Zeitgeist.

It’s dicey typing on laptop now. The screen keeps jiggling, apparently office madness made me plonk it around a few times. As exciting as it gets around here. Beat you, didn’t I.

Few things on mind.

Gentlemen, progress has never been a bargain. You got to pay for it. Sometimes I think there’s a man behind the counter who says, “All right, you can have the telephone; but you’ll have to give up the privacy, the charm of distance. Madam, you may vote; but at a price; you lose the right to retreat behind powderpuff or petticoat. Mister, you may conquer the air; but the birds will lose their wonder, and the clouds will smell of gasoline.”

Just as this character launches himself into this speech, it gets me wondering about the changes around. Take a second off my coffee table at the café, it’s a rare sight to see people talk amongst one another without lifting an eye from their tiny screens for a even a moment. The lost art of devouring books, or conversations on vacations.

Ps. I’m a wreck with technology. FYI, tonight I also learned I miscalculate the ‘right-left’ directions too.

That’s not what all this is supposed to be about.

Recently, had the urge to go off the face of the earth, socially, obviously. While deactivating facebook, it asked if I wanted to do the same for the blog page I created. Got me wondering why I created it in the first place. I remember my first publication. My first article. My blog wasn’t it. It was a dream come true. It was published. For people to read. Something I had written. Nightmare come true. Eventually as time passed, frequency of publications increased, I got a hang of the critiques’ taste. What I actually write is till date only up for selective few.

Don’t mind me. I am awed by the ones who can write when asked to, whatever asked to. Amazingly impressed with the ones who can cater to the taste of their audience and themselves. I think I've tried. I think I aspired for it secretly once. To impart that burning vision. To share the true brilliance of the truth.

You know? The ones, they are the ones who put thoughts to paper, and not start to wonder, ponder, scheme only when they face the blank canvas. I envy them. It’d be insane to have a market chase you for a book signing, to be a huge success. To be a writer?

Why do you write? Why do the others write?

What’s my, or anyone’s relation of writing to being a successful writer? Is that what’s the ultimate goal is?

Artistic bedlam.

I write, like I choose my music. Chaotic, erratic. Random. Experimental. Thoughtlessly flirting with words. Festival of jumping from one feeling to another mood. Tenor in some, alienated in the others. The freedom is thrilling. The rush is exhilarating. (I may often miss the sweet spot or two, but..freedom is petrifying).

As I think about the next blank paper, endless thoughts and questions fill my mindspace.

picture credits: Gauree Sharma

Study in blue.

I needed some simplicity. "Write about it", she said.

That was the thought in my head I woke up with. Last night's devilish Cosmopolitans still swaying soft around my lips. It was a pretty special night, last one at that. And now here I lay in my blanket-den with the remnant thoughts violating each breathing cell.
I knew I'd have to crawl out at one point or the other. Though I really didn't ever want to leave my blanket or even move for that matter. The hammer in my head breathing of restlessness. In flashes, I linked substances from the night before. Half-dazed, wondering about the ride back home. Pining away about the worthless excuse of a head or sense.

Something had changed over the past few hours. Hazily, I shifted a little in bed. A lilt of heartbeats. Flashes, about the fired passions. Don't know how long that'd go on for.

"I wish you would say something that doesn't bore me, dare you, to ask me something that'd make me stay." Was one of the morning calls before I jumped back into bed back home.
I found the courage to peek out of my blanket. My senses still nascent. Random checkered memories sneaked up to me. Apart of me besides me even so raw and soft, asleep. Tad bits that fortified the break of the sun through the glass.
There's this stage of beauty- the pretty, the praise, the attraction, the screeching scream to grab the eye. And then there's this arena of self-aware. The comfort. The strong, gentle lighting grace. Snuggling into the monster, inconsequentially, the sparks had infused to crystals. You get used to it no matter where you go, where you may travel to. The layer, the guard already distinctly shed. (spotless silver lines)
In trance, time warped me.

Incognito vex.

"When you are mad, mad like this, you don't know it. Reality is what you see. When what you see shifts, departing from anyone else's reality, it's still reality to you."
(madness, this mind of mine)


~Spaces filled in with the cool morning breeze.

Sketches in letters.

"I will find color in your darkness.

I will look through each door.

Put apart each house.

Dismantle each emotion.

But I will find your color

I will find you."

Words are lost. Words fade. You and I do too. (do we?)

The more I think, more the idea gets tangled up in my knotted head. They say I'm oblivious. I must be a little more obvious in my words. How beautiful is the game of expressions, how would I ever tell. The fury, the lull of a lover's quarrel, or the soars of a heartbeat under the star-night- write about it for me, won't you.

