BLEH!

Belligerence won't do,
but maybe a new language.
A word salad of all that's wrong,
But the cogency still remains. Or not.
So what is it now?
Need some diplomacy.
No lights, no color, no sound, no smell!
And too much of this and that, all that never mattered.
An imbalance, do we see now?
So why doesn't it all fall apart?
Because it's Utopia, they say!
Where are the Salvages then?
Those humans preserved?

Days / Daze

Not quite here,
Never quite there...
In the land of in-betweens

Reminisces of what could have been
Ruminations of what could be
Always a flight from what is

A sudden twitch and a sullen smile
Nostalgia leaks through the cracks
Sense? There is none.

Where do we land when we want to fly?
Do we land at all?
Maybe it's eternal trajectory, into an empty space.

Sometimes you don't neet a title

There is a nagging itch in your fingers and you want to come up with some mind blowing masterpiece, disconnected from its reality for you... but it's just one of those days when words won't dissociate from your thoughts. And yet, words never suffice. So... what do you do?

Listen to some Dylan and Rolling Stones, looking for some ideas to straighten out the web of thoughts in your head. Doesn't work. Then, you finally get your ass moving and make some hot chocolate with embellishments, because you need the comfort of the thick texture and the aroma that comes with it... so there goes the last of your fresh mint leaves... But you're still fishing for some words that just elude you... just elude you .... as you lose yourself behind the smoke rings.

The tug of nostalgia doesn't stir you because it's not nostalgia. It's what you have internalized. You wish for it to pass so that you can retrace the steps outside of it. But the bitch that this life is... it always brings you back to the mess that was created long ago. So what do you do? Haplessly wait for the day when you'll be in the hot seat and the madness just spills itself out. You know it's a crash in the making... and you know it's inferno en route... but what do you do? The only answer lies in the defenseless purging that is yet to be.

Psychic determinism: People get stuck in the circle of their personal tragedies, and remain so.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!!!!

The silent protest of overkill...

The calm or the chaos? It's all but one

It's difficult to explain,
The madness of a silent mind
Words fall short when the angst comes pouring out
What is left is broken frames of then and now
Revisits and remembrances,
Spurting in sporadic sparks as if from a rusted spout

What happens of the insanity?
The shrill screams and the silence in vain?
It's a melodrama of the pain of quiescence
It's the schmaltz of the comfort of gash
Beyond, into the serene numbness
The peace in its elusiveness

It's a journey from the peaks to troughs
and the peaks again, and then the troughs
Untill one day you hit an empty space
Thereafter, it's just a buoyant calm
As you gently float through the infamies and the adulation
And all the rest that never stays!

Something to think about

Over the years, Evolutionary Psychology has become a subject of keen interest to me. It is fascinating to see how every human behavior/ drive/ instinct/ emotion can be explained in terms of Survival and Procreation. It sounds simplistic, and perhaps it is. And that is the beauty of it!

A very important factor to one's survival (and sanity, to take a retreat to the familiar road) is the locus of control - the belief that things are in one's control. It has been well studied that the level of stress one experiences is correlated with one's locus on cotrol - an internal locus of control results in low stress levels, as opposed to an external locus of control, that causes high levels of stress and anxiety.

So what does it mean to have an external locus of control, and when and where does one delineate between its multitude manifestations as 'normal' vs 'abnormal' - or to use more civil words, as bearable vs unbearable?

If you lose a job in times of an economic crisis, the locus of control is externalised. Thus, high anxiety levels. But would you necessarily call it unbearable? Perhaps if it causes the individual to become inert and passive. Even so, there is a component on internal locus of control - he/she may decide to apply for jobs outside of his field of choice, he/she may decide to take advantage of the situation and go on a vacation, or volunteer for a cause they may have felt strongly for etc.

If you lose a loved one... There is no component of internal locus of control. But, coping with its loss takes a different turn in bereavement. It follows a different coping process.

So what does it mean to lose the internal locus of control? How about Psychosis? Or perhaps Bipolar Disorder? Or even a Personality Disorder?

