a gnarled inebriation

Occasionally, when Ammu listened to songs that she loved on the radio, something stirred inside her. A liquid ache spread under her skin, and she walked out of the world like a witch, to a better, happier place. On days like this, there was something restless and untamed about her. As though she had temporarily set aside the morality of motherhood and divorceehood. Even her walk changed from a safe mother-walk to another wilder sort of walk. She wore flowers in her hair and carried magic secrets in her eyes.

She spoke to no one. She spent hours on the riverbank with her little plastic transistor shaped like a tangerine. She smoked cigarettes and had midnight swims. What was it that gave Ammu this Unsafe Edge? This air of unpredictability? It was what she had battling inside her. An unmixable mix. The infinite tenderness of motherhood and the reckless rage of a suicide bomber. It was this that grew inside her..

*

On the days that the radio played Ammu's songs, everyone was a little wary of her. They sensed somehow that she lived in the penumbral shadows between two worlds, just beyond the grasp of their power. That a woman that they had already damned, now had little to lose, and could therefore be dangerous. So on the days that the radio played Ammu's songs, people avoided her, made little loops around her, because everybody agreed that it was best of just Let Her Be.

On other days, she had deep dimples when she smiled.

Sometimes she was the most beautiful woman that Estha and Rahel had ever seen. And sometimes she wasn't.


- The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

two beautiful girls told me how they loved The God of Small Things, and now, more than a year later, when it came to my turn to get acquainted with the book, they've somehow gotten detached from my life. the first made the decision to disappear from everyone. the other, too many factors eroded our friendship. it became gnarled. something to put away and not think about the luminous beauty it once held.

i really would like to meet Nicolette once more. there was something unfathomable about her - i doubt i could ever reach it but she was special.

*

Vick took out Keng Yang's guitar and strummed a few ditties on it. we were in camp and it was a dreary Sunday afternoon, rainy, gray, the kind best spent in bed with a book or a flick, ensconced in your blanket which is pulled up just right. so yeah, he tried to teach me the opening notes of this song which i can't recall right now. damn i never knew how difficult it was to even begin, everyone always make playing the guitar look so effortless. i couldn't even get the positioning of my fingers right, let alone make any sense of chords and what not. i think it runs in the immediate family, none of us has ever displayed the slightest affinity for musical instruments or singing. tragic.

"a liquid ache". i'm quite enthralled by the phrase; it inhabits within us all i think. inebriating.