Evocative

PMS + Gloomy Nostalgic Sleepy Day + Amruta’s Posts #1:traveller and #2: in the name of the mother =

cringing stomach + sharp intake of breath + tear-loaded eyes + a mountainous longing to crawl into J’s armpit

bwaaaaaaaaaah

Homeland

An Indian lady colleague told whether or not I will bring back a mixer/grinder from India after the wedding. I told her not really – the American blender works very well thank you. Apparently every newly married Indian couple here brings back a cooker (larger size) from the avg single person cooker (350-500 ml me thinks), the stone grinder for dosai, the idli steamer, and the blender and food processor for chutneys. Esp the south indians.

So immediately I made a mental list:
- Cadbury’s Eclairs. I FUCKING miss those. My happy fix for any hour.
- Sharp ball point pens that are <=0.6mm tipped. American ballpoints are the thickness of pasta. I MUST have pens that draw lines and
- Anjali dabba – the little box custom designed for Indian spices – with the little boxes.
- Little little idols of Gods that my grandmom got me used to.

I may not be into avidly praying a fervent prayer every morning, but lighting the occasional diya and the blue moon incense stick raises my spirits and spiritual quotient. I am a sucker for feel good morning rituals.

Doesn't sound like a list that will impress my colleague though.

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There was a time when I used to chide anyone I knew who was Indian who over-valued Indian things like movies and festivals and rituals. After being here for nearly 11 months, I am beginning to understand why. On diwali, the same Indian colleague invited me over for dinner. Pongal vada dosai sambar chutney and payasam. I dressed to the nine's and went. As if it was my first diwali or something. Bought Kaju Katli to introduce experimental minded roomies. Threw the box into the garbage because mofos here keep stock that is probably 3 months old and nonrefrigerated for the most part. Dass sweets something. Mofos I tell you.

And don't even ASK what happens when i watch a documentary about India or senti scene from an Indian movie. Bawling doesn't begin to describe the outcome.
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Wedding prep in full swing. After J's departure and the end of ceaseless shopping and packing weekends – normalcy has returned to the turtle. But still hours are spent searching for the perfect jewellery that can't be bought yet because the outfits haven't been found yet. And yet the heart isn't going flutter flutter as it should be about the wedding itself.

I find myself jumping and calling bloody murder when I hear J met Bartinda and Shaman and they didn't discuss me. And then laughing and craving to be back in Bangalore. The heart also does a trapeze act every time past gilded memories come to the fore along with the prospects of making some more – with some sistahs and breddas who are traipsing the world at the moment – and some yogis and yoginis who are ascending spiritual dimensions and establishing kilometric records.

1 month 7 days to departure and counting down!

Once a geek … always a geek

I’ve just survived a technology orgasm yesterday. I can’t help but be excited by/about Google Wave. I think they’ve done whatever I wanted with UI. Drag and drop images from the desktop and mailblogchattwitterflickrfacebookdiscussionpolldocoedit in one chinti browser.
Like ONE chinti browser window can do all that. And it’s all in HTML. And Script. And CSS.
And REAL-TIME is REALLY real-TIME.

wave.google.com

PS:Now see if I had Google Wave to blog this with this link would automatically autocomplete and become a link.

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Also on a happier note.

Smile

“Hey, who let in all these elephants?
Did you know that elephants are made of elements?
Elephants are mostly made of four elements
And every living thing is mostly made of four elements
Plants, bugs, birds, fish, bacteria and men
Are mostly carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen

Come on come on and meet the elements
You and I are complicated, but we’re made of elements
Like a box of paints that are mixed to make every shade
They either combine to make a chemical compound or stand alone as they are”

Meet the elements from the children’s album “Here comes science”; Artists:They May Be Giants
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They all kept saying
How much we look alike
I don’t think that we look alike at all

But I’ll admit that I look more like a chimp
Than I look like my cousin the shrimp
Or my distant kin the lichens
Or the snowy egret or the moss
And I find it hard to recognize
Some relatives of ours
Like the rotifer, the sycamore
Iguanas and sea stars

My brother the ape
My brother the ape

My Brother the Ape from the children’s album “Here comes science”; Artists:They May Be Giants
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Navratri Kheer Craving Crack
http://www.nanakfoods.com/upcoming.htm

All hail Guru Nanak.

