"New York is something awful, something monstrous. I like to walk the streets, lost, but I recognize that New York is the world's greatest lie. New York is Senegal with machines”– Frederico Garcia Lorca
And so I have discovered Lorca. I am deriving immense comfort from my newly obtained copy of ‘Gypsy Ballads’ most of which I spent an entire day reading at Barnes and Nobles today. It is reassuring to read a fellow malcontent at his prime and I long for the ability to complain and whine about the inevitability of the machine with similar grace. Still one must do what one can and my not-so eloquent ravings must suffice. I have failed and am failing miserably at summoning faux enthusiasm for America, for the future and most definitely for my ‘prospects’. My family finds me astonishingly ungrateful, seeing as I am not frothing at the mouth at the sheer serendipity of mayhaps becoming that next immigrant, sporting her hard bargained H1 to strut the streets of Manhatten.
My usual exaggerated enthusiasm is noticeably absent and even I cannot fully fathom why.
While I realize that I have never had much in lieu of ambition, I do not think that is what bothers me the most about being in this city or in contemplating staying here. It may have something to do with how big everything is here. I have always harbored an unnatural fear, aversion and apprehension towards big things and America is all about big every-things. Still the practical side (of my family, certainly none to be had in myself) reiterates that all opportunities lead here and I would be a fool (sic) to ‘pass this up’. It may very well be that all universal history rests on a handful of clichés and that we are all measured by how well we live up to one particular cliché in question: success. I am reading far too many fragments these days to make sense of how I feel or think. Though I am not making much progress with the latter I am profoundly grateful for the constant pleasure and isolation that books still bring.
I have been trying to muddle through Novalis’s ‘Logological Fragments’ these past two weeks and I desperately wish I had been a philosophy student, if only so that I could pretend to understand him. I ‘feel’ though, that his words are like chimeras and while I am struggling to understand their meaning their nuance is overwhelming. Novalis speaks of the greatest magician being one who would cast over himself a spell so complete that he would take his own phantasmagorias as autonomous appearances. I can imagine this all too clearly…alarmingly so. And I wonder if this is where I stand now, post-heartbreak, wallowing and whining incessantly with nothing to console me save this one delusion. This delusion that I am the undivided divinity operating within me. That I have conceived and dreamt and already written my world. That this world is ubiquitous in space and sustainable in time. The tragedy lies in the fact that it is nearly impossible to play by the rules of another world that one does not care to admit exists, that one does not aspire to be part of and that one abjectly loathes in most of its manifestations!
Mostly I am wallowing and I am getting better at it by the day. Currently the only silver lining canvasing my horizons is the imminent arrival of an old friend to New York in September. A fellow deviant, who embraces his madness more fully and fruitfully than I could ever hope to. I like to think of ‘Paagal Insaan’ in Dalinian terms. Dali said “There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad” but my friend wears his label unabashedly and by his creed ‘Mad’ is the new ‘Sane’. I look forward to mocking this metropolis in his company since I am currently shunning all company.
But it is still his voice that drives most of my discontent and his presence that still lingers on in all my out-moded, silly fantasies of 'could have beens'. Heart break is truly a terrible thing...and not for the reasons usually reiterated by romantics of every creed...rather for hope. It is knowing that whatever is to come now will never compare, that new people will never be 'new' enough and that love will now, finally have to be relegated to 'romance'. That pretty pretence, diamonds and pleasantries shall prevail. That the truth has lost and the lie has triumphed.
“You know what I find surprising about this?”
“You find things surprising?” I had perfected my own whimsical flavour of trite by then.
“I really don’t feel the need to lie to you, its rather…refreshing. I mean, I realize it might not be that way for you, but…”
“No, it isn’t. We, of the feminine vein, tend to base our happiness and Ever After’s on lovely lies. But ironically enough I am relieved to be rid of them.”
“Don’t you think that’s a bit premature?”
“It may be, but I already know there are no ‘Ever After’s’ here, so I don’t miss or crave the lying. I never really trust the lies when they sound pleasant anyway,” so I babbled my way through the swamps of that conversation.
“That’s probably why you are quite adept at this.”
“At what, precisely?” it was going to sting, I could practically taste it.
“Bitter truths…absolute honesty, even,” he sounded almost proud of me and that stung.
If he only knew.
I now find myself caught in the mirage of a morbid arcana that I don’t wish to lose. I wade through my days hearing his voice and feeling his presence mock me at every turn. He would hate me now as I manufacture a 'me' that none of my selves are. I am faking fake-ness, it appears, and this is an all time low. ‘They’ ask me to be practical, plastic and perfunctory and I pretend. ‘They’ ask me to write white-noise and I pretend. ‘They’ ask me to laugh at trite jokes, cake my face and pout my lips, take pleasure in shopping sprees and smile at cameras and I pretend. ‘They’ tell me that literature is nothing more than verbal algebra and that I need to crunch those alphabets in inane, simple, cliché’s because that is what ‘audiences want’ and I pretend.My solitary verse in the Vedanta has finally splintered and I am ‘corrected’.I am also bitter, melodramatic, prissy and self-righteous.
But I pretend my way around it.
