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I don't live here anymore...

My new blog is

www.athenasnotebook.wordpress.com

Nothing much over there right now but soon will be adding more stuff.

Small Potatoes

(Title courtesy X-files)

Forgive me God for I have sinned- betraying those who loved (still love) me unconditionally. Maybe there is a way out of this feeling of guilt but I don't see it. I don't see a way out- not because what happened is irreparable but because I feel no guilt. But I know...I have sinned. Maybe I am one of those who can only feel guilt through the eyes of ethics and not feel it like a true feeling. Maybe I am partially colorblind and the only color that I cannot see is that of guilt. But I am also hopeful because whether I feel the guilt or not I can actually feel the reigns of my life setting in perfectly like they were designed for me. I am, in true sense, getting a grip on my life- gradually and consciously.

I believe that as a species we are the only narrow-minded creatures who are capable of broad-mindedness. We all know that the set of possibilities that can happen to us is infinite and yet we set out in this vast and complex world of ours with precise notion in our minds thinking that certain things will never happen to us. We say to ourselves,

“This…would of course not happen to me.”

We forget that if at the end of our lives the things that we thought would never happen to us actually did never happen to us then the reason was not because we thought so, but because some bizarre equation that we have no whatsoever control over decided not to give us those things to be experienced. Some might want to call it God…I’d rather call it an equation for my love of mathematics.

I am narrow-minded and thought exactly in the same way like everyone else. I never wanted this to happen to me but it did- and it has a texture- the texture of the crumpled walls that I had written about long ago. When I press my back against it the network of nerve endings on my back tell me about its roughness through the impulses traveling at the speed of light and remind me of every second that I spent with him in these four months- those days so vivid in my memory that I sometimes mistake them for dreams, for I think that reality is only a draft and the end result can only be a dream- lucid; beautiful; happy and complete. Knowing this nature of my reality and my dreams, when I look back I vaguely remember smelling his shirt; kissing his hands, eyes and lips; looking at him and listening to his calm breathing pattern while he’s sleeping; finding a force in his voice while he speaks of things irrelevant to me …I believe that it’s all real. But I also believe that these pieces of reality- the fragrence; the touch; the voices; the forces are only parts of a rehearsal, the main act; the culmination of what people call love that hasn't arrived yet will be a dream. It will be complete.

Now as I speak of the strength of my growing love for him I realize that there was a part of him in me that had developed unconditionally and I killed it. I’d say that I did that to keep the balance of my heart and my mind but in truth I just didn’t have the courage to let it grow. I don’t know if he knows about it or not. I also don’t know what his feelings about it are. I never asked him about it. Maybe I was scared…scared that he’d know…that he’d be sad. That would make me the insensitive one; the one who feels no guilt… the one who doesn’t feel at all. I think that an apology would be a tawdry attempt at trying to make everything look trivial and so I would stay quiet and wait for us to complete each other and probably...one day... I will be free.

Letters of Ayn Rand

One has to read this letter that Rand wrote to her editor about the poor advertising of her book fountain head.

I don't know if I can survive this book. 8 years ago I was so impressed by a book that I couldn't read anything else but only those things that were written by the author of that book. No other book could induce the flesh-chilling effect as that book did. And now, after 8 years of reading all sorts of literatutre ,I have come back in a circle. To the same point where I feel exactly like I felt 8 yrs ago and it's funny that the words are written by the same auhtor only now it isn't fiction. It's her own life but there's no difference. Her fiction held the assertiveness of reality as much as her reality holds the grandiosity of her fiction. If you don't, in effect, find it interesting I'd be surprised and would want to know why. All her correspondence shows an unsurpassable clarity of thoughts and brilliance of her mind. I can't impress enough upon why should one read this book and so I am using AR's own way of purporting her book by quoting some of the paragraphs from the letter:

[And Aadi this is especially for you coz I know when you will read this you will wanna get a copy of your own. lol]

Dear Archie,

Thank you for your letter. It's very nice of you to wish to cheer me up- and that is why your letter was heartbreaking to me. If I were up against malice,I could fight it. When I am up against genuinely good intentions- not backed up by facts- I am licked.

...

You say: " I guess it's your faith in others I sometimes worry about." I don't know what that word means. If you mean "faith" in a religious sense- in the sense of blind acceptance- I don't have any faith in anything or anybody, I never have had or never will have. I go by facts and reason. I had neither faith nor nonfaith in you when I first met you. I formed no opinion of you until I had some concrete evidence on which to base an opinion. I trust and admire you as an editor, because of the intelligent judgement you exhibited while we were working on the novel. This is not "faith".It is much sounder. It is my reasonable conviction.

