Positive Impetus

Goal for August: A sparkling sonnet in smooth iambic pentameter.

I'm putting this meter-and-rhyme bitch away for good.

I will.

Watch this space.

PS: I don't even know how to count syllables properly :-/ {Oh yes, what's the point of achievement if you don't start off by undermining yourself? That way the dopamine lingers for longer :)}

:)

3.2.19 ஊடலுவகை Sulking Charm
She
1321.
இல்லை தவறவர்க்கு ஆயினும் ஊடுதல்
வல்லது அவர்அளிக்கு மாறு
He is flawless; but I do pout.
So that his loving ways show out.

Look what I found in the good old kural :)

6:22 Slow to Borivili

the train worms its way
into the mouth at Dadar,
wheels chewing in and
chewing out suburban track;
stations speck the distance
one route or the other.

the platform seems to float,
half-empty, like early morning
dreams or the inside of
a church after mass, bathed in
an aftermath of quiet, buoyant
with breathing-space.

the engine ploughs to a halt;
a slipshod crowd steps
back from the concrete edge,
converges quickly at the equally
spaced mobs hanging from,
and hiding, the doors.

sunlight surprises faces
spent looking out years
of locomotive windows.

the 6:22 travels at the pace
of a footnote, tunnelling
the collapsing slipstream
of the 6:21 fast, a lesser twin
trailing the trembling shadows
of speed, an afterthought

on sedatives shunting
through quicksilver evening,
trundling into sanatoriums
for the straggling, where
commotion is thin and
withdrawn, where the air

is already stale with the
distress sweat of waiting.

milliseconds later, it mows
onwards, motors humming,
to Matunga. inside, subdued
acceleration drums
the ears; electric smoke
shrills the nostrils; commuters

pinch inches, eyeballs
slapped stuck together:
slow-and-steady tortoises
squeezed inside a glove
compartment, shoving,
elbowing, climbing, testing

each other's shells, cajoled
into a play for patience
in this caravan of twelve
aluminium cages that
at least doesn't flee
before it arrives.

I want to write. I want words from lands full of lush-white silence and bleeding-green language.

I want to disappear and not have to explain why.

I want to know that there is some meaning to the pursuit of truth, to wanting to do the right thing the right way with the right intention.

I want to be left alone with my contradictions.

I want my spirit burned clean by a pure blue flame from the skies.

I want love.

I want all the pleasures of music.

I want the warmth of memory to flood my insides and ooze out the pores of my skin.

I want to be reassured that intelligence can be gentle and uplifting; that wisdom is not boring, that it's worth all the delight and the pain of experiencing experience at its minutest; that ignorance of the heart's voice is the most vicious and vulgar of crimes.

I want a solitude that will chant life into my ears.

I want conversation that will make me want to come down from the mountains.

I want a consciousness that will rise clean above the surface and see what we all need to see, feel what can't be felt.

I want to be able to walk and breathe and run on and on and on and on.

I want to live.

So, the rains are here. About time too. {cue: grin :D}

And I have a cold to boot. Which is not surprising, if you know the history I share with my barely functional respiratory system. Falling sick when you're alone has got to be the suckiest thing in the world. Yes, you grow used to it, but the suckiness stays.

Did I tell you that the rains are here? Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy {cue: more grinning :D :D}... everything is so wet and so f***in' green - it just kills you to look at it. Wait till it gets heavier. Just wait. I'm gonna stand outside my balcony and watch it pour. All day. Better still, I'll pull out a chair, sit with my feet on the railing and read a book. Who needs music?

The last two weeks, every single day, I've been like Calvin, except that I've been pleading for it to rain. And now it's here, and it's gonna be like this for a good two-three months. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy ... okay, okay, need to get a grip on myself.

In other news, this blog is the first result on Google if someone looks for Neruda's Ode to Bicycles. {Pats self on the back} No, I didn't have anything to do with it. Apparently people kept looking and kept coming here. And Google rewards quality, you see. Or at least, that's what I delude myself into thinking. {Before people start lining up to explain how Google's algorithm works, I'll be all snooty and say: I know}. The funny thing is that post doesn't have even a single comment on it. Bah.

