Tickled pink.

How can one/ I explain that I am content. Not how, nor why. Just content.
Supposedly you can only bring that feeling to those around you, but essentially it is our own doing that carries us alongside this.
I don't feel that being content is about losing wants and needs. I enjoy wanting, a lot of people thrive off wanting. Often it can be the wanting that is more enjoyable than the getting.
To me being content is being immersed in a moment. Knowing that on matter how you got there, looking back is a fading memory. And that sometimes answers aren't needed. That looking for them keeps from enjoying the question.
Live for the question marks.
Strive for the exclamation points.
Write your own story.
This one's mine. Chapter three so far, anyway.

Blank.

Observing gathers answers, though who felt answers were always so necessary? Can we not just have a question to follow without bringing the journey to a halt with an answer? The answer is not always static, maybe it has crossroads, lined with concrete-hand-painted-zebra-striped barriers. One that comes to a pause at the toll boxes, demanding the printed paper, the precious thing we value so.

The Doorman.

And as the gear shifter is jerked into place we roll on, sitting here in a trance- like state. The man beside me coughs, as once more he gets up to close the bus door. Why did he do it again? Why did he take this job upon himself? Knowing it would only aggravate him, having to re- close it repetitively or sit in the chilling draft constantly.
But maybe that is not what he knows. Rather, what I know. Though not what I feel.
The bus comes to a halt once more and once more the man shall rise to close the door.
The waiting game...
It's cold now, more than drafty. Refreshing for a short time, but it passes along with the kilometers.
NO.
This time the man asks the money collector to close the door. He has still done his job.

Life,

is so dandy!

Cinderella and her Step Brothers.

All the men in the Collie family are tidy. Give or take a few. To begin with I couldn't help but thinking; clearly I have the more masculine gene being the totty pig that I am when it comes to keeping a room tidy. Though this wasn't always entirely true. Sometimes I failed to sleep knowing that my room was in such a state. Believe it or not my conscience also nagged at my untidy habits. Jiminy Cricket was perching there on my now overly boney shoulder having a rant. Tis a bizarre thought to acknowledge that one of the filthiest countries has turned me into a neat freak. To need everything in place before I go to sleep. To have the clothes folded and in their correct piles.
Why is it easier to do dishes here in a sink with no plug, cold water, and a trickle at that? Yet previously I would literally fight off doing the dishes at home which included a sink with a plug, hot water, a tea towel and detergent. Woah! Exciting prospect. That wasn't sarcasm, I am being serious on this one.
Yet here I bother to do the dishes, knowing that a son is too lazy and chauvinistic to help his disabled mother tidy up, despite her just cooking for him. Believe me, cooking chapatis with two hands is task enough, let alone one. Yes the males I live with are brilliant cooks, though a little heavy handed on the spice for me (but so is KFC India and I'm not even talking Hot Wings. Original recipie got switched up.) On the cleaning up while they go, and afterwards though, here is the downfall. Here is the argument I just had. Here is where I struggle with not stashing my food in my room because it is seldom to have the males purchasing food. I just struggle to understand how difficult it may be to put peelings in a bag while you go instead of throwing them all over the bench as if you were waiting for pet guinea pig to crawl from the plug hole and hoover them up.
Perhaps the maternal gene showing through, trying nicely to explain why it is important to wipe down the floor in the bathroom after 'showering'. Otherwise it turns into a big muddy, hairy, wet mess. Resembling that of a colossal bathroom monster that is only achieved through general lack of personal care and hygine. At mid twenties you would think this would be established.
And drawing comparisons between now and two months ago, it is funny. Funny how it was the Indians who once frustrated me and now it is the outsiders. Maybe because they are the ones who should know better. Who have merely had the oppurtunity at education, at being feed regularly, at having someone who actually gives a shit.

The heart on my sleave.

At this time exactly, give or take about thirty seconds, I have just truly discovered what it is to be free and feel free in love..To be free in life. And in thyself. To have memories, but only cling to the beautiful ones and free oneself of the undesirable ones, knowing that the lessons have been learned.
(S)omeone was correct, to love you are free. To love you gain strength. In yourself and in your love for your own sandy creature. Whatever and wherever they may be for you.
I have loved with all of my heart and learned with it too, to my beloved. Initially it was not till after Hannah's death that I truly let be. Freed myself from the un- necessities lingering.
Though being here, dealing, not dealing, allowed me to slip back into habits. I allowed myself back into those habits. Ones I do not desire in myself. Certain weakness' that if given enough thought gain the momentum to be destructive.
So, after twelve days spent with a lover and a friend, soul mate and my partner in crime, we found ourselves the time of our lives. Thus far.
Coming back to the village was different this time. Different to the days of the girl in the mirror. The lost lonely soul. I have found you are only lonely if you choose not to see all those around you. Love is free. It is also everywhere. And it comes in everyone. Amount doesn't apply. It cannot ever quite be expressed in words but one will never stop trying.
This time I have found myself without forcibly digging deeper. Feelings float to the surface, bubble their way up until the pop with something more. Something new. Something blue. (I just liked the sound of that last sentence, forgive me for feeling marital.) And actually if they were any colour they would be yellow.
I now understand what it is to be the daughter, the sister, the friend, the lover and the soul mate. The niece, and the cousin. To be Nicola.
I know who I am and I know where I am going.
Life is chapters. This is a jolly dandy one!
Are you with me?

For you.

10 days with hundreds of stories to tell, the face, the smell, the person, the company that will never grow old.
Talking to this space in the back of the car where you sat just less than an hour,
Ago is where our adventures stay,
Up here is where those memories will never fade.
To challenege, to love, to meet at half way,
Yes, this journey is the most rewarding place.
To free thyself of what seldom clings on,
It is in this nest the branches become so strong.
Or under the rock, beside the sea,
We talk of Liberace and how beautiful it is to be free.
That smile you do, no you don't have a clue,
How much is said through those sweet eyes of blue.
No matter the time nor the place,
You can say it all through that beautiful face.
As you rough out your ringlets.
They'll only come back,
How they curl round your ears and down the neck to your back.
Time is never enough when you must say see you later.
My alligator.
Just in a while
My crocodile.