More Than a Friend

It was one of those mind-numbing moments.
A blow to the gut, an impact you can hear reverberating in your head before you feel a fist actually connect with your pelvis. One of your ‘elusive’ league of people sharing a long overdue secret- over a cup of coffee- causing your breath to catch and not slush out.

You recall this girl clearly from your college days; she was always someone who intimidated you for her sheer, unadulterated ‘goodness’ and unlimited reserves of energy. You admitted to her later on that you were even a tad jealous of her ability to not hold a grudge, to be pure and un-scheming in every ounce of her being, even when she was trying to get back at the world she couldn’t help being well-intentioned about it. You were jealous, because you had to work at this ability, you read books, meditated and constantly checked yourself with every conversation you partook in… but she was a natural.

She changed over the years, she lost some of her painful naiveté but she still couldn’t manage to lose that wholesome goodness. She told you that she really tried to ‘get tough’, because the world was a shitty place and the only way to manage one’s shitty life was give back as good as you got… but she still couldn’t shake her skin. You realise now that even though you both always craved being more spontaneous and worldly, you also nurtured your idealism because you felt it made you special in some way. This is what connected you, that you were both outsiders looking into the lives of others while you were so busy dealing with your lack of one. Your lives always revolved around the people in them and much as you both craved making them ‘all about you’ even your efforts were misguided because you tried to find a version of ‘you’ that would please everyone and that was safe. You realised that you were immensely grateful to a God you aren’t sure you believe in, for the opportunity to keep her in your life.
There are not many people you keep. You are one of those beings who float through life with a suitcase in your heart, you fill the case with books and music and colour but very seldom with people. People tend to zap you of your originality, so you keep very few from your travels. You allow them to permeate your skin and your thoughts just as long as you have to and for as long as they are there. The moment they aren’t, you shed them. They are only a handful that you go back and carry with you and you don’t regret this. ‘Your’ people, few and far between as they may be, are yours - you trust them and they matter. They don’t just fill vacuums in your landscape, they are part of it. You love ‘your people’ and you didn’t realise until that moment that she was really one of them. She wasn’t just someone you bounced ideas off of and enjoyed for her soft company. Somewhere along the lines you had pocketed her in your travelling bag and now you were scared that it might be too late to tell her.
She is one of the few who inspires you, you seldom admit to that.

She tells you about the cloud that has been hanging over her head for years, of how the disease was a shadow that had kept her from living or being who she was. You recognise the sentiment and the emotion but not the practicality of it. You have lived under emotional shadows, you have lived under abuse, but not this kind. Huntington’s Chorea is like a ticking time bomb. Living without getting tested for years means that every conversation is followed by the ‘what if’ of a 50% chance of having it. You finally realise what makes her who she is, not the disease, but the fact that she had a problem to confront and she does it on a daily basis. You know this because you were at your strongest when you were actually battling your demons, as is she. You know very well what separates you from the people in your life: Your Life. Extreme lives make extreme individuals, the good, the bad and the ugly. You have been all three at some point. It isn’t a pity party, it just is. ‘Normal’ concerns, normal passions, normal emotions have never been something you could relate to, because your life was never normal. This has made you who you are and it defines you by how you have dealt with it. You now recognise her strength somewhat, but hers is immense because it isn’t just emotional – it is mental, and physical and spiritual. You got out and are healing, she is still figuring out if she even can heal.

You are not sure if you are envious or ecstatic about the other remarkable friend in her life who is showing her how to live, seemingly for the first time. Every day you see her try something new, she is wearing make-up now, new shoes, new clothes and a new outlook. She smiles for herself more, gone is the embarrassed half-smile she earlier used to placate others around her. She is finally becoming herself and it is thrilling to watch. You have been there, you remember that place - where colours were brighter and every day meant new possibilities, that blossoming phase and you are happier for her than you can conceive. You realise that you are grateful to her other friend, she is a miracle worker, your jealousy stems from the fact that you found yourself alone but she has help. Then again, you always choose to do things alone and crying over spilt milk is foolish.

