Sunday, April 22, 2007

Friday, April 20, 2007

Eureka! Eureka I Say!

So this is my jump out of the bath tub and run through Syracuse naked moment. No, really. It hit me in the shower.

I blame the past too much for what I am and all these interpersonal issues. Fuck that shit! I'm freeeeee (see little running clouds a la comic strip behind me, my towel flapping in the wind)

.....

You would have thought this would have occurred to me without the eureka. But it did.

Now it has. I can't say it will make things clearer but it will certainly help me get rid of this stupid invisible boulder I have been dragging around for so long now.

In any event.


------------------------

Zaphod in elevator with three women from the office.
Tiniest one: I saw Tom Cruise the other day.
Middle one: yeah?
Tallest one with poofy hair: I heard he was short
Zaphod (surpressed grin>
Tiniest: Yeah he is.
Middle: I don't think I'd find him that attractive then
Bing! Our floor.
The perfect gentleman, I was for them to exit.
Tallest one: Thank you

I do appreciate polite women. And those with poofy hair!
;o)

Thoughts On The Corner of 56th & 6th

It is rather isolating standing on the corner of 56th and 6th. You can stand at the corner, by the F train stop, smoking a cigarette, reach down and turn the music up. The sky scrapers tower high above, glass reflecting the other. And if you stretch your neck back enough, you can see a orange-tinged blue sky with almost perfect clouds.
It always makes me smile.

I guess it reminds me of the terrace in the new floor back home in Delhi. (yes scout, go make fun of the fact that I miss home but this is more about finding a quiet space!)
This December I had the pleasure of having the whole apartment to myself with a spanking new TV and a shower to die for, but the point is the terrace. It’s not that big. And there’s nothing special about it. Heck, it had a paint spattered ladder against the wall from when the laborers painted it. But it was my space. It was big enough for me to pace up and down, smoking a cigarette. I could look at the green belt behind my house and see kids playing cricket, the odd buffalo, which normally would have been incongruous but hells bells, it is Delhi. I could look over the side and see the neighbors terrace, their laundry still damp and refusing to dry up in the cool winter evening. And it was the same blue sky, tinged orange with a setting sun.

While the quiet was calming after a busy day running around the city, there was an omission, the wanting to share it with someone/her. Or the pleasure I get in being with someone I like, alone, quiet, lost in thought yet knowing I can reach out at any moment and touch their thoughts and pull at the threads.

But it’s the same sky, the same feelings, just another day, place and one more cigarette.



























-------

The more I have tried to hold on, the harder it has been, the more it/they have slipped. But it’s hard to fall backward without reaching out, grasping at something. But then there comes a point of inevitable acceptance of the futility of trying to hold on . But at the same time you hope that you learn to fly before hitting the ground.

-------
I’ve learned mine can’t be filled,
only alchemized. Many times
it’s become a paragraph or a page.
But usually I’ve hidden it,
not knowing until too late
how enormous it grows in its dark.
Or how obvious it gets
when I’ve donned, say, my good
cordovans and my fine tweed vest
and walked into a room with a smile.
I might as well have been a man
with a fez and a faux silver cane.

Better, I know now,
to dress it plain,
to say out loud to *some right person *
*in some right place *
that there’s something not there
in me, something I can’t name.
That some right person
has just lit a fire under the kettle.
She hasn’t said a word.
Beneath her blue shawl
she, too, conceals a world.

But she’s amazed
how much I seem to need my emptiness,
amazed I won’t let it go.

Stephen Dunn.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Once Upon A Time...

I'd be lying right now if I said the non-head future were clear. It's just that I am so used to losing whatever I get attached to, I am gun shy. The problem with this is that while it keeps me safe, if something good does come along, I tend to take time to unwind. Also, at any hint of flight, real or imagined, thought imagined more often than not, I tend to curl up, don the shining armor and well, instead of slaying the dragon, turn the shield the wrong direction.

Here's hoping she manages to talk some sense into me and instead of me jumping at my own shadow, I drop the shield, lift the visor and feel stupid.

Here's to hoping for a happy ending.

(Work In Progress)

Some people do it in the shower, some on the pot, some in their kitchen and others in the living room.
We all do it somewhere, sometime or the other.
I prefer my bed.

It really is the best place.

.......
To think.
Pervs.