What evidence has Bobbs-merrill given me of its competence to handle business side of a book's publication?

...

Don't talk to me about my book "not depending on one line in an ad." It doesn't. It doesn't depend on any one of the things [for publicity] that Bobbs and Merrill havn't done. But what, in christ's name, does it depend on? My wonderful genius? Is that what you expect to sell books for you? Do you believethat good publishers succeed or fail on mere luck- the luck of getting or not getting a good books? Do you believe that it's the books that do it? Thenwhat are publishers for? What is it that good publishers do for their authors? Just set up the print? Take the credit if the book succeeds and blame it onthe author if it doesn't?

...

I know it wasn't indifference or laziness on your part. It was your goodwill, politeness and faith in your advertising agency. That's what makes itmuch worse than intentional negligence. There's your best example of the results of faith. Everything you've done on your own has been good and able.You turn your side at the most important moment- not for any good cause, not on any logical reason- but for the sake of courtesy to a lot of worthlesspeople. I know your career depends on this book as much as mine. You're scrificing it- for the sake of humanitarian kindness to other people. there's a rather tragic illustration of the fact that I really wrote the truth in my book. It's not just a story, Archie. It works that way- in internationalpolitics, in private life or in the publishing business. It's good intentions that are murdering all of us.

[here comes my favorite part of the letter]

Archie darling, goodness is no proof or gaurantee of anything whatsoever on earth. So it's perfectly pointless to assure me how much you want my book to succeed. I know it. I believe you. What I don't believe is that the firm of Bobbs and Merrill knows how to sell a book. If desire were all, then any writer would have a bestseller....

...you don't buy novels beacuse their authors are sincere in wanting them to be good.You buy on the basis of performance. You judge by concrete and reasonable standards. NOT by anybody's faith, sincerity, desire or the fourth dimension.

Our contract reads that they [the publishers] have the right to publish the book in any way they please. There is an implication of honor in such a clause.It is presumed that the publisher will exert his honest best effort to publish and sell a book in the best way possible to him. So honor is all I have to rely on now. Honor,honesty and integrity are matters of intelligence, reason an action, not of goodwill, emotion, sentiment, desires, instincts and much. Let the conscience of whoever is concerned- yourself, Mr Chambers, Mr. baker, Miss reynolds and all others- tell you what must be done now.

All i can add is that my life is at stake. Also yours.

[The defense rests. :-D ]

No Man's Land

Song of the day: Fly away from here... (Aerosmith)

“Yes you can be amoral... but not immoral. Yes you can call it an unfettered life, except for the chains that you choose to wear…”

It's so damn easy to be you and now I know how ordinary you are.

Could it be easier than this? Lie, cheat and coax. Then, when someone points it out just convert it to guilt; write sad poetry about it; add it as an extension to your character and call it as your “Dark Side”. Then declare to the entire world,

“I have a dark side and I live in undeniable guilt!”

Make the whole guilt thing sound as if it's some kind of atonement. Better still, call it chains. Let it paint your eyes with the depth of a pain that you created in such a way that it hurts you only on those places where you’d enjoy it. It is as unreal and a lie as your deed was.

“How can one be guilty and be unfettered?”

I thought that the worst part about guilt was that it bound you. It made your desires as a part of the ‘undoable’.

You say, “This is my guilt and let me bear the pain.”

One doesn’t choose pain according to their own convenience and that’s what makes it pain. If you can bear it and be so comfortable with it then it isn’t pain. You can elude the world with it. But not me…not you.

Don’t lie. Just tell the truth. It hurts but it’s addictive. Don’t make the empty feeling of pseudo guilt and pain your life. It’s not worth it.

- Journals of a Vagabond

I saw the movie “No man’s Land” a few days ago. Apart from stating the obvious that it was humorous as hell, well directed and the script was written brilliantly, I would like to add that I cannot erase the ending scene where the camera zooms out on the soldier lying on the mine from my mind. It’s weird because I am doing my work, an assignment or cooking or walking to school and suddenly (from some arcane place within me) the scene comes out and just flashes in front of my eyes. I stop for a minute; stare at nothing in particular and then just let it go after I have replayed in my mind for a minute or two.

Yeah!!Yeah!! I give importance to itsy-bitsy things in life. What are you going to do about it? It’s a personal blog. I can write about anything. lol

The comment on "Motorcycle Diaries Blog"

I recently recieved this comment. I know who the person is and I want to reply to him properly. Since the reply was a bit too long for a comment and so I am converting it into a full fledged blog. The lines in bold are the lines from the comment.

