I have never been able to fathom poetry. Not because it's unensnarable—which it annoyingly is—but because it never seems to touch upon that all-encompassing nerve of human endeavour supposedly running through our blood, transcending cultures and time and space. Is there a common trouble that we all share? Is there a common tragedy that is not death that we all quietly await that so many claim is described by poetry?
I, for one, think that that thread of shared memory is lost, forever leaving the feeble grasp of our comprehension. In fact, I believe that there is more to be shared, more to be found that will speak to the mind's innermost voices, in a lonely moment of self-doubting. Away from a larger freedom, a "shared freedom", we now reside in a larger prison, an invisible cell that assumes various shapes and sizes.
Sometimes, it’s in your throat, blocking your words from surfacing. Sometimes, it has your skull in a death-grip, suffocating all thoughts. Sometimes, it holds your feet to the ground and keeps you from flying, or sticks your fingers in your ears and never lets you hear what you might want to hear. Sometimes, it’s a cock in a cunt, a blade against your nerves, a catch on your side, a tapeworm in your intestines, or that cold sensation that kills wet dreams.
Today, now, this moment, the smallest of freedoms, the freedoms that belong to us alone, are what everyone shares, what everyone experiences. It's simply an individuation of an idea, rather a belief, and the truth of that admission—peppered as it is with much doubt—makes us hold on more tightly to it. And as much as we partake of that individuation, like little gluons that emit gluons, we inspire more to pop into existence.
Within the confines of each small freedom, we live in worlds of our own fashioning. Poetry is, to me, the voice of those worlds. It is the resultant voice, counter-resolved into one expression of will and intention and sensation, that cannot, in turn, be broken down into one man or one woman, but only into whole histories that have bred them. Poetry is, to me, no longer a contiguous spectrum of pandered hormones or a conflict-indulged struggle, but an admission of self-doubt.
Showing posts with label emotions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label emotions. Show all posts
Saturday, 8 September 2012
Saturday, 18 August 2012
The marching coloumns
Every day is a swing between highs and lows, and in the last two months that I've experienced them, they've never been periodic. Setting off the work, the mood depends on the weather: cloudy is good, buoyant, rain is more than welcome, but a clear, blue sky and a blazing fireball in the empyrean is a dampener on my spirits, if not on anyone else's. How will I work if I'm sweating all the time? Hmm.
The traffic in my erstwhile small city has grown to draconean proportions. Some argue that it's a good sign, a sign of the city turning into a metropolis. I don't like it. It not only places more minutes, more hours between work and home, home and work, between the factories and the beach, between the railway stations and the travel-shops, but it turns nice auto-drivers into pissed-off tyrants whom you simply don't want to run into.
It takes nothing to precipitate all this but the clock striking 6. Areas and wards transform from familiar crenelations of microscopic economies, communities of traders, sweatshop toilers, and flower-braiders to hotbeds of rage, of exodus and maddened intra-urban migration... Suddenly, friends want to leave, fathers want to be left alone, mothers want to vent, and sisters want only to know what the hell's going on.
If you're in Chennai and traveling by auto in the evenings, I suggest you carry a book, or a Kindle, or a smartphone with which to kill time. It's a time-warp, absolute and unrelenting chronostasis, with a profanity-drenched metronome ticking away like a time-bomb in the seat in front of yours. Of course, there are also people pushing, people shoving their way through the maze of vehicles. For every mile, I suppose it's 10 points, and for every deceptively shallow pothole surmounted, 50.
In this crazy, demented rush, the only place anyone wants to be is on the other side of the road, the Place Where There Is Space, a vacuum on the far side that sucks the journeymen and journeywomen of Chennai into a few seconds of a non-Chennai space. When I ride in an auto on such days, I just don't mind waiting, for everyone to pass by. I don't want to make enemies of my fellows. At the same time, I never might know them better than their mumbled gratitude when I wave them ahead.
The driver gets pissed off, though. Starts to charge more, calls me "soft", and that I don't have what it takes to live and survive in the city. I tell him I can live and survive in the city alright, it's just the city that's not the city anymore. Sometimes, the driver laughs; most times, it's a frown. In that instant, I'm computed to become an intellectual, and auto-drivers seem to think intellectuals have buttloads of money.
The only thing these days that intellectuals have buttloads of is tolerance.
Tolerance to let the world pass by without doing anything about it, tolerance to letting passersby jeer at you and making you feel guilty, tolerance to the rivers that must flow and the coloumns that must march, tolerance to peers and idols who insist something must be done, tolerance to their mundane introspection and insistence that there's more to doing things than just hoping that that's a purpose in itself.
It's circular logic, unbreakable without a sudden and overwhelming injection of a dose of chaos. When the ants scurry, the mosquitoes take off, and the elephants stampede, all to wade through an influx of uncertainty and incomprehension and unadulterated freedom, real purpose will be forged. When children grow up, they are introduced to this cycle, cajoled into adopting it. Eventually, the children are killed to make way for adults.
With penises and vaginas, the adults must rule this world. But why must they rule? They don't know. Why must they serve? They don't know. Yeah, sitting in an auto moving at 1 mile an hour, these questions weigh you down like lodestones, like anchors tugging at the seafloor, fastening your wayward and seemingly productive mind to an epiphany. You must surely have watched Nolan's Inception: doesn't the paradox of pitch circularity come to mind?
The grass is always greener on the other side, the staircase forever leads to heaven, the triangle is an infinite mobius spiral, each twist a jump into the few-seconds-from-now future. Somewhere, however, there is a rupture. Somewhere inside my city, there is a road at the other end of which there is my city in chronostasis, stuck in a few-hours-from-now past.
Where auto-drivers aren't pissed off because the clock struck 6, where fathers and mothers realize nothing's slowed down but just that their clocks have been on fast-forward of late, where snaking ribbons of smoke don't compete for space but simply let it go, no longer covet it, only join in the collective sorrow of our city's adolescence.
The traffic in my erstwhile small city has grown to draconean proportions. Some argue that it's a good sign, a sign of the city turning into a metropolis. I don't like it. It not only places more minutes, more hours between work and home, home and work, between the factories and the beach, between the railway stations and the travel-shops, but it turns nice auto-drivers into pissed-off tyrants whom you simply don't want to run into.
It takes nothing to precipitate all this but the clock striking 6. Areas and wards transform from familiar crenelations of microscopic economies, communities of traders, sweatshop toilers, and flower-braiders to hotbeds of rage, of exodus and maddened intra-urban migration... Suddenly, friends want to leave, fathers want to be left alone, mothers want to vent, and sisters want only to know what the hell's going on.
If you're in Chennai and traveling by auto in the evenings, I suggest you carry a book, or a Kindle, or a smartphone with which to kill time. It's a time-warp, absolute and unrelenting chronostasis, with a profanity-drenched metronome ticking away like a time-bomb in the seat in front of yours. Of course, there are also people pushing, people shoving their way through the maze of vehicles. For every mile, I suppose it's 10 points, and for every deceptively shallow pothole surmounted, 50.
In this crazy, demented rush, the only place anyone wants to be is on the other side of the road, the Place Where There Is Space, a vacuum on the far side that sucks the journeymen and journeywomen of Chennai into a few seconds of a non-Chennai space. When I ride in an auto on such days, I just don't mind waiting, for everyone to pass by. I don't want to make enemies of my fellows. At the same time, I never might know them better than their mumbled gratitude when I wave them ahead.
The driver gets pissed off, though. Starts to charge more, calls me "soft", and that I don't have what it takes to live and survive in the city. I tell him I can live and survive in the city alright, it's just the city that's not the city anymore. Sometimes, the driver laughs; most times, it's a frown. In that instant, I'm computed to become an intellectual, and auto-drivers seem to think intellectuals have buttloads of money.
The only thing these days that intellectuals have buttloads of is tolerance.
Tolerance to let the world pass by without doing anything about it, tolerance to letting passersby jeer at you and making you feel guilty, tolerance to the rivers that must flow and the coloumns that must march, tolerance to peers and idols who insist something must be done, tolerance to their mundane introspection and insistence that there's more to doing things than just hoping that that's a purpose in itself.
It's circular logic, unbreakable without a sudden and overwhelming injection of a dose of chaos. When the ants scurry, the mosquitoes take off, and the elephants stampede, all to wade through an influx of uncertainty and incomprehension and unadulterated freedom, real purpose will be forged. When children grow up, they are introduced to this cycle, cajoled into adopting it. Eventually, the children are killed to make way for adults.
With penises and vaginas, the adults must rule this world. But why must they rule? They don't know. Why must they serve? They don't know. Yeah, sitting in an auto moving at 1 mile an hour, these questions weigh you down like lodestones, like anchors tugging at the seafloor, fastening your wayward and seemingly productive mind to an epiphany. You must surely have watched Nolan's Inception: doesn't the paradox of pitch circularity come to mind?
The grass is always greener on the other side, the staircase forever leads to heaven, the triangle is an infinite mobius spiral, each twist a jump into the few-seconds-from-now future. Somewhere, however, there is a rupture. Somewhere inside my city, there is a road at the other end of which there is my city in chronostasis, stuck in a few-hours-from-now past.
Where auto-drivers aren't pissed off because the clock struck 6, where fathers and mothers realize nothing's slowed down but just that their clocks have been on fast-forward of late, where snaking ribbons of smoke don't compete for space but simply let it go, no longer covet it, only join in the collective sorrow of our city's adolescence.
