The birthday stories

Burthdays!

I had almost written this down in my head yesterday, it had a nice beginning, something about how a new year; the next year after a birth-day is like 4 am in the morning on an every-day – everything is still clean, the comforting mist, the happy shade of black – it’s like that unused piece of soap, still packed – ready to wash everything away. It’s like you have a fresh shot at life again. Birthday`s are the Japan of sunrises – the sun rises in Japan first, covers rest of Asia, then Africa-Europe, then North and South America – as the full year goes by, so does the sun.

However I didn`t write it down yesterday, I don`t know why, maybe I was too occupied with other things. If you don`t already know, other things make up 90% of my life. But what I’m trying to say is it was something around these things.  Something around a fresh start – a clean slate. Wiped clean. The slate is not new, its only clean – Do you get it?

The point was that I didn`t feel that at the turn of this birthday. This is nothing to be sad about, so please don`t be sad. I turned 28. And I think, I only think because I can never be sure of anything, especially when it is about myself, it has something to do with that.

So you see, I had began taking responsibilities since I was 17 or maybe 18 – and no one around me was doing that, so I thought well – I`m too ahead on the road and felt a sense of achievement – the same happened when I was 24, I moved out Bombay and settled in Gujarat – a full  home (there is a difference between a full home and a home – the difference is like a box full of cookies and a box of cookies), I was 27 last year and somehow it still felt like I was ahead of the curve. On a highway there were handful of cars ahead of me and all were behind.

But now, the 28 – it’s like I`m a participant in a different race now, the rules have changed, so has the road and my car is still the same. You see same slate – clean board.

Now no one asks you if you want to participate, folks wonder what is the fun in that – let’s throw him in and see what happens. The folks in this analogy are aliens watching us sing, dance, fuck, sleep, sing, dance, fuck, work, sleep – you get it, right?

So the rules have changed, or so it seems. Nothing physically has happened. The outside is the same, the outside has always been the same. The inside has seen some overhaul, or again, that`s how it seems. It`s like a boundary I unknowingly crossed having fun, frolicking like the jumpy spongy sheep who steps outside the barn drunk in life and is suddenly in the company of wolves or sleepwalking. I was asleep, I was walking in the dark, and unknowingly I crossed a liquid slushy transparent wall and landed on this side of 28.

The train of thought :)

There's something profound about the railway platform, have you ever thought why the bogeys are called coaches.., 

When you're in a city, static, you feel like you are in a slushy, gooey, stuck in a container state; between permanence and temporary -; a breeze away from either state,  the indecisions don't need deciding. The train station and its aura; the space around it, has the ability, the authority to pick the container and place it somewhere else. In the process, disturb the equilibrium, the settled heavy, the floating middle and the light top, suddenly, become one, they start belonging, the uneasy, the uncommon, the rainbow suddenly becomes one beam of light; the sky is on earth, the earth is on water and waters all floating everywhere; flooding wherever it goes. ...It continues to be in this state on the railroad; in flux. The time when you walk into one railway platform and the time you walk out of the other; and the in between is this metamorphosis. The container remains the same on either side, something inside though, changes. 

Travel, unravel

B-longing

Belonging, how important is it for a being to belong, to a certain group, place, religion.

How often have you put yourself in a situation where you learn about yourself? your plague..the disease eating out your soul

I never felt i belonged anywhere..got substituted with, i dont belong anywhere... Everything felt rented, temporary, dis - easy.. its how one might feel when everything inside is different from everything outside.. the mind and body are out of sync..

When you're in a rented place, you always feel you have to continue to prove your claim, continue to impress the owner, one trick after another... the fear of the gatekeeper, one day throwing you out haunts your nightmares, so, you keep striving.. without a moment of rest..

There's a pricking hatred for all those who belong, when have the have-nots not hated the haves..We cannot confront the world if our own home has defeated and diminished us

Do you know how it feels to not belong? Feel out of place

You're always at the bus stop with no idea when the bus will come..

Wondering Woods, whispering words

Dont want tomorrow..
For today's as good
as it could ever be..

Misty moutains..
Hazy heavens..
Abandoned angels
surrounding me..