"Before one starts questioning what is already there and taking a high moral stance, he or she better understand first the essence of what is already there and then start worrying about questioning it. That more or less explains it."

I don't know if it's an add-on to what I had written or a critique. Whatever it is it's pretty superfluous 'coz I think that I already dealt with "the knowing first and then questioning" part in my choice of expression...i.e., physics. Only fools and ignorant people question what is already there without understanding it. That is the difference between a dogma and science. A dogma can question beliefs without understanding them while science first tries to understand their nature before questioning them. That is also the reason why I chose physics in the first place...instead of a religion.

"Finally to put it simply it’s a movie about the unpredictability and triviality of life."

But of course!!What else? It is a movie based on the life of two travelers... it would certainly depict the “triviality and unpredictability of life”.But if that is the only thing that you saw than all you have seen is the obvious part of the movie. Any movie about traveling would do that. Even a trashy movie with bad direction would be able to convey the "unpredictability of life". But that is not what sets it apart from other movies of the same genre. What makes it an out-of-the-league movie is not any of its events but the fact that it’s written in such a natural way. The actors; the grandeur of the background; the richness of the culture; the humor and the dialogues are sketched in such a manner that it doesn't feel like a movie at all but like a personal experience. It did not leave me mesmerized or breathless but with the feeling that I have been deeply involved in an unconscious way with every breath that it took.

When anyone is talking about life there is everything to talk about. It is not a breath of fresh air or the taste of just soaked earth by rain that one might find hard to explain.

And this is exactly what I wanted to avoid. Talking about life in general. Talking about, in my own way, what the movie has already conveyed in its best form. The blog was in praise of the movie and how and why it influenced me…not a rephrasing exercise.

If u can’t feel and cant write about it then that means nothing has changed.

Two years ago I'd have said," Not very insightful." and that it doesn't deserve a response but right now I will tell you what I really think. Firstly, I never said that I don't feel about the movie so that part of the argument is quite pointless. Secondly, not being able to write about something does not have anything to do with the change that a person is going through. According to me it's absurd to connect an activity with its perceivable expression. Everyday a change might occur in a person whether he/she expresses it or not. It's how life goes. Hell even Gautam buddha could not explain Nirvana to any of his deciples. Does that mean that the change in him never occured? That is why I said...one will have to see the movie to understand the magnanimity...just like the only person who can understand the nature of his personal experience is himself.

“The feelings described in the end are just some whims that will fade away as quickly as you felt them or would have faded away already.”

Now that sentence shows prejudice but I have started taking prejudice in a much better manner than I used to so I will let it linger. You might be right though. Everything that I said might fade and I assure you that I am working on this aspect of my personality.

Thanks for stopping by and commenting on my blog. It makes me feel less insignificant. lol

Motorcycle Diaries

I don’t know from where to start. I have decided what I would want to do in life. I would want to teach physics. The science of how and why things are as they are. As much as it is a personal quest; physics is also something that I believe can change the course of world. We humans are curious and we all tend to ask questions. There should be nothing in the world that stops us from achieving the maximum intensity of our potential as a human being, the potntial that lies in our ability to question what is already there. If we cannot ask questions then all the millennia of evolution that god set off as an automatic process is a waste. Isn’t it? More on this in some other blog.

One gets up in the morning and finds gunk in the corners of ones eyes without realizing the importance of the process. It’s such a simple body function… in fact so simple that no one ever seems to notice that it’s so damn important to keep your eyes clean. (Imagine waking up every morning with dust particles getting into your eye and irritating the iris.) The beauty of the whole process lies in the fact that it happens without having you bother about it.

I watched Motorcycle Diaries a couple of days ago. Just like you cannot feel the enormity of mountains without seeing them; you would not be able to fathom its depths if you have not watched it yourself. One has to see the movie to feel its magnanimity.

It’s done like a simple daily ritual- naturally and beautifully... just like the collection of gunk in the corner of your eyes: cathartic; important and insignificant. It won’t leave you sleepless or restless. You would not find it revolutionary and it would not disturb you in any way. You’d watch it at night with your friends; eat popcorn; go to sleep and get up the next day to go back to your life expecting everything to be the same. But then you’d realize that something has changed and you are not you anymore. Everyday of your life from then on would pass as if it’s a sequence of changes that you are more than conscious of. If you have seen (can see) what I have seen in the movie then everyday when you wake up you would see the gunk collected at the corners of your eyes. Before you clean it off let me tell you- it’s the part of your life that was yours before you saw the movie.