Monday, 16 January 2012
A fisher named Freyton
And what do you mean by all your life, I ask. Freyton doesn’t hesitate to answer: “I am 40 years old, and I have been fishing for 40 years.” He is a fisherman from a quaint coastal hamlet called Aalanthalai, and has a private collection of conches that numbers in the hundreds. However, once his livelihood began to shrink after the invasion of trawlers and the pollution of his beloved sea, Freyton hasn’t been able to do anything else but worry. He won’t sell his conches even though he knows they will fetch a fortune. “Some things are more important than money,” he says.
Saturday, 29 October 2011
Nuclear monsoon
There was no meaning in the amassed legions of grieving clouds along the horizon, gathering lost wisps whose their mindless desperation found guidance in the open arms of a trusting friend, and vindication seemed close at hand. A storm was being brewed that would last for years and years, erasing the purpose of the pulsing tides on the grayest shores of the sea and leaving the cycle of seasons capricious, an abandonment that stung less of betrayal than of sensibilities, and they were drowned.
Under leagues and leagues of water, they lay embalmed in the arresting embrace of water and weed, caked slowly into stone.
As the first droplets splashed at the feet of trees and hills, a subtle eloquence in the silence could be discerned but became quickly susceptible to loss and decay, the uniform and artless patter of precipitation chasing it away. Soon, water was sniping through the air, like shards of glass ripping through skin and flesh with undeterred proficiency, and over everything that lay gazing at the sky that day was a patina of age and a realization of struggle, a call to arms.
It rained.
Under leagues and leagues of water, they lay embalmed in the arresting embrace of water and weed, caked slowly into stone.
As the first droplets splashed at the feet of trees and hills, a subtle eloquence in the silence could be discerned but became quickly susceptible to loss and decay, the uniform and artless patter of precipitation chasing it away. Soon, water was sniping through the air, like shards of glass ripping through skin and flesh with undeterred proficiency, and over everything that lay gazing at the sky that day was a patina of age and a realization of struggle, a call to arms.
It rained.
Monday, 17 October 2011
Propositions
Man is a dreary proposition. He's a lost form searching for function in a world that does not and never will know him. He wanders the streets of cities looking for something or the other but he will never find it—he never has.
On a wet Sunday night, I was driving home after my customary dinner at The Thatched Hut. Stuck in a traffic jam and the rain coming down harder than ever, I had nothing better to do than look out my window at a world that couldn't not be wet on a stormy night. A bus pulled over at its stop and a few people alighted. An old woman firmly gripping a knitting kit, her husband trying to keep up with her while trying to unfurl an umbrella, a prostitute whose make-up was already streaming down her cheeks—she could've been crying, and a middle-aged man carrying a bag of groceries and walking while typing something into his phone.
A bright red light caught my attention; the traffic was clearing and I began to move. Why was the prostitute crying? An affair of love? Interesting as that thought was, I realized it held no potential whatsoever beyond its curious context. Why did the crying prostitute have to be an odd proposition? That she fell in love wasn't so simple anymore—and I strongly suspected those of us who cried "Love is for everyone".
These were the men who were looking for love when it was already everywhere, and that they were looking for it meant they were looking for something specific. The man who'd made her cry could easily have been such a man, hurting from the love of a woman who had bedded other men simply because it was the matter of trades and a hungry stomach. He couldn't stand the severely non-physical love of a woman. It was strange to him, scared him, and he pushed her away.
Would she know love again? I was and am in no position to tell. Why couldn't the old woman care about the rain? I was sure her old husband was still trying to get the lever to unlock so he could open the damned umbrella. I was sure for some reason that he was only trying to look busy; men usually had a penchant for mechanisms capable of confusing most women. The umbrella would've been open much earlier if not for his avoidance of some conversation.
What could've happened? An affair, again? With the prostitute?! Unlikely. There was nothing loveable about him, for one. An inexplicable expenditure? Perhaps. As a man moves on from one era and into another, his first attempt at reorienting his senses is to coax something into obedience—he must possess something tractable. Growing up, it's a bike, a girl, a car, a job, an office, tenure, companionship, recognition, fame, pension, vacation and a death that kills him in his sleep.
The old man must have just found something he liked, something he could grip while his marriage slipped through his fingers. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the umbrella he'd invested in.
That was the lot. I wasn't much better off myself: an out-of-work writer is a nobody. I turned away from the window and just stared at the road the rest of my way home. The rain was whittling down already and the ripples were barely visible outside the umbra of hundreds of headlights.
I recalled then something I did when it rained when I was much younger, perhaps a boy of 20. I used to look at the sky and try to focus on one droplet as it came down, and I used to follow it with a keen gaze all the way to its demise on the road below my balcony. And then, I used to look up again, trying to spot my next target. I can't remember anymore why I enjoyed doing that boring exercise again and again, but I still did try to look up through the windscreen for a raindrop. I couldn't find many, and even when I did, I couldn't track it all the way. It was just the knowledge of tremendous rainclouds above my head and the firm ground on which I drove. Everything in between I took for granted, and that was something I knew I wouldn't like to be told ever.
The road was now empty—not a vehicle in sight. Driving slowly, I turned my eyes to the other side of the road. Outside a butcher's stall, a crowd waited in silence for their portions. On a piece of slate hung from the wall, "Fresh meat" was inscribed in chalk, sheltered from the past downpour by a shallow parapet that leaned over it.
Further ahead, another bus was pulling away from its stop, getting back on the road, and two boys were doggedly chasing it. They had backpacks strapped to their backs—students, getting back from classes, going by the rest of their attire. For a moment, I considered pulling over and offering them a lift, but decided against it when all those rainy nights that I'd spent waiting for the next bus to arrive came to mind. I hadn't enjoyed those nights one bit but they did teach me the value of punctuality... and how nasty colds could get.
I continued driving. A couple was walking on the sidewalk, outside a mall, holding hands while she pulled her scarf tighter around her face. Anonymity was hard to come by in cities such as this: all I had to do was walk up to them and ask for a light, and they'd already have a pretty good impression of me, my habits, my life. It was simple, really. I was and am a man in this city.
On a wet Sunday night, I was driving home after my customary dinner at The Thatched Hut. Stuck in a traffic jam and the rain coming down harder than ever, I had nothing better to do than look out my window at a world that couldn't not be wet on a stormy night. A bus pulled over at its stop and a few people alighted. An old woman firmly gripping a knitting kit, her husband trying to keep up with her while trying to unfurl an umbrella, a prostitute whose make-up was already streaming down her cheeks—she could've been crying, and a middle-aged man carrying a bag of groceries and walking while typing something into his phone.
A bright red light caught my attention; the traffic was clearing and I began to move. Why was the prostitute crying? An affair of love? Interesting as that thought was, I realized it held no potential whatsoever beyond its curious context. Why did the crying prostitute have to be an odd proposition? That she fell in love wasn't so simple anymore—and I strongly suspected those of us who cried "Love is for everyone".
These were the men who were looking for love when it was already everywhere, and that they were looking for it meant they were looking for something specific. The man who'd made her cry could easily have been such a man, hurting from the love of a woman who had bedded other men simply because it was the matter of trades and a hungry stomach. He couldn't stand the severely non-physical love of a woman. It was strange to him, scared him, and he pushed her away.
Would she know love again? I was and am in no position to tell. Why couldn't the old woman care about the rain? I was sure her old husband was still trying to get the lever to unlock so he could open the damned umbrella. I was sure for some reason that he was only trying to look busy; men usually had a penchant for mechanisms capable of confusing most women. The umbrella would've been open much earlier if not for his avoidance of some conversation.
What could've happened? An affair, again? With the prostitute?! Unlikely. There was nothing loveable about him, for one. An inexplicable expenditure? Perhaps. As a man moves on from one era and into another, his first attempt at reorienting his senses is to coax something into obedience—he must possess something tractable. Growing up, it's a bike, a girl, a car, a job, an office, tenure, companionship, recognition, fame, pension, vacation and a death that kills him in his sleep.
The old man must have just found something he liked, something he could grip while his marriage slipped through his fingers. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the umbrella he'd invested in.
That was the lot. I wasn't much better off myself: an out-of-work writer is a nobody. I turned away from the window and just stared at the road the rest of my way home. The rain was whittling down already and the ripples were barely visible outside the umbra of hundreds of headlights.
I recalled then something I did when it rained when I was much younger, perhaps a boy of 20. I used to look at the sky and try to focus on one droplet as it came down, and I used to follow it with a keen gaze all the way to its demise on the road below my balcony. And then, I used to look up again, trying to spot my next target. I can't remember anymore why I enjoyed doing that boring exercise again and again, but I still did try to look up through the windscreen for a raindrop. I couldn't find many, and even when I did, I couldn't track it all the way. It was just the knowledge of tremendous rainclouds above my head and the firm ground on which I drove. Everything in between I took for granted, and that was something I knew I wouldn't like to be told ever.
The road was now empty—not a vehicle in sight. Driving slowly, I turned my eyes to the other side of the road. Outside a butcher's stall, a crowd waited in silence for their portions. On a piece of slate hung from the wall, "Fresh meat" was inscribed in chalk, sheltered from the past downpour by a shallow parapet that leaned over it.
