I am an empty vessel today...
No.
If...
If I were an empty vessel today, you would be gone...you would be nothing but a faint trail of dust and love...I would have lost my words and my half dead dreams.
I would've have pulled the plug and drained us away. Far off and away. Think..us, mingling with dirt and other lives..rejected and refused.
Obscure. No longer known or recognized.
Not wanted. Not needed.
Morbid in a life that is young.
Morose in a world that is old and aging.
Don't tell me to think of blue skies and sunflowers...
Don't buy me sunflowers.
Yellow is not happy and young. Grey is not dismal and old.
Its all in your head. In my head.
I'll blink and you'll be gone.
Transient. Temporary.
I'll blink and you'll remember...
Remember that you promised me a home of grey walls. If I leave the walls all bare and naked- no pictures, no photographs, no souvenirs- will my world be less lived?
Will you cut me a window where the tree stands? I'll watch you leave...look up and I'll wave you goodbye.
I'll spin myself a life of long slow ellipses. You can sit by your corner and watch me walk and stumble across it. You can see me escape one and fall into the other. See me be.
But will you stay that long?
Or no...Just another name....
I wish I were that shiny red button on Little Red Riding Hood's cloak...a fairytale life...Someone dreamed me up somewhere into a symmetrically perfect existence.
Why couldn't that have been you?
But you never dream of me....
You don't dream of me..you don't hear me..you don't see me. I am where the world ends for you. But where people are, where the sounds and smells and stories of other lives and times come, there I cease.
I shrink a little..everyday...into anger..into despair.
What is the difference between indifference and blindness?
She...a figment of my mind, my imagination... but more a fragment of your past...threading her way always into today. My today. Your today.... inspiring you, making you smile and laugh. Live.
And me?
Shadow....shrinking
Your music has dust...but sing me that song again..the one you wrote for me..
It was for me wasn't it?
There are no tender sweet words between us...but just for this one time will you sing the song again and hold my hand?
Your fingers lie limp in my hand...a few seconds and then I will pull myself away from that hold. Nothing will trap you then..
Its a cold world.
Bleak.
But grey is not old and dismal.
Grey november.
Cold and grey.
You sit by a cold fire...your stories all told...
And shadows shrink a little more..
I empty myself a little more..
Another fistful of nothing...
Dust and a fullstop.
Friday, October 21, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
stupid stupid poem
Booooooo!!!!!!
Did I scare you?
Huu huu huu!!!!
Come now, don't feel blue
Run and wash your face in the loo
Then we'll go to the zoo.
What? You don't know what to do?
What's wrong with you?
Still no clue?
Well then, I'll fix u a smile with glue
And sit awhile here with you...
Did I scare you?
Huu huu huu!!!!
Come now, don't feel blue
Run and wash your face in the loo
Then we'll go to the zoo.
What? You don't know what to do?
What's wrong with you?
Still no clue?
Well then, I'll fix u a smile with glue
And sit awhile here with you...
Friday, August 19, 2011
Absence of Silence.
Spin. Spin. Spin....
Spin a little now...in a dance or a song you sing alone...
Spin a little tomorrow....in hope, in love and in despair...
Spin in chaos and look for quiet through eyes that have long lost their bearing..
Spin.
Dream.
Live.
Spin.
Pause...pause a while. Just one small moment?
Catch your breath and let the world whirl on and on with its heartbreaking insanity.For you, there is time enough for more of living. Come out and sit...
Watch the world through your urban window. Catch it in your fantasies..wrap it in colors you like...do what you want..go where you want to..
This is your one small moment of silence...your delusion..
Go run...run and chase it down if you must...this moment of silence...
Don't tell me about your moment of silence...there are none really. The only absolute absence of sound can come in the absence of life...
You breathe.
Blood rushes through your body. Every vein thumps a dark red.
Your heart beats.
Life makes a sound. Every second..seventy five beats a minute...
And silence? Insist on it still if you want to....
We live in sounds and voices....Remember in smells, colors, fleeting images and permanent pictures...Why must you then think of a moment of silence?
Antithesis....
That ferris wheel? Remember? Some fair a long time ago. You screamed till you were hoarse and rode yourself into a dizzying spell of wonder and nausea...that's it. Life.
A crowd of faces and sensations. What good will it do to you to deny it?
You could push me into a soundproof room with bare walls..No sounds there right?
I will walk from one end of the room to the other..Footsteps. Sound.
I will scratch my head and think of what to do..how do I get out? Sound.
I will knock on the door. Sound.
I will imagine the passage of time. Tick tock. Tick tock. Sound.
I will give up and sit on the floor. Sound.
I will fidget. An itch on the forehead. Sound.
I will let the mind wander.
Silence? Finally?
No wait...where?
My thoughts are noise.
My mind is sound.....
The world is never still.....
You stop at twenty thousand hertz. Life doesn't.
Spin a little now...in a dance or a song you sing alone...
Spin a little tomorrow....in hope, in love and in despair...
Spin in chaos and look for quiet through eyes that have long lost their bearing..
Spin.
Dream.
Live.
Spin.
Pause...pause a while. Just one small moment?
Catch your breath and let the world whirl on and on with its heartbreaking insanity.For you, there is time enough for more of living. Come out and sit...
Watch the world through your urban window. Catch it in your fantasies..wrap it in colors you like...do what you want..go where you want to..
This is your one small moment of silence...your delusion..
Go run...run and chase it down if you must...this moment of silence...
Don't tell me about your moment of silence...there are none really. The only absolute absence of sound can come in the absence of life...
You breathe.
Blood rushes through your body. Every vein thumps a dark red.
Your heart beats.
Life makes a sound. Every second..seventy five beats a minute...
And silence? Insist on it still if you want to....
We live in sounds and voices....Remember in smells, colors, fleeting images and permanent pictures...Why must you then think of a moment of silence?
Antithesis....
That ferris wheel? Remember? Some fair a long time ago. You screamed till you were hoarse and rode yourself into a dizzying spell of wonder and nausea...that's it. Life.
A crowd of faces and sensations. What good will it do to you to deny it?
You could push me into a soundproof room with bare walls..No sounds there right?
I will walk from one end of the room to the other..Footsteps. Sound.
I will scratch my head and think of what to do..how do I get out? Sound.
I will knock on the door. Sound.
I will imagine the passage of time. Tick tock. Tick tock. Sound.
I will give up and sit on the floor. Sound.
I will fidget. An itch on the forehead. Sound.
I will let the mind wander.
Silence? Finally?
No wait...where?
My thoughts are noise.
My mind is sound.....
The world is never still.....
You stop at twenty thousand hertz. Life doesn't.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Cold Mirror
My mirror has gone cold. Cold and stark.
I leave my body away from my reflections..
I was born with it and I will die with it. But do I want it? Did someone ever ask me whether I want it? Do I want to manifest myself in a tangibility that only breeds discontent and disassociation?
Its not an empty box of course…but I see it only as a lump. Of muscles and flesh and bones. Of words, thoughts, images and sounds and of a belief that it carries a life in moments and memories. But it’s only a belief.
Blood, people, voices, living, dreaming...seeping into the pores..frozen along the ridges of your scars.
Fleeting. Drifting. Floating.
My mirror is cold.
It says nothing. Nothing of me in my face. Nothing of time. Nothing of illness. Nothing of anything. No motion. No change. Am I caught in a stasis? Have I stopped?
I chopped off my hair some months back...I look at it now and see it as a sub-consciously sought reminder of a survival. Survived? Have I survived?
And there I end...if I were the mirror, there would be no more of me.
I die.
The body turns cold.
My mirror is already cold. Corpses. The two of us.
Don't tell me that its just a surface that captures enough light to reflect back the object or image placed before it. Does it reflect? Or does it recreate? And don't say that its inanimate and only meant to give a faithful picture of something else.
I stand and stare, wishing some grey warmth back into this full mirror. Nothing.
And that nothing itself is a slaughter.
Of what you ask? Funny...I thought you live through a little bit of that yourself every morning.
You....you are getting slaughtered.
My mirror is cold and its cold nothingness is an vortex of mute violence.
It screams across explanatory physics.
It disrupts my chaos.
It pushes me deeper into my own muck.
It watches me flail around helplessly.
It's pleasures are peculiar and cruel.
Its cold.
I can see the voices in my head standing a little behind my reflection in the mirror. A moment of mocking silence and then they begin. Their mouths move in chaos. They push and they shove each other. They live independent of me...I escape in sight...I cannot hear their words.
I read their words but I don't see the lies they tell and the lies I weave with them.
I see the weaver but I cannot discern the pattern. There is a contradiction in pattern for it arises out of confusion and deception. Its deception to trace a pattern and essentialize it for the sake of reason. What reason do I have to reduce everything to its bare essence? Who am I? What am I doing? What is my purpose? My essence?
Questions clash in futility and the mirror lives a mute life. Cold. Cold. Cold.
Questions in dreams and the dream of a question. Am I a dreamer? A dreamer not of night dreams in sleep..sleep of a diluted yellow...but a dreamer of the day?
I see nothing of my dreams here. I see no memory of them.
I saw a face once in my dream...patched together with rough glue like a jigsaw puzzle. My hands felt sticky then. And you, my dear were the puzzle...
A man walks to and fro between two walls in another dream. Brick to brick..length to length the walls are identical. Life goes on beyond them....but the man is caught inside that walled vacuum. He doesn't know from which wall he started walking first. Each wall is an alternate of hope and despair. His walking is futile. Why doesn't he just sit? He is futile....
I see nothing of these dreams in the realities of my cold mirror. Yet I know they are there. Dreams are never gone are they? They float like bits of vomit that did not get totally washed away with the flush....in dirty circles of stench and regret they spin... round and round they spin in that tiny little square world of water.
It is...it was, just a dream. A bad dream.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
Repeat these words until you know them even before you dream.
But who taught you the difference between the dream and reality? Your mother? did she run and hush you in the dark and tell you its just a dream?
Dissolve.
Dissolve that line between dream and reality.
Think.
Think in continuity. Perceive and feel in continuity. A dream and a reality woven into each other...indistinct and inseparable. Indifferent too, to our sad attempts at perverse rationalization.
Where was I? How did I think I would end this?
"Mirror mirror on the wall
How do I end this all?"
I leave my body away from my reflections..
I was born with it and I will die with it. But do I want it? Did someone ever ask me whether I want it? Do I want to manifest myself in a tangibility that only breeds discontent and disassociation?
Its not an empty box of course…but I see it only as a lump. Of muscles and flesh and bones. Of words, thoughts, images and sounds and of a belief that it carries a life in moments and memories. But it’s only a belief.
Blood, people, voices, living, dreaming...seeping into the pores..frozen along the ridges of your scars.
Fleeting. Drifting. Floating.
My mirror is cold.
It says nothing. Nothing of me in my face. Nothing of time. Nothing of illness. Nothing of anything. No motion. No change. Am I caught in a stasis? Have I stopped?
I chopped off my hair some months back...I look at it now and see it as a sub-consciously sought reminder of a survival. Survived? Have I survived?
And there I end...if I were the mirror, there would be no more of me.
I die.
The body turns cold.
My mirror is already cold. Corpses. The two of us.
Don't tell me that its just a surface that captures enough light to reflect back the object or image placed before it. Does it reflect? Or does it recreate? And don't say that its inanimate and only meant to give a faithful picture of something else.
I stand and stare, wishing some grey warmth back into this full mirror. Nothing.
And that nothing itself is a slaughter.
Of what you ask? Funny...I thought you live through a little bit of that yourself every morning.
You....you are getting slaughtered.
My mirror is cold and its cold nothingness is an vortex of mute violence.
It screams across explanatory physics.
It disrupts my chaos.
It pushes me deeper into my own muck.
It watches me flail around helplessly.
It's pleasures are peculiar and cruel.
Its cold.
I can see the voices in my head standing a little behind my reflection in the mirror. A moment of mocking silence and then they begin. Their mouths move in chaos. They push and they shove each other. They live independent of me...I escape in sight...I cannot hear their words.
I read their words but I don't see the lies they tell and the lies I weave with them.
I see the weaver but I cannot discern the pattern. There is a contradiction in pattern for it arises out of confusion and deception. Its deception to trace a pattern and essentialize it for the sake of reason. What reason do I have to reduce everything to its bare essence? Who am I? What am I doing? What is my purpose? My essence?
Questions clash in futility and the mirror lives a mute life. Cold. Cold. Cold.
Questions in dreams and the dream of a question. Am I a dreamer? A dreamer not of night dreams in sleep..sleep of a diluted yellow...but a dreamer of the day?
