An Ode to Narcissus

I believe they call this coming full circle.

I have been thinking a lot about Narcissus, for more than his alleged vanity or the cause for it. I have been thinking of him because I may just have developed a hyperbolic admiration for the symbol. Perhaps it is that simple... self love? Does loving ones' self mean one can't love others or is it the other way around? Considering I find myself inordinately incapable of this degenerate act: 'loving', I must admit the paradox plagues me to no end.

There are three different accounts of the tale in Greek myth but I tend to prefer the archaic, mortal version over Ovid's overtly poetic account - perhaps because it is the only one I have actually read outside the limited sphere that embodies the marvellous merits of Google- Narcissus was basically a jerk and therefore had many-a-man and maiden in love with him. This in my world is termed as possessing more-than-ample doses of the 'Asshole Gene'. That elusive strain incorporated in a man's genetic make-up that allows him to solicit admiration, lust and - yes sometimes even love- on the premise of his being a rancorous beast. This tendency in women is usually accompanied by the 'Saviour Complex' accounting for the not-so-complimentary strain in their genetic make-up that propels them to want to rescue and redeem men from themselves. It goes without saying (still, this is for the cheap seats in the back):

'People don't change.'
Let it be Written.
Let it be Done.

I am digressing from the subject (yet unheard of), Narcissus the Jerk was punished by the Gods (because apparently Gods have always only been there to do just that) for having spurned -in this case- his male suitors in the glorious tradition of Greek pederasty. The man in question being a chit of a dude named Ameinias who was ga-ga over Ass-isus. Narcissus gave him a sword as a gift, basically saying "Well if you'll die without me might as well get on with it" and the poor puppy did just that. The curse was put in motion, Narcissus fell even more in love with himself, this time via a pond and when he was met with the colossal indifference his reflection threw in his general direction, he called on the sword again, this time for himself. The entire transaction was commemorated in the birth of a beautiful flower by the same name - incidentally my favourite - growing out of his remains and doomed to stand at the banks of lakes and rivers staring at its reflection until plucked.

The reason I have been thinking about Narcissus is, once again, Dearest Nietzsche. I have only recently begun reading 'Why I am so Wise' and I must say that I have seldom encountered the pleasure of reading a more profoundly gripping 89 pages. The contents are intriguing:

1. ECCE HOMO - How one becomes what one Is.
2. Why I am so Wise
3. Why I am so Clever
4. Why I write such good Books
5. Why I am a Destiny
6. Twilight of the Idols - How to Philosophise with a Hammer
7. Maxims and Arrows
8. The Four Great Errors
9. The Hammer Speaks

Were it anyone else the blatant self-love reflected in every sentence would probably prove disturbing, but then that is why anyone who loves Nietzsche loves him. Because he sets the premise for the fact that modesty and humility, while very pretty precepts, are inherently dishonest. Pretending not to be good at something that one is - beyond all doubt- good at, is basically lying if one were to tell the truth. Then again pretty lies are based on the premise of disregarding the truth. The cover of the book reads " I know my fate. One day there will be associated with my name the recollection of something frightful - of a crisis like no other before on Earth, of the profoundest collision of conscience." Ah, the blissfully brash iconoclast!

The narrative follows to cement the premise, Zarathustra doesn't lie even when he is lying, because he admits to it being the default human setting. House, the new silver screen synonym for Holmes, attests to this with his 'Everybody Lies'. How then, are we to disregard eons of conditioning towards upholding the perverse pillars of humility and virtue...both of which are associated with catalogues of social conditioning? A few days ago I told a friend of how I had been cheated out of a stellar concept during a board meeting, the concept was mine and the individual in question simply entered the room, cutting me off mid-presentation and claiming it as its own. It later on turned and flashed me a megawatt smile. I had two options: I could leave the boardroom and pick a fight, snitch or ignore it. I picked the latter and this time not because of my overwhelming cowardice regarding confrontations of all kinds, but because it was a conscious choice. This individual couldn't probably think up an idea like that if its life depended on it, I knew that I would just need a couple of hours to improve upon the premise .
Was this Vanity or Cowardice?