Further ahead, another bus was pulling away from its stop, getting back on the road, and two boys were doggedly chasing it. They had backpacks strapped to their backs—students, getting back from classes, going by the rest of their attire. For a moment, I considered pulling over and offering them a lift, but decided against it when all those rainy nights that I'd spent waiting for the next bus to arrive came to mind. I hadn't enjoyed those nights one bit but they did teach me the value of punctuality... and how nasty colds could get.
I continued driving. A couple was walking on the sidewalk, outside a mall, holding hands while she pulled her scarf tighter around her face. Anonymity was hard to come by in cities such as this: all I had to do was walk up to them and ask for a light, and they'd already have a pretty good impression of me, my habits, my life. It was simple, really. I was and am a man in this city.
Thursday, 22 September 2011
The eunuch named K. and his-her mustache.
I know how the smart mind fears stoppage.
Against the clear and blue Bangalorean sky, the buildings stand still, the chafed facades of concrete meaningless against the still yet depthless waters in the empyrean receptacle. Flakes of clouds seem imminent in the western distance, and their approach is slow, graceful, and all such and other things lost from the weakened mind. The eternal struggle diminishes its distinctive flavor and grinds it constantly along the edges; it lies now like a chamfered ingot of iron that pushes itself, sans any intelligence whatsoever, a metallic zombie, pushes itself toward construction and contribution.
Then again, there are no footholds in the clear and blue Bangalorean sky. It slips over the mountains in the East and slips into the sea in the East like a satin bedspread unfurled across the lands within the horizons and let to lie there like a vast stretch of discarded canvas. I digress: it is not my place to comment on the performative genders of dreams. Do you see the struts, K.?
The struts. The struts are essential because they hold up the whole structure, and the struts are essential because they give you some meaning to work with. When the structure's up, you can lean on it. Lean? Why is there any leaning? Let the structure stand, I say, and let it grow toward the heavens. That's the point of this task, to let them grow and flaw so that I may know wherewith to grant on my remedies, my solutions, and know that I'm on my way to manhood. To know that I've long since crossed puberty, and that a mustache is imminent, and that the man will flower and give birth to another young man, and young men will abound for the joy of the creator! Who?
The creator! The dreams of our nights when the canvas' weave breaks at odd places and starlight shines through like the very, very distance edge of a cosmic scissor. A trimmer! A trimmer? You've lost it. You've lost me. You call yourself an agent, you narcissist, you! You're a pimp! A pleasure-monger, and if I let you, you will make a product out of my dreams, a package of intellectual gibberish. You will call it a construction! But it is a construction!
Oh, no, no, no, no, it is not a construction. It was constructed but it is not yet in possession of a completion, and in lacking that completion, it lacks everything it possesses, you abacinated man! Move that place from in front of your eyes and throw it away into the skies, and let it quench, that malleated veil. Oh, it's electric, but it blinds with its metallic will, its metallic will. The mustache will never come not as a matter of destiny, no, it will reject invitations and it will reject prospects because mustaches have no dreams, and it will choose to languish as a eunuch in that womb whence I came, and it languishes in the comfort of my joy and my pleasures that I left behind. Oh, the cavernous orphanage! Not the orphanage! Why the orphanage at all?!
I will become a man, I swear to you, I will become a man and I will do it by climbing up onto the terrace of that building, the one with the chafed facade of pink paint and very old concrete, and from there, I will traverse the skies. I know how the smart mind fears stoppage, and hidden twelve feet under that moment of stoppage is my manhood, the pause-and-think, the pitch-and-toss-and-never-worry-about-my-loss endeavour that we all know stands in my way, S.
We all do, don't we?! Assumptions! Pshaw! And from there- Pshaw!- from THERE!, from beneath that vast pit that opens only into the skies, I will not lean but climb all the stairs it proffers for my climbing. There, on top of the world, I will become a man. A child will be born and he will descend from the heavens. Do not kill him.
Listen to me, O Cosmic Builder, O! That was fantastic but you must know that I will leave now, your much-impressed creator, and I will leave now to create this Universe in your image, in your contorted image. Be warned, father, you who cower in the darkness and run unclothed under the white sun, listen! You must lean upon your construction and push against it with all your masculine strength for if you keep building and building, you will be a mason, a constructor, and never an artist, never a performer except for the pleasing of your own self, and there, look therein!
Look to find that you don't want to be a man, and if you never will break and only birth all the while, you will never be a man. A eunuch, a half-man, but never the full one. The mustache, then? Precisely.
Against the clear and blue Bangalorean sky, the buildings stand still, the chafed facades of concrete meaningless against the still yet depthless waters in the empyrean receptacle. Flakes of clouds seem imminent in the western distance, and their approach is slow, graceful, and all such and other things lost from the weakened mind. The eternal struggle diminishes its distinctive flavor and grinds it constantly along the edges; it lies now like a chamfered ingot of iron that pushes itself, sans any intelligence whatsoever, a metallic zombie, pushes itself toward construction and contribution.
Then again, there are no footholds in the clear and blue Bangalorean sky. It slips over the mountains in the East and slips into the sea in the East like a satin bedspread unfurled across the lands within the horizons and let to lie there like a vast stretch of discarded canvas. I digress: it is not my place to comment on the performative genders of dreams. Do you see the struts, K.?
The struts. The struts are essential because they hold up the whole structure, and the struts are essential because they give you some meaning to work with. When the structure's up, you can lean on it. Lean? Why is there any leaning? Let the structure stand, I say, and let it grow toward the heavens. That's the point of this task, to let them grow and flaw so that I may know wherewith to grant on my remedies, my solutions, and know that I'm on my way to manhood. To know that I've long since crossed puberty, and that a mustache is imminent, and that the man will flower and give birth to another young man, and young men will abound for the joy of the creator! Who?
The creator! The dreams of our nights when the canvas' weave breaks at odd places and starlight shines through like the very, very distance edge of a cosmic scissor. A trimmer! A trimmer? You've lost it. You've lost me. You call yourself an agent, you narcissist, you! You're a pimp! A pleasure-monger, and if I let you, you will make a product out of my dreams, a package of intellectual gibberish. You will call it a construction! But it is a construction!
Oh, no, no, no, no, it is not a construction. It was constructed but it is not yet in possession of a completion, and in lacking that completion, it lacks everything it possesses, you abacinated man! Move that place from in front of your eyes and throw it away into the skies, and let it quench, that malleated veil. Oh, it's electric, but it blinds with its metallic will, its metallic will. The mustache will never come not as a matter of destiny, no, it will reject invitations and it will reject prospects because mustaches have no dreams, and it will choose to languish as a eunuch in that womb whence I came, and it languishes in the comfort of my joy and my pleasures that I left behind. Oh, the cavernous orphanage! Not the orphanage! Why the orphanage at all?!
I will become a man, I swear to you, I will become a man and I will do it by climbing up onto the terrace of that building, the one with the chafed facade of pink paint and very old concrete, and from there, I will traverse the skies. I know how the smart mind fears stoppage, and hidden twelve feet under that moment of stoppage is my manhood, the pause-and-think, the pitch-and-toss-and-never-worry-about-my-loss endeavour that we all know stands in my way, S.
We all do, don't we?! Assumptions! Pshaw! And from there- Pshaw!- from THERE!, from beneath that vast pit that opens only into the skies, I will not lean but climb all the stairs it proffers for my climbing. There, on top of the world, I will become a man. A child will be born and he will descend from the heavens. Do not kill him.
Listen to me, O Cosmic Builder, O! That was fantastic but you must know that I will leave now, your much-impressed creator, and I will leave now to create this Universe in your image, in your contorted image. Be warned, father, you who cower in the darkness and run unclothed under the white sun, listen! You must lean upon your construction and push against it with all your masculine strength for if you keep building and building, you will be a mason, a constructor, and never an artist, never a performer except for the pleasing of your own self, and there, look therein!
Look to find that you don't want to be a man, and if you never will break and only birth all the while, you will never be a man. A eunuch, a half-man, but never the full one. The mustache, then? Precisely.
Saturday, 3 September 2011
I bought a dictionary.
Yes. For the first time ever, in my world that's filled with internet browsers and widgets and desktop and mobile apps, there is a paperback dictionary: "The Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus." I don't know why I bought it, though. I've always been good with words, whether it was a word I knew and so how to use it, too, or a word I'd never seen used before but could figure its meaning out by analyzing its root(s). On that note, buying a dictionary is almost an attempt to relive my growing years in Chennai and then Tumkur (in Karnataka).
Having never used a paper-bound dictionary in the last decade or so, I'm in no position to say that it wouldn't have been a mechanical process for me - the locating of words and then carefully reading the minute print - but something tells me I'd have seen it as something emotional. There are no specific memories associated with it, as such, and the only dictionary I've ever owned is even now gathering dust in the attic of an aunt's ancestral house. I wouldn't mind if it was lost someday while shifting locations, but I'm sure I'd become furious if one page of it was so much as folded. Now, there's another one. A new sibling of sorts.
I don't know what else to say. It's like that sensation when you thought you saw something out of the corner of your eyes but can't see head-on. It's that name that's at the tip of your tongue but won't come out just when the time's right. It's that feeling you get when you thought you just missed something that could've been important or life-changing in some way. The thing is, I don't know what I've missed. The last time I bought a dictionary, I began the journey to be the man I am today, and I love the man I've become. I know I could be aggrandizing the occasion needlessly, and if you think I am, then let me say this: I bought a dictionary. We'll see.
