475. I wonder if the night is old and wise. Or if the night is fresh and undiluted. Because it is a new night every time. Or: the notes I make inside my journal.
474. I am hugely grateful to Spotify / YouTube Music for using the Urdu script to display the lyrics whenever they’re used as such in songs. Inclusion on the Internet is fixing my broken Urdu. Thank you.
473. Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew. Enough said.
472. I am reading G.K. Chesterton (intermittently) and please see why I feel like I have uncovered a treasure in this 100 year old essayist.
The great sin of mankind, the sin typified by the fall of Adam, is the tendency, not towards pride, but towards this weird and horrible humility. This is the great fall, the fall by which the fish forgets the sea, the ox forgets the meadow, the clerk forgets the city, every man forgets his environment and, in the fullest and most literal sense, forgets himself. This is the real fall of Adam, and it is a spiritual fall.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton. In Defense of Sanity: The Best Essays of G.K. Chesterton (Kindle Location 192-193). Kindle Edition.
471. It’s been over two weeks of holding a knot in my chest. The heaviness doesn’t go away. The anxiety stays beside. I think of the pandemic. It is not pretty.
470. Do you have someone with whom you can talk about the stars? Or: how I define intimacy.
469. My period pains have gotten progressively worse and if I had the tenacity for rage right now, I would write about how bizarre it is that women go through this every month and still go about our lives. I don’t want ice cream. (I mean, I do.) I want period leave, reinstating the lunar calendar globally, and enough medical funding to be put behind women’s health issues. (I also want ice cream.)
468. The more I talk to most people in positions of power, the more unimpressed I find myself. #NotAllLeaders
467.
Tell me something, girl
Are you happy in this modern world?
Or do you need more?
Is there something else you’re searchin’ for?
— Shallow, Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper
466. You are my unbearable silence. Or: the lines I write as poems but they stay buried.
465. Something I constantly thought about during my Hajj — maybe prayer is all of us talking to our inner child. Any and all prayer is probably us talking to ourselves. (No, I am not being blasphemous.)
464. I have realised I spend too much time prefacing a thing I want to say with context and back-story and what not. I’m not even sure who is listening to me anymore. I should stop. Even I am tired of myself.
463.
کسی کو گھر سے نکلتے ہی مل گئی منزل
کوئی ہماری طرح عمر بھر سفر میں رہا
462. Haircare is a lonely affair these days. Oiling your hair was never about the right ayurvedic points or the perfect massager or the expensive oil you can buy off of Instagram. It was an act of caregiving. Someone who loved you put their fingers in your hair, and maybe they sang you an old Bollywood song off-key, but you were never alone in front of a mirror putting drops of rosemary oil into a carrier oil. You don’t need a hair massager and exotic hair oils for your hair. You need love.
461.
– I need my rage to function.
– You will have your rage.
460. Somewhere along the way, I freed myself from the puritanical worshipping of books by not soiling them in any way. Now, I write inside the margins, I dog-ear the pages, I make small notes in between sentences. I use postcards and old receipts as bookmarks. I leave sharpened pencils (bought on solo trips) inside my books and leave them lying around.
459. It is a good day to fall apart. Or: follow your body to whatever depths it takes you.
458. For some reason, I think about Sayed Kashua’s memoir Native: Dispatches from an Israeli-Palestinian Life a lot while I am working out. It’s strange, but true. I remember it being so sad but so funny and poignant. I remember wanting to resist my country’s regime the way he did — by writing his way out of it.
457.
and only our dreams have not been humiliated
Herbert, Zbigniew. The Collected Poems 1956 – 1998 . Atlantic Books. Kindle Edition.
456. Hack my Home on Netflix is a show I watch for 30 mins of unadulterated joy. I enjoy watching home improvement shows. Yes, I guess, this is what happens to you after a certain point. You just want things to be made better and prettier.
455. I bought myself a Chinese ink pen and a purple ink-well. I supposed adulthood is when we fulfill the wishes we had as children.
454. A solo trip is in order. I’ve been around far too many people for far too long.
453.
गिरता है गुलमोहर
ख्वाबों में रात भर
ऐसे खव्बों से बहार निकलना
ज़रूरी है क्या?
– Aise Kyun – Rekha Bharadwaj
452. Do I even care about the need for multiplicity in narrative anymore? Multiplicity in the way we are expected to live our lives? In the way we are expected to love? No.
451. Note to Self: Wear more lipstick.
amarllyis 