Trick Me Into Believing

First of all, Let us get this clear, I don't believe in love,
I also don't believe in magic.
Tricks are a whole different ball game though.

Think about it.
It is a dark road and you are walking down it alone.
And you can just make love appear.
You could just pull it out a sleeve.
Ain't nobody gonna mess with you. Man.
Crazy, right?

You could hide it like a warm furry white animal. In a classy top hat.
[The animal won't be wearing the hat. I mean, you hide it in the hat.]
It would stay there, silent and quivering. And maybe shitting.
It needs feeding.
And you might need to let it breathe. Occasionally.
Face it, no one likes a dead dove.
Finally, you might have to pull it out.
But I don't think you can put it back.

It brandishes decks of cards and sometimes silk handkerchiefs.
I hear, it can hypnotize people.
Make them forget themselves.
It can tell people what their card was,
And it can very well saw people in half.

Not all magic tricks are good,
But they are not all bad either.
A few are pretty real.
Most are smokes and mirrors too.

Love sometimes gets out of handcuffs.
Out of straightjackets.
Out of chains.
Out of tanks full of water.
That are buried under land.

Sometimes love just vanishes.
Because? I don't know. You tell me.
No, really, I am asking you.
It leaves you with your mouth open.
Wonder. Like no other.
But It binds you sometimes and it binds you till you can't move.

It transforms you. It transports you.
It levitates you. It penetrates you.
It escapes you.
But it is popular at parties. It makes you meet others.
Who believe. In Abracadabra.
And some who believe. In Hocus Pocus.
Who have read the books and want to practise.

So. For my next trick, I'll need a volunteer.

Ship of Theseus

It is not a very good paradox (very good meaning mind boggling as should be the innate nature of paradoxes) like the grandfather paradox.

As per Plutarch, who is very old and definitely dead by now, the ship in which Theseus and his gang of Athenian youth homies returned from Crete had thirty oars. It was supposedly preserved by the Athenians for quite some time. They took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place.

This is the crux of the matter so to speak. The ship changed. Leading to a question of things that grow. The more things change the more they remain the same or is it the other way round? Or something.

My personal choice of question though, voiced by Thomas Hobbes, is what I was trying to explain last night (and failing remarkably).

"What would happen if the original planks were gathered up after they were replaced, and used to build a second ship. Which ship, if either, is the original Ship of Theseus?"

Kinda like that band which is headed by one guy and everyone else just keeps on changing. [Yes, you Axl Rose and you too, Billy Corgan]

eg. You read this when you are unhappy. You read this when you are not unhappy? Is it the same thing?
OF COURSE. Literally, it is. On some terrible philosophical level (which has mood lighting but malfunctioning coffee vending machines) it is not.

The experience changes not just with the environment but also with the perception of the experience.

The formal cause or form is the design of a thing, while the material cause is the matter that the thing is made of. The "nature" of a thing is its design? Or is it a more material connection? Or is it entirely B.S.?

The song remains the same, because the design and not the matter stays constant.

"Apparently."

Jan's Heart

It looked quite like a heart. If you have ever been to a fair this side of the sun, you will have seen one of those tents with one of those jars. Cow foetuses masquerading as mutant wonders. This was however something different. It was a beating heart. It was a noiseless thing. You couldn't hear it beating but you could see it moving. Rubbery. Slimy. Something that makes your stomach jump like it does when you see roadkill.

Jan saw it first.

He was a slender man with slender craftman hands and he clenched the barrier that kept the curious spectators back as he stared at it. He stared it like he had stared at the first pair of boobies in the first porno he had seen when Altman's Travelling Movie Circus had shown up in town. He had paid money and he was determined to get his money's worth.

Everything else at the fair was shut down. Not even a single mechanical tinkle could be heard. The audience was streaming homeward. A static hiss of a radio here, a raucous card player there.

At that moment, however, Jan and the heart existed alone in the universe. Wonder lit his eyes.

"You still here, brother?", said a shadow, coming into the glare of the solitary light bulb.

"Yeah," said Jan curtly, not too happy about this intrusion on his thoughts.

The circus master was a connoisseur of curiosity. He nodded at the jar. "Isn't it something?"

Jan grunted and nodded. "I want to buy it."

The circus master snorted and then laughed a mocking laugh. "Why would I want to sell? People come to see it. Makes me money."