Having never used a paper-bound dictionary in the last decade or so, I'm in no position to say that it wouldn't have been a mechanical process for me - the locating of words and then carefully reading the minute print - but something tells me I'd have seen it as something emotional. There are no specific memories associated with it, as such, and the only dictionary I've ever owned is even now gathering dust in the attic of an aunt's ancestral house. I wouldn't mind if it was lost someday while shifting locations, but I'm sure I'd become furious if one page of it was so much as folded. Now, there's another one. A new sibling of sorts.
I don't know what else to say. It's like that sensation when you thought you saw something out of the corner of your eyes but can't see head-on. It's that name that's at the tip of your tongue but won't come out just when the time's right. It's that feeling you get when you thought you just missed something that could've been important or life-changing in some way. The thing is, I don't know what I've missed. The last time I bought a dictionary, I began the journey to be the man I am today, and I love the man I've become. I know I could be aggrandizing the occasion needlessly, and if you think I am, then let me say this: I bought a dictionary. We'll see.
I bought a dictionary.
Yes. For the first time ever, in my world that's filled with internet browsers and widgets and desktop and mobile apps, there is a paperback dictionary: "The Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus." I don't know why I bought it, though. I've always been good with words, whether it was a word I knew and so how to use it, too, or a word I'd never seen used before but could figure its meaning out by analyzing its root(s). On that note, buying a dictionary is almost an attempt to relive my growing years in Chennai and then Tumkur (in Karnataka).
Having never used a paper-bound dictionary in the last decade or so, I'm in no position to say that it wouldn't have been a mechanical process for me - the locating of words and then carefully reading the minute print - but something tells me I'd have seen it as something emotional. There are no specific memories associated with it, as such, and the only dictionary I've ever owned is even now gathering dust in the attic of an aunt's ancestral house. I wouldn't mind if it was lost someday while shifting locations, but I'm sure I'd become furious if one page of it was so much as folded. Now, there's another one. A new sibling of sorts.
I don't know what else to say. It's like that sensation when you thought you saw something out of the corner of your eyes but can't see head-on. It's that name that's at the tip of your tongue but won't come out just when the time's right. It's that feeling you get when you thought you just missed something that could've been important or life-changing in some way. The thing is, I don't know what I've missed. The last time I bought a dictionary, I began the journey to be the man I am today, and I love the man I've become. I know I could be aggrandizing the occasion needlessly, and if you think I am, then let me say this: I bought a dictionary. We'll see.
Having never used a paper-bound dictionary in the last decade or so, I'm in no position to say that it wouldn't have been a mechanical process for me - the locating of words and then carefully reading the minute print - but something tells me I'd have seen it as something emotional. There are no specific memories associated with it, as such, and the only dictionary I've ever owned is even now gathering dust in the attic of an aunt's ancestral house. I wouldn't mind if it was lost someday while shifting locations, but I'm sure I'd become furious if one page of it was so much as folded. Now, there's another one. A new sibling of sorts.
I don't know what else to say. It's like that sensation when you thought you saw something out of the corner of your eyes but can't see head-on. It's that name that's at the tip of your tongue but won't come out just when the time's right. It's that feeling you get when you thought you just missed something that could've been important or life-changing in some way. The thing is, I don't know what I've missed. The last time I bought a dictionary, I began the journey to be the man I am today, and I love the man I've become. I know I could be aggrandizing the occasion needlessly, and if you think I am, then let me say this: I bought a dictionary. We'll see.
Sunday, 14 August 2011
The site of grey
“And how many have you truly loved?” she asked.
One. I definitely loved one. “None.” The lie was for other reasons, reasons irrelevant to T’s cause. I have become lonelier over the last few weeks, writing as a matter of duty, reading as a matter of choice, and revisiting my engineering courses as a matter of staying occupied. I don’t know what I feel about this ennui apart from the fact that it scares me. And when I’m scared, I retreat further into a microcosm I invent for myself. It is not a fantastic invention as much as it is a bland one. “Windows Vista is not user-friendly. I like it like that.”
On the first day at ACJ, it struck me that I was no longer the writer in/from an engineering college; I was a writer in a place filled with writers, and I was intimidated by everyone I met, accomplished as they were. I don’t think I have the time for love now. It’s not that I can’t give, it’s that I don’t know if I can. I could date, I tell T. Dating is the worst thing to eliminate loneliness, she replies, and I understand why. It consumes time, it isolates me even further.
What do I do? There is a contradicting loneliness I feel during most hours that goes against my reluctance to date anyone. Could I court anyone and feel good about it? A bland option.
I need an identity, D says. I agree. When things with R ended, I felt I had no identity outside of that relationship. I still love R, but it’s something I’m getting over inch after painful inch. The only thing about me that is still “me” is my writing. Do I need to change the way I write? Perhaps. My writing can be overtly intellectual at times, which is fine because I write to concern other intellectuals (although I myself am not one).
I’ve always felt and known that good writing must excite the senses… that it must make the reader feel what I’m feeling, see what I’m seeing, taste what I’m tasting. There should be more than a sense of wonderment, there should be a sense of awe. Good writing mustn’t exclude the reader; on the contrary, it must reach out and envelope the reader in its arms. There is a reader in the intellectual as well, but one whom I cannot see.
“Intellectuals love Dostoevsky” – I know T does – “because his understanding of the human psyche is unparalleled, and that makes him brilliant.” My understanding of the human psyche isn’t. All I know about it is that it’s twisted, dank and corrupt, and I think that’s beautiful. I believe that people should stop denying that beauty, stop trying to cloak it. That is why I can’t write about hope or joy. I’m not afraid of them, just that I find them to be sporadic interjections into the human condition that will soon leave its facade.
There is no darkness without light. Agreed, but the site of my beauty lies elsewhere. The vibrancy seen by D in colours is the vibrancy I see occupying every shade between black and white, occupying black and white themselves. I don’t limit myself from feeling them. Instead of seeing red, I see a grey that is #7299152. Instead of seeing blue, I see a grey that is #4A525A. However, D is right: I see only grey. I neither see the red nor the blue. But do D and T see my greys?
One. I definitely loved one. “None.” The lie was for other reasons, reasons irrelevant to T’s cause. I have become lonelier over the last few weeks, writing as a matter of duty, reading as a matter of choice, and revisiting my engineering courses as a matter of staying occupied. I don’t know what I feel about this ennui apart from the fact that it scares me. And when I’m scared, I retreat further into a microcosm I invent for myself. It is not a fantastic invention as much as it is a bland one. “Windows Vista is not user-friendly. I like it like that.”
On the first day at ACJ, it struck me that I was no longer the writer in/from an engineering college; I was a writer in a place filled with writers, and I was intimidated by everyone I met, accomplished as they were. I don’t think I have the time for love now. It’s not that I can’t give, it’s that I don’t know if I can. I could date, I tell T. Dating is the worst thing to eliminate loneliness, she replies, and I understand why. It consumes time, it isolates me even further.
What do I do? There is a contradicting loneliness I feel during most hours that goes against my reluctance to date anyone. Could I court anyone and feel good about it? A bland option.
I need an identity, D says. I agree. When things with R ended, I felt I had no identity outside of that relationship. I still love R, but it’s something I’m getting over inch after painful inch. The only thing about me that is still “me” is my writing. Do I need to change the way I write? Perhaps. My writing can be overtly intellectual at times, which is fine because I write to concern other intellectuals (although I myself am not one).
I’ve always felt and known that good writing must excite the senses… that it must make the reader feel what I’m feeling, see what I’m seeing, taste what I’m tasting. There should be more than a sense of wonderment, there should be a sense of awe. Good writing mustn’t exclude the reader; on the contrary, it must reach out and envelope the reader in its arms. There is a reader in the intellectual as well, but one whom I cannot see.
“Intellectuals love Dostoevsky” – I know T does – “because his understanding of the human psyche is unparalleled, and that makes him brilliant.” My understanding of the human psyche isn’t. All I know about it is that it’s twisted, dank and corrupt, and I think that’s beautiful. I believe that people should stop denying that beauty, stop trying to cloak it. That is why I can’t write about hope or joy. I’m not afraid of them, just that I find them to be sporadic interjections into the human condition that will soon leave its facade.
There is no darkness without light. Agreed, but the site of my beauty lies elsewhere. The vibrancy seen by D in colours is the vibrancy I see occupying every shade between black and white, occupying black and white themselves. I don’t limit myself from feeling them. Instead of seeing red, I see a grey that is #7299152. Instead of seeing blue, I see a grey that is #4A525A. However, D is right: I see only grey. I neither see the red nor the blue. But do D and T see my greys?
The site of grey
“And how many have you truly loved?” she asked.
One. I definitely loved one. “None.” The lie was for other reasons, reasons irrelevant to T’s cause. I have become lonelier over the last few weeks, writing as a matter of duty, reading as a matter of choice, and revisiting my engineering courses as a matter of staying occupied. I don’t know what I feel about this ennui apart from the fact that it scares me. And when I’m scared, I retreat further into a microcosm I invent for myself. It is not a fantastic invention as much as it is a bland one. “Windows Vista is not user-friendly. I like it like that.”
On the first day at ACJ, it struck me that I was no longer the writer in/from an engineering college; I was a writer in a place filled with writers, and I was intimidated by everyone I met, accomplished as they were. I don’t think I have the time for love now. It’s not that I can’t give, it’s that I don’t know if I can. I could date, I tell T. Dating is the worst thing to eliminate loneliness, she replies, and I understand why. It consumes time, it isolates me even further.
