Exhaustion

I meant to take this week off, but it looks as though I won't have a long enough holiday. About a week and a half ago, I set my master's defense date: the 12th of December. I am working day and night... harder than I have ever done to get my manuscript comepleted in time... it looks as though it might not be. But I am trying. I haven't slept for longer than five hours in a whole week now, and my fingers are tired of typing... my eyes are tired of looking at statistical outputs for significant relationships... my faculties are tired of working... I am exhausted. :(

On Being Claustral

On Friday night, a friend and I went out to the bars. The object of the expedition being overtly to have fun, and covertly to stake out the scene associated most commonly with society, or the meeting of individuals, with an intention of taking stock of the possible entertainment or felicity that such company might bring. I am not a bar-goer. When I do once in a blue moon go, I have exactly the same reaction to the experience that I did the time before. One of complete apathy, and of instant boredom. Oh, I am content enough in the company of the persons I go there with. But a quick survey of what surrounds me reveals time and time again, only one thing: bars are filled not only with smoke, but also with a load of stupid, idiotic people. The fact that I live in a college town possibly only exacerbates such a situation, because the people in the Ames bars tend to be possessed of all the arrogance of youth, and none of the worldly experience which serves to temper said arrogance. All I am reduced to doing at venues such as these is to making a few desultory remarks and to trying as hard as I can to appear engaged. I would gladly focus on the person I am there with, but focusing on anything beyond a two foot radius is pure torture! I daresay that all this might make me appear incredibly pompous, but there it is... I can't help how I feel!

What makes it such a terrible pity is that the few people I would dearly love to meet in such bars are unrecognizably lost in the massive crowd of intellectual vacuums that surround them. What is an even greater pity is that since such public stomping grounds are virtually the only avenues where people get to meet other people, I have been forced into choosing a claustral life. The ablative of accompaniment is well-nigh absent from my life as it is today. I don't regret it... no. Au contraire, I revel in it. I am amused... and I quote bits of one of my favorite poems by Dyer, which I should probably adopt as an anthem…

“My mind to me a kingdom is;
Such present joys therein I find,
That it excels all other bliss
That earth affords or grows by kind:
Though much I want that most would have,
Yet still my mind forbids to crave…

Content I live, this is my stay;
I seek no more than may suffice;
I press to bear no haughty sway;
Look, what I lack my mind supplies.
Lo, thus I triumph like a king,
Content with that my mind doth bring…” ~Sir Edward Dyer.

Ledges

On Friday, which is technically the day that I put aside for research, but which often ends up being my “off-day”, I woke up earlier than usual, and by 10 o’clock I was done with all the chores I had to do and was faced with the prospect – research or something more pleasurable? I opted for more pleasurable. I haven’t been out in nature much over the past month; mostly because it has been too cold. So, I decided to drive to Ledges State Park – in another month, the roads and trails at the park will be closed. There is a one-minute drive through the park where the ledges rise almost vertically off the ground from the road that is absolutely breathtaking! It makes the 20 minute drive there worth it! So off I went, taking Lord Emsworth with me. The park seemed practically deserted. A pity - because it was such a lovely, mild day. As I reached the last half-mile of the drive, I looked up to admire the rise of the bluffs, and the beautiful trees, yellowing, reddening and starting to grow bare rising vertically with the cliffs. I also noticed the railings on the upper sandstone ledges and was besieged by an urge, almost a yearning, to climb up to them. And I did… I climbed the steps leading to the upper ledges, and when I got there, I was out of breath and dizzy. I sat down for a bit to recover my breath, and then walked horizontally across the cliff. The valley looked beautiful, and I was glad I had gone. There is something very humbling about the fact that these were created by glacial meltwater tens of thousands of years ago. I like canyons, bluffs, cliffs, valleys, gorges – anything that has to do with heights and water. I want one day to walk on the Scandinavian and New Zealand fjords – pure delight! I took pictures on my cell phone… will probably post them someday. I also settled on a bench up there and read some Wodehouse. Now isn’t that the perfect Friday afternoon? Beats research any day!

