re: me

Something in the way she moves …

Here be (a lot of) metaphors!

Eyes. Eyes wondering why their counterparts would not play with them, which playmate they are looking for. They are standing at the Bajaj Stop. He is looking at her, she is looking away There are times when he is as free as you like around her. But it is moments like this that take the wind out of his sails; leave him with skid marks of words in the middle of his tongue. Sometimes he does not know how to talk to her, what to talk to her about. But heaven knows he has got a thing or nine to tell her.

Having discovered that he was a player (Amharic translation —techawach) and having been pleasantly surprised, she had once commented: “I did not know you could talk so! mindinew endih af yeleqeqebih?!” He blames it on the bump that he had received in the car when he traveled home for the holidays. “It might go anytime!’’ he warns her. The tenuous chit-chat network that the purported bump had helped establish inside his head might come undun the same way it came into existence in the first place –without notice. He might run into her tomorrow and might not even say hi, thereby dispelling any illusion that she (or anyone else) may be harboring about him being gregarious. Things would return to normal. He would return back to his shell. His shell, he has not thrown it away. He has kept it safe in bubble wrap, for possible future use.

These are after all the eyes that, in their haughty way, had made him feel like he was seen, for the first time since the one who knows. Hers are the same eyes that had made him think that maybe, just maybe, he is not a defective (Does anyone remember the sitcom “What a Country?” There was this scene where the Russian guy talks about how, back home, they accused him of being “a defective”, to mean defector. Get it? No? Well, I am about to slam this frigging bracket in your frigging faces) Chances are she is treating him the way she treats every other male member of the species. I mean, look at him, looking daggers at every other guy that she may be sharing a laugh with like “This must be the owner of them preferred eyes. This definitely is her boo!” What he considers mixed signals are probably her normal innocuous mode of communication.

It turns out that our hero–that is to mean wimp–has lost but one of his shells. His fear of dealing with his feelings and reporting them to the concerned authorities in a timely manner still reigns supreme. Oh, his feelings! Let’s talk about them, shall we? Okay, he has been confused about what label to put on said feelings. In the absence of immunoassays and such, physical signs are all we have got to go by: he is happy when he sees her; he feels like shit when he doesn’t; she is the biggest promise that tomorrow holds. In many circles these are regarded as sure signs of having come down with love. Prognosis: not good if you suffer from it alone.

A growing body of evidence suggesting that she is suffering another fool but this fool’s fixation grows. Mounting is the burden of proof that he is carrying for his silly hypothesis that she might be the one. He dreams of sharing with her what Narcissus and the pond had (with a happy ending though.) Her eyes may not currently be projecting the best of his images; but he hopes for a turnaround; he hopes she might come around. It is safe to say that he has imprinted on her like a duck. He thinks she is his momma. She becomes the object of his affection. He keeps looking at her. She sees right pas…

God bless her!  She takes away the pain. And then she becomes the pain.

While they are standing there, he gets to thinking (compressed thoughts, because the moment in question lasted for about 5 seconds) whether she is looking for a/the person or forward to being at a place.

The person: judging by the people he has seen her with, she probably has the tendency to go for the well-proportioned ones; ones that would in all likelihood raise hell should anyone dare eyeball her. He on the other hand, the last time he got punched in the face he went (massaging his wounds) and got his brother. When, at a much earlier time, his other brother and co. would get embroiled in scheduled group fights after class, he tried to look at the situation objectively (war, what is it good for, right?), from the safety of his home, near his real mommy. He would obligingly make her laugh any time of day. But count him out of altercations. He can’t be her “bird libs chemaqi”. He knows his limits. He never went beyond white belt –white blood cells is the only way he knows how to defend himself.

Now, it has been said that women dig ambitious men. Well let her dig this; this is how he lives his life. He is not one to take life, the bull, by the horn and shit. Rather, he’s one of those people who meekly ride on life, the ship; no captain of his ship, master of his destiny here. Meekly, that’s what it seems like to onlookers. At another time she had asked: “Do you even know what the meaning of ‘to worry’ is?” or something to that effect. From afar a ship’s movement might seem effortless, but one needs to have a closer look in order to understand all the work put into giving the ship that calm visage (shoutouts to Tolstoy.) Of course he worries his ass off! He, in his silent way, invites her to get closer and have a look. She does not understand silent.

In the course of this writing, he has been presented as a ship, a duck, a traveler on a ship, and then again, a ship. But it goes further. Let us go right ahead and use another figure of speech: still waters run deep; now he is water.

But it seems that she is into rapids.

The place: she is a woman: it is time for her to be places and then some. He fears that it may require an ultracentrifuge making him settle. Whatever it is that may be going on inside her head, and however little he may understand of it, he has to fight himself from getting all cocky and blurting out: “t is what makes here, there!” getting his EPRDF on like “the future is bright with t!”

He keeps on bullshiting and equivocating until one day, he sees her with a ring on her finger. He listens with feigned nonchalance and occasionally chimes in as she talks about her plans for the engagement. She asks him when he is planning to get married. He replies, when someone who reads eyes comes along. Mute freak!

Fuck it! The title of the post is “about me” so, no more he

I am still under her spell. Some might call it coveting thy neighbor’s wife; I choose to call it unconditional love.

One

My self-esteem gauge points so low, one would be an exaggeration.

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