Blogs
Aug 18 2010 - 11:10am
I do not know if this is some sort of a penance, for crimes that I may have done and crimes that I may not have. In its doing, and under repeated questioning, all I can see is that this is nothing of that sort. There is really no reason behind this other than that I wanted to do this. There is no medal, there is no point being proven (I am not absolutely sure about this), there is no reconciliation, there is no favour sought or given. All that is there is to this is what you get to see.
There were moments, not too many, where the past threatened to come rushing in. Vendetta, vengeance and the ever-present whiff of the unfairness in even the "now" - they all made a beeline to make their own presence felt loud and clear. There were half-moments, not too many, where I felt I would freeze, as the beeline rampaged and worked hard to tear the delicate fabric of the "now". Forgiving someone is easy to do in words. At the core, where it matters and hurts the most, it is the hardest. It is not that I don't doubt if I have indeed forgiven, as I have often said, but I guess I managed enough to not have that stand in the way today.
If there is any, the only burning ideal is to live by the heart and the heart says not to surrender, at any cost, to anyone, the happiness you have earned, the hard way, in life. Thus freedom gets another companion that will never be allowed to go to waste. We will always live free and we will always live happy. It is within us to choose the lives we live. It is within us to choose what we hold on to. It is within us to choose what we let go. It may well be that the line may fall. It may well be that "free" and "happiness" may not strong enough to survive the worst. If the line were to fall, it will fall being free and happy.
Jul 2 2010 - 1:33pm
Day and night is the difference between clocks, time zones, the time we go to sleep and the time we wake up. Overriding all of those is the consideration of light, whether it is making its first appearance in the day for the world or if it is its last. I'm listening to a famous bit of chanting that is urging the lord to wake up, uttering the wishes of a good morning over and over again, like the turning of the days into one and into another. Days, like all else, are a man-made bifurcation, ably aided by the fancies of nature.
In short, there is no bifurcation of time, nor of memories. Of things you have missed. Of things you can't have, but that you still yearn for. Of things that mean a lot to you, but those that you have conditioned yourself into admitting that they represent little, while they still represent a lot. Of all the things still embedded within you. The fingerprints of a past you have left behind are the hardest to hide even when it is buried a thousand feet into the earth, into your conscience. There is, after all, a good morning, every time, may it be to the lord or not.
Thus seen, it is a grotesque misinterpretation to greet the good morning with an uninterrupted continuation of the previous. Night it may be, but it is a morning all the same. The mind and body are malleable as any hybrid metal. Feed it enough of the right fodder and it will gallop in a direction that can otherwise be deemed awful. It can bend without breaking, it can break without disintegrating. We are our own engineering marvels. Our realities are a creation of our fantasies that contain just about enough reality as we deem it right to make our days more livable.
Empirically, logically and rationally this should be easy. We have done the math. The sums are right. They add, they subtract, they divide and multiply just right. Then why do I struggle with the implications of a few lines that were not even written for me, or for anyone I know? We should be able to ignore this. We have been through this drill enough times already. But then why does this bring all of it back as much as it does?
Jun 14 2010 - 5:46am
Missing from my world was that voice I had not heard in a while. In the chaos of the last eight months I did not notice that it had gone missing. Since it is not given to raising itself above others it can't be heard unless you keep an ear open for it. In the past eight months I had forgotten to do that.
It was only when I finally ran out of things to say to everyone and had no more energy left to hear anything from anyone that I could hear clearly, in the quiet, what I had been missing all the while. In its gentle assertiveness was a kindness that I've almost always spared for others but I seldom spare any for myself.
As the season of discontent gnawed its way through the foggy mornings and swept itself over into a scorching summer, the words I have always valued - trust, love, honesty and many others - withered away. They were mere representations of what I was to have felt and known, but I could no longer connect to.
In this collapse of the inner language took root the detachment with the outer. I could say and know what a word or a feeling meant, but felt no connection to it with respect to another. Considering that the same used to see me charging at various windmills earlier, this newfound inertness was not comfortable.