"Oh," Jan let his disappointment show.

"Well, now. No need to be too sad young man. If you have money. Speak up."

"How much?"

"How about - " the circus master raised a fists and counted on his fingers. "five and maybe another five?"

Jan nodded with anticipation. The circus master saw this and raised his total, "- well maybe even fifteen?"

Worry creased Jan's brow. "Look here now, I just got twelve cards in my pack. I just want it to make me popular back in my home town. I don't want to make money from it."

"I see, I see. I think we can come to an arrangement.."

Jan was sold the heart and the jar containing it was put in the back of Jan's old cycle rickshaw.

"Just don't take it out of the liquid, will you?" said the circus master as Jan readied to leave. Jan nodded and drove off. The sky was bluer and brighter as stars died and night arrived around man and machine. The rickshaw made a faint clanking and the liquid in the jar sloshed around the heart. Crickets provided company.

Jan looked back again and again at his possession. Checking on his ticket to interestingness.

--

The Outlands had always been barren and Jan's home town, widely known among by the residents as The Burrow, was an oasis. Lanterns tossed light over patches of the property and the talking men that marked the property.

Jan headed straight to Buttner's store. The men recognized the creak of Jan's cycle-rick and stopped talking as it got closer.

"Hi Dun, Hi Matt," Jan said without stopping. "Come to my house tomorrow, I got something to show you."

"Yeah? What you got?" the men shouted after the departing Jan. They got no answer but the muttering of frogs. "Tell us or we ain't coming Jan!"

"Oh you sure coming fellas. You coming as sure as Jesus!" Jan shouted back. He grinned to himself. They sure coming.

Jan drove by all the places where he could find men and he told them the same thing that he told Dun and Matt. Uncertain men in uncertain lantern lights stood around in The Burrow and talked about this thing that Jan had gotten his idiot hands on. Some people said it was a thing and some others thought it was that other thing. The Redhead said it was an animal but the Buttner brothers claimed it was a machine. Anders wondered if it was a wife and Mrs. Anders wondered if it was a husband. Everyone was interested.

--

Jan reached home. He lived alone and he carried the jar pushing the door open with his butt and performing all the gymnastics that comes with carrying a heavy thing with both your hands. He set it down in the living room, right over the tee vee. The house was filled with grey things and this was the only thing with any colour.

There was nothing to do now but wait. Jan knew the jar was going to make his life a lot more interesting now. He imagined all manners in which that might happen.

"Damn I try and I try but everyone thinks I am an idiot. You don't think so do you? I think you should have a name. How about Clyde? Clyde is good. So, Clyde do you think I am an idiot? I didn't think so. Well, you know what Clyde? You and I are going to be very good friends. And Clyde, you my friend are going to make me famous."

The jar and its lone resident chose to respond with silence.

Jan dragged the only chair in his house in front of the tee vee and slept in it.

--

Morning came and it brought people.

Dun and Matt stood in the front door. Jan woke up, startled, and then grinned the widest grin.

"Hey Jan - we - came. To have a look - at whatever it is - that you have."

Jan pointed to the jar. Dun and Matt stared.

"What is it?" asked Dun in a whisper usually reserved for sacred words. Matt's mouth hung limp, a pink weal, showing teeth.

"Jan, tell us what it is. Is it a heart?"

Jan smiled his widest smile, the smile he had planned to smile at his wedding.

"Why fellas, it is indeed a heart. And it is not just any heart. It is my heart."

--

It was the third month of winter this side of the sun.

For the first time since he was born, Jan was happy as a well fed dog. Boots tramping up to his house to gaze at the horrible wonder, the hushed sounds of respect men made while standing in his house, the groan of the house as people came and went was extremely pleasing for Jan. Hairy wrists and fair faces came to Jan wanting to know if they could see it.

Jan would invite them in casually. He would gesture torpidly towards his heart and silence would engulf the room. Lizzie Buttner even fainted once. She never returned. Most people came twice, thrice and more. The room would burst with people from The Burrow and flies would itch their legs all over the place.

It was the same ritual always. No one would say anything. The people would stand or sit thinking. Jan imagined their brains working behind their bony skulls as he accepted their food, their cigars and their gratitude.

