Mosquitoes are here...

I killed one. I had forgotten how satisfying it is to kill an insect that has drawn your blood.

I am at the verge of completion with a project; the cold feet have returned. All I want is to bury my head. What I have written is drivel. Drivel.

--

I had the weirdest dream this morning: somewhere in Sudder Street in Kolkata was a bench before a shrine of Kali. On the bench were two blind gay-lovers beggars, who talked to each other with their tongues in each other's mouth. On the same bench were the family of a girl who was the statue of Kali.

As the duo of blind beggars talked, a story surfaced:

The girl who was now Kali had once been very beautiful and fair, and with her carefree ways given her family a lot of pain. People flocked after her and wanted to murder the family because they came in between. One day, while she slept, they poured kerosene over her body and put her on fire. She jumped out of bed , into a tandoor that charred her and cooled her at the same time, so that she healed, but her skin darkened and stiffened. The family repeated this twenty times, after which, the girl's face froze in a look of rage and terror. The family put up a shrine and put her in it, silent, charred, alive, immobile.

But the blind gay-lovers beggars knew the story. So they told it with their tongues in each other's mouth.

That was one.

Another dream I had towards midnight yesterday had to do with the idea of my present self as chrysalis, is that makes any sense. It was a slew of images, rapid fire, of which I remember the pod and the peas most distinctly. But it was tied emotionally to an urgent need to break free, to open and leave, to leap without net. It was so fierce in its gut-wrench that I woke up sobbing.

I think I understand why my mind is doing this: I think it is because today is the anniversary of my return to Nepal.

One whole year. Still not one *completed* movie project to my credit, although a short film was shot. It is being shot to pieces in the editing room.

One collection of short stories translated: no word from publisher or author any more. I think they won't be publishing it.

Translated more than a dozen poems for Save the Children's rehab for violence-affected kids: not one published...

No new short stories written. One published in a book that probably didn't sell a thousand copies.

Still lonely. Still looking, waiting. Still living with family.

Spent about two months away from home, including a month in Kolkata.

Still not regular enough, or good enough, writer for TKP.

Lost not a single kilo of weight...

All in all--roundly a failure.