I think the earliest recollection I have is in the house in GK-2. I think i was 12 or 13? No, 10. Fuck, it was my 10th birthday and i rememberr driving somewhere during the day with Dad to the doctors (ENT, not what my Dad does) and saying out aloud that I had lived a decade and had nothing to show for it.
Precocious? Perhaps. I prefer to think of it more as a Calvin from Calvin & Hobbest comment.
Of course my Dad laughed and I couldn't understand why it was funny. I never did speak along those lines to him again but still.
And I remember lying in bed that night and thinking I could be whatever I wanted to be and the problem with that, in a 10 year olds words, what's the right thing for me to be.
Then puberty happened and I just thought about girls...women, chicas, broads, the fairer sex.
Don't think I've really stopped but when I do take a break from my (unfortunately, have to admit, sometimes) carnal musings on women, I do think about other things.


Then there was Jaipur, the second night without my folks. See, the first day they left me in school (and until this point I had been home schooled), I thought I'd see them when I got home. I think it's only that evening that it dawned on me that they had disappeared. Now given my Mum's proclivity for scaring me by saying that they found me in a dumpster and would leave me back in one if I misbehaved, I thought this was their equivalent. So the second night I did write them a letter asking what I did wrong. Sap.
I don't think my grandmother mailed that letter out...


Or the night I got my first rejection from a college in the US. I had to question everything I had to offer...see the problem is that there are more questions than answers. But I think the fun lies in thinking them through.

All in all, there's something comforting lying in bed, the cold wind outside, the warm sheets within, stretched out, looking up at the hazy lights of the City and wondering where I'm headed.

For instance, I remember lying in a strange hotel room, in a new city after meeting this new girl who I liked. Still think about her. But we will see where it goes.

(Work In Progress)

Some people do it in the shower, some on the pot, some in their kitchen and others in the living room.
We all do it somewhere, sometime or the other.
I prefer my bed.

It really is the best place.

.......
To think.
Pervs.



I think the earliest recollection I have is in the house in GK-2. I think i was 12 or 13? No, 10. Fuck, it was my 10th birthday and i rememberr driving somewhere during the day with Dad to the doctors (ENT, not what my Dad does) and saying out aloud that I had lived a decade and had nothing to show for it.
Precocious? Perhaps. I prefer to think of it more as a Calvin from Calvin & Hobbest comment.
Of course my Dad laughed and I couldn't understand why it was funny. I never did speak along those lines to him again but still.
And I remember lying in bed that night and thinking I could be whatever I wanted to be and the problem with that, in a 10 year olds words, what's the right thing for me to be.
Then puberty happened and I just thought about girls...women, chicas, broads, the fairer sex.
Don't think I've really stopped but when I do take a break from my (unfortunately, have to admit, sometimes) carnal musings on women, I do think about other things.


Then there was Jaipur, the second night without my folks. See, the first day they left me in school (and until this point I had been home schooled), I thought I'd see them when I got home. I think it's only that evening that it dawned on me that they had disappeared. Now given my Mum's proclivity for scaring me by saying that they found me in a dumpster and would leave me back in one if Imisbehaved, I thought this was their equivalent. So the second night I did write them a letter asking what I did wrong. Sap.
I don't think my grandmother mailed that letter out...


Or the night I got my first rejection from a college in the US. I had to question everything I had to offer...see the problem is that there are more questions than answers. But I think the fun lies in thinking them throught.

All in all, there's something comforting lying in bed, the cold wind outside, the warm sheets within, stretched out, looking up at the hazy lights of the City and wondering where I'm headed.

For instance, I remember lying in a strange hotel room, in a new city after meeting this new girl who I liked. Still think about her. But we will see where it goes.

To Explain...

Here's the problem or what changed and made me forget.
I was carrying this rather large sack of fear, insecurities, blithering half-thoughts that led to nothing.

It made me bitch, whine, sob, and pretty much mentally fuck myself over twice on Tuesday. I think it took an indirect but rather bitter dose of reality that snapped my neck back, where I did a Three Stooges head shake and go wait a minute, how the fuck did I get here.

So, I stopped, pulled over to the side, let the sack of crap down, proceeded to scratch my head and I had my eureka moment.

The thing with epiphanies is that that they are rather exhilarating and this comes from two effects. One is in a blinding flash every fits in, the Grand Unified Theory of crises. The second is the relief and happiness with the rapidity with which the cracks come together and smoothen out.

And then you take a deep breath, a half smile, watch the smoke curl up and out the window, the way it has always done but you were just too busy to notice, the lazy fingers frantic at first and slowly unwinding and curling and drifting out. Kinda feels like that, dun it?

"Heeeeer's Johnny!!"

