Indie Web Carnival prompt for July 2025: Totems.
Written at IWC 5.
We were discussing this prompt at the meet-up and it was hard for people to relate to. Abhinav in particular said “you can’t focus on things - they come and go”. I don’t know if I have an object I come back to as much as I have rituals. I pick up my backpack which is packed just so and put it in my car every morning. I pick out the rings on my fingers depending on how cool I want to feel that day.
I used to carry objects around all the time when I was younger. That worked okay when I was a forgetful kid in a mall in Dubai, but less so when I was a forgetful teenager passing through public transport hubs in small-town Karnataka. I had an album full of precious baby pictures that got eaten up by the well in my grandmother’s house. Joan gave me a piece of plywood painted with the sweetest sentiments one summer holiday - I took it to India and the wood caught fungus. I’ve had my backpack stolen from outside my college exam hall - twice! - and journals dumped out or drowned in a fountain. That’s when I stopped owning physical things.
I realise, as I am writing this, that most of this “object skepticism” comes from a childhood on the move that I couldn’t control. I’ve moved cities twice and houses 4 times in the last 5 years, and haven’t lost anything major, but the idea of centering my self and my self-soothing around an object still gives me pause. I will always reach for what I can carry in my head, that can’t be taken from me - words. A few mantras to keep telling myself, at different phases of my life. My desktop password for a period was a variation on the word “publish”. I am embarrassed to say for how long, because it truly took so much effort to start writing with any meaningful frequency - but I’m here now, aren’t I?
Some of these phrases I steal from people in conversation, and then put in my keep to look at. Some of these phrases I surface in therapy. Sometimes, they live on my phone wall