Silly streams...
Noiseless noise..
Whistling water falls..
their poignant poise

In dewy dreams..
among cheerful,
cacophonic clouds..
Springing in mirth..
 this rosy bee

wondering woods..
was whispering words..
Of a wonderful world
Astounding me

August 28

Have you ever felt like a container of memories, a jar might be a better word/ Jars labeled with our names, when you unwind the lid and peek inside you see memories floating like clouds, soft cotton clouds at the top - light as they can be blown away with a gentle breeze - like a memory of chewing food this morning - insignificant. As you rummage through the jar, giving it a slight shake to mix the contents you also notice a water cloud, a thunder cloud, a cyclonic pool of gangsta clouds, and maybe a couple who sneak at who`s looking and go back in, like the thing you have under your bed, you try to reach it but your hand's too short, like a baby who`d only come to you if it wants to...

I`ve had those glimpses, but like everything going inside your head, you can never be too sure - if its all made up or if its all real or both, everything can and cannot happen - 

16 Jan2016..

I'm disowning myself.. Doesn't that sound like the right thing to do..Like letting myself do whatever i want and lose accountability, like how it is with the children. I want to get out of my body and all its little limitations, i want to jump from a roof and not smash, just fall hard, i don't want to know anything anymore, except the winter cold and the shivering .. The winter is homely, i can sleep so well. 

19 Dec 2015...

I dislike idleness,like this current moment,  like a river, abruptly being stopped, dammed, damned, it makes me think,about life, i don't like that. Am trying to understand what's happening, these things around me, I'm trying to understand this longing, this immense incompleteness, it beats with these heart beats, this echoing the thumping,  every passing moment, it is monstrously trying to swallow me and I'm letting it, but it wont, no matter how much i entice it, reveal its true nature.   I'm incomplete in my entirety. ....

Next day morning...

My mind wrote a monologue.. Must have been 10 pages long..i won't ofcourse type that..

When i got down at the station..these tides brought me down, no matter how much i resist, the temptation to wallow down in oceans of this nostalgic waste, broke me down and i saw the little that is left of me hit the ocean floor with a thud..

.....

Mmm aah arch..

7th march -

Grief, id go on a limb and say is the only honest, unadulterated, unsaturated emotion I've left to feel..
I derive this conclusion from actions.. Actions which broke promises.. Dinner sobs... Incredible change in plans..

13 March...

When asked what i was upto.. I replied uprooting myself..

*between changing addresses

14 March

I dreamt i was sleeping..

Somewhere this week or last or next.. I finished the unbearable lightness of being..I'm Franz or Sabina or Tomas or Tereza or Karenin....more Karenin i wish

I vish

19 March..

Dark intimacy...

Its dark because its weightless..its light.. An unattached feather..in its aimless flight

Do we need to go somewhere?

20 March

When i don't write, i feel full..i can't digest food, im breathless, I'm.. dumb stupid and restless.. More restless

I'm an abandoned rail road..amidst a jungle..

(For the lesser privileged reader.. It was meant to go somewhere.. Maybe it went somewhere.. But somewhere along the way..the forest became a home.. Get it?)

Ain't no sunshine keeps playing in a hideous tune in the background

The day today

I can tolerate everyone but myself..

Windows opened, breeze was felt, the sun shone, like a ghost creeped in, there was a throne .. I walked, sat on it.. I was king

Everything confuses me

The incomprehensibility reached a summit and almost at that very instance reached a sudden depth..and asked me where i wanted her to be..

I told her i dont understand.. Everything confuses me, immensely.. sincerely.. Theres no foul play, please, i don't understand

My weak knees, they gave way as comprehension on quicksand, collapsed and was swallowed in its own knowledge.. Ignorance he said was bliss...

Incomprehension was misunderstood

...

Goodbye Severus! - I`m raising my wand for you.

My intense need to sob got fulfilled when news told me Alan Rickman had passed. Potter was the first book i picked when i began dreaming, dreaming through books, Snape was the first man whom i started dis-liking, from my deepest trenches, Snape was the first man who taught me that your intentions are more important than your actions. After all this time and through the 7 books, he got a permanent place within my being.

It saddens me that the person who personified Snape is dead, Snape was killed in the books and i grieved, but by then i had grown up - i knew my favorite version of reality was a dream. Today it suffered another blow, it seems someone i knew personally and spoke to is dead - maybe Snape was someone I talked to when i did an ugly thing with good intentions.

