rakshitharavishankar

[rakshitharavishankar]

I wrote postcards to each month in New York during my first year here. Found it in my google docs yesterday and published it. Do read if you find time. Excerpt for November 2016: “At one point this month, I confronted some of the best times I’ve lived in my short life and I say confronted because I constantly feel like I am never going to be able to live them again, and rightfully so. But, life just feels like too much some days, and for the others, I make sure to carry an extra pair of pullovers.” Check link in bio. (at Union Square Park)

[rakshitharavishankar]

So, I wrote this really experimental and personal thing. It was the easiest thing to pen down because there were just so much feelings inside of me I didn’t know how to reconcile with, so I did this exercise where I just wrote down words I wanted to look at and made something out of it. “Loneliness, you see, can make us too powerful and too insecure at the same time, and we were a strip of both, turning litmus the right amount red but the wrong amount blue.” For more, check link in bio. Photo credits: @anahithasagar

[rakshitharavishankar]

I've been trying to define home for myself. It's been one long year, quite rewarding on many fronts and challenging on most others. Home was a phycial space a year ago. I believed in owning a space, making it mine, territorializing my house. It didn't turn out to be a great experience, it was exhausting and soon enough, it became a feeling. Disappointment, happiness, desperation, love. Everything felt home and haunted at the same time. Somewhere along that, I found homes in people. Not 'making them' homes but finding homes in them. That would make survival in the transient easier, right? There is an eerie relief in knowing you have multiple homes, making them replaceable, no? Not quite. Multiple homes only meant variant homes. Every home that left made life feel equally and differentially vagrant. Because every home that left took away the home I found. Because, every home, it seems, is reciprocal. Because, you don't just make homes, it makes you too. It accepts and rejects and experiences you. It's funny how we believe expecting changes can make accepting changes easier. Acceptance maybe makes it more stagnant because there is a sense of peak, an attainment of closure. Expectations, on the other hand are opportunities to become vulnerable. To experience with/without being consumed. Perhaps, home is and will always be a thing of experience. So, then, maybe it is everything and nothing. It'll stay and pass by at the same time. I don't quite know how to express what that means, but for now, home feels like hues. Orange and green, and definitely not blue.

[rakshitharavishankar]

TRIGGER WARNING: Substance Abuse safe space I am on my third glass of whiskey and i can see my vision shrink unders strings of fairy lights holding onto each other in the dark nothingness of a sea of people murmuring, or talking, or babbling as their mouths move to make words in between the red lipstick and the cherry sangria on the rim of a wine glass. I am already on my fourth as I gulp the rest of the alcohol letting it hit my throat and i close my eyes, a few quick moments where insomnia gives in to let me experience nightfall and in that moment, I relive life as it happened, and all the bodies around me feel like disjointed december jingles swaying to their own tune, a music that is loud yet inaudible and I run down in a rhythm of four quick steps and two jumps twice two times, long enough to lose track of direction and shrink myself as much as I can and open my eyes wide enough to let me dial an emergency contact. Talking about my panic attacks is too normal to be noticeable and too cliched to be a conversation on snow laden nights. Who wants to hear about the slush when you can make snow angels? So i call someone who has not lived in the snow, who has lived by salty oceans and under the spell of humid puffs of smoke, because i know salt and weed together is a trance that will always be better than frozen water. i know salt and weed can sometimes make a safe space. i let my tears flow and my mouth run dry as i realize that i don’t like ice in my whiskey because cubes of water always get left out and whiskey makes me want love. Love, i know, isn’t ice or whiskey or the alcohol dissolving in my blood. love is the skin on my tongue that seeks water after each ecstatic hangover, because whiskey may make me want love but water is home, and winter in december can make snow so mundane that i forget home and seek love in sips of bitter liquid ignoring the after-taste that already lingers at the tip of my tongue.

[rakshitharavishankar]

I want to be neon. inert and colorless but striking in vacuum. (at Washington Square (Philadelphia))

[rakshitharavishankar]

"Have you ever felt safe inside your head?" I ask and she stares back at me for a few seconds before asking me what scares me the most. "Myself. My thoughts. Inhabiting this body. Becoming a person, existing as an entity," I say. "This - I - don't feel like a safe space." I can see her eyes softening, and she takes a deep breath before she speaks. I can also her see nose flair a bit and I suddenly realize her nose is the most expressive organ on her face. "You know, you don't have to be a space, you can be anything or nothing, and I am not trying to confuse you," she sighs and continues. "Let's just pretend you are time, and not space. The time will end, it's not vast and void like the space, the time will pass and you will leave some experiences behind. It might still not be safe, but it will pass and you will learn to let it go instead of wading in the same, stagnant pool of energy." "Did I ever tell you how much I love you nose?" I say. "Did you even listen to what I said?" and I can hear her exhale a gush of air. "Every word." I close my eyes and start chanting. I am time and it will pass. I am time and it will pass. I am time and it will pass. (at Rittenhouse Square)

[rakshitharavishankar]

In the meantime, a little glimpse of summer still blooming in my front yard. (at Bay Ridge, Brooklyn)

[rakshitharavishankar]

Night.

At night, the darkness in my room occasionally forms shadows as the streetlight makes it way through blinders, And solitude spells down my spine, Alongside sweat on my skin, and *BREATHE* I usually lay like a fetus Shrinking the worlds inside me not just holding them together, but holding them within. A tangled web of venns crashing and collapsing into each other, trying not to spill the vastness that is the frenzy of my being whirling like the dreamcatcher restless above my head And I try to blink to its rhythm in even numbers hoping to hear the autumn breeze whiff lullabies past glass windows and wooden walls To all of the anxiety howling rather inaudibly. 