Lost and 2BuckChuckAnna

I was feeling really strongly about something before I came here. Now I forgot. So much for strength of thought.

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Confession: I am addicted to Lost. I seriously believe that if modern day fiction has shifted to the visual medium, then Lost is the best fiction I have ever encountered. It’s got a lot of bullshit of course – like radio hookups that won’t happen and will happen when you want them with a piece of red twine and can call London from a frikking freighter which is causing people to time travel to a Royal Scottish Regiment and a mouse dies trying the same —–. What I am REALLY happy about. Netflix has Seasons 1 through 4 for online streaming. For the past two weeks, barring a few exceptions, all my evenings have been spent planning a departure from the living area without being noticed by my roomies and then crawling into bed and watching back to back episodes of Lost. Things came to a head yesterday when I took half of the day off from the indulgence hangover that consisted of sore swollen eyes a headache and a general inability to stop thinking about what would happen next. I was even dreaming about John Locke and Kate Austen and Jack Shepard in a flight and on an island.

What I am really grateful for is that I started watching Lost at a period of time when I have access to 5 full seasons. What I hate about this is that I don’t have access to Season 6 yet. The waiting and anticipation for good fiction is unbearably nail hurting and cuticle peeling.

With that purged out of my system, I strongly encourage anyone who hasn’t had a good time in a LONG time to invest in a few DVDs and give their mental stimulations a healthy boost. I mean c’mon – if you could believe and enjoy and relive Gondor and Elves and Gandalf and appreciate a good story with a twist every second, Lost is totally up your alley. Brilliance I say.

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My roomie Anna – she wakes up at 6 45 am – is at work by 7 45 – works till 4 30 pm – comes back and goes for a bike ride or a speed skating expedition every evening – comes back all sweaty and high from an endorphin orgasm – and then showers, cooks, smokes, up, and drinks between 1 to 2 bottles of wine – and finishes her day with a Haagen Daaz ice cream stick at 1 am. The same time as when I have been falling asleep in the days before Lost. However, on a day I get less than 8 hours of sleep, exercise or a walk for me goes right out the Dee-Oh- Oh- Are.

This morning I look at her looking up at me grumpily in the morning as I left for work and I asked her what did I do to earn the stare. She said she was sore from the 20 odd miles of speed skating she did yesterday.

I asked her how does she do it- that after the 2 bottles of 2buckchuck she sent the previous night.

She said, in truly Annaesque style:
Coffee, carbs, supplements, vitamins, ice cream – whatever it takes!

It’s Friday morning at 9 45 am and I am thinking when was the last time I wanted to do whatever it takes for anything at all. I’m chewing on it.

Baby Squirrel Rehabilitation

So our new roomie – A – majorly into biking hence knows lots of mountain biker friends – brought home this little thing yesterday.

Behold! A baby squirrel:

Because I don’t have the actual pics handy as I type this – and I did take pics of course – we’ll use one from the web.

So anyhoo:
Apparently – this little critter needs to be fed every 2 hours – even thru the night – crawls around – and hasn’t opened it’s eyes yet. And after feeding you need to take a wet cotton ball and rub its genitals – to make it pee and shit.

A of course thinks her friend is nuts. She asks him “S – what happened to your biking morals. Squirrels are the guys who try to jump under your wheels when you are biking at high speeds and cause you to crash. ” But that’s only A’s way of having fun and making fun of the situation.

What S has done is:
- Put the little guy in a moving box.
- Put a heating pad under 2 pillow cases.
- Put in a meat thermometer that measures the temperature of the box so we can maintain it at a steady 90 F.
- Made a box of dog puppy formula.
- Given us a box of Gatorade.
- One syringe minus the needle is the titties the little guy feeds off of.
- Put in a warm blanket on top to protect him.
And called it a day. He’s off to Nevada to see a biking show while A sticks around out here and takes care of the little guy. This house has one new species taking our time and attention now.

