.? And the only way I see possible is that …I lose my engineer friends. I friend more poets and anarchists and idealists.! Sales people – out, Doctors – out, Scientists – out, Lawyers– out…Dentists – in, Chiropractors - in, Yogis - in, Trader Joes baggers - in! 

Relationships: The in-between, the I-Thou, the golden string that unites us all, then why so much conflict? My friend Hune refers to it as dialogue (not a monologue, or an egotistical rant..I have mastered those especially in PMS).

On that note, my close friend Annica had a revelation today, she decided to call her ex husband and apologize. It was her gateway to healing, not because we simply suffer from ethical moral dilemmas on failure, but because we are individualistic within a collective and lose sight of the abstract that binds us as a dilution, a blur, and yet complete. She realized she gave up too early and that she missed the abstract, atleast that is my take on it. There are no absolutes, but there are plenty of abstracts to choose from (except I cannot explain the Trump dictatorship, because we elected him and that makes him the anomaly within the abstract-absolute model...sigh).

As time passes, I get more and more close to the anti-thesis of defaults. I realize that more and more you let go, the more you feel empowered, the more you invest inwards, the more you reap from the unknown outward and the more you embrace that you are broken, cracked, imperfect, the more the blurs, the abstract, the shades, and of all that surrounds you, makes you whole.

We maybe broken. We may be ocd or pms within a microcosm. But we are whole, in relationship with each other, it's bigger, it envelopes and cradles, like a translucent membrane binding us together. In love. 

"If you ask people what attracted them to the person they love, they never tell you of some perfect feature that focused them on sheer surfaces but rather an imperfection that allowed them to see into their uncharted depths" Eugene Kennedy  

TO AGE OR NOT TO AGE

As part of the New Years’ resolution I did not take, I figured it was about time to writeup a Bindi Post. If extreme boredom is not the instigating factor, if grueling loneliness is not the catapulting factor, if the rapidly reducing single malt bottle is not the compelling factor, well, then it must be NDE (near death experiences)..

I am reminded of Roethke as I inch slowly towards mid-life..alone and brave…

What's madness but nobility of soul 
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire! 
I know the purity of pure despair, 
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall. 
That place among the rocks--is it a cave, 
Or a winding path? The edge is what I have.

The edge is exactly what I have. As I slowly turn into the crazy lady in the elevator who distracts you from your 'stare at the phone' meditation or the whimsical woman who went to North Pole to eat Thai food (also known as 'watch Asians have sex under the aurora')…the point I am trying to make is profoundly about embracing the physical signs of becoming defunct eventually.

My friend Barbie once lashed out at the world declaring out loud that she had had it with anti-aging creams. Why ‘anti’-aging? Where are the ‘pro’-aging lotions? Where is the 5K walk FOR slowly shriveling? Where is the Greenpeace anarchy against those myriad age-defying BB/CC serums, why do I not see those renegades hanging outside of Wholefoods handing out “Support Crows-feet” flyers …. as Floyd appropriately sang “we don’t need no education, we don’t need no sag control…”

Personally, I have had it with the soul sucking, confidence shattering stylists, aestheticians and plastic surgeons. I damn them as bottom-feeders just as many predatory lucrative professions out there (you know who you are, feasting on human insecurity and fears..bah). But who is asking me for my opinions? We already hit rock bottom with Trump…

So just the other day Annica and I are having this passionate discussion on “age-groups slotting”, over text. (Texting is an imperative means of debates these days, phone calls are passe, fyi, especially during work hours). Sharon, the engineer waxes philosophical (hmm.. odd) saying finding love and that perfect partner is not about the age …it’s about connection. Annica chips in …timing too. Yaya, connection, timing, laws of attraction, age is a construct..cross my heart-hope to die! But reality is reality, you go shopping and there are more pinks than blues. You go dating, well there is always the hunger for the younger.

So where does mid-life begin or end? If age groups in dating hierarchy is divided into 20 – 30 years, and then the whopping 40 plus (to infinity?)…I think that’s just BS…because you have just smooshed together the most definitive and confident years of life and forcefully grandfathered it waiting for death to arrive with a sickle….as Milton expresses succinctly “How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth..” Well, not happening.