Snape was my hero and that hero is no more today and so i`m crying in my little corner. The world, somebody wrote, is the place we prove real by dying in it

To the man who died - be at peace Alan and thank you!

There`s no escaping

The left overs were buried, the ground flattened. Its like when you hit mute after a chaotic delirium , the quiet that follows, deafens you. Then you know, for sure, that there will be no signs of life, lets remove the uncertainty, lets say there is no sign of life.

This ground zero is a mega plot of my existence.

If you go out for a casual stroll, you'll find parts of me, strewn around the trains, the beaches, the pavements. Like remnants of an exploded bomb, not the destruction the bomb caused, no not that, the remnants of the time bomb itself. The leftovers.

I always felt combustible within the city, the sense of explosion always kept ticking. It was cruel, but so is hope, all variants of it.

Sometime these past years, it ticked off, the ground zero is no longer a flat plateau,  studded with valleys, volcanoes and trenches. They say this is life, sigh!

 there's no escaping, is there?

Hindi

Chuppi si kuch cha gayi hai,
Hawa bhi kuch mand si..

Chuppi si kuch cha gayi hai ghalib,
Hawa bhi kuch mand si..

Kabristan me jab ek hasi ghunji,
Khush thi woh, murda lash bhi..

Hum to ji gaye janaab, is katl e aam me,
Wo kehte ab baari aap ki..

Nihil est momenti'

Nothing is important - if there was ever a motto in this life..Nihil est momenti.. would be it..latin makes everything important and adds an intellectual zing to the statement.. An intellectual zing adds a level coolness to the idea of philosophy.. I need it.

Talking of philosophy - i think we came out nothing, yea absurd as it might sound, the idea has started to spread its reign in my head. In the beginning, there was nothing. Even before the 'beginning' there was nothing. Because,  for something to exist nothing ought to exist too. Right?

My argument towards it, is the idea that comes to your mind. First there is nothing and suddenly - 'pop' its there, right where nothing had previously existed. Filling the vacuum.

So, nothing is on one side of the equation. Any guesses on what ought to exist on the other side to make it even or odd for that matter..

Nothing balances out nothing. Void for void. Empty for the enormous vacuum. Nihil Gratis.

So that's all this entire song and dance is about. We start with nothing and end up with nothing. Does it not fit in - all of this into an enormous, a big fat, a gigantic nothing.

A circle, our planet earth is a big zero. Ending where it started.

That's broad isn't it, that's the infinite universe's scheme of things.
What are we, we mammals doing here?

Judging by history, we are just being pricks, devising ways of laying to dust, the only place ( a tiny speck, but the only place) in the universe, that let us thrive. But us individually too, the micro-scopic level - no matter what you do - once the screen zooms out - your effort would've been so tiny, that calling it infinitesimal small would be overestimating.

Our lives never had a purpose, those of us who think otherwise are only fooling themselves.

You do your little thing, but forget about any god, forget about any good or bad ( they are only a matter of perception), don't do it cause the flow of existence asks you to.

 There's no higher purpose - except nothing. Because nihil est momenti



Facts:

We are one planet orbitting around one star in one galaxy. There are at least 150,000,000,000 such galaxies

Hdk

August 1 notes

Memories are made of clouds, i sometimes think. Their gravity, content, the moisture, the light, the dark dampness and the way they pass through and through over the skies of my little worldly brain, makes me think they are clouds or cloud like – enormous in size and content, but made of something that is soft and light as nothing. There is a colossal psychology laboratory in my head and I think that’s where all of these clouds reside, regenerate, de-generate. Thoughts too, then, are lightening and thunder that accompany these memories.

All of this, combined, rains on my light being; drenching me and I, like a sheet of paper – become soggy, unusable and devoid of any crispness. And if an unsuspecting being, under mindful consideration, tries to pick me up, all it does is tear my fabric up and destroy the last thing I hold dear, my completeness.

These clouds are the end of me.

Happy Birthday Franz.

I'd almost given up on words Franz, but its your birthday today. I have to, and now when you read it, i'll change it to - i had to, wallow in, scratch - scrub - dig - pierce through this sand and be bright and shiny. For its your birthday today dear friend.