[rakshitharavishankar]

surviving abuse

not all scars are slits and cuts or wounds in flesh most are memories, stored, repressed and experienced. memories don’t vanish because they don’t exist physically. memories cannot be forgotten because they have already been felt. memories don’t move on because they aren’t always mobile. memories survive, battered, bruised and breathing. memories are etched, embedded carefully into layers of your being. memories heal, gradually and eventually they repair and mend, through self-love and care. by falling apart and re-forming chipped parts of yourself. reclaiming moments lost and memories locked. without explanation, and definitely without apology. but first, memories heal by forgiving. not your abuser, but yourself.  

[rakshitharavishankar]

grounding.

They will tell you life is an entitlement. it’s not. It’s a forest you wander in. Let yourself make multiple ways from one tree to another. Find your tree. Sit under it. Eat the fruits. Write on the barks. Carve your memories. Rub the branches, and make fire. Not for warmth, but for flames. Burn down meadows and let the sun dry its patches. And once you’ve lost the green, look for the oasis.

[rakshitharavishankar]

Perversions.

I shut my eyes and it is dark and lonely. Not a void, but a wave - water making a meticulous effort to maintain balance at the seashore. I can’t see it, the wave can only be heard. Splashes of water hitting something hard. Not rocks, but something creeky. Like a bridge that was about to fall apart. I open my eyes. I feel a lump in my throat. Dry and salty, crystallizing my saliva like the sediments along the beach. I want to scream or at least cry. Crying has always helped. It’s the silence that makes the most noise. It’s silence that makes waves audible and invisible at the same time. I have not felt this way in a while. 5 years and 2 months to be exact. I feel like I’m losing my grip. The fingertips of my right hand trace the contours of my petite wrists. I can’t see my old scars anymore, I can only hear the beating of green tubes underneath my skin. Just like the waves.

Half a decade can make you feel out of practice, I smile to myself, locking my wrists in between my knees.

[rakshitharavishankar]

Moving forward is not just about what lies ahead, it's also about what we leave behind.

R. //Dear Confidence//

[rakshitharavishankar]

You are not your body

You are not your body.

To everyone out there who are constantly reminded that their body doesn't adhere to society's normative vision, I want to tell you that you are beautiful. Your worth is not directly proportional to your body. You are not the fringes of the world. You are your own world.

I want to tell you that your eyes and ears and mouth and lips and arms and fingers and nails and knees and feet and skin and bones and muscles are legitimate. Your body is legitimate.

[rakshitharavishankar]

he enjoyed music that I only heard, just the way, i felt colors that he only saw and somewhere in between, his voice hummed, and my eyes held dreams where fireflies glazed yellow in skies screaming indigo ripping apart a horizon of crimson longing to find its note and sipping sangria in the twilight we found  my hue and his tone, his rhythm and my blue my vision and his voice fading away  into  an abyss echoing white love. (at Niagara Falls, New York)

[rakshitharavishankar]

Photo credits: @abhishyantpk They say that uphill is always difficult. You feel breathless. Your limbs hurt and your heart feels heavy. And, the uphill almost always symbolizes success. What they don't say is that uphill needs more than energy to climb. It needs rest. Meticulously planned bouts of relaxation. Catching your breath and letting your heart flutter to moments of silence. Closing your eyes to the world across you and opening up your arms. Touching the wet grass and whistling along with the birds. What they don't say is that rest is not relative to the person walking with you. The climb is yours alone. You also need to meticulously put to rest your emotions and feelings. For that, you might have to awaken all the senses you just put to rest. And that, my friend, is what they will call balance. But what they won't say is that balance is not going to be about weighing the scales, but being in two places. Separately but simultaneously. (at Tarrytown, New York)

[rakshitharavishankar]

You know how some roads look narrower as you walk them -- that's how I feel as a writer. On a lazy Tuesday morning, tossing in bed, brushing my hair to one side so it doesn't soak the sweat on my neck, shrinking into a foetus trying to fit into a bed that seems vast but void -- that's how I feel like a writer. Writing ideas in a world where I feel so possible yet so powerless, using words to quick-fix temperaments and vocalize apprehensions, where sentences fight wars I’m too afraid to fathom, stories told behind screens and closed door without any catharsis -- that's how I feel as a writer. Waiting to find breadcrumbs on the way, light on a bright sunny day, symmetry in the trail, and maybe a little bit magic to warp the world in a frenzy -- that's just how I feel as a writer. (at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery)

[rakshitharavishankar]

"It's not that you don't understand, it's that you do not even try to," I blurted and dropped a bunch of sheets on wooden floor. "Well, because you don't always make sense. For starters, it's difficult to see everything as being social. That's just pseudo," he sat up. "Says the man who believes machines will surpass humanity. First, that is reminiscent of Enlightenment and we know what followed that. Also, we essentially want to end our productivity and that's supposed to be a feat? H-O-W so?" I screamed from across the kitchen. "Let's do this another day?" he sulked back into his laptop. His obstinance bothered me very much, sometimes making me weary of the lives we were leading. If we are to hand over the reign to a stream of codes, why do we urge to be social creatures? "Want to sit by the beach and stare at the sky?" I asked. "Yes ma'am." That evening, as our feet twitched to the cold waves splashing against the rocks at the shoreline, and the clouds turned rose, I sighed. "Maybe we are the virus in the system. Some de-bugging would help no?" he said with his eyes to the sky. "Charming." I sighed and dug my feet into the bed of rocks. (at Nyack Beach State Park)