I am still trying to wrap my head around the exciting stranger I sat next to in my almost-midlife-crisis getaway flight, who had to, absolutely know how old I was and furthermore, his vehement disbelief that I was a mom. And don't even get me started on the damnation of moms, I remember when I went with great enthusiasm to audition for an unpaid modeling gig and the cold co-ordinator's spine-chilling response "I was told you are a mom, we don't take moms, your age doesnt make the cut-off since the other models are in their 20's". I had to seek Victoria's Secret lingerie shopping therapy after that encounter. How did she know my age because I could give 20 year olds a run for their money? And what does it matter if I am a mom? Who are these fashionistas who revel in their own bubbles demeaning other women? What’s this virus that ails the minds of men and women alike? Isn’t it okay to embrace the law of diminishing returns of the body while our minds are constantly shedding skin and rejuvenating? And if our souls are timeless, what exotic European concoctions can we possibly apply to buff those rusted, conditioned thoughts? Do we really need to ask the shallow question "how old are you?" Or, "really you are a mom.."...sigh.

I say, we need more '50 shades of graying' books in the beauty aisle! I also say we need more post-botox collectible celebrity Barbie dolls of Joan Rivers or Michaela Romanini or Donatello Versace to be reminded of the existential joke when ones tries to hold on to constancy and the universe laughs a thunderous laugh in response. I say, the future lies in the silvering pussy riots for every bush has silver lining..go figure.

Your skin like dawn
Mine like musk

One paints the beginning
of a certain end.

The other, the end of a
sure beginning.

Maya Angelou

GUPPY - A Story

The skins were neatly stacked against the wall, color coded, metal hangers that held their heads impeccably stern, dipped in satin. Colors, light, medium and dark and the myriad hues and murk that blended onto themselves within a throbbing mandala of possibilities.
Every so often, a body would walk in, a bag full of unfulfilled desires and longings in tow. It would never make eye contact, rather, drift politely into the aisles scouring for a perfect fit, hiding behind a facade of half guilt, half thrill and a hint of beguiling coquetry. 

Deep within the confines of this elusive store, the changing rooms stood grim and dingy, dominated by a blind old woman with a face of an unborn child whose eyelids nictitated in an unrelenting stammer of doubts. There were no mirrors on the walls, simply sockets that looked back at you, approving or disapproving or indifferent. You could try out only a handful of skins at a time. Time being an irreverent bother.

Last night was one of those nights, I felt the pangs of needing a makeover desperately. Drudgery and stagnancy had been taking their tolls, settling complacent deep inside the grooves of my breasts and predictable creases. I had had enough. I grabbed my incongruous stash of dried dreams and rushed to shop. The shriveled lady of the house smiled at me cynical, but I wasn’t going to make eye contact, was I?

Instincts are a great thing, coupled with a great sense of smell, they never let me down. I allowed my wise gut and nose guide me into a haunting, obscure and unkempt maze within the store. I thought I spotted my mother over a bend, her head buried deep between one of the zigzagging aisles. She paused.

The tightly-stuffed racks were filled with animal, fish and bird wear of all imaginings, a familiar disarray in sync with my internal madness. Some were lying on top of each other, a latitudinal and longitudinal filing system; some had slipped off their pretty metal hooks of attachment and spread out naked on the floor waiting to be noticed of their self-deprived vanity. I think I might have stepped over a few as they winced in wants of sensation.
I rapidly sifted through these hanging shapes, one by one, parting air, time and space within the slits of their tangible existence. And there it was.. sandwiched between a smoky scavenger and a burning flamingo, an inconspicuous guppy caught the immediacy of my interest. Excited, I grabbed all three and started walking briskly towards the trial room.
Where is that damn woman? I looked around impatient, time being an irrelevant bother. The puny old lady was nowhere in sight and the changing rooms had been pad-locked with incredibly introverted human repressions. I felt an incredible urge to nudge and taunt those locks as they danced and thundered through the drumming of my breath, bellowing back at me with empty notations of morality and judgment. Of course, by now, the three skins I held had started to bicker with one another debating the fate of the chosen one, adding to my impetuousness. Impatience.

To escape the cacophony of the squabbling threesome that was rapidly escalating into savagery, I broke into a run. Perhaps I wasn't ready, perhaps my emptiness needed a different fill. I was also oozing something slowly, perhaps my guilt, in a molten wax like substance, a nose bleed. A viscous, dark shadow shape shifting between a giant guppy and that blind old lady, in a bizarre mad rage of chaos and abduction, was in hot pursuit. The corners of my eyes were darkening. My scleras were darkening. Then my own past passes me by as if it was a more formidable fugitive in motion, as mother watched.

Suddenly, I find myself hanging from the ceiling, upside down. Just like that. No wax. No drips. And watch myself being skinned, a spot waiting for me in those aisles. 