To the supporters of CBT, it may seem absurd if I associate the loss of locus of control with the above. But imagine having to fight a war with yourself every single moment of every single day, not being able to predict what's coming your way, and not knowing or understanding how to control it. If the city's hit by a hurricane, you can choose to be vigil and take control over the situation to assure your safety. If there's a forest fire, you stay away from the forest. But what do you do if one moment you are content and happy and then suddenly a dark gloomy cloud takes over and you can't see anything clearly? Where do you run to? What do you run from? It suddenly explains suicide rates among Bipolar!

Coming back to my still in infacy fascination with the simplistic explanations, one can do more with the core affective and instinctual and cognitive dispositions than with investing in fancy MRI researches and drugs and PET scans and whatnot...

If we can just find a way to instill hope, to help these individuals regain a sense of control, of dignity, of stability, so much more can be achieved, and without the devastating effects of medications!

JUST ANOTHER SUBLIMATION

You transcend beyond the realms of reality
And thereafter it’s just approximations
A masochistic thrill in the tug of war
A narcissistic pleasure in revelations

What do you make of the connection in the disconnect,
And the distance in proximity?
What is it all but illusions?
A trance, a rhapsody

You crave for the simpler existence
But you have plunged over the edge
Hereafter, it’s a plummet
You go down, and you go down… perish in another’s pledge

It’s the turmoil beneath the sullen clouds
The current beneath the calm seas
You expand till you explode,
Till rendered a speck of dust in the breeze

What sense does it all make?
Permanence, sustenance, ambitions of naiveté
In the end, we’re all stardust
It’s just moments in brevity

WHEN STARS COLLIDE

He lit a fire,
And her head set ablaze
The realms of nothingness
Thus they began to chase

Prodigies of war, two marred children
They tethered, they slithered
Never could contain the love that came their way
In the ruins of others, thus they withered

Their sanity rested in each other’s madness
The calm of the chaos within
Every now and then, they would cosset in abandonment
The masochism of the aborigine

The last of their memory was burnt
But the annihilation was an ambition none could attain
The fury of their fusion was so extreme,
Their souls could not sustain

So now they blend,
Separate from the separation of the rest
Her thoughts become his and his soul hers
They rejoice in the defeat of their conquest

THE ANONYMOUS

A beam exuded from his darkened soul
The orange of his lava filled the air
He couldn’t breathe in his own blaze
Yet he lived more than anyone would dare.

Sole warrior in the world of marchers
He didn’t stir, but he fought his war
Did he win, or did he lose…?
He had travelled beyond and far.

The war was his, but victory the world’s
The dismembered wrath and agony,
He was the reservoir of broken dreams
He grew a wise man, and wisdom became his felony!

Change...

"THE ONLY CONSTANT IS CHANGE" - Heraclitus

Since the human race started contemplating, we've known that the only thing that is constant, assured and certain is change... Change...

Blame it on sub average introspective qualities, or on facticity, but for most of us, change is a series of progressive events that collaborate together, piece by piece, into what we call life. We just watch it go by, or get so lost living it that we never appreciate it... we make ourselves believe that there isn't any change, but isn't every day really a new day? Even when we are as static one may believe it is humanly possible, we are living a change, albeit in the form of time just slipping away, it is still change - change beyond ourselves.

There's another category among us - ones who embrace the first and foremost of 'the seven habits' as Stephen Covey liked to put it - those among us who are Proactive in the change. We're constantly on the run... doing new things, harboring a strong will to learn more, see more, do more... always manipulating our environments. If we can't change our perception, we change the object. If we can't change the object, we fight the perception that we're becoming dangerously comfortable with as each day passes by, if we can't fight it, we ignore the object. But there's always an unrest, an itch... for something different, even if it is my window curtain...

For some of us, comes a point in life when all the years of maneuvering actually begin to take shape... when we no longer need to kneed the dough... it just happens. Suddenly, the otherwise dormant universe becomes Proactive for us. Suddenly, change comes and how! You want to turn away, but it won't let you... and then you realise that all this while you had been deluding yourself with the belief that you are changing yourself, when you had only been changing your environment. And now, the world is changing you, and there's nothing you can do about it, except change... But all you really want to do is shrink back in your little cell, your dark comfort zone, even though you hated it... because, well perhaps it's so much easier that way.