It was like a church. People believed in Jan and his heart. And guess who did not like it? Gramps, the preacher. The ruler of the real church. Unsurprisingly, attendance had dwindled at the church. Gramps had heard about Jan's heart but he had dismissed it as a silly tale. But now it was the only thing anyone talked about. Gramps did not like it one bit. All that reverent awe wasted on that idiot and his oddity.

Some of the men shared Gramps irritation and these men met with Gramps and a plan was hatched.

--

As was customary, people showed up at Jan's house on a Sunday, like pins to some oddly attractive pin-cushion. The gathering had begun and there was no sound but for that of impatient feet and the scurrying of rats under the porch planks outside. Jan was up front, on his rocking chair, resting on a pillow, gifted by the Buttners. He was rocking slowly, enjoying the fame. Jan had a crush on Mary Buttner since he had seen her and she was at the back of the gathering with all the womenfolk. Her soft lips pursed but she spoke not a word to nobody.

After a period of proper silence, Gramps, who had appeared unseen, cleared the phlegm from his old throat. Everyone turned towards the source of the sound as if to admonish the maker of the sound for breaking their saturnine silence. Gramps, blinking, dried lips, calloused face and all the signs of age, stood. Gramps looked a long while, before licking his lips in a single reptilian motion, and spoke in his thin reedy voice, "Now like you my children, I have wondered what it is. What it is that brings you here? What it is that keeps you from thinking about your Lord and saviour? I ask myself, oh I do, what is it that is so important to my flock that they can't show up at the church and be together in the name of the Lord? Wonder what it is that has made them forget me, your humble servant my Lord? Wonder if it's a he or a she or an it or something else? Now I know. It is this vile thing. This jar sitting here in the long dark night. Think about it lying here. Hanging above this mess. Waiting. For what you think? Death and destruction! That is what! That is right my children. That is all this thing can bring you. Because  ask yourself, what really is this thing? That man's heart!? Have you ever seen a man and his heart live apart from each other?! Have you?! Nay, it is not true. Jan is a liar! It is not his heart, It is the work of the Devil, Lord forgive me for taking his name!"

Shocked into silence. And then suddenly everyone started talking. Gramps moved his head side to side before lapsing back into silence. The damage was done. The seed of doubt was sown.

The people left one by one. Jan tried convincing that he had never met the Devil and even if he had he would never collaborate with him on an art project.

--

 

Winter did not end that year. It carried on into summer. The town of Burrow was in trouble. Lizzie Buttner had fallen sick. Jo Marner had died in an accident. Dun and Matt had tried to steal food from the Buttners and they had been shot dead in the street. The Burrow had fallen on hard times and in hard times people look for answers. And if they can't find the answers they look for new questions. Which is how one fine day Jan found Mary Buttner and her friends up at his house. They had come around to look at the heart and wanted to know if it was okay. Would Jan mind it awfully if they were to see the heart now?

Why would Jan mind that? Jan nodded happily and beckoned them inside. He watched them watch hungrily. It was like meeting a long lost friend.

"It looks like this dog puppy our Bessie gave birth to. Our Bessie is always giving birth to puppies," said Mary in a benevolent, soft voice. "So this one puppy was born like that. You know, all deformed and unmade. No form, no features except for two large watery eyes."

"It looks like one of those swamp babies my nana talks about. She says they are the reason we don't get no food this time," said Alin, whose nana was crazier than the craziest bat.

And soon enough Jan's house was filled with people again. People wanting to see his heart suspended in the red liquid. People wanting to stare at this wonder in silence. People wanting to forget that they were hungry.

--

To the few people that came to his church, Gramps preached. He preached understanding and tolerance and virtues. Gramps was angry but he did not let his flock see it. Jan and his heart had stolen his thunder when traditionally it was Gramps' job to comfort his children. Gramps was not needed and Gramps did not like that. And as idle minds are often wont to do, Gramps' mind became the devil's workshop.

--

One day in the ninth month of winter, Jan woke up to find that the jar was missing. He no longer slept in the living room and he had not heard anything during the night. Jan was distraught. It was more than an oddity for Jan now. It was almost a part of him. It was like suddenly losing an arm. Jan rode his cycle-rick in town looking for the jar or anyone who might have seen the jar.

Questions and their answers led Jan to the church. Jan rushed to the church to recover his beloved heart.

Jan pushed the doors of the church to walk inside and found that almost everyone in The Burrow was present inside. He panicked for a second till his searching eyes found the object of his desire. The jar. Resting in the middle of the stage. Gramps standing to its right. Anders standing to the left.