What do I do? There is a contradicting loneliness I feel during most hours that goes against my reluctance to date anyone. Could I court anyone and feel good about it? A bland option.
I need an identity, D says. I agree. When things with R ended, I felt I had no identity outside of that relationship. I still love R, but it’s something I’m getting over inch after painful inch. The only thing about me that is still “me” is my writing. Do I need to change the way I write? Perhaps. My writing can be overtly intellectual at times, which is fine because I write to concern other intellectuals (although I myself am not one).
I’ve always felt and known that good writing must excite the senses… that it must make the reader feel what I’m feeling, see what I’m seeing, taste what I’m tasting. There should be more than a sense of wonderment, there should be a sense of awe. Good writing mustn’t exclude the reader; on the contrary, it must reach out and envelope the reader in its arms. There is a reader in the intellectual as well, but one whom I cannot see.
“Intellectuals love Dostoevsky” – I know T does – “because his understanding of the human psyche is unparalleled, and that makes him brilliant.” My understanding of the human psyche isn’t. All I know about it is that it’s twisted, dank and corrupt, and I think that’s beautiful. I believe that people should stop denying that beauty, stop trying to cloak it. That is why I can’t write about hope or joy. I’m not afraid of them, just that I find them to be sporadic interjections into the human condition that will soon leave its facade.
There is no darkness without light. Agreed, but the site of my beauty lies elsewhere. The vibrancy seen by D in colours is the vibrancy I see occupying every shade between black and white, occupying black and white themselves. I don’t limit myself from feeling them. Instead of seeing red, I see a grey that is #7299152. Instead of seeing blue, I see a grey that is #4A525A. However, D is right: I see only grey. I neither see the red nor the blue. But do D and T see my greys?
One. I definitely loved one. “None.” The lie was for other reasons, reasons irrelevant to T’s cause. I have become lonelier over the last few weeks, writing as a matter of duty, reading as a matter of choice, and revisiting my engineering courses as a matter of staying occupied. I don’t know what I feel about this ennui apart from the fact that it scares me. And when I’m scared, I retreat further into a microcosm I invent for myself. It is not a fantastic invention as much as it is a bland one. “Windows Vista is not user-friendly. I like it like that.”
On the first day at ACJ, it struck me that I was no longer the writer in/from an engineering college; I was a writer in a place filled with writers, and I was intimidated by everyone I met, accomplished as they were. I don’t think I have the time for love now. It’s not that I can’t give, it’s that I don’t know if I can. I could date, I tell T. Dating is the worst thing to eliminate loneliness, she replies, and I understand why. It consumes time, it isolates me even further.
What do I do? There is a contradicting loneliness I feel during most hours that goes against my reluctance to date anyone. Could I court anyone and feel good about it? A bland option.
I need an identity, D says. I agree. When things with R ended, I felt I had no identity outside of that relationship. I still love R, but it’s something I’m getting over inch after painful inch. The only thing about me that is still “me” is my writing. Do I need to change the way I write? Perhaps. My writing can be overtly intellectual at times, which is fine because I write to concern other intellectuals (although I myself am not one).
I’ve always felt and known that good writing must excite the senses… that it must make the reader feel what I’m feeling, see what I’m seeing, taste what I’m tasting. There should be more than a sense of wonderment, there should be a sense of awe. Good writing mustn’t exclude the reader; on the contrary, it must reach out and envelope the reader in its arms. There is a reader in the intellectual as well, but one whom I cannot see.
“Intellectuals love Dostoevsky” – I know T does – “because his understanding of the human psyche is unparalleled, and that makes him brilliant.” My understanding of the human psyche isn’t. All I know about it is that it’s twisted, dank and corrupt, and I think that’s beautiful. I believe that people should stop denying that beauty, stop trying to cloak it. That is why I can’t write about hope or joy. I’m not afraid of them, just that I find them to be sporadic interjections into the human condition that will soon leave its facade.
There is no darkness without light. Agreed, but the site of my beauty lies elsewhere. The vibrancy seen by D in colours is the vibrancy I see occupying every shade between black and white, occupying black and white themselves. I don’t limit myself from feeling them. Instead of seeing red, I see a grey that is #7299152. Instead of seeing blue, I see a grey that is #4A525A. However, D is right: I see only grey. I neither see the red nor the blue. But do D and T see my greys?
Saturday, 18 June 2011
A story
11.26
Dialing...
"Hello?"
Hey!
"Hey!"
What're you doing?
"I'm outside with-"
Oh, OK! We'll talk later!
"Yeah, sure!"
Bye!
"Bye!"
12.24
Dialing...
"You don't have enough credit-"
12.31
Dialing...
"The person you are calling has not responded. Please try-"
14.10
Picking...
Hello?
"Hey buddy! What's up!"
Hey man... how's it going?
"Awesome! Listen, me and C planning a trek. You wanna come?"
When's it?
"Tonight. We're thinking of catching the 8 o'clock bus and-"
Not tonight, sorry. Have some work.
"Saturday night?"
Dad's coming online, some work to do with the bank, something.
"Oh, OK! Next time then!"
Yeah man, sorry. Call-
"Bye!"
14.33
Dialing...
"The person you are calling has-"
15.04
Signing in...
"L. is online."
Laptop?
L: "Nt yet happened."
Damn. :(
L: "Yeah. I'm fucked."
Sleepover at S.'s place and finish the assignment?
And then tell me about the pillowfight?
L: "Heh. She lives all the way across town!"
Fine. P.?
L: "Uh. No."
K.?
L: "Oh wow."
"Hahhahahahhaha its K.!"
:D
What doing?
L: "Painting."
"Ur sheldon from big bang theory."
I'm Sheldon?!
That guy's stiff, a creature of habit and annoying!
I'm not annoying!
L: "You're stiff. Creature of habit. A know it all. ALL."
Sheldon Cooper is annoying and unforgiving. I am neither!
And he's not interested in sex. He's NOT interested- THAT'S ANTI-ME!
L: "Okay :P"
":P"
"Okay. And that."
The place here's a huge bungalow with no curfew and careless watchman.
L: "Fancy :P"
"Ur outside? Not with family?"
No, any studying requires the hostel experience.
Can't study for nuts from home - even this.
It's going to be crazy!
L: ":)"
"Did you make friends?"
This chick
L: "Really??"
Yeah!
But she's off FB for a while.
L: "Ahaan"
You are no longer signed in to send or receive messages.
15.55
"Hello?"
Sir, I'm calling from the south-
"Yes, sir, we're sorry sir. It's an area-wide cut, sir, there's a fire in the grid."
When will-
"In about 4 hours, sir."
16.16
Opening...
Yes?
"Sir, delivery from Amazon?"
Oh, yes!
"Sign here... and here."
Thanks!
"Thank you, sir!"
18.01
Dialing...
"The person you are-"
19.29
Wireless network... connected.
19.31
Signing in...
"L. is offline"
Hey! You there? Sorry, there was a power cut. I'll catchya soon, have a nice evening!
19.44
Coming.
"Good evening, sir! Delivery from Dumpling Queen!"
Oh yeah, how much is it?
"A round... 60, sir."
Keep the change.
"Thank you, sir! Enjoy your dinner!"
Yeah.
20.34
Dialing...
"Hello?"
Hey!
"Hey!"
What're you doing?
"I'm on my way!"
Oh, when'll you be here?
"In a coupla minutes, max. How's it going there... you OK?"
Yeah... I'm fine. Just missing you.
"I miss you, too."
Couldn't you blow off the late night shift?
"Aww! Look at you!"
I'm serious!
"You know I can't do that! Plus, it's Saturday... you know how busy the streets get!"
Yeah, yeah, OK. Get here faster.
"Yeah, I'm almost there."
OK.
23.15
"It's getting late."
Hmm...
"I'll talk to you tomorrow!"
I hate you.
"Me too! G'night!"
Yeah, whatever.
07.14
Picking...
Hmm... who's this?
"Hey!"
Yeah?
"It's me! You just woke up?!"
Yeah...
"Please tell me you've the script ready!"
Yeah... almost-
"Almost?! What's almost?!"
Gimme an hour.
"Are you sure? Because if you haven't finished it, you should tell me now."
No, no, one hour. You'll have it.
"OK, I trust you. Don't lemme down, man."
Hmm.
07.19
Somewhere in the south of the great City, curled up within layers of poverty, rebellion, filth and convivial skulduggery, in a building dotting the ramshackle landscape of the miserable shores, a young man strode up and down upon an old carpet, one of the few things of value in his otherwise poor excuse of a residence. At this juncture, the reader may not be surprised to discover upon my utterance that he was a writer - he still is - and took away from the denial of luxury the luxury of denial, a self-imposed lesson on the art of inspiration, coveting lovers and dodging them, befriending strangers and salvaging himself from the hubris of his own madness. Right then, as the first droplets of rain struck the glass in the windows, he called a young woman he was attempting now to love, and she spoke: "I'm outside with-" Goodbye, he screamed! Despair! On the philanthropy of despair it seemed he would feed first...
08.03
Picking...
"You done?"
What if I'm not?
"Man! I trusted-"
Relax! I'm done.
"Hmm... what's it called?"
The Art... of Inspiration! You like it?
