I'm in dire need and help of Pest Control Inc. I have four large ones in my house. Rodents! They answer my phone, eat my food, sleep in my bed, use my bathroom, shower me with sweaty hugs after a football match and have the audacity to call themselves my housemates! Oh the horror! The sheer horror!

For the first time in my 26 years I am sharing my living quarters with men. Four of those. Mercy! Is there no patron saint of victims of parasitic infestation? That's right, the ecology of such communal living consists of only one type of inter-relationship between organisms. Parasitism.

Morning last, as I tugged my limbs out of the last remains of the anesthetic folds of sleep I gaped in stupefied horror at the flood in my bathroom. Admittedly, it was a puddle but the size doesn't matter, does it? That sweet faint scent of lavender was eaten up and replaced by the strong pungent aroma of after-shave. I noticed, helplessly, at the floating little islands of suds and hair in that ocean of a puddle. Perhaps it was the sleep in my head but I thought I saw the floating hair take up different shapes and one of them was a fleeting sneer. Like that of an indecent mistress who wins against a man's wife for the place in his heart or his pants.

As I opened the door to the bathroom, it took me a good few seconds to get my eyes accustomed to the steamy interiors. When the steam settled, I noticed a million little droplets on the mirror and the wall. Squiggling. I stepped in for a closer examination of the place and I landed into that ghastly puddle. Why I opted for examining it closely I still do not know. Perhaps it was curiosity born out of disbelief. The lid to my shampoo was not only opened, but screwed off and placed on the shelf. Upon holding the bottle of shampoo to screw the cap back on I felt I was holding a slippery wriggling little fish. A fish called Herbal Essences.

Finally my heart could not take it anymore and I walked out with the intention of giving the lads a piece of my mind. The lads were gone. Football apparently.

I hereby admit my ignorance. Ignorance of how men function. I've come across various claims, generated from the feminine, that men are like babys. I acknowledge my ignorance. I never knew what it actually meant until now. They leave their waste around and eat what someone else cooks. They expect someone to cook for them and clean up after them and leave them alone. I'm only glad wearing adult diapers isn't in yet.

I'm in search of some custom-built contraptions nowadays. Tupperware with built-in rodent traps. Bottle-shape tasers in case one of them decides to filch some juice. A motion-activated dart gun in case the toilet seat is left up. Is replacing hair-removal cream with shampoo too harsh?

I am open to suggestions.

In an effort to push down my last botany induced ramblings, here is the second part of 'Commuters and The Abandoned Baby in a Bag (I)'.

The first thing I noticed about her was her derelict disposition.

She was wearing a baby pink sweatshirt with white borders. Her hands hung heavily in her pockets in front of her waist as she tried her best to hide her round belly.

She was carrying a leather hand bag a bit too large for her minature body.

Shoulder length hair, parted on the right side, they ended curling outwards.

Large cheek bones, sprinkled with acne. She was chocolate coloured with hints of coffee. The expression she wore, looked painfully nostalgic as she dragged her feet to move forward.

She came and sat so close to me that I was forced to look up from my cigarette and notice her entering a stranger's safe space. I looked at her and smiled. She looked hungry and dead. I could not detect that twinkle in her existence that would give me a hint that this person is alive or has any inclination to do so. She had a damaged aura about her.

I offered her a cigarette. She declined, trying to smile.

I didn't move. Neither did she. We sat there, lost in time and space. Each to their own thoughts, each comfortable in their own mind. I didn't mind her, she didn't mind me. In fact she didn't mind the world. She had heavier things to burden herself with.

And then I saw her get up, wearily. She stood up, took a sharp turn and started walking with a certain disturbing determination in her gait.

For a split second I felt there was something wrong in her walking-away. That is when I realised she was leaving her bag behind. Before I could shout out behind her I heard a muffled cry from the bag. The leather bag was zipped up and breathing.

I jumped to my feet, mustered all the breath I had in me and shouted, 'Hey you! You left your baby here. Hey you!'.

