“It is an ironic habit of human beings to
run faster when they have lost their way” – Rollo May
I find myself in a frenzy that I cannot
forgive away at present. My mouth tastes like bile, my face is numb and the
whimsical wi-fi signals adorning my apartment walls are oddly amplified in this perversely self-affirming instant. And so I write, to preserve a sense of sanity and
sanctity in a moment utterly devoid of both. My thoughts are switching
trajectories at a moment’s pace: I marvel at my ability to put one foot in front
of another even at the most inopportune moments; I relish the idea of finally
beginning to enjoy the company of women, who earlier seemed to shrink even my
sizable mass into parochial protoplasm in their intimidating circumference. I
find I might even make female friends, which should prove to be an interesting
adventure. I have identified that I am attempting to redefine myself in the light
of anticipation and conversation…granted, it is odd realizing ones’ own
reflection in another and hearing our opinions pour out for the first time in reaction to someone else's. It is a nefarious beginning,
although not entirely unpleasant. I find that I intensely dislike the color
pink, I had always withheld judgment on colors but at this present precipice, I
can observe my complexion and I must pronounce -Pink is most definitely not the
new ‘black’.
I believe the elders have identified this
stasis as somewhere between a state of absolute euphoria and acrid panic. ‘Hiraeth’ is Welsh, for a homesickness
that pertains to a home to which one cannot return, one that perhaps never was.
It alludes to the nostalgia and yearning, for a grief reserved for the lost
places of a past one tries to recover but never can. Hiraeth is a unicorn, only it is black. The kind one clearly
remembers meeting and having ridden even, but one that can never be spotted
again. Tonight, Hiraeth is a series
of disjointed misnomers…it is Islamabad’s oddly poignant nonchalance towards
the entire enterprise of existing; it is a bitter-half frozen glass of coca
cola; it is the smell of the last wisps of Imperial Leather soap and the sounds
of Amitabh Bachan singing ‘Khaike Paan’ still slapping around in my head. It is
the summer afternoons that I know will come, where the only thing to rescue me
from hyper-awareness regarding each individual stream of sweat running down my
back will be a Sindhri Aam fished out
from a steel tub of dry ice. Hiraeth
is watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the afternoon, to the sound of an
old air-conditioner that still needs a knob to be turned to #4 on Auto-cool and
it is repeated trips to Audio City with penciled lists of songs that will someday
grow up to be a cassette that I pay Rs200 for.
There is a sequence in North and South, where Gaskell has Margaret finally
acknowledge the loss of home “No matter
how we were, no matter how much we wish it, we cannot go back”. I suppose this
is my Margaret moment. I feel as if I
must finally give up my search for Mitchell’s bon-bons, Country Pine-cool and that long-lost reviewing of the
Tiny Toons finale, because even if I find them I recognize that they won’t
taste the same.
This is an odd, lilting loop I presently
find myself trapped in, almost as if I am constructing myself in retrospect.
There is an odd god-liness about
this motion that I find simultaneously liberating and licentious. In some
manner I am beginning to view the latent Sanskrit warning Koyaa Rusqatri as a
positive tangential for endless possibility carved in layers of spite. The Koyaa Rusqatri, literally refers to the ‘balance
of a life out of balance’. The notion alludes to those off-shoot individuals
who are incurable, un-fixable and irredeemable in their essence. It offers up a
platitude for all the plebian bandits and social banshees of the world -
alienated and alliterated by their personal conundrums to a point where they no
longer seek redemption but rather respite from the expectation of being every
idle relative’s concerned after-thought. The collective ‘Oh, Him’s/Oh, Her’s’
finally looking to live a life beyond the ‘But
what will become of …’ that shadows their very presence and just BE. The
Rusqatri was devised as a caveat from expectation and exultation alike. It is
the lost-soul’s life raft that does not seek any sort of shore. It allows
un-balance as a legitimate life-style choice and I fear I may be very close to
admitting into it.
