"I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."
Suddenly the realisation sinks in. No more will I have to explain these lines to anyone. Nor will I have to look for their meaning somewhere, in someone else's 'closer' reading. I seem to have understood. Somewhat.
Dot. Dot. Dot.
Look carefully.
Measure your steps.
And start walking backwards.
And now, without turning back, walk through all the countless spaces between those gaps, and I'm sure you'll understand as well.
Don't blog
If you aren't thinking of yourself and your words and expressions as ephemeral, don't blog.
Don't blog if you're seriously thinking there's someone out there who will feel and understand your thoughts as they are, and, soothe, caress, feel and understand the broken wings of your overburdened incomplete expressions, as you've yourself done countless times in your solitary wanderings.
If you aren't an advertiser for palliatives, a dragon-tooth seller, a high-flier, a lighter of a protesting candle, or a teller of lies who believes in his own conflated exploratory balloons mapping the world, don't blog.
Don't blog if you aren't a serious voyeur for soft and hard schlock images, someone who suffers from serious symptoms of security-complex, or a bibliophile who doesn't want to share what he has read of the world.
No one wants to hear of you as yourself. You cannot write of yourself. For yourself. Even against yourself.
Don't blog if you're scared, sick, angry, unhappy, radically mad, rabid, or immaturely happy about your family's vacation to the dull sea no one wants to hear about.
If you stir in sleep and think you can speak of those dreams and visions which drove Nebuchadnezzar mad, don't blog.
Don't blog if you try to run away from life and wish to start afresh from childhood.
The words will remain as they are, in suspension or in disbelief, in wonder or in imagined imaginings, and the crazy world will go whirring past as you stare at the blinking screen.
Don't blog if you can smile, weep, or scribble on a real piece of paper that no one can read but yourself.
If you think yourself staring at the void or if you don't see emptiness enveloping your memories, don't blog.
Don't blog if you have life outside this ether, these crumbling bits of real or imagined space, or if you believe that you have made peace with your mind after spewing out whatever troubles your mind right now.
Random thoughts after the 'festival'
Finally, those horrid five days are over, at least for an year.
The days collectively miscalled a festival. Of crowds pushing, jostling, shoving, digging, cursing, groping, stomping throughout the night.Strutting, shrieking, belching, spitting and shitting, mobbing their ways through the city.
All to catch a glimpse of a few decorated earthen straw-filled idols of the Hindoo mother-goddess propped with bamboo. Or to gape at all that brightness surrounding the lights and stars, the 'themes', the near-empty stalls selling Marxist literature, potency-oils and perverse industrial logic. Or to look at the unknown faces of others similarly hysterical. Or more probably looking for some change in their lives drudging along the too-familiar course of work, taxes, insurances, premiums paid in one form or the other, or lives without them.
Witness mass hysteria at close-up, with loudspeakers blaring; academically-minded Marxists might find strong elements of Bakhtinian carnivalesque in the phenomenon. Look really close, and you might find people who're really lonely, trying to drown out their drudgery in the tours they make throughout the mad, sullen city.
I only wonder how many are there in this city who lock themselves up inside rooms with lots of books and trying really hard to shut off the hysteric loudspeaker sound, concentrate on imagining alternative worlds of possibility.
The days collectively miscalled a festival. Of crowds pushing, jostling, shoving, digging, cursing, groping, stomping throughout the night.Strutting, shrieking, belching, spitting and shitting, mobbing their ways through the city.
All to catch a glimpse of a few decorated earthen straw-filled idols of the Hindoo mother-goddess propped with bamboo. Or to gape at all that brightness surrounding the lights and stars, the 'themes', the near-empty stalls selling Marxist literature, potency-oils and perverse industrial logic. Or to look at the unknown faces of others similarly hysterical. Or more probably looking for some change in their lives drudging along the too-familiar course of work, taxes, insurances, premiums paid in one form or the other, or lives without them.
Witness mass hysteria at close-up, with loudspeakers blaring; academically-minded Marxists might find strong elements of Bakhtinian carnivalesque in the phenomenon. Look really close, and you might find people who're really lonely, trying to drown out their drudgery in the tours they make throughout the mad, sullen city.
I only wonder how many are there in this city who lock themselves up inside rooms with lots of books and trying really hard to shut off the hysteric loudspeaker sound, concentrate on imagining alternative worlds of possibility.
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