Monthly Archives: April 2006

The Lists

Posted on by

The Lists

 

I had been having an idea for a few days now to put up a few lists, like they do on some blogs. Of late my blog hasn’t been attracting too many visitors and the ones it does are not commenting. Well I don’t like this one bit. Anyways, here are the lists:

 

 

List #1 Things that get me all dreamy and thoughtful:

 

1         Rain.

 

2         Sound of raindrops.

 

3         Rain-washed streets.

 

4         Watery sunshine.

 

5         Low dark clouds.

 

6         Glowing yellow skies in the evening.

 

Or pink, or orange, or whatever colour, just not the normal colour.

 

7         Evenings in general.

 

8         The subdued blue glow that precedes sunrise.

 

Late-risers, you’ll die without ever having seen it.

 

9         Brilliant white skies after a rain.

 

10     Sunshine on your face.

 

Please don’t ask me who ‘you’ is. It’s mostly a mental image.

 

11     Stars, clear and bright all over the sky.

 

 See how the sky keeps coming back? Well, my name means The Blue Sky, hehe.

 

12     Quiet and dimly lit alleys.

 

I am a boy, and mostly without too much cash on my being. Hence safe.

 

13     CFL energy-saving lights.

 

Not the bulbs. The light.

 

14     Sodium street lights.

 

“The colour of dreams” – Poushali-di.

 

15     City lights.

 

 

 

List #2 Things I don’t like:

 

1         Limits.

 

2         Authority.

 

 Only when there’s too much of it, or its abuse.

 

3         Persontages.

 

Persontages are those persons, or rather students, who live on percentages. They devour marks for breakfast, percentages for lunch and highest marks for dinner. They live and breathe percentages. Their condition may be voluntarily selected, but is more often than not induced or imposed. I have met some, and I hate them. Their twisted tales are not confined to the realm of “academic excellence” (yeah that’s within quotes in this country, because academic excellence is just another meaningless word here) but also goes to the extent of manufacturing various ploys to inflict public disapproval on weaker and more human, but potentially hazardous competitors.

 

4         Heartless flirting.

 

I can’t do it. If I try, after half an hour I shall get deeply involved with the person’s problems and anxieties and her dreams and ambitions and beliefs and then it won’t be flirting any more, let alone heartless.

 

5         Thinking oneself to be a loser.

 

I have had personal experiences I wish not to elaborate on.

 

6         Giving up, when you still could.

 

On this context I would like to bring to the mind of those of you who have watched The Matrix (Part 1) a scene of this movie which is my personal favourite. It’s in the subway station: Neo is faced by Agent Smith. Neo glances at the stairs behind, as if to run, but then he chooses to turn around and face the agent. I have had mental repetitions of this image many a time in my head when things inside it were starting to fall apart.

 

7         Macho-man ship.

 

Same as 5.

 

8         Talking too loud.

 

9         Wholly extrovert people.

 

Although my first love was quite a bit like that.

 

10     Talking about one’s likes, dislikes and other self-centred stuff when the audience may not be interested.

 

11     Complaining even after having what many are deprived of.

 

12     Group–assaults on weaker individuals

 

13     Older people trashing everything about the younger generation.

 

14     Conservative attitude.

 

15     Talking on the cell while getting on the bus, or driving, or anything that demands more attention.

 

16     Family.

 

Same as 5. Has connections with 2.

 

17     Intrusion into privacy.

 

Nothing much personal to say about this. I have no privacy, let alone any intrusion into it.

 

18     Forgetting.

 

Both me forgetting and them forgetting.

 

19     People who mistreat animals

 

for no reason, or the even crappier reason of being more powerful.

 

 

 

List #3 Things that I would like to change about me:

 

1         How I look.

 

My height (currently aiming at 5′ 10”), my weight, and some other things you won’t be interested in.

 

2         The Chamber.

 

Talked of in Gift or Curse? and Problem.

 

3         My mental weakness.

 

Disappears when someone else needs help because of their own mental weakness.

