BrainDrain

I had a long conversation with God last night. It’s been a while and he was surprised I dropped by to chat. As soon as I said Hello it was as if we had never stopped talking. A lot has happened just in the past month to make me come to terms with my life and who I am at the moment. It’s been me in touch with my own mortality and of those around me. For one, since I was out of town for most of this month because of the wedding and Ms. Rita, I feel like time is no longer standing still but rushing past me in some kind of mad, blind, frenzy into the unknown. And I can’t stop it. I almost welcome it. On the eve of my 28th, I’m not as afraid as I used to be. I simply don’t care.

Life has afforded me a few lessons this past year. I trust people less now than I ever did. I don’t know if that is a good thing but it keeps me well-insulated from the horrors of what people can do to each other. On the eve of my 28th, I emerge battle-scarred, cynical, curt, and hopeless but wise. Ignorance was bliss and I forsook it for knowledge’s sake. I know God is disappointed in me. He didn’t have to say anything but I knew. It will be a long time before I can trust and even love again. One the eve of my 28th, I refuse to be blinded by the ill intentions of evil people. There is such a thing as trusting too much. I suppose things can change but for me, now, it may take a while.

On the eve of my 28th, I go forth armed with one lesson, and one lesson alone: proceed with caution.

Sometime last week I had a very traumatic experience. It must have been around 11pm or so and I think I was straightening things up before I went to bed. Everything was all fine and dandy and I had just finished watching Jay Leno’s monologue like I usually do. The show went to commercial break. All of a sudden some creepy music comes on and the commercial for that frickin’ Exorcism of Emily Rose movie starts running. I think I pretty much stood in place as the commercial went through the usual routine of inticement with flashes of clips and the voice over dude giving an intriguing, yet incomplete, summary of the story line. Stupid thing totally played on my curiousity. "What happened to Emily Rose?" Stupid tagline.

I stared at the screen as the characters talked about how there was "no cure for the Devil" and similarly lovely catch phrases that will obviously insure anyone of pleasant dreams of candy canes and lollipops. Of course, these  candy canes and lollipops would all have demon heads and gaping black mouths reminiscent of Edvard Munch’s painting "The Scream" (which, by the way has been STOLEN from the Oslo Museum and has yet to be found).

As the commercial ended I ran around turning on the lights with my mace in my right hand aimed in-no-particular-direction (yeaaaa, ’cause demons’ gaping eye holes are totally sensitive to pepper spray….riiiiight). I had the incessant urge to call mommy. From somewhere, my rational mind broke free and admonished me about how late it was and that I should not let such things scare me. I changed the channel and Sienfeld, or something similarly mundane, was on and I watched a little bit to balance out the fight-or-flight spasm by body had just gone through.   

Yeaaaaa, so that was the frickin’ commercial.  I love scary movies but exorcism ones freak me out especially if they are based on true stories. HELLO….a true frickin’ story, people! Yeaaaa. So, I decided that I don’t need to see the movie. The commercial was enough.

Voice over dude, I don’t give a crap what happened to Emily Rose. I don’t even wanna know.

Work has been insane these past two weeks. I think I’ve clocked about 70 hours one week alone. IN-frickin-SANE. I mean, I like my work but they really don’t pay us enough to do all that we do. And the worse part is that we have to be nice about it to students, our co-workers, our bosses, and the other departments who wanted this done "yesterday." We get props every once in a while and that totally keeps us going, I guess. It’s funny but nowadays I value "thank yous" more than a paycheck. Sometimes I think its like I’m a "volunteer".

People are quitting right and left. Another lady quit last week saying that she didn’t earn a masters to be making phonecalls. "HA", I say, frickin’ "HA". It makes me totally rethink the reason I’m here. I mean, I have a masters too. I think I’ve simply convinced myself that this self-inflicted trial is supposed to gain me experience which, by default, it does. However, it is detrimental in so many ways.

We are so submerged in work that we don’t have time to think of our plight. We just "do or die", so to speak. There is not one person in here that doesn’t shoulder an inordinate amount of stress when they go home. It’s funny because some days I’m so tempted to take up drinking just so I can de-stress at the end of the day. My co-workers tell me that they didn’t have health problems until they started working here. So, it’s kind of li—

(wooooaaah, a hot guy just walked by my window…)

Anyway, ahem, getting back to wo—

(woaaaah, now he’s walking back….what a hottie!…hold on….lemme go peek through the blinds…)

Where was I? Oh, yes, so work is so detrimental to my well-being. Yet, I’m still here. My mom asked me the other day, "Who are you working all this over time for, monay? All this and what have they given you?" And honestly, I don’t think I have an answer that would satisfy her. Or one that would satisfy me either.