My friend told me I was a doormat, that I would be breakfast mulch in less then a week. I have a different take: I work hard to keep my cool. Really hard. I meditate, I read, I write ...all in the attempt to improve my person. That fabled improvement can only be made evident if I act different from most of the people surrounding me, it isn't idealistic... it is vanity. Perhaps not in the traditional sense, but somewhere in my head I know what Nietzsche means when he says "But the disparity between the greatness of my task and the smallness of my contemporaries has found expression in the fact that I have been neither heard nor even so much as seen." I read it and a malicious corner in my abdomen admonishes me for my hoity-toityness, but then I get it. Were I to stay in the doldrums with everyone else I should just quit while I am ahead, buy a pint of face plaster, a pair of stilettos and a brain that stops asking questions. But I need to keep asking something, so that's out.

Nitimur in vetitum
We strive after what is forbidden

Well so be it! The only point so far that I don't see eye to eye with the man on is here 'One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil' Neitzsche has downplayed the pupil grossly. What is so wrong with craving a life filled with questions, there is never an end of answers and the different trajectories that each answer proffers. Why then limit oneself to one question and one answer...which is the only path available to surpass the pupil and enter the realm of the professor- limiting the expanse of question. Now why would I want to do that? Although I suppose this choice may well be a passive-aggressive attempt to retain that venomous strain of humility. If one is predisposed to admit that one cannot ever know all the answers, vanity - however she comes- will always only be a polite acquaintance, never an intimate lover like Nietzsche likes her to be.
Perhaps this explains the man's penchance for Dionysos as the choice Deity - the proverbial God of Wine, Women and Song. The promoter of civilization, a lawgiver and lover of peace — as well as the Liberator, his purpose to free one from one's normal self, by madness, ecstasy and inebriation. The divine mission of Dionysus was to mingle the music of the flute and bring an end to care and worry.
If this be Nietzsche's mission than sign me up, but his account discounts the fall out. Pitting the Satyr (Dionysos) and the Sinner (Narcissus) against the Sainthood may not be the best thing. Although, I must admit that my apprehension draws largely from years of adverse conditioning in the gross glorification of all 'Glory Be' religious genres.

The Man said "Here there speaks no 'prophet', none of those gruesome hybrids of sickness and will to power called founders of religions."

Perhaps I am finally ready to listen to plain, intelligent prose over prophecy.

Bread Crumbs

I believe it has been three days since I was thrown.

By what exactly I am not yet sure, and I hope that I do not come across the information any time soon. There is a terse sort of plebeian mystique in not being able to recognise or identify my demons anymore. Several things happened but nothing really happened. I now find myself at an odd sort of paradox pinnacle, only it isn't a pinnacle its a plateau. Everything around me is stale, stable and serene but for the first time, the tidal wave of ideas in my head is threatening to shake me loose from something. I think that something is my complacency.

This scares me.

My corporeal complacency and I share a very deep bond and I have never considered severing it. There have been moments that have forced me to take stock of my laziness and momentarily move out of -what they all call- 'the Rut', but I like keeping the road leading back to Tartarus perpetually freckled with bread crumbs. I have recently been having nightmares. Nightmares where I find myself with a broom and tin pan in hand, wiping the smudged water colors clean. I see myself running around, attending meetings, heading ideas and waiting for paychecks.
I cannot bear the sight of myself like this...losing myself all over again.

Several things happened.

I read a column that brought me to tears sitting at my desk at work so that I found that I just HAD to email Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post. She talked about how life chokes poetry out of us. Of Koyaanisqatsi - a life out of balance. Of how the worlds greatest classical violinist Joshua Bell stood weaving magic at a subway Station in DC but no one stopped to listen, because magic lost the epic battle in time management ;

I met a soul mate, a sixty-something adolescent genius traipsing around the world in his bermuda shorts and safari hat photographing natural wonders and writing books. All the while smiling;

I met a man without a face, a congenital disorder had wiped it off his skull - there was a mouth and a bump where an eye-censor sat and a slit where a nostril used to be. All the while his mind worked and as he drooled into a pipe, leaking out mucus to a small bucket he mumbled and pointed and made scintillating conversation;

I stumbled across the discovery that I can translate photographs and picked up a camera again with the express purpose to finally write that column I've wanted to write for ages, regardless of whether it ever sees the light of day. To write phantom fables through traces of life in chaos;