I see nothing of my dreams here. I see no memory of them.
I saw a face once in my dream...patched together with rough glue like a jigsaw puzzle. My hands felt sticky then. And you, my dear were the puzzle...
A man walks to and fro between two walls in another dream. Brick to brick..length to length the walls are identical. Life goes on beyond them....but the man is caught inside that walled vacuum. He doesn't know from which wall he started walking first. Each wall is an alternate of hope and despair. His walking is futile. Why doesn't he just sit? He is futile....
I see nothing of these dreams in the realities of my cold mirror. Yet I know they are there. Dreams are never gone are they? They float like bits of vomit that did not get totally washed away with the flush....in dirty circles of stench and regret they spin... round and round they spin in that tiny little square world of water.
It is...it was, just a dream. A bad dream.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
Repeat these words until you know them even before you dream.
But who taught you the difference between the dream and reality? Your mother? did she run and hush you in the dark and tell you its just a dream?
Dissolve.
Dissolve that line between dream and reality.
Think.
Think in continuity. Perceive and feel in continuity. A dream and a reality woven into each other...indistinct and inseparable. Indifferent too, to our sad attempts at perverse rationalization.
Where was I? How did I think I would end this?
"Mirror mirror on the wall
How do I end this all?"
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Warps of Living.....
Note to self:
I will not live in contradictions and dilemmas
I will not run after answers to looped questions.
I will not look for traces of times and people gone by.
From the failure and futility of this...these systematic 'notes to self'
11 months into my return to this god forsaken hell hole of a city and while the heat blisters and weaves itself into shimmering waves outside and runs in endless loops inside my head, I eat, sleep, sweat, curse, lament, think and well...exist.
Time flies...its been one year come and gone already.
Time runs and crawls at its own pace..what's one year in the many to come and go?
What have I done in these 300 odd days? A little bit of this, that and the other? Much as I love the sound and play of these words, they really tell all and say nothing. I thought then, that I should attempt a list of things I have done in this year...things done, seen, thought of and learnt too? A list like that and a blog post on that are a cliche I am told. Damn right its a cliche. But then what in our lives is really new? Where we have been living for eons, overlaps and repetitions are but consequential aren't they?
And so, for the list in random non-sequential and un-patterned thinking.....
A return to the city is a return to its people.It was a sudden (in the truest sense of the word) decision to leave the city and then to return. The city changes and stalls at all times. It traps and releases...at the end of each day, it just is there..silent yet loud. My people here....yes they are my people, the very coordinates of daily living...well my people here are as caught in the flux of living as I am..some more than others. Forms and shapes have changed. My space is ever widening and shrinking daily. Old associations I carry along with fights, cursing, laughter and love. New ones I try to fit into this pattern. I returned to the city and my people. Some took me right back and some...well some left me behind and walked away.
People will ask for proof. Numbers, facts , figures, dates, definite instances...actions and deeds..that is all that matters. Our cynicism is not limited to our selves. The essential doubt extends to all beyond us. Nothing stands outside its purview. What I work hard to believe in, will be questioned at every word and every comma I use. And then I am told that in my being questioned and ripped apart, is the truest test of my belief. Is my failure proving your point well enough for your cynical satisfaction? Words and ideas loose force.....I say its over...I am done with bits and portions of my past floating in and out of this present life. But I am told, its not over yet. What do I believe? A simple notion held in the heart or another's conclusion premised on analytical objective observations? Its proof you want. Its proof I don't have.
The idea of abstinence is slightly warped. Its delusional. You can get rid of the things and habits in physicality. I do not doubt that. But can you divest yourself of the idea? Can you abstain from the idea of it? Nothing ever leaves us does it? People, places, things, habits...tangibility alone is transient. Whatever remains beyond that...is there...just there..The tail ends of a flash of living...
I live in a world of morbid distortions. Having said that, I wonder what example to give...which part of my life do I throw open by way of proof? I am thinking now whether its the morbidity which has increased over this one year or the distortion. Or perhaps its just the active awareness of these that has increased....Does it even matter?
The year's made me high on existential angst. Then yesterday I figured that there is an existential boredom too. I have fallen victim to both I think. I believe I have done almost everything I could to release myself from this stupefying slumber. I have stopped at nothing (by my standards of course). I have even gone and spent time in shopping malls. Where my first five and a half years in Delhi were a record of not going to malls (other than that one time at the end of the first year when my parents and their friends dragged me to one...), this second phase in Delhi has seen me tripping over to malls across the city (actually only to Select City Walk) with a frequency which is fast becoming a cause of concern to me. I was proud of my I-don't-go-to-malls stand and record. It was at once coming from a personal dislike of closed, air conditioned and falsely manipulated spaces and from a rebellion...no a weak pseudo rebellion against the sham of modern existence and philosophy. Select City Walk does nothing but increase my existential anxiety (note that its anxiety and not angst this time..... not that it makes much of a difference at the end of it all). Its a strange place indeed. Each person walks by you in a cloud of rich expensive perfume. Women are dressed as physical examples of the clash of cultures and times. Stick thin, straight hair and a smart short black dress from Zara...perfect. But what is that atrocious bunch of I-am-newly-wed bangles doing on your wrists woman?!!! Another woman comes with her husband and his parents for a late evening coffee to Costa. I sit in the corner, deep in the attempt of disappearing from there and make the City Walk world go poof....and I see all four of them in earnest conversation. Avid face expressions, frantic hand movements and vigorous head shaking...they all probably live in the same house anyway. So why did they come here, in the middle of head hurting loud un-music to have a conversation? Couldn't you all have talked at home? Is this some new idea of real family time? Costa, a site of family dramas unfolding and decision making?
Young parents with younger kids...early initiation into fast living?
Old couples from the Delhi nouveau rich houses...seeking a place in changed times?
Kids bunking school....rebellion?
The whole world collapses inside those three malls and resurrects itself anew in warped realities.
Its a play of my anxieties you could say....in all probabilities it is....but I am have consciously decided to now un-mall myself. Temporarily at least.
We lead lives in alternatives. There are a million different roles we play and a thousand divergent lives we live. Everyday. All the time. To that extent we are schizophrenic. And in this year, this time, the spaces between my lives is increasing. We construct and structure our worlds through lies..a small one here and another one there. Wrap it. Wrap it. Wrap it. Wrap yourself away from a false world. Wrap yourself inside your own world of lies. Only now my lies confuse me. I forget what I said. My lies contradict their own selves. One to the second, the second to the third and the third to the fourth. In endless exponents they come and walk away with the small little truths that I thought I was. I wonder now, even as I write, will there be something left for me to salvage and protect when this world crumbles? If you strip me bare of my lies, nothing of me will be left I think. I am long gone already.
It costs about a hundred ten rupees to travel in an auto from CP to home. I lived a hundred rupees worth of life yesterday in that time and money while returning home.
Home? I found my home in people. A people? Some people?
Its just people. Thats all. The be all and sum all of all our lives. And when they leave? For they will, there is no doubt about that. Then? Does a home end with people? In the life I lived in those 25 odd minutes in the auto, I kept wondering if I could induce a flash of psychedelic recollection. What bits of myself would I have recollected? And from these recollections would I ever manage to find that one tiny crack that could perhaps take me back to where I was and who I was a long long time ago? Don't call this regression. Don't label it anything. It's nothing at all and yet it is all that we want sometimes. You and I....to return to those false ideas of innocence and simplicity..When there is nothing simple about the moment of conception then how can our human beginnings be simple? Innocence is not a word. Its a lie.
There is much of the I everywhere. In your world and mine, that is all that matters. You are. I am......we lost out on much of the us that was ever possible. We only delude ourselves with doubles and plurals. Its a singular life of singular living. Where do we create the space for plurals? Why? This is irony. I ridicule the plural here and yet even as I write I find comfort in the plurals of living.
This is my refuge. From a world of lies and from my own lies. A refuge at times from my own self. You.
You sleeps deep and easy. I write.
I cannot quantify my year of living again. I am changing. One day at a time....we become strangers to our own selves and call it growth. The ideas that we are....that I was are drifting away...But from my distortions and delusions I am happy enough. For now.
I will not live in contradictions and dilemmas
I will not run after answers to looped questions.
I will not look for traces of times and people gone by.
From the failure and futility of this...these systematic 'notes to self'
11 months into my return to this god forsaken hell hole of a city and while the heat blisters and weaves itself into shimmering waves outside and runs in endless loops inside my head, I eat, sleep, sweat, curse, lament, think and well...exist.
Time flies...its been one year come and gone already.
Time runs and crawls at its own pace..what's one year in the many to come and go?
What have I done in these 300 odd days? A little bit of this, that and the other? Much as I love the sound and play of these words, they really tell all and say nothing. I thought then, that I should attempt a list of things I have done in this year...things done, seen, thought of and learnt too? A list like that and a blog post on that are a cliche I am told. Damn right its a cliche. But then what in our lives is really new? Where we have been living for eons, overlaps and repetitions are but consequential aren't they?
And so, for the list in random non-sequential and un-patterned thinking.....
A return to the city is a return to its people.It was a sudden (in the truest sense of the word) decision to leave the city and then to return. The city changes and stalls at all times. It traps and releases...at the end of each day, it just is there..silent yet loud. My people here....yes they are my people, the very coordinates of daily living...well my people here are as caught in the flux of living as I am..some more than others. Forms and shapes have changed. My space is ever widening and shrinking daily. Old associations I carry along with fights, cursing, laughter and love. New ones I try to fit into this pattern. I returned to the city and my people. Some took me right back and some...well some left me behind and walked away.
People will ask for proof. Numbers, facts , figures, dates, definite instances...actions and deeds..that is all that matters. Our cynicism is not limited to our selves. The essential doubt extends to all beyond us. Nothing stands outside its purview. What I work hard to believe in, will be questioned at every word and every comma I use. And then I am told that in my being questioned and ripped apart, is the truest test of my belief. Is my failure proving your point well enough for your cynical satisfaction? Words and ideas loose force.....I say its over...I am done with bits and portions of my past floating in and out of this present life. But I am told, its not over yet. What do I believe? A simple notion held in the heart or another's conclusion premised on analytical objective observations? Its proof you want. Its proof I don't have.
The idea of abstinence is slightly warped. Its delusional. You can get rid of the things and habits in physicality. I do not doubt that. But can you divest yourself of the idea? Can you abstain from the idea of it? Nothing ever leaves us does it? People, places, things, habits...tangibility alone is transient. Whatever remains beyond that...is there...just there..The tail ends of a flash of living...
I live in a world of morbid distortions. Having said that, I wonder what example to give...which part of my life do I throw open by way of proof? I am thinking now whether its the morbidity which has increased over this one year or the distortion. Or perhaps its just the active awareness of these that has increased....Does it even matter?
The year's made me high on existential angst. Then yesterday I figured that there is an existential boredom too. I have fallen victim to both I think. I believe I have done almost everything I could to release myself from this stupefying slumber. I have stopped at nothing (by my standards of course). I have even gone and spent time in shopping malls. Where my first five and a half years in Delhi were a record of not going to malls (other than that one time at the end of the first year when my parents and their friends dragged me to one...), this second phase in Delhi has seen me tripping over to malls across the city (actually only to Select City Walk) with a frequency which is fast becoming a cause of concern to me. I was proud of my I-don't-go-to-malls stand and record. It was at once coming from a personal dislike of closed, air conditioned and falsely manipulated spaces and from a rebellion...no a weak pseudo rebellion against the sham of modern existence and philosophy. Select City Walk does nothing but increase my existential anxiety (note that its anxiety and not angst this time..... not that it makes much of a difference at the end of it all). Its a strange place indeed. Each person walks by you in a cloud of rich expensive perfume. Women are dressed as physical examples of the clash of cultures and times. Stick thin, straight hair and a smart short black dress from Zara...perfect. But what is that atrocious bunch of I-am-newly-wed bangles doing on your wrists woman?!!! Another woman comes with her husband and his parents for a late evening coffee to Costa. I sit in the corner, deep in the attempt of disappearing from there and make the City Walk world go poof....and I see all four of them in earnest conversation. Avid face expressions, frantic hand movements and vigorous head shaking...they all probably live in the same house anyway. So why did they come here, in the middle of head hurting loud un-music to have a conversation? Couldn't you all have talked at home? Is this some new idea of real family time? Costa, a site of family dramas unfolding and decision making?
Young parents with younger kids...early initiation into fast living?
Old couples from the Delhi nouveau rich houses...seeking a place in changed times?
Kids bunking school....rebellion?