"What is the meaning of this?" Jan asked as he rushed up to get the jar.

Jan reached the stage and held the jar delicately in his hands. He carressed it like a new born. Afraid that it might fall. He turned and started walking slowly towards the exit. "Thank God," Jan breathed.

"My children, this is what happens. This is what happens when you do not trust me. When you do not trust the Lord. Look at this traitor. Look at this agent of the Devil. He is the reason The Burrow has fallen on harder times. Look at him and his abomination. Look at his fall from grace. Look at his fall from faith. He takes the Lord's name in the same breath as that Devil's contraption. We cannot allow this. We must not allow this. We must put an end to the poor man's sufferings. Else we must risk more of our Lord's fury. Else we risk dying."

By the time Gramps was done, Jan had reached the door of the church and he had not paid attention to the speech. He however realized that the air had changed perceptibly. Something was wrong and he instinctively increased his pace.

"Look at him scamper. I bet he is going right back to his den of vice to experiment in sin and fornicate with the Devil? Will we allow that?" asked Gramps.

"We will not," replied the Buttner brothers. Then someone else said it and soon everyone was saying it.

"Well so now my children it is time for you to take matters in to your hands. Destroy the demon spawn! Destroy that halfwit!"

--

Jan was trying to run as fast as he could. The liquid sloshed against the jar. It lapped against the sides and some of it got onto Jan's grey shirt. The heart stood resolutely in the middle of the jar, beating. Jan turned around to look at the mob moving towards him and almost tripped. Some of them were armed with weapons. Some carried sticks and stones. Some others had nothing but their fists. All of them looked ready to kill.

I just need to get back to my cycle-rick thought Jan. He had parked it at the base of the hill. Jan looked back again and this time he tripped. He clutched the jar and its lid as tight as he could. He rolled to a stop near the base of the hill. He could see his cycle-rick. Jan got up and examined himself. Minimal damage. He then examined the jar and let out a cry of dismay. The jar had sprung a leak due to a giant crack on the bottom. He hurried towards his vehicle when a stone sailed over his head. He looked back fearfully to see a stone head straight at him.

It caught him square on the nose. Jan fell. So, did the jar. It fell and it broke. Jan scrambled to his feet as fast as he could and struggled to reach the fallen heart. The jar was intact but it had tipped over. The liquid was gone. The heart had fallen on the ground and he could now hear it beating. A faint ticking. The mob had reached the base of the hill now. It encircled the crying Jan. Jan held the heart in his hand, cradling it like one would cradle a baby, and cried.

The crowd parted to let Gramps through.

"Aah, you hear that people? You hear that sound? Buttners grab that heart!"

The Buttner brothers headed towards Jan who immediately got up and held the heart close towards himself.

"NO! Stop where you are!"

The Buttners paid no heed to Jan. One of them arm tackled him and the other took the heart from him and tossed it over to Gramps. The ticking startled Gramps for a second before realization dawned upon him. A faint chuckle escaped him.

He raised the heart in one hand and shouted over the howling wind, "Here's proof! It is not a heart like yours or mine. No thing of flesh like the Lord hath intended it to be! It is a vile contraption of the Devil himself. Watch!"

Gramps hurled the heart at the biggest rock on the ground. Jan attempted to catch it but the heart hit the ground before he did. It broke in two pieces revealing intricate machinery inside a plastic casing.

"There is your proof! This man has been fooling you, my children! He is no miracle! This is not his heart! It is but a tool of the Devil. Personally, I don't blame him. The Devil has deluded stronger men than him. However, there must be a punishment for his sins. You decide!"

Even as the mob stood pondering possible punishments, someone decided to take the initiave and hurled a stone at Jan. The stone hit one of the Buttners. On the head. It was the younger Buttner. He died. The older Buttner rushed to his fallen brother's body asking him to not be dead only to find him dead. In his moment of grief, the older Buttner drew a gun and fired in the direction of the stone thrower. There were people in that direction and one of them was hurt and he died too. His friends and maybe relatives retaliated and something broke. A mental barrier of sorts. The people had had enough of faith and wonder and the winter. They wanted to break things, hurt other people and they wanted the warmth of blood to frame their actions.

