you don’t think its happening? it is.

I know, the things cannot be hidden- although few, but they are assorted- household items big and small, quite impossibly imaginary.

Please, the things cannot be sold- ageing, malfunctioning, mismatched, obliterating.

Simply, there is no place for all of their things here – these appendixes and clues to a nest.

There is no place for these things, but here. My passive income, their mounting bad debt. If I didn’t have to sell it now. I see no other choice.  Hard luck. They simply must go, them and their things.

The night is deceivingly peaceful. But night will break and come dawn, I will be the one to show them the door- the one responsible for hauling a family out of their rented home. She will curse me (She thinks I am rich), and my family (I have none), and my ancestry (I don’t know who). The children- they might look at me with helplessness, their faces might be blank with seeming indifference; they might be missing sschool tomorrow morning (obviously), but they are learning their harshest yet life lesson in return. God knows what.

They will be separated by night- the boys will be at a home, mother-and-daughter will be at a shelter. If she allows their break-up. If not, they will all be at the park, against elements, against all odds.

And I will be uncomfortably glad that by tomorrow night, their things will have disappeared. All of it will be gone, save a lonesome fold-out table they will leave behind, forgotten perhaps, at the void deck. Or perhaps it will be intended abandonment- too big to haul away, of no use anyway. Who needs a table in such circumstances?

The table doesn’t stay. The people don’t sit. The food will not be served. The clock and its hour will never pause at dinner-time. The family cannot be sustained. Because their things cannot stay.

But my kindness no longer has means. God knows.

Filed under: daily grind, heartaches, written word

Canon in D: Variations

Friday afternoon. One empty hour. She’s finished marinating the chicken, she has her soup on slow double boil. The washing has been folded, the house has been upkept. The children are napping. She knows at least the hour- this hour- is hers.

She fingers the curved veneered wood and places her fingers where it parts. Her fingers crouch and she lifts open to life – latent chords beneath a soft red cloth, protecting notes and chords that will invite music to sooth her ears and heart. The velvet red train is slowly rolled away to reveal slender black against white keys. She composes herself and flicks the mental songbook and decides, Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Firmly and rhythmatically, she coaxes the sleeping giant to life. The keys get lighter, her fingers fly and flirt, the tune emerging- a clear, strong and crisp manner initially, then achingly a repetitive song plays out.

The children must not be awoken. Her memories suffice, for there is no real melody. It is a silent hour of the afternoon, a piano lies only in the window of her soul, the music that soothes her heart comes from within, not from anywhere else. A bird cocks its head on a tree branch on a tree a hundred metres away from the four-storey building, it hears the silent melody. The insects stop their chatter- they pause and observe a tune never as loud as this. The lizard under the sofa opens a lazy eye and sees through the crack, the reflections of its lady owner’s feet against the sofa. Her foot taps.

Music like this, the lizard notes comes rarely in this house these days. Once, when her marriage was fresh as a bouquet and her babies were meek and her world was a lot less routine, and all her time was hers. Now her own laughing nineteen-year-old piano-playing-self is all but a ghost, except on rare afternoons like this. Rare hours like this…

Filed under: written word

the ants and a garden

The ants found my room. There are a lot of them in this new place and they terrorise the kitchen. They share space with cereals and they get first dips in bowls of clean crockery. They ravaged the six-piece sweet and spicy drumlets the brother saves for his supper, and they even want Dad’s cough syrup. Now I see them in my room.a stray one on my pillow, another making its way across the desert of the toilet. There is no stopping them.

So much for ants.

I wanted to write about the new job- the one that is ending my brain drought, my depressive job-searching melodramas. About how there is a little irony going on here. Imagine me like a one-dimensional cut-out doll. Tack on some shiny clothes – not too shabby, yet not quite branded- and note: this doll will don the many-inch Nine West heels she bought for her first job interview, heels to be worn by resting feet, not standing feet. Now her expression- smiling; because she’s eager-to-please, she comes from a comfortable background, she doesn’t worry about putting money on the table, she’s hungry for achievement, but not ruthless. You put her into a garden and she moulds into the background prancing after butterflies and lies on grassy slopes. She’s happy in such an environment, an idyllic environment, one she can imagine and find worth in herself. Then you prop her up into an upright sitting position, you stuff statements, numbers, accounts, allthatisinstrumental -to the building of that beautiful garden she is sitting in- in front of her- you tell her, this is how the garden is maintained. This is the stuff of dreams. Now, you maintain it.

What I am implying is- I don’t know what I am putting myself into. But I am going to do it. Its the stuff of reality that fuels the manifestations of the most ambitious dreams. You know, just in case I land myself an ambitious dream.

Filed under: daily grind

We are Men In Suits

Two weeks since the last post. Life has been a ball of yarn, uncooperative in particular. Can’t get ahead of it – can’t find the illusive head or tail of the yarn; once you drop it, it unfurls opportunistically ahead; when you pick it up with all its resident spins, it overflows, refusing to be tamed- a knotty sight.

Good things and bad things that come together: an internship, no internship, now yes-maybe-but-terms-attached internship. A group of valued confidantes, a scattered network unable to meet for an impromptu drink.

Last week my attention drew to the seven sins, a list to which wise men conferred over in order to compile, a list of seven things that will cause Santa to boycott, because you have been naughty, not nice.

And they are, in no certain order:

Lust, Gluttony, Sloth, Anger, Pride, Envy, Greed

Sloth stands out like the kingpin for me. Sloth.

I neither accept nor deny these as rules, but I agree that sloth is bad. The word is pronounced in self-despise, sounding exactly like what it means. Lulling, and rolling off the tongue, it leaves a caustic aftertaste.

There is also this sin- Indifference. Surely, when the world is happening to melt into nothing, we who sit and await the tortures of future generations are of the most cruel. They say we should now look to the men in suits to stand up and act. But we are all men in suits. Just as I watched Slumdog Millionaire and think its weird- that people walk out happy viewers. Hey, shit happened in the show, this shit is real, how could you walk out of the cinema- remember only the bollywood bits and erase the reality bites- how could you finish watching the show, HAPPY?

I only judge myself.

Again, for the hundreth time, I feel someone is speaking to me.  In particular, a maker. Someone who owns me. Someone whom I wouldn’t be able to question in organic state. It might be a frame of mind adopted in distressed stages of life- as when people fall to ground and beg for mercy- it might be. If not, I am now thanking you. For tolerating my denial and confusion. Your kindness appreciated.

Filed under: daily grind