cold wind, hot soup

It’s the fall already.

It seems only yesterday the summer started and I was looking forward to all the picnics and lazy afternoons.

Whatever happened to those lazy afternoons?

Summer flashed by me, mocking me having so much work and so little time for it’s warm invite. The sun slithered teasingly in my room every sunrise, teasing me with it’s rays, and laughed at me while departing at sunset, making misfortunate shapes on my wall. Another warm summer day gone, and no leaving this wretched room.

And now it’s the fall. Cold and crisp. And I miss home. The sun and the dust and the hotness of it all. I want to go home and I want to sweat in the sun, like I always worry I shouldn’t. This thing, the desire to stay clean and smelling like Comfort and Chanel, has to be squashed and spitted on. Live, I say, live! And sweat.

Then shower of course.

It is the luxury of being single. The stupid luxuries. I don’t have to wax my legs, or keep my feet as soft as a baby’s ass. I am very much a living gorilla right now, and I so enjoy it. Not long ago when it was still sunny, I was having a jog in the park, and I sat on the grass afterwards. The sun was playing beautiful colour tricks and I was in awe.. I looked at my arms, and how the sun was reflected on the hair on them, pure magic. I don’t understand why I have to strip them bare when they look so beautiful hairy. Silly tradition, silly culture, silly feminine rules.

Soup.

Sure does warm your heart, and insides. I am getting over a cold. And it is so funny.. I thought it could be hey fever, and not a cold. And then I realized I wasn’t craving cigarettes. My mother always said she hates smoking when she catches a cold. And then I had it, sheer truth, I have a cold, and I am definitely becoming more and more like my mother everyday.

It is almost as though I am in a preparation period. I have changed so much in the years I lived in London. And yet somehow I always plan my life in Kuwait, as though I need to validate these changes by embedding them in my “normal” life. If I go back home, and I am the same undergraduate I used to be years ago, then nothing has really changed.

I can’t ever truly live the way I want in Kuwait though, and this has nothing to do with limitations of the culture (although that is also a problem). I can’t because of the heat, and lack of green. I will miss the pleasant weather (won’t miss the rain). I will miss having a park to sit in close by no matter where I go. And I will miss preparing my own meals and having so much alone time to think and work.

I will not, however, miss being without my family. They are what I miss the most. In fact if they were here, I probably would miss Kuwait much less than I do.

Such vanity, these blogs.

I can write this in a diary, but there is something about seeing it on a screen. I suppose I shall delete all those personal entries at one point. But not today. Today I treat myself to a cup of hot leek and potato soup, and some vanity.