Fear in the Mirror

The clouds came back last night

Returning the cold shivers of my mind

With a lightning of a thousand shadows;

I looked up and down searching for your life

Not to find it in the illusion of what appeared

If only all that had been never was.

I could call upon the angels to let you fly

But I saw despite the utter darkness

Fear in the mirror;

Oh! How a tainted blow upon the soul

Summons the guards of hell

For in the end we are mere shadows

Groping in the mirage of our light

Like apparitions you and I,

How we danced to the whims of imaginary colours!

To think we are of flesh and blood

I only know I am endowed with you

If only this feeling made us real,

I could call upon the angels to let us fly

Like darkness calling out to you

Fear in the mirror;

So I let the prisoner of reflection step out

Casting the mirror forever to dust

But the fear returns like vapour

In the break of dawn

I could see that fear was me all along.

A Walk in the Park

There are phases when the mind grows weary of pursuits close to its heart. It’s time to take a walk in the park. I was trying to give form to thoughts ready to be expressed but then my heart let out a cry and wanted a breath of fresh air. I spent years arriving at new ideas but while my feet kept moving, they never took me to newer horizons and places. There were ideas for the mind but the feet were left with nothing and I could no longer let the indifference continue to bleed. So, I decided to pay heed to the eyes that wanted to look outside. I suddenly felt my lungs take in more air than it ever did before. It was not that I had underestimated my lung capacity but it was just that my mind took more blood than it needed. My lungs were left gasping for more...for more. One day my mind refused to work despite people telling me to pursue its course. How can I do that when my intellect refuses to work? I realized that I was wrong. It was not that my intellect refused to work but it was just that my mind did not let me access the intellect anymore because I had come to neglect the wishes of my body. I decided then that it was time for me to take a walk in the park.

It was a new year and I was in Cubbon park. A sunny afternoon took a nap over the trees so that I could only feel the cool breeze. I believe that it is called the freedom park because it is where the spirit of freedom is parked. I could not see the spark and I did not know where freedom was parked but I was glad that I left my mind behind and got my peace back in time. Here and there were foreigners (perhaps “English” going by the accent) talking about “stone innovations” and local couples by the bench looking to get deeper and liberate themselves from the monotony of pragmatic chores! They expressed their desire ‘to live a little’ as Americans would put it. To live a little in India is to live a lot. In America it is the least that the free spirit would expect. The romantic spirit is different from the free spirit in the loaded sense. The free spirit is broader and travels faster to stagnation while the romantic spirit slows down to a point of stillness with breathing gaining sufficient momentum every time.

I sat on a bench for a while and inhaled peacefully. There were no words of wisdom but simply an air clear of thoughts. I breathed for the first time almost like a child. I remember observing a child look at the surroundings as though they were brand new. What cannot be purchased is a clear vision without ideas. After some time, I left the park and walked over to the signal where I had to take a different pause. I did not notice the vehicles pass me by, but just their presence to be able to walk over to another direction.

I was interested in what seemed to me a place of pleasant contradictions. While at the airlines hotel, there was a pizza stop. It was a stall. Stopping over for a pizza in the open air coincided with my desire to have a Zen pizza. Under the banyan tree, I lost my mind and came out from a zone of extreme caution to a space free of cares. It was where the conflict between my mind and body found a delicate resolution.

From then on I returned as and when I pleased. When I left, there was nothing left to resolve. There was no food for rationality. I savoured the point at which I found myself in harmony. I did not realize till then that it was as easy as a walk in the park.

Does Sense of Belongingness Make Sense?

A country is an artificial way of establishing togetherness. It is not the jurisdiction that gives you a feeling of being at home. Home is not just a place where you reside, but a place where you feel at home. Without this feeling, you might simply refer to it as a room or a place where you are 'residing' and not 'living'. A room in a sense is like Kafka's shell. You have a space in the midst of the wild but you belong only there and outside you see yourself as a being to the other. There is no one like you and everybody else or most people are similar to each other. If there are individuals like you they are few and far in between. You find the individual in them and do not see them as the other to you. As far as people who constitute the other in terms of common patterns of behaviour and inclinations are concerned, it would be as well to say that they are all the same and must constitute 'the other'. You are different from the other and you cannot be indifferent about it all the same. In a country where you are a citizen and you share a commonality in feature as in the physical plane you are spoken off as being one with the country say, Indian, American and so on.  You may not feel at home with the place, you may not feel accepted there because you have different interests and inclinations despite the fact that they are perfectly legitimate. This could be just one of the many reasons. The patterns of madness in the nation in terms of trends and the obsessions of the mass may have you culturally ousted for no fault of yours. You cannot feel at home in your own land.

When officially you are asked for your residential address, you just give an established address. You may not be residing there. That does not apparently matter. What matters is that you have an address that is legally established. This is registered and your so called "home" is in the system. The place where you live may not be your residential address; it may not be your home at all in the established sense of the term but that is the place, my dear where you feel at home and where you are at comfort with yourself. This is your true address and this is where you experience integration (many say strength but I would prefer to say integration for home is where you collect yourself). Therein you realize your identity and this is what gives you, your address. The system does not recognize it because it is not in it and as far as it is concerned the real identity "is not".

A country where your potential is curbed is not a place where you can grow, and where you cannot grow, you cannot be. Just because you are a citizen of a country does not mean you belong to the country. Your countrymen and women may expect you to be grateful to the country just because you were born in it or are a citizen. This expectation is by no means legitimate. Patriotism is scarcely germane to your existence as a being in flesh and blood, and being of soul. The pursuit of happiness or discovery encompasses landscapes that no authority on jurisdiction can fathom and no bureaucrat of administrative denominations can understand or even hope to imagine.

