Life Update and Things I Want to Say
what's been on my mind
May was a difficult month. I have a bad case of writer’s block and I have too many anxieties plaguing me. I finished university and moved back to my parents’ house, and I am trying desperately to join the workforce, but no organization wants to hire me, or so it seems. I have been racked with guilt and overcome with misery for several other reasons that I shall explain at a later time, but it is June now and I am in the mood for something new and exciting — romance, inspiration, and employment. I primarily write about my own life, and I have no dearth of experiences to draw from so there is actually no real reason why I should be afflicted with this condition of writer’s block, but it has happened to me nonetheless. Somehow everything I have written in the past month feels prosaic and unevocative. I know people say that maybe writing something is better than writing nothing at all but it feels shameful to write a bad thing. This writing about writing itself feels trite to me.
I am very sentimental about Delhi and the life I left behind in the city. Living at home makes me a different person. I am healthy and taken care of and well-fed, but I am also surveilled. I am trying to leave this city very avidly, but i am worried about my home and my parents — their health and marriage when I am not around, so I also don’t want to be not around. There is no non-self-aggrandizing way to put this, I feel like I am the saving grace of this household.
I did NaPoWriMo earlier this year, albeit not very successfully, but I did manage to write a fair amount, so I think the plan of action as of current is that I want to phase out the poems throughout June.
Of the many things, people and places I miss in Delhi, I miss Bingo, Bubba, Gigi and Snowy — the dogs of my hostel the most. In the photo are Bingo and Bubba, the naughtiest of the lot. Bingo is really intelligent and demanding. Bubba is a flighty thing, and he is frequently under the weather. Gigi is young and exuberant and is quite the kleptomaniac, she takes things from my room as she pleases and has no concept of returning what is not hers.
Dog Wants
there is a dog
outside my door
scratching persistently
dreaming of the pedigree packet
leaning on the door's other side
there is a dog
outside yamuna hostel
he loses himself on purpose
everyday. wandering around the buildings
in dreams of the windy scooter ride
there is a dog
outside the dhaba
rolling feverishly in the mud
aching for some romance
fondly jumping on my white clothes
Through the last five years of my life, I have had the privilege of living with so many of my best friends. Both times I have graduated, I have been left with the feeling of i’ll never have it so good again.
Hurry up Before time runs out!
On many nights my friends and I would take ourselves
out to the main gate to buy a lone cigarette. A pack
would tense our lungs but a singular one is noble. Laughing
at something from emanating from our phones. A tune
stuck in all of our minds together or something of that nature. Then we
collide with more friends. The herd
expands into a precipitous army of voices and madness. Talking
over one another four conversations at once. Where else
but my college campus would I learn about the sound. From
the operatic chinese flute dizi. Or the newfangled
developments in my friend’s curious polycule of lovers. Or Adorno’s
dogged but futile attempts at employment in america. Or what
it's like to use Grindr in an active warzone. Or how whales
and orcas will be our comrades in the imminent revolution. Or how
bisexual men are the fascist devil incarnate. We’d take
the forest shortcut back successfully using the pythagorean theorem. We’d made
our routes perhaps only actually maybe three minutes shorter.
Someone I was seeing (yes, the musician of musicians, molly and mayhem fame) recently asked me this question, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head, so it obviously had to be the title of this next poem.
You think Kurt Cobain wore jammies to bed? young girl lying in bed in someone's bed looking for the lighthouse to send out a warning signal take some great plunge. tide is good tonight. you ever are with someone with dreams taller than their proclivity for movement? sometimes apparently you have to sleep in a cool outfit just so you can wake up in one young girl five years old at the beach and so much depends upon lay of the land. weather forecast. kiss with promise. The promise of once more Hankering to read a book like a child. Sweaty fingers agile mind Every flight you take is away from them. stamina is hardly easy to come by. The waves do not tire of crashing down on the shore. waves can measure time. ten more waves before they go. don’t book the uber yet three more waves until they leave. don’t put the key in ignition
That’s all I have to say right now. I have been playing around with some recipes, and I shall eventually compile them into something concrete, and I will be back soon— less frustrated and more employed, hopefully. Keep me in your thoughts and prayers.
Love,
Nivi
really like the line about the single cigarette being noble. also really like this piece overall. writing about writing when you can't write is so frustrating but I think you're being true to the essence of the act when you refuse to give despite not having the "meat" that leads to a piece. but really you're such a brilliant writer. im sure you'll overcome this