Now this is a person who does not know how to be consistent when reading the stars. This simply reaffirms my belief that those who are slipshod at astrology should be sued for causing personal distress. Which one of these am I supposed to believe?!

First they say:
April 11:
All necessary information is available if you consult the right sources. It's a great day to try new things, and you've got the energy to make it happen. What has seemed too difficult to you in the past may be achievable today. All the effort you have been putting into a relationship may have been in vain.

And after I hyperventilate about the last sentence for two minutes, I read another section of the same forecast, which says:

Friday, April 11You will be fully aware of the effect of love and of each instant in the interrelationship with your partner. Moments like this cannot be repeated and, without a doubt, constitute a great opportunity to develop and improve your own psychological qualities.

I might be reading this superficially, but the first one immediately suggests that the day will be hopeless or upsetting. The second suggests that I will be spend it holding his hand in the computer lab as we quietly type our way through our respective workloads, meeting on the other side for a glass of wine in the bar around sunset.

Haiku2 for tare-jalao
citrus shade of neem butterflies inflamed with colour lilting their way past
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Created by Grahame

Quotations Meme

I have just convinced myself that what I most need to do with the next five minutes is go here and circumscribe myself within five randomly picked quotes that best describe who I think I am. (As seen on Medusa's blog)

Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny.
-- Mahatma Gandhi

Never let the demands of tomorrow interfere with the pleasures and excitement of today.
-- Meredith Willson, The Music Man

She had an unequalled gift... of squeezing big mistakes into small opportunities.
-- Henry James

Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
-- William Faulkner

One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.
A. A. Milne (1882 - 1956)

Mustdashhaveapostertododamnit!!

Hallelujah!

Throw your hands up in praise!

An attachment in an email from the upcoming First Conference:

So I open the conference booklet and find that in amongst the 157 pages outlining the presentations of all The Greats, page 44 belongs to me. My name, affiliation and abstract.
Nice number, 44. Sums to 8 (my personal lucky number, that), multiple of 11 (the only times-table I loved - why can't everything be as intuitive and symmetrical as the 11-times table?) and when you pull it apart by subtraction, you get a perfect 0.

So happy. So bloody terrified. Have 24 hours to prepare, revise and print poster. Goddamn it. To work, to work. Cannot sound like a hack (feel like one at this moment). Cannot sound like a toady. To work, to work.

For now, this is enough

Spring has brought:

- Things with wings.
- Accelerating deadlines.
- Tunics, dresses. Sans leggings!
- Roman sandals
- A craving for dal-rice-salad-dahi

Summer will bring:
- The citrus shade of neem
- Butterflies inflamed with colour, lilting their way past my mother's garden
- Sweltering dreams
- Lonely dawns
- An accelerating countdown to homeward bound into new summers, into an unknowable autumn.

Dream

Italy. Lemon-coloured stone fringed with the dreamy green of olive trees . Summer in the silken waters of Venice Blue and pink and honey and gold. Gondollas singing their way through the water. A girl with a chocolate gellato and wind in her hair crosses St. Mark's Square wreathed by a cloud of pigeons. She is walking towards the hotel, but turns left past that small bridge where the map seller sits. She goes towards that receding patch of sky where the gold of the stone sets the blue alight. Always beyond the next street corner and the next and the next... her sandals graze the pavement, her gelato almost gone. The patch of blue, chasing it, in that crowd of strangers. Of friends.

The names of the men she has kissed:
Antonio. Rolando. The nameless blond boy on the bridge across the Arno who she never saw again.

Snatches:
- The cold and the wind in the marshes where we stood and hugged. That was the first time I saw Mallards. We scattered them in the dark as we ran away in the dead of night. My illicit kiss in the marshes.
- San Gimignano. The day was wrapped in pink freshness. I could see from the centre of the city to the edges of the world. Marble arms at the centre, marble cloud at the rim. The bronze copy of David. I danced at dinner, in my red skirt with my red shoes with my red lips. I danced with Sam. I danced skyhigh. My parents watching, everyone in the room laughing and clapping.
- The run back to the hotel, through Florence. The waiter at the downstairs restaurant cheering Bravo! Bravo!
- The jasmine, the roses. The air. The moon through the old green wooden window when I stood at the end of the corridor waiting for all of you to finish getting dressed for dinner. I thought of Amy then, and knew she once loved this place.
This precise place. That precise painting on that precise wall and that moon.

Italy. I say it tiredly now. Like swansong, like a birthcry.

Mr Can't Be Bothered, you win

... so, I throw up my hands.
Go your own sweet way.
It's not optional for me.

Bulleted list of recent bullet holes.

• He hates Monsoon Wedding.

• He will probably hate India.

• In fact, he will probably not want to even give it a try.

• He hates poetry, art, painting. He thinks they are pretentious.

• He does not believe in God or spirituality or the power of beauty (all synonymous in my head, but please don't ask me how I arrive at this stellar conclusion.)
  

• He hates people. And coffee shops and expensive coffees.
  

• Fashion, and inky skies after dusk and people-watching and wild dancing and noise and wildness. Saris the colour of sunsets and roses behind the ear. Colour and madness. All are lost on him.

Fuck why am I here, fuck fuck fuck fuck why am I here.

Fuck, I love this man? And he loves me?

• Oh and don't get me started on some of the things that come out of his mouth:
  

- "I will not fight for it."
- "God, why do you need to be happy?"

Fuck fuck fuck.
Shot if I stay, shot if I don't.
Fuck fuck fuck

tiny paw prints

of kittens, of puppies
of tiny five-toed feet,
cactied with baby claws.
these used to be quite like mine,
until someone picked up this white kitten
and took dastardly liberties with her claws.

and now baby cats have one up over me,
they still make footprints in the snow,
i can only make smudges
that shine redly like ruined poppies.