₊˚⊹♡ > Recent Status Updates

Early in the summer, the General Board of Health issued a warning that anything giving off a strong and unpleasant smell must be burned or otherwise disposed of – and that invariably means discharged into the Thames. Now the river, heaving with flotsam and jetsam, can barely flow; neither gushing nor rippling bright and blue, it simply slithers, sluggish and grey like a cold-blooded reptile.

Mourning is a woman’s job – and so is remembrance. 🤍

Stories within stories... She's so good at this.

“Because what is stand-up, after all? Have you ever considered that? Take it from me, Netanya, when it comes right down to it, it’s a pretty pathetic form of entertainment, let’s be honest. Do you know why? Because you can smell our sweat! Our effort to make you laugh! That’s why!”

Anyway, we’ve learned how to live with all that, we got used to it, it’s like part of our heritage.

I was becoming ever so slightly fond of it, you know, with those charming fairy tales about the Elders of Zion, those bearded old hook-nosed trolls sitting around together, munching on tapas of leprosy with cilantro and plague, exchanging recipes for quinoa braised in well poison, slaughtering the occasional Christian child for Passover—Hey, guys, have you noticed the kids are tasting a little astringent this year?

’Let’s say, an Israeli scientist came up with a cure for cancer, right? A medicine that would finish off that cancer once and for all? Well, then I guarantee you the next day people all over the world would start speaking out and there’d be protests and demonstrations and UN votes and editorials in all the European papers, and they’d all be saying, ‘Now wait a minute, why must we harm cancer?

Now’s not the time. That will be the title of our movie.

Someone I don't know. No matter how much I think I do. I don't.

Deadline-induced quality issues: a problem all over the galaxy.

I might dnf 😅

But, I don’t know, maybe it takes a long time to figure out what you’re truly searching for. Maybe you spend your whole life just to figure out a small part of it.

The wind is picking up. I must straighten my shoulders, too.
Because:
(a) Anything Can Happen to Anyone.
(b) It’s Best to Be Prepared.
Bye- O, Mart Roy.

I’ll be seeing you.

And grateful that I hadn’t had to subject a human that I had brought into the world to the kind of anger and resentment my mother often felt for me.

‘When she was born, her birth certificate was an apology from God.’

Imagine his joy had he known that my own mother might have agreed with him. Imagine his sorrow had he known I had the equivalent of navy SEAL training on this subject and that his exertions didn’t move my needle even a micromillimetre.

Bringing up the rear was somebody carrying a large jar of jujubes. She had become obsessed with jujubes.

Arundhati you cheeky minion!! 😂

“It wasn’t nostalgia that took me back so much as the desire to exorcize some of my old ghosts by looking them in the eye, and to hang on to others, to tell them of my great escape. That, I learned, is impossible. We either house all our ghosts, as I do, or unhouse them all, as my brother does. There’s no bargaining with ghosts.”

But what we know isn’t always in line with what we feel, or what we do.

‘If protesting against having a nuclear bomb implanted in my brain is anti- Hindu and anti- national, then I secede. I hereby declare myself an independent, mobile republic. I own no terri-tory. I have no flag.’

I wasn’t Christian enough.
I wasn’t Hindu enough.
I wasn’t communist enough.
I wasn’t enough.

"At every event I could see Pradip in the audience, looking proud, tearing up when I started to read. But it was difficult for him and stressful for me. All the light shone on me. He, grand, wonderful man, my teacher, lover and best friend, was made invisible. He didn’t mind, but I did. The balance in our relationship was upended. My newfound fame crashed into our little love tent & jerked us around like puppets."

G. Isaac began to shake with silent laughter at his own joke.

But I had learned the lesson of a lifetime: how to make friends with defeat. My metaphoric room was full of broken planes, too.
G. Isaac showed me that making friends with defeat is the very opposite of accepting it. For that alone, I forgave him his past cruelty towards us and loved him till the day he died.

That kind of focused, ferocious love, regardless of what it may choose as its object, is a blessed love. The challenge for those of us who are not chosen, and instead watch love pass us by, is to learn from it, marvel at it, and not grow bitter and incapable of love ourselves.

When it came to me, Mrs Roy taught me how to think, then raged against my thoughts. She taught me to be free and raged against my freedom. She taught me to write and resented the author I became.

‘You’re a millstone around my neck. I should have dumped you in an orphanage the day you were born.’

I used to dream of millstones stacked high in a ship’s hold & wonder how they knew how many to take when they started on a journey. How did they calculate how many people would die onboard & need to be buried at sea with millstones around their necks so that their corpses didn’t float around?

Still, he had saved me from something bad. I was shaken and felt the least I could do was to marry him. (Being unaccustomed to kindness, I was often over- grateful.)

‘You are so cute, just like a bonsai plant.’