Martyn who had a rake plunged it into Jonah's stomach even as Anders hit him in the head with a stick. The stick broke and merely infuriated Martyn who free the rake from Jonah and raised it so as to rest it inside Anders. At this precise moment, Bo threw a stone that hit Anders in the head robbing Martyn of the chance to kill Anders. Martyn turned around looking for the one who threw the stone. He had not lowered the rake yet probably because he believed he would find the stone thrower easily. Mrs Anders saw her husband die while standing in front of Martyn. She promptly stabbed Martyn in the back killing him. Alin was shot in the face and her dead body was shot in the gut. Tom chasing Mary Buttner with the intent of raping her was dispatched with a knife through the eye and Mary Buttner herself was strangled to death by Mrs Goodwin who wanted to do something with her hands.

And in this way, pretty much everyone killed everyone. Gramps was shot and stoned and his body was found crucified on the cycle rickshaw's handlebar. Predictably, someone’s heart had been cut out and left in the jar with some red liquid which might be blood.

Someone here had a sick sense of humor. And what about poor Jan, you ask? Did our idiot escape?

Who the fuck knows and who the fuck cares?

thousand words

never more have I ever wanted a picture to be alive or
to be a mirror

afraid that if those eyes ever lifted
they might unclose something deep in me
tenderness, what is thy remedy?

I see that wretched mole still graces your nose
I always thought of it as an establishment and not a woe

I haven't travelled but I have been places
yet I don't think I have ever been where your silence has been, but I would like to go if you would lead me

I imagine you would have frail gestures but I know you don't, you have long slender arms that hide strength.
I have troglodyte extensions fitted with chubby sausages for fingers.

look I am no poet, you must by now be painfully aware
I should maybe say things about the light, the brow, the cheek but what else might I say that bad luck byron hasn't said before me

I am sure reams of poetry exist on those hair,
but what about those shoulders, I hope someone else too cares

[If it was respectable o'clock now, I fear my twitter would intrude on yours to describe your chin with one of those japanese words I just googled; full of intense meaning but economical in form ]

red rien mouth that might just break into a soft calm eloquent smile
red fingertips that might guide hearts lost in the texture of your ocean to port, in thee.

oh how I wish I could show you
the world has a new praxis
with you as its axis

oh look what you made me do
you made me rhyme

Quit Twitter : Day 8

TWO DAYS I BEEN LIVING ON EXCELLENT FREE FOOD OHGOD WHERE IS MY CHIN

I yearn for a time when pure love existed.

Talk to someone everyday for a month and then suddenly you can't talk to them for two months. What bullshit.

忝 is apparently unicode or something for 'self deprecation'.

I have been at three parties in the last twenty four or so hours. I might defragment any moment.

I feel an end approaching. It is pointless. Like this forced sabbatical. It did nothing for my whimpering and my hankering.
It is great to be loved by largely nameless, faceless people (you might never meet, hence there is probably very little selfishness involved) for your words (and the you that you let them see via these words because, let us face it, the truest act of love is letting people see who you really are)

"Tiny bubbles hang above me.
It's a sign that someone loves me."

Mr. Hyde, do you wanna be back in the saddle?

Quit Twitter : Day 7

There is something undeniably alluring about a hot shower.

I was recently asked my views on pani puri. I said 'what difference does it make?'. Upon which I  was greeted with a sullen 'you say that for everything.' It is true. It is my stock reply to the little things.

I like saying 'if you know what I mean' to unsuspecting people and watch them (a) recognition add color to their face if they know (b) go along with me and act like they do know what I mean (c) grapple for context and lose.

soft majestic intensity of trouble will find me by the national sees them recoloring pictures that they have already drawn. plus berninger's deeper than ever voice, beautifully morose lyrics and a band that knows itself and knows what it is doing, hey it is my album of the year.

So a misunderstanding later, someone higher up than me said that I knew more things than people my age. I realize that older people are no authority on people my age but I'll take it. There is nothing better than being complimented for your big brain.

Quit Twitter : Day 6

Last night I saw beauty and it stole two hours of my sleep. I wrote something about it. I liked it but it also made me a wee bit sad.

So this morning as I woke up and smelled the routine, I listened to Morrissey who works great as an external conduit for melancholy.

Ever feel like you have been given a thin blanket to warm up when you were clearly frozen into some prehistoric peat?

