#5: On the virtual cookies for my soul
Love me some infinite conversations spiced with carby puns and seasoned with WhatsApp screenshots
A new entrant to my life recently asked me what my “virtual cookie” was and it got me thinking about the minutes in between the busy hours that feel like escalators to cloud 9.
There’s this poignant quote by Grace Paley which has been swirling in my mind… “write what will stop your breath if you don’t write.” And it’s precisely these escalator-like moments that have been pausing my breath (in a good way) during the croissant-like busyness of my days.
When I eventually write the memoir of my life, the opening testimonial is going to be about how I’ve never felt like I’ve had an uneventful day. And even the days that were relatively less so offered some new learning about how much I love the constant of change as much as I appreciate the pillowy focaccia of predictability (can’t help it with the bread puns, soz).
But during those infinitely packed days, my virtual cookie has been so unequivocally sitting in the chaise lounge of nostalgia, and spending time to revisit my archives with those who upholstered it. Taking the furniture analogy a bit further and not wanting to be an armchair philosophe, I do think love brings with it different seasons. Some gentler, warmer, breezy days. Others filled with moody drizzles, tumultuous thunder, and an enveloping greyness. However, its varying forecast has also spurred many a meaningful conversation with a patient friend.
In my earlier 20s, love’s temperamental swings brought with it a sense of all-consuming indignation peppered with curiosity of what lay ahead. I would have moments where the journey just didn’t make sense and while I love a full glass as much as the neighbouring optimist, it felt truly impossible to imagine if I would ever quite “get” it. During these moments, it was my friends who enlightened me on the process. It was L.B. who told me that we would be okay and that we were, in fact, the blind leading the colour blind when it came to matters of the heart. It was A.V.D.S. who would comfort me with stories of our childhood in Dubai and our age of innocence binging on Blue’s “Guilty” album. It was J.D. who would remind me that feeling anxious was natural and that she would always be there for me, just like she was when we were 10 years old on our afterschool bus rides in Muscat, Oman. It was J.L.F. who was always ready for a late night walk to the Lincoln memorial, armed with his structurally realist mind (I don’t care that you changed majors, you’re forever my first International Affairs bestie) on nights when I needed desperate relationship advice. It was S.C.J.L. who would make me laugh to no end about our Friday evenings spent debating in Model UN, reminding me that even when love felt difficult, our nerdy times in high school together would never fade. In fact, all of these friends reminded my stubborn self that love was very much about the process than the outcome (a topic for another post). The collective wisdom of deep friendship is frankly intangible, it is these friends who drew out the roundness of love in full clarity for me.
Not that I am quite on the other side yet but I reflect on these friendships and what they taught me. A large part of what I feel is awe. Awe for the depth of these conversations, awe for how they fed the parts of me which felt deeply unsure, and awe for how they continue to bring me a sojourn of sorts during particularly packed days.
One of my favourite books, which deserves a Substack ramble of its own, is Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. In it, he writes of Marco Polo’s perambulation through different cities, reporting back with a sense of wonder, the very same I feel about the conversations of the last decade.
“Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.”
So on my busiest days, the virtual cookie I find most comforting to nibble on is the conversations, past and present, which made me really feel. I will quite literally scroll through old WhatsApp chats, re-listen to archived voice notes, and dig up an old e-mail thread in my Hotmail account (lmao, I still have Hotmail) for the revival and reconnection to a past moment. While some of these conversations are with people who have since faded out or departed from my current inner circle, I realise that a good number of these conversations and their energies are still at my fingertips - another voice note, call, a text, a heartbeat away. And they remind me not only of the myriad of ways I have deeply loved but the different ways in which I continue to do so.
For those of you potentially scoffing at my obsession with the archives, I can assure you I have the (sometimes inconvenient) dismaying habit of cold calling the time messengers in my life. On one particular morning a few weeks ago, I was walking home from a boxing training and decided that all I wanted to do was to speak to a college classmate and one of my favourite people in this world. I.H. has this innate ability to make me laugh like no one else and most of our conversations, in real life or via phone, are taken up with sheer laughter. It’s friends like her that make me so appreciative for the people who, over the years, have chosen to see me in all my colours. There’s something so stunning to be said for friendship conversations where you’re discussing the existential, comical panic brought on by a swath of fruit flies (this happened to her apartment in college and I’m still not letting it go) while discussing a particular brand of viral Caucasian feminism that certain female artists have recently incited.