 

4         Doubting myself.

 

5         Unnecessary negative thoughts.

 

And oh Jesus they are so unnecessary and oh Jesus so negative.

 

6         My wardrobe.

 

When 2 of List #2 loses the rains, I shall live on a diet of only T-shirt and jeans. And normal jeans. No boot-cut or bell-bots or crap like that.

 

7         The residue of shyness from my former self.

 

I thought it was gone. But it declared its presence once again last Friday.

 

8         The uncontrollable urge to end a bad patch in a relationship.

 

Even if that means saying sorry to the other person for some fault of theirs.

 

 

 

 

List #4 Wish-list

 

1         The Chamber shall close, or shall be more friendly and controllable.

 

2         Home-life will change.

 

3         Strong hug from/to Liberator.

 

4         Kiss from/to Liberator.

 

5         To hear, at least once before I die, from the mouth of the Flightless Bird the three words, even if not meant.

 

6         Sense of belonging. Mind(s) that know about the Dreaming.

 

7         Be well-built.

 

8         More visitors to my space.

 

9         More freedom.

 

10     Someday, somewhere, I wanna lie down with Liberator beside me and see all the stars in the sky, for a long time.

 

11     A lot of love.

 

1Life.

Josh’s Dream

Posted on by

J o s h ’ s    D r e a m

< a  m e t a p h o r .>

 

 

He was dreaming. He was a clown and he was sleeping and dreaming. He had been dreaming for a very short time and then he woke up and he saw he was a clown. He remembered it all, his job, his salary, his pet flying elephant, and his own personal red sky that he kept in a glass jar in a dusty cupboard upstairs.

   He walked out of his tent. There was a miniature F1 track in front of him in which colourful palm-sized cars whizzed by. The sky was a mosaic of black and white, and the ground alternately turned from green grass to black water and back. Someone was calling his name, he thought. He turned to look.

   Thud. The hard cold floor did not greet him warmly. Josh took a moment to drift back to reality. He staggered up, blinded by the darkness all around. A passing police car threw shafts of red and blue light across his dark room. He looked at his bed, at the messy covers which hung by the side where he had fallen off the bed. His forehead ached where he had hit the ground.

   Josh had been dreaming. Josh had been dreaming that he was a clown, and in his dream the clown was dreaming too, although he could not remember what he was dreaming of as a clown in his dream. And then the clown woke up, in his dream. And then,… Josh tried to focus on the dream as the graphic details began to fade from his mind. No use. He went and got himself a glass of water.

   Strange, he was a clown and he was dreaming inside a dream. The dream had seemed so real. All through the dream he was the clown and no one else. Not Josh. Just the clown. So real, so real. He never even knew he was dreaming. As if it were a second life. Like a sort of life within life. So real. A world whose every part, every being, every element was just different facets of his own imagination. He was the clown, and he was the tent too, for he created it by imagining it, and he was the race-track, and the cars, for all of them were born of his thoughts. The whole dream was composed of the same substance — his thoughts. What if he never woke up from it, Josh thought. Then he would be a clown all his life. A clown with a piece of red sky kept in a glass jar upstairs. Upstairs, and in a tent. Josh smiled to himself and drank the rest of the water down. The dream was even more real because he, as a clown, was sleeping and dreaming in it. A second dream. Dream within dream. And then he woke up from whatever his dream was to see that he was a clown. And then he woke up again to see that he was Josh. And then he woke up, again… oh no that hasn’t happened yet, thought Josh. That doesn’t need to happen. This is reality, he reassured himself. He felt his forehead where a tiny lump now throbbed. This is hard reality. No more waking up.

   But Josh could still feel the dream tugging at his thoughts. Oh come on, get out of my mind, he thought. It’s just a stupid dream. I wish I’d seen Esther in it, though. It’s still a week before I see her again. Anyways, it was a stupid dream. Josh dreaming that he was a clown dreaming. Ha, stupid.