That just after I had read something else that said loneliness is a disease. EVERYTHING IS A DISEASE THESE DAYS.

"are you alone or are you lonely?"
"i am nice, can't wait for that to be declared a disease"

You know how when you are an inexperienced player in Counter Strike and looking through a sniper scope is a risk. You can't switch soon enough for close quarter foes. You can see people coming at you and you know the inevitable is coming at you. But you lumber like a great slow beast and well, die.

"dark words, dark wings"

Dark moods creep up unbidden
in a moment, Mr. Hyde is back in the saddle and all he wants to do is be in charge. That is it. He doesn't want to hurt you. He is an impudent, unpleasant boss and you don't want him telling you what to do.
All you can do is wait.

No silver bullet for that.

Quit Twitter : Day 5

ONLY 5??!!
Feels like a lot more.

Guy from my engineering batch, also was my roomate for some time, got married. I panicked till someone told me he was two years older.

You know how you meet someone who is such a breath of freshness in your citizen kane aspect ratio life that you feel more wes anderson colour scheme? All you want to do is talk to them all the time. All the while worrying about verbal missteps that you might make and sour things up.
All you want is them to john hughes like you. It isn't pretty. It is stupid.

I am not entirely sure quitting twitter has changed anything. I still seek digital distractions a.k.a. mobile phone more than anything else. Mostly because of afore mentioned person being easily accessible via mobile phone. I have made the web browser my new centre of affection. I reload pages hoping for magic.
It is unseemly.

In my enthusiasm, I grossly misjudged the hold my digital demons have on me and I started reading a couple of things. By my estimate, I am reading at least seven nine books right now. Scary thing: I know exactly what is going on in each of them.

cripple. (adj.) (masquerades as noun) a good true word; politically incorrect equivalent of physically handicapped.

Every breath I take
Every move I make
Every bond I break
Every step I take
reminds me.

It is easy to blame this state of my being as the cause of every character flaw I have. It is convenient. Probably untrue. But hey a straw is a straw. I hate to use it to my advantage but I can't really ignore it. I think the real problem is I am in the twilight zone. There is nothing visibly wrong with me and for me that is worse.

In some future/s, when cyborgs are cool and the new hipsters, I will fit in.
Till then I will listen to Daft Punk's latest, Random Access Memories.
INSTANT CRUSH TOUCH CONTACT MOTHERBOARD 

Quit Twitter : Day 4

Back to my kingdom of work. Work shmerk.

It doesn't really interest me anymore. Doesn't feel challenging enough. It was good when it was new but now that I have scaled the learning curve, my interest has waned.

Upstream Colour is not as demanding of attention as Primer was. There is no cerebral plot gymnastics. It is pretty clear what is going on. However, there are several of these that are going on and it is not entirely clear which one is going on.
Is the movie supposed to be a celluloid representation of Nature itself? Has Shane Carruth watched Tree of Life?
I think that everything that is shown is what it is but it is also a part of the internal lifecycle of the worm. Needs more thinking.

Bananas.

Pune weather is currently finer than my taste in life things. Nice cold winds.

Read & Sleep.

Quit Twitter : Day 3

I woke up thinking of the word febrile.

Modern Family is that rare gem of a television show that I hate for its saccharine sweetness and alluring simplicity and then hate myself for hating something for the aforementioned qualities.

Found a musty old folder somewhere in the dark recesses of my teenage mind's angst compartment.
Nativity in Black, a Black Sabbath tribute album Volume 1.
"Supernaut" performed by Ministry side- project 1000 Homo DJs.
"Children of the Grave" by White Zombie seems like something Marilyn Manson copied later.
"Black Sabbath" performed by one of my favourite metal bands of the '90s: Type O Negative. (The iconic three-note riff is done on piano & a nice organ sound near the end.)
"War Pigs" by Faith No More is a live version. "The Wizard" has Rob Halford singing.
"Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath" has Bruce Dickinson.

Ate meat after what feels like ages but actually could be last week.

I think people will still watch Casablanca even when they need to get to meetings in treepods on their jetpacks. It is a timeless pop-cultural milestone.

Isn't it great when lyrics feel like they are made just for you?
"Lying snowblind in the sun / Will my ice age ever come?"

Watched Upstream Colour.

Quit Twitter : Day 2

Watched one episode of QI. Learnt a lot. Laughed a lot. I think I might have broken the middle finger on my left hand.