She tells you that she has finally decided to get tested and no matter what the result she will finally live her life the way she wants to. You realise now that you are overjoyed that she got nominated for the scholarship you were rejected for, she deserves it for something you didn’t, and that earlier twinge of ‘but why not me’ that you felt when you got your letter has completely vanished.
You will both be starting over this year and you are sure of it this time.
It WILL HAPPEN.
It will happen because she has earned it, every day of her 29 years, she has earned it by simply being and you have by learning to ‘be’.

Atkins aftermath

Its oddly disconcerting, how I could ignore for so long that one of the most beautiful things in the world is bread. I always figured it was coke and literature and my perverse, masochistic notion of love.... but nope, its bread.

A week and a half into Atkins and nine pounds lighter there is nothing I miss more than the all-encompassing absence of bread. Glorious, sublime, sweet, oh-so-sweet bread. Yesterday, my masochism drove me to tune into BBC food for a good two hours, I watched the French Lady bake her majestic Blueberry Pie. I sat and watched in acute agony as she bathed it in peach sauce. I am in awe of my hitherto un-discovered inner strength. I have battled emotional demons-a-many, but this... THIS is my Everest.

Being weaned off of Bread.
I'd much rather be in rehab for meth.

The 'It's All About You' Song

“And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life, is life itself” – Milan Kundera

There comes a point where you begin to believe your illusions.

That precarious juncture where the world and all that is in it really does revolve solely around you. The few people you truly cannot avoid interacting with are no more than holograms floundering along your atmosphere, but temporarily seeking you out here... on 'your' turf. It is all yours. It isn’t necessarily isolation, rather a hyperbolic narcissism carved to help nurture your notion that you are indeed special, even if you choose not to acknowledge, advance or advertise the fact.
That this is your world, your dream, your delusion, your destiny and your dimension.
They are the phantoms, random ghosts floating on pavements and sidewalks, but ‘you’ are the story and if there is really a narrative being carved out, then it is all for you. The God-voice is directed at you, is about you and is for you.

Such highly cultivated neuroses can only come from pathological people-phobia.
Which is why you are beginning to doubt if it is you missing out on the social experience or society missing out on your experience?

You leave work early and as you are driving home, you realise you just want to drive somewhere that doesn’t lead to anything, so you let your play list drag you through an hour of extra traffic to a section of town that doesn’t interest you, save in the fact that the traffic is minimal and you stop at a department store to buy a coke and some narcissus posies from the kid standing outside without shoes. You look at the boys’ feet and give him a smile and an extra 30 rupees feeling that this ought to make you feel less guilty about the fact that you can’t summon up a suitable measure of guilt for his condition.
You park your car in a McDonald’s parking lot staring at groups of youngsters seemingly living 'a Life' in the midst of what is supposed to be ‘your’ floor show. You idly deliberate about what the real significance of extra’s on a film set is, perhaps they just make blank spaces look colourful. So you forgive them their irksome clique. You have finished your coke and wait for the next song to start your car and head home. You have no one to call, no one to see and no one to care about and you are not quite sure if it bothers you as much as it should or if you are denying your denial again. Someone said that home is like a naked person, you don’t really understand what that means but you figure it means a sense of completion and wholeness and comfort and the like. So you decide you aren’t really headed home, just to the roof over your head with everything a girl could want under it.
You wonder why you want more.
You wonder why you are so ungrateful.

You reach home to find that the power is out, so you discreetly creep up into your room and carry your computer out onto the terrace and compose this inane rambling run-on-sentence dedicated to your overwhelming belief that someday it will all make sense and a day after that it will all begin to matter.

You recall a Dylan biography you saw last night that mentions ‘Seven simple rules for life in hiding’:

1) Never trust a cop in a rain coat - You realise that you, like most of your countrymen and women, don’t trust cops on principal.

