...And a crappy New Year

As it so happens, I find that I am not above writing out my New Year reveries, which is testimony to the fact that I am not the proverbial party girl this year…or any year for that matter. I am NOT complaining, or if I am than I am doing so with a much-displaced sense of grandeur. What is it about the holidays that prevents us from treating them with the blatant disregard that we offer to almost every other day? Is it the fact that we are all too aware that others are out partying it up all over the world?
If it is the latter, that still shouldn't be such a pickle. People party all the time and I am always not one of them. Why does it bug me on New Year's Eve? Perhaps my downfall is the fact that I refuse to immerse myself in the holiday blues with dedication, which is somewhat sadder than being sad on said day. There is an age-old contrived mechanism for the would-be depressives to attain new lows on New Year's Eve: Joni Mitchell records, fire places, frost and morbid TV films on Hallmark. I refuse to allow myself this treasure. I, instead resort to watching an animated Disney feature, this year its 'Cars', with a small tub of vanilla frickin' ice cream next to my Sui Northern-warning-antonym-of-a-heater. My play list invariably involves Chuck Berry, The Beegees and this year, in memoriam, James Brown. I vehemently refuse to let the blues set in. Elvis be damned (for this one night only).
Morbidity needs to be embraced, or so say the 'oh-so wise' sects of our post modernist literature. Morbidity makes us achieve unattained levels of genius, they say. I am not morbid and I can't carry it even with my best effort, which I have yet to exert for anything. I can't wear plaid colours and I cant not laugh at the dilemma that is destiny. My best effort at morbidity is that I admit New Year's Eve sucks. That's it, that's all the bitter venom I can spew forth.
I subscribe very dearly to the edict 'Save the best for Last'. Thereby on my dying day I am very likely to spew forth some words of such eloquent-sage-genius that the Angel of Death, himself will have to nod his head and say 'Aaho, changa aakhiya!' Yes my Angel prefers pedestrian. Every New Years Eve forces me to look my life over, which is why I hate this blasted holiday. The Grinch and I are synonyms today, which hardly helps matters considering the fact that the Grinch mostly had dibs on Christmas - but the sentiment still applies. 'Looking my life over' isn't high on my list of priorities, which apparently is a problem. There is one song that sums up my entire couch potato, laugh-through-life, no-goals-barred philosophy on life, love and all that could come in between if I ever let it - "Cleaning Windows" by Van Morrison.

I heard leadbelly and blind lemon
On the street where I was born
Sonny Terry, Brownie Mcghee,
Muddy waters singin 'Im a rolling stone'
I went home and read my christmas humphreys book on zen
Curiosity killed the cat
Kerouacs dharma bums and on the road

Whats my line?
Im happy cleaning windows
Take my time
I'll see you when my love grows
Baby dont let it slide
Im a working man in my prime
Cleaning windows...

Carbohydrate Thinking

I think I have been 'thinking' all together too much these days. It isnt even a specific type of thought that I have managed to entangle myself in, just random musings of absolutely everything and consequently nothing.

Too much thinking is definitely not good for me. Its a lot like carbs in that manner. The more you indulge yourself the more it sticks to your ass!

Not that that ever stopped me from indulging.

Boxes over Bedlam

I fear that my dream of laughing life away may be floundering.

Apparently it is not a responsible notion to have such a limited goal. I have been told, at great length, that it is not practical to expect so little of life. That writing in one's journal and backpacking through the years is not a suitable lifeline to hope for.
WHY?
In essence it is perhaps the hardest pinnacle to crave, it is the deepest struggle - to be happy for as long and as often as one can be. How is this not a noble enough cause? Why do we need to say that we want to 'get rich' and 'famous' to be taken seriously.

They ask me what I want to do and I respond, "I want to be insanely, ecstatically, fanatically happy".

They stare at me and blink thereby...

Picking up from the nonsensical ramblings of my last entry, the question lingers in different tangents. I find that regardless of conformity the struggle to be true to myself is ever-pervasive. It is still there, but it seems to be getting easier. Atleast I like to think it is. The last week has been a productive one, I seldom have those. Sometimes it takes forced company to get over ones' phobias. And noone can deny the phobias are many. I discover that when coerced in company im not half bad. Good even, when need be.
Heres to victory! This probably calls for a 'victus' battle cry at midnight in a gladiator outfit.
I don't have a gladiator outfit. Plus i'd have to shave my legs, so i'll scratch that.

Back to the mythical point that I need to prove exists and hence probably doesnt. Why is it that most of us (political correctness ever important) bracket the romance department. I have always nurtured the subjective belief that a perfect other exists. He is real and one fine day a not-so-random shopping mall, rainy street or bookstore will bring us together. Lightening will strike and the Beachboys will play 'Wouldnt it be nice' in the backdrop. If that be the case than what are the perfect similarities and perfect differences that make this 'other' perfect? Just a notch over or under the prescribed recipe and the fabled love is either over or under cooked. I watched the little Mermaid for the umpteenth time yesterday. 'The seaweed is indeed greener in somebody else's Lake' - I mean poor, demented Ariel simply needed to fall in love with a human. It just so happened that the first one stupid enough to fall off his boat in the middle of a hailstorm was a prince who was handsome. But what if she had been practical and decided to test most human men before 'choosing' the one. Whom would she have picked or would she not have picked at all and waited. I mean what happened after the rainbow glittered over Ariels wedding boat?
Is that how the notion 'love' came into play?
Did it simply become too hard to wait for perfection, think about it? Thereby the dependence on one all-powerful emotion that would help us overlook all the cracks and the flaws and settle. When all the signs blink red, one can say that love was the culprit. Love was the noose. Love was the excecutioner. Love made it 'worth it'. I have always longed to say those words, hopefully not with regret as most of us do.