Brick walls are there for a reason. Brick walls are meant to be broken.

Mine are vulnerably monochrome.

Anywhere, and I will follow.

This isn't about me. This isn't about you either. Neither is it about the kids playing fire 'n ice on the terrace today. Nor did I start writing keeping the messages in mind. This isn't about my thoughts, or the pain.

Words over my head, I know nothing at all. Stumbling, falling, learning to walk, I'm breaking the habitual stability.

Expressions. (divenire)

*post script first. 

There's this soft tone playing in my head tonight. The slow curves of a sketched figurine on a paper caught my attention, all (only) just in my head. Inspired in my own passion, I retrieve all of lost essentials, with the fire ablaze, I move into the new turns.

Time passes by when I think of the last time, when was it, that we played our little game of catch a crook, or was it hide and seek around that old tree in the backyard. That childhood past, oh, how long has it been. Get a new hobby, they tell me now. Start something new, they advice. Learn a culture, they ask. What's new, they implore. Now, they question. I stare into the warehouse of my head- sparkling eyes, wandering souls, stolen smiles- I answer, as I pack my tools, there's so much for me to do.

The dreamers, my culture, as I stumble to answer.

The musical figurines, my new hobby to tell and paint and dance and sketch and turn wheels. The craft.

I don't come from this world of real.
~I grew up in glass castles and amongst hollow enchanted caves. It was somewhere around where dreams are made- oh, could be the golden pot at the end of a rainbow.
Silly, you called me. Dreams, still lead me on.
Just see my work station, you'd know what I'm talking about. (Of course I work). But I still secretly live in the notion of my need to fall asleep to let Amelia Jane roam about along with the other billion little elves.

I'm the misfit outsider. The weird writer. The wary dancer. The difference. The dreamer.

'she dances to the song in her head,
speaks with the rhythm of her heart,
and loves from the depth of her soul.'

Post Script.
Starting out as fiction, balancing on words and wires, it is something i'm growing to live in. The song is still playing, is what added to words rolling in. (Ludovici Einaudi- nuvole bianche)

Treehouses.

Hi.

You remember the treehouse we played in, don't you. Those childhood days out in the sun between bees and bumbles. Simpler times of counting stars while learning rhymes at night on the swing in the balcony. And the early morning runs and squash-squat terms, not to forget the swimming lessons, also the unarmed basketball sessions.

In my mind space even today, I find myself waking up every morning palpable with over-worked breathing, running around helter skelter to complete the day, keep clean just to slowly set into the dusk. Come back home. Back to my mind space, to the swing in the balcony under the night sky- near the treehouse.

When I put the sheets on to hide-away, you'd pull the sheets off my face and watch me sleep all day. And when I'd slam my fingers in the window, you'd kill all the pain away. Remember when I tripped off the staircase and scared you. You hugged me so close.

~When the rest of the world is asleep
Do you remember that night when you and me
Pulled down the steeple of ash
The rain was coming down, I was filthy and black?
(i was calling out for you)

The wind and the wave.

Tribute.

Alba.

"The winter has passed,

and the sun shines upon her."

Madrugada- it's that moment at dawn when the night greets the day. Did you hear about the alba at dawn, the poem about the separation of the lovers, a love song about parting at dawn. Taking them away from the night fall, the magic of the stars, the warmth of the bonfire and the blanket of the cold breeze. 

Think of love, the passion, the searing heat, the colors- oh, the covers, and the abandonment. And the pain following; the pain, leading.

A cry for help, an age old tear shed in mourning, an aubade for the night to stay without an end, for the beloved to never leave her arms, and the guard to kiss the daybreak. Oh, how soon it all ends. Just now was it that night fell upon them. Sheltered by the dark, the heat smeared through their veins. Like reignited amber, there they lay in one another's arms, safe in the cover of the night. With hands entwined, eyes locked with each others', breathing as one, their passions lay hidden from the daylight. It was the calm of their heartbeats. As he drank in her gracious breath, admiring her, he holds her one last time loyally in her arms. The fear of the pipe whistle haunts each. 

The day will break soon, and the bond must be broken. Separate lives must be assumed and followed in.

The space now fills the cool shadows of abandonment. Spreading away from the shadows, her bare-bruised shoulder now lies exposed in the break of dawn. The day is setting in, drawing unwelcome patterns over the covers. The eyes that stayed locked in the rumpled sheets with hands laced together through dark, now sense their cue of pale separation. 

With the light in their souls, he leans in to softly lay one last kiss goodbye as her eyes slink open to the tears now tying them together.

~This day the sun will rise

on a new intent

Choices, may they be wise,

To bring each a smile,

do one good deed

Take time to pray awhile

His words I'll heed.