   But the nagging thought wouldn’t go. Josh tried to focus on what exactly was annoying him, and he stared into space for minutes trying to get the thing off his head, trying to grasp what exactly the thing was, for it was not the dream that was occupying his mind any more, but something associated…

   And then it happened. The Voice. Deep inside him, quiet but not feeble. So quiet, it was silent. It was the voice of the origin of thought, and it was formed of thought. And it sort of came up this infinitely deep well inside him, and spoke to his thoughts: and then he woke up, again.

   What? He thought. He woke up again? Man, that’s over. I’ve woken up two times already, as the clown and as me, and I have work tomorrow, and there’s no more waking up left to do, because I ain’t dreaming. Wait, when I was dreaming, I was the clown, and when the clown was dreaming, he was… oh I forgot. Anyway, so the only way any waking up can still be left is if someone else is dreaming themselves as me, right? The only way is if this, he held his arms open and gestured to his dark room, if this is another dream. Then I gotta wake up again and discover I’m someone else. Ha, how can that happen? How can I wake up again, anyway? I’m not sleeping, am I? How can I wake?

   Man, this is shit, he concluded and drained half a glass of water. He decided that as he was awake anyway, and with these weird spiralling thoughts in his head, he might as well do something worthwhile to get his mind off them. He booted his computer and started on some work he had left for the next morning.

 

 

   A few months later, only two weeks after he had been married to Esther, Josh was involved in a road accident and was killed on the spot. There were a few police cars around when they took his body out of the wreck. A small crowd had gathered to witness the bloody mess that was being maneuvered out of the damaged car. Amidst the murmur of the people and the flashing of beacons and the wailing of sirens, Josh came to know how he could wake again and discover that he had been someone else dreaming.

 

   And then he woke up, again.

 

 

 

1Life.

 

 

Goodbye

Posted on by

Three years of my life that will forever light up the rest of it. I was normal once, destined to the path that so many before me had taken, ending up as normal, in normality. I am glad I found you. I am glad you found me. I am glad we were found by each other.

I am not sure how much I have been able to improve you, but as these three years culminate in this evening we have here before us now, I can only be overwhelmed by how much, how tremendously have you been present in me, affecting me, dragging me away from the normality of the normal. Thank you, for being.

I can see the flickering lights of the evening city, past you, vague, out of focus. I turn to another pair of lights, a pair of burning, sparkling, living light-scattering gems that are your eyes. I am going to miss your eyes. They are not exceptionally beautiful, you once told me. I agree. But you need to believe, you see, they contain and reflect three years of my life. I can see myself in those eyes, how I was born again and evolved and we evolved together. They tell a story that has reached its last chapter this evening, my love. It is waiting, counting the last minutes till it slips into the vast and dark realm of Past.

Let me speak my heart out in these ten minutes before I board my taxi for the airport. You have been my life, dear. I am going to miss you like a blinded person misses his eyes. Like a person in the hospital bed after an accident misses his limb. Like a dead person misses his life.

The clock is ticking. Why do you take so long to finish the drink? Can you hear my mind wanting to stop time and rewind to three years ago and hit play again, and do it again when it once again comes to an end, and again, and again, and again…

There is not much time left, and I am starting to have an odd feeling. You know how an athlete feels how he should have practised a bit more a minute after his run, how an actor feels he should revise his lines a minute before going onto stage? I know the next life is minutes away from now, and I feel we have not lived much together. There are so many things that occured in my mind, torn fragments of thought, so many things to tell you, so many little things to gift you, so many things to do with you, so many ways to tell you I love you. I can only hope you somehow understand it all, my love, I hope you know how much I love you, because I cannot say it all over again; there is no more time.

Kiss me now, and more than that, let me drown in your eyes for a few minutes, for the last time in my life. I am going to miss your eyes, your face, your odd ideas, your phone number on my caller ID, your voice, you.

Goodbye. I love you.

 

< this is based on pure fiction, born from the womb of my imagination with a few undertones of desire. There has been no girl like this, no three years, no airport, and no goodbye.>

 

1Life.