you’re a carousel, you’re a wishing well

I feel unaccountably happy every time I listen to this song (‘Everything’ by Michael Buble).

Friday afternoon. Tomorrow’s a busy day, what with one job interview and one general ‘how to make money online’ meeting. Hopefully, from the following week, I will be engaged in more than one scheme through which I will finance my laptop. At twenty years of age, I’ve begun to feel more and more guilty at having to spend my parents’ money on things that have nothing to do with them.

And here’s an abstraction:

Now and then, between those frisson-laded phases of madness and obsession and fixation upon one object, one person outside of oneself for all the most intense sensations of happiness and sadness, you fall into a languorous exploration of things that have nothing (and yet, everything) to do with your immediate emotions. The kind of sanguine contentment that you feel, in this period, feels more relatively valuable to your life than any previously longed for and experienced intensity.

Spending long, lazy days filled with reading and conversation, lunches and dinners with friends who are long past superficial concerns of politesse, conversations to nowhere on the phone and advertisement-worthy evenings with family all the while knowing that your path in life (for the next year, at least) is secure: in the midst of so much, could you feel anything but happy and content, as if nothing could be lacking?

comfortably numb?

I’ve read 6 books in the last two weeks.

1. i’ll take you there – Joyce Carol Oates
2. The Enchantress of Florence – Salman Rushdie
3. On Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan
4. Vanity Fair – W.M Thackeray
5. Q & A – Vikas Swarup
6. The House of Blue Mangoes – David Davidar

I’ve watched 9 movies:

1. Changeling
2 Slumdog Millionaire
3. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
4. Feels Like Heaven
5. Kate and Leopold
6. Partition
7. License to Wed
8. Australia
9. Twilight

I’ve written in my diary, gone to play rehearsals, eaten out, gone to Speed and Zara’s, made unfulfilled plans to go shopping and dreamt strange dreams.

I’ve felt contented, unhappy, lazy, sleepy, bored, miserable, afraid, hollow, depressed, thoughtful, apathetic, outraged, indignant, vindicated, bitchy, self-indulgent, jealous and thankful.

I don’t know what this is called. I don’t know if I like how this year’s going so far. I don’t know if I’m as intelligent as I once thought I was, or as unique, focused, well-adjusted or ambitious.

The word I’m looking for, I think, is upheaval. So far, 2009 has been all about violent, unstoppable change. Mostly of the destructive kind that changes you forever.

And as always, I’m reacting to change I can’t control by being as static as I possibly can.

you’re free to leave me, but just don’t deceive me

Indian Writing – II tomorrow. I have no notes for the nine poems we have on the paper, and all my responses to the one novel we have are hopelessly “subjective”.

There are so many things I want to write about, but not too much or too little. How to maintain the perfect balance between revealing too little and too much? Because of course, being as shamelessly exhibitionist as I am, I can’t quite keep from revealing some of it. I have no defence, but the honest hope that in throwing it all outside of myself, I will not have to feel it anymore. And oddly enough, it’s not an effort made in vain.

i) This goes out to a bunch of people whom I care a lot about and who all seem to have the same problem:

Your only problem lies in your inability to see yourself for the beautiful person that you are. You constantly strive to be someone else, to please everyone around you when really, you’re only making yourself unhappier in the process. We have one life and you owe it to yourself to live it the way you want to. No one else matters as much as you do. Forget about all those things you perceive as failures, look at yourself in the mirror and see all those things that make you better and trust yourself, above anyone else.

ii) Is it normal to think you can’t ever trust anyone again? It’s so easy to slip into this self-conscious cynicism, this bitter view of things. I’m terrified, it’s true. Once you’ve felt hollow, once you’ve made yourself sick with regret and hurt, once you’ve had everything you ever believed in thrown in your face, is it wrong to never want to be that vulnerable again?

iii) All your life is based on trust. You trust your abilities to get you through education and employment, you trust your intuition to keep you safe, you trust the people around you to be everything you want them to be, you trust life itself to be for you what it’s meant to be but so often isn’t. Questions, questions, questions of sincerity, of honesty, of integrity blow about in the wind. I don’t pretend to know the truth anymore.

drifting apart without an end in sight

it’s taken me so long to learn the essential life-lessons:

the only person i can be alone with my thoughts with is me.

the only feeling that is most poignant is loneliness

fleeting moments of telepathic companionship are few and far between

no matter how hard i try, you’ll drift from me someday and perhaps by then, i won’t even care

i can make you as many promises as i like, but i will end up breaking them

your laughter is the talisman of our friendship, your love stems from moments of distress when my shoulder’s around to cry on

you can only stretch out of yourself so far, to brush your fingertips against someone else’s self.

claiming to know someone completely is a lie – you are always more aware of yourself than anyone else

you can believe yourself to be on the same wavelength but most often, you are guilty of wishful thinking

everything is constructed out of our need to believe, a desire for purpose – when really, we all know there’s none.

green paint and musty air

it’s not supposed to be so hard is it?

treacherous moments of doubt, that i hardly know how to answer – they come upon me like clouds of crows, pecking away at every assurance you’ve ever given me.

it’s like incessantly plucking the string of a guitar – the twang simply doesn’t go away, it reverberates in the air until your ears find themselves ringing from its echoing presence

whispers are an integral part of life that you can’t run away from, try as you might, there will always be some hint of dissent around you – it’s upto you to develop just that right edge of indifference, because you can’t possibly go through life worrying what they’re thinking, unless you fancy living someone else’s life.

close your eyes a minute and think about it – let your imagination run wild and dare yourself to cross boundaries of self-preservation built up in earlier, more dangerous times.

pure, unadulterated thought – it pours down your back like sweat on a blindingly sunny day, it engulfs you like the waves do when you sit with wet sand under your legs. it creeps into crevices unfilled and throws you over the deep edge – sink or swim?

there’s beauty in the breakdown.

but you’ll see it only if you let go.