There are so many songs about change, so many Philosophers have contemplated over it since time immemorial, Psychologists wonder about it every day, every one of us lives it every day... yet, why are we so scared to confront it, why do we coy at the thought of letting this current of change take over us? Why do we always have to be in control, even as we complain about it every second? What do we really want?

What are we made of?

Sleepless nights and midnight caffeine kicks... what are we made of?
Love that never arrives, love that's pushed away, dormant years and bouts of madness, love of hate and hate of love... what are we made of?
Stardust and chemicals, dust that dissolves in the invisible waters, pursuits of illusions, illusions are reality... what are we made of?
Restless souls chasing peace, peace that always eludes itself, hushed tears and violent screams... where is the truth?
Is it on a mountain top that exists but only in my mind, or is it in the sand dunes that are blowing in the wind?
Lies that we sell, truth that we deny, pasts we never forget, present we never believe, future, always too far... where is our reality?
Souls that are sallow, hearts that are hollow, minds marred, children charred... where is the rescue?
Cries that are never heard, blame, blame, blame. the flame never dies... but who started the fire?
Too far beyond to retrieve, the savior is dead. The war is not ours, gratuitous is our enemy... What are we made of?

ABYSS ABYSS ABYSS ...

Chaotic circles

Caught in the chaotic circles
She sits back and enjoys the show
Remorselessly she rejoices
In this melodrama that she so blissfully put together,
Piece by piece it unfurls,
The mysteries untold, she holds
Now it’s a tragedy, now a comedy…
Her life is every drama ever conceived
A patchwork of half-written metaphors,
A mélange of half-brewed potions,
She fills it with her whims and fancies
And makes it her own
Originality is but an illusion!

It goes up, it goes down, never a plateau
It churns within, it burns without
A pauper walks by, and it turns upside down…
All the sages and all the saints
All the madmen and all the maniacs
Watch silently as her life corrodes…
Smug in believing that she perishes
Under the torrent of their caprice
Unaware that she sits beside them!

Now she knows how she feels,
Now there is nothing she feels,
Now the words are hers,
Now the words are just letters,
Neatly tailored together…
But incomprehensible,
Just like herself!

Does this fiasco of sentences have a meaning?
Does it have an end?
There isn’t one in sight,
For there wasn’t a beginning…

??

Reflecting upon the recent five month long hiatus from the blog, I am utterly surprised at the various places my pseudopods have poked at! I have been a million different people in the last five months, and every new person has been just as real as the one before and the one after!

The degree of reality of the world within and without me has always been my favorite to ponder upon. Without, the most real I have felt has been in wrath and anger - for, in hatred there's always honesty! Within, there has been none - for everthing has been so transient, and most of what I have felt, I haven't at all beyond a moment.

Even so, there has been an unrelenting, indescribable torrent within me. I wouldn't call it a temperament, or a trait, or anger, or benevolence, or passion... those are big words, and too murky! Perhaps it is a tinted canvas upon which everything else resides, and merges in its hue. Perhaps that is true for all of us... we are all made up of a plain canvases, with a tint of ourselves - each unique. But the canvas is barren, and painted one by one with things universal - aspirations, beliefs, emotions; each one exactly like the other. The difference then lies in the shade of the canvas, not what it is filled with. And how i see your canvas, full with its sceneries, is tainted too by the hues of mine!

Thus I ask, what is real? The canvas, after all, is empty!

Moment of disgust, or revelation??

I started my day with a quote by Eric Berne saying, 'The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing' ... It was the perfect fuel for my ongoing journey towards a sense of paralyzing loss of all that we once had, all that mankind was supposed to be but isn't, contempt for everything mankind has made itself, for the resort to gimmickry.. for the death of mankind, and along with it, the death of its home.

