'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.
No comments:
Post a Comment