PEOPLE WHO DON'T WANT TO SHUT ME UP

Sunday, January 29, 2012

blocked

I have not written here for the past eleven days and that's really bugging me. I've thought of a few things I'd like to say but I've thrown them into the drafts folder because...I wrote them and they didn't sound good. Some of it was stuff about depression/recovery and some of it was about Arundhati Roy an activism and such...I guess I'm just not ready to talk about things yet.

So, baby steps. I gotta talk about something.

I can't wait for this month to end. I can't wait for school to end. I can't wait for April, and by extension September...the closer I get the further it seems.

I thought of giving myself a present this year. Nothing elaborate, just something simple. I wasn't able to get it. I tried, but I couldn't. Now I just feel like...I don't know how I should feel like. On one hand I'm just a kid, really, what can I do? Small observer of large world as Auden put it. On the other, I feel like ... you know, I'm turning nineteeeeeen and ... by now I should be able to do things. It shouldn't be so hard. I shouldn't have to depend on anybody anymore, and the frustrating thing is that I still have to.

So I guess no present for me then until maybe April, and maybe not even then. I don't have a choice or a say anymore.

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I went to the bookstore and bought a Arundhati Roy book called An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire...and let me tell you, it's mindblowing. This is because:

  1. Bitch please  (If you'll excuse the expression.) . It's Arundhati Roy.
  2. It's essays...but not written academically. Like with hyper-qualifications and ifs and buts and you know all the elaborate buildups and shit? I mean, yes, I love academic essays. But sometimes you're like shut the fuck up, mute the jargon, and shorter paragraphs please and moreclaritylessqualificationthx
  3. BTW, it's written really well.
  4. Yaar, you know, when you read AR you get a view of India that you don't get anywhere else. I mean screw the paranoid parrots on the pakistani media parade because the India they give to you is a fictional one. Half their criticisms are about things that you can't even be sure exist or if their premise is correct in the first place. But Arundhati yaar. Did I mention I want to be bestfriends with her? I do. But anyway, she writes with honesty and she actually knows her shit. But at the same time she isn't doing it to make money or to sound cool  — and this is the best part  — she is doing it because she wants to reveal to the reader something that has been obscure or hidden or covered up. And she does it with precision, she does it with honesty, and all the while she's got her eyes on the importance of human life right there in front of you. It's incredible. You'll only understand what I'm saying if you read one of her pieces.
  5. I watched half of we (I'm rationing it so it lasts longer), which is a reading of one of the essays that the anonymous filmmaker set to AV. And have you heard her? Listen to her, her voice is musical and full of a power I can't really explain. She's an incredible person.
I am also reading The Night of the Iguana and Other Stories by Tennessee Williams who is my homeboy. So reading-wise I'm having a pretty awesome time. 

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oh, and this happened:

god, I love Rachel Maddow.

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