"I think I do... I do, I do."
Dialing...
"Hello?"
Hey!
"Hey!"
What're you doing?
"I'm outside with-"
Oh, OK! We'll talk later!
"Yeah, sure!"
Bye!
"Bye!"
12.24
Dialing...
"You don't have enough credit-"
12.31
Dialing...
"The person you are calling has not responded. Please try-"
14.10
Picking...
Hello?
"Hey buddy! What's up!"
Hey man... how's it going?
"Awesome! Listen, me and C planning a trek. You wanna come?"
When's it?
"Tonight. We're thinking of catching the 8 o'clock bus and-"
Not tonight, sorry. Have some work.
"Saturday night?"
Dad's coming online, some work to do with the bank, something.
"Oh, OK! Next time then!"
Yeah man, sorry. Call-
"Bye!"
14.33
Dialing...
"The person you are calling has-"
15.04
Signing in...
"L. is online."
Laptop?
L: "Nt yet happened."
Damn. :(
L: "Yeah. I'm fucked."
Sleepover at S.'s place and finish the assignment?
And then tell me about the pillowfight?
L: "Heh. She lives all the way across town!"
Fine. P.?
L: "Uh. No."
K.?
L: "Oh wow."
"Hahhahahahhaha its K.!"
:D
What doing?
L: "Painting."
"Ur sheldon from big bang theory."
I'm Sheldon?!
That guy's stiff, a creature of habit and annoying!
I'm not annoying!
L: "You're stiff. Creature of habit. A know it all. ALL."
Sheldon Cooper is annoying and unforgiving. I am neither!
And he's not interested in sex. He's NOT interested- THAT'S ANTI-ME!
L: "Okay :P"
":P"
"Okay. And that."
The place here's a huge bungalow with no curfew and careless watchman.
L: "Fancy :P"
"Ur outside? Not with family?"
No, any studying requires the hostel experience.
Can't study for nuts from home - even this.
It's going to be crazy!
L: ":)"
"Did you make friends?"
This chick
L: "Really??"
Yeah!
But she's off FB for a while.
L: "Ahaan"
You are no longer signed in to send or receive messages.
15.55
"Hello?"
Sir, I'm calling from the south-
"Yes, sir, we're sorry sir. It's an area-wide cut, sir, there's a fire in the grid."
When will-
"In about 4 hours, sir."
16.16
Opening...
Yes?
"Sir, delivery from Amazon?"
Oh, yes!
"Sign here... and here."
Thanks!
"Thank you, sir!"
18.01
Dialing...
"The person you are-"
19.29
Wireless network... connected.
19.31
Signing in...
"L. is offline"
Hey! You there? Sorry, there was a power cut. I'll catchya soon, have a nice evening!
19.44
Coming.
"Good evening, sir! Delivery from Dumpling Queen!"
Oh yeah, how much is it?
"A round... 60, sir."
Keep the change.
"Thank you, sir! Enjoy your dinner!"
Yeah.
20.34
Dialing...
"Hello?"
Hey!
"Hey!"
What're you doing?
"I'm on my way!"
Oh, when'll you be here?
"In a coupla minutes, max. How's it going there... you OK?"
Yeah... I'm fine. Just missing you.
"I miss you, too."
Couldn't you blow off the late night shift?
"Aww! Look at you!"
I'm serious!
"You know I can't do that! Plus, it's Saturday... you know how busy the streets get!"
Yeah, yeah, OK. Get here faster.
"Yeah, I'm almost there."
OK.
23.15
"It's getting late."
Hmm...
"I'll talk to you tomorrow!"
I hate you.
"Me too! G'night!"
Yeah, whatever.
07.14
Picking...
Hmm... who's this?
"Hey!"
Yeah?
"It's me! You just woke up?!"
Yeah...
"Please tell me you've the script ready!"
Yeah... almost-
"Almost?! What's almost?!"
Gimme an hour.
"Are you sure? Because if you haven't finished it, you should tell me now."
No, no, one hour. You'll have it.
"OK, I trust you. Don't lemme down, man."
Hmm.
07.19
Somewhere in the south of the great City, curled up within layers of poverty, rebellion, filth and convivial skulduggery, in a building dotting the ramshackle landscape of the miserable shores, a young man strode up and down upon an old carpet, one of the few things of value in his otherwise poor excuse of a residence. At this juncture, the reader may not be surprised to discover upon my utterance that he was a writer - he still is - and took away from the denial of luxury the luxury of denial, a self-imposed lesson on the art of inspiration, coveting lovers and dodging them, befriending strangers and salvaging himself from the hubris of his own madness. Right then, as the first droplets of rain struck the glass in the windows, he called a young woman he was attempting now to love, and she spoke: "I'm outside with-" Goodbye, he screamed! Despair! On the philanthropy of despair it seemed he would feed first...
08.03
Picking...
"You done?"
What if I'm not?
"Man! I trusted-"
Relax! I'm done.
"Hmm... what's it called?"
The Art... of Inspiration! You like it?
"I think I do... I do, I do."
Wednesday, 15 June 2011
Why Quentin Tarantino is wrong
(This article involves a prelude that I insist you read.)
It's important to understand that technology does not, and will not for a long time to come, replace emotional expression and emotional honesty, and that's where I think the great Quentin Tarantino could be wrong. He once famously stated that,
I appreciate his loyalty to the ideals of romanticism but, looking at it axiomatically, he chose to say "computer" and not anything else (although don't ask me what "anything else" could be). What does a computer do to effectively reduce the "poeticness" of a poem? What is it about an electronically supplied numerical input and an electromagnetically generated visual output that is beaten by a leaky fountain pen and paper that crumbles at the lightest touch-or should I say that it is a matter of individual investment and computers limit that when they shouldn't? I don't agree. If anything, typewriters and computers make it easier to compose real poetry: poetry that is completely independent of its medium, poetry that finds it rational to reflect only the literary prowess and emotional content of the individual (objective) and not his/her association with the oldest form of literary communication (subjective).
Poetry, you see, is an abstraction just like beauty and justice are, and if Tarantino thinks he can't find them in a computer or only on a piece of paper, then it's also unfortunately obvious that his films are a product of iconoclastic ideals and the chance of the occasion that I was to be born in 1988, and that doesn't happen often.
Our individual attitude towards technology does not change the way technology itself behaves; it only changes how much we think it can do for us when we take to it-and this applies even to the tech that is constantly being upgraded and modified to satiate different needs. Similarly, poetry that requires a "non-computer" to be realized is not poetry but what we think is poetry: it is subjective interpretation, one that fails in the face of the slightest opposition, and therefore cannot withstand the test of time.
It's important to understand that technology does not, and will not for a long time to come, replace emotional expression and emotional honesty, and that's where I think the great Quentin Tarantino could be wrong. He once famously stated that,
"You can't write poetry on a computer."
I appreciate his loyalty to the ideals of romanticism but, looking at it axiomatically, he chose to say "computer" and not anything else (although don't ask me what "anything else" could be). What does a computer do to effectively reduce the "poeticness" of a poem? What is it about an electronically supplied numerical input and an electromagnetically generated visual output that is beaten by a leaky fountain pen and paper that crumbles at the lightest touch-or should I say that it is a matter of individual investment and computers limit that when they shouldn't? I don't agree. If anything, typewriters and computers make it easier to compose real poetry: poetry that is completely independent of its medium, poetry that finds it rational to reflect only the literary prowess and emotional content of the individual (objective) and not his/her association with the oldest form of literary communication (subjective).
Poetry, you see, is an abstraction just like beauty and justice are, and if Tarantino thinks he can't find them in a computer or only on a piece of paper, then it's also unfortunately obvious that his films are a product of iconoclastic ideals and the chance of the occasion that I was to be born in 1988, and that doesn't happen often.
Our individual attitude towards technology does not change the way technology itself behaves; it only changes how much we think it can do for us when we take to it-and this applies even to the tech that is constantly being upgraded and modified to satiate different needs. Similarly, poetry that requires a "non-computer" to be realized is not poetry but what we think is poetry: it is subjective interpretation, one that fails in the face of the slightest opposition, and therefore cannot withstand the test of time.
Why Quentin Tarantino is wrong
(This article involves a prelude that I insist you read.)
It's important to understand that technology does not, and will not for a long time to come, replace emotional expression and emotional honesty, and that's where I think the great Quentin Tarantino could be wrong. He once famously stated that,
I appreciate his loyalty to the ideals of romanticism but, looking at it axiomatically, he chose to say "computer" and not anything else (although don't ask me what "anything else" could be). What does a computer do to effectively reduce the "poeticness" of a poem? What is it about an electronically supplied numerical input and an electromagnetically generated visual output that is beaten by a leaky fountain pen and paper that crumbles at the lightest touch-or should I say that it is a matter of individual investment and computers limit that when they shouldn't? I don't agree. If anything, typewriters and computers make it easier to compose real poetry: poetry that is completely independent of its medium, poetry that finds it rational to reflect only the literary prowess and emotional content of the individual (objective) and not his/her association with the oldest form of literary communication (subjective).
Poetry, you see, is an abstraction just like beauty and justice are, and if Tarantino thinks he can't find them in a computer or only on a piece of paper, then it's also unfortunately obvious that his films are a product of iconoclastic ideals and the chance of the occasion that I was to be born in 1988, and that doesn't happen often.
