Creating life : gift for my future self

I am beginning my next Phase of life, I am moving back from Manipal to Bangalore. This means two things, 1.There is time enough to blog, my husband who lives in Bangalore will share the home workload, 2. I am not spending every long weekend traveling to  Bangalore and back. This means this blog will show up more entries regularly from June. Book reviews, my self-development goals, political rants, and poetry. Everything that needs to be written shall be.  There will be a longish post on Philosophy and why there are no women in it. Soon, I promise.

 Meanwhile, do go and check out my Youtube videos on Planners and random flip-throughs of my cash wallet system.

The Konmari technique: decluttering my life

After a year of fly lady and going from chaos to can have anyone over sister, I think I am ready to try the Kon Mari technique. I had read of this in Houzz and my dearest friend Cindu mentioned it to me recently. I was hesitant if I could go through what I thought was a shock type of declutter program but I realise that all things I have practiced last year including regular 27 fling boogie ( getting 27 things out of the house at one short time interval) , give a thing every day of the month, no buy weeks, clothes and earring purges, still my house is filled with things. I love it but I wanted a more spiritual  way of working with letting go. I just got the " spark joy" book by Marie Kondo.If you are doing this first time, do go with Maria Ciley's sink reflections or Marie Kondo's first book " life changing magic of tidying up."
I started using paper planners last year and this has led to creating time to do things I love, including blogging which is one of my passions.  So what better way to use some of that extra time than to blog on decluttering, in a real way. So there is an order to declutter using categories and so I am going to adapt the Kon Mari technique to the baby steps of fly lady. As I go along let me see how it works. First I set the timer to 30 minutes, the Kon Mari takes more time than a regular fly lady declutter. For the fly lady way you  get to a pile of clutter and separate it to the categories : keep, give away, and trash piles/ baskets. Then we put back the stuff. This was great in dealing with paper, stationery, clothes, books and all sorts of pots and pans. But my "keep" pile always was a bit larger and I didn't feel I had actually got rid of much stuff. It was also hard to decide what to keep and what to give away. MK says to begin with clothes. So today after a reading few pages of the spark joy book I pulled out all the night clothes from my cupboard and piled it on my bed. ( the bed is clean, sheets changed and well made as soon as I got up as a part of my morning routine , the flylady style. Here are the pictures of the results.


pile all clothes on bed.



Each article of clothing is picked up, held in my hand , hugged, felt to see if it sparks joy.

Folded

Joy is not excitement or a wild sense of exhilaration but the quiet comfort of happiness, familiarity, content.

give away and the donate pile after thanking

final keep nightwear  that goes into my cupboard.

Mansi talks

Waking

Everyday, everytime a woman grits her teeth and gets into her daily business of living a thinking-less world. If She thinks, then she cannot be, who she has to be. she will awaken from her dream and know who she truly is, then she realizes endless possibilities. That doesn't suit this world....


 I awoke in darkness, every fibre of my body screaming. A repeat dream that has haunted me often. Locked behind closed doors, petrol fumes filled my lungs as my whole body burnt away. as I grasped my burning clothes, my skin peeled away like a glove. Petrol- heat and smoke. Air.. Help, I grasped at a semblance of some prayer. Gasping, I awake safe on my own lifetime, my partner's gentle snores assuring me all is well.


I have never shared this dream with anyone till today. It was a private nightmare, one I sought meaning for in theories of past lives and in the conclusion that it was the the activity of an over imaginative mind.


Dramatic and very newsmaking my dream may be but the real life is not that melodramatic. But it is no less a nightmare for the everyday woman. She is born into a world that she must negotiate by the art of not thinking. Thinking awakens desires not known to her kind.  Violated in body, mind and every space she has she retreats into those corners of an unthinking darkness. Washing, cleaning shopping watching mindless soaps.
 Every bit of her identity is seen as threatening, every joy she derives alone  has to balanced with giving and temperance. Even the so- called free fun that she has is presumed to be an object of pleasure for someone else.


Some of dear friends will brush this aside. But sisters, it takes some thinking to wake up. Don't wake up now, for then you will then have my nightmare to share for all women. I think and then I cannot be at peace. I am a woman born and trapped in a man's world. No home to fly away to.




Dedicated to the everyday woman's world....

Work

Thinking out of my walls they said was easy,

the walls are your thoughts.

I found solace in scrub-pad's confused layers,

as I cleaned away thoughts along with the soiled vessels,

 I spun-dry my tears after soaking them in salt.

I swept away all the taunts and teasing,

gathered them up into the empty vacuum of my mind.

I finally remote hammered my thoughts shut in 

endless pouring of the soaps on tv.

Yet one tiny thought escaped

crawled up searing my throat,

squeezed its way with a silent whistle 

 dripped down on my cheeks.

 The bell rings and I banish that traitor and

mindless, go on to receive the dhobi. 

Cleverer people than me are telling me that all the hype about Anna Hazare is silly. / More people are pointing out to me that Irom's fast has been going around for 10 years yet " people" don't support her. Others make very pertinent remarks about the " disturbing" Jan Lokpal bill.
http://kafila.org/2011/04/09/at-the-risk-of-heresy-why-i-am-not-celebrating-with-anna-hazare/

I have stood for trees, lakes and rocks. By tigers and narmada valley people. The anti- kaiga and the anti-road widening. I have always added to the mass of protesters doing what I think is right and carrying on a crusade in which 9 times out of ten I lose.
 My voice is small but often unheard in the greater concerns of skepticism. Yet I voice myself. Not out a great motive to make a world shattering difference but in the hope that my voice will add to the strength of all the clamor. A clamor that peaks and wanes in time. Each peak is linked by a handful of committed people like me who continue to hold on to lost causes. And sometimes, we make a commitment to join a particular protest, not because other causes are less important. But becoz sometimes it is important to support things whose time has come.
 The lokpal bill's time has come.
 I understand I have to speak for Irom too. And the tigers and the mountains of odisha and the dalit students and the poorly paid garment workers. But right now as I raise my voice for the lokpal bill. Silence Skeptics.  I am at least not dead, resigned and bitter as you are, I will fight.