Conversations with friends like this have also taught me to appreciate my own tonality. Sometimes you have a really weird and wild night to recount and during others, you’re folding your laundry and can’t figure out what to have for dinner. It’s conversations like this that have coloured my every day too. This pretty much sums up my conversations with another wonderful friend (S.L.) in my life. I can’t count how many times we’ve rung each other up at 10 A.M. on a Sunday morning to talk about a souvenir in her handbag from the prior evening’s adventure. They sum up to the exact number of times we’ve sent voice notes analysing a random Instagram post by a political office holder in the country where we live (for context, we’re both policy nerds). A decade later, barring no major lapses in technological memory, I know we’ll have the archives of these kooky conversations and have many more inspired by the very same.
There are also the conversations that never seem to have a start or end. A.F. and I met almost four years ago when we both started going to our boxing gym. While our friendship was initially born out of our love for fitness, our sisterhood was cultivated on account of being only children with a mutual passion for coffee and conversation. This particular memory sums us up. We had spent time almost half a day hanging out together. On our way to our respective homes (we lived down the road from each other), we were still texting. When we both got home, we were still texting and decided to phone call. I honestly can’t remember what earth-shattering topic we were discussing. At that moment, her husband asked who she was speaking to and when she said she was talking to me, he responded “but you just hung out.” I got such a laugh out of that but years on, some conversations are just that good.
I am soon going to be godmother to her first child and recently asked her, “everything is going to change, isn’t it?” While my question was not born out of fear of change but mere anticipation, I realised that there is a comfort in embracing change together. A lot of things are going to change, just like they did when she moved countries last year. But a lot of things will stay the same. Sure, we don’t grab take-away coffees for each other anymore before/after boxing training. And sure, I can’t just show up at her place with sushi and another rant in tow. But, we do still have these infinite conversations in which “good morning” and “good night’ blurs together. We still ask each other how our workouts were. We still laugh about the same random things. The same will be true when the newest addition to her (at this point, our) family arrives - our conversations will have a new protagonist but in between, we’ll still be us - laughing about a killer workout, and chatting away into the wee hours. In any case, a few days after asking her this question, I found my clingy self booking a flight to go see her and bask in the moments of now.
Conversations bring so much to our lives, especially during moments of silence, distance and difficulty. I think there is a romantic depth brought on when the person you love calls you with no other intent but to hear your voice and to share about your days apart. I remember the moment I knew I fell in love with J.P. - we would talk for hours on end. So intricate were the conversations that when we first met, there were 10 different lines of thought in just one conversation - from His Royal Badness (Prince) to the novel The Beguiled to finding photo automats. I’m not sure if it’s the fact that we’re both writers or if we both just share a fondness for poor attention spans but we would write paragraphs on paragraphs trying to cover all relevant matters and with cohesive responses to each. At some point, we comically progressed to voice notes only to realise we’d likely never get to all of it in time before another 10 topics popped up. During our times apart and the complexities that life threw us, it was these exhilaratingly real conversations filled with giggles and guffaws that reminded me of what was true and what was worth it.
To be clear, I do not consider these conversations an escape from our reality. But they were bridges to a different time - companions in their own rite and a reminder of all that was pure, organic, and filled with infinite, possible connection. Now, while much time has passed and we no longer have these calls, I regard these conversations as a reminder of love which I will meet again and again - regardless of who with and definitely for their sheer sense of enlivenment.
On the days during which work and meetings seem to consume every morsel of time, these conversations nourish me, through archives and more. To have such a diverse, whole palette in conversation is markedly an assurance that my chaise lounge will be well-upholstered with the voices of those who I love…with a bowl of baci di dama (my favourite, if you’re wondering) at that.