Two Minds. Or Many.

I meant to love you

But got distracted by myself

And then the monkeys came along

And we just had to watch them play

By then we had both forgotten about love

And misery

And melancholy

And togetherness

And loneliness

I meant to tell you

You meant the world to me

But the world means so little

I took one day at a time

And tried years at a go

And nothing changed

We stand still like clowns at a circus

The last show over

The people gone

The pretty horses smoking rings of sawdust

The lights might have faded

But the stars still shine

Please,please,please

Leave me be

I might get along with ghosts

But I don't want to 

 

The Commuter's Musings

'What you don't ever catch a glimpse of on your wedding day-because how could you?-is that some days you will hate your spouse, that you will look at him and regret ever exchanging a word with him, let alone a ring and bodily fluids. Nor is it possible to forsee the desperation and depression,the sense that your life is over, the occasional urge to hit your whining children, even though hitting them is something you knew for a fact you would never ever do. And of course you don't think about having affairs, and when you get to that stage in life when you do (and everyone gets there sooner or later), you don't think of the sick feeling you get in your stomach when you are conducting them, their inherent unhappiness. And nor do you think about your husband waking up in the morning and being someone you don't recognize. If anyone thought about any of these things , then no one would ever get married, of course they wouldn't ; in fact the impulse to get marry would come from the same place as the impulse to drink a bottle of bleach, and those are the kinds of impulses we try to ignore, rather than celebrate. So we can't afford to think these things because getting married-or finding a partner whom we will want to spend our lives with and have children by-is on our agenda. It's something we know we will do one day, and if you take that away from us then we are left with promotions at work and the possibility of winning a lottery ticket, and it's not enough, so we kid ourselves that it is possible to enter these partnerships and be faced only with the problems of mud removal, and then we become unhappy and take Prozac and then we get divorced and die alone.'

I had picked up Hornby's How To Be Good from a Sunday market in Delhi I think, a couple of years back and promptly forgotten about it until last week when I found it, Nick Hornby carved out in bright, bold, banana-yellow on the dusty jacket, during one of my very infrequent clean-up fits. I put it in my to-go-to-work bag, to colourize my long commutes to and from work. It's a circus act, these commutes. You wait till the vehicle you are supposed to get arrives. And like most things in life, it doesn't. Then you wait for anything that will arrive and take you anywhere remotely close to where you are supposed to be. You spot the thing, wave madly and if you are lucky, you hop on and if it's a normal day, you just manage to squeeze in. Manipulating your body through a human jungle, you find just enough space to stand on one leg, which you then proceed to do for an hour or so. There are jolts and jerks and all sorts of vehement, violent movements you subject your body to. Sometimes you are flailing about awkwardly, sometimes grabbing just about anything solid and if you have a hand left over, you reach in and pull out a ringing phone. Or a book.

How to Be Good. Well, it's Hornby, so of course there must be no such thing as steps to being good or even any valid reason to be good, provided of course, you can define doing this,this,this is also known as being good. Hornby does not disappoint. It's a rant and while the Angriest Man in Holloway might have actually written a newspaper column, you realize the Angriest Woman in Holloway is writing the book. Having an affair doesn't help. Career doesn't help. Getting faith doesn't help. Children don't help. Friends and family, ditto. Religion doesn't help. Ha! Like Hornby was going to make it that easy. There is no ideal man, there is no ideal marriage, there is no ideal life. But that you already knew. If you get out trying, good for you. If you stop trying, well, just as well since it really does not matter either way.

Someone mistakes you for a handle. Reading time over.

Come evening and you head back. Yet another long commute but there is something lovely about the evening. Something very mellow about the tones of the sky. All those blues and greys and smattering of stars above the traffic signal seems almost romantic. And that beautiful juxtaposition of those birds sitting calmly on the telephone wires, above all the craziness and rush that is the prime-time traffic. You take your book out and read again. And now it's not a rant. All Hornby is saying is that people are unhappy and people are human and there are different ways of dealing with life and sometimes actions aren't meaningful while non-actions mean the world and you can do what you want to and do what you need to but be prepared to accept that often neither is going to be enough. You look up and take in the people around you. There are people waiting to get back to the comfort of home. There are other people really, really not looking forward to that, and clearly wanting to spend more time with the present company. And there is the slightly creepy co-worker who you've begun to suspect follows you home.

It's such a mixed bag, life. One day you are waxing sentimental about your old college days, the next being horrified by front page news of some boy attempting to kill a girl who rejected his advances and then killing himself in the very same college. Then there is love and hate and their interchangeability. You think of some beautiful lines you had read-

Oh yes, I have known love, and again love,
and many other kinds of love;
but of that tenderness I felt then,
is there nothing I can say?

 If one person knew of this tenderness, then by induction, so did others. Given that in parts at least, we are commutative.