Talking about poetry, read this book of poems called "Ultramarine" by Raymond Carver. Carver is a writer I'm beginning to like a lot. His poems are like short stories and don't quite fit the "notion" of a poem but I like them all the same. The intensity does waver a little here and there but it's a solid collection of poems. They are never about the writer or his craft, no showing off, no "ooooh! am i clever or what?", just moments snatched from a life and presented as is. It's interesting how he makes his poems work and how they leave that lingering bit of emotion in you even after you're done reading. Need to reread them again. One "cute" {ok, so I just used that word} poem from the collection:

An Afternoon

As he writes, without looking at the sea,
he feels the tip of his pen begin to tremble.
The tide is going out across the shingle.
But it isn't that. No,
it's because at that moment she chooses
to walk into the room without any clothes on.
Drowsy, not even sure where she is
for a moment. She waves the hair from her forehead.
Sits on the toilet with her eyes closed,
head down. Legs sprawled. He sees her
through the doorway. Maybe
she's remembering what happened that morning.
For after a time, she opens one eye and looks at him.
And sweetly smiles.

It's fascinating how he paints these "word pictures", as he calls them. Lots to like about the guy. In case you're new to Carver, you might want to read this.

Polished off this book called "The time traveler's wife" by Audrey Niffenegger over the weekend. A friend had recommended it a few years ago and I finally got around to picking it up at a book sale last Friday*. It's "an old-fashioned love story" between Henry, who time-travels because of a genetic condition, and Clare, who meets Henry for the first time when she's 6 and he's 36, and gets married to him when she's 22 and he's 30. Did that intrigue you? Then you should read the book.

It's a good, well-crafted book, although the craft does show here and there. The book is downright hilarious in some places {like when Clare asks Henry if he thinks they are having too much sex; like when Henry's librarian friends bet about why he keeps disappearing; like when the older Henry time-travels to teach the younger Henry how to pick locks and pick-pocket}, delightful in the way it carefully ties every knot, engaging, moving, and much much more, leaving you with a lump in the throat when you put it down finally. I really should put a review up but then it's so much work. Oh, gah!

Other books read during a surprisingly good month for book-reading: The Black Swan, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, Selected Poems - Wislawa Szymborska and The Essential Hemingway.

Life is good :)

Meanwhile, it's raining outside :D

* - In case you're in Mumbai and love books, you might want to check out Magna Book Gallery in Fort; they have a 30% off on some books and 20% off on most others. The sale's on till July 3rd, if I remember right. They don't have a lot of books, but you can snag a few bargains if you're looking for classics. I got a Fitzgerald for 80 bucks :D

PS: A quick hi to people whom I don't know and are "following" this blog - much flattered.

Wish you were here

I keep feeding the darkness my loneliness and soon, the night morphs into a monster, one with a hundred eyes.

Because silence can eat
only so much.

Nowhere to hide now. No use pretense. No escape. Nothing to do but lie back on the grass, hold on to my shadow, gnaw my knuckles and stare these fears down.

I'm so tired.

Because patience wrings
the heart dry.

Every minute is an exercise of tongue-biting will, every hour a recurring nightmare, every dreamless day a deliberate act of absurdity. Time agonizes, admonishes, apologizes, but it goes about its routine like only time can, quietly counting, one second at a time. Every night, I fall asleep out of sheer exhaustion.

Never knew this could be this hard.

One touch. One whisper ...

So bloody goddamn hard.

... of eternity together.

I hug myself, trying to feel you in the space between my arms, searching for the memory of holding you till dawn came looking for us. I try.

One hug. One wish ...

So hard, so hard, so so so so ... hard.

... for lingering bliss.

Why is it that two people travel best hand-in-hand? Maybe I'm a little ahead of you on this road. Maybe, I'm a little behind. How would I know? You seldom call out. And so, my confessions are all a little tempered; my need carefully calibrated. Lest I get ahead of myself. Lest I lose you in the distance.

When I was little, my father bought me a pair of binoculars, the green of a billiards table.

Because distance breeds
demons and doubts.

One summer afternoon, I discovered that if you looked in the far end, where the black eye-pieces were smaller, the clouds no longer became bigger; they just grew tinier.

Because truth is a trickle
too little, too
fickle.

And if you turned the knob, the birds flew farther and farther away till all you could see was just the blurred outline of the horizon.

Because evenings grow purple
with twilight dread.

Have you ever done that? There was always this brief moment, before I turned the binoculars around and looked in the right end, the right way, one infernal instant when I used to think "What if ...?"