The whole world collapses inside those three malls and resurrects itself anew in warped realities.
Its a play of my anxieties you could say....in all probabilities it is....but I am have consciously decided to now un-mall myself. Temporarily at least.
We lead lives in alternatives. There are a million different roles we play and a thousand divergent lives we live. Everyday. All the time. To that extent we are schizophrenic. And in this year, this time, the spaces between my lives is increasing. We construct and structure our worlds through lies..a small one here and another one there. Wrap it. Wrap it. Wrap it. Wrap yourself away from a false world. Wrap yourself inside your own world of lies. Only now my lies confuse me. I forget what I said. My lies contradict their own selves. One to the second, the second to the third and the third to the fourth. In endless exponents they come and walk away with the small little truths that I thought I was. I wonder now, even as I write, will there be something left for me to salvage and protect when this world crumbles? If you strip me bare of my lies, nothing of me will be left I think. I am long gone already.
It costs about a hundred ten rupees to travel in an auto from CP to home. I lived a hundred rupees worth of life yesterday in that time and money while returning home.
Home? I found my home in people. A people? Some people?
Its just people. Thats all. The be all and sum all of all our lives. And when they leave? For they will, there is no doubt about that. Then? Does a home end with people? In the life I lived in those 25 odd minutes in the auto, I kept wondering if I could induce a flash of psychedelic recollection. What bits of myself would I have recollected? And from these recollections would I ever manage to find that one tiny crack that could perhaps take me back to where I was and who I was a long long time ago? Don't call this regression. Don't label it anything. It's nothing at all and yet it is all that we want sometimes. You and I....to return to those false ideas of innocence and simplicity..When there is nothing simple about the moment of conception then how can our human beginnings be simple? Innocence is not a word. Its a lie.
There is much of the I everywhere. In your world and mine, that is all that matters. You are. I am......we lost out on much of the us that was ever possible. We only delude ourselves with doubles and plurals. Its a singular life of singular living. Where do we create the space for plurals? Why? This is irony. I ridicule the plural here and yet even as I write I find comfort in the plurals of living.
This is my refuge. From a world of lies and from my own lies. A refuge at times from my own self. You.
You sleeps deep and easy. I write.
I cannot quantify my year of living again. I am changing. One day at a time....we become strangers to our own selves and call it growth. The ideas that we are....that I was are drifting away...But from my distortions and delusions I am happy enough. For now.
Monday, July 25, 2011
I am Bored.
I am bored. To death.
I am infinitely and definitely bored.
I am sitting and counting the ways in which I am bored and even that is boring. Obviously this is a phase...it cannot..it just cannot be anything more than a phase.
But what if this is more than a phase? What if I am caught in a lifelong trap....one day falling through itself and running into the next..nothing to distinguish one from the other..nothing to remember or forget..Nothing happens out of pattern.
Where does monotony end and boredom begin?
I hate clocks tick tock-ing their way through existence...and now "I am so bored" is tick tock-ing round and round inside my head. Now that I think of it, it runs with a rhythmic beat. 1,2,3,4....I am bored..I am bored.
Drink water-I am bored...
Check mail- I am bored...
Take a bath- I am bored.....
The world breathes, lives and exists in a beat...I am bored.
How bored am I?
I can read a new book. Boring.
Take a walk. Boring.
Facebook, tweet, chat...social networking? Networking? Boring.
More people. New people. Boring.
On Monday, the week looks boring.
On Saturday the weekend looks boring.
Days are boring....
Run into a scooter. Shockingly boring.
I should tap people for new music. Boring.
Nina Simone. Boring (blasphemy!!!)
Stare at the wall and look for faces...where did the Cossack go? Boring.
Muse about abstracts..time..space..blah blah blah. Boring.
Toy with fixations. No wait...find a new fixation. Boring.
Accusation are boring. I said something, people understood something else. I should sit and figure out what I meant when I didn't say anything. Boring.
Alright, I should act mature and smart and intelligent. Boring.
Mind games. Boring.
MS Excel, Outlook, Word. Boring.
Google. Boring.
Apple. Boring.
Pears and oranges. Boring.
Crib about how bored and bored I am. Boring.
Life is boring. No rephrase- my life is boring. I am boring.
Dull. Dull. Dull.
I don't want to stay in. I don't want to go out.
I don't want to meet friends. Everyone is boring. All talk is boring. All coffee shops are boring.
All break-ups are boring. All new romances are boring.
This weather is boring. So much for being as fickle as weather. Global warming changes climatic patterns and alters English language similies. Boring.
Pigeon fight in the balcony. Frantic flapping of wings. Feathers flying. No blood. Boring.
Wishes and dreams. Boring.
Memories. Boring.
Read.Write.Eat.Sing.Dance.Drink.Dope.Sleep.Shop.Talk.Think.Run.Walk.Sit......everything is boring.
I googled "bored". I am obsessed, nay high on 'googling' yes.
A Dennis Prager says: "I am bored generally means I am boring".
I had beer served in a teapot on Sunday. Brown china tea cups followed. Momentary lapse of boredom.
But beer ain't my cup of tea.
Redemption?Rescue?None.....Boring.
I am infinitely and definitely bored.
I am sitting and counting the ways in which I am bored and even that is boring. Obviously this is a phase...it cannot..it just cannot be anything more than a phase.
But what if this is more than a phase? What if I am caught in a lifelong trap....one day falling through itself and running into the next..nothing to distinguish one from the other..nothing to remember or forget..Nothing happens out of pattern.
Where does monotony end and boredom begin?
I hate clocks tick tock-ing their way through existence...and now "I am so bored" is tick tock-ing round and round inside my head. Now that I think of it, it runs with a rhythmic beat. 1,2,3,4....I am bored..I am bored.
Drink water-I am bored...
Check mail- I am bored...
Take a bath- I am bored.....
The world breathes, lives and exists in a beat...I am bored.
How bored am I?
I can read a new book. Boring.
Take a walk. Boring.
Facebook, tweet, chat...social networking? Networking? Boring.
More people. New people. Boring.
On Monday, the week looks boring.
On Saturday the weekend looks boring.
Days are boring....
Run into a scooter. Shockingly boring.
I should tap people for new music. Boring.
Nina Simone. Boring (blasphemy!!!)
Stare at the wall and look for faces...where did the Cossack go? Boring.
Muse about abstracts..time..space..blah blah blah. Boring.
Toy with fixations. No wait...find a new fixation. Boring.
Accusation are boring. I said something, people understood something else. I should sit and figure out what I meant when I didn't say anything. Boring.
Alright, I should act mature and smart and intelligent. Boring.
Mind games. Boring.
MS Excel, Outlook, Word. Boring.
Google. Boring.
Apple. Boring.
Pears and oranges. Boring.
Crib about how bored and bored I am. Boring.
Life is boring. No rephrase- my life is boring. I am boring.
Dull. Dull. Dull.
I don't want to stay in. I don't want to go out.
I don't want to meet friends. Everyone is boring. All talk is boring. All coffee shops are boring.
All break-ups are boring. All new romances are boring.
This weather is boring. So much for being as fickle as weather. Global warming changes climatic patterns and alters English language similies. Boring.
Pigeon fight in the balcony. Frantic flapping of wings. Feathers flying. No blood. Boring.
Wishes and dreams. Boring.
Memories. Boring.
Read.Write.Eat.Sing.Dance.Drink.Dope.Sleep.Shop.Talk.Think.Run.Walk.Sit......everything is boring.
I googled "bored". I am obsessed, nay high on 'googling' yes.
A Dennis Prager says: "I am bored generally means I am boring".
I had beer served in a teapot on Sunday. Brown china tea cups followed. Momentary lapse of boredom.
But beer ain't my cup of tea.
Redemption?Rescue?None.....Boring.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
The Two Ends of Twenty....
So tomorrow, you enter the world of twenty.
Happy Birthday Amna!!!!! :)
She mourns the eminent end of her teenage years..but only just so lightly. There isn't much of a difference between 19 and 20 anyway.
She asks me, where were you for your twentieth birthday? What did you do?
And I think.....when was I twenty?
I am still thinking...I was in Delhi...I am more-or-less sure of that geographical detail..but what did I do? Who was I with? How did I 'celebrate' it? Cake? Party? What?
I am still drawing a complete blank.
Her mother's warned her that she is no longer eligible to throw tantrums. Teenage dramatics are now going to be a thing of the past. Alright. But teenage dramatics? Is being twenty a numerical indication of entering 'adulthood'?
And 'Adulthood'? Really!!!!
I can already see a lot of words (in quotes) getting tagged along with this number. Conclusion? It's NOT just a number. Our saying that is just a defense mechanism.
Will things change from nineteen to twenty? What does twenty look like to you?
Her answer? A bucket list of sorts....
A bucket list- a list of things to do before you die. And to continue with the morbid element here....The phrase 'bucket list' owes its origin to the idiom 'kicked the bucket' which, in turn, means to die. And how exactly did the bucket find itself getting associated with death? I leave it for another time..though apparently the association traces itself back to 16th century England (did a 16th century English bucket look any different from the present day English bucket?)
So well, at a day less than twenty, she is already making a bucket-list (of sorts I should add). Obviously I remember my list of things to do..We did not call it a bucket list back in those days (yes its been that long now and I guess we have only Rob Reiner to thank for the revival of the popularity of the term...). How many of those things have I done? I remember a couple of them...
-Watch Coldplay live in concert (present status: Not Done)
-Go scuba diving (present status: Not Done. I don't even know how to swim!!!!)
-Read all of Wodehouse (present status: Not Done)
-Learn how to drive ( Present status: Done, but I still do not have a license..and this was pretty sad an inclusion for a bucket list)
-A world trip (present status: halfway done with a fortnight of tripping through Europe)
I will dig out the list when I go home the next time. But I can already see that scarp of paper weigh heavier on me with silent accusations of things not done, a life not maximized and time lost.
Life becomes a list of things...drat!
Should I draw a conclusion? Do I have the time to draw one and dwell on it?
Down with the list anyway.
So twenty was and is no different than nineteen...I believe that.
But twenty is different (and radically so) from twenty six...
From the other side of twenty five, everything before looks easier and sweeter..Please do not argue with me about the beauty of nostalgia..blah blah blah!!!!
Its been seven years since I left school...the old slide by the jack-fruit tree in school was razed to ground. We grew up. Things died and space was created. Keeping up with time they say...I guess the new kids would not have known what to do with the slide anyway. Would they have googled it?
I completed my graduation and my masters. I worked for a year and then returned to academics. From this delusional return, I think increasingly that I am only wasting my time and not really facing the existential questions of (ahem...gulp) adulthood.
And now more than ever, I have to bear social pressures of fulfilling medieval gender roles and responsibilities. Marriage apart, at twenty-six, I am already being reminded of the ticking clock.
I am twenty six ONLY!!! That's me...
You are twenty six ALREADY!!! That's them..
So much of a difference between only and already...
The year of the proverbial 'quarter life crisis' is over but the crisis itself is not.
At twenty a lollipop would have been a juvenile idea. Rather, I would have forgotten about the idea and taste of a lollipop. At twenty six, making my way through one simply made my day..It was a beautiful lollipop I must add...with blues, greens and pale yellows swirling their way through its sugar sprinkled circle of a self.
At twenty, getting dunked in the mud and then kicked black and blue on your birthday would have been an uncalled for affront. At twenty six (while still being an uncalled for), it makes for a good laugh..
At twenty, spending an entire Sunday playing scrabble would have been a waste of time. At twenty six, spending an entire Sunday with those creamy white tiles and a scoreboard, no no wait...first running out in a good-by-Delhi-standards rain, checking through five shops for the game and then insisting on only buying the Leo Mattel one...that makes perfect sense.
At twenty, you dream of working, money and your own bank account. At twenty six, you contemplate about the inclusion of a provision in your work contract which would allow you to walk out when things get too boring.
At twenty, you have to figure out how to convince your parents to buy you a new laptop/ipod/android(take your pick please). At twenty six, you have EMI's to handle.
There are six years between twenty and twenty six. But right now, they seem a world apart to me. I cannot imagine moments of collusion between twenty and twenty six. But they exist I am sure...
But on being twenty, its a simple birthday wish I send across to my young friend...May you fall back in love with the lollipop sooner than twenty six.
Happy Birthday :)
Happy Birthday Amna!!!!! :)
She mourns the eminent end of her teenage years..but only just so lightly. There isn't much of a difference between 19 and 20 anyway.
She asks me, where were you for your twentieth birthday? What did you do?
And I think.....when was I twenty?
