Packing things away, Life should go on - Pt iii

Jan 31,2009

The Acoustics

Sometimes I swear I can hear you, in the wrinkles of clothes, in the hum of radios, in the mold slowly forming on unused t-shirts. I swear it. It’s there in my battered, torn shoes left to dry. It’s in my phone and my computer. It’s in the musty pages of old books and in empty deodorant cans. I hear you most when I climb into an unmade bed and feel the hairs on the sheets.

It’s there when I sort the clothes into the right position and in the soft, sagging folds I can hear “It’s wrong! It’s all wrong!” in that naturally cute voice of distress. It’s in the cigarettes over coffee and in the mirror where your grumpy face lingers in a shadow before realising your feelings and casting aside all maladies in a damp hug against the door.

It’s in the songs on the pod and in the sheets upon sheets of paper folded neatly in their envelopes hidden in my drawers. The chirrup of a phone. The pixels of an image. I hear it everywhere and nowhere. I can hear your voice in all these things but what I want is to hear your voice in my ear as I fall asleep and come home from work and sit hunched over this keyboard with fingers whirring at useless, random thoughts and in my bed telling me that it’s wrong, it’s all wrong until I make it right again and you fall asleep and grind your teeth at dreams to come.

January 17, 2009

The life and adventures of Bourbon

I was in a terrible place for a while. Lets not get into the details on that, lets just say that it was a low point. The past two months have been shaky to say the least, but they’re over. Now I am back. Hello.

I made a conscious decision on Tuesday. It happened when I woke up at six-thirty instead of eight and I had almost two hours to do nothing. I decided that I don’t really want to be doing the same anymore. It’s a good image I’ll admit; sitting in bars with friends having drink after drink and looking all the more haggard because you did the same the night before. And then the night before. But image isn’t everything. Last weekend I had so little sleep and so much alcohol that most of my memories of it are gone. I can pick bits and pieces, but they’re hazy at best. I felt like I was destroying myself a little bit.

Maybe I did, I don’t know, but I decided to stop.

And that’s what Tuesday was about. Tuesday was about setting things right, with everything. And it worked to an extent. Of course not everything was fixed and who knows maybe more problems have arisen, but things felt a hell of a lot better.

Anyway, I thought I’d break with the tradition of my usual veiled entries and just come out and say it; I am alright. I’m not overly ecstatic and I’m not down and out. I’m doing fine. This means that people can leave me alone in a room without showering me with protection, but it doesn’t mean you can abandon me or stifle me with affection. I am OK.

So there we go, lets resume regular programming.

Jan 11, 2009

Mancold Martyr

I’ve been sitting it out far too long at home sick as hell for the past few days so I thought I’d recount some of the titles I’ve watched. And other things.

First up is the much too short Afro Samurai which I will thrust down people throats. The only problem that I’d bring to figure would be the appalling lip-syncing. It’s as if Samuel Jackson looked at his characters and said “Fuck it, there shouldn't be no mother fuckin’ restrictions on my mother fuckin’ lines”. So there’s the occasional weird scene when the anime character is shouting and good old Samuel is whispering something. Other than that everything was seamless. I watched it over two days with the flatmate (God bless his soul for recommending it in the first place) and I really wished I could’ve watched it in one. The animation was seamless, the action perfect. And the teddy bear samurai- I liked him better when he didn’t take off his mask but he was yet brilliant.

Another on the anime list would be the Samurai Champloo series which I’ve laughed at so many times just because it’s slang for orgasm. It’s a classic series, made by the same people and (roughly) at the same time as Cowboy Bebop, and it’s occasionally quite ridiculous. The series is a cross-genre work of media, blending the action and samurai genres with elements of non-slapstick comedy. It is also a period piece, taking place during Japan's Edo period. The series is interwoven with revisionist historical facts and anachronistic elements of mise-en-scene, dialogue and soundtrack. The series' most frequent anachronism is its use of elements of hip hop culture, particularly rap and the music it has influenced, break dancing, turntablism, hip hop slang, and graffiti. The show also contains anachronistic elements from the punk subculture and modernism, but less prominently.

