jaadu hai.

I had a massive crush on this girl in high school. For clarity, this is when I was in grade 10. She was buddhist, her family from Sri Lanka. She was so smart. She wrote so well, was a math whiz, a great orator, and was on the track team.

Sometimes afters school I would walk for a bit in the direction opposite of my home, then I’d walk back. Knowing that I’d cross paths with her.

The next year I also switched my physics class, just so I could be in the same class as her. It wasn’t easy. I had to make a case to my computer science teacher to ask my physics teacher to let me switch, so that I could be a TA in the computer science class. Switching classes would resolve the conflict I had in my schedule. I didn’t tell my computer science teacher the real reason, of course.

As I’m writing this, I’m getting vague memories of being in a coding competition with her. Our school was competing against others, so we were on the same team. I also remember being on the school debating team with her.

This particular memory is about a math problem. We were in a harder math class. Sitting beside me in English class she was asking for my help with this math problem she was struggling with. Now, I’ll have you know that I knew how to do this problem. I had already solved this problem before. I was a bit stunned that she was asking me. I remember getting a bit excited, a chance for me to show her my intelligence!

I started to scribble the solution. And in the middle of it, my mind decided to empty itself of all mathematical skill. I fumbled and wasn’t able to solve it. She went back to trying to solve it on her own.

I remember feeling so stupid.

My sleep patterns are all over the place. Always have been. I don’t even make any kind of effort anymore to bring it into control.

However, when I’m at the edge of my wakefulness – when I’m grasping at sleep’s straws – I will often put something on Youtube to help guide me to sleep.

Sometime’s it’s just noise. Simulated sounds of traveling through space in a spaceship.

If I really want to fall asleep, I’ll put on something that I want to meaningfully learn. I’ve been trying to learn to play chess of late. There’s nothing better at putting me to sleep than trying to learn something.

My attempts at focusing will peak my exhaustion and off the switch goes.

I will have fallen but the tubes keep tubing. One video will play after the next. Sometimes it will be other chess videos and at other times it will be entire basketball games from the 90s/00s. Often, it will also be science videos. Something being explained. More things to learn.

The fascinating thing is how the sounds steep themselves into my dreams.

In this one dream I was part of an improv troupe. We were on stage taking suggestions from the audience. I don’t recall the suggestion made, but in the scene we became scientists discussing quantum physics. The scene became quite involved and was a hoot. After the performance, the troupe collected in the backstage lounge. We were just chilling and began to discuss the finer points of quantum physics. We agreed and disagreed with each other while sharing our bewilderment.

I then woke up to a video of a quantum physicist being interviewed.

I was a teenager. I don’t remember the exact age. We used to go to Saudi every summer. This was nice at first, because we were returning to where we once lived. A homecoming of sorts. But as time passed I didn’t like it because it kept me from developing friendships during those summer months.

When in Saudi, family would come visit us. On and off we’d have uncles, aunts and cousins in the apartment. Some would live in the same city, some even in the neighbourhood. But others would come from afar. Two of my uncles were doctors and they lived in remote parts of the country. That’s where their hospitals were.

One of the doctor uncles had come to visit with his family. My cousins were in the range of 5-9 years old. One of them had his hair combed super proper. I was amused at how someone so small and young was so invested in the precision of their hair. Specially given how imprecise I was about such things.

So to tease my little cousin, I ruffled up his hair as we were playing. He got flustered, ran away and combed his back into place. I hid the comb and ruffled up his hair again. He got upset, of course, and was able to find another comb. I was increasing curious what his recourse would be if he wasn’t able to comb his hair into perfect alignment. I hid the second comb and ruffled up his hair again.

Unable to find another comb, he started crying. I had not expected this outcome. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. I felt so cruel in that moment. I returned the combs to him but he kept crying.

It’s interesting how curiosity without consideration can turn into cruelty.

Anyway, I’m bald now.

I guess I will note down stray memories as they find me.

I remember being in Hyderabad as a child. We would go every year. Most years to attend a wedding. My mom has nine brothers. If all of them got married each year, that’d be nine years. This wasn’t the case, but a lot of our visits were related to an uncle getting married.

