Thursday, October 30, 2014

Haunted Spaces

Some spaces eat you up,
Some spaces spit you out.

Some spaces do not exist,
Except in their own barren womb.
And there you find the remains of nightmares,
The long gone scents of wilted waters.
There, fingers touch and voices call
Deep from the abyss of unnoticed deaths.

White could be the walls hiding brown blood,
Or pure the curtains veiling its own massacres.
Like sharded tombstones of a hidden demise.

A baby boy buried in cubes of ice.
A man with an axe, proud
Of his ability to order death around.
Knocks on the door
With no one out there.
Dear little cottage,
Is this play fair?

A sweetened sourness.
A limping calm.
The mind licks the air around,
Shuffling on three feet
One in the sky,
One on ground,
One inside a tortured sleep newly found.
  
A shifting silence
Peeps through its mask;
Cursed to a life
In the realm of thoughts
Protracted by memory
And blessed by my being.
  
Stop the knocks,
I don’t want your pain
Let me sleep
And be fine again.
Clear out your hoarded memory,
Brush out the skulls, brush out the axes.
There is still sunlight outside.  



Thursday, October 23, 2014

Dented and Tainted

Perhaps the only beauty about something pure and unadulterated was its immense potential to be dented and tainted.
Everywhere she looked, little Margot found dents and torn pieces. She found them exquisite, almost divine.
Poor little Margot. She was addicted to aches, but she was not sad at all. It was as if sorrow sieved itself and kept the thick rocks away, giving her a paltry sip.
She would walk down the streets and smile at shopkeepers. They greatly amused her; sitting there with their precious wares waiting for someone to come take them away in exchange for a few notes.
What did ‘to possess’ something mean? Who gauged how pure your possession was or how intense your propriety over it was?
People around still danced, still painted, and still dreamt beneath the torn blankets. That was the essence of life - to see beyond the torn covers. You had to get out of your covers and stand naked in the snow.
Little Margot dreamt away. There was nowhere else to go, she knew she had arrived and she knew that she had started on her soul path.
A very wise woman had once told her, that when things start falling in place just like that, without you needing to put in extraneous efforts, it meant that you had started on your soul path, the path you are meant to be on. And from then on nothing else would matter.
Little Margot had trusted her, and when things actually did start falling in place without the need for her constant prayers or oblong wishes, she knew that she was on her way. She still battled with the past but now, with her stars completely in her favor, she found her long lost dancing shoes hidden right below her nose. 
She found her long lost voice, and now what she spoke made complete sense to her soul. 
Nothing and no one could insult her essence, for she knew what it was and could finally defend it.

Life had lied to her before, though, saying that as long as she had 'light' within her, she would be perfectly alright. 
So she had sat in her little room and kept spinning as much light and love as she could from her soul. It was almost a penance. And yet, people found her empty. 
People faulted her seeming lack of love. 
Life had lied to her; for it wasn't enough to have light within, you needed to stand on the rooftops and tear your heart out and blare out to the world that you did possess it.
She felt cheated, not because the world misunderstand her, but because no one bothered to try to understand. 
She had almost lost her senses yet no one saw anything, except the bland outer smile.
And now she lay, alone yet at peace, on her little bed in her little dark room. She could see the stars above, and they were her stars. All hers. 
She did not need to climb up to rooftops , and she did not need to sit at shops to sell her thoughts and feelings. 
She had found her soul, and would not trade it for anything.
She preferred being dented and tainted than being a bland emptiness.
Maybe her soul did not have light, but who cared.
It was blue, just like her.

Sunday, October 19, 2014

My 'Normal'

I am able to breathe!
Really breathe.
I live in this little cottage on the corner of a very quite street in a very small town called Alva in the Mid West.
I wake up when my body feels ready, and go to sleep when it feels tired. I eat when my stomach asks for food. I am not following any schedule.
Been a while since I've been kissed, but I am not exactly clamoring for a new love or to find a companion to fill the 'normally' expected empty space.
I do not find the emptiness.
I feel healthy - mind, body, AND soul.
My Mondays and Sundays all seem the same.
I take walks, drinking in the aura of what this space has to offer - little cottages with adorable little signs and gardens, empty stretches of streets which make you feel like you are in a movie set or something, great big trees which paint shadows whenever the sun obliges, or just rustle around when it is windy.
My life right now revolves around books from the library, a studio where I go and paint or draw when I feel like, the little market down the street, and a couple of great friends with whom I share conversations and long drives, art talks and movie nights, and a few performances whenever and wherever I am asked to.
I am not planning fervently about my future, though my mind is giving me hints of some great ideas for life which I know will mature soon. I am not exactly earning as much as I had thought and desired, but no qualms. It will flow in soon, I know.
I am watching small town parades which make me relive my childhood images crafted by the Nancy Drew books, high school Cinderella pageants, some crazy movies, and possibly some rodeo games in the near future.
I do not have a new sim and there is no net connection except at the library.
I am slowly but persistently learning French.
Sometimes, when I walk back to my little cottage and snuggle in for the night, I hear footsteps on the empty floor above in the dead stillness. (And I swear someone stroked my head a couple of mornings ago, until I started whimpering in my sleep).
Is it the quite? Is it the solitude? Is it another dimension?
I am not on a holiday, I am not in a dream, and it definitely does not feel like a far away illusion. It is very much real, because I can feel my own breath. My soul is on a great vacation, just breathing. And breathing.
Back home, people would laugh at this 'life'. No job? No marriage or romance? No schedule? What exactly do you do ? Or who exactly are you ?
I don't need definitions for myself. I don't need definitions for my life. I don't need anyone to tell me what my life should be like.
I don't need to be 'normal' by your standards.
I need joy, MY joy, and I shall define it however I want to.
But I really do fear going back home, and that, to me, is the only thing that is not seeming normal right now.