Because tomorrow will come
crashing through the curtains.

Have you ever been caught in that moment when you didn't know if your world was coming back?

And I will wake up
wishing you were here.

Well, have you?

So the f***er finally did it. Well, like my brother used to keep prattling about, twenty years from now, nobody will remember Nadal's early exit and Fedex will have a career grand slam to show his fat kids.

It seems to me that both the artist and the philosopher are preoccupied with the same domain, that of the self.

One seeks to cling to the self, to explore and expand it, to eke out a place of one's own. For the other, all attempts at uniqueness seem folly.

One seeks expression; the other, release. One yearns to be visible; the other will settle for nothing but oblivion.

Trouble is, I don't know who's what.

***

The smallness of your heart comes in various shapes. But then that is bearable even though it's the one thing you have been trying to escape.

What is inescapable, and hence unbearable, is when you confront it in someone you don't want to confront it in.

***

Anger and desire seem to be conjoined. You distill anger from your spirit and later you realize that desire has slinked out the back door. And when anger makes a special appearance, desire starts licking the edges of your soul. While the artist needs both, the philosopher seems dead set against them.

Age is a quiet shutting of doors as day deserts.

Turn your back, knot your robe, shuffle around the house, lock the windows, draw the curtains, turn on the light and wait for the lizards to come out of hiding.

Age is renewing the newspaper subscription, feeding the cat when it isn't hungry, watering the cactuses shrubbing the porch.

Plumber fixes leaks for free. Neighbours make excuses to check if you're still alive. Careful : don't bore the kids.

Age is valium, bed sores, wispy hair, sagging breasts, oatmeal memories, cataract evenings, cancer lurking around the prostrate.

Fall asleep in the arm-chair. Drool on your shoulder. Forget dreaming. Forget worrying.

Age is a phone call nobody makes.

Watch the world shrink. To the street. To the door. To the puddle of urine around your feet. To the hardened lines on your nails. To your thoughts. Feel it shrivel inside your pajamas. Feel it warp into the furrows on your forehead and trickle down the wrinkles around your eyes.

Age is a dusty calendar two years old.

Slice a vein. Inject an air-bubble. Slip in the shower. Drown in the bath-tub. Easy does it.

Age is an ache for life that refuses to go away.

today, in the afternoon, i saw someone walking. just like you. with those same free-swinging arms and small, tightly clenched fists.

i resumed reading but my head whirled around to see if it was indeed you. all along knowing there was not a chance on earth, or mars, that it could be.

and it was, of course, not you.

it's not the first time something like this has happened. a couple of weeks ago i thought i heard your voice and it turned out to be someone else. apparently, i've assimilated you more than i realize.

i seem to know the exact length of your stride, the point to which your hair tapers down your back, the slight narrowing of eyes when you walk, the way you wear your clothes, the rhythm of your footfall, the sound of your breathing, even the weight of your shadow. i don't know if you remember me in this way too. maybe. maybe not. does it matter? maybe. maybe not. i don't know. perhaps, i don't want to know.

thinking about the way you walk, the memories come tumbling down. like leaves shaken free by a gentle breeze. vivaldi's hopping violins in 'autumn' start to play inside my head. the air seems lighter, clearer, crisper. a sigh slips out from in between my lips. my heartbeat steps up a few notches. i feel as if i'm standing on the edge of the world, inside a small chalk-drawn circle; blue, blue sky all around me, not a cloud in sight. that is what you feel like: the edge of the world on a glorious sunny day. with no vertigo to throw me into a free fall.

it's strange how memory works its magic even when we aren't looking, how we end up in the strangest of places without trying, how two people can condense the world between them; it's stranger how clinical memory can be when it cleans up, how we've chosen to live amidst the mundane despite knowing the beautiful, how two people can drift apart, like ghosts, into separate universes.

i look down at my phone wondering if i should call you. and tell you what? that i saw someone who walks just like you? and what would you say in return? what would we talk about after that? breakfast? will we still argue about who should cut the call? i shrug and put the phone back in my pocket.

but then something's not letting me sleep tonight. yes, hindsight is where we all want to be sooner than later and wisdom sometimes can't wait till tomorrow. but right now there are memories pleading to be pickled. so here i am, writing this.

to let you know that i saw someone walking today.

just like you.