I'm Jealous of the Wind

I love sitting by my window and looking outside at night, like I am doing now. I know I have said it a million times before, but I figure one more time won't hurt -given the fact that this is my night time ritual. As a nocturnal, any excuse to stay up at night is a good excuse. Tonight, my mind is a jumbled mess of thoughts: from thinking about the collection of stories that I finally finished reading today; to the book that I finished in one sitting; to the wind. I am watching the trees dance and sway to the silent music of the wind. The trees in turn make their own sound, the leaves move against each other, producing a rattling sound, but it grows on me, and I find myself anticipating the next wave of wind, just to hear this sound. And in the dead of the night, the sound is heard loud and clear because sound travels faster at night -I learnt this in high school Physics. And maybe that's why I write at night; not because I focus better, as I have been telling myself, but because I know my voice (writing) will travel faster.

The wind is a powerful force. I wore a dress a fortnight ago. This choice of outfit was influenced by the very embarrassing fact that I hadn't done my laundry and all my pairs of dress pants and jeans were dirty. So I had to hold my dress down while the wind tried to take it up. It was awkward and tiring and I vowed not to wear a dress or skirt until the wind stops.

As I stare outside right now, this jolt of jealousy hits me hard. Weird, I know. I am jealous of the wind. Because the wind has the ability to make me feel awkward and attract unnecessary attention to my hands and legs from strangers. I am jealous of the wind because it has the ability to make the trees sing, and for me to actually enjoy the song. I am jealous of the wind, because of it's ability to make my hair an unruly mess after I have spent a bit of time trying to give it a semblance of perfection. I want to hate it but I can't. The only emotion I can summon is jealousy. I am jealous of the wind, and damn it, I don't want to be.

The title of this post is from the song Jealous by Labrinth

Get into My Ear: Allergic to Water by Ani DiFranco

Ani DiFranco - Allergic To Water (audio WXPN: Free At Noon): https://youtu.be/08m5Re7xWf0

It's a little past midnight and I am sitting in bed, sipping tea (because heaven knows I can't survive without caffeine) with no intention of going to sleep soon. There is a voice that's telling me that I should get some sleep, because tomorrow might bring something good. But this voice, this annoying little voice, is ever present, always whispering and I always choose to ignore it. Today, I feel like I have too much to do, yet I don't know where to start. I have three papers that are due in the next few weeks, the most urgent one being due on Monday. I also have a presentation to prepare for. But I can't bring myself to research and write these papers. I bought Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy today and I am itching to start reading it. My mind is telling me that I am reading so many books at any given time and I should at least finish one before starting Lucy. I also have Ani DiFranco's Allergic to Water on repeat. And each time the song starts, I decide on what to do just after the song ends: it started with deciding on researching on Monday's paper; then I switched to reading Lucy; then I switched to reading Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others- one of the books I am reading to Roxane Gay's an Untamed State- yet another book that I am halfway through. But towards the end of every repetition,  I tell myself that I should listen to it just one more time. Oh, how I am an expert at procrastinating.

Perhaps I should have started with my declaration of love for the awesome Ani DiFranco. But I feel that love isn't quiet the right word. I am beyond love, this is full blown obsession. An obsession that could as well be an infliction, but I don't care. I have to listen to Ani. Ani grounds me, every song she sings, I believe, is about me, because how could every song she sings be what I am needing? How could she be the one I go to whenever I am happy, or sad, or numb? From Grey to Not a Pretty Girl to Soft Shoulder to Shameless to School Night. Right now, and for the past several months, I am obsessed with her 2014 album Allergic to Water. There are several songs that are my favourite: Careless Words, Dithering, Rainy Parade. But it is Allergic to Water, the single, that I keep coming back to.

Favourite Lyrics

You can't even imagine
The torturous state I have been existing in
I am allergic to water
It itches my throat and blisters my skin Still I drink coz I have to, I bathe coz I have to
But boy it's a pain

You may wonder
What would possess someone like me to go on
You may wonder how it's possible something so basic could go wrong
All I can say is if you stretch your mind all the way as far as it goes
There's someone out there who lives farther than that in a place you can never know

So right now
If you are looking at me
You can't assume that I am thirsty

And I don't want your sympathy
I am just telling you so you'll understand
This is me, sincerely, doing the best that I can

If I haven't said that Ani's lyrics move me, then I will say it again. This song is about empathy, it's about not making assumptions, it's about embracing my otherness. I don't like it when people make assumptions about me, simply because other people are that way. Is it too much to ask that when someone approaches me, they come with a blank slate, so that whatever they learn about me doesn't surprise them?

I Rode a Different Road and Sang a Different Song

When asked to describe me, a friend recently said and I quote, "Lina is the type of person you'll tell, 'I like water', and she'll tell you reasons why she doesn't like water. In short, Lina has her own way of thinking which is completely different from other people's." Another friend of mine said that these days she finds herself thinking about my warped opinions while going through her days. Today, a group of my friends were talking about how much they had to do tonight when one of them said, "You guys will be working your asses off while Lina will be doing her nocturnal reading." They then proceeded to ask me which book I am currently reading, and I told them Wife of the Gods by Kwei Quartey and A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra. One of them commented that I am always reading queer- no pun-  books that none of them has read. You might think that I found these observations insulting. Quite the contrary, I took them as a complement, because in a world where everyone seems to be coming from a duplicating machine, I am proud of the fact that I have chosen a different path, a different song and I am dancing my way through this path listening to my own song.