Freezin, rests his head on a pillow made of concrete,again
Oh, feelin maybe hell see a little better set a days, ooh yeah
Oh, hand out, faces that he sees time again aint that familiar, ooh yeah
Oh, dark grin, he cant help, when hes happy looks insane, oh yeah


I have forgotten myself. It has been 9 months since I was last stripped. And this has been the longest it has taken me to remember me.
I had forgotten who I am or where I came from and tried to stumble forward. And it's this hedonistic feeling to remember, it's like deja vu except this really happened.
At first I walked the walk, talked the talk, but the one closest to me saw the cracks and it threw me off because it reminded me that I had forgotten. Ironic and a terrible sentence but it makes sense to me.

Kneelin, looking through the paper though he doesnt know to read, ooh yeah
Oh, prayin, now to something that has never showed him anything
Oh, feelin, understands the weather of the winters on its way
Oh, ceilings, few and far between all the legal halls of shame, yeah...

I think part of me didn't want to remember and wanted to wallow and get completely consumed, hit the bottom of the proverbial bottle, dime bag, whatever your escape of choice may be.

While feeble attempts were made to get up again, the were more to go through the motions at an attempt to remember. Fuck that shit, aint no fooling me, least of all when I'm the fuck pulling the strings ya hear!

It feels familiar, the old me I remember, no longer hazy and no more 'I wish I were him'...sad given that the finger was pointed at me all along, just perhaps the me a year ago.

I missed me. It's good to be back. 9 months is way too long to run. And it feels good to stop.

Even flow, thoughts arrive like butterflies
Oh, he dont know, so he chases them away...
Ooh, someday yet, hell begin his life again, yeah
Oh, whispering hands, gently lead, lead him away...him away...him away...

Saturday, April 14, 2007

Oasis



'Morning xxxxx

I miss you right now. It's night, I'm lying in bed, flipping channels not really watching anything, thinking of everything going on. And I want to talk to you.
The sheets are clean and drawn up, the window open slightly, cold air blowing in bringing in sounds of the city.

I'm not thinking about anything in particular. So many distractions but I can't stop thinking.
Slide away - and give it all you've got
My today - fell in from the top

I'm imagining all these other lives I could have had, the one if I never left India, the one if I had never met her, another where I had never started writing a blog.
The phone rings. It's a friend wanting to catch up. Perhaps later...

I'd like to see what it's like, this one that I have chosen. I'd like to move back and see where things go with you, another job, another city, hells bells, another life, choosing one while letting go of another.
In the morning when you don't know what to do
Two of a kind
We'll find a way
To do what we've done

It would be interesting to wake up with you (notice I didn't use 'fine' best b'loved, as apparently in woman talk that means 'bad'....women!)
and do all the banal things but knowing I can tell you whatever runs through my head, stuff that I am glad you find interesting and at the very least willing to listen more, in a way perhaps the words 'wanting to' would be more fitting. And knowing that I want to know more of you.
The news reports on the upcoming election, Hillary Clinton's classmates speak about her, Obama raises money for his campaign...a woman and a black man standing for elections...ironic, Bush, a white Texan elected by the red states was what was needed to tilt opinion to positive for a woman and a black man to stand for elections.

Instead of having to save snippets of my day to email you, to actually see you in the evening, perhaps over dinner and tell you and hear about you day, the new story you are working on, the new people you met and have you teach me more on politics (!)
I dream of you - and all the things you say
I wonder where you are now?

Did you know....?
What about....?
So tell me, .....?
Questions saved for the rare leisurely times when I don't have to run back to work or you don't have to get ready.
Something real, something tangible...is what Id like that with you
'll find a way
Of chasing the sun
Let me be the one that shines with you
In the morning when you don't know what to do

I'd like you to meet my friends, BestBud who, you are right, is a bit nuts....Fat Man who is someone else I'm close to...Bobo, ToughCoookie, 11ses, Shah, Maxium (he's the one I warned, if you did to be good friends, would smack your gluteus), Garg, Tondy, SB, Gups... all of them.
Slide away, slide away, slide away, slide away
and I wanna try now, i wanna make you mine now

Fuck, I think we always pick our lives whether it being who we decide is our friend, what we want to become, what time we leave for work or deciding what's best. Most of the time we just do small things that perhaps have a bigger influence than we will ever know (or perhaps it's the influence of a tab open to Wikipedia's entry to Stranger Than Fiction that's making me think that) but on rare occasions we make conscious choices.
Hold me down, all the world's asleep
I need you now, you knock me off my feet,
I dream of you, and the thought of growing old

Haha, in cutting & pasting the song, I've began to think about it.
But inevitably comes back to you or wanting, this minute to tell you how much I love this song. Or making you listen to the others and felling really good about the fact that you like stuff like Snow by RHCP or Clap Hands by Tom Waits...reminds me, must send some Grace Potter & The Nochturnals to you.
Pity you aren't here, could have seen The Killers or Arcade Fire or The Kaiser Chiefs...
Oh, let me be the one
That shines with you, and we can slide away...

