how much food do you need for the rest of your life? how much water do you need for the rest of your life? how much oxygen do you need for the rest of your life? how much love do you need for the rest of your life? how many times do you want to have sex for the rest of your life? how many drinks do you need for the rest of your life?
have you ever had a pizza from naples?
i have never had pizza from naples in italy. tomorrow, i could take the first flight out to naples, italy and eat the most authentic pizza from the best place in naples. maybe i’d enjoy the pizza from naples or maybe i wouldn’t, but all it’d ever be to me, is a good, ‘authentic’ slice of pizza. i would be eating some good pizza but it might as well have been from some gentrified restaurant in nyc and i’d have been happy.
wherever i am in life, i cannot treat it like a transitory period. every second is real. sometimes it does feel like i wasted my college years wanting to come out and work, i wasted my first years out of college by wanting to move out of home, move out of tech and i wasted some more time because i fixated on living with emily.
at every point, there are milestones and moments being made that are to be cherished.
let’s say you haven’t had chocolate for a long time.
until one fine day, you look at chocolate again and remember how good it tasted. maybe you even indulge in some chocolate again. then another fine day, many days later, you hit a point where you remember that you’ve once come across chocolate, but you do not remember about how it feels to taste chocolate. then another day, many days later, you will barely remember ever having experienced such a thing as chocolate.
the answer to wanting food easily was never to have food delivery. the answer to wanting to be closer to people was never to have another way to communicate with people. the answer to wanting to be more beautiful was never to have a gym next to you and buy face creams.
everything is a hack to make you feel better until the next time. there is no money in making a solution that works.
what do you like most about emily?
i just have no words to accurately describe what i feel about emily. emily embodies many of the qualities that i appreciate but none of them are really that important to our relationship or to why i love her. i feel her sensitivity and her intelligence in my life everyday and i feel blessed being next to her but i will always love her simply because i desire to.
i read an article today on the guardian about how good or bad posture is almost inconsequential to the pain or ache that one feels in the back. i cannot remember feeling this confused in a while. all the posters i have grown up on which showed a tick on a photo of good posture, all the informational videos and articles that showed how a bad posture made people’s lives hell, all the government and school campaigns about sitting right, it all really did not add up.
i cannot search for love as i cannot look for someone i have never seen, i have never heard, i have never met. i cannot look for what i know nothing about and someone i am not really sure even exists. how will we meet and how will we ever know? i will never know. id have to trust myself, without ever having known what it feels like to love.
tiny moments,
scattered across this garden of memories.
so far ive walked barefoot,
i no longer remember where ive left my shoes.
my feet were tender when i arrived, and always will be;
so long as this play of bitter-sweet memories tickle my bare soles.
truly,
i no longer remember where ive left my shoes,
but now i feel, i need them no more.
poem from udaan
to know myself is my deepest, most important pursuit.