As a matter of self awareness in your existential time, when someone asks you, "what do you want to do when you grow up?", please feel free to say, "I just...I just want to live".

Disappearance-Incarnate

You move from indifference to difference when a whole new metamorphosis has begun. The alienation as a result frees you from the roots that made you appear just like others before. Such a time loses any earthly value to you and you begin like you never did before. A quality you cannot qualify, a movement you cannot represent, the identity you cannot determine for without the perception of the other you are disappearance-incarnate.

Impossible Reactions

Do all actions have reactions? Every action exhibits traits. Although these traits are visible, they are not always noticed in isolation. Traits of an action eventually constitute the characteristics of the nature of the action. It is an event under certain conditions. Without these conditions an action takes a different form. It can also be the case that it will fail to take effect, in other words the action is impossible. The sense of an action is in effect, independent of the value attached to it. This means that the action has a value a priori. It cannot not be coloured by an external agent. If the observation is coloured it is an automatic distortion having nothing to do with the impact of the action. The impact is the value of the action in itself. Under the same conditions, the action has no other value other than its shared impact. The impact takes the observation back to the nature of the action. When the conditions are changed the same action can become impossible. Impossibility is not just that which is not possible. It also includes the inconceivable.

It can be said that not all actions have the same reaction as their respective natures are different. A tree appears still. It is rooted to a place but it is part of actions. These actions cannot have reactions. When the wind blows against it, there is a rhythmic movement. This makes it look elegant. It does not shake in a clumsy manner. It adds to the gentle breeze as well, giving the atmosphere a delicate touch. It moves with the breeze. It does not get shaken by the breeze. Only when there is a storm it may get uprooted but when it does not get uprooted, it retreats ever so gracefully. There is a difference in condition here. The root cause of the break down could be the roots or the intensity of the storm/wind. If it is the roots, then the nature of the root is to be viewed. If it is the intensity of the storm, then the nature of the storm is the subject matter of focus. Is it the strength of the roots or the ferocity of the storm that has the caused the breakdown? If the roots are strong, the storm can still uproot the tree. This is a matter of threshold. It cannot be said that the roots are week just because the tree could not withstand the storm. What about the storm? The action of the storm has an impact but it does not have a reaction. This is not just a matter of semantics. It is a phenomenon very much in keeping with natural laws.

Take the shadow of the curtains. You do not see the curtains by looking at the motion of its shadow. What you see in the motion of its shadow is a different movie altogether. This movie is figment of the imagination of your mind. It is the intelligence of your body that makes the movie without your awareness. It is a distortion effect in the paradigm in which common knowledge operates but it is a phenomenon in its own right with a dignity unassailable by the closure of the consciously known. This is an unsolicited action and there is no reaction. There may be wonder or surprise but that is no reaction. Unsolicited advice makes no sense and is ignored without any reaction. It welcomes no relevance. Unsolicited action by the intelligence of your body takes you away from what you consciously know. This is welcome, a pleasant revelation of yourself beyond what you know about yourself. This is an action. There can be no reaction. It is impossible in to arrive at a meaningful value of this movie in the plane of knowledge. Even if it is called resemblance from experience, it has no relevance to the plane of physicality and does not alter the equation.  

It is impossible to react to a phenomenon of no earthly criticality as much as it is to react to an action of which you are only a part.

Do Words Disappear?

As I can see, great many individuals read under competitive pressure. There is a tendency to associate reading with learning. For every word that you read, the imagination has escaped your mind. You see the words in every line of every page. But where do they go? Do they disappear? I am tempted to say that these words are not ideas by themselves. I refrain from saying that only because as a reader, I am in mind the only one. What about you? Do you find yourself in your mind or do you cease to exist by becoming a reader. You may be curious to know if the thoughts and phantoms of the author fill your vessel. Your vessel is never really empty.
Your vessel can never really be full.

The brain is not an organ when you are alive. It is devoid of any value or significance when you receive the thought, character and essence of the author. As the words pass you by, you do not see the meanings in a vacuum. You sense the thought that eventually completes itself at a point of disambiguation. A point where no camouflage is possible. But what do you understand? What do you let pass by? A meaning so insanely incoherent that your soul does not let in, finds its way into your brain  now filled with insolence. You read but you do not reflect. You remember but you do not absorb. You quote but you never truly understand. Whenever you quote you are always misquoting the author, if you cannot appreciate the cognitive convulsions of the author. Do words disappear? Have you killed them for the brand of your intellect? If you surrender meekly to the demands of the eyes of trend and horror, what you have only done is to deplete in vain every pulse of your self esteem. In so doing, you adorn the unreal pride of readership at the expense of clarity of the author's thought and character. Words have disappeared indeed!

You may read a book a day. You are merely replacing one author with another...one book with another. The authenticity of your mind is doomed if there is no absorption. You have no place for the author in you...the author who is you and you have a lot left to unlearn my dear friend.

Please Fund My Common Sense

A man is made by the company he keeps. It is the upbringing by guardians and peers who exert a profound influence on his sense of who he is. That is why it is important to be selective about your friends. Genetic engineers might as well do research on bread and butter instead of genetic predispositions. Our bread and butter is eaten up by these life scientists through institutional funding. If every man has to do everything for himself then nothing will be achieved. If every man is left to fend for himself, then we will have a planet of lost souls. Over and above this nuisance of capitalism, why fund the biological scientists who labour in delusions in the name of clinical research? Nature has made everyone differently and everyone has a certain uniqueness that gives them strengths. They come with deficiencies as well. This is why everyone needs to help everybody else. This cannot happen in an artificial system where everything is based on process and inheritance. Biological and medical sciences cannot change people to suit the ideology of power mongers and plutocrats. It is going to be a matter of time before they face the truth.