It defined me. That was me. With that no longer there, then what is me?
By now discomfort was a constant companion. I wanted to run, but there was no point in running if I had to return to the battlefield again. By now honour, bravery, courage were things that meant little. I wanted out, but where and what was out?
There was no magic wand to wave, to fix a problem internal was not something that anything external could manage to do. I tried different routines in an attempt to let habit make up for a lack of an innate knowledge.
Then that too failed. I could convince myself to be anything for two weeks and be the exact opposite in the subsequent weeks. There was as much connection to any of these states of being as there was to a handrail. It helps you get to places in a predictable manner. And it does only that.
Meanwhile, the restlessness took on dimensions that were alarming. I wondered if I were to be stripped of everything - body, soul and whatnot - what you would possibly find at the core would be this constantly buzzing, trembling lump that would never settle down.
It did not escape my mind that none of this, incidentally, was new. These were known things I had grown used to over thirty-years, so why the undue alarm? The answer was not difficult: trust is tough to gain and easy to lose - it becomes a lot more unforgiving when you don't trust yourself any longer.
I wondered, why was it that a year ago, when circumstances were considerably tougher, I was on a much more even keel? There was unrest, there were problems, but I was not disheartened then. I was more accepting, there was no turning my back on everything. I had no answers.
Even if I had any, I would not trust them one bit. For all you know, I would just be telling myself things that I wanted to know and hear. Lacking an inner language, it is only logical that things should happen that way.
Since my ability to participate or be involved much in anything personal took a nosedive, withdrawal came automatically. I probably did not know much at that point, but still knew that one thing I could not willingly do was to live a lie. I heard questions, but I had no answers.
I really did not have much to say and I don't think it was anyone's fault.
It was eerily quiet and it is not the kind of quiet you can imagine. If I was not scared enough already, this made it even worse. It felt much like an endless tightrope walk.
In the middle of all of this I did not realize initially that I was hearing the voice again. In fact, when it first became clear to me, I was more than a bit bothered. Seriously, you can't have a two-sided conversation where there is only one person involved. We don't do things like that, do we?
Thankfully, it was all rather mundane. There was no significant attempt at trying to solve life's rubric cube. After the token mention of disappointments, the repetitiveness started to wear me out. It was a case of shut up or get out and with the withdrawal, it was easy to get out here too.
I don't remember why the question 'what do you want to do' was asked in one of those conversations. What I do remember is that I could not give an answer that did not depend on a relative measure of worth and value as its cornerstone. Oh, well.
We started with the basics. Let us at least not try and endlessly make the same loop of errors again. No more conversations about the whys and wherefores. Just stop, if I cared enough.
'What do you want to do' can be the easiest or the toughest question to answer. It comes bundled with a mix of your own expectations and the expectations of others.
For me it is harder because of a lifelong addiction to guilt - for everything and anything - which is an absurd way of finding my own importance and place in life. Every day is now an experience of unravelling another layer into which this addiction has taken hold.
It alters my perspective, skews my value system and puts me permanently in a state of trying to make up for the flaws and unfairness of a million things in the world. It is like a blank cheque, you can put any number to it and I'll still honour it out of my own account.
Tallied into neat columns, I could easily point out what is yours and what is that of others we were dealing with, but what is mine was a column I almost had little to put into. As a con artist, this is a spectacular achievement, as a human being, this is horrific disaster.
Logic is as perfect or as flawed as you want to make it. At this point I have little idea which of the two does my interpretation fall into. I don't know if I will ever know that for sure. But for now I am trying to form sentences again and not lean on another's meaning as I do that.
In all of this I've wondered - if what I really am is something that is wholly different from what you've portrayed yourself to everyone around you? After a minute's worth of pondering I find myself giving up the answer. There is no real answer to that. We all see what we want or what we are conditioned to see.