2) Beware of Enthusiasm and of Love, each is temporary and quick to sway – You are aware that you generally fake enthusiasm and are as terrified of love as you are of not getting it so you will always ‘beware’ of both sentiments.

3) When asked if you care about the worlds problems, look deep into the eyes of he who asks. He will not ask again – You do not really care enough that you really do care about the worlds problems but you remember, with a lingering sense of trepidation, that you are scared of looking people in the eyes.

4 & 5) Never give your real name and if ever told to look at yourself, NEVER look – You cultivate as many names as you do false impressions and whenever you try and look at yourself, you lose the battle to the illusions that seem to define you. You are completely safe from self-awareness.

6) Never say or do anything the person standing in front of you cannot understand – You never say or do anything of consequence in front of any person save yourselves.

7) Never ‘create’ anything. If it were misinterpreted it will chain you and follow you the rest of your life and never change – You have never created anything you have felt comfortable sharing and everything you create is misinterpreted in the process of its conception.

You wait till the power comes back to switch on some music and settle down in the middle of the floor in your ocean-print pyjamas with your paint brush in hand. You relish the acrid smell of turpentine and paint mixing with the rough gravelly strains of the folk-music strumming through your speakers. You dip the brush in blues for the Police man in a Raincoat; in pink for Enthusiasm, in red for Love, in a mauve haze for the World’s Problems; in yellow for Your Name and orange for your False Mirrors, in black for Not Understanding and you envelop it all in a green bottle for Creating Something.

And you cork the bottle in brown so that it doesn’t spill.

The Lost Prophets

It is becoming more and more distant with each passing day, the notion of a Self.

I currently reside somewhere in the periphery of my person, looking in and not particularly growing in any direction. I also find that I have begun to count the number of sentences that I start with this innocuous vowel, ‘I’. They are far too many, and yet they still fail to nurture that vague sketch of identity that I seek. A few days back an inane face book, 10-minute interview robbed me of an answer I think I should have had. The question was: ‘What is your centre?’
I find that I do not have one, I am flowing haphazardly, caught and thrashed intermittently in a wave of nostalgia, longing and whimsical irony. The waves are not progressive or regressive, but like most waves they are both and therefore neither. There is no centre. What good is an individual without a centre?
What good is an individual?
What is good?
What?

If there truly is a sea of translation, then we are all lost. The discovery that I am finding most of myself in this nonsense is oddly comforting. I like nonsense, no one tries to make sense of it and therefore it is perhaps the only notion left alone, intact and pure. Currently I am swimming deep in the lake of my Art and my anima; this always seems to happen when I listen to Dylan for a long stretch of time. Time loses its urgency to win races: ticking turns to tapping and tapping into swishing as all is lost. And all is found. That one elusive ‘End of the Year’ and ‘On to New Beginnings’ month rolls around and I spend my weeks tracing back every Dylan song I can find, which takes a lot of listening. Listening, which becomes easier to do when the talking is no longer yours to hear. It also drives a lost fantasy and lots of nonsense to the brim of what could be.
I like that.
I like that I am finally writing in pencil again, and not thinking about it at all.
I like that my writing, in retrospect, appears untidy and much resembles idle scribbling.
I like that my art is untidy again and that I am not trying to clean it up.
I like that I seem to be giving up on ‘cleaning up’ completely.
I like that I am beginning to like something about my ‘untidy’, ‘unruly’, ‘inconvenient’ nature enough to nurture it and let it breathe.
I like that I no longer find myself ugly.
I like many things again.
I like that most of all.

Recently I have been dwelling on some very beautiful blasphemy. An acquaintance asked why -since I was not religious- did I want to pursue my PhD in Comparative Religion? I thought about it and I am still caught in the web of transgressions that is currently thinking me.
I believe this is because I don’t want any proof anymore. I have spent altogether too much energy trying to disprove dogma and prove secularism. I wish to stop this by purely immersing myself in study for the sake of comprehension of the incomprehensible. To acknowledge and hopefully someday embrace the un-knowability of everything. Not to judge or defend, and I realise that this is the hardest part, but I want to see if I can manage it nonetheless. Truth be told, I have never really been able to stomach the glamour of religious mythology and/or history, this is ironic seeing as I sincerely covet mythology in every other shape and form.

