Back, just like that.

Its the same pattern. Pending work, ambitious plans to finish it off, the same playlist on the iphone and this sudden urge to go see if someone commented on my age old blogs. There is so much that has happened that I wish to write about. But most are personal diary items and mostly just mundane life happenings. Oh, how I want to put them on the blog. I so want to make my life sound interesting, mysterious. I so want your attention. I so want to be discovered. I want someone random in a party to praise this blogger who posts on wigglylines and I want to act curious. I want to go be famous under a different name like Mark Twain and Agatha Christie. I want my grandkids to worship me. My husband to be amazed by me. Oh, I so want this.

I want to win just one literary prize. I want to do something that is brilliant like Catch 22 or To Kill A Mocking Bird. I sometimes fool myself into fantasies like writing something like Catcher in the Rye.And then I want to vanish gracefully into fading light. I can imagine myself walking into a tunnel of white light while people who know me look at my silhouette.

Heroine, protagonist, underdog, narrator, all of that in one. Thats me. Thank God for dreams. Thank God that they are vivid enough to lose myself in them. And if I really do something prosaically great someday, I promise to print this as the preface ;)

Void

There is a pristine moment of void

I stare into nothing

And no one looks at me

I do nothing

My head presses the pillow at an angle

That fixates my body

To move nothing

But to say that I somewhat sat there

And thought nothing

Is probably an exaggeration of void.

But they were lazy

The thoughts in my head

In the distant background I breathe

And the laptop gurgles tiny-ly

Telling me that it is as alive

As I am, as much as I want to be

I try to read this void moment of mine

Wondering its utility

Wondering how can I be useful

In this moment of void.

Things start to rush

In my mind

Randomly they move,

They are at so many places

At the same time

The void is cracking

Shattering and tumbling

Collapsing into itself

I lull it to come back

But it is gone, this peaceful moment of void.

Unfinished Business

There are 2 drafts that I never finished and posted. I am not completing them anyway. Each time I am back to blog, I have this urge to start on a fresh page. My diary would look the same. Lots of unfinished business. But it should be a new plunge each time.

The same thing will happen to a lot of stuff in life. Awkward conversations abruptly let go. Long tiring books, stopped at Pg 138. Your daily expenses that you thought you would track. Chuck them all. There shall be a new day, a new way.

And then there are something that we finish, we like or not. Tax filing, filling time sheets, folding laundry, making tea, applying mascara. I wonder why? Is it that things we enjoy sometimes just lose steam and die an untimely death. And then we cannot go back and bring it to a definitive ending. Or that even if they are half way through we can stow them away, and not many people will notice or care. It is only us. And we are not answerable to us.

Show off your Philosophy Kabhi Kabhi

The concept of life should be simple and linear- Today was better than yesterday, because it is a cumulative of past experiences and the present. On the same lines tomorrow will be better than today. No matter what. No experience should subtract the pleasure or the beauty of what is already there. Just an additive world.

It should be so that we can be thankful for things that did not go wrong, that we do not take the "business-as-usual" for granted. For the usual is so comforting, like the taste of mashed potatoes.

It should be so that the day tires us out that we are left with just enough time to sleep. And that vacations take people to some place nice. Looking back time should have flown, because good times move fast.

Some train journeys should be done alone. Relatively speaking, one can be stationary and the world moves around, passing you by. In contrast to this life, where we haven't dared to stand still, and wait patiently.

Coolness et al.

It has to be something big that brings you back to write. A bigness that only you perceive. No one else will ever know, like a change that happens to your state of mind, when you get up from slumber for a specific purpose only to discover with a jolt that nothing is worth losing sleep over.

That is a cynical beginning. Till a few years ago I would have smiled to see this cynicism in me. A couple of insomniac friends would read this on the their laptop window (while listening to Metallica and the likes as they simultaneously ran simulations and statistical regressions ) and would nod their heads in unfortunate agreement that 1- it was a sad but right conclusion (and that idea of bigness that no one else will never understand was awesomely fantastic and intriguing) and 2. We were the rare and cool few who got it right- an idea of a cruel life, and what it was doing to us.

Well by this definition, of knowing about life in a rock band kind of a way, all qualified to be cool. But we thought we were rare too. The once who did not think that they thought in the rock band style thought they were cool in being different, and I guess they were right in their logic too. So in the end everyone was cool and different. Suited everyone.

So is it a sign right now, that Beatles of all bands decides to sing "Let it be" to lull me into calmness. Spiritual ( and religious spiritual) that they come and tell me to drop all this hysteria over unjust life and just let it be. And to top it all, I am not changing the song. I have wizened? Crossed the other side...no longer cool in the rock band kind of a way? But conversely, cool still?

This is not the conclusion that I thought I would reach. That I am still cool :-) I thought I would claim that I am old now. While that is true, I am glad that I can sufficiently convince (or fool) myself to feel not-so-down-in-the-dumps. I can go back to listening to Dave Matthews guilt free now.

Ordinary Wishes and Ordinary Things

I want two things to happen -ceteris paribus- before I can contentedly go off to sleep. Both of them are very small wishes, if seen in perspective. Well, for one I want to have a patch up conversation with my brother before I sleep. The other thing is somewhat of the same magnitude, but I shall not mention it just to keep the mystery quotient about this blog alive.

I would have ended the last paragraph with a smiley (to fortify my smart ass comment about mystery quotients) but I guess it is not a smiley mode tonight. As I write this I have come to realize that my wishes are not going to be granted, so will probably have to make do with some comfort food. At this point, I don't want anything so bad but these small wishes. If God decides to appear at this moment, I know what I want. Forget all the big stuff about happy lives, and accomplishments and other bloated desires. I don't want any of them ( I mean I want them too intrinsically), but just these two things. Funny, how you feel so differently at the end of the day. Had this been a morning, I would have craved for the world.

But a consolation did come before the night ended. A small one, that eased the frown from my forehead and took me into another frame of mind. It is just that different train of thought that you need to board sometimes and enjoy the ride. A friend shared a blog that had this poem. I am posting it here.

The Patience of Ordinary Things

by Pat Schneider

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they're supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

"The Patience of Ordinary Things" by Pat Schneider from Another River: New and Selected Poems. © Amherst Writers and Artists Press, 2005.

Liberation

Do you see the Red Cross message to the right of this text?
I am not a person who can ask people to donate. I am scared that I am entering very personal premises of the other person by telling him/her what they "should" or "could" do. Nevertheless, it feels liberating that I allowed this widget to show.

Have you plugged your headphones and turned the volume to the highest, while You Tube/I tunes/others plays a song?
Did it right now. In a few moments took it out thinking that my sleeping roommate had something to say, which I would miss hearing since my ears are overly occupied. A few seconds pass. I put the headphones back. It is liberating to do something just for ears. Others can wait.
Recommended: "That's All- Genesis. They say:

"Just as I thought it was going alright
I find out I'm wrong, when I thought I was right..."

Have you abandoned a number puzzle for a blog?
Did that too, right now :) Liberated from proving to myself each time that I am not so dumb.

But still captive... expections that make me peer into other windows, waiting for the sun to shine, silly day dreams that I wish came true. Unanswered questions, an unexplained game.

"I could leave but I won't go
It'd be easier I know"

That's All.