The confusion of being, when seen through the third person is eventful and one can even laugh at oneself for being naive - I've been naive all this time - all this time, now the past - a past so gloriously defining us and our boundaries - forever binding us - and pushing us towards - the end, that cliff which when the soul jumps - the body is pronounced dead. I think all we are doing is suffering for our past - but this your birthday Franz - you validated and approved of my need to sob - cringe - to be weakened and be mindful of a power within me - within us, that grabs, throws us into the mighty abyss. And while i was rummaging through this greyness - your words, you - told me its OK. And today on your birthday Franz - i want to thank you for it - in a mumble, in a corner - beyond the window sill - in the night Franz - i thank you.

For sometimes, when the night is the darkest - you turn black and swallow it.

in bombay

14/6/15:

I am in bombay today, i must feel like i have come home.

The idea of a home, the house - has blurred in my head - i feel like i no longer belong, nor here, nor there. The idea of moving, through places and time, too hasn't made home in my head. A limbo.

My head, is recovering from a childhood and the adolescence - i now feel, at 25 - i must spend a good part of my life recovering. A recovery.

I recover or say, i try,  from everything I've lost - things that were either not mine to keep or choose not to be, but things i held dear nevertheless. My own.

I am left holding nothing dear and at this point of time ( i wrote juncture - but couldn't carry its heaviness), there's nothing i want to do or achieve - to say it in naked, unashamed words -there`s aimless. Drifting

Nothing makes sense, nothing holds on, the permanence i so longed for, from the time i had my first mature thot, has ceased to grant itself to me. And all I'm now living in, is, in its weakest form - the temporal. The tempest. Where the choices i make seem immaterial - there's no better or worse, all that is, is temporary.


The restlessness of the sea, shores up this mind. I get tired of these silly rants, when nothing makes sense amidst all these flying thoughts

hdk

Honk

When i drive.. I turn into a maniac. My condition, I'm told is a constant state of mania - for all the time i spend on the ground, which is, all the time, when I'm awake.

Its my lack of attention that we drifted from driving, something i don't do without a signal.

While I'm driving my compulsive disorder is at its prime - i think. I abuse at the vehicle which turns without intimating me while I'm driving behind it - i curse at those who cut lanes, i smite those who blare their lights on my eyes, i plan to kill those who appear out of nowhere and startle me and my optimum balance.

Humans, I'm told learn the fine art of cursing when they are driving. Its true. For those of us who abide the rules, those who don't, are an absolute shame and should be thrown of this planet.

I began wrong, those of us who don't understand and want to follow the nuances that involve sharing road - should be barred from using one. So its not me being a maniac, its them.

And the fact that i like things to be in their proper place, shouldnt be termed obsessive, nor a disorder.

Honk!

the problem

I wouldn't. But here u go.

There's no frame of mind.. I think d frame is emptied and sublet to space. Everything that invariably remains is outside it and all I'm doing is waiting for it to wither away.. And then crumble the frame too. The more easy it seems the difficult it gets..but all of this, still, resides in some kind of frame - its infinity is in its emptiness

I sometimes have a very strong feeling of throwing away my cfa books and start reading him.. In one of his books he writes I'm a cage in search of a bird.. I dunno but it does feel like that.. Otherwise the purposelessness gets the better of everything i do and mean

A lack of purpose wouldn't be a frame of mind.. Its more of a condition.. Hah.. A frame of mind is temporary.. An incurable condition is vast in its permanence..
And so i must throw my fone away and stop ...

My problem of seeking balance ruins happiness and muffles sadness

Nightmares and you

I had a nightmare last night.

Nights,
 they gulp you down.
At times when you wake up in your dreams,

You're at the bottom of the ocean.
In space,
 floating,
sucking into a blackhole.

In your thoughts then,
 maybe - a tiny speck in the vast expanse.

The oceans,
the space,
your thoughts.

Then come you,
 bursting through,
 darling.

A wand in hand.

Lumos.
You.
Light.

A dream is you, everything else is just a nightmare.

Hdk

Choke

 no body to talk to..
 no thing to talk about..
no taste for the bitter time
The sour life..
The crunchy life..

Munch, munch, munch.
How much, munch, munch.
Choke.