Took another run at Donnie Darko the other day. I forget how much I love that flick. I think it’s not just the amazing cast, but also the overall art nouveau style and noire-ish sentiment with whip cracking dialogue that makes it worthwhile.

January 4, 2009

Untitled

Lets take a second here. Just a second.

I had a good day yesterday (if you take away the sole reason which made it not a good day, but we won’t go into that)

December 30, 2008

A Long December

A long December, and there's reason to believe

Maybe this year will be better than the last

I can't remember the last thing that you said as you were leavin'

Now the days go by so fast

- Counting Crows

Dec 7, 2008

The Dopes of Haphhazzard

I’m gonna pull you in close,

Gonna wrap you up tight,

Gonna play with the tips

that you came in here with tonight.

I’m gonna light your face,

blow circles as things fall back in place.

I can’t remember the last time I got high. I just have this one memory of one fantastic time. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe from laughing. I danced and the footage is still doing the rounds. I woke up with cotton mouth and a cut on my forehead.

Dec 6, 2008

Blot out the light and the world drops away

Morning. Slivers of light descry around the edges of the blinds and assault my eyelids. I roll away onto my right, away from the clock on the phone that digitally chips away at my remaining time. Probing fingers count the bruises on my legs, pressing each one gently until I wince. I find three new ones and one new dent where my leg had yielded against the jutting keys in the filing cabinet. Absently I pick the skin off my fingertips and count the hours to work.

I'm safe at three.

Packing things away, Life should go on - Pt ii

November 27, 2008

Untitled

So you see there’s this guy, and he’s with his girlfriend on the bus (where I seem to encounter a few interesting people these days) and they’re having an argument or a discussion or something. I can’t tell from where I’m sitting. What I can tell, right, is that the girl’s mad at the guy or concerned at the guy or something. Basically she’s the one that’s in some form of distress. Now, this damsel is giving him the works; concerned frown, short, quick gestures with her hands and a little bit of hope lingering on her lips.

The guy though - this swooping knight in shining armour that’s supposed to rescue her or something - he’s just like sitting there confused. He’s got a little frown too, but it’s a frown like he doesn’t know what to do.

I can sympathise.

November 22, 2008

The Short Life

I swallowed this little flying piece of pestilence this morning. The vermin wasn't a particularly large bug, perhaps the size of a fly or a gnat, but I'm pretty sure it was neither. The consistency was far more chewy than that of either the gnat or the fly. I suspect that a gnat would crunch under the pressure of my carnivorous jaws.

However, I know for certain that a fly would merely dissolve in my mouth, that I would barely be able to recognize that a living fly had entered my mouth and begun the long digestive trek that ends quite definitively in the digestive tracts. I've swallowed flies before, and the bug I swallowed this morning was not a fly.

I'm guessing that the thing I swallowed this morning was a hybrid of sorts, a bastard child. I don't think it could have been any other type, because this one fought like hell to survive the involuntary retchings of my throat. It probably had issues - huge, emotionally crippling issues in order to put up a fight as long as this one did. No ordinary fly would have known such coping techniques.

If the thing I swallowed this morning was in fact not this special bastard bug, but one of those unremarkable pure breds from a stable home with two supportive parents, I sincerely hope that the father doesn't come looking for me.

Note - None of the above was wanton... I have since been washing my mouth with soap, detergent, toothpaste, kitchen surface cleaners. Its a good thing I don't have to talk.

November 18, 2008

Untitled

So, I’m a room. It’s a big room, a little too big for my ..........

Oct 26, 2008

Keeping Pace

Every day the day gets brighter for those couple of minutes. Getting home from work now in the evenings is a little bit like being blind, and the only thing saving me is the high sidewalk keeping vehicles at bay. And after walking for 10 minutes, suddenly the bright light is slowly touching me - and I don’t have to be afraid for being hit by a share-rick or something.