As I have aged, being in constant conflict with surroundings or the world is something that I've grown increasingly tired of. Once the anger-enjoyment-obnoxious cycle wears out, all that I want and seek is to be able to live most days without the soul scraping along barbed wires on all sides.
And that is simply not possible unless I start doing things I really want to do, than what I think I should be doing as a reflection of the expectations of others or as a byproduct of the lifelong addiction to guilt.
And that is a long long journey of learning wherein I still do not know what the alphabets are. Someday, hopefully, I will learn that language, put together words, sentences and write a more realistic story which I can be at peace with.
May 23 2010 - 10:29pm
To say the abruptness had a single cause would not be an accurate portrayal of events. To say it had multiple causes would not be accurate either. It is one of those things in the world that stop abruptly because of a death of momentum and a lack of will to attempt motion of any kind.
In such circumstances, anger comes easy. It comes even easier when you can't find that door in a room with only walls - a door's existence which you are aware of, but it just can't be found. You know it is there because it used to be there.
I find a discarded chocolate wrapper, another fine layer of dust on a table top just a few days into it being cleaned. There is so much out of alignment. There is so much out of place. You clean, you put things back in place. Rinse-repeat.
If the last dated missive was a clue, this is the final proof: does not matter if the straws are there, does not matter if there is better understanding. There just is no more urge to clutch at anything. Consider it a termination of the urge.
Over time I've lost my inner mooring. My reference point to me is no longer there. I've doubted it and erased it so much over time that I have little understanding of what I feel anymore, let alone they 'why' in it. What is a left or a right when you know not where the center is?
Social wisdom and folklore would remedy this with a quick trip to the altar, followed not much later by babies and whatnot. Even if you can't get it right, you can at least point at the numerous millions would could not either. We are not alone.
In largely turning my back, I'm letting go of empathy in either direction. After numerous encounters with outcomes that have been so far away from the intent, I have little interest in the backstory. I simply does not work.
In living it is my choice to give up all that is contributory. I do not know exactly what of me works right anymore. At this point there is little that I can see on that front. But that is no excuse to blindly continue doing what I've kept on doing all my life.
These are trying times. To know and be known is not nice. But, even in its full scalding glory, it is what it is. We live the lives we choose. We do the best we choose to do.
Mar 10 2010 - 2:45pm
After the madness of momentum comes its death. As inexplicable as its birth, in its death, it leaves in its wake a feeling and a sense of puzzlement and a weary expectation of its next visit. I have lost count and track, there is no longer the pursuit of seeing and finding patterns. The forfeiture of all yesterdays and tomorrows brings forth a beggar's poverty in accepting the present and only the present -- what is there is only now.
As the days slip by, there is order, accomplishments and the memories of milestones past, but there is also the rancour of tepidness in most things. Things work as advertised, predictable and accounted for. But it also brings with it a restlessness that refuses to die. Things go wrong, things go right, but you carry on as a certainty. If in this goodness there is no great sense of accomplishment or joy, then what is it that will bring that forth?
The pursuit of which is the hardest one to handle: avoid temporary deviations, stay the course and let imagined ghosts remain just that - imagined ghosts. Five years ago, from the other end of the spectrum, I could not bring myself to even smile, for I could not remember what that was like. The smile is no longer a problem, but belief certainly is. There is much that habit accounts for, but belief has little to do with it anymore.
As I sit and wonder about the years passing by, I see people, friends, family that I have known going in different directions and becoming different things. Through a large part of my twenties I distanced myself from all of that and having gone back and closer over the past couple of years, I still find a distance that can't be measured in words exchanged, time spent together or any other metric I could think of.
It is like a stain that refuses to go off.
Over time, I have come to understand that there is little I understand of most things. If there are limits to learning, there seems to be no limit to unlearning. Unspooled, the yarn of life is just a pile. It feels like a constant return to that pile, in a theme replicated over various acts. When there is little that anything establishes, it is only natural for the responses to also grow tepid.