I am still thinking...I was in Delhi...I am more-or-less sure of that geographical detail..but what did I do? Who was I with? How did I 'celebrate' it? Cake? Party? What?
I am still drawing a complete blank.
Her mother's warned her that she is no longer eligible to throw tantrums. Teenage dramatics are now going to be a thing of the past. Alright. But teenage dramatics? Is being twenty a numerical indication of entering 'adulthood'?
And 'Adulthood'? Really!!!!
I can already see a lot of words (in quotes) getting tagged along with this number. Conclusion? It's NOT just a number. Our saying that is just a defense mechanism.
Will things change from nineteen to twenty? What does twenty look like to you?
Her answer? A bucket list of sorts....
A bucket list- a list of things to do before you die. And to continue with the morbid element here....The phrase 'bucket list' owes its origin to the idiom 'kicked the bucket' which, in turn, means to die. And how exactly did the bucket find itself getting associated with death? I leave it for another time..though apparently the association traces itself back to 16th century England (did a 16th century English bucket look any different from the present day English bucket?)
So well, at a day less than twenty, she is already making a bucket-list (of sorts I should add). Obviously I remember my list of things to do..We did not call it a bucket list back in those days (yes its been that long now and I guess we have only Rob Reiner to thank for the revival of the popularity of the term...). How many of those things have I done? I remember a couple of them...
-Watch Coldplay live in concert (present status: Not Done)
-Go scuba diving (present status: Not Done. I don't even know how to swim!!!!)
-Read all of Wodehouse (present status: Not Done)
-Learn how to drive ( Present status: Done, but I still do not have a license..and this was pretty sad an inclusion for a bucket list)
-A world trip (present status: halfway done with a fortnight of tripping through Europe)
I will dig out the list when I go home the next time. But I can already see that scarp of paper weigh heavier on me with silent accusations of things not done, a life not maximized and time lost.
Life becomes a list of things...drat!
Should I draw a conclusion? Do I have the time to draw one and dwell on it?
Down with the list anyway.
So twenty was and is no different than nineteen...I believe that.
But twenty is different (and radically so) from twenty six...
From the other side of twenty five, everything before looks easier and sweeter..Please do not argue with me about the beauty of nostalgia..blah blah blah!!!!
Its been seven years since I left school...the old slide by the jack-fruit tree in school was razed to ground. We grew up. Things died and space was created. Keeping up with time they say...I guess the new kids would not have known what to do with the slide anyway. Would they have googled it?
I completed my graduation and my masters. I worked for a year and then returned to academics. From this delusional return, I think increasingly that I am only wasting my time and not really facing the existential questions of (ahem...gulp) adulthood.
And now more than ever, I have to bear social pressures of fulfilling medieval gender roles and responsibilities. Marriage apart, at twenty-six, I am already being reminded of the ticking clock.
I am twenty six ONLY!!! That's me...
You are twenty six ALREADY!!! That's them..
So much of a difference between only and already...
The year of the proverbial 'quarter life crisis' is over but the crisis itself is not.
At twenty a lollipop would have been a juvenile idea. Rather, I would have forgotten about the idea and taste of a lollipop. At twenty six, making my way through one simply made my day..It was a beautiful lollipop I must add...with blues, greens and pale yellows swirling their way through its sugar sprinkled circle of a self.
At twenty, getting dunked in the mud and then kicked black and blue on your birthday would have been an uncalled for affront. At twenty six (while still being an uncalled for), it makes for a good laugh..
At twenty, spending an entire Sunday playing scrabble would have been a waste of time. At twenty six, spending an entire Sunday with those creamy white tiles and a scoreboard, no no wait...first running out in a good-by-Delhi-standards rain, checking through five shops for the game and then insisting on only buying the Leo Mattel one...that makes perfect sense.
At twenty, you dream of working, money and your own bank account. At twenty six, you contemplate about the inclusion of a provision in your work contract which would allow you to walk out when things get too boring.
At twenty, you have to figure out how to convince your parents to buy you a new laptop/ipod/android(take your pick please). At twenty six, you have EMI's to handle.
There are six years between twenty and twenty six. But right now, they seem a world apart to me. I cannot imagine moments of collusion between twenty and twenty six. But they exist I am sure...
But on being twenty, its a simple birthday wish I send across to my young friend...May you fall back in love with the lollipop sooner than twenty six.
Happy Birthday :)
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Painful Questions of Aesthetics and a note of thanks....
Alright, I got Apoorva to work on the aesthetics bit of the blog. It was my own idea of making her pay back for coercing me into getting this new form of virtual socializing with Skype. I even connected my Skype account with my Facebook account!!!
We made our way through backgrounds with everything from antique cameras and radios to abstract lines and sad looking birds, font sizes, themes, archives link position and format and just about everything.….
I was happy with this one (sepia toned?) background with postcards but she was getting royally pissed with the fact that she could not adjust the size of the background picture to her satisfaction (Skype chat line: LIKE HOW FUCKING STUPID IS THAT!!!!).
She wanted to move the “bloody postcards” around a bit to create better aesthetics.
I didn’t even know you could do that!!!
The result you see…
I can’t tag my thanks here (you will of course be duly and publicly thanked on Facebook)…but take it anyway Apoorva :)
And stealing from the Facebook thanks: "standing in deep appreciation of the crucial role you played in this resurrection...many thanks!!!"
But I am left wondering now….why am I spending so much of time of this blog? Rather on its resurrection?
We made our way through backgrounds with everything from antique cameras and radios to abstract lines and sad looking birds, font sizes, themes, archives link position and format and just about everything.….
I was happy with this one (sepia toned?) background with postcards but she was getting royally pissed with the fact that she could not adjust the size of the background picture to her satisfaction (Skype chat line: LIKE HOW FUCKING STUPID IS THAT!!!!).
She wanted to move the “bloody postcards” around a bit to create better aesthetics.
I didn’t even know you could do that!!!
The result you see…
I can’t tag my thanks here (you will of course be duly and publicly thanked on Facebook)…but take it anyway Apoorva :)
And stealing from the Facebook thanks: "standing in deep appreciation of the crucial role you played in this resurrection...many thanks!!!"
But I am left wondering now….why am I spending so much of time of this blog? Rather on its resurrection?
Skype-ing…
I know everyone has a Skype account.
I did not… But there were twelve other Gayatri Goswami’s floating around there, talking-chatting-calling-blah-blah-blah. I added the thirteenth.
Anyway, so my best friend has now shifted base to London. (I should footnote this….but this is not an academic paper….so well.) She is acquiring a ‘neutral-Indian’ accent and it’s another weapon I use indiscriminately now to tease her and well…just generally make fun of her. Poor thing has apparently become acutely conscious of it now, especially in front of her fellow Indian friends there…Any day now, I think, she will call me for some ‘tea’ and ‘cookies’!!!! (Please read it with a Brit accent?)
Fascinating how spatial environments play so crucial a role in the physical expression of a language. And how much of an acquired accent is a matter of social conditioning? But I digress.
So well, getting back, I gave in finally to her constant badgering and set up a Skype account a little while back. (I have trouble with Facebook and often find myself contemplating the option of account deactivation, albeit a temporary one…why did I now get myself a Skype account? Accumulation of more virtual worldly trappings!!!)
With my background explanation in place, I thought you should see just how much of an internet handicap I face….
After this, please appreciate the technological hurdles I cross every single time I write here…Thank you already :)
[2:37:22 AM] Apoorva Sharma: Finally u appear on Skye!!!!
[2:37:37 AM] Apoorva Sharma: accept my call
[2:37:49 AM] Gayatri Goswami: how the fuck?
[2:37:53 AM] Gayatri Goswami: awww jeeez
[2:37:54 AM] Gayatri Goswami: wait
[2:37:55 AM] Gayatri Goswami: stop
[2:37:56 AM] Gayatri Goswami: calling me
[2:37:58 AM] Gayatri Goswami: weird music
[2:38:02 AM] Gayatri Goswami: wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[2:38:08 AM] Apoorva Sharma: well there is green phone button
[2:38:11 AM] Apoorva Sharma: click it
[2:38:16 AM] Gayatri Goswami: stop the music
[2:38:20 AM] Gayatri Goswami: stop calling me!!!!!
[2:38:22 AM] Gayatri Goswami: pleasseeeeee
[2:38:23 AM] Apoorva Sharma: on the right hand top side
[2:38:25 AM] *** Missed call from Apoorva Sharma. ***
[2:38:27 AM] Gayatri Goswami: phew
[2:38:29 AM] Gayatri Goswami: thanks man
[2:38:32 AM] Apoorva Sharma: ok then
[2:38:32 AM] Gayatri Goswami: i was feeling like
[2:38:35 AM] Gayatri Goswami: a retard
[2:38:40 AM] Gayatri Goswami: don’t drop a call just like that
[2:38:45 AM] Gayatri Goswami: i got scared and thot
[2:38:58 AM] Gayatri Goswami: some weird shit ass of an alarm went off!!!!!
[2:39:01 AM] Gayatri Goswami: jeeeez
[2:39:03 AM] Gayatri Goswami: :(
I did not… But there were twelve other Gayatri Goswami’s floating around there, talking-chatting-calling-blah-blah-blah. I added the thirteenth.
Anyway, so my best friend has now shifted base to London. (I should footnote this….but this is not an academic paper….so well.) She is acquiring a ‘neutral-Indian’ accent and it’s another weapon I use indiscriminately now to tease her and well…just generally make fun of her. Poor thing has apparently become acutely conscious of it now, especially in front of her fellow Indian friends there…Any day now, I think, she will call me for some ‘tea’ and ‘cookies’!!!! (Please read it with a Brit accent?)
Fascinating how spatial environments play so crucial a role in the physical expression of a language. And how much of an acquired accent is a matter of social conditioning? But I digress.
So well, getting back, I gave in finally to her constant badgering and set up a Skype account a little while back. (I have trouble with Facebook and often find myself contemplating the option of account deactivation, albeit a temporary one…why did I now get myself a Skype account? Accumulation of more virtual worldly trappings!!!)
With my background explanation in place, I thought you should see just how much of an internet handicap I face….
After this, please appreciate the technological hurdles I cross every single time I write here…Thank you already :)
[2:37:22 AM] Apoorva Sharma: Finally u appear on Skye!!!!
[2:37:37 AM] Apoorva Sharma: accept my call
[2:37:49 AM] Gayatri Goswami: how the fuck?
[2:37:53 AM] Gayatri Goswami: awww jeeez
[2:37:54 AM] Gayatri Goswami: wait
[2:37:55 AM] Gayatri Goswami: stop
[2:37:56 AM] Gayatri Goswami: calling me
[2:37:58 AM] Gayatri Goswami: weird music
[2:38:02 AM] Gayatri Goswami: wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[2:38:08 AM] Apoorva Sharma: well there is green phone button
[2:38:11 AM] Apoorva Sharma: click it
[2:38:16 AM] Gayatri Goswami: stop the music
[2:38:20 AM] Gayatri Goswami: stop calling me!!!!!
[2:38:22 AM] Gayatri Goswami: pleasseeeeee
[2:38:23 AM] Apoorva Sharma: on the right hand top side
[2:38:25 AM] *** Missed call from Apoorva Sharma. ***
[2:38:27 AM] Gayatri Goswami: phew
[2:38:29 AM] Gayatri Goswami: thanks man
[2:38:32 AM] Apoorva Sharma: ok then
[2:38:32 AM] Gayatri Goswami: i was feeling like
[2:38:35 AM] Gayatri Goswami: a retard
[2:38:40 AM] Gayatri Goswami: don’t drop a call just like that
[2:38:45 AM] Gayatri Goswami: i got scared and thot
[2:38:58 AM] Gayatri Goswami: some weird shit ass of an alarm went off!!!!!
[2:39:01 AM] Gayatri Goswami: jeeeez
[2:39:03 AM] Gayatri Goswami: :(
Monday, July 4, 2011
Numbers in Purpose......
There is a crow’s nest in the peepal tree right outside my balcony. I am waiting for the crow to come back.
And then what?
Hmmm…no idea.
Five clips and one hair band. I finally managed to scrunch up my hair into a sad excuse of a pony tail (when did the horse’s tail enter the world of vanity?).
Lazy lizard crawls into its dark cool world behind my one pot claim to greenery in this hostel room…
I like the cover design of Amitav Ghosh’s new book. How can anyone plan and write a trilogy? Rowling is a freak...no rephrase- freaky genius. Ha!! Better!
Are these even blog-mention worthy details of a monotonous life?
No.
But space fillers? Length expanders? Yes to that!
