Thoughts over tea

Have been meeting some different types recently, due to some new developments in life. Quite a few of them work in NGOs and research organizations -- the horrors that well-heeled corporates shudder at. Low pay! Humanitarian aid! Run! :)

One of these is a tiny young woman who's currently involved in community rehabilitation in Jaffna. She sat across us at the table in that ragged canteen as we, a motley group of 20-somethings from weird and wonderful walks of life, discussed life, love and, well, boys, over hot tea and helapa. I freaking love helapa. She told us about her work in the North and about how words can barely express how beautiful the land is, and how interesting and open the people are. She's wiry and energetic and as she spoke with her hands flying and her eyes glittering (seriously), you could see how excited she was about it, how enthralled by the sheer awesomeness of the life she's living.

While a part of me was truly envious that you could be so in love with what you do, a part of me was fascinated -- what is it like to be so passionate about something? 

I love those moments...

When you want to bang your head repetitively against a hard wall. Really.

Or, as a happy alternative, lay your neck gently against the cold steel of a railway track. And then hope that Sri Lankan Railways is not on strike, again.

As a generally non-suicidal individual, these thoughts always fill me with a sense of being in no control whatsoever of my "Destiny" or life. Like today, for God's sake.

Assume you stand at a beginning of a branching in the road you're taking. Yes, very Robert freaking Frost and all that crap. So, then you try to take road A (Also here, it is assumed that you haven't spotted Road B yet), and as you're going all fine and dandy when POW! you trip and fall and fall face-first into...elephant poop. So now you're filthy and pissed and angry with life and yet not surprised because Life has so far been throwing dung in your face for a while now.

So, you trudge back to the road and stand there glumly contemplating, when it starts to rain, drenching you but also revealing...Road B.This reaffirms your faith in life and you happily set off down the road, picking flowers, strewing them at innocent bystanders, petting babies and other little animals and in general making a grand racket about how great Road B is.

Then, one fine day, you stumble across a by-lane, one that leads you straight into Road B. Straight, clear and obstacle free.

The point of this meandering analogy is lost even on me. However, initial sentiments remain firmly fixed in my head. As of now, listening to a Strauss marathon in hopes of reducing them.

Why you should not necessarily write when angry/depressed

1. Names might come out.
2. It might result in a completely uninteresting-for-anyone-else rant on how much people suck and why the world just needs to die off in general.
3. It might be unnecessary.
4. You could do better.
5. It may result in pure, unadulterated drivel designed to take your mind off your problems, thereby resulting in it being a piece of no literary worth, whatsoever.

Hmm :) Always one to take my own advice :)

Weighty expectations much?

The Big Guy says today that I'm trusted like no one else before. Ideally, I THINK this should pressurize me but also make find some way of furthering my position here but strangely, I feel like someone put a damn paper bag over my head. Air cut off, HOLY SHIT! Aiyo, I just want to write and be loved for it. I'm thankful that I have the chance to do so in some way. Eh?
We had a conversation on writing today, too. It was interesting, Somehow what I feel slipped out, I generally try to keep it reined it, I'm safe like that. I told him that the spiel I generate on a daily basis is not me, that's not personal. What I write here, my poetry, the mumbling that go on in my head as I scrub my feet, that is real. That is me. Everything else is just the smart part of my brain, honed with the help of countless books and thesaurus.com