My friend Tigger realized his calling as the next-gen Messiah who would single-handedly educate all the inhabitants of this country, cure Aids and introduce Democracy to our Land of the Pure...bouncing all the while;

I sent in my first attempt at Fulbright, confessing at length that I had no quantitative skills whatsoever but did they have room on board for a Hobo who wanted to sing 'Ring them Bells' perched atop the Eiffel Tower?;

I found that I may have missed my personal chance at seizing what an acquaintance calls 'Venomous Hope' and I may have misdirected my resentment at him for being right and forcing me to look the realization in the eye;

I went to Government College for the first time accompanied by a colleague and spent an entire afternoon in the music department listening to old tapes of student recordings on the tabla and harmonium- the air was musty, the afternoon hot and the atmosphere ecstatic;

I spent an evening with my driver Karamat and my maid Fauzia at Joy Land, which I visited after almost seven years, sat on an obnoxious ride that gave me a headache and scared the fading night-light out of me and had ice cream and pop-corn over conversation that centered around my procuring invitations to visit the villages of both next Sunday;

I downloaded loads and loads of Bob Geldof and Jefferson Airplane and stumbled across the discovery that songs like 'We Built this City' - though lacking in lyrical merit- are pretty damn awesome to hum in the shower;

I met writer friends for 'coffee' and had a coke, rather late. I managed to stay out till 10:30 and laughed for real;

I wrote a letter to the sky, saying everything and burned it.
Like I said…Nothing really happened.

Cain and Able

Much as I hate to admit it, I feel that I can no longer deny that there is much of you in me.

I am terribly ashamed of pleasure and I am quite sure I have you to thank for it. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, that is until I had to go and defy destiny by presuming myself perfectly capable of being happy by leaving and trying to live my own life. That one promise so inherently conflicts with the premise that I find I am incapable of dealing with it. You always covered your mouth when you laughed pretending you were coughing, not that it was often.
I always lower my eyes.
I try and tell myself it is a sign of misplaced modesty until it occurs to me, 'I hate false modesty'. At least I claim to do so often enough.

I enjoy the company of boisterous, complex and often brash individuals who flaunt their hearts and heads on their sleeves but I never do so. Now I cant’ help but wonder if it is because I am still ashamed. The funny thing is that I do manage to write in a manner of who it is I wish I could be: funny and smart. This usually ends up sounding contrived, manipulative and borrowed. Perhaps because it is.

I like someone.

There... I said it and I have never said it before, so I know how big a sentence it is.
Smaller than almost all the ones I put to paper, but larger than the whole lot combined. I met him last year and I vehemently avoided him like your voice in my head told me I should. I never met his eyes and I was predictably prickly and quiet. You would have been proud. I never shared a single conversation with him, but spent many-a-minute staring at him over the cover of my book. I think he may have caught me on one occasion and the moment he did I was deeply ashamed.
I wasn’t embarrassed, or curious, or playful and flirty…I was overwhelmingly ashamed. Like I was somehow dirty and evil.
According to your established modus ponens I probably was.
You were wrong about me not being a good student, as it so happens I turned out a sponge.

Lucky for me, I can’t really harbor much regret over the entire episode, purely because he could never have been the kind to have been even remotely interested, which perhaps is why I found him interesting. The regret comes purely from the realization that you and I are still inextricably intertwined. More so now that you are away, because you somehow managed to worm your way permanently in my head and have taken up residence in the general neighborhood of my conscience. If they want me, they better knock me down. Because I promise you I’m not easy and won’t be until there’s hollowed ground. Which, we both know, neither of us believe in.

So I am doomed then, aren’t I?

Doomed to never take chances and dance around delicious possibilities.
Doomed to want.
Doomed to wait.

Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus

'Mountains will be in labour, and an ridiculous mouse will be born'


I have recently taken to tackling Latin phrases, courtesy an old Latin -to- English phrasebook I found hiding innocuously under a pile of Jackie Collins paperbacks at Readings. The treasure cost me a total of Rs 60 and is proving to be a delight, simply because old cliche's in Latin somehow manage to escape being trite, they take on a new dimension. A dimension that extends language but is simultaneously defined by it.

