deactivate.

"disappear, she says. i love that word"
              -will christopher baer


im not so sure this is the best time to be writing here, it's not been a lovely day per se. but i find myself coming back here after something shifts. maybe shift isnt the right word. its like gears. either they lock out of place or something stops spinning. this time its the latter.

i hope it locks back into place soon.
today's not been my day.

buntings.

"comfort was peculiarly chilling"
                  -shannon a. thompson, seconds before sunrise


im in thailand, koh samui, sitting on the shore overlooking  the south china sea joining with the pacific ocean and im slightly tanned, enough to indicate that ive spent copious amounts under the sun without sufficient sunscreen and im slightly happier, enough to indicate ive been on a holiday to a country you usually go on holiday to.

havana is playing in the background while my slippers are in front of me, halfway buried in sand. ive got an iced soft drink on the table with my backpack serving as a lumpy pillow for me. my neck is sore.i think i'm gonna go for a walk through the shallow part of the sea in a while. i did it two days ago and i walked back onto the beach with a scraped foot from the rocks hiding cleverly in the water.

the wind is blowing really strongly as well. someone's tablecloth just flew off.

there's one single cloud in the sky and the water is reflecting four different shades of blue. one shade is green. there are the world cup's countries' flags hanging as buntings from haphazard sticks standing in the sand. i can't recognize most of them. overall, its a lovely sight. pushing the thought of all the schoolwork i have left right now would make this experience a little bit better.

maybe i should give coconut water a try.  

jazz vs. blues.

"how satisfying it is to leave a mark on a blank surface. to make a map of my movement- no matter how temporary"
           -craig thompson, blankets




nine days.

i travel to thailand tomorrow. i should be excited but i'm not, i'm focusing more on the prospect of having to sleep when there are people in the same room. hotels are fun, but that seems to fade at night.

i've been left alone without any distractions for the past ten days. i haven't been watching any television,  no videos. i guess the only thing i had was a few playlists i made before i visited here. i've come to realize a lot of things as well; it's never worth talking unless you're asked to. i got published on a website for an international writing competition and that was nice. it was nice, it should have motivated me to get back in touch with writing but it hasn't.

i've been thinking about learning how to dj. it seems cool. i'd call myself zombie dude, just saying.

i ordered a bag from tommy hilfiger and it arrived today. that's not really a necessary detail but i woke up today remembering how i haven't opened this site in a week and i felt a twinge of guilt. i hope i wake up feeling calm tomorrow.

there's a 6 hour difference between britain and thailand; that fact has been on my mind alot lately. 6 hours is excessive. i'm getting spoilt when it comes to time differences, i've forgotten what it's like being in touch with people 8 hours away. time zones scare me. when you live most of your life online, you become sort of an expert when it comes to time differences. i wouldn't have known the time difference between tirana and my residing city if i hadn't met someone from there. nor would i have known athens and my residing city share the same time. it's intriguing, sure, but there's always that added danger in finding friends who wake up for school exactly when you call it a night.

i go back home just as august starts. i can't say im necessarily dreading it. i'm looking forward to it knowing the time zone between britain and my residing city gets reduced back to the original two hours.

but who can deny post-holiday blues?

hangars

"we all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons"
                                                                    -w.h. auden



something tells me im going to be moving around a lot for the next two weeks.
i'm in dubai; it's a lovely place. last september, i visited dubai for two days and i went back home wanting to tear down all the architecture and rebuild it into a skyscraper-laden city.

home is beautiful as it is, but there's a kind of wonder that comes with seeing places you have never been to before.

i reach calcutta tomorrow. calcutta's beautiful; i was there in may and the weather was cool with drizzle hanging around the corner and it was a change- a drastic one from the humid and bleak disposition the city always has in july.

i'm looking at a runway; there's a double decker flight and tons of vans carrying luggage. there's a white light washing everything with a dulled out look. the plane is being reversed by a pushback. i am impatiently waiting.

for the first time since 2009, i am genuinely glad i'm going back to calcutta. we visit every year, but i had always seen in with trepidation. i'm excited this year; which is also relieving, you can't live your entire life hating the city you come from.

spinach and cheese.

"resist the temptation to defend yourself"
                         -brian tracy




last time i sat at starbucks with my laptop in front of me was the day i realized nothing is permanent.
last year, around this time, i was a different person than i am now.

i was quieter, more violent, i thought things that were given to me were permanent. i was perpetually looking down, berating myself for not looking up. dramatic as it may sound, that was quite literally the case. i remember bumping into quite a few people last year.

as the year came to a close, things changed. people left. i fell out of love, i lied to people i shouldn't have lied to; it was a mess. i'm seven months into 2018, i lost my 2 year streak of being clean, i found someone i never want to let go of, i may not be able to look up in confidence yet but there's five months of this year left. a lot can change in five months.

i'm glad.

i'm not content but i'm glad with the way things are.
time is a killer but i've kinda proven i'm resilient now.