She would not look back. Without thinking, I smashed the bottle of Coca-Cola on the ground breaking it into a million pieces. This commotion got her reflex action to take over and look back. And I siezed it! I siezed her gaze and she ceased.

I ran, with all my might, I ran. She froze. I ran towards her. When I reached her, I held her arms and shook her. Perhaps it is because I was shaking myself.

'How can you forget your baby back there?! And why is it in a bag? How can you?!'.

Her eyes begged me not to attract attention. I calmed down a notch but only enough to discourage on-lookers from looking on. I still wasn't going to let go of her.

I remember the sweat on my hands as I gripped her tiny arm between my palm and fingers, firmly. I admit I wanted to tighten the grip to perhaps hurt her.

Walking back towards the bag, my mind finally caught up with my body. Could it be her fault? Could it actually be the mother's fault?

My grip on her arm loosened up a little as I started looking down, embarassed.

'Please, is there any way I can help'?

'No. I don't want this baby. It is not baby of love'.

'Might I ask what is it you mean'? I admitted my simple-mindedness.

'This man hurt me and touch me, and now this his fruit. I not want anything of this man.' She responded, eager to be let go.

'Could we not hand the baby over to the authorities?' I suggested. Trusting the authorities to do right by her and the baby.

'This man touch me, is police!!' She trembled. 'He officer, I work his house. Clean his house! He touch me at night and say I steal things from kitchen and make me leave'.

I let go of her arm.

[To be continued...]

There is something of an ant-of-the-colony feature to commuting daily. Every morning with suprising potency and speed you are made to feel insignificant as you enter the crowded central station. In a matter of seconds you are brought down from being someone's world, their day and night, to a mere ant surrounded by a million of your brothers and sisters. At times I feel like the last sad speck of the smoldering remains of the great fire that engulfed Rome as Nero went about being a pansy with his flute or was it a harp?

I digress. I feel 'speckish' on more days. It's humbling and phrased like that, a depressing state of personal affairs.

On work days the central station is especially crowded. On the train that abstract vicinity of personal space around strangers diminishes down to a mere zero as they push and pull themselves onto the train until it can accomdate no more. Office job gentlemen move with clumsy agility to avoid over exertion on their neatly pressed suits. Young women struggle to fight the sweat from spoiling their delicate make up. Teenagers with hairstyles from all ages and places, pointing in every direction struggle to keep the baggy trousers just under their buttocks as they insert their earphones to disconnect themselves from this sweaty and inconvenient transit. Young lovers find solace in each other's company as they whisper sweet nothings to each other. Quite unpremeditatedly you can see the young man take up his role of the protector, protecting his delicate princess from the shrapnels of public transport. The young woman, she's much too eager to test how far her knight will go as she stages episodes of pseudo-tripping and hints of fainting. A Kentucky Fried Chicken employee siezes this oppurtunity to catch a nap all the while struggling to keep his head on his shoulders. A keen eyed middle aged woman, perched in contempt, can be seen staring out the life force from the woman jotting down these details.

It is an entirely boring experience; commuting that is.

After all how much pleasure could one derive from watching a girl strive to finish her entire semester's course in a forty-minute train ride on her way to an exam? You get on the train in the morning, blend in as you find your corner to set yourself down with the other boring faces, sleep flooding their eyes still, you bide your time and get off at your stop. EVenings are no better. If you are lucky enough to find a seat, know you will not escape the evils of having a large strange head lean on your shoulder.

However, every once in a while something happens that shakes your very existence down to the core of your heart as you struggle for days to make sense of it.

[To be continued...]

What is the prognosis of writer's block? Or rather, this particular block? As it were, life around me still denies me a muse and my soul refuses to feel inspired. I miss that split second of stimulus, short but strong that would set me off typing away at the speed of thought.

I figured letting it pass and not pushing it would help me get back on track. I ended up counting the days like beads on a rosary. I feel like a zombie while my fellow bloggers are dishing out fresh hot-cross-buns at record speed.

