Any dream will do

...strange things happen to me.

And when there's that dull pain in the arm, something akin to dunking your hand in a tub of ice overnight and waking up to this searing pain that you can't quite locate the origin of, it means introspection. And that too, the deep I-am-not-looking-for-answers-I-think-I-have-them-all kind.

Strange conversations are the order of the day, yes. Normal conversations went out of fashion aeons ago as we all know and almost every single conversation I've had ever since I could string words together doesn't fall into the normal category, so, the way this paragraph begins is actually dumb. Who cares?

Even stranger are the times when we speak but don't really talk. Like this grocery store lady who wants to know some detail about someone that I don't care to discuss. Like rhetorical questions that don't call for answers but get them anyway. Like calling someone on their home phone and asking them if they're at home and getting a reply in the affirmative. Like wanting to tell someone how much they mean to you and not being able to say what you want to because you fall way, way short of the right words. Like not getting a chance to speak in an argument because the other person wouldn't shut his mouth and then stewing in your own anger because you couldn't get a word in.

The TV is on full blast in the living room and I'm in this little corner in my room typing at a furious pace with Peaceful, Easy Feeling playing on the speakers. I don't know exactly what it is about having crossed 21 that makes young, inexperienced children wax eloquent about life and love and faith and time and integrity. Life's not going anywhere, they say. Try sitting on the beach and watch the ocean relentlessly do what it does from dawn to twilight to dawn over and over again, I say. I don't think I love the person I'm supposed to be in love with anymore, they say. Try waking up the day you're sick to a cool, gentle hand on your clammy forehead and ask yourself if you can live without that person, I say. There's no faith and trust and sincerity and steadfastness in any relationship anymore, they say. Try standing in the kitchen when the lady next door is making chapatis for her family at dinnertime and listen to the hubbub at the dinner table and sniff the aroma that wafts in from the window, I say. Time's of the essence and I haven't done anything worthwhile, they say. (You're telling me!) Try going without sleep for a couple of days and see if you can lift your head to look at the clock after 48 waking hours, I say. My integrity is my most important possession, they say. Integrity? You might want to try some country music before you spell the word, love, I say.

Rest and be thankful. Yes.

                    

Sidenote: Rob Morrow as Don Eppes in Numb3rs gives me a peaceful, easy, nice, dare I say molten liquid warm feeling. Kind of like dark chocolate in a double boiler. Note the way his eyes crinkle breaking his face into this I-feel-my-smile-do-you? grin. My heart just didn't stand a chance. Mmmmmmmmm. We likes. A lot.

Ever since I started this new job about a year ago, I've been waking to chirping birds. I would love to tell you all about the magpies and the cuckoos and the pigeons and the thrushes (no, sick minds, I do not imply an unwanted infection around the mouth) that coo and twitter and wake me up long before the alarm has a chance to trill, but for all I know, and I think I do, they may be the little grey sparrows that I've missed ever since I grew up. They used to frequent my childhood home, which, technically, is right downstairs and I used to leave a few grains for them to peck on and a small bowl of water for when they got thirsty. 

I don't know how many of you remember a post of mine on another blog some years ago (the blog's since been deleted and I'm not known to save my posts) where I wrote that I wanted a job where I could wake up to sunrise and walk back home to sunset so I could see the oranges and the silvers and the greens of real life that I could see only on my computer screen. Back then, I had this quality called ambition - as far as my career goes, that is. I digress most of the time that I do talk, other than when I'm talking with my girlfriends about the men we wanna, ahem, you know, but a conversation that I had recently with an old friend convinced me that any ambition I had to climb the corporate ladder has taken a walk and fallen off a bridge somewhere into a water body from where it probably won't ever rise again. Some very pertinent questions were raised and I admit that I tried to pretend that ambition was still my best friend for a few days after, but I realised yesterday that I was lying to myself - something I'm incapable of. 

So, between lacking ambition and birds that sing, what am I really trying to say? 

This. Sometimes, you come across a few lines or words in a book or a song that are far removed from real life but closer to a sense of connection than with any single living known person that you love or live for. Emotions that have been hibernating for so long that you might have forgotten they exist miraculously come alive once again.

Life is so beautiful sometimes, it makes you cry.

I don't know when I stopped thinking of you

and of French windows overlooking the sea

and white curtains fluttering in the breeze

and an imperfect terracotta vase

on a corner slab on the red wall

and the flutes on the centre table

with the last dregs

of an evening lived,

but every now and then,

forgotten words

and faded dreams

hum and dance together

in a careless cadence

to stir up memories

of an unseen yesterday

that I can't seem to remember

but don't want to forget.

After having written mostly non-fiction and memoirs, first-time novelist Sue Monk Kidd tells a compelling and poignant story of the coming-of-age of 14-year-old Lily Owens, an old and wise soul living in an adolescent’s body. Having lost her mother to a traumatic accident at the age of four, Lily grows up in a bleak world waiting for a little ray of sunshine. Not having witnessed a single moment of affection from her father, T. Ray, Lily finds it hard to mingle and make friends. Her strongest supporter is Rosaleen, a black woman who acts as caretaker of the house and Lily’s stand-in mother. Being an oddball, Lily leads a quiet life lost in her thoughts and tries her best to stay out of everyone’s way.

Set in a time in South Carolina when racial unrest was rampant, Lily decides to throw caution to the wind and finds the means to escape her dreary little world when Rosaleen insults three white men at the market. Seizing the opportunity, both move to Tiburon, South Carolina and are taken in by a black beekeeper, August Boatwright and her sisters, June and May. There, Lily unearths a secret to her mother’s past, discovers the power of family in the unlikeliest of places, finds a true friend in Zachary Taylor, August’s assistant and discovers that humans aren’t very different from bees!

A plot such as this can easily fall into kitschy territory, but Kidd elegantly transcends the fine line separating drivel and lyrical prose to tell a lucid story peppered with humour and insight. She does justice to the inherent wisdom and painful adolescence of Lily, while seamlessly blending the two together. The narrative is fluid, the characters rich and the story an experience that no fiction fanatic should miss. I cried, I laughed, and I savoured every word of it. A must read!