two weeks left for '11 to end. this is the year of great heartache, acceptance, academic milestones and an almost complete loss of faith. and a loss of something else as well. something i cannot quite put into words. i could perhaps say the greatest loss has been that of purpose. but it isn't purpose exactly. i have come to realise that, at this late stage of making myself, i could not escape the fate of those unfortunates for whom work is just work: neither a yoke to be detested, nor a delight to wake up to each morning. all those churning emotions and questions and anxieties, all that zeal and fervor is long past. this was a year of leisure, of the pursuit of ever more frivolous distractions. boredom must be avoided at any cost. at the best of times it leads to unpleasant entanglements, because one often forgets, so easily, that people aren't things to do.
i am a woman of no passions, no stirring interests, no desire to throw in my lot with the 99%. my heart does not bleed at the injustices of the world, the sight of two dead horses lying on each side of the road, entrails caught between the teeth of stray dogs, the cows crammed on to carts headed surely for slaughter, the jute farmers who surely won't get enough for their bumper crop, the ragged children in my school uniform sleepwalking into a future infinitely dimmer than mine is shaping up to be despite my worst efforts. in these quarters, eaten alive by mosquitoes, heating my bathwater on the stove, sleeping on mattresses on the floor, i am thankful for shampoo, cable tv, and my mother, who insists on cooking for me, who worries about how i am occupying myself. i should be moved. instead there is ...nothing.
i grew up in this way. as cold a fish as there ever was. a storm of passions overtook me when i should have grown up. it started with a dim sense of romance, the desire to know all the secrets of great feeling, to rip someone else open and consume them whole, to own and to belong. five years caught up in this endless pursuit and longing, but this year, those demons have left me. one lets another in, one loses oneself, one goes searching soon after, but it isn't so easy to decide which of one's selves one is to reconcile with: there is a part sloughed off each year one has aged, like so much shed skin. if after peeling off the masks, the aspirations, those willed improvements, one finds within oneself nothing of great import, no lofty ideals, no investment in some great cause, there is perhaps no need to look deeper, farther. perhaps the masks make the man. in essence we are all animals, but good posture is half the battle won. that, and a lack of nostalgia. i was born with the latter. everything else is a matter of perseverance. bring it on, 2012.
i am a woman of no passions, no stirring interests, no desire to throw in my lot with the 99%. my heart does not bleed at the injustices of the world, the sight of two dead horses lying on each side of the road, entrails caught between the teeth of stray dogs, the cows crammed on to carts headed surely for slaughter, the jute farmers who surely won't get enough for their bumper crop, the ragged children in my school uniform sleepwalking into a future infinitely dimmer than mine is shaping up to be despite my worst efforts. in these quarters, eaten alive by mosquitoes, heating my bathwater on the stove, sleeping on mattresses on the floor, i am thankful for shampoo, cable tv, and my mother, who insists on cooking for me, who worries about how i am occupying myself. i should be moved. instead there is ...nothing.
i grew up in this way. as cold a fish as there ever was. a storm of passions overtook me when i should have grown up. it started with a dim sense of romance, the desire to know all the secrets of great feeling, to rip someone else open and consume them whole, to own and to belong. five years caught up in this endless pursuit and longing, but this year, those demons have left me. one lets another in, one loses oneself, one goes searching soon after, but it isn't so easy to decide which of one's selves one is to reconcile with: there is a part sloughed off each year one has aged, like so much shed skin. if after peeling off the masks, the aspirations, those willed improvements, one finds within oneself nothing of great import, no lofty ideals, no investment in some great cause, there is perhaps no need to look deeper, farther. perhaps the masks make the man. in essence we are all animals, but good posture is half the battle won. that, and a lack of nostalgia. i was born with the latter. everything else is a matter of perseverance. bring it on, 2012.
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