The Beginning

"Some day I shall rise and leave my friends
And seek you again through the world's far ends,
You whom I found so fair
(Touch of your hands and smell of your hair!),
My only god in the days that were.
My eager feet shall find you again,
Though the sullen years and the mark of pain
Have changed you wholly; for I shall know
(How could I forget having loved you so?),
In the sad half-light of evening,
The face that was all my sunrising.
So then at the ends of the earth I'll stand
And hold you fiercely by either hand,
And seeing your age and ashen hair
I'll curse the thing that once you were,
Because it is changed and pale and old
(Lips that were scarlet, hair that was gold!),
And I loved you before you were old and wise,
When the flame of youth was strong in your eyes,
-- And my heart is sick with memories." ~ Rupert Brooke.

This is quite the most beautiful poem I have read all of the last month. I read it last night in the ancient book of poems I bought from The Dusty Bookshelf. Do people write like this anymore? Forget writing... do people even think like this anymore? What I consider to be true romance seems to be an anachronism today. Even romantic movies are intolerably melodramatic and embrace a vulgar sort of humor. Self-expression and art is angry and violent... self-obsessed. It is stark, not mellow. The crystal spring is forgotten. The nightingales never sing anymore in any poetry. I am an anachronism too. "-- And my heart is sick with memories."

Recounting

I have started to keep a diary again. When I was much younger, I kept a diary very religiously. I must have begun when I was in the 6th or 7th class when I read Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young Girl”. Influenced by Frank, I was terribly eager to begin chronicling the events of my own life and Mummy gave me a resin-bound LIC diary so I could start writing. And though my very first diary was wrought with printed quotations from famous freedom fighters, and sepia LIC adverts were manifold in its pages, I thought it was the most beautiful and precious book in the world. It held a record of my thoughts and the manifestoes of my plans for my life when I grew up. An adolescent diary is something sacred. It holds secrets that adults might scoff at or dismiss as childishness, but to the adolescent writer, those very secrets are the planks with which is built the drawbridge that helps her cross the moat of teenage into the seemingly perfect lands and castles of an independent adulthood. Daddy still has my first few LIC diaries packed along with other relics of the same early adolescence, in a cardboard box which lies gathering dust on one of the top shelves of the back bedroom in Hyderabad. I like to open the box when I visit home, and read my cherished diaries. The pathos of those simple chronicles is quite overwhelming and evokes memories and emotions so raw that it sometimes is difficult for me to believe that so many years have passed since I wrote them.

My diary-keeping after the first few years was very sporadic and underwent a great metamorphosis. By the time I went off to Kasaragod to college, I started writing only when I felt terribly sad, or terribly inspired and poetic. For the four years I spent in Kasaragod, I journalled only in one book. It is a very melodramatic volume. In it are the stories of homesickness, lovesickness, impassioned letters to imaginary lovers, desperate rantings against the futility of my life, confessions about crushes, poems I had written, scraps of poetry or prose that touched my heart, spiritual exploration, novenas, pictures of myself and other such things that seemed to arise from the union of a Gothic heroine and a tragic Shakespearian hero. This was also the time when I first began writing to Yvon, my phantasmal alter-ego. Everything I wrote was a confession to him. I still have that diary with me. I rarely ever reread it now, but it saddens me when I do.

