Welcome To Morning Pages - The First Edition

Morning Pages - 1

Plunging In For The First Time

Written on 26/09/2016

Shared publicly on 12/10/2018

I wake up with eyes in a major grog. It takes a while before I understand what I’m seeing, but my third eye helps me to navigate the morning challenges like turning once, twice, thrice in bed till I recognize and acknowledge that I am in my here-and-now.

The early morning sleep is the most refreshing. I wish I could stretch it a little longer till I wake refreshed and open my eyes and look out at nature and say thank you for waking me up, thank you for my being awake and alive and ready But if it isn’t the impatient rattle of the “milkman” – who is a whole lot of other things besides milkman and who is the only available crutch I can rely on, though it comes at a price, it’s the late September sun piercing the veil of the rain guard on the skylight I face. Bursting its way through the squares of the pattern, throwing into sharp contrast the black ragged cobwebs that have gathered undisturbed between the sheet and the glass behind.

It feels secure. Because no ordinary human hand can reach through that gap and actually remove them without risking a tear or nick on the life saving rain guard. I’m curious to know why that should make me feel secure? Does no hand dare for some reason, fear of censure maybe or fear of a nasty scratch? At any rate, the cobwebs and their makers must feel secure.
My "glass ceiling" – a thin plastic sheet twisted and turned into an intriguing shape like a huge shapeless blister on a giant’s belly – is likewise riddled with the remains of moths, tattered cobwebs and dust. There is no way this can be opened out and cleaned for fear a tiny shift will disturb its functionality. It hasn’t had to catch the water from the center of the room for a while, but heck that River of (Mis)Fortune has found so many other routes and coursed through the fibre of the entire house carving its own veins out from the weak spots in the plaster. 

We don’t know how deep this network runs. We can only pray away the worst, monsoon after monsoon. I do believe that I would be sleeping far better were I not under the benevolent shield of this dubious monstrosity. We have a plan to conceal it with an artwork; we are planning forever. I keep wishing we had the skills of pandal (no-one can pronounce that word right; its origins are Tamil and it is pronounced pun-thull in Tamil) makers. We would have a pandal ceiling ready in a jiffy. But that’s like making up an unwashed face skillfully. The germs and the damage linger behind the façade and no one knows whether they grow and how they grow. Were the ceiling to leak, one wouldn’t know it and we could console ourselves with "what we don’t know, is not there."

How long does one page* go on for? Wasn’t I supposed to type three pages of nonsense without regard for what pours out? 

While I have been writing spontaneously for years now, I have a built in nonsense filter. When I begin to write, that awareness is invariably switched on. Or maybe I have graduated beyond the ability to type sheer nonsense? I am so conscious of typos, of bad grammar. I do this in real time. 

It seems that even when I intuit I have a grammar and spelling check switched on. What are the grammar and spelling rules for intuition? Do we intuit in a language that can be readily verbalized? I believe not. But at some point between the practices of intuiting and writing we discover a bridge that connects the two and somehow the thoughts and feelings flow from one medium into the other. 

But returning to the rain guard aforementioned, and the glass ceiling, I ask myself whether a day will come in my life when I can once more sleep without the shield of that weird appendage overhead? Will life be civilized again? Will twenty five odd years of war-zoning end? These years have seen the casualties of this war – health and life. Are the people who cause these traumas happy wherever they are? Do they sleep well on their marble floors and under their own plastic coated ceilings? I wonder. You keep escaping from the karmas you create till you make the grand escape – but what follows?

It is Pitru Paksha and I have done precious little for the Pitrus. And they have done precious little for me besides keeping me transiting from one listless day through troubled night – to the next, and the next ….and the next... 

"Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?" 

Methinks at times that it is all a bizarre fantasy and real life will dawn yet. In four days it will be Mahalaya Dawn. And the Pitrus would have still gone unsung back into their alter-verse. As for the book, my hands seem to move when I write these musings but the book-zone has unceremoniously thrown me out again. I am unable to live in that locale. I am too distracted and sucked in by this one. 