There’s something that has changed, I can feel it but can’t seem to write or talk about it. As I said…natural…beautiful and let me add…indescribable.

I don't want to belong

No matter where you go,
the borken rules will follow you.
For when you are born,
and if you know where you are from,
you would be cursed with the rules.

I don't want to belong.
I don't want to belong.

They are everywhere:
The rules of skin,
the rules of love.
The rules of sin,
and the rules of redemption:
In red, in black, in brown and in white...

It is not the sorrow,
for sorrow can be forgiven.
It's the feeling of tastlessness,
the feeling of indifference,
That just stays in your mind.

If you ever made a choice;
It was between the rules:
the rules of wrong;
and the rules of right.

I don't want to belong.
I just don't want to belong.

An Insoluble Note

“You know what happened on the day when God read Dickens’s Great Expectations and was so damn intrigued by the character of Ms Havisham?”

“I was born.”

Ms. Havisham. Oh how vividly I remember her character. The epitome of “the heart broken”; her palace pervaded by the stench that comes after a rotting death, not only of the physical body but also of the emotions that it once carried; her old wedding dress: papery and yellow; the big dining room, stilled years ago (when her lover ditched her on her wedding) with the dust reigning over every piece of grandeur instead of the planned celebration and where she roamed with a senseless urgency like an apparition of the past.

I believe that my life is, in some form or other, a version of Ms. Havisham’s- sometimes I am her, tragically dragging the moments that I missed or hated; moments that would never come back and sometimes I am her deceitful lover, gauging and weighing myself only in terms of treachery or guile.

I had a friend who I’d talk to every time I needed someone. He was my only escape from loneliness and the monotony that percolates one’s life when one doesn’t have a lot of people who understand him/her.

One day, in the morning, I opened my eyes startled by the sound of a crash. Somewhere something had broken… beyond repair. I didn’t realize what it was until I realized that I was excluded from the list of people who he would talk to and that he would totally close himself to me, not because he hated me, but because he was attracted to me.

I know he’s doing this as a self-defense mechanism and I’m sure a lot of people do this in order to save themselves from getting hurt. There’s nothing wrong in this attitude. This blog is not about whether this is wrong or right or something that would bring my friend back in my life. This blog is about how I feel about the situation; just like his breaking up of our friendship was about him, this blog is just about me…me and me.

So when I told this to my brother, with a sheepish crying voice, asking him to give me solace, he said:

“Well he has a point. He just can’t be your friend anymore. Some people get around with things like that and some don’t.”

To which I replied with silence. The only thing that was shrieking in my head was a distant voice…shrill and discordant…uttering all sorts of nonsense,

“Ask him!!! Ask him… what about those great times that we spent laughing; those long discussions on useless but meaningful subjects; what about that spark of clash that lighted both our lives? Doesn’t all of that matter anymore? Is that it? So just because a romantic relationship cannot develop between us, the code of friendship, that frequency matching that we shared is now to be burned and forgotten? Doesn’t he understand that it’s the friendship that matters beyond any emotion or potential of being hurt?”

Of course it’s painful to know that when you are crying hard and you ransack your treasury of support, you see your own empty hand, blurred by your tears. You wipe off the tears and reality forces itself into you, that in a relationship, someone made a choice to starve and die because it had become a kind of poison for them, leaving you no right whatsoever to decide what can happen next and not give enough leverage to be able to cry over it either.

But I remained silent because I knew that there’s only one answer to it…it’s a choice and you can’t question people’s choices.

He quoted somewhere recently:

“Over time he had acquired the ability to blend into the background of whatever he was - into bookshelves, gardens, curtains, doorways, streets- to appear inanimate, almost invisible to the untrained eye. It usually took strangers a while to notice him even when they were in the same room with him. It took them even longer to notice that he never spoke. Some never noticed at all....He occupied very little space in the world'”

… from Roy’s God of small things.

The quote had nothing to do with me but that instant, when I read that quote, I realized that he has made his choice of roaming in his loneliness; wearing an old garb of intense emotion that he’s still trying to savor by hiding; blend in the background and not ask for more space than he already has. And later when he would have come to terms with his background and the little shell of space that surrounds him, I would be entombed eternally as the undeclared “deceitful lover”.

Sometimes I feel depressed when I realize that in some things, I just can’t do anything but remain silent and roam with my own ghosts of deception and trickery, unlike her deceitful lover, but very much like Ms. Havisham herself.