And I return to my favorite- 'WHY'
Why did we establish this blog?
Why did we let it lie sad and dormant for soo long?
Why have we entered this phase of frantic blogging now? A sea squall-ish development?
And the hardest question of all- Why the fixation with numbers? To be more specific, why the fixation with getting a fatter number on the 'Followers' list?
(I hate looking at the right hand side of this blog!!!)
Somewhere in the last few weeks I think, purpose has cross bred with numbers. I marvel at all those people who have blogs with two three or four hundred followers. Where do these people come from? How did they find these blogs? Are they regular readers? If they are then I wonder how much time they spend reading these blogs online. And how can anyone write so consistently on a virtual platform? But these are semi-tangential questions right now really.
Anyway, so when we began the purpose was to just write...we thought we did not care for what others thought or felt about what we wrote, how we wrote and why we wrote.
Sadly, we missed the operative words in this first statement-of-purpose like sentence to self.
"We thought".
Yes...you thought...we thought..
It was only a thought. A delusional attempt to garb this modern extension of individual vanity and narcissism under nobler wraps of self expression with an undertone of 'the-world-be-damned'.
We were writing for ourselves. Or were we? The least I can say right now is that the delusion at least has ended...Where this delusion ends, there the reality of our world in numbers begins.
I recently watched The Matrix Trilogy and this realization of the numerical grip over our lives reminds me of the green run of numbers in the matrix (should I have written that with a capital 'M'?). Amidst these creeping and crawling numbers we live happily and quietly.
(I shouldn't have mentioned the Matrix here....its uncalled for...or is it?)
Each tiny aspect of our lives are caught in numbers...they are everywhere.
Dates.
My age.
My grades.
Your salary.
Your expected bonus.
Prices.
Rent.
Bills.
Your car mileage.
Gigabytes.
Days.
Weeks.
Blah.
Blah.
How does all this apply to the blog? Well like this....
How many hours will I spend writing this post? Should I care about the number of words or the length of this post? What number post will this be again? So how many people can I expect will read this one? How many will like it? How many will trash it? How many comments will I get on this post? Will this post change things for the blog and actually inspire someone to join the blog?
Comments.
Followers.
Hits.
Likes.
Dislikes.
Blah.
Blah.
Blah.
But I write for myself don't I??!!!!
Oh no I don't.
Lets get one thing absolutely straight....No one, and I mean no one, writes and maintains a blog for their own sake. With the very first word that you put on your blog its a delusional journey to make yourself think, rather to lull yourself into thinkin that you are writing only for yourself. You 'blog' to be read by others. Thats it. In other words 'NUMBERS'
If I were to extend this line of thought to all other forms of self expression, you may plead for artistic sensibilities getting offended with the idea of needing social acceptance and appreciation in numbers. But would I be lying if I were to say, that somewhere or the other, we all need assurances from others around us in our small limited worlds for the choices we make in expressing ourselves?
What is the point of expression if it is not received by another?
And so they run and walk...sit and laugh..sleep awhile and never quite drift away..Numbers.
Everywhere..
In clocks that time us and our lives.
In calenders that cross off days as they go flying by.
In to-do lists that fill the hours of a day and the days of a life.
In passivity and in action.
In words and minutes of silences.
In this, that and the other.
And then what?
Hmmm…no idea.
Five clips and one hair band. I finally managed to scrunch up my hair into a sad excuse of a pony tail (when did the horse’s tail enter the world of vanity?).
Lazy lizard crawls into its dark cool world behind my one pot claim to greenery in this hostel room…
I like the cover design of Amitav Ghosh’s new book. How can anyone plan and write a trilogy? Rowling is a freak...no rephrase- freaky genius. Ha!! Better!
Are these even blog-mention worthy details of a monotonous life?
No.
But space fillers? Length expanders? Yes to that!
And I return to my favorite- 'WHY'
Why did we establish this blog?
Why did we let it lie sad and dormant for soo long?
Why have we entered this phase of frantic blogging now? A sea squall-ish development?
And the hardest question of all- Why the fixation with numbers? To be more specific, why the fixation with getting a fatter number on the 'Followers' list?
(I hate looking at the right hand side of this blog!!!)
Somewhere in the last few weeks I think, purpose has cross bred with numbers. I marvel at all those people who have blogs with two three or four hundred followers. Where do these people come from? How did they find these blogs? Are they regular readers? If they are then I wonder how much time they spend reading these blogs online. And how can anyone write so consistently on a virtual platform? But these are semi-tangential questions right now really.
Anyway, so when we began the purpose was to just write...we thought we did not care for what others thought or felt about what we wrote, how we wrote and why we wrote.
Sadly, we missed the operative words in this first statement-of-purpose like sentence to self.
"We thought".
Yes...you thought...we thought..
It was only a thought. A delusional attempt to garb this modern extension of individual vanity and narcissism under nobler wraps of self expression with an undertone of 'the-world-be-damned'.
We were writing for ourselves. Or were we? The least I can say right now is that the delusion at least has ended...Where this delusion ends, there the reality of our world in numbers begins.
I recently watched The Matrix Trilogy and this realization of the numerical grip over our lives reminds me of the green run of numbers in the matrix (should I have written that with a capital 'M'?). Amidst these creeping and crawling numbers we live happily and quietly.
(I shouldn't have mentioned the Matrix here....its uncalled for...or is it?)
Each tiny aspect of our lives are caught in numbers...they are everywhere.
Dates.
My age.
My grades.
Your salary.
Your expected bonus.
Prices.
Rent.
Bills.
Your car mileage.
Gigabytes.
Days.
Weeks.
Blah.
Blah.
How does all this apply to the blog? Well like this....
How many hours will I spend writing this post? Should I care about the number of words or the length of this post? What number post will this be again? So how many people can I expect will read this one? How many will like it? How many will trash it? How many comments will I get on this post? Will this post change things for the blog and actually inspire someone to join the blog?
Comments.
Followers.
Hits.
Likes.
Dislikes.
Blah.
Blah.
Blah.
But I write for myself don't I??!!!!
Oh no I don't.
Lets get one thing absolutely straight....No one, and I mean no one, writes and maintains a blog for their own sake. With the very first word that you put on your blog its a delusional journey to make yourself think, rather to lull yourself into thinkin that you are writing only for yourself. You 'blog' to be read by others. Thats it. In other words 'NUMBERS'
If I were to extend this line of thought to all other forms of self expression, you may plead for artistic sensibilities getting offended with the idea of needing social acceptance and appreciation in numbers. But would I be lying if I were to say, that somewhere or the other, we all need assurances from others around us in our small limited worlds for the choices we make in expressing ourselves?
What is the point of expression if it is not received by another?
And so they run and walk...sit and laugh..sleep awhile and never quite drift away..Numbers.
Everywhere..
In clocks that time us and our lives.
In calenders that cross off days as they go flying by.
In to-do lists that fill the hours of a day and the days of a life.
In passivity and in action.
In words and minutes of silences.
In this, that and the other.
Angry Birds
(M: a word of clarification/caution...this is not about Justin Bieber.)
Alright, so we all know of Angry Birds. With over 250 million copies having been sold since its launch in December 2009, it would be rather surprising to come across someone who hasn't, in the least, heard of Angry Birds.
With that established,I believe that there are only four types of association that one can have with this game. My categorization goes like this-
>First, you have played the game and are addicted to it (obviously the degree and intensity of addiction will vary from one person to the other..and if you have problems with the word 'addiction' then well, give me an alternative to explain your bleary eyed self in front of the laptop/iphone playing the game while the rest of the world lives itself out and in through mundane boredom?)
>Second, you have an indirect association with the game...either you have heard of it, or read about it or have seen someone from the first category play themselves in an endless cycle that stops only when the pigs are all dead.
>Third, you are a subset of the second category...meaning you have had an indirect association with the game..you may even have sling shot'ed your way through one episode, but you are still confused about the rationality of it..you are still struggling (and for all you know, will struggle until the end of errr... the world or the green pigs) to deconstruct the 'WHY' of it.
>Fourth, you are one of the blessed few (a rarest of rare minority) who are just not concerned with it..(its an inconsequential thing in a world that is full of things and people that are nothing but transient?)
Where do I stand? Third group.
The target of all my questions are of course all those sitting firmly inside the first category and the most obvious question is "why do you play the game?".
Since this would entail an engagement with the larger question of virtual gaming, I steer clear of it...but only for now.
Angry birds right...well, why are the birds angry? The basic premise of the game, as quoted by the Wikipedia entry on the same (yes yes, it even has a Wikipedia entry!! Darn! Talk about twisted priorities!!!!!), explains that the game is about these bunch of birds trying to retrieve some eggs stolen by the green evil pigs and that the destruction of the pigs is their revenge. There is nothing wrong with the premise. Revenge would explain the sling shot'ing and bombardment of the pigs...I could even stretch it forward into the realm of the eternal struggle between the good and the bad. I don't dispute the philosophy of it. No no...my problem is more logistical in nature...my question is simple- How did the pigs steal the eggs?
They can't climb trees...so are we talking of some mutant breed of pigs which can clamber up trees, snatch some eggs and and race back down? Is this a projection into a degenerate future where the evil will manifest itself through beings we cannot conceptualize in totality right now? Will these beings be blessed with powers and abilities that are at once horrific and magnificient?
I would like to meet the creator of this game...where did he get the idea of these pigs in the first place...should I look deeper into things like religious beliefs and possible associations with dark magic in the life of this man?
Yes yes I know that you must be shaking your head in incredulous disbelief right now..alright, I admit I got a little carried away with the dark magic bit..but if I may please continue with my I-am-carried-away bit then, just think for a minute...suspend your rationality..what if this really has some connections with evil? What if there are deeper meanings hidden in the game? Like a possible preparation for an actual battle between the good and the evil to be fought in the time coming? Swords, flashes of fatal lightening, weird animals with hideous fangs, agents in black et al?
I shudder....time to change tracks and return to the question with which it all began.
So, why do you all play it? Hour after hour..how can you?
A very devoted player, when i asked him this question (knowing fully well that a philosophical answer would sit much better with me than any explanation that centered around things such as graphics or programming and the likes) said this- isn't it the same with everything else that we do in life? We start things to bring them to an end...a conclusion right? You read a book, watch a movie or listen to a song to finish it... to see what happens in the end...Its the same with the game. We play it to finish it.
Unbelievable....I had and have nothing to say to this line of answering. But to put it mildly, even as he said this I could see that he knew his logic was crumbling down and apart with every word. No tree-climbing-green-evil-pigs came to his rescue.
Even if I grant that you play it to finish it...what difference did it make? I read a book, watch a movie or listen to a song to finish it. Alright. But all of it makes a difference to me..I see something new, read about something new and so on...
But what did you get? Red birds flying like sling shots across a tiny sky in sometimes futile and sometimes successful attempts to kill the pigs?
I am told that there is intense strategizing involved- the arc of the shot, the force of the throw etc. etc.....Fine. And whats the practical translation of this intensive strategization in your life? That practice makes one perfect? Yeah right...a click on the mouse for the amount of time you spend practicing is more likely to end up inflating your physiotherapy bill in later life!
In my despair to understand this one elemental question, i googled this- 'angry birds philosophy'...(please don't laugh, I am really writing from the pits of dejection.)
The results tell me that this is a well thought out question.
Some examples (all from blogs primarily): that obstacles assume different forms at different stages, acknowledging them is the first step towards tackling them; that knowing the different birds and what they can do is to know your strengths and weaknesses and that alone can help you deal with problems and difficulties; that you must make the most of every opportunity and that team work is the best way to maximize human effort towards a set goal...Some one even went so far as to suggest that if you treat each bird as a child you would get excellent parenting tips from the game...How exactly? (I could tear my hair out in frustation right now!)
But the one result which was spectacular in terms of its incredulity was a project launched by the ISKCON group in Brazil which called itself 'Angry Birds Yoga'. The first lesson was titled 'How to eliminate the Green Pigs in your Life'. (I will of course post the link to this project at tne end of this..and maybe I should make in mandatory for those of you who have managed to reach this far in my tirade to check the link out...but then again, how will I enforce my authority and control over your actions through this virtual medium? Damn the shifts in power structures!!!!)
Each character in the game has been attributed with a quality in this project. So where the pigs are all evil undesirable traits we need to get rid of, the birds are the face of 'The Good'.
Moral? Copy the Red, Blue, Yellow and White bird. You shall fly into divine salvation on the wings of these birds...Oh errr...damn. they are all wingless aren't they?