“Hello”. It was the girl I tended to see whenever I cross the stadium. She jogs past me everyday, and for just a nanosecond our eyes meet each time and then she’s gone. But today she had stopped. And I’m standing still as well.

“Hello?” I said without really knowing why. “Um… I know this might sound strange but…. I was wondering what you are doing?” She looked so shy and afraid when she asked, almost like she’d been practising all day. “What I’m doing?” I asked shocked. Walking back to sector 21!

“It’s just that I see you on so often that I’ve starting to wonder where you’re on your way….”

All of a sudden I had the opportunity to say things like:

“There’s just so many girls in the city so I tend to use this as my area to get the work done. Selling myself here is so much safer than other places. Are you interested by the way?”

“I’m undercover. Please go away.”

“I'm trying out a new exercise regimen. It’s very secret.”

But since my mouth tends to run around faster than my brain, all I had was “Er…. I’m walking back home to Sector 21.” I said like it was the most natural thing in the world.

“But the sector is over there…” she pointed. Quite obviously, I had missed the turn. “Yeah I know…. I’m just ummm .... taking this route so that there is a little bit more light. I don’t like walking in the dark.”

And I found myself talking to a complete stranger who refuses to stop jogging even though I am walking really slowly.

September 30, 2008

When I write to haunt

Love and pithy verses you hear, say what you can't say.

All I shall have to say is, move on, and I'll stand by anyway.

From your changing contentments, what will you choose to share?

Someday drawing you different, may love be weaved into your hair.

Packing things away, Life should go on - Pt i

Narrator: The man with all the pretty words is Bourbon, known throughout the civilized world for his charm and quick wit. A smile is ready on his lips and lady fortune seems to smile back, along with countless other ladies. In the uncivilized, he is only known for the ladies.

Thankfully we all know that’s not true.

Hopefully by now we also all know that he posts ridiculous things on his blog - because it’s the Internet, and it’s not real. Everything sounds worse on the Internet. Times New Roman has always been a terrible way to communicate.

His blog however seems to have a lot of drafts. His blog is quite a drafty place. Here they are.

September 24, 2008

Here’s what happens when left to my Own Mechanised Devices

The days;

Read all my bookmarked google reader pages

Read all my comics

Watch tv for a bit

Contemplate watching a dvd

Read all my bookmarked google reader pages

Read all my comics

Read the blogs of those comic artists

Surf Wikipedia

Maybe make something to eat

But just maybe (omelette toast sandwich x1, yesterday's roti & subji x1 - if supplies grant it)

Smoke with my mp3 player on

Smoke with my mp3 player off

Do a sniff test

Maybe shower

Go to work

The nights;

Turn the geyser on

Forget that it’s on

Take out my list of things to do

Not be bothered to do anything on the list

Read all my bookmarked google reader pages

Read all my comics

Heat food

Wonder where I spent all my money

Tv surf

Read all my bookmarked google reader pages

Take laptop outside and experiment with music tastes

Smoke the rest (cigarettes 2 and 3 go over the lawn wall)

Try to blog

Maybe

Open notepad and write but get too bored

Watch songs on 9XM. Sometimes just so that I listen to "We are the Beaatle Nuts.... Meaning Paan Supaari"

Contemplate watching one of Roger's dvds

Don’t go to bed until i cant stand to stay awake

Brush teeth

Rinse face

Look in mirror

Read a few pages of a book before becoming bored

Sleep

Dream

Maybe

Sep 11, 2008

Weariness Kills

And cripples and hurts and maims. But mainly it kills. It kills a lot of good people.

It’s worse than alcohol really. Alcohol is not too good, I know, but it’s not as bad as being tired. Atleast being drunk lets you be loud and obnoxious and you do things you wouldn’t usually do, but when you’re tired your mind shuts down. Completely. The biggest regrets I can list in my life are things I’ve said or done when I’m tired.

