Ponderance

If I die today, who will pay back my loans?

Imagine

(Dated 12/07/2014)

Imagine a world where you don’t need money to survive: where people are kind and they smile at you and say good morning like they really feel it; a world where a man smiles at a woman with genuine good will rather than imagining what lies beneath her clothes. Imagine a world without passports and borders and jobs and responsibilities, where you can just pack your bag and walk out. Imagine everything that John Lennon told you to imagine. Now open your eyes.

You are looking at a screen, reading the thoughts of a person you may or may not know and most likely do not care about. You pause thinking, “this is depressing” and retire to your phone for five minutes, checking out random peoples’ engagement photos on Facebook and blasting pixel jellies out of the way. Maybe, you play a round of Quiz Up and bask in the glory of defeating someone you don’t know in something that NOBODY, including you, cares about. But you like to win, don’t you. You like the rush of being number one and having people look up to you as number one, don’t you. You like feeling important and popular even if it is for a minute don’t you? You get back to this blog post and immediately switch to Facebook on your laptop. Pictures of cute kittens, videos of babies getting massages, NSFW pictures of some model on some beach on some mind-numbingly stupid gossip rag. You go to sleep. You wake up four hours later and first things first you check your phone, to see who has messaged you.

I want to modify John Lennon’s message for our generation. Someday, soon, I want to wake up in the morning with a smile on my face, grab a backup with only two t shirts and a pair of jeans, an anorak and some cash, some books and walk out of my house, without my phone or my laptop. I want to buy a road atlas, and drive a car across America, catch a plane to Tokyo, navigate the crazy beautiful city with simple tourist-guide paper backs in English. After that I want to move, by car, by bus, by train. Hitchhiking, illegal car shares and selling my books for money for the next air ticket. Maybe I’ll consider sleeping with a man for a couple thousand dollars. Maybe I will reconsider. In any case, I will make my way to Bangkok and party all night, for a week. And when I run out of money, I will bus tables, or lead English tours to make some more.

I want to climb mountains. I want to take a dip in every ocean of the world, including the frigid arctic waters. I want to boat across rivers; white water rafting, with my heart in mouth and in those woven little boats, languidly floating across a sprawling tropical river, swatting mosquitoes with my hat. I want to visit villages and relish the fact that there are people who survive without cell phones, and laptops, and TV and expensive alcohol, and high heeled shoes, and mad urge to compete with and destroy any peer who threatens your self-worth. I want to wade knee deep into paddy fields in Laos or Cambodia or South India, and tend to the grains that grow from the soil, to sustain us. Plants, birds, animals and less fortunate human beings: all being born apparently for only one purpose, to serve those who can afford them. I want to sit on the shores of white, sandy beaches, watching the orange sun set slowly out of view, with a paper cup full of wine and no shoes. Nowhere to go, no deadlines, no Tinder, no impressing people. No need of a companion or investments or housing or higher education.

And finally when I am tired and I am all out of money and resources, when my bones grow old, and my mind can’t take it anymore, maybe I will climb one last mountain, watch one last sunset and ride one last ride to the bottom. I will not be confined by decay or disease, by hospitals or ungrateful progeny. I will fade along with the sun and I will go back to the soil I came from.

I wonder and I bet you wonder too, that why does inspiration only strike at four thirty in the morning. Maybe because you are as sick of it all as I am. Maybe because you are as scared as I am about facing reality that we absolutely have no choice to do what I dream of. Not you and not I. And it is fucking scary to think about finding happiness when everything about the world is wrong. But maybe you will go down without a fight, (paraphrasing a good friend), but I won’t. I will fight to keep my dream alive. I will strive to remain unhappy, dissatisfied, vulnerable and masochistic, because it keeps my dream alive: my dream to escape, my dream to not conform and my dream to escape from the daily reminders that I am useless until I prove otherwise. Yes, I will fight to remain unhappy because someday I want to be brave enough to give it all up and run away. Someday, I will run away and none of you will ever find me. 

Ode to the human condition during early winter

Pitter patter pitter patter
The sound of raindrops gently peppering the wooden roofs
Cold, so cold
Like angels' tears that froze.