It would have been...again, interesting to be around Friday night, of course, I'm sure my presence wold have changed the night, at least with regards you being pulled by your Ex and the guy who has been in love with you...but still, would have been very nice to let you sort out your relationships, giving the odd bit of advice when asked
Okay, enough of this song...oo The Masterplan
Love the guitar opening, the main riff is acoustic guided by an electric, I'm sure I could learn to play this?




Or stand in a corner and let you do your own thing but be around to hug you or at least try and make you feel that things aren't all that bad.
But even without the soap opera drama, perhaps go one day and take your friends' dog for a walk...or watch you watch me go nuts over Gujju food and try and learn odd bits of Gujju-speak.
Will dance if they want to dance
Please brother take a chance
You know they're gonna go
Which way they wanna go
All we know is that we don't know
What is gonna be
...well the words certainly are ironic...

It's nice to write a slow email, nothing in particular to say, just talk with you. Again, feels incomplete, even when we do speak over the phone. The conversation is still missing you even though you are right there and all a conversation needs.
Meh, guess I can still call you The Omission, now however in a different context.
Made a meal and threw it up on Sunday I've
Gotta lot of things to learn
Said I would and I'll be leaving one day
Before my heart starts to burn

I'd like my folks to meet you. Even if my mum sounds like an ogre...which she isn't, really
But then I suppose I'd be intimidated by your Dad no matter what.


Stand by me, nobody knows the way it's gonna be
Stand by me, nobody knows
Yeah, nobody knows the way it's gonna be

Anyway kiddo...I can either keep missing you and feeling a bit low about it or I can go distract myself..until I speak with you again.

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Whole New Meaning

The first attempts at lyrics, written by Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant next to an evening log fire at Headley Grange, were partly spontaneously improvised and Page claimed, "a huge percentage of the lyrics were written there and then".[5] Jimmy Page was strumming the chords and Robert Plant had a pencil and paper. Plant later said that suddenly, "my hand was writing out the words, 'There's a lady is sure [sic], all that glitters is gold, and she's buying a stairway to Heaven'. I just sat there and looked at them and almost leapt out of my seat." Plant's own explanation of the lyrics was that it "was some cynical aside about a woman getting everything she wanted all the time without giving back any thought or consideration. The first line begins with that cynical sweep of the hand ... and it softened up after that. I think it was the Moroccan dope!"

I think the second last line is so nice that it brings up a whole new meaning to this song for me. Geeky of me to read up on this song but its one of those I remember listening to as a 16 year old going nuts over the guitar solos and the drumming. Hells bells, Bonhom had a rabbits foot, Page had flying fingers and no one could wail like Plant.
And the reason I love music is because this piece will always me hearing it loud as a 16 year old in my room without realizing that everyone who loves this song, felt the same way I did back then. So even when I'm introducing this music to my kid one day, I'll still remember what it felt like then when I was 16 and learning music.


And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our soul
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last
When all are one and one is all
To be a rock and not to roll

Fucking Frustration

Am feeling rather frustrated right now. Last night went out to a friends place and got boomed (while making $3 in poker). But the thing was everyone wanted to go out party. And I don't. I think I'm on a break from this. It's the same thing. It's going out, getting drunk, barely being able to have an intelligible conversation, either because of the noise or the booze. Every body trying to get some, hang-ups jealousy, all that asme song and dance bullshit.
There has to be more to this. I mean fuck, I love going out with friends and having fun, but it's just that it's the same thing, over and over again, just at a different place.

And another thing, I don't know how much I like booming with too many people around. Either it's my own fucking head that sees through their front and can see rather easily all their insecurities. Fuck, I want insecurity I have mine man! Useless.
(Yeah, I see the selfishness in this statement but fuck this, my space, you don't want to read this go away then)

And another thing bugging me is that a tiny tiny part of me is a bit ruffled at Shortys ex visiting. I mean look, if something has to happen it will. She can tell me that there's nothing there and nothing will happen. And I know that, she has talked about him at length and I do believe her. And I decided not to let baggage from the ex carry over. But it's just that it's so familiar to hear those words, "nothing will happen"
But you kept saying nothing would happen. I'm not mad at you,just want to know why you strung me along saying nothing would happen if now you want to date him instead.
Because I was scared something would and I kept saying it more for myself so nothing would.