I realized yesterday that my friend and I are the very women we hate. Oh don’t even front ’cause you know who I’m talking about. And of course, we hate these women because of their uncanny ability to snag every Tom, Dick, & Harry that gets within in a few feet of their tentacles. But, we really hate them because they are different from us and don’t give a crap what we think of them. However, I didn’t realize this until yesterday.

There was a lady walking two golden retrievers in the park. She was wearing some sort of ghastly mini haltertop and daisy dukes (okay, okay, they could have possibly been just short shorts). She was so low-class. Ugh, you totally can’t disguise a pidgeon with peacock feathers. Well, my friend and I were dressed exactly as one is supposed to dress at the park–Of course, there are rules, unwritten though they may be,  for this sort of thing. So this lady, was walking around with her dogs and we, automatically made fun of her, and I can’t really think of why but probably because she had the nerve to call attention to herself and act like she was all that. Bitch. And what else was bitchy about her was that it turns out that she was the girlfriend of the hottest guy in the park that day. Double bitch.

Yea, so as we were muttering about her, I realized that we were the bitches. What the hell? So, yes, I didn’t exactly approve of her male-catching techniques, but that is no reason for me to pass judgement. So she may have been dressed a little to risque in my eyes, but she was still a person. We didn’t know her but she just stood out. Just like at a cocktail party, I would stand out like a sore thumb. Perhaps it would  better to bitch about the society that creates such animosity towards people who are different from us. We simply assumed all these characteristics about her simply by the way she looked. We are such bitches; the very bitches we hate.

Hell, at least she had a man. Here I was sitting at a frickin’ park on a Monday night with my friend watching her fiancee and his buddies play softball with the local church league. Yeaaaaa…..

OKay, first of all, mad props to the one of the few people who has applauded my efforts at blogging on friendster: thanks tm. I now realize that this blog may actually be worth keeping. If any of you wonderful people out there find any of these here entries worthwhile, please let me know and I shall make it my duty to keep you entertained during those hours when you have nothing better to do but to read a blog. All I hope is that my entries will be considered by you, my lovely audience, to be thought-worthy!  Thank you for your patronage. Please watch your step as you exit to the left.

Credit debt is like a big sack of dog poo that you have to carry around all the time. It’s always at the back of your mind and you can’t wait to get rid of it. It totally stinks up the place and people can just tell that you are carrying some majorly malodorous baggage around. You try to get help with your sack of poo and use your credit card company.They are gracious enough to carry it for a while but then they secretly add more poo and give it back to you.

Oh yeah, and in trying to "lighten your load", you try to set it on fire to get the insurance money. But, it is a well known fact that flaming sacks of dog poo are not a good idea.

Alas, thus are the woes of credit card debt. It totally stinks and you can’t really get it off your back.

There was a time when I was sure that this was it. This was the real thing. However, it wasn’t. I’m not even sure the real thing exists. Before I knew what was happening I was staring at the shattered remnants of my heart lying on the floor.

I stared for a while in disbelief. It seemed like just yesterday that I had superglued my feelings back together, good as new. It took a couple of knocks but things had been fine. I thought I was impenetrable then; industrial-strength glue was all that was needed, I thought.

As I now regather the pieces after weeks of paralysis, I realize that I my heart was not shattered the way it had been the first time. This time it had been worn thin at through months. It had been worn away like an angry sea, advancing and retreating, wears away at the cliffs.

As I fumbled through the rubble, I realize that this time there was no loud bang as my heart exploded in grief and sorrow. There was only a brief shudder as my heart, worn thin with assault, simply crumbled one day. Just like my decayed tooth, it no longer hurt because the nerve, its hidden essense, was dead.  It was simply numb.

I was numb. It didn’t hurt. I didn’t cry. I simply gathered whatever pieces I could in my arms and moved on. That’s all I could do.

