Dance in a Triangle: September 2009

Sep 27, 2009

Sunday Night

There's light tonight; from the street lamp outside the gate, from my grandmother's window. From the pale half moon floating in the sky. The clouds are thin and wispy, shreds of a misty veil strewn carelessly over an inky sky. Strange, there are but a few stars.

I sit on the step in the cool night air. There's a dog on my lap and one at my feet. Another one, the mad one, is chasing ghosts only she can see. My phone sits on the cold stone, silent.

The garden is teeming with nightlife. A moth flits by as the dog in my lap snuggles closer. She's just a baby and she's fast asleep. Crickets in the bushes, bats in the sky. Fireflies dance their manic, joyous dance of light just beyond me in the darkness.

The darkness is strangely comforting; in the absence of light, in familiar surroundings.

It's been a strange weekend. I feel like I've lost something important.

Sep 25, 2009

Pack Light

I try to be minimalistic. I really do. But I like.. stuff. I collect the most ridiculous crap; a ribbon because it looks pretty, a bottle because it might come in handy later. More often that not, all this stuff is found generally lying around my room, not serving its intended purpose. So every once in a while I go on a massive cleaning spree and throw stuff out.

I've never been an overly emotional type. I don't have boxes under my bed full of notes and cards and ticket stubs which I pull out on occasion and sniffle over. That's mainly because I haven't had a proper bed since I left. These things can hardly be packed up and carried to and fro between continents over and over again. And with friends like mine, those are not notes that can be left lying around. The safest place for memories is up in here.

Every year, for four years, I've packed, unpacked and repacked my stuff more times than I care to count. And every year I do lots of throwing out. It's amazing what one can accumulate in a short period of time. This year there's no packing. No trying to fit everything into two suitcases, no unpacking in B21B, putting up curtains, making sure the poster is just so. No Olg, no scented candles, no oilivier. But that's ok. It's time to move up, move on.

Sri Lanka has absorbed me back, sucked me in. I never thought coming home would be so easy. And now, with the prospect of leaving in November, I feel a little weepy inside. The time is not right to leave. People constantly ask me if I miss New York. I do. On weekends. On Saturday nights. Sometimes. But more often than not, I'm perfectly happy sitting at the beach with N or going for a movie with G or being a groupie with Sach. Or gossiping with PP. Or getting bad advice about boys from The Duckling. Did I mention I love being home?

I think it all comes down to the fact that when I left New York I had no baggage. There were no boys I'd miss or who'd miss me in return, there were no friends with whom I had ambiguous relationships with. All I left behind was family, all of whom I knew I'd see again, all of with whom distance wouldn't ever really matter, that when I met them again it would be like I never left.

But I think leaving Sri Lanka will be harder this time around. There are people I will miss in a different way. It's wise to put up those boundaries before you get sucked in, but it's less fun that way. I tend to overthink everything, so my bags maybe light but I'm pretty sure I'll be over the emotional baggage quota.

This post has come out terribly disjointed and is not what I set out to write but I've had such a dry spell with the writing recently that I'm gonna leave it as is. It comes down to this:

I met someone from my past recently. And it was an overwhelming relief to know that I had let go. So I hold great store in giving up, in letting go, but its one of those practice makes perfect things. Erykah Badu had a great song about that.

I guess nobody ever told you
All you must hold on to
is you, is you, is you