First Post of 2024 — Yay!

February 20, 2024

   I’m sitting at my desk, a new desk I bought for my new home. I finally tossed the cheap Ikea pull down desk I had used for almost all of the 16 years I lived in my last home. I’m facing a very dark cobalt blue wall that my husband thought was too dark for this small room – he said it would feel like a cave, and it does in some ways. But with the brightness of the sunlight from the open windows that run right across the wall opposite the door, the light oak grey closet finish, and almost matched curtains, the room feels bright. 

I have barely sat at this desk though we moved into this home on December 14, 2023. Too soon after moving in and getting ‘box-free’,  I went on a month long trip to Bombay. I took with me five fountain pens, a whole lot of notebooks, and some clothes. I barely did any writing there but sketched  the trees outside my window with the pens I had taken. I guess I must have missed the trees of Telok Blangah Hill Park outside this window. These are denser and more varied than the ones in the garden in my Bombay home but I saw more birds in the Bombay garden which is a rare oasis in the midst of the concrete of South Bombay. I miss those birds here, particularly a little kite that I named squealer. 

On this desk on my left is a wooden box with stationery I use most — some post-its, highlighters, an eraser, a glue stick, and a small stapler. The lid acts like a tray and in it are today’s fountain pens — three Pilot 912’s (with FA, MS, and BB nibs), a plastic Parker filled with the Waterman purple ink I bought in Bombay, and a Pilot Lighttive. In front of the box lie eight novels I borrowed yesterday from the Library@Orchard and my kanso noto journal. On my right lies my phone and an empty tray which earlier held a transparent pot of hojicha tea and a stained little white cup which is really an expresso cup, but from which I like to drink green tea. 

I went to the library after my physio visit yesterday. I had sprained my hip muscles while moving and the tightness and pain in them had tensed up the lower back, the glutes, and all the thigh muscles. Pauline brought me a ton of relief but told me not to walk or train much, instead try to heal through aqua-therapy.  I had missed the libraries of Singy a lot. I’m not sure why I borrowed eight novels when my reading has been poor for months. I read only two books in the month in Bombay, but I think there is a deeper purpose to this excessive borrowing than to merely kick-start reading. I’m not sure either what the purpose of writing and sharing this as a blog post is, except to start some writing practice — any writing practice, just naming objects around me is a decent start, after three or perhaps four months of pathetically little and uninspired writing. 

These months have been disorienting. The packing, unpacking, packing, and flying to Bombay, then settling into a room where all the light bulbs had blown out since my last visit and where my dry-cleaned bed sheet and cover reeked of a fragrance the dry cleaner obviously thought was divine, but clamped up my nose to the extent that I woke up at night with it blocked and had to spend 10-15 mins sitting in the dark room doing breathing exercises before I could get any air into my lungs again — these things might have created the disorientation. The return here was equally unsettling as I realized that in my hurry to be ‘box-free’ I had put things away without much coherent thought, and I didn’t know where to find anything including my underwear and night things on the first night back. 

The only thing well organized seemed to be one drawer of the two in my new desk, and the drawer with my tea things in the kitchen. I won’t bore you with what is in that desk drawer but if you tried to guess, you would likely guess correctly. My tea stocks are low — just three green teas, a Ceylon, and some chamomile, but I think those feel just right. 

I had given myself a ‘project’ on the second day of this trip to Bombay and I will write about it in another blog post soon. More writing practice, but before that some organizing of this little cobalt blue room is probably a good idea.