After I came to the US, my diary writing grew more and more abstract and intellectual. It also grew increasingly sporadic. By the time I arrived in Ames, it was practically non-existent. This blog of mine is an extension of my diaries, but it isn’t quite the same thing. I began reading “The Kenneth Williams Diaries” a couple of weeks ago, and was struck by how open and honest his diaries were – just like my first childish ones were. He chronicles not thoughts, but events. And it is a refreshing change. Inspired once again, I started on Sunday to keep a new diary. It tells the tale of who I am and what I do. It is remarkably candid. When I read it ten years from now, I wonder what I shall feel…

Project Blueberry Scone

Last night, I discovered a rather exiguous packet of blueberries languishing in my freezer. (I am not at all sure that frozen blueberries can languish. Still…). In the summer, my instinct would be to whip out a banana, some yogurt and ice, and frappe it all into a smoothie. But it was cold outside last night, and I did not want my insides to be cold as well. It took only a moment before I decided that I wanted to bake blueberry scones. Now, I am a famous baker. I like anything that is baked, or part-baked, so long as it is not too sugary – pies, pastry, vegetables, puffs, cakes, trifles, tarts, cookies, pizza, casseroles, pasticcio… If it can be popped into the oven, I will do it! But I have never experimented with scones before. I think the fact that my erstwhile scone consumption has been only at Starbucks and similarly overpriced coffee shops has prevented me from trying to bake them thus far. What hope had I of competing with Mr. Starbucks???

But in any case, I assured myself that I could do it, and out came the flour. I had no butter, so I used some light margarine trying desperately not to be deterred by the rather ominous label on the packet: “Not recommended for baking or frying”. I wasn’t sure if it was baking powder or baking soda that I needed to add, so I popped in a little of each. I added some sugar, though nearly not as much as I ought to have done. In went an egg, some milk and the blueberries. Now I am sensible enough to know that for making scones, the dough needs to be pliable, like it would be for making a chapatti. But unfortunately what I had was a large sticky mess! Also, the blueberries had insisted on lending their indomitable hue the gooey mixture. So, I ended up with large blue blobs on my baking sheet instead of beautiful triangular pieces of dough. I knew then that my scones would not be perfect.

After about fifteen minutes of baking, I discovered that my project had yielded eight wonderfully fluffy part-muffin, part-biscuit, part-bagel like objects. They also were enormous, so I cut each one in half. They weren’t the perfect scones at all! I have concluded that next time I need graham flour, fewer blueberries, more sugar, real butter and maybe a dash of nutmeg. Be that as it may, I now have a week’s worth of “blueberry breakfast things” in my fridge. I had the first installment this morning with tea. It was delicious. :)

Here are some pictures:

Drunk???

A friend of mine sent me an offline message: “Why do you get drunk and announce it to the whole world?” I assume he is referring to my post, Nachtgold. Contrast this with another friend who consults me on what wine he ought to pair with what food, and tells me that he thinks it is brilliant that I am an authority on wine (FYI- I am not! He just thinks I am because I know a bit more about wine than he does). Another friend actually called me “a woman of culture”, not purely based on my knowledge of wines… other things as well, and I was most immensely flattered. What a world of conflicting messages we live in! But in any case, I was thinking as I wondered how to respond to this person: what do I say to someone who doesn't understand drinking which is not extreme? That drinking can be a means of exquisite pleasure and not merely a method of entering rather expediently into oblivion? That women might drink too and enjoy it, and that alcohol isn't an accessory that only helps enhance and display machismo? That temperance is possible when one raises a glass to one's mouth? In the end, I decided not to justify, since I had no need to. I merely told Jacob that I did not get "drunk", I enjoyed a glass of wine with dinner, that I wasn't apologetic or ashamed and that I had no need to be.

Anyone who knows me, knows fairly well enough that provoking me in any such way only leads to rebellion. Ergo, I have decided to start a new section on my blog called "Wine of the Week". I consume about a bottle of wine a week, about a glass of it every alternate day. My preference tends to be for full-bodied sweet wines, but I will take recommendations if anyone has any. I intend to describe the wine I am currently drinking and post my opinion of it. Please do not go by the comments I post - I don't know as much about wine and wine drinking as I would like to, and am hardly a wine connoisseur. Also, since I am only an impoverished grad student, the wines I showcase will tend to be representative of the "cheap" or "clearance" aisles. I might splurge once in a while and decide to treat myself, but that will probably be the exception and not the rule. So, enjoy vicariously through me!