Hornby ends with

'And then, I can do this. I can live this life. I can, I can. It's a spark I want to cherish, a splutter of life in the flat battery; but just at that wrong moment I catch a glimpse of the night sky behind David, and I can see that there is nothing out there at all.'

But that's just it. There is. Maybe not as annoyingly magical as THAT friend claims it is. Maybe it's a moment, a person, a time-point.

There are the hills. Always. Surely anyone would find the spark on the hills!

The evening deepens. So does the cacophony of car horns. And then suddenly, you spot the vehicle of your choice. It's not crowded either. Perhaps poetry is not dead after all.

The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul

I decided I was a lemon for a couple of weeks. I kept myself amused all the time jumping in and out of a gin and tonic.

Come and See

Well, it's official. The heat has forced me towards a movie binge where I am going to do nothing but imitate the lifestyle of a cocktail downing couch potato.....okay maybe just tomato juice with a celery stick thrown in.

Movies I am going to devour are:

• Natural Born Killers 
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
• Naked Lunch
• It's all Gone
• In Bruges
• Lord of War (just because of Jared Leto)
• Blow (Depp, Cruz!)
• Point Break (because I miss Swayze)
• Pineapple Express
• Enter the Void
• Conversation
• Baraka
• The Butterfly Effect
• Hard Candy
• A Tale of Two sisters
• Following
• Kill Bill

Because I am in a trippy mood, not unprepared to be scared and lastly need some gore!

Early Morning Rain

It's the kind of morning which makes you think of an autumn evening. That somber, dulled blue-grey sky which comes right after a brilliant sunset. A stealthy sunrise and the rain clouds roll in immediately. A wayward gust of wind brings the smell of rain. A second gust later, it starts raining. For five glorious, glorious minutes, it's a green, cool, wet world right outside my window. The lawns outside stretch like a field and the man sitting right in the middle of the lawns is doing exactly what I would be if the world was ending and I knew it-sitting and reading in the rain. I close my eyes and at that very, very specific moment, I feel like I am home, on the hills, deep in the middle of a forest. It is, for a second, the kind of morning that gives you all at once an ache in your heart, a taste of sand and salt and a sense of endless time. The kind of morning you won't remember off-hand but unknowingly set as some measure of perfection-saying, to the utter irritation of everyone, I don't remember where but I've seen better.

I Only Know How To Be Young

I can be jealous, naive, mean and irrational
Right down nasty sometimes
I can put your guard up
With big words and a tailored super ego
And then break your defenses with
Some mad, glad loving
My blues will chase yours into hiding
I feel I never will reconcile
The should, must, need and want
I intend to have and to hold
To love and to flourish
To change and to keep forevermore
I expect everything
In a world which doesn't know my name
I am not afraid to prod strangers
And ask them if they are real
If there is a chance
I'll wrench it loose
From it's box
I have been promised change
Fed on revolution
And I'll hold them on to it
I'll pay my dues if they are worth it
There is no need to tempt me
I'll trade you for it, only
Let the deal speak for itself
Keep all pretenses in the casket
There is just no time
What with all the songs that must be sung
And the stars that must be watched
Come gaze with me
I'll show you a sunset
You've probably seen
And tell you a story
You never could have imagined
I'll square the matter
Of Reason's Circle with you
Pre-conceived notions may roam
Prejudices must be slayed
There is a brewery of eternal youth
Next door, if you can manage the walk
In a slim, straight line
Don't peer too far
I am the future
And I am a stark, dark soul
Leave the placebos behind
The truth takes up too much space
And memory
If you project life on life
Do you get more or do you get better?
Come, if you have no answers
If you have answers
Come all the same
Just remember
Doublespeak is Greek to me
I have all it takes
To fix a light bulb
And write a brief history
Of timely actions
I'll call you out when
You start thriving on War and peaches
It may be too early to get up
Although it's never too early to start
And when the night falls
And the sound of silence
Is all I crave
Humour me.

Panama Cut Boy, The Real McCoy

It doesn’t happen often
It seems very rare
That I come knocking at your door
And don’t find you there
You’re always sitting round
You’re always waiting up
And it would be too bad and oh so sad
If it didn’t keep cracking me up
You gotta leave, baby
You gotta run, baby
You better stop, baby
You know I am just having fun
And I’ll go on and on and on
You’ll be the last one in the line
And I’ll be the first one to leave
But while it’s on I’ll lead you on
Say what you want to believe
You’re just a little baby, girl
You’re just so new at this
I got you in my game before you knew my name
I’ll keep you forever with a kiss
You can’t run hard enough
You can’t leave soon enough
You can’t stop, just can’t stop
One look, one touch
It's not too much
It's just enough to make it tough
To ever, ever give up
On me.