Lust

Having a day at your own pace. Being able to read at breakfast, a book on your left hand, the fork on the other, and taking little sips of coffee in between. I live for these things. When I finally get out of bed after hitting snooze three times on a Monday morning, it's what I look forward to. We can't help but live for the weekends. We drift through days.

I love my work - don't get me wrong - even if sometimes I feel like I'm being thrown at the open sea, leaving me to swim my way back to shore. I can barely keep my head above the water, but I keep on treading. At the end of the day, when my toes finally feel the smooth sand, there's nothing left to do but wade to dry land. And it's fulfilling, to save yourself.

Then I'm left alone with my mind for one and a half hour ride home. I look forward to those times, when I can watch the streetlights moving in a constant stream of light. Look at people's shadowed faces, bowed heads swaying almost rhythmically to the moving car. Once, I buried my nose up a book, only stopping on the short distance between streetlamps, enveloping the car in darkness. Most times, thoughts pour in. Memories. Dreams. Life. It becomes the air I breathe, filling me up before I breathe them back to the world in quiet whispers.

The thing is, I don't know what I'm talking about. When I wrote (typed) the first sentences, I don't know where I'm headed. I weaved words one after the other and it's such a delicious feeling to be doing so. Not constructing sentences, but writing them, flowing from my fingertips. Exhaling words into the world.

I'm not sure if I made any sense. I just wanted to write, to create, to appreciate words. I find I want a lot of things, turning me into a million pieces. I want to move, want to be here and a hundred places all out once. To see the fiery colors of autumn. To fold in to myself. To feel lost then found. I want to bite into the world. I want the imprints of the world on my skin. To not feel limited but infinite.

"I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited." - Slyvia Plath

Stuck

When writers can't write it's called writer's block. But when a reader just can't turn the page..

I've been putting off reading for weeks. I have excuses: work, sleep, things. There so much going on in my mind that I'm living in it - I'm putting everything real on hold. You know that feeling of not wanting to read on just because you don't have the energy to let it sink in? The book is a world of its own but whenever I open it I absorb it, instead of the other way around. Isn't it supposed to be an escape? You get sucked in, free falling. I don't want to put the blame on the book, it's not fair. I want to read. I need to read. Reading is a part of me, creeping into my fingertips until the words blink up at me. I breathe in words so I can breathe them back to the world.

Where's my lust for reading?

Can't help but wonder whether this has something to do with my tensed neck/shoulder/back muscles - not knowing why I don't read is so bothersome it's taking a toll on my body.

PS. I'm currently "reading" 22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodgkinson

Bad days

There are bad days and there are great ones. Good days are always short lived, bad days are tougher on us. We obsess over it, painstakingly analyze what went wrong, wish and pray that we could undo it. It's a hopeless case and it crushes us, deep in our bones. Well, for me.

Others can take on that bull with both hands on its horn, I scream and run away. I internally scream, and internally curse myself, and internally run away. I had a bad day. It's not about luck, fate, the cosmos, or anything. It was words, words that hit me like sticks and stones.

Here's my solution to a bad day (if not effective, seek professional help):