I started reading Brave New World sometime ago ... I never thought of Huxley as an author who would change my thought process so much... perhaps it's not so much change as it is an amplification of thoughts I had supressed for years because I believed they were absurd... but today, I see absurdity in a new light. I see absurdity in everything around me... even as I type this on my laptop, all I can feel is a tingling sensation in my fingers every time they come in contact with the plastic on my keyborad, so much so that I want to amputate my fingers.

I had a revelation a few days ago... like the protagonist in Sartre's Nausea, I was transported to a world of naked disgust! Except what digusted me wasn't an inert tree trunk, but everything manmade. As I looked for a blind spot to focus on to divert myself from more humane concerns, I was suddenly struck by the fact that the stain on my mirror I tried to concentrate on was so artificial.. I wondered if it really existed. Would one call that existence? It had been forced to come into being... and it was just there. What was the purpose of that stain? Then I looked around, only to realize that everything in the room except myself was so artificial and just there... I wondered if I should even say that these things exist, that the room exists... All these things did not come into existence ... They were forced to be there... and just be. To what end? Why was there a stain on my mirror, why were there lines on the tile, why was there a scratch on the sink? What sense did any of that make? What was the purpose? Why? Why? Why? As I groped for something that made sense to me, i shivered ... I looked outside to find a tree or a bird, but there was none.. all I could see was the sky, and even the sky seemed so sullen, so sad, so disappointed with the fact that no one looks at it anymore, that it is lost somewhere behind a cloud of dust... I looked at the mirror hoping that I'd see something natural there... a human being, flesh and blood... but all I saw was the metal on my nose, the cloth on my body... and I wondered, even humans aren't human anymore. My heart sank with disgust. I turned the faucet on hoping that the sight and sound of water would make me feel better... but that only made me think that even the flow of water is so artificial. I stepped into the shower, the same... with every inch of my skin that I covered with soap, I annihilated myself... It was madness...

Narrating the incident, I seem to have forgotten why I started writing of it in the first place...I do not wish that everything man has invented over the years be destroyed, that we live in rain forests... After all, it is technology that has made my hopeless romance come true. But I do wish that we would stop, stop inventing, stop modifying, stop vandalising what we were born into. .. I miss Mother Nature!! I need to breathe ....

Should I call it irony, or should I call it life?

Telling a friend about the recent much awaited developments of my life, I was struck by my lack of enthusiasm! It didn't come as a disappointment... I guess this is where Philosophy saves me. It got me thinking how everything in life is so ironic!

Right from the moment a child is born, he is thrown into a world of paradoxes... birth never comes without pain. A child enters the world; yet, we celebrate its cry. When a child, there is an almost urgent need to grow up. But when the child grows, everyone is left with a hint of sadness.

Our entire lives, we live for the future. Every act, every breath is for what is to come. Our existence is based on anticipation in entirety, in eternity. The wait... the wait for growing up, the wait for going to school, the wait for getting good grades, the wait for finishing school, the wait for going to college, entering the 'real world' as we are so often told, the wait for finishing college, getting a job, once again entering the 'real world' ... it's always a wait. We start one thing, in anticipation of its ending... jump to the next in anticipation of what lies after this.... if not a job, it is the next phase of life.... marriage, children, grandchildren. We're forever waiting.

The wait has become so intrinsic to man, both at an individual as well as a universal level, that we haven't learnt what to do when finally the wait is over and we have in hand what we had waited for. In not knowing what to do with it, we device something else to wait on.

Does our real life ever begin, or are we always telling ourselves to wait??? I go to school, when I go to college, I will enter the real world... Oh I finished college, that wasn't the real world, my job will be. I am at my job... it's not good enough, maybe I need a husband for my real life to begin... my husband and I are just two, I need someone to mother... now I am a mother, my kids have grown up and left the nest empty... their kids will fill it up. ... before we know it, we are left with nothing to wait upon but our end. A life wasted?????

True, we all need purpose in life. We all need direction, a sense of comfort in the hope for a future that's not empty. True, we need to work to make sure that it isn't empty. But are we extracting everything from our present to fill our future with?