The same person asked me what religion I followed. I tried to not fumble my explanation, seeing as it never really seems to hit home that I am sincere when I say that I truly feel that God, Faith and Religion are all simply the Muse, Art and Beauty. No matter how I say it, it always comes out corny and New-Ageish and that always makes it small. Alternate views are apparently unacceptable if they haven’t been allowed to marrow for 1400 years. So I changed tack and weaved him a whimsical tale about the Lost Prophets of Harmless Art. It was a very pretty story and I am quite sure I came off as intensely charming and fanciful in my naiveté. Even conventional people manage to dismiss art as something so pretty it couldn’t possibly be ‘THAT’ dangerous. We forgive the Sufi’s for downright heresy. We call them saints, why?
Because they were pretty in their criticism.
‘Pretty’ is always so much easier to dismiss.
And I saw him doing just that, the polite smile acknowledging the little girls talent and raw idealism. Her love for art clouding the ‘real gory stuff’ over, harmless deflection, he thought. There is a reason why ‘people’ say that ‘people’ can be stupid when it comes to Religion. ‘People’ can’t really help themselves. Believing is easier than thinking for most and no matter how prettily one dismisses Art, nothing forces ‘thought’ more than the Muse.

I am usually considered subversive because I cannot glamorize and revere religious prophets the way most people do. I don’t dis-respect them, but I don’t respect them for their alleged contributions either. They are historical figures I accept or reject based on what I read of history and how reliable I consider the sources and sightings. And if there is one thing history always tells us, it’s that it is utterly unreliable. I do no more or less for them than I do for anyone. This bothers people, I have noticed. For some reason it is okay to question God and criticise him, but not his sentinels. They are sacrosanct.
Probably because very few of us are willing to admit that believing in prophets who actually lived and were human is much easier than believing in the much larger abstract that gives them their identity and definition for supposed posterity.
I have always maintained that if prophecy was ‘divine inspiration’ then it was ridiculous that it was only relegated to decaying historical nuances. If prophets were – in fact - individuals who wrote and spoke a message that struck a chord in people’s hearts to connect them to something outside of themselves, then it was impossible for it to be just one message that would expire as easily as it has. This could be why we are all at a loss to find how to replace, update, incorporate or suppress it in the present. My ‘prophets’ would then be Dylan, Cohen, Guthrie, Chopin, Twain, Barrie, Tolkein, Mohammad Ali…perhaps just as many as we have in dogma: 1,24,000…and ever-growing in number. Every thinker has the potential for prophecy. Whoever manages to move me to tears and ecstasy has the potential be my personal saint. I find that reverence for actual experience is well within my scope of devotion. Reverence for the experience mind you, not so much for the sponsor. Pure aesthetic appreciation for a message that can compound in a manner that tugs at the soul strings every time it is delivered. I have never cried for our prophet or laughed with his history. I have never been moved to …well…anything.

Does that discount his being a prophet, No.

Does it discount his being mine, Probably.

I have cried however, even as I picture the death of a man as multi-dimensional as Dylan or Cohen or Ali. Of the last song they will sing, of the manner in which that message will collect in the infinite well of every other sentence they wrote or sang or surmised.
Words strung together like pearls and bullets ‘Our Goliaths will be conquered’, ‘We sit here stranded though we all do our best to deny it’, ‘Its hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender’, “ Float like a Butterfly, Sting like a Bee your hands can’t hit what your eyes can’t see”, ‘Our interests on the dangerous edge of things; the honest thief, the tender murderer, the superstitious atheist’ … what makes them less inspired than gospel? What makes them less valid for resonance in the soul than prayer?
What makes it real, if the whole point is for it not to be?


Does any of it make the Wanderer’s prophets or Art religion?
Why not?
Then again, ‘why’ at all.