romantic – untitled atm

096b – the creative process of intimacy

I haven’t been writing (publicly) as much because all I can write about lately is love and romance. Anyone who knows me knows I’m deeply wary of the idea of being enmeshed with anyone else, especially romantic partners. And yet, these days I find myself wanting to spend all of my time with a specific person. She’s great and we both seem to be on the same page about most important things (including our own individual needs wrt alone time etc), and yet I do find my alone time not being as precious lately. It’s almost like I’m able to “recharge” with her and hence am able to do my “alone time” with her as well. Which.. I know it isn’t necessarily a bad thing— I’ve been in monogamous relationships before and they can be really pleasant— and just because they come with very strong, deep attachments doesn’t mean I have to be so fearful of them. But still, I know for sure that to retain my sense of myself, my individuality (which really, philosophically, I’m fully sure of wanting to do), I do need to remember what I like about my alone alone time.

Writing and music have been the two most important things over the last year, and to be fair to myself, I’ve been doing enough of the two, even if I’m not doing them publicly.

Still, I would like to continue to make my writing / journaling / blogging public, to the extent possible.

This actually feels really good too. Just the idea of writing things down and sharing them with the world does give me a sense of comfort and security. And this is important for me to note and regularly stay in touch with so I can do everything that I talked about earlier in the beginning of this post (ie retain and maintain my sense of self).

Something I’m more in touch with lately is a bit of the “crazy” and “weird” parts of me. Of course, calling them crazy and weird is a bit of a judgement, but perhaps I just mean the parts that maybe we’re not fully secure about, whether it’s because we carry internal judgement or whether society makes us that way, doesn’t really matter. Channeling all this becomes very important though. Of course most of us know creativity and art thrives on all of the parts of us that we’re not able to express through other ways. But to channel them successfully we need to make sure our routines around creative work are not falling apart. If I’m not writing everyday, for example, then even being in touch with part a or b will be useless. To create good stuff, or stuff we can be happy with, then, needs the following things—

a. being in touch with all sorts of feelings and parts of us,

b. routines wrt outlets and our creative practices,

c. the courage to express and the courage to share it or put it “out there”.

I suppose the process of intimacy (with another) and with the self looks the same in many ways then.

Anyway. Was this too rambly? I don’t think so. What am I saying? I’m saying that even though I haven’t been creating as much art as I may want to, I think I’m okay with it because I’m deepening my connection with someone, and that is, in many ways, the same thing as creating art (to me). The output, yes, is quite different, but for a while I think I’m okay to invest my time and bandwidth in the “creative process of love and romance”, and not just my existing preferred creative outlets.

Happy april, folks! xx

090b – intimacy and travel

There is something about leaning on people that feels incredibly rewarding. Intimacy is magical and every time you do something tough in the journey (asking for what you need or want, or something you’d like, or canceling plans with consideration)— you know it can go either way. It can strengthen a connection and add more “events” (data) to it or it can weaken it. Both outcomes are okay but it’s always fun to see where it goes.

I have been spending most of my time in other people’s spaces and lives, and slowly but steadily I allow my life to merge in their spaces, that’s quite fun too.

Today I spent my afternoon in a good friend’s room, he’s moved out of it but some of “him” was still around. I send him a picture of his desk and tell him I’m having fun and he tells me where the trees are if I’d like to improve the view. It was all quite nice. His desk was dusty and yet the afternoon light made it all quite romantic for me. Dusty surfaces in otherwise mostly clean spaces are an interesting little detail to me.

I visited a very old friend in her house in a far-off neighbourhood in the city and I was reluctant to go there, but the trip was quite worth it. I like seeing residential spaces and how different people have different lives. We talked about everything under the sun and I wondered when we’d meet again. In the past we’ve gone many years without meeting and I’m pretty comfortable with that too.

I haven’t been doing as much writing as I’d like to be doing but maybe I’m changing that right now.

We talk about how “if you wanted to, you could write about anything, really” but something stops us, still.

All (okay, most of) my friends are analytical as well as creative and I love that about them.

I was more careful of my energy this time though and I’m quite glad about that. I felt like I was able to balance self-preservation and getting “enough” out of travels pretty well.

Headed to Bombay tomorrow and spending three days there and although I was feeling like I’m done with traveling, I’m finding that I am looking forward to meeting some people. Pretty excited about that.

Also did some good amount of “exposure therapy” over the last few days which I’m happy and content about.

Indulgences though, ah. Back to tapering down from it now, hopeful I can keep at it.

I think getting any new ideas and or art (or cultural expansion) from any sort of traveling makes the travel (or other activities) very worth it. We clicked a lot of pictures, had some good food, recounted old stories, wrote new ones, and that’s more than I could ask for, I suppose.

That’s 90K words! Glad to be here. Don’t think I’d like to get away from this habit, really. I like documenting things, I like noting down how I feel about events and things happening in my life. I do find myself going back to reading these from time to time, which I think serves a nice little purpose for myself too.

029a – platonic intimacy and friendships

We don’t always get what we want. But we get other things. Other things that sometimes end up being silver linings.

I took a somewhat spontaneous weekend trip with few of my friends from grad-school this week. I’d never realized how platonic intimacy has many similar stages like romantic intimacy does. The obvious, tangible things like shared spaces, shared bathrooms and beds. But more than that, the smaller things – the newer fights, some of them caused by unsuspecting jokes, the small adjustments to each others’ habits. Quirks. The privilege of getting to see each others flaws. The vulnerability that comes with telling someone you’re a late sleeper. The vulnerability of being cranky when you haven’t had your day’s coffee. Then there’s the meditative moments when you all sit around someone packing their suitcase on the last night, watch them slowly fold their clothes, one piece after another. You realize how much at peace you all can be, together. Nobody says anything until it’s done and everyone suddenly realizes how magical the moments that just passed had been.

I’m all for virtual friendships and long-distance relationships, but I’m realizing that some dimensions of intimacy can only be achieved by spending actual time with people. I think throughout school and college, some of this happen pretty automatically, since trips and spending time with each other is kind of a default. But as adults, some of us often have to be a bit more deliberate about it. Glad to be able to do it though!

In general, it’s been a great year for friendships for me (of course, being single will do that to you anyway). But I have realized that I’m much more social than I used to think, and it’s been fun to lean into it. Though one new concern that’s come up for me is whether having “more” friends can affect the quality of friendships? (I mean obviously, but I wonder what the numbers are.)
I was definitely a believer of “quality over quantity” earlier, and though I have liked increasing the quantity so far, I don’t want the quality to be affected.

Am I making “enough” friends so that I don’t have to face disappointment when someone is unavailable etc, or do I just genuinely like having that many friends? I think it’s okay when I have multiple friends for different purposes, like enjoying different kinds of activities or when people fill different roles for me, but having multiple friends for similar purposes and roles might be an overkill.

My eventual goal though is to reduce my dependencies on social media and have just enough close friends that I can keep in touch with them and be able to reach them through the older mediums of connectivity. This should provide a good enough upper constraint, I guess.

Anyway, that’s all on this. Onwards.