Pooling Reasons

Attaching meaning and inserting it deep within an inane thought or obtuse musing has always been a strong suit of mine. Convinced things have to mean something and lead me somewhere or to someone – that things happen for a reason; that nothing just happens to happen.

Immediately, that disposition is defective as I get into Jaai's car and pull the seatbelt over me a bit too quickly, jamming it in the process. Some menial acts just have no rhyme or reason. There is always a reminder of this around the corner. Although my peripheral vision is 20-20, my mind’s eye is severely impaired.

By the time we reach Phillip Island, it is dark, and we’re scared. The Airbnb looks and feels like the Idaho house where all those students were murdered just a couple of years back. My friends hate that I keep bringing it up. I don’t get it.

Out on the balcony facing the ocean, there is a darkness akin to blindness; a silence so piercing, in the face of which my existence echoes a screech. Sedation is how I’ve kept myself alive for the past couple of years. To slowly kill myself is to subscribe to a longer sentence. I light up a joint and exhale with it tension about death and destruction. When it may not be up to me to decide on my demise, I am the most alive.

At night, in the room assigned to me, the closest to the front door, the window of which faces the void sea, I try to put myself to sleep. My metal water bottle tips over and lands on the floor with the ricochet of a gunshot. I drift off paralysed in fear.

When we wake the next morning, the house has come alive. Light pours in like the first cocktail served on a Friday night. I prop my phone up and film myself getting ready. I always feel pretty in a sleeveless top. The extent of scandalousness I allow my body to exhibit. I don’t look back over the footage.

At the beach, which was death dimension just last night, waves crash over rocks, forming small pools in gaps. I had this illustrated encyclopedia as a kid that kept me occupied for hours. The detailed depiction of life coexisting in small pods gave me joy and stimulation – something I was hoping to resurrect.

As we inched closer, peered deeper into each pool, we saw right through to the bottom – sand and sediment. Empty shells, many broken – empty homes, a ghost town. I chalk it up to being the wrong time of year to visit. That the creatures are simply elsewhere. It’s not until a week or so later that a video pops up on my FYP talking about how many beachgoers have noticed the same thing around the world. I wonder if death dimension wasn't the perception of darkness on the horizon; rather, the darkness lingered and blinded me in the face of Earth’s grief over lost love and creation.

The 8th of August this year was said to be the day for manifestation. Something about the Lion's Gate Portal and how powerful it was in the face of what the number eight represented. I saged the house; I prayed hard, over and over, for many things. Selfish things which I can’t say I regret asking for but which worry me, for I didn’t ask for something for the Earth. I could've wished for life to return in places where cruel humanity had eroded it. For the pools to look the way they did in my encyclopedia.

I don’t know if things have been happening because of the manifestation, or if they’re just happening because they always do. Do I attribute my recent successes to deep yearning on a certain day, or do I take credit for setting myself up to succeed?

Whatever it may be, the answer doesn’t lie in how easily these things come to me – because they don't. They’re served in thin-stemmed coupes rimmed with devastation and torture, the taste of which either comes first or lingers long after the liquid has been devoured.

I’ve been on my phone a lot more lately. I find it embarrassing, and it’s something I used to get angry at Nick about. But everything I see leads me elsewhere – to a promise I made, to a place I was, to a feeling I endured. I got back on Tinder recently; I’m in a relationship which allows me to be who I truly am – unsure and always wanting more. Unsure I deserve love, wanting consolation that I am beautiful to those who aren't in love with me.

I match with someone I once knew but had cut all contact with. I match with someone I never knew but had seen online a few years back. Nothing really goes anywhere, but every time I open the app, it says you received 61 likes. You received 35 likes. You’ve received the approval of strangers; you've caught their attention enough for them to swipe – not even right, but up!! That "dtf?" text from the ugliest guy with the worst seeming hygiene on the planet attests to something, right?

When Nick asks me how it's going on there, I respond truthfully that it's all boring and nothing much ever happens on these apps. "I bet you already have that 99+ like button at the bottom though," he responds. He's right, and it does feel a little good.

Two weeks or so after our Phillip Island gals trip, I load up my TikTok drafts and finally watch the video of myself getting ready. It dawns on me that the Tinder likes may have been pouring in because of my strategically chosen pictures rather than the reality or actuality of me. I haven't edited anything, just picked my faves and maybe turned up the saturation on a few of them; but perhaps my selfish manifestations led me from getting invited to dine at places free of charge – as a writer – every week in hopes I’d enjoy their service enough to feature them in an article, to becoming too intoxicated, drinking on the dime of success, and forgetting that nothing ever comes for free.

Whilst Bella Fiori's new video on the Staudte family murders plays on the TV in the background, I edit the 5-minute-long video down to around 40 seconds. Four minutes and 20 seconds of fat and chub and gluttony I try to hide. Angles from the side where my nostrils look so big I finally look into getting that deviated septum surgery I've put off for years. I think about how carefree I seem of all my losses in the video. How much I am like the empty pools; how they reflect my conscience – shallow and absent.

I get mad at Nick for telling me over and over, for years now, that I’m beautiful. He doesn’t deter his stance. I feel guilty for the way I act. I feel grateful for the love I have. I wonder what I did to deserve both. If one is reparation for the other. If I deserve one, maybe it’s because I insist on the other. I upload the video in its fractioned form. It sits at 12 likes.