Thursday, September 25, 2014

Books, books, books!

Books that have influenced us - one of the most interesting threads doing the rounds on facebook. It was lovely to look through the many lists, and with the kind of obsessive love I have developed for reading and writing, I thought a Blog post would do it much more justice than just a status (I mean come on! Who isn't bored of the blue borders by now. At least a little.Whatever).
After much mulling over I think I have tracked down the main books that have influenced me.
Here goes my list :

'The Swiss Family Robinson' By Johann David Wyss
One of the first books that got me hooked to reading and travel and writing.

'And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos' By John Berger
You have to read it!

'Margot Fonteyn - A Life ' by Meredith Daneman.
I owe my affair with ballet to this book. I shall never get over it. Or her.

'Memoirs of a Geisha' By Arthur Golden
It taught me that reality can be beautiful and magical, just like a dream or an illusion. It is only our resistance to reality that makes it lose its spark.

'The Road to Damietta' by Scott O'Dell
Love!

'A Room of One's Own' By Virginia Woolf
It helped me think better. It helped me realize that you do not need to be grand and all over the place. Simplicity would do. It would do great! With both your thoughts and words.

'The Witch of Portobello' By Paulo Coelho.
Need I explain?

'Rebecca' By Daphne Du Maurier
and its sequel
'Mrs. De Winter' By Susan Hill
The best atmospheric novels I have ever read. And the use of language. My Lord! what use of language.

'The Book of Promethea' By Helene Cixous
Honesty can be as bare as bare can be, and still be beautiful. And comfortable.

'The Fountainhead' and 'We the Living' By Ayn Rand
What a brilliant mix of philosophy and creativity.

'On the Street Where You Live' By Mary Higgins Clark
Mystery and murder at its best;
and
'In Cold Blood' by Truman Capote
true accounts of a mass family murder told with such detachment that it makes you shiver.

'Uncle Tom's Cabin' by Harriet Beecher Stowe

'Sylvia Plath - Complete poetry Collection'
Writers can be 'trained' academically and still be natural and not esoteric. Her poems helped me get over this 'academia' mind block.

'His Nameless Love- Portraits of Russian Writers' Essays by various authors
Nothing like a hidden love story or an untold real life saga.

The (more) important reason that made me actually think deep about this post is that I am convinced more than ever that writing is where I belong. Weird happenings and coincidences ( There is an as yet un-revealed reason out there, I know, for there is no such thing as a coincidence in this universe) have revealed myself to me, and now I feel at ease. Nothing to prove, nothing to show off - just my good old books and this aged laptop which is nearing its last breaths, but still holds all my random scribbles patiently. And a candle to create 'the' writing atmosphere.
Now all I need to do, is stop writing so selfishly about myself and let myself dissolve. Into the minds and words of writers like the ones I have mentioned above, and allow my mind to breathe more. Grow more.
And stop trying to be emotional or clever. I don't mind a bit of rust and racket here and there though, but just enough.
And it doesn't seem like a new path, but something that has been taken out of the closet (no pun darlings, not yet).
Everything has gone, yet everything has actually arrived now. Everything is empty, yet nothing has felt fuller before.
So here I am, being (hopefully) me.
If words ever left me, I should cease.
Thank you, dear books, thank you for all the mirrors and the magic.

Much Love!















Sunday, August 17, 2014

MID LIGHT - The Prologue




'One voice, hazy and distant yet lavish and pregnant like the last few awkward steps of a journey, sweeps fervently across the sand.

One voice, half-swallowed by the white within, smacks against the roof of the head, manages to trickle out feebly, rueful, and loses itself in the crammed up world.

 One voice, a grand pulse, pounds around bushes and mountain peaks and throbs amidst ripples and hurricanes, cuddled up on the throne of the heartbeat of the universe.

Fastened to the world by other peoples' prayers, a mere justification of their grand attachments,our life is probably not its own intention sometimes. It escapes the iron anchors that hold it in existence through three songs that voice three dimensions - an alternate voice that could have been; the present voice of silence that is, where the rain slides away as if always falling on slippery glass windows; and a parallel voice that should have been. '


'MID LIGHT - The prologue' explores these 3 dimensions of possibilities through poems and short stories.

Publishing it as part of my final MA Fine Art Show; come along to Chelsea college of Art and Design to buy a copy and leave your valuable comments.
Hope to see you all on the 5th of September! 
Ciao!





Saturday, July 19, 2014

...

Everything is ruptured, in a very beautiful way.
Like dreams that have lingered for too long.
You know what I mean ?

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Premature Paranoia

It does not exist if I do not write about it.
It cannot kill me if I do not open the door.
The blood will not trickle out if the cut is sealed with a kiss. 
But the lips are burnt.
The skin might turn into red ash.
Keep away the rituals from me, I say!
Put me not on a funeral pyre;
please just bury me beneath the waves.
Or perhaps inside a casket of gold,
let my death know the shimmer of stupidity.
Too much of sanity is stifling my existence,
Bound in the chains of jabber and pretense.
Cut the chords, and let me float away.
Away from myself.
But look, there s a knock on the door.
Is it the sword of sorrow?
Is it the knife of grief?
Or is it an endless procession of pity hidden behind a mask of smiles?

- A prisoner of Existence

UNSUPERVISED Thoughts #4

Sometimes I wished I was writing fiction; but my metaphorical voyage through an unseen (but deeply felt) history and an impregnable fut...