But let me throw light on this weariness. It isn’t the eyes-burning-sluggish-red weary. It’s a whole different weariness altogether. It’s a weariness that takes hold when you’re about to fall asleep, or when you’ve just fallen asleep, and someone disturbs you. You say and do so many things because you are so bone-tired.

You can’t think. Images blur in lust.

August 30, 2008

Untitled

I have a new bus now. It’s better than the old one, in that it’s ten minutes faster and doesn’t go through those areas that makes me ashamed to be human.

The part I like the most about this new bus route though would be the walk I get when I step off it. My old bus deposited me in the centre of Noida, right beside a little shop that sold my brand and an ATM machine if I was low on change. And a bakery. Man, how I miss the bakeries from the South. That was nice too I guess.

But this new bus deposits me a good five minutes away from my old stop, right next to this quaint little momo shop.

Score.

For a long, long time . . . .

I was enraptured by books. I’d be lost in the lines and find myself in a place that even the writer couldn’t have imagined. Characters half formed creating universes in the sleepy shadows of my mind and sceneries melting into landscapes of watercolours in my eyes.

But then I started reading for sport. I’d read a page as fast as I could and test myself on its content. (Due to this I have the innate ability to see only a mere flash of a road sign and know every which direction it was pointing to, but let me not digress.)

(Back in school, I read the entirety of Lord of the rings (The Hobbit in toe) in under one week and received full marks on a quiz a good friend (Bala). I even picked up the names of sub-characters that were only restricted to a few paragraphs of text and the underlying prejudices and borderline Celtic references.)

But now it’s not quite the same. A lot different actually. I read solely for pleasure. I see a good book or I hear about a good book, and I read it. But I’m so utterly selective in my readings that coming across a truly unique book is a rare occurrence. I’m extremely judgmental about what I read, damning it to the three categories of Worthwhile, Easy, and I-should-finish-them-laters.

Whenever I see a book displayed in the window of a bookstore, I automatically assume that it is generic, available, ordinary, simple… Shit. It’s mainstream and I don’t do mainstream. This may eventually be one of my greatest downfalls as a wannabe-writer/hack/human being, but I don’t do mainstream. Sure, I’ll listen to a popular band, I’ll watch the latest block-buster, but you most definitely will not find a chick-lit or serial crime thriller on my bookshelf. The books I like are obscure, random, maybe even hard to find, possibly no longer in print; anything but mainstream.

And yeah the classic pieces of literature, cult-mainstream, and books studied at schools do not count as mainstream.

The whole idea of mainstream annoys me. Sure, there’s the chance of picking up a book that says things that no other mainstream book has touched on, that says something different compared to the endless lines of racism, sexism, terrorism, love, relationships or historically accurate characters. Maybe there’s a gem somewhere out there in the front row along with all the other colourfully decorated front covers where the name of the author is bigger than the title itself.

And it’s not just because of my self-serving, pompous attitude when I regale you with the stories of an obscure Canadian/African/Russian/Czech author, there’s a wholly deeper level to this altogether. You see, when it comes to reading books, I have a nasty habit of becoming the book. The florid writing and intriguing characters are absorbed into my mind and ebb out through my skin as the story unfolds. This is why when I read a depressing book, I feel depressed. Or when I read an anarchistic book, I want to create anarchy. Some of it passes, true, and I return to normal, but some of it stays with me and lingers in the cavity of my chest where it very well becomes a part of me.

And, as such, I don’t want some middle aged woman polluting what may very well be my soul with musings over boyfriends. I don’t want some little story that works itself out in the end with charming, happy little coincidences. I want tragedy. I want epiphanies. I want intriguing characters that develop in my mind and become me as much as I become them. I want to feel the world from under my covers. I’m too cowardly to have these feelings for myself, so I read books to grasp every nurturing drop of emotion that inflames my senses to a feeling I never knew I could experience.

So please, I beg you, if you recommend a book for God’s sake make it memorable. Otherwise there is a very good chance that I will move myself away from you for your poor taste in life.

(Also, on a completely separate note, when the hell will I write a post that goes on to say what the title does?)