I sit here, with something i have always wanted in life, with the knowledge that I just need to cross this one last bridge to be what i have always wanted to be... and I find myself thinking 'is this it' ??? I don't know what to do with it. I tell myself, it's just the last moment jitters, it will pass. I see my future fulfilling, but my present is hollow. There is no more wait... and without the wait, there's nothing for me to live for today.

Everything that man has ever done, or is doing today has been FOR something... Why is it so difficult for us to just BE?

I always thought that I lived in the present more than anyone else I knew. And I still stand by it. But even so, it wasn't enough... Words fail me right now, like they do everytime I am overwhelmed by the nothingness of this life... I guess it fits, NOTHING CAN DESCRIBE NOTHINGNESS!!!!!!!

A Madman's Prayer

In whimsical silences,
In blithe madness,
In quiet desperation,
In unrelenting sadness
Lingers passion,
Passion that fears no consequence
Passion that wills no witness
Passion that knows no bounds
Intangible, unbridled,
It runs wild in the woods
Is it a chase?
No, just a deliberate life.

‘But why’, you ask
‘Why bear the pain of isolation of a private insanity,
The pitiless accusations of those in reign,
Those fowling eyes preying
Upon the dauntless passion you behold,
Those spears thrown to condense you to pillage,
Withering cold, in pain.
Don’t you see, oh! Madman, oh! Maniac!
The blindfold against which you battle
Is but invincible.’

But this incorrigible rebellion that you accuse me of
Is no more than misconstrued exhilaration,
A private affair with madness
Not for anyone to witness,
Only to feed the void in my soul
The void that you possess, but I experience.
You say, ‘but the void is in your soul’…
I say, there is just one soul, yours, mine and everyone else’s.
The void too, is one.
The madness too, is one.
I only dance a different dance…
But the music is one…

So I beseech you
Don’t revile me if I fail to relive your life,
For as I strip naked of your mellowed minds,
And as I break the chains of your hollowed hearts
I expose for myself the bare beauty of your being…
And I marvel at the grandiosity of your petty pursuits
And I fancy your fascination with frivolity
In my misapprehended madness,
I love you like you have never learned to love.

.

My self-imposed sabbatical has reached a point where I feel completely brain-dead. I try to contemplate once again about some mystery of the world, but I find myself inadvertently retrospecting about the days when I used to spend endless hours marvelling at a sentence I would read in a book. Now, nothing I read or hear stimulates me enough.

Is it because I may have become tolerant, and that I need a stronger stimulant to bring in the same effect? Or is it because I have mentally exhausted myself? Or is it because I am subconsciously trying to push away any form of stimulation because I do not want to revert to a state of brooding contemplation? Perhaps, it is simply because a mind doesn't really work in isolation...

My journey from a hyperactive mind running ahead of time, to one that is frozen in a timeless spell, was a gradual one. It took certain disappoinments, ineffectual attempts at trying to modify and justify what I witnessed to comply with my beliefs, a rebellion against the schism between what I had idealised and what actually is. Perhaps, the journey hasn't quite reached its end. Perhaps, this quiscence is really an immature defense against something that I can't overtly fight. But perhaps, in this miscontrued revenge, I am really harming myself. But to not do that would be a compromise. Perhaps, I chose misleading mentors who, under the facade of nihilism, really upheld an idealism too idealistic for reality, too psychotic for psychosis itself.

It's marvelous how we perceive everything around us. More marvelous is how our perception evolves. Yet more marvelous is how our identity also changes with our perceptions. Perhaps, I am at a stage in life where I am still trying to find myself. I try to tell myself that perhaps, at a later stage everyone reaches an equilibrium... but does it really happen? Are we not always evolving? Does anyone really know who they are or what their reality is? Like Benjamin Franklin said '... the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment...'

So I sit here, although not old enough, and doubt everything that I have experienced and known, felt and believed... I sit here, beholder to a change, personal but with an undeniable universal impact, and try to fathom what really is and has been my reality?

I know I will never have all the answers. I know that I will continue to alternate between my experience of life as reality and an illusion. I also know that if I stop or if I finally understand what I am chasing, I will have no reason left to live...

So here's to this journey called life... that has no one truth to it, no one consolidate reality, and never an end...

