Tag: Learning

Growing Up #11: A Prose on Shopping

Alfa M. ShakyaLeave a comment

I could walk the entire day, stop for a few minutes in between, munch some food, and still be upright – ready to dash the next store. By the looks of it I really enjoyed shopping. From cat print shirts to neatly pressed coats, the energy slowly dwindled away. I don’t dash into store after store anymore. It’s not that shopping isn’t fun, but perhaps I’ve become more efficient, and my energy – divided.

There were days when I could buy oversized clothes – hey I was still growing! These days I walk out empty handed if they don’t fit me.

Do you kind of feel a little awkward when the beautiful piece of cloth fits so well on the mannequin but looks awful on you? Deception! Do you feel a small part of you get angry when the salesperson gives you a size hoping it’d fit you (they’re 100% sure), because by the looks of it – it should, but doesn’t? Do you begin to wonder if its just you, or perhaps it’s everyone else too? What kinds of clothes are they making?

And then sometimes you find one that fits just well, after having a heap of discarded ones on the floor. Does it then feel like an achievement?

I almost never find my shoe size. It’s almost always sold out. They say there’s just one pair for one size in one style. Why don’t they make more of it? Or it is just the thing they say to make up for the lack of it? Can’t say.

Do you sometimes worry about having to bargain? After a full day’s work, at the edge of Decision Fatigue, does it seem like a huge task? And so do you head into the fixed price store instead? Ah! at least everyone who buys there pays the same price.

A prose on shopping. So many things inside the mind of a supposed adult out on shopping. Anyways, I still manage to get some cat print items.

Week 11 of Growing Up – a series about growing up, every Saturday. How’s the digital drawing I tried? Did you shop this week? Let me know in the comments.

Curved, Convoluted, Confused

Alfa M. ShakyaLeave a comment

It’s okay to be curved, convoluted, and confused,
to have the wires of your life
twisted and turned
as if ready to dance upon each other.

Because look at the vessels
the body encloses,
look at them and you shall see
how they twist and turn.

Laid straight they could
travel twice around the globe,
but would they house a life?
it cannot be told,
but probably not.

Look how curved, convoluted
and confusing they look,
perhaps because of which
they make life possible,
pumping blood all over.

When the roads do not
go as straight as we would like them to
confounding our state of being,
they could too carry life within them.

So it’s okay to tilt a bit
for otherwise the world wouldn’t fit,
inside of you.

Growing Up #10: What Have We Done to Our Homes?

Alfa M. Shakya4 Comments

I’ve always been a fan of retreats, but then it struck me this time. What have we done to our homes that we must go far far away from it to find our peace back? Isn’t home supposed to be the inviolable place we rested our minds, the impermeable barrier that kept us safe, the impervious door no evil could pass?

This is of course not to say travel and retreats are a waste. It’s just very ironic that our schedules have made us their slaves. We’re always connected, and a few minutes of disconnection can feel like a year of missing out.

I’ve been reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, and a line from the book about the domestication of wheat strikes so familiar to what technology has done to us:

We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us. 

Perhaps technology has domesticated us. Harari calls us a hackable creature, thanks to technology again. Read about it here.

I’ve known myself as someone who has always loved being home. I might be the classic introvert that personality quizzes describe. I love being at home – wiping dust off the book shelf, arranging and rearranging toiletries on the rack, or just playing the keyboard.

These days though I find stress creeping into the walls of my room, insecurity emerging out of social media taking over my dusty study desk, unnecessary emails gnawing up my creating time.

And I ask myself, what have I done to my home?

I must change it. It must be changed. Drawing lines – it might just be as simple, undecorated and acetic as that. Just as hard.

Growing Up is a weekly series on well, growing up, published every Saturday (Cheat week this Week as I wrote this on a Tuesday). It’s been 10 consecutive weeks I’ve been writing this specific column in my blog here. Can’t believe it’s 10 weeks already. They were right: time passes any way.  

Growing Up #9: ‘Tis The Season of Goodbyes

Alfa M. ShakyaLeave a comment

August – the eighth month of the calendar, the month when Summer isn’t gone yet, but the winds begin to feel chilly, a telling sign of how we have lived past over half of the year; a sign of the coming cold in the horizons.

August – a month of goodbyes when the suitcases are neatly packed, weighed, and wrapped. They hold not just belongings but memories and scents of yesterday, and now have pasted tags over their bodies keeping them from getting lost. It is how much can fit inside the weighing limit that one can carry of ones past – crunched, crumbled, convoluted.

I bid goodbye to friends, their eyes yearning for a better tomorrow and their hearts swelling with hope. I wish them the best that there can be. Together we’ve bid our goodbyes to many it seems. Maybe we have lost count now. Some goodbyes are left for electronic wires to convey, some other even unsaid.

There’s something strange about this season, a signal of transition. A fleeting season that could define many tomorrows, or may be it could just be a passing season. An ephemeral season that holds a memory or two for most, of when they left, and when they let go.

August – when the leaves turn yellow in some places, it’s still green here.

Growing Up, a series on Growing Up, every Saturday – because Saturdays are perfect for overthinking.