happy new year

I don't understand why for days and weeks and sometimes months I don't feel like writing. Even though a lot is happening that I would want to put down somewhere, and even if I have had the time to spare to do it. And then someday I will be reading something, about a writer's urge or practice of reading and writing, that will suddenly - like a tic - make me want to write. But if I'm lazy for even a minute around that, it passes. 

It's been very busy in my mind lately, reading and pondering about the human body, esp the female body, about evolution and gender and sex and athletics (was reading Eve by Cat Bohannon and Sohini Chattopadhyay's The day I became a runner; and then of course movies like Thappad, Mammootty's Kaathal, and She's lost control found their way to me).... The books blew my mind in many ways and the movies jolted me. But it was all way too much to pen down. I've been talking so much about all of these things and the way my neurons are connecting them to whoever has been near me...

And I've been running on a treadmill in a gym for a change, cos the air outdoors wasn't worth breathing this whole winter. Gave me the opportunity to measure my Running stats for the first time. Combine it with the reading and I've been trying to increase my speed and aim a half marathon by next Jan. Apparently women beat men on ultramarathon run speeds, and our bodies are in many ways better at stamina, healing, and living longer. So I'm preparing myself for that next phase of aging in my life, equipped with what millions of years of evolution have given me and the possibility that others' words and thoughts keep opening up. Quite the right time in my own life to encounter all of this, and just when a couple months back I felt like I barely knew anything about the female human body...

In fact even just now I picked up the typing act because I was reading Amitava Kumar chronicling Joan Didion's death and quoting her as saying in an interview that the act of writing is a hostile act because it forces one's thoughts and dreams (unwelcomed but tricked into) on the minds of the readers...

So reader, last night I dreamt of participating in a murder and disposing of the body cleverly, after a busy day meeting a friend, buying fresh produce and then an intro bouldering class with sis and her partner and mine that has left me with leaden arms this morning. The murder probably a result of watching Poker Face too long... but possibly also some creative darker version of feminism being play-acted out.