Respice, adspice, prospice
Look to the past, the present and the future.

Granted this is probably not the best tidbit to begin with. After all, viewed atop my daily pulpit of yells and yoddles, I notice that looking to the past is something I actively avoid, but passively re-invent every day through my writing. This usually means that I avoid the present completely by altercating between a series of 'Wouldda, Couldda, Shoulddas' to conjure and circuit a future that has little or no premise in promise. I believe it was Sean Connery in Finding Forrester who said that 'In some cultures it was considered good luck to wear one's socks inside out'. In retrospect, I can attest to the fact that I took him very seriously.
Only that ever-elusive Irish luck still evades my grasp.

Armed by my own helplessness to find hope, but hoping for it all the same, I now discover that my phantom thoughts and dreams are fast taking on a scarier dimension. They are becoming real-er than they were and not real enough to change anything. I have begun living vicariously through the writings and readings of many-a-ghost writer in cyberspace. In some manner I have always done this in print, but I find that there is an unanticipated difference between the two. Even as my books are littered with untidy pencil scrawls and arguments in the margins the same tenacious tendency extends to interference on this new pixel-platform nebula. Where earlier I was perfectly content to butt-in by scribbling my end on paper, I am now displaying an untidy tendency to pose questions to the ghosts that light-up my computer screen and simultaneously my dormant cerebellum on a daily basis. The worst of it is, that whenever they respond they reaffirm that they are real. This in turn reminds me of how surreal they are, considering they know my thoughts and mind and vice versa, but nothing in the knowing extends to a tangible plateau. For someone who thrives on passive homo-sociality through cyberspace because it scares her in person, this new-found curiosity is debilitating. Now I usually end up e-mailing the writer as I pocket their thoughts for future consumption. This is troubling. Mainly because, even as they respond to my intrusive efforts, with sincere appreciation, a deprecating tendency to humor my pains or mild annoyance at my petulance...we are merely strangers who happen to walk past each other on Cyber street every day. And even though we may share the weather, or the music playing on boom boxes in the corner or skate the streets, we don't recognise each other. Not unless one of us bumps into the other and that defeats the purpose of strolling.

My bourgeois Ghost Town consists of several characters that inspire my curiosity. And in the great words of the recently-proclaimed-Great House, m.d '...since I'm not a cat, that's not really dangerous'. But I feel, Wilson's rebuttal applies in this case, the adage wasn't really inspired to ward-off cats... and I may actually get burned on this one.

One of these beings is noxious in nature, were I to view it as an ambient energy I would probably call it Apathy. It wards off all forms of company and all crevices of sentiment (something I largely depend on). Even its writings have an underlying layer of 'Venture no further, for here be Dragons', which I must admit is what usually inspires my steps to do expressly that. It challenges all accepted forms of... well almost everything, but does so within the premise of established, age-old principles. This tendency about Apathy always draws me, for while I tend to relate to most of its dilemma's I cannot bear to think that the only way to ultimately face them is the path it has chosen. I believe I turn to its thoughts every morning, out of some misplaced notion of medieval chivalry. I am determined to believe that the glass can survive half-full and it is insistent on the fact that the glass was broken a long time ago. That, coupled with its inherent dis-interest in my intrusive presence continues to prove alluring.
Women are weird that way.

The second of these beings is a Wordsmith. It plays scrabble with sentences and ping-pong with prose and poetry. Its thoughts are abrasive, but somehow retain a sibilant tone. It is somewhat of a friend from not-so foreign lands. I call it 'Chai'. For no other reason than the fact that its love of language, its aura of ephemeral lazy afternoons spent in mid-day suns and rain and its smiling tonalities - if indeed smiles can have sounds- conjure up images of what people tell me this addiction is supposed to taste like. I find that I cannot channel the sentiment through the physical social solvent, so I turn to my metaphysical Chai.

The third is a more recent discovery, it is brusque, bitchy and beastily beautiful. It moves at a much faster pace than I am used to and is succinct in any and everything it does. It is also rainbow coloured in my mind, not because it is gay, but because it is a kaleidoscope. It is a bottomless well of boundless energy and, seemingly, no artifice. I generally think of it as Ecstasy, or the closest thing open to the experience at any given time.