I don't see myself as weird. I just don't do things or think a certain way just because other people think that way or because it's the conventional way of thinking. My thought process originates from my own way of looking at life. My opinions (I am very opinionated, but then again, who isn't?) are shaped by my experiences and where my empathy lies. I don't let other people influence my decisions, because I believe being self sufficient starts with independence of thought, of mind and renunciation of what is deemed acceptable,  conventional or proper. I read what I find interesting and what stimulates my mind, not what other people are reading; I'll choose reading over watching a movie any day, even if it's a popular movie; I'll choose one on one conversations over a group of people anytime, even if it's a momentous occasion that requires my input;  I'll choose staying up at night even when doing nothing over going to sleep any day.

One of the reasons I started this blog was that I had been called weird enough times so I thought that a blog called Idiosyncratic Hedonist would document my 'weird attributes'. I don't know how it transitioned into personal musings, intentional living and whatever else I write about. But I am always in a perpetual transitional state. I don't know what this blog will transition to, but I am sure it will continue to be true to my thoughts, my mental meanderings and wanderings that translate to the simultaneous complexities and simplicities that make up my life.

The title of this post is from the song Angel in Blue Jeans by Train.

The Broken Clock is a Comfort

I woke up yesterday and, unbeknownst to me, was the time I normally wake up on Saturdays, which is seven. But the clock on my bedroom wall read ten minutes past two. For a delicious moment, in the midst of the disorientation brought about by suddenly waking up from deep slumber, I felt an unexplainable happiness; that happiness that you feel when you wake up in the middle of the night and realize it's still hours before you have to get up; that happiness that only those who go to sleep past midnight can understand and truly appreciate; that happiness that gives you comfort and reassures you that good things still happen; that happiness that restores your faith in a higher being. I then realised that there was light coming through my window, and suddenly, I could not reconcile the two facts -the light outside and the time on the clock. I checked my phone and then my watch and both showed seven, and I felt like a child whose candy had been taken away from her!

The title of this post is from the song Broken by Lifehouse.

I'm Killing Loneliness that Turned my Heart into a Tomb

A couple of weeks ago, I forgot my phone at home. I left the house at seven in the morning, and the traffic was horrendous, a rare occurence on my side of town. After observing all the people in the matatu with me, trying to figure out what they were thinking, guessing what they did for a living, how they spent their weekend (it was on a Monday) and what motivated them to choose their outfits, I got bored and thought I could send good morning texts to my friends -the few that I have and those who reply to texts. It was then that I realised that I left my phone at home. My first instinct was to panic, then I realised that as much as I always have my phone with me, it's not something that I can't do without for  the 12 hours or possibly more that I would be outside the house. I had my Kindle so I read the whole way to town and the one and half hours felt like my usual thirty minute commute.

Last week, an acquaintance of mine asked yet another acquaintance for her phone so she could send a text. I asked her where her phone was and she said she had forgotten it at home. I then asked her if the text she wanted to send was very important, she said no. She just wanted to tell people that she had left her phone at home so they wouldn't bother calling or texting her until she got home later. I should add it was two in the afternoon and she had left her place at one.

I thought to myself that maybe it's because I have a few people with whom I communicate on a daily basis that I didn't see the need to borrow someone's phone. I sometimes leave my phone in my bedroom when I am at home. Sometimes it takes me more than 12 hours to check my emails and my WhatsApp messages. My phone is usually either on vibrate or silent, so it is possible that I would be having my phone with me but I wouldn't hear it ringing.

Sometime last week, I read a blog post (I am a lazy blogger, also I read so many blogs that I can't quite remember where exactly I read it; but believe me I would have provided a link) where the blogger was talking about loneliness and our need to kill loneliness by constantly wanting to talk to people and the convenience of a cell phone gives us the illusion that we are not lonely. I thought that there was some truth in that. I remember a friend telling me how a friend of hers was complaining how it was 10 in the morning and no one had sent her a message.

I don't know when I stopped wishing and staying by my phone waiting for people to call me. But it could have been the time when I stopped being interested in empty conversations. This is the time I started craving personal and meaningful conversations. Don't get me wrong, I love frivolous conversations, I love funny stories, I like reminiscing about fond memories or embarrassing stories, I love looking at funny photos and gifs, but I can't stand pretentious conversations. This is also the time I had had enough of bad grammar and people replacing s with x and I had a hard time trying to decipher what the message was. I became proactive and I started initiating conversations with the people I wanted to talk to: people whom I genuinely cared for; people who when I asked how their day was answered with something more than fine or good; people who when we haven't talked for sometime would not text me 'hi stranger' but would send me a funny photo, a link to a story that they think I maybe interested in and we would reconnect by discussing our thoughts regarding what it is they have sent; people whom when I send a link to something, they create time to read and give me feedback; people who would send me songs or movies they are watching and from these, I would get to know more about them; people whose opinion I love, even if it differs significantly from my own. These are the people who are not just telling me facts about themselves, but people that I am able to see their thought process and I see them as people with feelings and not just people I know things about.

