Ramblings and Reading Recommendations

(Bring a cup of tea and peace of mind)

A conversation :)

I find myself awestruck time and again: I keep forgetting how much there is to life and it is so easy to do so! When you are stuck in the dark for far too long, you have to blink a few times to get used to the light; you have to change to get things to fit you, and even if you do not, things will run past you and they will wreck you and shape you. Life is a force to reckon with. We are all movie moments which continued on long after the cameras stopped rolling. We are better than all fiction because we get to be real. We get to exist.

I seem to find parts of me in poems and notes by other people, people who lived centuries ago and within conversations with friends who seem to have adopted my way of texting, or even writing different words over the course of time we have existed for one another.

I associate different things with different people and I forget they perhaps do the same. A reminder of that is the most devastating thing in the world: to exist for others as they do for you; to be remembered. 

It is surreal yet terrifying; to be known, it feels like love and fear at the same time.

It reminds me of the infamous Tim Kreider quote:

“If we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.” from his blog.

As I get older, I find things shifting and settling; infinite possibilities and dwindling choices co-exist, everything is nothing and nothing is everything. I find myself living in the middle of contrasts and things that simply exist in conflict with other things, there are too many spectrums and extremes and I find myself in the middle of everything as nothing but a silent observer.

And I tell myself to cherish it all because Time loves to play tricks. And she will flip it and you won’t even realize when you got to the other end.  So I keep taking pictures and trying to make a thing of all my moments here.

Try to read books and mark the parts which made me cry, made me feel a little more human and hence real. 

The only way to tell you how it feels is to tell you to read Jessica Glutch’s blog “On becoming the historian of my teenage years.” It runs along the lines of Lorde’s own note from her 20th Birthday and both of them have my heart. They are my own reminders to make a thing of this life and make it memorable.

I have them saved, printed and I have them copied onto multiple document platforms; I do not want to lose them.

Book Recommendations!

Most significant events of my life are marked by what I read back then or what I wrote as a result of it. 

I am a firm believer that reading is the closest thing to time travel in the world; I am sure my friendship comes with a lot of book recommendations and “YOU HAVE TO READ THIS” texts. But I do not think it could ever be any other way. 

But full disclosure: I have not read anything in a while. I pick up books in a state of calm timelessness. I happen to have found none of them in the recent past. One book I did pick up was ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ by Agatha Christie. It is my door into the world of Agatha Christie and I am pretty excited to read more by her.

Until I pick up a few more books, here are some timeless favorites of mine :

(re-reading them may or may not be the reason I have not read anything new)

The Palace of Illusions - Chitra Divakaruni

The Kite Runner- Khaled Hosseini

A Thousand Splendid Suns- Khaled Hosseini

1984 - George Orwell

Salt to The Sea - Ruta Sepetys

I couldn’t leave you without any poetry so here’s a personal favorite of mine:

Crush- Richard Siken (Read at your own risk because it will devastate you)

Spoken Word Pieces:

Beginning, Middle & End - Phil Kaye (He does a more edited and refined version of this later but this one has my heart)

Hiroshima - Sarah Kay 

I am sure if you keep up with poetry at all, you already know of Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye and their charming Origin Story. But I will leave these with you still. I hope they find a place in your heart as they have in mine. 

And with that, I shall leave you! If you read any of these and happen to like them, I would love to know! You can find me very easily courtesy of digitalization.

Here is a link to all my Social Media Handles: Link

Signing off,

Anika :)