Our individual attitude towards technology does not change the way technology itself behaves; it only changes how much we think it can do for us when we take to it-and this applies even to the tech that is constantly being upgraded and modified to satiate different needs. Similarly, poetry that requires a "non-computer" to be realized is not poetry but what we think is poetry: it is subjective interpretation, one that fails in the face of the slightest opposition, and therefore cannot withstand the test of time.
It's important to understand that technology does not, and will not for a long time to come, replace emotional expression and emotional honesty, and that's where I think the great Quentin Tarantino could be wrong. He once famously stated that,
"You can't write poetry on a computer."
I appreciate his loyalty to the ideals of romanticism but, looking at it axiomatically, he chose to say "computer" and not anything else (although don't ask me what "anything else" could be). What does a computer do to effectively reduce the "poeticness" of a poem? What is it about an electronically supplied numerical input and an electromagnetically generated visual output that is beaten by a leaky fountain pen and paper that crumbles at the lightest touch-or should I say that it is a matter of individual investment and computers limit that when they shouldn't? I don't agree. If anything, typewriters and computers make it easier to compose real poetry: poetry that is completely independent of its medium, poetry that finds it rational to reflect only the literary prowess and emotional content of the individual (objective) and not his/her association with the oldest form of literary communication (subjective).
Poetry, you see, is an abstraction just like beauty and justice are, and if Tarantino thinks he can't find them in a computer or only on a piece of paper, then it's also unfortunately obvious that his films are a product of iconoclastic ideals and the chance of the occasion that I was to be born in 1988, and that doesn't happen often.
Our individual attitude towards technology does not change the way technology itself behaves; it only changes how much we think it can do for us when we take to it-and this applies even to the tech that is constantly being upgraded and modified to satiate different needs. Similarly, poetry that requires a "non-computer" to be realized is not poetry but what we think is poetry: it is subjective interpretation, one that fails in the face of the slightest opposition, and therefore cannot withstand the test of time.
Tuesday, 14 June 2011
The fifth traveler
At the edge of civilization,
Where it was raining day and night,
We decided to bury our our feud and join
Each other on the road thereafter.
Now John he was a guitarist
And struck up a tune
That traveled with us as the fourth traveler;
The sound of its music was like the rain,
Trespassing our loneliness like a silent killer.
As we walked we saw an old man
Sitting in a raincoat 'neath a tree:
He lit up a cold smoke.
Its orange light swam the wrinkles of his hand.
He looked long at us searching for an open ear
Into which he'd crawl to escape the shifting sands.
But we had no time for talk or play
Even though we had nowhere to go
Because each of us knew
That he was in a place where he'd like to stay,
Where the knowing silence of death stalked us,
And the temples were where we wanted to pray.
Gently we came upon a fallen tree,
Uprooted by the fury of an ancient storm,
Its leaves and boughs scattered.
Our journey seemed over in that shadowy sea,
And we rested our backs against the wood,
Finally with that silent surrender becoming free.
And John he finally let his eyes weep
For the loss of a friend long ago;
We tried to hold him down.
His sorrow in the dark was our treasure to keep;
He smashed his guitar there and fell down crying,
And there we lay fear our fifth traveler to sleep.
Where it was raining day and night,
We decided to bury our our feud and join
Each other on the road thereafter.
Now John he was a guitarist
And struck up a tune
That traveled with us as the fourth traveler;
The sound of its music was like the rain,
Trespassing our loneliness like a silent killer.
As we walked we saw an old man
Sitting in a raincoat 'neath a tree:
He lit up a cold smoke.
Its orange light swam the wrinkles of his hand.
He looked long at us searching for an open ear
Into which he'd crawl to escape the shifting sands.
But we had no time for talk or play
Even though we had nowhere to go
Because each of us knew
That he was in a place where he'd like to stay,
Where the knowing silence of death stalked us,
And the temples were where we wanted to pray.
Gently we came upon a fallen tree,
Uprooted by the fury of an ancient storm,
Its leaves and boughs scattered.
Our journey seemed over in that shadowy sea,
And we rested our backs against the wood,
Finally with that silent surrender becoming free.
And John he finally let his eyes weep
For the loss of a friend long ago;
We tried to hold him down.
His sorrow in the dark was our treasure to keep;
He smashed his guitar there and fell down crying,
And there we lay fear our fifth traveler to sleep.
Monday, 13 June 2011
When Kap Fynncraft woke up on Tuesday morning.
When Kap Fynncraft woke up on Tuesday morning, neither he nor anyone else knew that it would be different from any of the previous days. He walked to the bathroom, washed his face, brushed his teeth, had a bath, brewed some coffee, toasted some bread, boiled an egg, breakfasted, dressed up and locked the front door behind him. When he reached the last rung of the ladder he had to climb down, he seemed as if he forgot something, and climbed all the way back up. Wedged in the window grill above the first rung was a folded-up white sheet: the newspaper. He stuck it in his mouth and climbed back down. Adjusting his cap, he stood at the bus stop. It was 07.40.
As always, Chip Ramirez stood to his left, and as always, Ark Eiwen stood to Chip's left. They had nothing in particular to speak about, but a decade-old habit of waiting at the bus stop for 10 minutes in each other's presence made the silence anything but discomfiting. At 07.42 precisely, The Man In The Green Helmet would ride by on his scooter. A minute later, The Two Men With Their Briefcases would open the store on the other side of the street. Just as they reordered everything inside the shop and turned the sign to "Open", a red bus could be seen driving up and down the mounding road on the horizon. At 07.50, Kap, Chip and Ark boarded it.
The bus ride to the factory took precisely four minutes everyday because the amount of traffic between 07.50 and 07.54 was the same on any given day. In fact, the amount of traffic at any point of time was the same on any given day. In fact, nothing else about the city had changed in the last 10 years. As he rode the bus to the factory, he also knew nothing would ever change either because the smoke rising from the smelting factory a few miles in the northeast was always of the same hue, density and emotion. Sometimes, he'd look at it and wonder. Sometimes, he wouldn't look any way at all but the paper. Sometimes, he thought what it would be like to jump out of the bus onto the pavement and shatter his head. The telltale jerk brought him out of his reverie on that Tuesday morning, and a minute later, he alighted.
It was winter. The westward wind was strong and cold, unrelenting against his thin woollen shawl. He drew it tighter around himself, although it had never been of any help. But he'd had nothing else to complain about all year, and something like this was all that he had to keep himself from thinking of different ways to kill himself. He signed elaborately in the register, and as always the clerk looked up at him queerly. Before he went to his seat near the drill, he looked at the calendar. It was March 17, 2144. The celebrations were exactly a week away. Exactly 10 years ago, on March 24, 2134, the country officially declared it had nothing significant left to achieve. The standard of living was appreciable, nobody was poor, no wars seemed possible, diplomatic relations presented no challenges, research output had been steadied, diseases had been eradicated, consumption was regulated, the surplus was sold at fixed rates, the weather was shielded against, and state-sponsored festivals provided distraction from the melancholy.
Kap Fynncraft had been a journalist. When The Threshold was breached, he was reporting a story on a woman giving birth to quadruplets at the capital's government hospital. A few days later, he had been promoted to sub-editorship with the newspaper. A week later, there was nothing to go by except a repeated declaration of the government's accomplishments. A month later, the paper had shut down and he was forced to find work in one of the factories. A year later, in 2135, his wife died when she slipped on the ladder outside his door. He had tried to instigate a revolt in the factory: when they asked him what the problem was, he had said something about wages. The next day, he was arrested by the police. A few days later, he was forced to admit there was nothing he could do about it, and when he did admit it, he was released. When he went back to work, he found they'd also increased his wages. When he tried to look intimidating, they reminded him of his wife. "This is for you to spend as you wish, Mr. Fynncraft. We've a feeling you loved your wife very much."
At 16.00, he lined up near Gate 2. The queue for the bus was two labourers long, and he joined it as he always did as the third man. At 16.06, the bus started on its six-minute journey. On that Tuesday, it took more than an hour: just as they passed the Presidential Boulevard, they were stopped behind a few other buses, some cars, many cyclists, and what looked like an upside-down truck, its underside charred and smoking. Kap Fynncraft, somehow, had sunk back into a reverie. He would be home late today, dinner would be late, he'd have to eat as he watched the game tonight. He smiled. Maybe he'd annoy that old woman downstairs by walking around at 22.00. Maybe he'd miss the bus in the morning and hitch a ride. Maybe-
Before he knew it, the bus was on its way again. He could no longer see the plumes of smoke on the southwest, the inky blue of the late-evening sky had swallowed it in its entirety. The streetlamps were lighting themselves one by one, as if they knew Kap Fynncraft was coming, as if they knew he'd want to alight and, somehow, not want to break his head on the pavement on a night that involved a postponed dinner and an angry old woman. A moist film of water had condensed on the windows of the bus, and he waited by the door lest he missed his stop. Under the bright white glare of the streetlights, he could see the patterned tiling on the pavement whip by in the oblong shadow of the vehicle. He knew they were somewhere near his house, he remembered the hexagonal patterns from a terrible day when he had reached the bus stop early one morning and had decided to look down.
Black, white, black, white, black, white, black... the lines between the colours trapped his eyes, and he could feel himself moving through the Universe one coloured tile at a time.