And I HATE this insecurity bullshit brought on by one person who at this point probably doesn't give a fuck so for me to be affected by someone now safely in the past just kills me, I fucking HATE it. I used to be the most secure son of a bitch, I was fine with the ex meeting every fucking schmuck under the freaking sun. Of course, I think thanks to her I did wonder if I was holding on to her like an octopus. I didn't think I needed to. Fuck, if you are with someone, there must be good reason and meeting new people shouldn't change that. And now in some warped way, I went is it me??

Fuck that, there are enough Dear John's that have the line it's not you, it's me.
Who the hell buys that shit?! Course it's you!

Ah bollocks. I fucking hate being threatened and I hate not being able to believe people close to me. And I hate most of all the fact that someone else may just be responsible for this in me.

FUCK!!!

(goddamnit, does this ever sound like the diary of a 16 year old high school girl. Fuck it, i'm melancholic and I don't give a damn right now)

----------
Okay, fuck it, I'm not done. I wish I weren't a little uncomfortable with her ex. And here's the thing, I can see why they are close. Fuck, 5 years is a long time, and if it was your first, then all the more reason. And you can be great friends with the person. And there's history, and common friends and all these firsts.
Arghhhhhhhhh, see I can see myself writing this out, thinking it and it making sense, in my head and on paper. And still there's this fucking niggling I can't seem to fucking expunge.

And of course, being me, I am completely repulsed even entertaining the thought I don't want you hanging out with such-and-such person. So that's not an option. Besides, I wouldn't want to be with someone who would listen to such ramblings.

Fuck it. I think right now am just frustrated trying to find someone around who I can vent to and someone who can say what I need to hear...for the simple reason I can't seem to find the words myself.

Friday, April 06, 2007

Everything Under the Sun

So now I am learning to read music while I play the guitar. Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to learn how to read it, given the notation looks like a completely different language. It's like looking at arabic or hebrew and then actually being able to articulate it and make sense out of it.
It's the headiest feeling I have in a very long time. To let your eyes go over the notes, realize that it's telling how to translate it into music, how something intangible has been thought over by someone and now it's translated perfectly so that you can understand and play it the way it was meant to be played.

Another thing it reminded me of was, and this is a thread going off in another direction. But I will never know what the english language will sound like. For instance, when someone speaks another language fluently, you can feel how it sounds, German is rough & angular, French has too many round sounds, Italian has its own drawl, Latin American languages come at you in bursts. I wonder what English sounds like.

------------------------

So some time ago, Shorty sent me "Walking in the Rain" by Oran "Juice" Jones (not Orange Juice Jones Little One). And every time I hear it, it reminds me walking to work from my place in London. I remember the big gate at the narrow alley way, pushing it open, very Lemony Snicketts when the door opens and you have this quaint English street, the late night Diner opposite, the trucks cleaning the street, construction workers on their way to work, going past the bar with live music, much quieter now, almost tired from a long night on the town. I remember seeing my leather shoes over the cobblestones opposite the theater the night before SpanALot debuted. There's walking to Leicester Square where so many people had been parting the night over, the buildings tired but happy. I go past another wonderfully named pub, watching the delivery trucks unload food to serve people who will be back there in the evening, new people meeting friends, regulars, couples.
Every time i hear the song, I get the mental imagery of this tall guy in a white suit, more fitting given he is black (whats the PC term then? African American? British African??) , very very 80's with a black fedora with red trimming. Or a scene out of an 80's movie when he talks and references like

You know my first impulse was to run up on you
And do a Rambo

or

That's right, Silly rabbit, tricks are made for kids, don't you know
that. You without me is like corn flakes without the milk! This is my
world. You're just a squirrel trying to get a nut! Now get on outta
here. Scat!


But yeah, it reminds me of her and the music she sent me, putting in my iPod and listening to it, trying to figure her out.



-----------

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Ride 'em Cowboy!

"Life's a voyage that's homeward bound."
-- Herman Melville

Right, so if that’s the case, instead of reaching there in one piece, I’d rather walk in with a slightly goofy befuddled expression, a glass of bourbon & coke in one hand and a cigarette in the other going, “Dang! Now that was a ride!!”