Jaman

 

Silver pots

A kitchen’s temple bell 

 Jaman -- guest, aka, God-given   

Seeded, synchronised  

four-legged goddess’ pearly silk liquor  

 

Planted
Set
Rest 

                                          in a micro(c/w)ave  

three to five hours,
on a summer’s day.   

 

 

 

Jaman is a small portion of curd used as the starter culture to make a larger batch. 

This poem speaks to the tradition of homemade yogurt-making, a practice woven into the childhoods of many Indians. 

The process relies on an intuitive understanding of measurements, temperature and patience; knowledge that is often passed down through generations and shared within communities. 

Making yogurt is also an inherently collaborative act. To begin, you need jaman, borrowed from someone who has already made yogurt. That starter itself was once borrowed from someone else, creating an unbroken chain of sharing, care and collective knowledge that stretches across families, neighbours and generations.
 

This poem was written in 2022,  as a sequal/ sumplimentary to Dhai Calligraphy 

What I haven't Read

If you were holding your breath for this quarter’s instalment of books I’ve read, don’t - because I’ve read nothing. Nada. Not one novel, not one classic. And I’m okay admitting that.

At the beginning of the year, I found myself unable to stick to a book. I tried many, hoping something would land. 

The Dressmaker by Rosalie Ham was an obvious choice because I love the film so much, but I couldn’t separate the characters from their screen versions. There was no room left for surprise. The Cicada House by Ella Ward felt close to the plot of All Fours by Miranda July, with its escapist tone, but it didn’t stick. A Body Made of Glass by Caroline Crampton was too heavy for me at the time. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson sits on my shelf still (gifted by Chanel), but I can’t seem to get through it. And When the Going Was Good by Graydon Carter was, in my opinion, just boring. I’ve tried it so many times I’ve basically memorised the first chapter.

It made me wonder: if I don’t feel the urge to read something, if I’m not excitedly reaching for a book, am I just reading for the sake of it? To say I’ve read it, to appear well-read, to participate in discourse? If there isn’t a single piece of literature I’m yearning to indulge in, then what’s the point of forcing it?

Of course, I’ll still read things when I need to — a research study, some Instagram prose, whatever — but despite borrowing books, trying audiobooks, asking for recommendations, and keeping lists, nothing has been calling me to the page.

It also made me think about how much weight we place on reading in general. We’re not in school anymore, being forced to analyse and report back, so why does it still feel like a measure of intelligence or worth?

Is it because we feel we should be making the effort to read, especially now, when information is so easily accessible in other forms? Do we read to say we do, or do we read for enjoyment?

Personally, I used to read to be inspired to write. The different ways something could be said expanded my understanding of language. Plot twists and narrative turns opened up new ways of thinking and expressing. Reading felt essential.

But this year, I’ve found that same inspiration elsewhere — in supposedly ‘menial’ shows like Sex and the City. It’s not high art in the traditional sense (though it’s iconic and singular in its own way), but I can’t pretend I haven’t read books that enticed me for the same reasons and still didn’t live up to their reputation.

A lot of the books I’ve found most inspiring also centre writers as protagonists — many of Stephen King’s novels, or narrators in books like Butter by Asako Yuzuki and Penance by Eliza Clark. Lately, SATC has been filling that gap through Carrie Bradshaw.

When I read, I visualise everything like a screen already playing in my head. One could argue reading demands more imagination — that you have to build the world yourself — but I’d argue that watching someone else’s interpretation of a script can create a similar kind of expansion. It’s not lesser, just different.

Like feminist literature, I’m drawn to feminist screenwriting too. Both give me glimpses into how others navigate womanhood, and both soften the guilt or uncertainty I sometimes attach to my own thinking.

Watching Girls through Lena Dunham’s lens gave me permission to sit with cringe — to accept it as part of being alive rather than something to avoid at all costs.

And now Sex and the City is offering me a glimpse into my thirties, and into ageing in a way that people in their twenties, like me, are often taught to fear.

I do still yearn to be lost in a book. It has its own charm, its own kind of immersion, and I want to be one of those people reading on trams and trains, completely absorbed again. I hope that desire returns at some point. But I’m not going to force it.

So while some people might already be on their 50th book of the year, I’m sitting here with zero under my belt. I hope this is some comfort to those in a similar place, because I know I’ve felt insecure before about how many books I was or wasn’t reading.

At this point, I don’t really care to know anyone’s book count anymore (or at least, I'm trying not to care). If anything, I’m side-eyeing people who report 100+ books by the end of the year because, genuinely, where did you find the time, and how deeply were you actually engaging with each one?

Even when I was reading three or four books a quarter last year, they would eventually start to blur into one another. A lot of them, I couldn’t reliably recall the main characters or plot points, simply because of how much I was consuming at once.

Maybe those people are better at it than me — maybe they can retain everything and deeply connect with each piece of literature they tick off their list. But it’s not sustainable for me, and I’ve made peace with that (for now).

Who knows, you might see a “10 books I’ve read in 10 days” post here one day (unlikely), and I’d probably feel a sense of achievement if I did. But if not, there’s always the possibility of a “media I’ve consumed in the second quarter of 2026” instead.