The Fourth is a mirage of music and words. Abstract to the point that I feel if I were a scrap of torn paper, it would be the torn, crumpled counterpart of a much-similar parchment. Aged and brittle, denoting that it cannot appreciate modernity, it appears to somehow be caught in the same time-warp in which I usually find myself. Looking perpetually for romance in reality but settling to grasp at the humour in all things as a consolation prize. I call it Tabula Rasa - A blank Tablet.

Living through dead writers is pleasant, poignant even, but living vicariously through people who are already living vicariously through their words is hard to keep track of, even for the likes of myself. The Blog odyssey, offers a foray into the minds of many, some of which you wind up wishing you had access to on a regular basis, until you have to remind yourself that they are strangers. That just because you skim their words every morning and skate their emotions, doesn't link you to them, at least not in any form more tangible than a click convenience on your template.

This is usually the point where I regret my 'Aloneness'. The corner where it begins to border 'Lonely'. Which is probably why I can't help but wonder about the thoughts and dreams of those who I can draw similarities to? Why I cannot let it rest.

Perhaps because all the 'real 'people I meet are anything but.
Still, hope springs eternal in Never-Ever Land.

To Idleness, with contempt

Deblitiating deliberations!
I find that even though I take great pride in my inordinate lack of purpose, being mind-numbingly idle is definitely no fun. Or perhaps it isn't because I am bound by the condition of having to sit upright in a chair without the luxury of taking off my shoes and flying off to meet fairies. I opened my day with Jack Johnson's 'Broken', a shower, a change and trailed my twisted trajectory to work. On the way there was Diamond's 'Forever in Blue Jeans' and some captivating Chet Baker.
I suppose my need to make the books and movies and music paramount priority in my world emerges from the fact that without them, life is just musty. It is, but I would much rather it wasn't.
This oh-so random musing is precipitated by the fact that its 4:18 pm, I have already written a brilliant series concept (Yes I say so myself as will others...for I am Spartacus, Bah!), have finished my bag book for the day... Machiavell's 'The Prince', good but no cartwheels for him. My pencil has scarred the pages with its usual But-I-beg-to-differ / I must digress, Sir! salutations and I am fucking B-O-R-E-D. I spent a good two hours on my novel, wrote neary 30 pages of which I have yet to make head or tail. I also wrote up two chapters on my thesis literature Review section and posted my Fulbright application. I have been tuned in to Duke Ellington for the past hour so I think I've exceeded more than my usual level of existential.
I've scrolled down Daily Times through and through, finally bothering to read the pages I spent a year working on and never deemed worthy of my actual attention. I've caught up on my correspondence and have just spent 15 precious seconds methodically applying lipgloss.

What scares me now is that even though my narration has elapsed it is only 4:26...and I'm stuck here till seven.
Nothing even remotely worthwile fantasizing about, especially considering my last but most recent crush's face has already begun to fade.
Short-term memory symposium sucks!

Project: Contentment

Jaded, Juxtaposed and Juvenile Malang reporting from Catechism Capital : Void of Maladjustment.

To,
Your Inexplicable, Undefined, Unbound Highest Entity, Universal Source of Knowledge and All Things Oh-So Great and Dandy.

Sir,
The many-me's of I, have hereby decided to undertake a mammoth new project, entitled Project: Contentment. With your permission we would like to make slight alterations in our daily regiment of pop-psychology deferrals, pseudo-smartassness and recind our monastic oath sponsoring our allegedly-illegal taps into your monopoly of thought.

This new resolution has been precipitated by our innate social and psychological complex to avoid homosociality and repent for our sins against the Gods of Antiquity. We are fully geared to partake of the Primrose Path of Dalliance (also stand in line) and be mellow and charming to cement our status as members of this race that 'they' call human, as per your permission. We - in our sincere efforts to prove our dedication to this cause - are willing to cut the proverbial Umbilical chord linking us to sage-old principles of Tolerance, Felicity, Individuality, Creativity and Freedom of Choice, Thought and Action.
Forgive us Father & Eschatological Compadre's for we have not sinned against the nature and nurture you have bestowed upon us and ask your express indulgence to do so hence forth.

