Saturday, September 8, 2012

Chop suey And Usually Just A Cup Of Coffee

Of late, I've had a nagging feeling at the back of my mind that I have missed out on something important; some wonderfully, fantastic opportunity that perhaps would have changed my life as I know it now. It should have happened, rather it was asking to happen, it was at the edge of precipitation from where events of tumultos and grandiose proportions would have followed; but somewhere, the banality of my everyday or just my overly cautious and apprehensive outlook towards most things that I come across, made me overlook it. I have no clue in what shape did it present itself in front of me... possibly a conversation that should have happened, that didn't happen; maybe a nod of the head and a simultaneous, conspiratorial blink of your eyes and mine, that got lost in translation... I'll never know; the moment is gone; and life has indeed become eerily easy...for you and for me.

I have known myself to often look back at events and choices in the hope of creating and recreating possibilities in my head and what their outcomes could be. However, while earlier it would often lead me to a certain degree of dissatisfaction, now I just amuse myself with the thought of what was and what might have been. Perspective is a wonderful accomplice as one tries to understand the equation of life- a variable here, a constant there, few logical interludes and maybe a few iterations of certain hard to learn lessons- all you then need is the vantage of perspective to explore the possibilities. It's a funny little exercise and I have at times been guilty of indulging in more than I actually should. Time has never been anyone's ally, and all I can think of is that in some overlapping corner of the many parallel universes, perhaps that very corner to which these fantastic improbabilities owe their provenance, somewhere there, a giant clock is ticking...  And it's that rhythm of the tick-tock that this throbbing, pulsating life resonates to, and to this rhythm I must always surrender. 

There are days when there is a certain consumate contentment in my aloofness and detachment with the world. Nothing to hold me down; no love, no longing, no happiness, no pathos, no expectations... I become neutral, sifar, null, zero. I am infinite and I am nothing, all at once. I can sit by the fountain in front of the National Museum in Oslo, and when evening comes, this wave of humanity can pass me by unobtrusively, I am invisible. I am nobody, just a face... like the one in Munch's much admired 'Scream'. In a glitzy nightclub, in the city of Stockholm, I can still hear my sacred silence; the beats go round and round and in a tangle of sweat and body, I become a part of something ritualistic as I let my primal side on the loose; I am the beat now, I am the sweat, I am Speed, I am Ecstasy, I am the high... In the by-lanes of The Red Light District of Amsterdam with its multiple whore houses, I imagine that I can try and break my soul;  put the pieces back together, and then metamorphose into someone new, s stranger to my own ideas and beliefs. But it's not a carnal sin that can break a soul, does it? 50 euros is too easy a deal, the soul deserves more than that. One needs tragedies, and maladies of unimaginable magnitude for that; and one must court misery as a muse... and maybe this tragedy, like that great opportunity, has already passed me... and all that's left of me within me is a residue that just can't be scraped off for now.

In all that I do, I tread the fine line between being earnest and becoming pathetic. On days, when this act is performed to the dot, I sleep soundly... on days when I fumble, I hope for the world to end...  Somehow, between all this balancing act, our stories will still remain the same - we are all survivors of heartache but still, victims of memory... and like Eloisa - I also beg not for forgiveness, but for forgetfulness...and just like Prufrock, you and I are measuring out our lives with coffee spoons while listening to the sounds of that big clock ticking away...

I owe you nothing... but you owe me my smile; the same that I used to point at you like a rifle... and the one that disarmed you...