jottings and memos

NaPoWriMo- Day 5

Okay, so here is when I technically began to fall off the wagon. I wrote this on day six, because I was busy on the 5th, and today it’s the eighth, and I haven’t written since then, so errghhh (how articulate). I’m blaming this on my college assignment due tomorrow, because I’ve been procrastinating on it and trying to screw up the courage to do it, and I’ve conveniently convinced myself that if i write poetry, it’ll lull me into a false sense of productivity, so I’ve banned writing till I get my shit together. I’m hoping for a poem to be written tomorrow (I highly doubt it, because you know how deadlines are), but till then, here is this one for your enjoyment.

I’m going to call this one Amby, for obvious reasons. This poem is my baby, my child, and I’m honestly really proud I wrote this. I’m a beginner poet by the way, I’ve written very, very few poems in the past, so there’s not much that I can look back on to be proud of. I do know, however, that this poem wouldn’t have reached this level if it wasn’t for the lovely, absolutely amazing, day 5 prompt, which you can find on napowrimo.net, along with all the other official prompts. The prompt was called 20 Poetry Projects, I think, and it was a list of various things I was supposed to add to my poem that really spiced it up.

Enough rambling, now, enjoy Amby:

If you’re thinking of life in terms of a rat race,

with a finish line, or whatever,

then let’s say people are assigned vehicles upon birth

to get there.

so in that case,

donald trump’s got a fancy, made-over unicycle

with streamers blowing out the sides, gilded,

mirrors all over to deceive the eye

of its size,

but it’s still a unicycle, all the same,

because he hasn’t got the sense to upgrade,

and because a single wheel doesn’t give much insurance,

he’s beginning to lose his balance.

you’d find me, on the other hand,

in a paavam* Ambassador,

sturdy and reliable–

but only at a slow pace.

because pushing me can lead to grating complaints,

bitter-tasting anxieties at pit-stops,

gritty worries in the oil gauge.

I say this because

eventually is my middle name

when I lose a hair tie, or my keys,

it’s eventually that I rely on,

and two days later, there it is,

under the temperamental lampshade in 133.

eventually, she’s her own person,

she lets her ideas steep and brew in her head,

tea-stained puffs of aroma finally

spilling out over pages and pages.

eventually isn’t sustainable in the rat race, however,

because

ay, dios mio,

another deadline missed,

another paper due,

eventually smells houses burning

but eventually

does not

extinguish,

and, in 2014, the Ambassador was manufactured no more.

but now, when the world is at a halt,

with Ferraris idling in garages,

nursing worries of maintenance, obsolescence

and with unicycles struggling to stay in place,

— as balance requires momentum–

I sit in my Ambassador,

quiet and content,

because there is nothing this car knows better

than to wait out the years

and come through.

for it may be true what they say,

about slow and steady

winning the race.

* paavam- a malayalam word meaning poor, in this context, used as how poor would be used in the phrase ” oh you poor dear”

NaPoWriMo- Day 4

Poetry

So this was unprompted too. No idea why, didn’t feel like being restrained that day, I guess. It’s fine, because, again, the point of this challenge is to just write, not to produce a masterpiece (though I definitely have created my best work in the next post, because I’d never write otherwise), or follow the prompts exactly. Anyway, here goes:

I can’t like something for long enough

can never see it through

i think,

my preferences are like bread

when fresh and new, simply fantastic,

deliciously mind-consuming,

finger-licking.

but soon enough it

tastes boring, dull,

makes my mind feel like cardboard

and I leave it aside,

untended

and of course,

nature takes her course.

Soon enough, the bread’s stale-

the guitar is unplucked, books half read, scarf unfinished (child sized)

-and grows fungi

the strings get rusty

vocabulary drops to sub-standard,

yarn stringy, loosened, unspooled.

That’s when I notice the bread on the countertop,

guilty I hadn’t put it away

or eaten it in time,

that now,

because of

me,

it had turned the colour of my table

smelled putrid, like neglect

of someone who could never do a thing right,

a jack of all trades,

a disappointment,

a woman (un)done.