"There is a hole in my window, a gaping hole in this wind-owes nothing to me, 

my self left me, with my wantings, by me.

They charge for bags these days, I carry this obscurity deep, tucked within my bosoms, 

nobody knows, I don't pay the price

nature vs nurture, flight vs fight

(sometimes the chased, sometimes the chaser)

If every line is a circle, we eventually meet (my match, my maker, match-maker)

I sat on my blue chair today. I figured out how it reclined after an year of straight talk.

I laughed. It was a button I pushed. 

Now my being laughs too. 

Silly. That hole in my mind. 

There is also a whole in my half."

NAMASTE - Is it NYE yet?

The earth was spinning, the fern before me bending like a flame playing with my head, everything was moving, my legs felt heavy, I was breathing but the air I sucked-in held little meaning. It was a tease. It was there but not. Suddenly I fell, flat on my face. My vanity and dignity disappeared into the slippery icy steps as quickly as my consciousness vanished into some unannounced time bending exercise. I found myself dusting off my right knee for I knew it was going to bruise badly later that night. and I strutted uphill smiling …I had fallen. no excuses to conjure up except that I had no endurance at 8600 ft.

It was my first getaway after a long unending divorce and custody battle of three years. My first vacation. And the chosen ground of my prowl in liberated single hood, had to be the desert town of Palm Springs CA. I am still trying to come up with a more fitting name for this city, hmm Palm Stinks perhaps? What was I thinking as I had packed my fine off-shouldered black sequin sexy dress to doll up in (aka SUFFER-IN WITHOUT BREATHING) on NYE hoping to be some hot stranger’s hotter date? What was I thinking as I had packed in my Jimmy Choos (aka JIMMY's FOOT CHEWS?) to strut around in what I deemed later as a bleeding town for gay men seeking men gay, age being a construct, holding hands, kissing in the rain, drunk as a moth by the flame and my presence sticking out as a sore vagina in that blizzard. An anomaly, what was I doing there? (Nothing against gay men of course, bff).

As if the futility of finding even a one-night-stand wasn’t cracking like a silent whip through the cold 31st night, the night kept getting interesting in it’s weird convoluted ways. We found ourselves pouting and drooling in a chocolate shop like deluded Gretals minus Hansels. I bought myself a champagne and rum truffle, don’t ask why. Milk Chocolate just wasn’t going to cut it.

As we waited outside the store resting in the shade of its candied canopy to protect against getting rained on with NYE's loneliness and as my eyes cried inside themselves in self-pity, a white man approached us. He was staggering. He was moving like the earth and the fern I had encountered earlier that morning. Surreal coincidence? Then he winked. An evil grin clung on to the corners of his mouth as if attempting to set itself free in some monstrous perversion of sorts. His gaze slowly shifted towards the children and my mother bear instincts took over. I rushed the children and myself back into Charlie’s chocolate factory (I much prefer Charlize's) periodically glancing at the window to see if the man had magically disappeared. But it seemed like he was waiting for us to return just as we were waiting for him to leave and in that tug of war, our free BUZZ bus arrived and we lost the war. We ran frantically towards the Buzz in the rain and as we passed him he screamed “go back to India, go back to India, go back”

Annica, my girl friend was infuriated. It was her first exposure to racial slurs, being of Canadian birth (friendly Canadians). She audaciously shouted back “Happy New Year” ..twice, ending with a defiant “Namaste”…sort of like a charged-up profanity. NAMASTE!

I started laughing because nothing made more sense than laughing for wasn't it George Orwell who said "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." 

“Go back to India”, a more specific version of "Go back to where you came from" since Americans are weak in geography...but haven't we all heard that before? Er ..was this BUZZ BUS gonna take me there? Could I bribe the driver to take a detour, were the rest of the folks transporting to India with us tonight?? Visas? It was a free ride after all. But how would I confirm to this dude that I indeed went back? I would really like him to know 

“Sir, we listened to you, we bribed the driver and went right back, to India! Get this, no hard feelings, our fresh-off-the-bus pack was greeted by nubile apsaras/nymphs with jasmine garlands draping us in silk scarves, they then generously applied snake oil all over our exhausted bodies and we rested over a white elephant who gently rocked us to sleep as we listened to Ravi Shankar’s sitar and finally wrapped up the day with Deepak Chopra’s deep relaxation guided meditation on our way to our villages. Btw, the Parrot astrologer sends a message, please confirm this bus didn’t run you over, in some taciturn karmic fury, as you inadvertently jay-walked to your death? If so, sorry to hear that. NAMASTE”