In order to accomplish this, we have come to the cataclysmic conclusion that we must partake of that most-dreaded social lubricant. We, in all our senseless senses and thoughtless thinking, shall be joining three homosapiens for Tea this afternoon at 2:35 pm.

May you pardon our perjury,

Signed:
Ontological Misdeed Management Program
Experiment#43653764538475683765
Tag:Maria Amir
Planet: Earth

The Beauty of the Beast

It is scary and emboldening at the same time.

A few days ago, my grandmother asked me if I was still applying for Fulbright or if I still wanted to pursue 'this', she called it. I thought about it and said 'Yes'. She asked me if maybe I should apply for journalism, everyone has said it in some manner or another, but she was the first one to come right out with it. They all know as well as I do, that were it journalism on my applications there would be fewer rejection letters and I would even be eligible for a few scholarships. I think I considered it for a total of two minutes before saying, ‘It’s either writing or its nothing’. I don’t know if im being uncompromising or honest. I don’t ‘need’ a Masters degree, I already have one... I ‘want’ one. I want to sit in a classroom again and be pushed to compete creatively. To do what I love to do and do it with others who love it just as much. And that need makes the question subjective, which in turn makes it more than a matter of priorities, it makes it a dream and a voyage. But then again it is a matter of priorities; Do I want to get out more than I want to write?

I suppose for the time-being I shall be sticking to the original premise…I want to write, it is the only time I feel real. Like I actually exist, I breathe. Doodling in my notebooks and my books for that matter, conversing with blank pages, myself and dead authors...is the only time I feel like the Maria I hope I am. The best part is that the moment I find myself in an environment where I cannot navigate my bearings all I have to do is reach in my over-stuffed hamper-of-a-bag, get out my pencil, journal or novel and write and read to meet myself.

That is where the 'practicality debate' makes an appearance. I am not practical and I suppose I really must need to be. That is when all the doubts set in, followed by the perpetual need to prove that I am not stupid or dippy. Every time I meet friends going abroad with scholarships it hits me, your voice… ‘Stupid, Useless, Waste’ and in the middle of the night I grab at the headboard of my head-boardless bed to remind myself that I am out, that you are no longer here and that I am no longer her. Then I justify it somehow in my head by saying I’m an artist, that my applications aren’t the same as those for Business subjects and Environmental education. That I am not doomed to be dumb, because I was spiteful, pathetic and confused in High school. It is rather childish I suppose, to be so terrified of being 'dumb'. Not 'ugly' or 'silly' or 'lazy' or 'useless'...only 'dumb' really truly scares me.
I think about giving up on it all and doing what everyone wants me to do yet again…pick a person and get a move on. That’s when I become desperate and the walls start to cave in and I run around applying and re-structuring my application essays. Gambling my entire future on the notion that I can string a few sentences together. What if I can’t? I can write, but what if I can’t write what people want to read?
I remember how you used to relish taming your horses and dogs, how your face swelled with pride when they were chained, beaten and subdued. I know I will not tame the Beast or water him down to scare fewer people off. Because I just happen to think the he is beautiful. I love him untamed and inexplicable. Thats the only way I can love him.

I suppose I must organize myself and I am working on it, the problem is my…’gift’ -if that is what they call it- only runs on a liberally applied dosage of consistent chaos theory. It doesn’t work when organized, so maybe I need to work on scattering it to the point where it is only mine.

Maybe they, if they choose to take me, need to take me as I am.

Which means I need the courage to begin being who I am instead of talking about it.

Such a girl

I discover with a degree of decrepitude that I do tend to be 'such a girl' on certain things. These days the primary basis of that observation lies in House Md Season three with me acting the perennial shipper fantasizing about Huddy storylines...it doesnt help any that my job description encourages me to prolong my perpetul voyages in La La Land. Its either that or counting off the days till Harry Potter 7 makes it to the shelves and I have something else to obsess about to distract myself from my chronic lack of something to obsess about. One has to be really sad to get their socks off fantasizing about fictional characters hooking up in alternate dimensions.
I am really sad....Ka Ching!