Nevertheless, had we waited for Mr or Ms Right...perhaps love wouldn't have been that important. The pieces would fit, it would be perfect. The 'practicality' of 'perfection' would easily win over the silly stigma that is emotion. Two people who were 'made for each other' would be happy and the x factor wouldn't need to exist. Monogamy would be overruled by biology (which lets face it, it often is) and ecastacy by comfort.

Boxes over Bedlam...
It is the most loathesome notion ever.

Sheep in Shepard's clothing

The compound mysteries of the universe seem so base when we view them through the eyes and hear them through the ears of others. Looking out at the cosmos can only be described along the premise of words that have been used by others in the past ‘vast, magnificent, deep, dark…’ We are so impenetrably content to continue along the cliché’s set out before us. Our competence measured only by what we can reproduce rather than what we can produce. The finalities of ‘objectivity’ often prove disconcerting - it is rather taxing to discover that the human composite is broader and simultaneously more bracketed than any other species on the planet. We are a confounded race, denounced by our perfections and announced by our imperfections. Only a mirage of preconceived notions and sell-out sycophants can survive on the basis of copying over creating.

It is a parallel of impossibility. To know not what becomes of the mind and binds the soul to precepts and concepts that need outside sponsorship. For some reason it is never enough for us human beings to believe in something unless we can convince others to do the same. An abstract collage of ‘wills’ and ‘wont’s’ does nothing to dispel the notion that we are no more than our compound being - perhaps not even a little. By and large we do not exist beyond the dust that forms us and the ideas that free us.

Any idea travels its very own, intrinsic wormhole before it is complete, indeed, if it ever is so. If every new thought holds its premise in an old thought or interconnected thought and if every new idea is layered with the undertones of logic, creativity and time – how does ‘creation’ take place? A more apt description would be re-creation and that too, over lifetimes and lifeless lines. According to Plato, an artist is quite passive during the act of creation. Indeed the artist is quite literally in the grips of the creative process. Such an account of creativity hardly flatters the artist. Not only is the artist’s ‘activity' inherently passive but the responsibility for creation is transferred elsewhere. Thereby, underlining the age-old gap that frames the un-availed transit between the Philosopher and the Artist – a reluctant admiration but a discord in algorithms. Generally speaking it is the formers dependence on logic and boundaries and the latter’s disdain for them that separate these two tangents.

A true Artist is a romantic in either parody or principle and a true Philosopher is a realist in both. Many have called it the unbridgeable gap even though many have tried to cross the divide by taking what is politely termed as the ‘middle route’. This approach in itself poses a problem, is the middle route merely another layer of sheep skin that allows mankind to fit in with the herd and adapt, or is it the ‘meant to be’ we long for? If not, and that is a big ‘if’ and a bigger ‘not’, than the absolutes are the only ones who have the courage to be themselves regardless of the consequences. In a manner of speaking, they are the only ones willing to retain the ground carved out for them over centuries of stigma.

It is so tragic that there is little room for ideas left in this world. Ideologies have replaced ideas and tyrannical idioms have replaces idylls. We are a nation of sheep, my friends. Even the Lions and Wolves no longer recognise themselves.

We are followers of followers of followers, not a confounded leader in sight!

Second base

What are the odds!
I find myself plagued by one of my deepest fears realised.
A lump.

So off to the hospital it is, for a mammogram, which by all definitions is an uncomfortable experience. Checked and cleared off all C-charges, my sigh of relief follows more along the lines of the gale that huffed and puffed the little piggies' house down.

"Nothing more than a pulled muscle".
Now to investigate how the hell I could have pulled a muscle in my breast!

But that comes later.

First I have to get over the fact that the first dude to get past second base with me was a doctor whose name I cant remember and whose face I wish i didn't.

Patches and Goodbye's

It is an enormity of parallels.
To find oneself eclipsed between old songs and memories. I watched a History Channel biography on Cat Stevens yesterday and it brought back the days when I used to write purely for the sake of writing. A catharsis that can only be experienced by fellow misfits: Invisible people. When I was invisible I was invincible. My corners were a fortress of masked truths and free visions.
Much changes with freedom.

Today I know that I have lost some of my way. I have bent in a way I never thought I would, I have bent my mind. It used to be my body. It is a hard fact to admit: that we do many of the things we do, only to fit in. Even when we want to stand out, we still want to stand out in a manner that is contrived. The deepest chains bind you, when you are finally free.
And this time you are the gatekeeper.

Oh very young
What will you leave us this time
Youre only dancing on this earth for a short while
And though your dreams may toss and turn you now
They will vanish away like your daddys best jeans
Denim blue fading up to the sky

And though you want them to last forever
You know they never will…

And the patches make the goodbye harder still

Today I woke up to a Stevens playlist.
It opened with 'Love is in the Air' and for a brief moment while I was driving to work, Lahore was at its most magnificent. The tonga's swayed and the beggars smiled. And I marvelled at how a man who wrote songs that sang to the spirit could give them up for the notion that God doesn't like music or dancing or joy.

Then it closed with "I Love my Dog more than I love you".