For a while, I couldn’t even look at the pieces and as I unpacked my other baggage, I put them off to the side in a corner. Weeks passed and they sat ominously. Later, as I got braver,  I began to bring them out one by one.  And now, I sit here and organize them like I would a jigsaw puzzle. There are pieces missing and there will always will be. Like brain cells that die and can never be replaced.

I wonder if I should bother putting it all together again. That’s the problem with starting over; you wonder if it will be worth it. What’s the point? Won’t I be broken again? Won’t I lose more of myself?

I know I will. It is inevitable. I reach for mirages and am left grabbing sand. As grains, that are love, slip through my fingers once again, I know I can always start over with another handful. The deserts of the parched heart are endless. And there is some insane satisfaction in grabbing for mirages and starting over.

So being Desi isn’t enough to protect you from sunburn, I learned yesterday.

Yesterday, we spent the whole day at the Houston International Festival. This year, they were showcasing India. It was exciting and I was in awe at how many people of all nationalities and backgrounds congregated Downtown near Sam Houston Park. At that moment, I really began to appreciate the diversity Houston held. And though I am talking about the diversity of cultures in the population, I also mean diversity in each individual I saw. I saw an African American lady teaching a little Hispanic girl how to Dandiya. Talk about going beyond stereotypes! It made me wish that Houston was like that all the time. Or maybe if there was a designated "Culture Zone" in Houston with street performers and different restaurants. Some places are semi-Culture Zones, like Montrose,  but not completely. Well, anyway, my brother and I enjoyed it even though for the most part of the day we were manning the check-in table. This, indeed, was the same table where the sun kissed me until I, indeed, attained a permanant blush (in less poetic terms, a sunburn).

Well, I am now testimony to the fact that desis do in fact get sunburns. When our forefathers talked of Red Indians, there were not only ignorantly referring to Native Americans by some old-skool term, but to crazy desis like me who thought they’d never get burned by the sun.

So I got a betta fish, aka, a Siamese Fighting Fish. I swear, I have some kind of issue with naming things. It took me two days and one night to name my blog and now the poor betta fish is, alas, still without a name. These were some of the names that popped into my head:

1. Mo’ Better (pronounced betta) Betta

2. Bettha (Hindi for "son") Betta

3. Alpha Betta Soup

4. Baba Gahnoush (*shrug* It sounds like a cool name though)

5. Meenu (Malayalam for "fish-y")

6 Fish Bait-ah (hee hee)

Yea, so I could go on and on. Right now I call talk to him in Malayalam and call him Chakaray which means "brown sugar." Yea, that’s a sensible fish name.

Anyway, so that’s the current dilemma. I’ve had him for one day and I think I traumatized him already by moving him into a betta’ bowl instead of that totally garish tupperware bowl Walmart had him in. He glared at me and blew bubbles the rest of the day. This morning I saw that he was still alive and came to realization that glaring and blowing bubbles is just the fish thing to do. To my joy, he had eaten the food I had put in the bowl.

I’ve never had a pet so this was a big step for me. It was an even a bigger step to sleep as usual and not hold an all-night vigil to make sure my new pet would still be alive by dawn. The two "almost-pets" I had at UFA, Ufara Liberty and Anonymous Betta, both received all-night vigils the first night they were with me. I was so scared that something was going to happen to them that I kept checking on them.

Anonymous Betta was relatively quiet. He was a prize in a drawing that ISO had during Student Life Fair. Since I lived near the school, I was chosen to care for AB until his rightful owner came to claim him the next day. His current whereabouts are unknown.

UFARA Liberty (currently known as Scampy to her new owners) was a whole ‘nother story. She was named so because she was found in a trash can in UFA on July 4th, 2003. I gave her milk, water, tuna….nothing. She would not eat. I gave her a blanket and put her a cardboard box but she kept meowing like it was going out  of style. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep the three nights I had her. She is alive and kickin in the boondocks.

Anyway, so now, I have this one and he is still alive. I didn’t spend a sleepless night either. It gives me hope that I can care for another creature without worrying too much. Hmm…Hope…that’s a nice name for a fish.

I like to think that having a job is like owning a cow: sure, you may be surrounded by manure and a bunch of slow-moving creatures, some of whom may be mad, and you may also have to milk it for all that it is worth, but "hay", at least you have a cow!

In a related note, when Bart Simpson says "Don’t have a cow" is he actually, in covert language, propogating the subversion of the current market economy? Hmmm…something to ponder.