These days, I am longing for the comforts
of home and my city, while simultaneously adjusting to the idea that remaining
here and battling my demons may be a worthwile venture in the long run. There isn’t much I find redeeming about this
city except, mayhaps, the Jacaranda trees that currently line my street. These
trees bear a stunning purple blossom that may just be pretty enough to keep me
invested in the idea of my own individuality born of independence. If they were
Cherry Blossoms, the struggle may well have been considered moot. I wish I
could just settle the matter of myself and be done with it once and for all but
I seem to relish the challenge of a life that perpetually resists perfection.
In Native American mythology, there is a
spirit animal reserved for the self-defeating savant. A creature that caters to
the glamour of self-destruction that appeals to those of us who savor the art
of self-combustion and consider ourselves more poignant, just for pragmatically
snipping away at ourselves piece-by-piece. The most infamous trickster in
Native American lore is the Hosteen Coyote, some consider the coyote an anagram
for Prometheus in Greek mythology, as he too brought fire to his people. Others
liken him to the Norse god Loki in temperament and constitution. The Hosteen
holds nothing sacred and thereby everything is equally important and
simultaneously recyclable to him. The Hopi hold that, to be granted a wish by
the Hosteen, is at best dubious but immediately self-serving. It is said that
each granted wish follows an exclusion clause that guarantees that it will not
be granted in the manner of one’s choosing. The legends of the coyote, Loki and
Mercury circle around myths of cunning and do not operate at an intellectual
but on a purely instinctual level. They are the unconscious will. And yet, in
every legend, where the Hosteen has appeared to the Hopi or the Pueblo, no one has been known to have
resisted it. I seem to be running with
the Hosteen at present and for the first time I comprehend the charms of
surrender more than self. It is an odd conglomerate of values operating in
reverse. I am my own Saint Teresa, and I myself am begging to be rid of all my
saving graces. It is oddly liberating.
And yet, there is a junction where this
liberation becomes suffocating. I find that my moral monitors are all the more
stifling because I was the one who oh-so laboriously erected them and now find
myself tearing them down. I suppose this is the down-side of constructing one’s
ethics outside of a God and thereby taking responsibility for every thought and
action as it is cemented in habit. I am presently struggling with my
multiple choices. I suppose this is better framed as the steady decomposition
of the construction, production and definition of my thoughts. I catch myself playing with Molyneux here,
who asked Locke whether a blind man restored to sight, would be able to
distinguish between a cube and globe that his blindness had conditioned him to
identify. In the epistemological sense, I see myself sympathizing with Ibn
Tufail’s Hayy ibn Yaqdhan , as he consorts with colours rather than shapes in
this regard. How do I quantify my person here… as what I am? What I was? What I
want to be? Or is it who I am becoming as I am becoming her? Molyneux further
leads me to Agrippa and his Münchhausen
Trilemma, where all truths are essentially impossible to prove, even by the likes
of logic. Trilemma denotes that circular reasoning, infinite regress and
unproven axioms counteract any real value in moral rectitude and thereby the
idea is a hopeless endeavor from the onset. Even if it does offer me hope. Is
my person a product of what my mind wishes it to be or of my neurology and
physicality? I suppose, loathe as I am to acknowledge it, I must carry my
carcass around with me for the rest of my journey. I finally rest with Sorites,
where I can make some sense of my selfishness as well as my self-loathing. The
heap-paradox rests in deterioration giving rise to liberation…from
definitions. What is a person? Am I a whole, or a conglomerate or an assembly
line of features and facets, which if split up and taken away one by
one, will free me from the burden of being the me that binds me. The bale of hay that depletes straw by
straw until it isn’t a bale of hay.
Can the same be true of a person?
And if so, what needs diminishing?
Can the same be true of a person?
And if so, what needs diminishing?
Where do I start to deconstruct and detonate?
When can I finally dissolve into the person I think I could be?
“Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever
there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters,
orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal,
vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting,
backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen
yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade
suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart.
People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to
have a choice.”
- - Women, Charles Bukowski
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