Which is probably why the force is just not with me. Yoda would probably put it like this 'New-found malice in your heart there is young Padawan, leaking is your half-full glass of universal solvent'. No shit, Master. Indeed it is. For once I wouldnt mind fantasizing or crushing over someone in 3-D, real time, with a face and a smile and a fragrance (im not sure if that means aftershave really, but propriety demands I pretend it does). Then again, people are... well people... and even if im not 'as special as I may like to think I am, as do we all' I still am I.
And people always remain people.

It appears my romances or perennial lack thereof are perpetually doomed to a series of long-distance, anonymous correspondences. Perhaps because reality is always disappointing and strangers are somehow vindicated and justified simultaneously in cyberspace and old letters than they are in person. It is a depressing thought being doomed at the other end of a perpetually pending conversation that will never end in an actual meeting, but you know that if it were to do so it would simply End, so you thrive on playing along because it means something is happening, even if that 'something' is a big, fat nothing. Or, as it happens to be in my case, the several somethings that happen to be unabashedly obese nothings.
So, cheers to all my daily one-liners in cyberspace that form the pivot-point edifice of my fantasies and a large part of my composite conversation.
I miss having a best friend.
Then again, that requires work too. 'People work'...the scariest kind.

I came across someone writing this online and it struck some semblance of a chord:

Veritas
The truth, I strongly suspect, is that love is a bit of a twee (maybe even sad) little illusion, a happy story that we tell ourselves to pretend that even if everything isn't all right now, it will be in the future. Maybe. If we hope desperately enough.
We're not talking agape here.
Sometimes, you wonder…what's the fucking point? Why even bother? Does it actually even mean anything?
Nope.
Good night.

I suppose I should be depressed but im not. A gay guy that I don't know somewhere in the world I don't know, Knows what I mean.
That's something isn't it?

Probable problems

I love my problems of late, they are so base and silly that they are refreshing. I am losing time and inclination to drone on about the random wheels turning and tinkering in my mind, at least for the time being. I am quite sure I will get back to it as soon as time manages to fit me in to its busy schedule, pun intended.
My current lists of problems include the fact that I have not managed to find any semblance of decent parking on Davis Road, that all of my creative concepts at Geo are being appreciated but are too bloody long and elaborate for me to complete on time and the fact that the overwhelming combination of Blue and Orange desks, walls and seats is clashing with my contact lenses.
A small ray of light presents itself in the form of packed lunches, there is an elusive beauty to a packed lunch from home. I haven’t gotten packed lunches since I was about eight and the fact that someone bothers to wrap up a sandwich for me in tin foil every day is unbearably cutesy…in a good way…in the best way possible actually. The fact that today that lunch just happened to be a ‘Teenda sandwich’ is obviously anti-climactic but I think I managed to laugh it off quite comfortably in the cafeteria.
Other problems include Bank accounts which need to be opened immediately and procuring my fuel allowance considering I am broke till June and I am notoriously bad at being broke, of which I suppose I ought to be extremely grateful.

Passage perdition of the day: ‘To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, and they must all be real. It is no use starting late in life to say: “I will take an interest in this or that.” Such an attempt only aggravates the strain of mental effort. A man may acquire great knowledge of topics unconnected with his daily work, and yet hardly get any benefit or relief. It is no use doing what you like; you have got to like what you do. Broadly speaking, human beings may be divided into three classes: those who are toiled to death, those who are worried to death and those who are bored to death’ by Churchill, I suppose this ought to make me feel better, here’s to hoping it will serve its purpose.

These prettily, probable problems allow me to focus my energies on a random comment by a random acquaintance in cyberspace who raised my hopes up by telling me he had procured for me, a soul mate. Even though I promptly lashed out at him by pointing out that the entire epistemology centering on the search for such an individual inherently rested on the search and that the find had to be walked upon by the two souls in question, who was I kidding. A soul mate courier service could definitely find a market in atleast one of my worlds. Turns out the fabled candidate in question -deemed appropriate because he was the King of babble to my alleged Queen -is gay. I hereby proclaim that the new corollary for ‘cruel’ is ‘straight’.

This all means that I can put my perpetually pending identity crisis, existential dilemma’s and randomized eugenics on hold and focus all my attentions on an un-opened bottle of coke sitting on the desk next to mine.
Which presents as an actual problem.