One could talk about the absorption of symbols of popular culture into our daily lives...That alone could and would make some small amount of sense here..But still, Angry Birds as metaphors for parenting and spiritual teaching? I still need time and space to get used to this...And don't even think of crowding my space with flying angry birds!!1
This is turning out to be longer than I thought or planned...
I am already tired of writing about it and I have been at this for like an hour now I think...if nothing else, then i marvel at the persistence of those who play Angry Birds.
I guess its another one of those things which would fall into the category of 'each to his/her own'....
But it still beats me..Why?
(And the link:
http://pandavas.wordpress.com/2011/05/02/angry-birds%E2%84%A2-yoga-%E2%80%93-how-to-eliminate-the-green-pigs-in-your-life-part-i/)
Friday, July 1, 2011
Old Monk
A rectangular 15 inch world.
I delude myself with company..
Virtual worlds of partial associations and half truths.
Flashes of orange on windows that speak?
A sad grey of invisibility.
A click and a contact. Do I ever see them?
A link and a like. A picture and a comment….
A fiber and a world of twisted bondings…
Night sky…
Not black…here it comes with an orange tint.
Stars. None. They hide behind urban miseries.
What is this?
A rum induced stringing of words?
A run towards futility?
Loss of writing syntax?
No not poetry…
Jack and Jill…rhyme rhyme rhyme…
Why?
Maybe they should have stayed up the hill….
Doomed to a forever of falling down.
Why bother?
A break for more…
A wait for words to gather anew.
Rum. Water. Mix mix…swirl.
A medium lost and a habit being discarded.
Absent smoke.
She said….
Spinning. Spinning. Spinning.
A giant shadow. Small ant.
When will they fly?
Perception…gone wrong or found again?
A monk trapped in a lorry…
Chased in plurals.
Hidden in crates.
Pass a bus window...
And a mind that trips over to lost times.
Wait again.
Familiar blanks? Why write?
Someone reads…no one cares.
A paper clip scratches its head.
Confusion?
A programme that fails to make its way through the mire of mortal nonsense.
No binary ones and zeros.
No flowcharts to follow.
What do I do?
Save?
Exit?
The angst of a digital existence.
The three musketeers.
Too short a life shared.
Why did we begin at all?
A world so full…
They cursed us into unwanted changes..
Miss it. Mourn it. Remember it.
Sepia toned photographs?
Carry it around…
Weigh me down and bring me back to the surface.
Come back? Please?
A chrome death.
Temporary but.
A wait that chafes….
Tell me what you think?
Your words lost…your thoughts gone.
Quote Bretcht.
Quote Plath….
In another’s words….
Just tell me what you are….
I delude myself with company..
Virtual worlds of partial associations and half truths.
Flashes of orange on windows that speak?
A sad grey of invisibility.
A click and a contact. Do I ever see them?
A link and a like. A picture and a comment….
A fiber and a world of twisted bondings…
Night sky…
Not black…here it comes with an orange tint.
Stars. None. They hide behind urban miseries.
What is this?
A rum induced stringing of words?
A run towards futility?
Loss of writing syntax?
No not poetry…
Jack and Jill…rhyme rhyme rhyme…
Why?
Maybe they should have stayed up the hill….
Doomed to a forever of falling down.
Why bother?
A break for more…
A wait for words to gather anew.
Rum. Water. Mix mix…swirl.
A medium lost and a habit being discarded.
Absent smoke.
She said….
Spinning. Spinning. Spinning.
A giant shadow. Small ant.
When will they fly?
Perception…gone wrong or found again?
A monk trapped in a lorry…
Chased in plurals.
Hidden in crates.
Pass a bus window...
And a mind that trips over to lost times.
Wait again.
Familiar blanks? Why write?
Someone reads…no one cares.
A paper clip scratches its head.
Confusion?
A programme that fails to make its way through the mire of mortal nonsense.
No binary ones and zeros.
No flowcharts to follow.
What do I do?
Save?
Exit?
The angst of a digital existence.
The three musketeers.
Too short a life shared.
Why did we begin at all?
A world so full…
They cursed us into unwanted changes..
Miss it. Mourn it. Remember it.
Sepia toned photographs?
Carry it around…
Weigh me down and bring me back to the surface.
Come back? Please?
A chrome death.
Temporary but.
A wait that chafes….
Tell me what you think?
Your words lost…your thoughts gone.
Quote Bretcht.
Quote Plath….
In another’s words….
Just tell me what you are….
Yellow Cat Pillow
My mother made this pillow for me when I was about four or five years old...yes yes its hand made and if you look closely, you will see a childhood of spilled juices, sleepy dribble and stray pen marks on its yellow life...
Frayed red threads disobey the circles of its eyes.
The nose is long gone.
One side has three whiskers, one less than the other.
The collar is half gone too.
Much gone...little left…
I haven't let my mother stitch the cat back into respectability....in its abused disarray it reminds me more of things gone and lost. What’s missing is what I fill with half memories.
I am a compulsive chronicler…a hoarder of memories in tangible forms and shapes…
Where we judge our lives in memories and moments, I am constantly loosing them. I have difficulty remembering….I will loose half of what you say to me within five minutes of your having said it. I cannot hold onto thoughts, be they yours or mine…they slip through my fingers like grains of sand…a perpetual game of hide-and-seek…
I live in fear of forgetting...forgetting what to remember and forgetting nothing at all. I wonder often if I will ever have stories to tell. Will they come in quietly to me on a distant summer afternoon or will they shove their way through a cold winter night as I sleep? Or will I draw a blank? Will I loose all my stories?
A singular past and innumerable metaphors of living it now. A ghost. A knot.
We live in questions that haunt….wanting answers that are true. But where do we meet when your truth is different from mine? Where questions are futile and answers naïve, there memories trick us into believing.
I keep a scrapbook of sorts….I have tripped a little too often over what I remember and what I think I remember…I no longer wish to question myself with things I remember.
And so I hoard.
I collect…I preserve…I stick and paste memories from here and there into this little black scrapbook of mine.
Tickets from the ride up to the second floor of the Eiffel Tower…
A paper napkin with a silly doodle by a friend long gone and lost in living…
A postcard from long ago…
The first salary slip…
A photograph and a letter from a grandparent…
A entry pass from a western classical symphony
Movie tickets…dinner bill…
It growers thicker and fatter with the days that go by…I carry my knots with me…the more I live, the more the knot grows…
My ghosts walk with me…I leave some behind and others I commit to memory in this black little book…
And as I wrote somewhere earlier here…. knots will travel...knots will run...
but unravel they never will...carry those knots..lug them around. throw a few and gather anew.
live.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
The Rum Song....
( J! J!!!!! extending the joke...or killing it?)
He who is glum
Needs a plum
Spiked with rum
Go beat the drum
And tell all to come
But don't tell your mum
She'll spank your bum
But old songs we'll hum
:D
He who is glum
Needs a plum
Spiked with rum
Go beat the drum
And tell all to come
But don't tell your mum
She'll spank your bum
But old songs we'll hum
:D
Monday, June 27, 2011
How Much Time is one Cigarette?
Its time enough for me to think that:
-Its high time i took my life in my hands and brought it under some semblance of control. To be more specific, that I should cultivate a healthier lifestyle in terms of food, regular exercise, proper sleeping hours and all of that...
-Its ironic and lame that I should think of health even as I smoke that idea away.
-I should probably make a will (not that I have anything worth of materialistic value to leave behind)...I may die tomorrow for all I know. But then, if the world does end next year then who would want the trappings of another's life to weigh them down?
-I should really look for a room of my own now...living in a hostel is fraying my nerves to the end.
-I should write more and read more.
-I should get my passport renewed.
-I should do something more socially relevant....I spiral deep into the whole notion of doing something to be part of one change or another...that there are too many things in the world waiting to be changed.
-I should really really try going to Marakkech....I haven't heard of anything as exotic as that...
-I should may be try my hand at playing Angry Birds.
-I should learn French. Who knows when I may get the chance for a Parisian summer love?
-I should read Foucault.... how many packets will I need to pull myself through one book?
-I should tell mum and dad about this alternate life that I lead here....they will not believe me..Social ostracism?
-I want a house on the hills....and one in some small Greek fishing village...
-I have still not gotten around to changing my pre-paid connection into a post paid one...drat!
-I have to start making a daily list of things-to-do.
-I still do not know how to operate a washing machine...I prefer hand washing my clothes...am I wasting more water and detergent?
-M's internet (read facebook and blogging) addiction is becoming very irritating. I do not understand obsessions..least of all, one which keeps you glued to a laptop even through a brilliant rainy Sunday afternoon (mentally humminng Lemon Tree...).
-M's weirdly sweet....especially while making Cheese Maggi (that just has to be put in capitals... and I should make up my mind about whether I can make my peace with this new obsession or should I challenge it?)
-I know what disc brakes on a bike are now....is that good?
-I need a good dose of old friends and some D-n-D.....its been way to long..J are you listening?
-I am standing too far away from the fan......
And now i am thinking about how a cigarette can define time....
I'll have to think about this...
The last cigarette.
-Its high time i took my life in my hands and brought it under some semblance of control. To be more specific, that I should cultivate a healthier lifestyle in terms of food, regular exercise, proper sleeping hours and all of that...
-Its ironic and lame that I should think of health even as I smoke that idea away.
-I should probably make a will (not that I have anything worth of materialistic value to leave behind)...I may die tomorrow for all I know. But then, if the world does end next year then who would want the trappings of another's life to weigh them down?
-I should really look for a room of my own now...living in a hostel is fraying my nerves to the end.
-I should write more and read more.
-I should get my passport renewed.
-I should do something more socially relevant....I spiral deep into the whole notion of doing something to be part of one change or another...that there are too many things in the world waiting to be changed.
-I should really really try going to Marakkech....I haven't heard of anything as exotic as that...
-I should may be try my hand at playing Angry Birds.
-I should learn French. Who knows when I may get the chance for a Parisian summer love?
-I should read Foucault.... how many packets will I need to pull myself through one book?
-I should tell mum and dad about this alternate life that I lead here....they will not believe me..Social ostracism?
-I want a house on the hills....and one in some small Greek fishing village...
-I have still not gotten around to changing my pre-paid connection into a post paid one...drat!
-I have to start making a daily list of things-to-do.
-I still do not know how to operate a washing machine...I prefer hand washing my clothes...am I wasting more water and detergent?
-M's internet (read facebook and blogging) addiction is becoming very irritating. I do not understand obsessions..least of all, one which keeps you glued to a laptop even through a brilliant rainy Sunday afternoon (mentally humminng Lemon Tree...).
-M's weirdly sweet....especially while making Cheese Maggi (that just has to be put in capitals... and I should make up my mind about whether I can make my peace with this new obsession or should I challenge it?)
-I know what disc brakes on a bike are now....is that good?
-I need a good dose of old friends and some D-n-D.....its been way to long..J are you listening?
-I am standing too far away from the fan......
And now i am thinking about how a cigarette can define time....
I'll have to think about this...
The last cigarette.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
On Redundancy....
As I write and as you read, its but one small momentary break in our lives that are running in an endless loop of existential indifference.
One day is a circle. One circle is a trap of continuous reaffirmation of narrow existence. In a world that is only dismantling itself with every passing hour, we have taught ourselves to comfortably ignore each of those things and people who ask too many questions and break through our inertia.
This is not to challenge redundancy....I am too nicely ensconced in it to do that. But perhaps catching this moment of a break...this instance of partial awareness of the bleak side of our world...this will help ease a bit of the existential angst against my own apathy and indifference?
There are a million things which prick and another million things which mock our perceptions of life and living...
I can already sense a reluctant full stop coming.....the break didn't last all that long now did it?
One day is a circle. One circle is a trap of continuous reaffirmation of narrow existence. In a world that is only dismantling itself with every passing hour, we have taught ourselves to comfortably ignore each of those things and people who ask too many questions and break through our inertia.
This is not to challenge redundancy....I am too nicely ensconced in it to do that. But perhaps catching this moment of a break...this instance of partial awareness of the bleak side of our world...this will help ease a bit of the existential angst against my own apathy and indifference?
There are a million things which prick and another million things which mock our perceptions of life and living...
I can already sense a reluctant full stop coming.....the break didn't last all that long now did it?
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
“The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair” by Ray Bradbury
He called her Stanley, she called him Ollie.
That was the beginning, that was the end, of what we will call the Laurel and Hardy love affair.
She was twenty-five, he was thirty-two when they met at one of those dumb cocktail parties where everyone wonders what they are doing there. But no one goes home, so everyone drinks too much and lies about how grand a late afternoon it all was.