NaPoWriMo- Day 3

Poetry

Not at all related to the prompt, but it was something I wrote in a couple of minutes, so here it is:

raindrops whirring,
tapping on your head rhythmically,
cyclical.
your favourite song in the background
your heart mirroring its beats—
I'm sorry, was I misleading?
A shower can be as romantic as an evening in the rain, you know?

NaPoWriMo Day 2

Poetry

None of my poems really have titles, also I tend to veer off a lot from the original prompt. The prompt is there just to get you writing, because the challenge is about getting you to write, not what to write.

Anyway, this one’s inspired by James Schuyler’s The Fireproof Floors of Witley Court. Don’t ask me how.

I find it interesting how people twist reality to sound
positive.
You'd call it a slender storybook
I'd call it a children's tale
and shame them for reading it.

You'd say hard worker 
I say not talented enough
and shame them for their efforts.

You say fat is not an insult
I say you're deluding yourself 
and shame them for their appearance.

You ask them for their preferred pronouns
I say there are only two genders 
And shame them for their existence.

You say there's always other options
I say you don't deserve it 
and shame them for their aspirations.

You say it's okay to be emotional
I say wallowing gets you nowhere
and shame them for their emotions.

You empathise
I call it selfish 
and shame those in early graves.

You say obstinate 
I say strong-minded
And shame myself for believing it.

NaPoWriMo is here and believe it or not, I’m doing it

Poetry

Yes, I know, it’s been days since the challenge has started and only now does it occur to me that I have a blog, meant for writing challenges — but I swear, I have been doing them. So here’s day one of NaPoWriMo, horrendously shitty, but here it is:

Prompt: as brunette as crunch (??)

The sky is warm and bloodlike
We spent the whole day at the beach
today
and it felt warm and mellow

We had a picnic in the sands,
and afterwards,
I stroked her hair gently,
as she lay in my lap
the brown mixing with the blonde,
sand as brunette as crunchy toast,
hair as vibrant as liquid gold.

The sky is hot today, it's peppered with scars
Like vericose veins on a smurf
It rained a lot, and we sat in the patio
I took my blue pills, my green tea,
She held my hands, as I squinted up at
the hot, rainy sky.

The sky is bloody today again
The day feels like a war
I have fuzzy visions —
a phone dialling, a stretcher racing,
red contrasting with blue, blue, blue and
now that
I come to think of it,
I'm pretty sure I've never seen toast-like sand
I think hard, pushing the fog in my brain ,
going back to another day with a bloodlike sky,
and glimpse a flash of grainy gold

And when I open my eyes, look up,
She's there.
Hair as brunette as crunchy toast,
eyes wide.
Don't worry, I say
but the edges are getting fuzzy.

Kindly do not judge my poetry writing skills by this… monstrosity, because this is probably the worst one I’ve ever written. I had a concept, but didn’t execute it properly, but that’s okay because I got better as the days passed. I’m posting this one only because it’s the first one, and practically no one knows about this blog, so what’s there to lose?

Anyway, happy writing! Check out napowrimo.net for the prompts, and if those don’t tickle your fancy, there’s always other poetry accounts and resources on instagram that are doing their own!

Here’s a book review instead—The Immortalists, by Chloe Benjamin

Book Reviews

Heh heh.

It’s been four months since my promise to myself about writing challenges and not one post has gone up since. Well anyway, I’ll keep the post about my intentions up as a testament to my failure (and also maybe an idea that I could actually stoke the flames of later?) I’m not giving up hope yet.

In the interest of posting something, I thought I’d write about this book that I finished today that has got me feeling things. A disclaimer before I start, though: I often suspend my own thoughts and ideas while reading so unless I’m reading with the intent of analysis, my critical thinking skills are kind of redundant. So, this is just going to be a working through of the emotions I had regarding the book. But please, do enjoy!

