My teacher was getting exasperated at how I responded to each of her admonitions. She told me a strange story from her village about something that happened near the pesantren. One day, a girl was changing her napkin in a public restroom. She was in such a hurry that she forgot to rinse the pad and tossed it straight into the trash. When the girl got outside, it dawned on her that she’d left her ring behind. She ran back and opened the door to the toilet. Imagine her shock when she came upon a long-haired woman squatting, her back to her. When the woman turned, the girl saw her pale face and red lips and screamed. Even more horrifying, the woman was licking her blood-soaked pad.

Blood and ghosts, I nodded. It made sense. They always showed up together in stories. I stopped with my whys.

I need the right conditions.

I should be able to manage everything in the office, but I can’t. In front of my computer, from nine to five, my job is to think up ideas. Yet not a single word or image comes to mind, not in the middle of all these computers constantly chirping out message alerts, not in my cramped rolling chair, with a limited set of positions to sit in, surrounded by colleagues in work shirts, sometimes joking, sometimes muttering who knows what. Ideas don’t come to me here. They come in places that let my thoughts ramble and dance.

‘You’re a copywriter, you know, not a poet,’ a friend said once.

‘A copywriter isn’t a photocopier.’

‘What you are is a troublemaker. Don’t tell me you have to get stoned each time you’re after inspiration.’

No, I don’t have to. Maybe what I need is to take a walk in the park, to feed the birds. Maybe I have to sit by a waterfall and watch water droplets flit about like flies. Maybe I have to get on a bus and make a survey of the city’s smog through the window. Or become a fish – silent, motionless, mummified by time. And then when inspiration comes, I will dart at it.

But I’m a fish trapped in an aquarium. My gaze penetrates the glass, but keeps getting refracted in the process.

I need the right conditions. So, after work, I make an altar in my room. Laptop on a soft mattress. Dim reading lamp. Chill-out music. Strong black coffee, no sugar. A couple of slim joints. My holy shrine to the goddess of capitalism. I begin my quest for inspiration while chanting a mantra.

Oh, menstruation. Oh, menstruation. Ommm…