They did not, as often happens, see each other across a crowded room, and if there was romantic music to background their collision, it couldn’t be heard. For everyone was talking at one person and staring at someone else.
They were, in fact, ricocheting through a forest of people, but finding no shade trees. He was on his way for a needed drink, she was eluding a love-sick stranger, when they locked paths in the exact center of the fruitless mob. They dodged left and right a few times, then laughed and he on impulse, seized his tie and twiddled it at her, wiggling his fingers. Instantly, smiling, she lifted her hand to pull the top of her hair into a frowzy tassel, blinking and looking as if she had been struck on the head.
“Stan!” he cried, in recognition.
“Ollie!” She exclaimed. “Where have you been?”
“Why don’t you do something to help me!” he exclaimed, making wide fat gestures.
They grabbed each others arms, laughing again.
“I-” She said, and her face brightened even more. “I-I know the exact place, not two miles from here, where Laurel and Hardy, in nineteen thirty, carried that piano crate up and down one hundred and fifty steps!”
“Well,” he cried, “let’s get out of here!”
His car door slammed, his car engine roared.
Los Angeles raced by in late afternoon sunlight.
He braked the car where she told him to park. “Here!”
“I can’t believe it,” he murmured, not moving. He peered around at the sunset sky. Lights were coming on all across Los Angeles, down the hill. He nodded. “Are those the steps?”
“All one hundred fifty of them.” She climbed out of the open topped car. “Come on, Ollie.”
“Very well,” he said, “Stan.”
They walked over to the bottom of yet another hill and gazed up along the steep incline of concrete steps toward the sky. The faintest touch of wetness rimmed his eyes. She was quick to pretend not to notice, but she took his elbow. Her voice was wonderfully quiet.
“Go on up,” she said. “Go on. Go.”
She gave him a tender push.
He started up the steps, counting, and with each half-whispered count, his voice took on an extra decibel of joy. By the time he reached fifty-seven he was a boy playing a wondrous old-new game, and he was lost in time, and whether he was carrying the piano up the hill or whether it was chasing him down, he could not say.
“Hold it!” he heard her call, far away, “right there!”
He held still, swaying on step fifty-eight, smiling wildly, as if accompanied by proper ghosts, and turned.
“Okay,” she called, “come back down.”
He started down, color in his cheeks and a peculiar suffering of happiness in his chest. He could hear the piano following now.
“Hold it right there!”
She had a camera in her hands. Seeing it, his right hand flew instinctively to his tie to flutter it on the evening air.
“Now me!” She shouted, and raced up to hand him the camera. And he marched down and looked up and there she was, doing the thin shrug and the puzzled and hopeless face of Stan baffled by life but loving it all. He clicked the shutter, wanting to stay here forever.
She came slowly down the steps and peered into his face.
“Why,” she said, “you’re crying.”
She placed her thumbs under his eyes to press the tears away. She tasted the result. “Yep,” she said. “Real tears.”
He looked at her eyes, which were almost as wet as his.
“Another fine mess you’ve got us in,” he said.
“Oh, Ollie,” she said.
“Oh, Stan,” he said.
He kissed her, gently.
And then he said:
“Are we going to know each other forever?”
“Forever,” she said.
*And that was how the long love affair began.
They had real names, of course, but those don’t matter, for Laurel and Hardy always seemed the best thing to call themselves.
For the simple fact was that she was fifteen pounds underweight and he was always trying to get her to add a few pounds. And he was twenty pounds overweight and she was always trying to get him to take off more than his shoes. But it never worked and was finally a joke, the best kind, which wound up being:
“You’re Stan, no two ways about it, and I’m Ollie, let’s face it. And oh God, dear young woman, let’s enjoy the mess, the wonderful mess, all the while we’re in!”
It was, then, while it lasted, and it lasted some while, a French parfait, an American perfection, a wilderness from which they would never recover to the end of their lives.
From that twilight hour on the piano stairs on, their days were long, heedless, and full of that amazing laughter that paces the beginning and the run-along rush of any great love affair. They only stopped laughing long enough to kiss and only stopped kissing long enough to laugh at how odd and miraculous it was to find themselves with no clothes to wear in the middle of a bed as vast as life and as beautiful as morning.
And sitting there in the middle of warm whiteness, he shut his eyes and shook his head and declared, pompously:
“I have nothing to say!”
“Yes, you do!” she cried. “Say it!”
And he said it and they fell off the edge of the earth.
*Their first year was pure myth and fable, which would grow outsize when remembered thirty years on. They went to see new films and old films, but mainly Stan and Ollie. They memorized all the best scenes and shouted them back and forth as they drove around midnight Los Angeles. He spoiled her by treating her childhood growing up in Hollywood as very special, and she spoiled him by pretending that his yesteryear on roller skates out front of the studios was not in the past but right now.
She proved it one night. On a whim she asked where he had roller-skated as a boy and collided with W.C. Fields. Where he asked Fields for his autograph, and where was it that Fields signed the book, and handed it back, and cried, “There you are, you little son-of-a-bitch!”
“Drive me there,” she said.
And at ten o’clock that night they got out of the car in front of Paramount Studio and he pointed to the pavement near the gate and said, “He stood there,” and she gathered him in her arms and kissed him and said gently, “Now where was it you had your picture taken with Marlene Dietrich?”
He walked her fifty feet across the street from the studio. “In the late afternoon sun,” he said, “Marlene stood here.” And she kissed him again, longer this time, and the moon rising like an obvious magic trick, filling the street in front of the empty studio. She let her soul flow over into him like a tipped fountain, and he received it and gave it back and was glad.
“Now,” she said, quietly, “where was it you saw Fred Astaire in nineteen thirty-five and Ronald Colman in nineteen thirty-seven and Jean Harlow in nineteen thirty-six?”
And he drove her to those three different places all around Hollywood until midnight and they stood and she kissed him as if it would never end.
And that was the first year. And during that year they went up and down those long piano steps at least once a month and had champagne picnics halfway up, and discovered an incredible thing:
“I think it’s our mouths,” he said, “Until I met you, I never knew I had a mouth. Yours is the most amazing in the world, and it makes me feel as if mine were amazing, too. Were you ever really kissed before I kissed you?”
“Never!”
“Nor was I. To have lived this long and not known mouths.”
“Dear mouth,” she said, “shut up and kiss.”
But then at the end of the first year they discovered an even more incredible thing. He worked at an advertising agency and was nailed in one place. She worked at a travel agency and would soon be flying everywhere. Both were astonished they had never noticed before. But now that Vesuvius had erupted and the fiery dust was beginning to settle, they sat and looked at each other one night and she said, faintly:
“Good-bye…”
“What?” he asked.
“I can see good-bye coming,” she said.
He looked at her face and it was not sad like Stan in the films, but just sad like herself.
“I feel like the ending of that Hemingway novel where two people ride along in the late day and say how it would be if they could go on forever but they know now they won’t,” she said.
“Stan,” he said, “this is no Hemingway novel and this can’t be the end of the world. You’ll never leave me.”
But it was a question, not a declaration and suddenly she moved and he blinked at her and said:
“What are you doing down there?”
“Nut,” she said, “I’m kneeling on the floor and I’m asking your hand. Marry me, Ollie. Come away with me to France. I’ve got a new job in Paris. No, don’t say anything. Shut up. No one has to know I’ve got money this year and will support you while you write the great American novel–”
“But–” he said.
“You’ve got your portable type-writer, and a ream of paper, and me. Say it, Ollie, will you come? Hell, don’t marry me, we’ll live in sin, but fly with me, yes?”
“And watch us go to hell in a year and bury us forever?”
“Are you that afraid, Ollie? Don’t you believe in me or you or anything? God, why are men such cowards, and why the hell do you have such thin skins and are afraid of a woman like a ladder to lean on. Listen. I’ve got things to do and you’re coming with me. I can’t leave you here, you’ll fall tomorrow. That means you, Paris, and my job. Your novel will take time but you’ll do it. Now, do you do it here and feel sorry for yourself, or do we live in a cold-water walk-up flat in the Latin Quarter a long way off from here? This is my one and only offer, Ollie. I’ve never proposed before, I won’t ever propose again, it’s hard on my knees. Well?”
“Have we had this conversation before?” he said.
“A dozen times in the last year, but you never listened, you were hopeless.”
“No, in love and helpless.”
“You’ve got one minute to make up your mind. Sixty seconds.” She was staring at her wristwatch.
“Get up off the floor,” he said, embarrassed.
“If I do, it’s out the door and gone,” she said. “Forty-nine seconds to go, Ollie.”
“Stan,” he groaned.
“Thirty,” she read her watch. “Twenty. I’ve got one knee off the floor. Ten. I’m beginning to get the other knee up. Five. One.”
And she was standing on her feet.
“What brought this on?” he asked.
“Now,” she said, “I am heading for the door. I don’t know. Maybe I’ve thought about it more than I dared even notice. We are very special wondrous people, Ollie, and I don’t think our like will ever come again in the world, at least not to us, or I’m lying to myself and I probably am. But I must go and you are free to come along, but can’t face it or don’t know it. And now-” she reached out. “My hand is on the door and-”
“And?” he said, quietly.
“I’m crying,” she said.
He started to get up but she shook her head.
“No, don’t. If you touch me I’ll cave in, and to hell with that. I’m going. But once a year will be forbearance day, or forgiveness day or whatever in hell you want to call it. Once a year I’ll show up at our flight of steps, no piano, same hour, same time as that night when we first went there and if you’re there to meet me I’ll kidnap you or you me, but don’t bring along, and show me your damn bank balance or give me any of your lip.”
“Stan,” he said.
“My God,” she mourned.
“What?”
“This door is heavy. I can’t move it.” She wept. “There. It’s moving. There.” She wept more. “I’m gone.”
The door shut.
“Stan!” He ran to the door and grabbed the knob. It was wet. He raised his fingers to his mouth and tasted the salt, then opened the door.
The hall was already empty. The air where she had passed was just coming back together. Thunder threatened when the two halves met. There was a promise of rain.
*He went back to the steps on October 4 every year for three years, but she wasn’t there. And then he forgot for two years but in the autumn of the sixth year, he remembered and went back in the late sunlight and walked up the stairs because he saw something halfway up and it was a bottle of good champagne with a ribbon and a note on it, delivered by someone, and the note read:
“Ollie, dear Ollie. Date remembered. But in Paris. Mouth’s not the same but happily married. Love Stan.”
And after that, every October he simply did not go to visit the stairs. The sound of that piano rushing down that hillside, he knew, would catch him and take him along to where he did not know.”
And that was the end, or almost the end, of the Laurel and Hardy love affair.
There was, by amiable accident, a final meeting.
Traveling through France fifteen years later, he was walking on the Champs Elysees at twilight one afternoon with his wife and two daughters, when he saw this handsome woman coming the other way, escorted by a very sober-looking older man and a very handsome dark-haired boy of twelve, obviously her son.
As they passed, the same smile lit both their faces in the same instant.
He twiddled his necktie at her.
She tousled her hair at him.
They did not stop. They kept going. But he heard her call back along the Champs Elysees, the last words he would ever hear her say:
“Another fine mess you’ve got us in!” And then she added the old, the familiar name by which he had gone in the years of their love.
And she was gone and his daughters and wife looked at him and one daughter said, “Did that lady call you Ollie?”
“What lady?” he said.
“Dad,” said the other daughter leaning in to peer at his face. “You’re crying.”
“No.”
“Yes, you are. Isn’t he, Mom?”
“Your papa,” said his wife, “as you well know, cries at telephone books.”
“No,” he said, “just one hundred and fifty steps and a piano. Remind me to show you girls, someday.”
They walked on and he turned and looked back a final time. The woman with her husband and son turned at that very moment. Maybe he saw her mouth pantomime the words, So long, Ollie. Maybe he didn’t. He felt his own mouth move, in silence: So long, Stan.
And they walked in opposite directions along the Champs Elysees in the late night of an October sun.
(I first read this in an old old issue of the Reader's Digest...which year i do not remember now...)
That was the beginning, that was the end, of what we will call the Laurel and Hardy love affair.
She was twenty-five, he was thirty-two when they met at one of those dumb cocktail parties where everyone wonders what they are doing there. But no one goes home, so everyone drinks too much and lies about how grand a late afternoon it all was.
They did not, as often happens, see each other across a crowded room, and if there was romantic music to background their collision, it couldn’t be heard. For everyone was talking at one person and staring at someone else.