We were in a car. I don’t remember where we were going, nor where we had left. This was the children’s car. Full of my cousins.

We were passing by this Hindu man riding his bicycle. One of my cousins stuck his head out and yelled, “anna, tyre puncture!” in a Telgu accent (anna means brother). There was no tire puncture. It was a prank. The man started to worry and look at the tires on his cycle. Noticing that everything was fine, he yelled back some angry words. I don’t remember what he said.

I do remember being very upset about this. We were on the road. What if this man had lost control of his cycle being worried about the tire? I felt like it could have caused some real harm. I wondered why my cousin would do such a thing. Maybe we had seen a similar prank in a movie and he was trying it out on the road.

I didn’t have the courage to bring it up with my cousin.

I am a perennial coward. Looking back, I am shocked at how I mustered up the courage to say and do some of the things I’ve said and done.

I wonder for the future, how much of my courage will be musterable.

What’s the point of being here still only to be still?

I find myself chasing memories. As if playing hide and seek. I am always the seeker. I don’t get to hide.

I imagine these memories floating around in my head like some amorphous nebula. Most of it is a blur, speeding by as I try and pluck something into stillness.

Actively trying to remember works sometimes. It seems like more and more a struggle as time passes. Sometimes I’m left with just memories of memories. I remember having remembered it, but I can’t reach it now. Is it gone forever?

Other times some adjacent memories will return with no warning. I was reaching for something else and now I have this one. I wonder what to do with it. Once I let it go now I wonder if it’ll ever return. I wonder how true it is. Maybe I’ve revised it over time to be something more suitable to who I am now.

Right now, for no particular reason, I’m trying to remember two names. Friends from high school who I haven’t seen since. I remember some vague specifics, but not their names.

One friend was a tall brown boy. He was legally-blind. We’d hangout on and off during lunch breaks and we were in the computer council. This one time I had sprained my ankle playing basketball in gym class. I remember him helping me from the gym to… I don’t remember where. My hand around his shoulder as I was hopped on my good leg. As we passed by the library I remember some kids telling me how silly I looked hopping on one leg. They told me to use the sprained ankle but not put too much weight on it. I remember all this some how – bit and pieces – but I don’t remember his name.

The other friend was a goth-ish white girl. We were just in one or two classes together. English was one of them. We had developed nicknames for each other. We would yell them to each other whenever we saw each other in the hallways. We continued to do this long after we were in classes together. I remember her hair and that nonchalance in the way she walked. But I don’t remember her name, nor the nicknames we had.

Did they even have names? Were we even friends? Did this even happen?

Perhaps I could look them up in a year book. Just that I never bought a year book.

What would I even do with their names?

I haven’t written much. It’s been a long time.

I used to carry this tiny notepad where I’d jot down thoughts as they appeared. I would make sure never to be far from this notepad. Who knows when a thought may strike and wilt all at once? Leaving just enough time for me to capture it.

There’s many reasons to write (or not write, I suppose). Motivations, muses and moments all count. Sometimes you have them all, but don’t want to write.

Back in 2015, returning from a work trip, I stopped at the waterfront. And started to weep with a friend. For clarity’s sake, I wept and the friend watched/listened. He made a comment about how I could turn that sadness into writing, as if there were a correlation. Maybe there is. But we’ve all written during sadness and joy. I did write quite a bit back then. Most of it was horseshit.

Ultimately, I love the turns of phrases. How one word welcomes the next. You can image a word clearing the way for another, whispering “we need to stick together,” as the next one arrives. Like words tying themselves together and to a tree at a climate protest. Making themselves known. Making their cause known.

My muse now is the passage of time. There is no legacy to leave behind. I hope to be forgotten in a flash (or two, maybe three). So there’s only the moments we make and share, in the moment we make and share them.

Anyway, I’ve started to take notes again. Some vague inspiration has struck and I’m trying to give it shape. The thoughts used to come more or less completed before. I’ve been out of practice. I just get patches now. Hopefully this is just warming up.

There’s a lot of work to be done.