Blogs then became something that I liked reading. Unlike other social media platforms like Facebook where you are asked what you are thinking and when you answer, you are asked to add a location, blogs are places where I see what someone thinks, their opinion, and when I comment, it doesn't matter that this is someone I don't know, I might not recognise them when I meet them on the street, but the sharing of ideas is something that is profound, something close to surreal. That is something that I am looking for in my everyday interaction, which also means that I don't have to constantly have my cell with me every waking second of the day. I don't have to seek my cell to kill the void that is loneliness. I am very comfortable without my phone ringing every single minute of the day. Because to kill loneliness, I don't wait for people to tell me a few facts about themselves, facts that don't inspire a need to know more about them or become better friends. To kill loneliness, I seek genuine and meaningful interactions that leave me knowing more about the person I am interacting with and myself while am at it.

The title of this post is from the song Killing Loneliness by HIM.

Give me a Quiet Mind

In an attempt to tame my monkey mind (that's what the Buddhists call the mind that cannot stay still) I attended a guided meditation session yesterday afternoon. A meditation session led by a monk! I had expectations for the class, like being able to tune out everything in my mind and just being in the moment even when  there is so much going on around me. But the monk lowered the expectation for me when he said that it takes practice and patience and time.

I have a problem getting my mind to stay still. Someone that I used to know used to find this hard to believe because on the outside I am this cool, calm and collected being, someone who can sit still for long periods of time and only get up when it's absolutely necessary. Also I am not shy, but I only talk when I have something to say, which, come to think of it, is a lot especially with people that I know. But I am also comfortable letting other people around me talk without feeling the need to say anything. These are the times when whatever is being talked about does not concern me at all, or I don't really care about the subject, in which case my silence communicates just that. I believe in voicing my opinion and I do have opinions on everything. I have talked about marrying the person who can quiet my mind, but I now see how heavy such a burden is to load on a person I purport to share my life with, oh and the impossibility of it all!

Anyway, my calm exterior betrays my internal meanderings. Hundreds of thoughts bombard me from every possible  direction,  each thought demanding my absolute attention. Which I give for a few seconds and before I come to a conclusion, another thought demands my time. Of course, there are moments when my mind is still, but this is when I am on my yoga mat but still these moments require my attention in form of my muscles burning and pulling. So yesterday, with the monk guiding my meditation, I sat still for a prolonged period of time. Of course, there were a few times that my mind would wander and I tried to put it to focus. I was shocked when I realised the meditation was forty(!) minutes long, because it felt like ten. People talked about seeing colours, imagining the sun or the moon above their heads and then floating inside them. I didn't feel any of that. What I felt was a few moments, because I am quite sure they were a few seconds, of stillness. No colours, no moon, no sun, not the voice of the monk, not the mantra that I was repeating.

I left there wanting to relieve that feeling. But I got into a noisy matatu, talked to a friend over coffee then went to watch a film then back to a noisy matatu. I wanted to relieve it today, and in yoga class during shavasana, that moment totally eluded me. The rest of the day hasn't been any different from yesterday. Oh, but how I want to quiet everything down even for a little while.

The title of this post is from the song A Quiet Mind by Blue October.

I've Closed Enough Windows to Know you can Never Look Back

It is the beginning of the year, that time when people make resolutions to change their lives. I think hate is a pretty strong word but I very much dislike beginnings. This strong dislike is probably because beginnings are usually preceded by anticipation which leads to expectations and when my expectations are not met then I get disappointed. Plant an expectation and you are sure to reap a disappointment, so the cliché goes. Having been perpetually disappointed, beginnings have become something that I don't look forward to, something that I dread. I prefer a seamless transition of things with no clearcut markings of the beginning or the ending. I like a continuous flow of events where one activity leads to another which leads to another which leads to... 

But beginnings and endings are inevitable, it is but the nature of things. The law of evolution, therefore, dictates that I have to adapt or be miserable. So I wonder, is it a little immature for me to hope for the wonderful gift of foresight this year? Is it wishful thinking to hope that the world will bend to my whims this year? Is it disengaging from reality to hope that my expectations (because God knows I can't help but have them) will be met?

I am good at introspection. Sitting at the end of each day to record my reflections. I always look back with 20-20 hindsight at the things that I did and what probably motivated my decisions or choices. Hindsight at the end of the year is at its best. I am unflinchingly honest with my reflections, because I am aware of how subjective memory is and so in an effort to be objective sometimes I berate myself for the things that I did. It is said that history always has a point of view,  and there is no exception with my past; I judge myself harshly, too harshly. I want something different this year. To look forward, to think long and hard before making life changing decisions in which future retrospection will reveal an evidence of good judgement. To have a future illuminated by foresight.

The title of this post is from the song Carry On by Fun.