They were, in fact, ricocheting through a forest of people, but finding no shade trees. He was on his way for a needed drink, she was eluding a love-sick stranger, when they locked paths in the exact center of the fruitless mob. They dodged left and right a few times, then laughed and he on impulse, seized his tie and twiddled it at her, wiggling his fingers. Instantly, smiling, she lifted her hand to pull the top of her hair into a frowzy tassel, blinking and looking as if she had been struck on the head.
“Stan!” he cried, in recognition.
“Ollie!” She exclaimed. “Where have you been?”
“Why don’t you do something to help me!” he exclaimed, making wide fat gestures.
They grabbed each others arms, laughing again.
“I-” She said, and her face brightened even more. “I-I know the exact place, not two miles from here, where Laurel and Hardy, in nineteen thirty, carried that piano crate up and down one hundred and fifty steps!”
“Well,” he cried, “let’s get out of here!”
His car door slammed, his car engine roared.
Los Angeles raced by in late afternoon sunlight.
He braked the car where she told him to park. “Here!”
“I can’t believe it,” he murmured, not moving. He peered around at the sunset sky. Lights were coming on all across Los Angeles, down the hill. He nodded. “Are those the steps?”
“All one hundred fifty of them.” She climbed out of the open topped car. “Come on, Ollie.”
“Very well,” he said, “Stan.”
They walked over to the bottom of yet another hill and gazed up along the steep incline of concrete steps toward the sky. The faintest touch of wetness rimmed his eyes. She was quick to pretend not to notice, but she took his elbow. Her voice was wonderfully quiet.
“Go on up,” she said. “Go on. Go.”
She gave him a tender push.
He started up the steps, counting, and with each half-whispered count, his voice took on an extra decibel of joy. By the time he reached fifty-seven he was a boy playing a wondrous old-new game, and he was lost in time, and whether he was carrying the piano up the hill or whether it was chasing him down, he could not say.
“Hold it!” he heard her call, far away, “right there!”
He held still, swaying on step fifty-eight, smiling wildly, as if accompanied by proper ghosts, and turned.
“Okay,” she called, “come back down.”
He started down, color in his cheeks and a peculiar suffering of happiness in his chest. He could hear the piano following now.
“Hold it right there!”
She had a camera in her hands. Seeing it, his right hand flew instinctively to his tie to flutter it on the evening air.
“Now me!” She shouted, and raced up to hand him the camera. And he marched down and looked up and there she was, doing the thin shrug and the puzzled and hopeless face of Stan baffled by life but loving it all. He clicked the shutter, wanting to stay here forever.
She came slowly down the steps and peered into his face.
“Why,” she said, “you’re crying.”
She placed her thumbs under his eyes to press the tears away. She tasted the result. “Yep,” she said. “Real tears.”
He looked at her eyes, which were almost as wet as his.
“Another fine mess you’ve got us in,” he said.
“Oh, Ollie,” she said.
“Oh, Stan,” he said.
He kissed her, gently.
And then he said:
“Are we going to know each other forever?”
“Forever,” she said.
*And that was how the long love affair began.
They had real names, of course, but those don’t matter, for Laurel and Hardy always seemed the best thing to call themselves.
For the simple fact was that she was fifteen pounds underweight and he was always trying to get her to add a few pounds. And he was twenty pounds overweight and she was always trying to get him to take off more than his shoes. But it never worked and was finally a joke, the best kind, which wound up being:
“You’re Stan, no two ways about it, and I’m Ollie, let’s face it. And oh God, dear young woman, let’s enjoy the mess, the wonderful mess, all the while we’re in!”
It was, then, while it lasted, and it lasted some while, a French parfait, an American perfection, a wilderness from which they would never recover to the end of their lives.
From that twilight hour on the piano stairs on, their days were long, heedless, and full of that amazing laughter that paces the beginning and the run-along rush of any great love affair. They only stopped laughing long enough to kiss and only stopped kissing long enough to laugh at how odd and miraculous it was to find themselves with no clothes to wear in the middle of a bed as vast as life and as beautiful as morning.
And sitting there in the middle of warm whiteness, he shut his eyes and shook his head and declared, pompously:
“I have nothing to say!”
“Yes, you do!” she cried. “Say it!”
And he said it and they fell off the edge of the earth.
*Their first year was pure myth and fable, which would grow outsize when remembered thirty years on. They went to see new films and old films, but mainly Stan and Ollie. They memorized all the best scenes and shouted them back and forth as they drove around midnight Los Angeles. He spoiled her by treating her childhood growing up in Hollywood as very special, and she spoiled him by pretending that his yesteryear on roller skates out front of the studios was not in the past but right now.
She proved it one night. On a whim she asked where he had roller-skated as a boy and collided with W.C. Fields. Where he asked Fields for his autograph, and where was it that Fields signed the book, and handed it back, and cried, “There you are, you little son-of-a-bitch!”
“Drive me there,” she said.
And at ten o’clock that night they got out of the car in front of Paramount Studio and he pointed to the pavement near the gate and said, “He stood there,” and she gathered him in her arms and kissed him and said gently, “Now where was it you had your picture taken with Marlene Dietrich?”
He walked her fifty feet across the street from the studio. “In the late afternoon sun,” he said, “Marlene stood here.” And she kissed him again, longer this time, and the moon rising like an obvious magic trick, filling the street in front of the empty studio. She let her soul flow over into him like a tipped fountain, and he received it and gave it back and was glad.
“Now,” she said, quietly, “where was it you saw Fred Astaire in nineteen thirty-five and Ronald Colman in nineteen thirty-seven and Jean Harlow in nineteen thirty-six?”
And he drove her to those three different places all around Hollywood until midnight and they stood and she kissed him as if it would never end.
And that was the first year. And during that year they went up and down those long piano steps at least once a month and had champagne picnics halfway up, and discovered an incredible thing:
“I think it’s our mouths,” he said, “Until I met you, I never knew I had a mouth. Yours is the most amazing in the world, and it makes me feel as if mine were amazing, too. Were you ever really kissed before I kissed you?”
“Never!”
“Nor was I. To have lived this long and not known mouths.”
“Dear mouth,” she said, “shut up and kiss.”
But then at the end of the first year they discovered an even more incredible thing. He worked at an advertising agency and was nailed in one place. She worked at a travel agency and would soon be flying everywhere. Both were astonished they had never noticed before. But now that Vesuvius had erupted and the fiery dust was beginning to settle, they sat and looked at each other one night and she said, faintly:
“Good-bye…”
“What?” he asked.
“I can see good-bye coming,” she said.
He looked at her face and it was not sad like Stan in the films, but just sad like herself.
“I feel like the ending of that Hemingway novel where two people ride along in the late day and say how it would be if they could go on forever but they know now they won’t,” she said.
“Stan,” he said, “this is no Hemingway novel and this can’t be the end of the world. You’ll never leave me.”
But it was a question, not a declaration and suddenly she moved and he blinked at her and said:
“What are you doing down there?”
“Nut,” she said, “I’m kneeling on the floor and I’m asking your hand. Marry me, Ollie. Come away with me to France. I’ve got a new job in Paris. No, don’t say anything. Shut up. No one has to know I’ve got money this year and will support you while you write the great American novel–”
“But–” he said.
“You’ve got your portable type-writer, and a ream of paper, and me. Say it, Ollie, will you come? Hell, don’t marry me, we’ll live in sin, but fly with me, yes?”
“And watch us go to hell in a year and bury us forever?”
“Are you that afraid, Ollie? Don’t you believe in me or you or anything? God, why are men such cowards, and why the hell do you have such thin skins and are afraid of a woman like a ladder to lean on. Listen. I’ve got things to do and you’re coming with me. I can’t leave you here, you’ll fall tomorrow. That means you, Paris, and my job. Your novel will take time but you’ll do it. Now, do you do it here and feel sorry for yourself, or do we live in a cold-water walk-up flat in the Latin Quarter a long way off from here? This is my one and only offer, Ollie. I’ve never proposed before, I won’t ever propose again, it’s hard on my knees. Well?”
“Have we had this conversation before?” he said.
“A dozen times in the last year, but you never listened, you were hopeless.”
“No, in love and helpless.”
“You’ve got one minute to make up your mind. Sixty seconds.” She was staring at her wristwatch.
“Get up off the floor,” he said, embarrassed.
“If I do, it’s out the door and gone,” she said. “Forty-nine seconds to go, Ollie.”
“Stan,” he groaned.
“Thirty,” she read her watch. “Twenty. I’ve got one knee off the floor. Ten. I’m beginning to get the other knee up. Five. One.”
And she was standing on her feet.
“What brought this on?” he asked.
“Now,” she said, “I am heading for the door. I don’t know. Maybe I’ve thought about it more than I dared even notice. We are very special wondrous people, Ollie, and I don’t think our like will ever come again in the world, at least not to us, or I’m lying to myself and I probably am. But I must go and you are free to come along, but can’t face it or don’t know it. And now-” she reached out. “My hand is on the door and-”
“And?” he said, quietly.
“I’m crying,” she said.
He started to get up but she shook her head.
“No, don’t. If you touch me I’ll cave in, and to hell with that. I’m going. But once a year will be forbearance day, or forgiveness day or whatever in hell you want to call it. Once a year I’ll show up at our flight of steps, no piano, same hour, same time as that night when we first went there and if you’re there to meet me I’ll kidnap you or you me, but don’t bring along, and show me your damn bank balance or give me any of your lip.”
“Stan,” he said.
“My God,” she mourned.
“What?”
“This door is heavy. I can’t move it.” She wept. “There. It’s moving. There.” She wept more. “I’m gone.”
The door shut.
“Stan!” He ran to the door and grabbed the knob. It was wet. He raised his fingers to his mouth and tasted the salt, then opened the door.
The hall was already empty. The air where she had passed was just coming back together. Thunder threatened when the two halves met. There was a promise of rain.
*He went back to the steps on October 4 every year for three years, but she wasn’t there. And then he forgot for two years but in the autumn of the sixth year, he remembered and went back in the late sunlight and walked up the stairs because he saw something halfway up and it was a bottle of good champagne with a ribbon and a note on it, delivered by someone, and the note read:
“Ollie, dear Ollie. Date remembered. But in Paris. Mouth’s not the same but happily married. Love Stan.”
And after that, every October he simply did not go to visit the stairs. The sound of that piano rushing down that hillside, he knew, would catch him and take him along to where he did not know.”
And that was the end, or almost the end, of the Laurel and Hardy love affair.
There was, by amiable accident, a final meeting.
Traveling through France fifteen years later, he was walking on the Champs Elysees at twilight one afternoon with his wife and two daughters, when he saw this handsome woman coming the other way, escorted by a very sober-looking older man and a very handsome dark-haired boy of twelve, obviously her son.
As they passed, the same smile lit both their faces in the same instant.
He twiddled his necktie at her.
She tousled her hair at him.
They did not stop. They kept going. But he heard her call back along the Champs Elysees, the last words he would ever hear her say:
“Another fine mess you’ve got us in!” And then she added the old, the familiar name by which he had gone in the years of their love.
And she was gone and his daughters and wife looked at him and one daughter said, “Did that lady call you Ollie?”
“What lady?” he said.
“Dad,” said the other daughter leaning in to peer at his face. “You’re crying.”
“No.”
“Yes, you are. Isn’t he, Mom?”
“Your papa,” said his wife, “as you well know, cries at telephone books.”
“No,” he said, “just one hundred and fifty steps and a piano. Remind me to show you girls, someday.”
They walked on and he turned and looked back a final time. The woman with her husband and son turned at that very moment. Maybe he saw her mouth pantomime the words, So long, Ollie. Maybe he didn’t. He felt his own mouth move, in silence: So long, Stan.
And they walked in opposite directions along the Champs Elysees in the late night of an October sun.
(I first read this in an old old issue of the Reader's Digest...which year i do not remember now...)
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Challenging procrastination.......
We’ve consoled ourselves by saying that we are only living up to our name....procrastinators we are and procrastinate we will....
But we seek to shed this burden now...where a million words come and go everyday...it is no longer possible to carry on that mantle of silence.
The last time we wrote was on the 19th of September 2010.....musings from a Sunday afternoon perhaps.....but all has to change now...or at least an attempt at change has to be and will be made.
may we say true..true not to the name but to the challenge of countering it....
But we seek to shed this burden now...where a million words come and go everyday...it is no longer possible to carry on that mantle of silence.
The last time we wrote was on the 19th of September 2010.....musings from a Sunday afternoon perhaps.....but all has to change now...or at least an attempt at change has to be and will be made.
may we say true..true not to the name but to the challenge of countering it....
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