Woodcutter,
Cut my shadow from me.
Free me from the torment
Of seeming myself fruitless.
And so I have discovered Lorca. I am deriving immense comfort from my newly obtained copy of ‘Gypsy Ballads’ most of which I spent an entire day reading at Barnes and Nobles today. It is reassuring to read a fellow malcontent at his prime and I long for the ability to complain and whine about the inevitability of the machine with similar grace. Still one must do what one can and my not-so eloquent ravings must suffice. I have failed and am failing miserably at summoning faux enthusiasm for America, for the future and most definitely for my ‘prospects’. My family finds me astonishingly ungrateful, seeing as I am not frothing at the mouth at the sheer serendipity of mayhaps becoming that next immigrant, sporting her hard bargained H1 to strut the streets of Manhatten.
My usual exaggerated enthusiasm is noticeably absent and even I cannot fully fathom why.
While I realize that I have never had much in lieu of ambition, I do not think that is what bothers me the most about being in this city or in contemplating staying here. It may have something to do with how big everything is here. I have always harbored an unnatural fear, aversion and apprehension towards big things and America is all about big every-things. Still the practical side (of my family, certainly none to be had in myself) reiterates that all opportunities lead here and I would be a fool (sic) to ‘pass this up’. It may very well be that all universal history rests on a handful of clichés and that we are all measured by how well we live up to one particular cliché in question: success. I am reading far too many fragments these days to make sense of how I feel or think. Though I am not making much progress with the latter I am profoundly grateful for the constant pleasure and isolation that books still bring.
I have been trying to muddle through Novalis’s ‘Logological Fragments’ these past two weeks and I desperately wish I had been a philosophy student, if only so that I could pretend to understand him. I ‘feel’ though, that his words are like chimeras and while I am struggling to understand their meaning their nuance is overwhelming. Novalis speaks of the greatest magician being one who would cast over himself a spell so complete that he would take his own phantasmagorias as autonomous appearances. I can imagine this all too clearly…alarmingly so. And I wonder if this is where I stand now, post-heartbreak, wallowing and whining incessantly with nothing to console me save this one delusion. This delusion that I am the undivided divinity operating within me. That I have conceived and dreamt and already written my world. That this world is ubiquitous in space and sustainable in time. The tragedy lies in the fact that it is nearly impossible to play by the rules of another world that one does not care to admit exists, that one does not aspire to be part of and that one abjectly loathes in most of its manifestations!
Mostly I am wallowing and I am getting better at it by the day. Currently the only silver lining canvasing my horizons is the imminent arrival of an old friend to New York in September. A fellow deviant, who embraces his madness more fully and fruitfully than I could ever hope to. I like to think of ‘Paagal Insaan’ in Dalinian terms. Dali said “There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad” but my friend wears his label unabashedly and by his creed ‘Mad’ is the new ‘Sane’. I look forward to mocking this metropolis in his company since I am currently shunning all company.
But it is still his voice that drives most of my discontent and his presence that still lingers on in all my out-moded, silly fantasies of 'could have beens'. Heart break is truly a terrible thing...and not for the reasons usually reiterated by romantics of every creed...rather for hope. It is knowing that whatever is to come now will never compare, that new people will never be 'new' enough and that love will now, finally have to be relegated to 'romance'. That pretty pretence, diamonds and pleasantries shall prevail. That the truth has lost and the lie has triumphed.
“You know what I find surprising about this?”
“You find things surprising?” I had perfected my own whimsical flavour of trite by then.
“I really don’t feel the need to lie to you, its rather…refreshing. I mean, I realize it might not be that way for you, but…”
“No, it isn’t. We, of the feminine vein, tend to base our happiness and Ever After’s on lovely lies. But ironically enough I am relieved to be rid of them.”
“Don’t you think that’s a bit premature?”
“It may be, but I already know there are no ‘Ever After’s’ here, so I don’t miss or crave the lying. I never really trust the lies when they sound pleasant anyway,” so I babbled my way through the swamps of that conversation.
“That’s probably why you are quite adept at this.”
“At what, precisely?” it was going to sting, I could practically taste it.
“Bitter truths…absolute honesty, even,” he sounded almost proud of me and that stung.
If he only knew.
I now find myself caught in the mirage of a morbid arcana that I don’t wish to lose. I wade through my days hearing his voice and feeling his presence mock me at every turn. He would hate me now as I manufacture a 'me' that none of my selves are. I am faking fake-ness, it appears, and this is an all time low. ‘They’ ask me to be practical, plastic and perfunctory and I pretend. ‘They’ ask me to write white-noise and I pretend. ‘They’ ask me to laugh at trite jokes, cake my face and pout my lips, take pleasure in shopping sprees and smile at cameras and I pretend. ‘They’ tell me that literature is nothing more than verbal algebra and that I need to crunch those alphabets in inane, simple, cliché’s because that is what ‘audiences want’ and I pretend.My solitary verse in the Vedanta has finally splintered and I am ‘corrected’.I am also bitter, melodramatic, prissy and self-righteous.
But I pretend my way around it.
Woodcutter,
Cut my shadow from me.
Free me from the torment
Of seeming myself fruitless.