As always, Chip Ramirez stood to his left, and as always, Ark Eiwen stood to Chip's left. They had nothing in particular to speak about, but a decade-old habit of waiting at the bus stop for 10 minutes in each other's presence made the silence anything but discomfiting. At 07.42 precisely, The Man In The Green Helmet would ride by on his scooter. A minute later, The Two Men With Their Briefcases would open the store on the other side of the street. Just as they reordered everything inside the shop and turned the sign to "Open", a red bus could be seen driving up and down the mounding road on the horizon. At 07.50, Kap, Chip and Ark boarded it.
The bus ride to the factory took precisely four minutes everyday because the amount of traffic between 07.50 and 07.54 was the same on any given day. In fact, the amount of traffic at any point of time was the same on any given day. In fact, nothing else about the city had changed in the last 10 years. As he rode the bus to the factory, he also knew nothing would ever change either because the smoke rising from the smelting factory a few miles in the northeast was always of the same hue, density and emotion. Sometimes, he'd look at it and wonder. Sometimes, he wouldn't look any way at all but the paper. Sometimes, he thought what it would be like to jump out of the bus onto the pavement and shatter his head. The telltale jerk brought him out of his reverie on that Tuesday morning, and a minute later, he alighted.
It was winter. The westward wind was strong and cold, unrelenting against his thin woollen shawl. He drew it tighter around himself, although it had never been of any help. But he'd had nothing else to complain about all year, and something like this was all that he had to keep himself from thinking of different ways to kill himself. He signed elaborately in the register, and as always the clerk looked up at him queerly. Before he went to his seat near the drill, he looked at the calendar. It was March 17, 2144. The celebrations were exactly a week away. Exactly 10 years ago, on March 24, 2134, the country officially declared it had nothing significant left to achieve. The standard of living was appreciable, nobody was poor, no wars seemed possible, diplomatic relations presented no challenges, research output had been steadied, diseases had been eradicated, consumption was regulated, the surplus was sold at fixed rates, the weather was shielded against, and state-sponsored festivals provided distraction from the melancholy.
Kap Fynncraft had been a journalist. When The Threshold was breached, he was reporting a story on a woman giving birth to quadruplets at the capital's government hospital. A few days later, he had been promoted to sub-editorship with the newspaper. A week later, there was nothing to go by except a repeated declaration of the government's accomplishments. A month later, the paper had shut down and he was forced to find work in one of the factories. A year later, in 2135, his wife died when she slipped on the ladder outside his door. He had tried to instigate a revolt in the factory: when they asked him what the problem was, he had said something about wages. The next day, he was arrested by the police. A few days later, he was forced to admit there was nothing he could do about it, and when he did admit it, he was released. When he went back to work, he found they'd also increased his wages. When he tried to look intimidating, they reminded him of his wife. "This is for you to spend as you wish, Mr. Fynncraft. We've a feeling you loved your wife very much."
At 16.00, he lined up near Gate 2. The queue for the bus was two labourers long, and he joined it as he always did as the third man. At 16.06, the bus started on its six-minute journey. On that Tuesday, it took more than an hour: just as they passed the Presidential Boulevard, they were stopped behind a few other buses, some cars, many cyclists, and what looked like an upside-down truck, its underside charred and smoking. Kap Fynncraft, somehow, had sunk back into a reverie. He would be home late today, dinner would be late, he'd have to eat as he watched the game tonight. He smiled. Maybe he'd annoy that old woman downstairs by walking around at 22.00. Maybe he'd miss the bus in the morning and hitch a ride. Maybe-
Before he knew it, the bus was on its way again. He could no longer see the plumes of smoke on the southwest, the inky blue of the late-evening sky had swallowed it in its entirety. The streetlamps were lighting themselves one by one, as if they knew Kap Fynncraft was coming, as if they knew he'd want to alight and, somehow, not want to break his head on the pavement on a night that involved a postponed dinner and an angry old woman. A moist film of water had condensed on the windows of the bus, and he waited by the door lest he missed his stop. Under the bright white glare of the streetlights, he could see the patterned tiling on the pavement whip by in the oblong shadow of the vehicle. He knew they were somewhere near his house, he remembered the hexagonal patterns from a terrible day when he had reached the bus stop early one morning and had decided to look down.
Black, white, black, white, black, white, black... the lines between the colours trapped his eyes, and he could feel himself moving through the Universe one coloured tile at a time.
Friday, 10 June 2011
On that eternal path to winter, hidden away in that distant grayness where boughs bend over the lone trespasser to cast whimsical shadows, there is a summer glow stashed away between the gnarled union between tree and earth. It is the cause of much wonderment and despair, of the tinctures of curiosity lining the teary eyes of damsels, of the industrial sheen of sweat and blood upon the breastplate of fallen knights; it is the last vestige of an old summer. Where the mournful distance of life brings down the demons and devils upon each dust-specked footstep, there is a dream that must be filled by that golden glow.
Slowly, a vortex swirls up into the wayward winds and brings them together in its screamed cause... meus causa est meus mos! The orb of fire dips down beyond the western world and an argent disc rises up in its stead, and the falling leaves know it is the time to join battle. The mortal rage of a rufescent summer awakens from its stupor to meet the quiet and crawling invasion of wolves, werewolves and winter, and they clash! In the union of metallic thorns, brazen gauntlets and recrudescent valor, the skies and all its worldly subjects witness a last stand by all of nature's forces to possess the child who watches... who watches... from the gnarled union between touch and sensation... between intention and reality.
Watch! Watch her defeat the grace that has always subdued her, cowed her into a thing of beauty, and watch on as she becomes the woman whose fury Hell toils to match! Watch her skirt through the rubble, accursed to rot in the rustic glow of a doleful sunset, and mourn with fury the loss of her love! Watch her break free, in the name of all anarchy, and dismiss your attention for its patronizing hedonism... bleed, sire and soul, for then you will know the painful journey she waits to finish!
Slowly, a vortex swirls up into the wayward winds and brings them together in its screamed cause... meus causa est meus mos! The orb of fire dips down beyond the western world and an argent disc rises up in its stead, and the falling leaves know it is the time to join battle. The mortal rage of a rufescent summer awakens from its stupor to meet the quiet and crawling invasion of wolves, werewolves and winter, and they clash! In the union of metallic thorns, brazen gauntlets and recrudescent valor, the skies and all its worldly subjects witness a last stand by all of nature's forces to possess the child who watches... who watches... from the gnarled union between touch and sensation... between intention and reality.
Lights! Music! Walk!
Watch! Watch her defeat the grace that has always subdued her, cowed her into a thing of beauty, and watch on as she becomes the woman whose fury Hell toils to match! Watch her skirt through the rubble, accursed to rot in the rustic glow of a doleful sunset, and mourn with fury the loss of her love! Watch her break free, in the name of all anarchy, and dismiss your attention for its patronizing hedonism... bleed, sire and soul, for then you will know the painful journey she waits to finish!
Sunday, 29 May 2011
Untitled, 29052011
Disease is also one's material.
Graham Greene
That a man of my age remains limited by his lack of experiences and hardship to understand, agreeably, the significance of literary masterpieces is simply the mark of a bias hoisted upon the associations of age, the confabulation of bygone memories, and the indulgence in literary excesses.
Untitled, 29052011
Disease is also one's material.
Graham Greene
That a man of my age remains limited by his lack of experiences and hardship to understand, agreeably, the significance of literary masterpieces is simply the mark of a bias hoisted upon the associations of age, the confabulation of bygone memories, and the indulgence in literary excesses.
Saturday, 28 May 2011
Untitled, 28052011
Why does literary theory seem so esoteric?
Why do all great novels seem to have been steeped in sorrowful and injurious experiences? It's as if they are all reflections, didactic in some part, seeking to provide literary form to anguish experienced in the way of knowing the "perfect" life. In the same vein, is there no literary form for non-reactionary, non-adventurous emotions? What about day-to-day activities? What about the small things that cledonistically put together the mind of a man who goes to sleep at night with it? All the literary exercises past with desperation as motive are tiring on the senses.
Boredom is a perfect start.
Why do all great novels seem to have been steeped in sorrowful and injurious experiences? It's as if they are all reflections, didactic in some part, seeking to provide literary form to anguish experienced in the way of knowing the "perfect" life. In the same vein, is there no literary form for non-reactionary, non-adventurous emotions? What about day-to-day activities? What about the small things that cledonistically put together the mind of a man who goes to sleep at night with it? All the literary exercises past with desperation as motive are tiring on the senses.
Boredom is a perfect start.
Untitled, 28052011
Why does literary theory seem so esoteric?
Why do all great novels seem to have been steeped in sorrowful and injurious experiences? It's as if they are all reflections, didactic in some part, seeking to provide literary form to anguish experienced in the way of knowing the "perfect" life. In the same vein, is there no literary form for non-reactionary, non-adventurous emotions? What about day-to-day activities? What about the small things that cledonistically put together the mind of a man who goes to sleep at night with it? All the literary exercises past with desperation as motive are tiring on the senses.
Boredom is a perfect start.
Why do all great novels seem to have been steeped in sorrowful and injurious experiences? It's as if they are all reflections, didactic in some part, seeking to provide literary form to anguish experienced in the way of knowing the "perfect" life. In the same vein, is there no literary form for non-reactionary, non-adventurous emotions? What about day-to-day activities? What about the small things that cledonistically put together the mind of a man who goes to sleep at night with it? All the literary exercises past with desperation as motive are tiring on the senses.
Boredom is a perfect start.
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