Perhaps it is I need change. However, my life nowadays it such that it doesn't allow much change. My place in life dictates thus. So I end up asking for advice from the old lady; the introvert in me.

Give me some time.

I think I suffer from writer's block.

Among the morning crowd on the Komuter, I tend to choose a victim. A sacrificial lamb for the fine tuning of my verbal skills. After stripping them down to mere words, raw and bare, I file them away with the rest of the victims in a diary. Their remains, in pen. They serve as fodder for my linguistic ambitions.

Do not judge me, I do them a favour. An indian mother ended up in the category of hindu godesses. She had divinely mischievous eyes. A perpetually shocked looking Anorexica convinced my eye that Aphrodite must look like her. These are all my perceptions of course. Funnily and strangely I have never found any man interesting enough to subject to my descriptive knife. Perhaps they do not hold as many secrets.

As it were, lately I am failing to put together legible words about these innocents. I feel like a failing tyrant who holds supreme and sovereign court by the day and massages his aching and weakening bones by the anesthetic darkness of the night. Romance aside, I feel like a corpse.

Cause of death, Verbal Infarction complicated by Grammatical Inflammation.

And so yesterday I tried to put my writer's block to test. This is his child.

My Days Commuting

She's just boarded the train in a caramel coloured frock with beige polka dots tied loosely at the back. She is about 8 months pregnant. The part of her frock that covers her now enlarged breasts is white laced. It has 'quadri-corollar' (four petalled?) flowers on them that are connected to each other at the tips of the petals.

She's wearing school-girl buckled shoes with a joke for a heel. They are almost new. As if they were bought for this pregnancy. In them she wears stockings. Inside her stockings her calves and shins look like they are preparing to hold the weight that is coming their way in the days to come.

I see no wedding band on her left hand. However, she's wearing two gold rings on the right one and a gold nosepin.

She's carrying a red bottle-bag.

A red ID holder hangs around her neck. Her work place ID rests on her very rotund belly. It seems to be in perfect symbiosis with her belly; feeding off the baby's nourishment while protecting it from head-on collisions.

Her hair's tied tightly and neatly in a ponytail that reaches the small of her back. She's keeps dozing off and messing up her do. She's asleep now. She certainly looks tired.

She has a bit of a double-chin act going on under her jaws.

Her rotund belly seems to be breathing. As if it respires on it's own. That is a bit scary to my perceptions, I admit.

Good God! A hefty, heavily made up woman has just come and sat beside me blocking my view. Of all the empty seats on the train... She smells of ammonia like that of hair removal cream. I digress. She fails miserably to attract my verbal attention.

Back to the pregnant.

Her hair's neatly combed except for a few stubborn short strands that stick out on the forhead and beyond.

She's chocoloate coloured but right now my neighbour's chemical aroma is interfering with my ability to pull words.

Heave!

She's chocolate coloured except for her face which holds darker dots, almost in a polka fashion on her jaw bones. Like remenants of acne. Her lower lip has a meandering horizontal line across it dividing it into two different shades of brown. One darker than the other. Except for her red bottle-bag her shades of brown seem like the work of Rembrandt.

At intervals she wakes up to get her bearings.

What joy! The pungent ammoniac woman chose to change her seats. Perhaps she read of herself being raped in words.

For a pregnant mother she looks tired and cynical about it almost.

Did she want this baby? What does she hope from it? What does she fear from it? Except for the tired and cynical expression her face doesn't give away much.

I'm having a hard time reading through her.

Perhaps it is that she's done this many times before.

A puny woman just came and sat beside me with a strong floral smell. Almost astringent. Once again I have somebody fuelling my block. What do people do in the morning? Take an inventory of everything that smells potent, and shower in them? My head hurts.

People need a lesson in perfumery.

What was I thinking? Or rather, what was I not thinking? Do they not sell viagra for the verbally impotent at the chemist's? Where is my magic blue pill?