I am preoccupied. I have always been preoccupied. And what an occupation!!! So any trip to the place I need to be in, is a luxury I snatch out from obsessively living in the here and now. Oh life! Can you shift the pieces of the mosaic oh-so-slightly to bring meaning to the pattern? The glass is jagged, it is standing up from the floor and I am scraping the soles of my feet on it. They bleed! Stop this torture. Take me back to when the room was pristine white and waiting. Waiting for conception, waiting for birth/rebirth. When the outer walls were an exquisite shade of grey like those beautifully greys of Kim’s house in Maine. And the windows gleamed white. 

Did you need to shatter the illusion in six months? And then bring death and destruction in its many forms into this home and house? Feel my pain – oh house! I have loved you always and stood by you. Today you carry within you so many troubled ghosts, as many old souls mellow with wisdom, and this half-young half-old desperate being who is half alive and half dead at all times. Waiting for a clue, waiting for a signal and hating the interminable wait.

End the third page oh Lord! 

Because my hands ache now and I remember I need to let the water into the tanks and feed my weary belly. Before another one of my helpers blunders in and stumbles out, sending me into one more morning whirl. My mother cried – "When will this morning ever be mine?" She tried all she could. I could have tried harder to make it hers. Why blame my playful/self-obsessed children for not making mine better. It looks so easy right? She thought the same, didn't she? She asked me for seven perfect days to herself and promised me seven years more of her life, in return. And how cruel does life get that I finally “gave” her those seven days struggling between this zone and that one, physically tortured and mentally fleeing already till she was stilled to rest, the heat of battle still on her forehead. A Durga in repose. Crumbling even before we could think of a visarjan. 

Do I have tears at this? I don’t know. I earned my seven years of penance. And then received another couple of years of physical agony and question marks. And answers that deceived me to keep going. Answers that were no answers but an expression of doubt and lack of confidence on the part of those who needed to have the answers. Tell me you don’t know. Don’t suddenly deliver me into the steely hands of torture. Oh how I fled, I did. Whew it took me off into review mode. But the good lord helped me to flee. Yet there is a time and a juncture for that fleeing. I wonder if I had to flee through those portals that could have led to hell. Finding a window high up in that dungeon and heaving myself out through it. The worm hole mystically expanding to let my bloated body crawl through. Amen to it all. Inshallah to it all. 

I want to end this but my page hasn’t ended. So I have trailed off into writing nonsense aka stream-of-consciousness. If the above para made no sense, don't blame me. Blame Julia! 

The water won’t wait for me and my legs are going to sleep. Luckily my eyes are holding up. I wish I could type without looking back at it for mistakes. I can’t any longer change that reflexive behavior. I can’t any longer change the subconscious thinking in correct grammar. Yesterday morning I woke from a dream and made a clear announcement with eyes close, refusing to open my eyes so I could complete the announcement which risked being lost. I have all these pent up feelings in the pit of my stomach and the pit of my heart from seeds sowed by my soul. 

You who are reading this! Are you reading this? After you read this would you still want to read a book I write? Tell me truly. I really want to know whether I am worth reading. It may not stop me from writing Morning Pages but well …. The last few dregs of my coffee lie undrunk and now cold and unworthy. The writing process has been interrupted to let the water in. The sun has gone away beyond the trap of the rain-guard. The urine is unreleased in my bladder, the book unwritten, the bed unmade, the plants unwatered. And I have effortlessly slipped into page four. It is time to snap out and snap into another zone. It's 9:07 a.m. and I'm done.

*Morning Pages

About this series: Inspired by advice from Julia Cameron and shared with me by SrideviDatta. In Julia’s words:

“The bedrock tool of a creative recovery is a daily practice called Morning Pages. “Morning Pages are three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning. *There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages*– they are not high art. They are not even “writing.” They are about anything and everything that crosses your mind– and they are for your eyes only. Morning Pages provoke, clarify, comfort, cajole, prioritize and synchronize the day at hand. Do not over-think Morning Pages: just put three pages of anything on the page…and then do three more pages tomorrow. “*