Humans first!

Lately, I've been pondering over the implicit fallacies of mankind... about our faulty defenses, our misperceptions, our errored attributions, our misconstrued beliefs, and everything else that is collectively wrong with us. It was triggered by the ritualistic rekindling of bra-burning feminism on the occasion of Women's Day. Perhaps, procrastinating this note has added on a lot to it. And since, by wishing to include all of it in one piece of writing I risk coherence, I have, with much trouble, decided to stick to only one aspect - what triggered it in the first place - gender.

Once upon a time, I was all for equality between men and women. Generations before us fought for it, we still continue to. But perhaps, we are building on a flawed foundation. Is there really anything like equality between men and women?

I strongly believe that women and men are built differently. Equal rights are one thing. But to compare two qualitatively different entities is a quest that will never have satisfactory results. It is irrelevant to look into how this war between genders originated. However, we can't sacrifice generation after generation in a struggle for something not only unachievable, but also emotionally devaluing. There are certain characteristics that are common to everyone - men and women alike. But there are a lot more that are exclusive to each. I don't understand androgyny. What defines it anyway? For years, women have struggled to prove themselves worthy of the same jobs as men, the same social status etc. Well, we have done a pretty decent job... but somewhere along the line, haven't we lost ourselves?

By consistently trying to equate ourselves with men, we are telling the world that we believe we are inferior. Inferiority isn't even a factor here. Because there can be no hierarchy between two things that are mutually exclusive. I believe that the constant need for women to be at par with men has arisen as a result of misinterpretation of religion and culture. It arises from the inferior notion of women that is promoted primarily by religious fundamentalists, aiming at constraining something that they might find potentially overpowering. Of course, women have also introjected certain unreasonable notions. But, keeping aside the complexities of the process, let’s try to realize here that we’re chasing something that exists only in our minds!

Whenever there is a difference between two entities, there is always a battle about which one is better, which is ‘right’… why? Why can’t we try and foster acceptance and respect for our differences, instead of continually wearing ourselves out trying to be something we aren’t?

And why is it even an issue? Do we see men prancing around in pink panties and painted nails, telling the world that they’re as good as women? Then why do we undermine our femininity?

Being a believer in individuality of all, despite gender differences, I hate talking about men and women as separate entities. Everything I have written above lacks conviction, not because I don’t believe in it, but because I believe in something beyond the sex of a person! So, let’s try to look at ourselves and others as humans before we do as men or women!

Days of absolute nothingness, i have had ample time to reflect, to recreate my personal universe... and i have come to realize many new absurdities of life... my own irrationalities, my fears, my hopes... and those of everyone else.

In its absentia, when my world went crazy for a while, I realized how important sisterhood is... Both my girls, my lifeline, on different continents, and I seem to have modified my beliefs... isn't life just so funny?? You spend years believeing that a certain thing is important, but one fine day, the most unassuming thing goes away from you, and what you thought were your strongest beliefs are uprooted. ... and i am wondering... how valid is all oour ranting about being independent, strong women...? All of us here, stuck in singledom, we have made ourselves believe that we are happiest in our solitude... but solitude survives only in company. We tell ourselves that we are alone because we don't have a man, but we never acknowledge that we have each other, and that is really what keeps us going in this madness! All the talking about futile flings, failed relationships, unfulfilled loves makes it easy to pull through. We all, together, glorify our loneliness, and dissociate the pain from it. Like the Piano Man would say, loneliness is a drink we all share...

I can never stop marveling at what is becoming of us... our world seems so far apart from everybody else... yet, it isn't. It's not dual lives anymore that we are living... it's three, four, even five! And we're all losing our sanity soon. There's a breaking point for all of us...

There's so much going through my mind right now. Too many thoughts, not enough words. Speaking of which, are words ever enough?? Do words really help us or do they just undermine our experiences? Whenever I read something that I had written in the past, I always find my experience of it as a reader so devoid and empty and incomplete. One can never feel the same thing twice in the same way. And then I wonder, how accurate is communication? Perhaps that's why the world is in such a chaos...