Rain dots the bleak landscape,
The last, sparse patches of green,
Living their final days,
Yearning for light and glory,
But shrouded in grey,
Before the whiteness takes all.

Just a month ago,
The world was set ablaze,
In a riot of colours and hues.
A tribute to life,
An effort to be vibrant till the very end.

The bare branches stand silent now.
Sentient beings, going back to ancient sleep as powder falls from the heavens.
Sleep, sleep, sleep oh children of the great mother,
Sleep till it's time to live again.

But alas, we the race of thinkers,
Of ponderers, of philosophers,
Of narcissists who think we are better than life itself!
For us there is no sleep,
Only a wait, a long wait,
For the whiteness to fade and the colours to come back.

Ennui

So, what do you call someone with questionable dreams, no marketable skills and no ambition? what do you call a serial procrastinator who dreams of things that are impossible because the possible is  too difficult to achieve? What do you call a person who is so unsure of themselves that they are convinced that their whole life is a series of accidents- both serendipitous and devastating? How do you convince this person that they are worth something, that their presence has meaning, that their existence is not an accident? How to you convince this person that some activities are worth losing sleep for, some people are worth giving up unhealthy food for and some things are worth fighting for, dying for? How do you validate this person's life?


You don't!

Life

Who are you to tell me that my dreams are stupid? Who are you tell me that I should think practically, tangibly, realistically? Who are you to tell me what I can or should or must do?  I am the dirty-mouthed, sexually aggressive, socially awkward, child-woman, who doesn't have an idea about who she is or who she wants to be. She is the girl who goes to sleep with stars in her eyes, dreaming of globetrotting, from London to Rome, to Sao Paola, to Kingston, to Kuala Lumpur, to Laos, to Bangkok, to Goa. Oh sweet Anjuna, with your shimmering waters and white sands and spires of sweet hash smoke, transporting your inhabitants to transcendental states. I am a dreamer, who doesn't want anything in particular, except love, sex, drugs and rock and roll. I believe that Lana Del Rey and her melancholic songs of lost glory, sordid sex and drunken regrets are the answer to life, the universe and everything else, not 42.

I am a social misfit, even more out of place here: Where everyone is an over achiever, a princess, a brainiac, a genius, a virtuoso, someone special. This is no place for someone like me- an ordinary, dishonest, unscrupulous girl who literally believes in the adage, “Live fast, die young, bad girls do it well.” I am the crazy one, the one who would probably make a better porn star than a scientist, the one who prefers a night flying high on hash rather than the sweet joys of coding. I don’t belong in this band of special people. But I am here. And I am going to make it alive.

Not because I want to.

But because I have to.

Sometimes silence screams

Sometimes silence screams and only silence answers. The echos of silence, like heavy somber footsteps, weigh down upon one's heart, the crushing load of a thousand elephants. One considers screaming, a shrill long drawn vibrato, cutting through the heavy veil of silence like a blade, but realizes that it is futile. All sound is enveloped, ingested and digested. All sound blends into that inky blackness that is complete dark. One grows desperate now! The agony of being unheard and of words left unsaid is too much of a burden for a frail heart. But what can one do,except wait! Wait for words to break the spell, or for a peal of laughter to shatter the silence, like ripples on a dark glass. Wait, one must; one must wait, patiently for a song that will never be sung.

Silent Night

Its a cloudy night
And yet there is a calm breeze.
A girl sat up on the roof of her building.
Alone.
Feeling alone is one thing.
But being alone,
That's a different thing altogether.
She paused for a puff.
A new habit.
Acquired by the lack of her usual drugs.
Friends, alcohol and of course sweet Mary Jane.

She smoked the last of her cigarette like a joint.
She had no idea why she was so sad.
Perhaps denial worked better when one says it out loud.

She paused, contemplating one more...
Then she decided to wait for a bit.
What was it exactly?
Not the oh so cliche lack of a man?
Pictured spoke a thousand words.
She had a man a while back.
She didn't need one now.

What was it exactly?
The feeling of helplessness?
Impotence crushing?
The inability to make others feel better?
Or the lack of someone to make her feel better!

She looked up and saw no stars.
Nothing above.
Somethings left behind,
And everything in front of her.

She lit up another cigarette
And blended into the night.