The book has an amazing concept. It’s about four siblings who go to a fortune teller in their neighbourhood as children to learn the date of their death, not because they want the information but out of innocent curiosity and sheer summer boredom (we’ve all been there. I’m there right now). The book then splits into four parts, each one tracing the lives of each sibling till their deaths. We get to see if the fortune-teller was right or not, and how her predictions may or may not have affected the choices the siblings make.

Reading the book made me feel incredibly morose. I am unfortunately, not a woman of many tears (I really do wish I could shed more than 30 tears at a time— all that stifled emotion is no good for you) so the emotional impact of a book often is broiling and bubbling in my chest and my mind for a while, and if it’s a book like this, I know it’s affected me when I feel that sense of unease. And I’ll tell you why.

~ cue college-admission fuelled ranting about the pointlessness of life~

I am on the cusp of adulthood, barely eighteen, and only recently have I been realising how much drudgery there is in life, the daily ploddings through routines and tasks that you should do for a better future, or a stable existence, until you realise that you’ve been spending all your life working towards this idea of a ‘better future’ without ever stopping to enjoy the present. This book was scary because it was kind of like seeing these realisations that I hoped weren’t true play out. The characters are full grown adults with understandable, complex emotions and views that led them to do whatever they did, and most often, these people weren’t very happy. The characters lived in different ways— reckless abandon, a controlled existence— and neither seemed to have been the ‘best’ way to live. It’s scary to see that, to feel like you have no control, and it’s unease for someone who’s been told that living in a particular way will ensure happiness in the future. And these promises of a golden future end up being what you always hear, until you forget that you could do anything else but continue on in that same way. What is the point?

~end rant~

I don’t think this was the message of the book, though. I think what Chloe was trying to get at is that no matter which way you live, overly cautious or revelling in excesses, there is no path that necessarily guarantees you anything. In essence, there is really no ‘way’ to live, no formula granting you an easy existence, no right or wrong. I personally think that’s a wonderful message and, at the same time, kind of scary— if what you’re looking for is that ‘way’ to live life that guarantees maximum satisfaction.

I think the reason why the book came off as so morbid (especially after the first two deaths, my god those left me feeling terrible) was because Chloe had to write around the action. She did a great job of moving through 50 years in a great way, recapping events that had happened, but most of the in-person present tense action was happening around the time of death of the character, naturally making us feel like their whole life was as depressing as the months before their deaths.

On a more personal note, as an only child who always wanted a sibling, I really enjoyed getting to be intimately connected with this family. Because it was about four siblings through time, the reader feels as though they grew up with them, and knew each of them equally, rather than how it is when reading about one character with siblings, because you see the family relationships only from one point of view. So I really liked feeling included in the sibling-bond and I could understand better the kind of relationships they had with each other.

Another personal note that made me like it was mention of AIDS. I love Queen and naturally Freddie Mercury’s death of the disease is heartbreaking to me even though it happened like a decade before I was born. Somehow, reading about the AIDS virus then made me able to understand the scale of the crisis and how devastatingly painful it was to Freddie and other sufferers at the time.

I also really liked its ending. We aren’t taken till the time of the oldest sibling’s death, like we were with all the others, and that leaves us hanging, makes us wonder whether the gypsy was a fraud or not, because we don’t know if the last prediction comes true.

I think this book is rather a heavy read because of the thoughts it gets you thinking and the emotions it makes you feel, but I would give it a solid 8 out of 10, a good read. It was very well written, well plotted out, unique concept, great characterisation and moving. Overall, I would recommend this to anyone who is mentally prepared for the heaviness of this read.

And so, post two is done!

the new year comes with challenges

Uncategorized

And this year, I’ve resolved to make writing more one of them.

I’ve always liked writing and I realised I don’t write enough to satisfy my creative juices apart from the once in a while angsty diary entries I churn out for my Evernote account. So with an intent to create something nice that may actually do something positive for my self esteem (haha), I propose to:

write and post a piece per week (apart from exam weeks, ofc)
use a propmt which I will scrounge out from some depth of the internet.

Thank you for coming along!

Let’s see if this actually works out.