Looks like the Nexus 4 is going to need work to get it up and running. Groan.

Still can't seem to write full sentences. I blame Twitter. Ooh a sentence.

Tried to think of a new book to start reading. Ended up thinking of a lot more than one. Clicked on Plume only once.

Hung out with a friend. Watched Go Goa Gone. Liked it. Might this be the darkest timeline?

Watched the cast of Mad Men react to MLK's death. You know the ones. Slept. No weeping today.

Quit Twitter : Day 1

Woke up. Checked phone. Clicked on Plume. Remembered last night. Wept.

Went through the motions. Found out that the Nexus 4 had been delivered home. Elation. For a brief moment.

Clicked on Plume to tweet about it. Wept some more.

Realized that I had not finished David Sedaris' Naked only because I had not read the last story, the eponymous, Naked. Finished it.

Reached home. Unboxed the Nexus 4. Wept. This time due to elation.
DAT PHONE.

Slept. Wept some more.

Quit Twitter : Day 1/2

I quit twitter laboring under a delusion of control.

I did nothing.

Idea Dump

5 ideas I submitted for some online competition before I read their terms & conditions..


3d printers with cloud brains replace society.
Cancer eventually evolves into Immortality.
Internet speak first eliminates need for vowels and then language itself ceases to exist.
Mobile phones spike evolutionary curve turning humans into a gestalt-sentient race.
Handicapped people world over rejoice as a miraculous new prosthesis appears that 'fits' everyone



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Tell It Like You Mean It

My mother's mother used to tell her a story and as is the nature of such stories my mother tells it to me. She often forgets that she has told it to me before and sometimes she remembers halfway through the telling and very rarely does she finish the telling of the tale.

A brahmin once prayed for an answer from the gods above. He was poor and his lot in life was of the troubled kind. He had a dream the same night and the night after and the night after and so the dream came to him till he could dream no more. The dream was always the same. A disembodied voice would ask him to “Go to the king's palace and dig under the mango tree in the royal gardens to find a buried treasure.”

The king was, as kings often are in such stories, cruel and unjust and the brahmin knew that he could not appeal to the king's sense of humanity. One day, when he could take no more of the dream, he decided to walk to the palace. He found the tree. But there was a gardener in the royal gardens. He returned distraught only to return the next day and find the gardener hard at work. After a few days of lurking and agitation, the brahmin entered the gardens and was immediately stopped by the gardener.

The brahmin, in the manner of one who has been found in a compromising position but has never ever committed a crime, began explaining. 

“I had a dream. It said, dig under the mango tree and find treasure.” The gardener mocked him.

“Poor people like are such gullible idiots. Dreams that will make you rich!” said the guard. “Even I had a dream just like it. My dream said dig under the tree behind the house of the brahmin who comes here looking for treasure and you will find treasure. Go away and do some real work.”

The brahmin thanked him and hurried back home. He dug under the tree behind his house and found the treasure.

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1. That story has a moral and I don't really care what it is. It is a story. A simple sequence of words that doesn't sound entirely silly. I am honestly fed up of our varied and largely fanciful narratives and 'literary' concoctions. I guess that is horrible spirit for someone who 'writes' but that is how it is. The story above is the kind of story I yearn for. And yet I mutilated it. My mother never described it that way. She never used metaphors and other big words. Those were my inventions. I inserted things into the story for some fiendish purpose that does nothing really to the story itself. My additions do not subvert or divert the course of the story. There is no alchemical change to the very nature of the story. The brahmin will find the treasure even if throw in another simile.

2. Whatever happened to the 'character'? The stock figure, a conventional cardboard cutout that carries all stories on its slim shoulders. With no pretensions of personality and no symptoms of development, the stories of yore would be peopled with the soldier, the princess, the witch, the horse. They are gone now. They have been replaced by flowing prose, literary devices, fragmentation and general cleverness. I do like cleverness. Heck, I am a habitual proponent of cleverness on several social networks and most of my online personas are built on the stable foundations of cleverness and wit. But, I do hope to find that elusive tale told anonymously and filled with the stock characters. Maybe something like the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. Or The Arabian Nights. 

3. Where do stories come from? The sources, I know of, are both oral and literary. I doubt my maternal grandmother went walking and some strange old woman seized her and told her this tale but most of the olden tales spread word by word. Now, this particular story might seem to some like Paulo Coelho's Alchemist and thus the source might be literary. It’s impossible to say how exactly a story arises and we really aren't concerned with that at this very point. We are concerned with versions however.