The dog in the house – Molly – freaks out every time we open the box.

So I went online to do a little bit of reading on how to take care of a squirrel. More reading for anyone who cares – Baby Squirrel Rehabilitation. Supremely interesting I say.

From the fact that we just aren’t equipped to take care of this little thing and how we can only try – baby caring is a journey of immense discovery.

Two things

“You talk when you cease to be at peace
With your thoughts;
And when you can no longer dwell in the
solitude of your heart you live in your lips,
And sound is a diversion and a pastime.
And in much of your talking, thinking
Is half murdered.
For thought is a bird of space, that in a
cage of words may unfold its wings but cannot fly.”

-Khalil Gibran

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Someone thought of Charles Babbage:
http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=5

I feel immense respect for creative genius that feels compelled to visualize and explore the dark crevices of the defining pillars of history. It’s after all informative of where we come from and also don’t come from.

Deifying the dei

Deifying the dei

Maybe this is what de-i-fying really means.

Removing the ‘I’s in expression and then re-evaluating what will remain expressed to get an non-”self adorned” measure of the value in the expression. If the sentiment and expression doesn’t fall apart, there may be some value in expressing it. It might even make it to aphorism of the day.

It’s so mathematically obvious.

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PS: This is an opinion.

Everyday observations

When you spend most of the day in silence, the small things get their volume turned up and the big things tend to appear gaudy and you designate them to a mental background. Probably the reason why trance works for my head now.

In unexpected stretches of mental silence – mostly inspired by being in an environment where nothing induces the guilt of not following mass trends – I find myself observing and glancing sideways with glee at peculiar phenomena in my life. I get excited about them like a little baby.

For example, the snooze function on my phone only allows me to snooze it for 9 minutes at a time. Like what a choice of numbers, 9. Not 5 or 10. Not 15 or 12. 9. Imagine what must have gone through the brains of the dude who wrote the code. It’s so cool, it’s not even binary. The perfect mix of the odd in the world of booleans and evens. No you have no clue what this means, like if you set your alarm for 8 15 and snooze it, the next time you wake up it will be 8 24. That’s not alarming at all. So you snooze – and snooze – till you reach a round figure. Ok at least I do. It’s a game I play with fate. I resign myself to waking up at the next round figure my phone alarm will throw at me. And that usually takes about 45 mins to happen. Do the math. Isn’t this like amazing? Every morning I can’t figure out the math though so I end up getting late. Yea – btw – I am back to my old ways. I get to work by 9 30 am. Barely.

And thair sadam cannot be made with brown basmati rice. First of all basmati has no business being brown in the first place. I want to sue the company that thought this up. Perfect waste of awesome grain. Basmati mein baas hi nahi hai.

Other interesting facts: Labradors, my roomie tells me, do not have the signal processing power in their brains to tell them when they are full. So the ladies in the house – Molly and Jasmine – are the house bhikshus. They do the rounds with a box in their mouth and the most amazing pitiful pretty faces that beg me to find it in my heart to feed them. I can’t. They also can’t stand being alone. Leave them alone for too long in the dark and they will start barking at you as soon as you get in the door. Also, until the lady of the house comes back from work, these girls hang outside my door and lay there.

The bearded dragon is gone though. We miss his staggering panache.

All this may sound all banal – but they have become relatively important observations. They are of significance and stem in some form of non-processor-driven stimulus.

I still can’t make good sambhar though. See now that makes a HUGE difference to me. And the idlis, sambhar and chutney in Mylapore are TO DIE for. Can’t imagine San Diego can’t beat the fare here. MCafe should put the Madras back in their cafe by going to Madras first.

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The sad thing about these everyday observations is that by the time you are done acknowledging how preciously and simply beautiful they are, they have stopped dealing with the recollection and memory brokers in my grey cells. So then I retire the post theretum.

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Sublime experience that automatically quells the wording enzyme:
Stern Grove

(pics from the web – will put up my own soon)

Thanks to Shanky and Kailasha – we ended up having a surreal and sublime music fest experience in one of the most awesome venues.
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Using “volume” where it counts

is like fucking for virginity