4. It is said that the tales grew and changed as time went by becoming more elaborate, sometimes more delicate, religious contexts were acquired. (Are we talking about people here?) Some tales would survive this experience while some others would be absorbed into some other tales. As they went on surviving and merging and mixing with people and the cultural gene pool, the tales changed and names changed and settings changed but their base nature resisted change. (Still not talking about people) They just became complex.

5. All forms of literary and educational tendency has found these tales and glommed onto them by different apparatuses. This is where things get tricky. Books and their kind have influenced you and I and I am sure I am writing this under some such influence that I am not conscious of and you are reading under some such influence that you are not conscious of. (benefit of doubt)

6. Now we come to the real issue at hand. I am interested not only in the tale but also in the taleness of the story. How does it work? What makes it run, not only on several reams of paper but also through a largely dark and dirty public consciousness, freely? Why do we have to reboot/retcon/reinvent them? And why do these crutch words usually end up meaning 'set in modern times'/'personal interpretation'/'creative variation'.

Why can't there be a version 'as is'?

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(Recent movie versions of comic books suck not just because they are horrible as movies but also because they have lost sight of what they were as stories)

There is no psychology in a tale. The characters are characters and very little is expected of them in terms of 'life'. Good is good and bad is bad and that is not how the world works. But hey this is a tale and why can't we just leave it at that? Stuff happens in tales and it just happens. There is no ominous event. Nothing is concealed. There is no tricking of the audience business here. There is none of the frailty of the human condition, the gossameriness of memory, the ghosts of long dead doubts and desire almost never interferes. The characters are almost always passive.

They have no identity. The woodcutter, the big bad wolf, Goldilocks and such do not really need names. Names bring meanings and annotations when all you need is a descriptor and a differentiator. They are 1-2 dimensional; flat. They get the job done. For all purposes, they could be one guy putting on different masks as and when needed. But then nothing is that simple.

Realism cannot cope with this multiplicity. That whole kingdom is segregated and not many wander there.

Speed is important and all the good tales have it. They are perfect examples of what you do need and what you don’t.

‘Once upon a time’ and the man shoots his gun and all the runners are off.

They start off at point A and within paragraphs are at F and then K and then S and finally Z.

This is possible only when you have no baggage. None of the sort you get in modern fiction. Modern fiction and I do love it, has names, things, back stories, time and space, material constructs and spiritual dimensions. Here again we glimpse the nature of the tale. It continues with or without ever considering these characters. Every word is a part of the story and no more. When your only instinct is to ask 'and then what happened?' you don't really care about nature.

Individuality is of no consequence to the fragmented and adulterated tale. It does not run on uniqueness and originality.

Thisisnotatext. Well, it is but it would only actually mean something with the spaces inserted at all the right places.

The tale is a different beast. And the nature of the beast dictates that it be affected by many things such as the original teller, the weather on the day of the telling, a physical inconvenience, or it could fall into the hands of an illiterate.

A comedian will perhaps tell a funny tale better than the mistress of mystery who can tell a tale of horror like no other. Their personal quirks and inventions will then become a part of the structure of the tale. Till the time someone forgets a bit or adds upon it.

Thus, the tale becomes and unbecomes. 

People are fantastic and they usually sprinkle their versions of tales with their personal demons, dark residue, or brilliant sunshine. The story can stomach it. It however carries a stylistic fleur-de-lis from that moment onwards.

(Imagine for a moment, a Star Wars movie directed by Richard Linklater or Dan Harmon. Or Kathryn Bigelow, Lucas forbid. It would be a Star Wars movie and yet it would also be a Linklater/Harmon/Bigelow movie. I don't like you JJ Abrams.)

What is it that this 'rantthing' is trying to get at?

Telling a story is a delight. I do not like it when a teller sets out with the express intention of fooling the listener. Why can't a story be just a story?

When you have the substance of a tale, you just need to tell it with style (not overpower it).

A bit like jazz. The performance matters a lot.

In the end, even if we do our best to tell it like it used to be, we may find it inadequate. The best tales are told by kids, after all. Maybe it is impossible to tell it like it is.

In the meantime, let us just try and live happily ever after.