The Source-Code of My Life

Today, suddenly, without any search for it, quite involuntarily, quite unintentionally, quite inadvertently, I discovered the source-code of my life. I was startled when I found it full of if-else-end segments! Upon a closer look, I realized that none of those if conditions were not truly if conditions. They only maintained a deceiving semblance---there were no conditions being tested by any of the if commands; and after every else, end followed immediately. The space between else and end was empty in every case. The lack of conditions being tested by ifs and the void in place of all alternatives  deeply disturbed and horrified me.

(Based on a sleep disturbing dream.)

--Sandeep, 22/07/2014.

Nocturnal Serenade

In the darkness of this night, a melodious music flowing from faraway lands finds a recess deep in the bottom of my soul; it modulates my melancholy and convinces me of its heavenly origin. My God, why life is so futile yet so beautiful! 

First Thought

My God, why did the night die so young! 

Waves of Disquiet

It seems the only way I can write is in semi-fiction mode. What else will I write but about myself and my life? What is interesting other than that? 

Politics has changed in this country. The election changed everything. People are rejoicing in the huge victory of the leader. Was it their leader? I wonder. How are they able to show such a vigorous support for him? Do they know him so much? How can they put so much of faith in him? I cannot understand. It is the way humans are. The mass resists to be understood.

I can't write about the mass, its choices, its urges and its behaviour. I don't want to know either. Life is led by a vacuum of desires and drives and motivations. When you are engrossed in that vacuum, you don't even know that it is a vacuum. Everything -- shouts, rejoice, hopes, virtues, morality, values, sense of wellness, happiness, joy, ambitions, devotion, dedication, convention, tradition, culture, revolution, genocide, holocaust, hegemony, slavery, debt, wealth, assets, investment, confidence, comfort, anxiety, anger, desperation, fear, animosity, hatred, pride, redemption, struggles, wars, ethnic cleansing, riots, rape, liberty, surveillance, internet, pornography, vendetta, defamation, corruption, sexuality, fellatio, fetishism, pederasty, perversion, hunger, poverty, democracy, monarchy, fanaticism, machismo, emasculation, feminism, writing, poetry, cinema, smile, laughter -- revolves around that vacuum. A vacuum which reveals itself as an absolute presence, a nothingness which appears itself as a fullness, a hole which portrays itself as a gravitational pull. 

I also feel the illusion of that presence, that fullness, that pull, but I also feel its absence, the emptiness, lack of any force and direction. Perhaps, I have some inherent deformities -- maybe blind, maybe insane, maybe something else. But I am away from the madness of a crowd. I hate crowd. I am timid of a crowd. I can't subscribe to the crowd's interests. I am away. I am alone. It is not that I want to be away, alone. It is that I am alone and away, that is why I am alone and away.

I am not living in a desert. Yet, I find myself alone as if in a desert. I find my voice getting crushed in the continuous flow of loud shouts from outside. Those shouts, when deciphered, form a vehement call for a change -- an unacceptable, unwarranted change. They want to create a homogeneous voice -- a loud, monotonic, unending sound. A deafening sound that is external and absurd. That sound will not compromise on its monotonousness, homogeneity, and superiority. It wants to eliminate all the different tones, all the variations. The colour of that sound is a pure, boring white. An insipid white. White that will not tolerate any other shades on the canvas. 

I am a stain in a pure white canvas, a canvas which people mistake for containing a beautiful painting. I am a wrong note, a deviation, in a monotonic music, which people mistakes for a beautiful music. I can't make their painting pristine nor make their music pure. I am here to stay as a stain, a deviation, as I am, eluding even my own understanding of it. The truth is that I am a stain even I can't clean myself. I am a deviation even I can't rectify myself. Perhaps that deviation, the sense of being a stain, defines me. Perhaps I have different sensitivities than the crowd. 

Who knows it right? The more I observe anything, the more it eludes me!

Sandeep

Chennai, May 25, 2014.

Senseless Writing: On Being a Subject, a Cogito! [Unedited]

Breath deeply.... Breath deeply.... Breath is strength.... Breath is life.... Breath helps you to hold on to life. Breath deeply and be alive. Live!

Do not tell me philosophy. Please! And do not tell me metaphysics. 

Do not tell me any superior theory that can define me, understand me, explain me, and thereby limit me and oppress me.

I may not be limitless. I may rather be finite. I may not possess anything that is mine. My desire may not be mine. My dreams may not be mine. Perhaps, theories are just right; perhaps, they are wrong. Perhaps, life exists outside. Perhaps, the outside defines me.

Yet, I experience only me: the me inside me myself. I see only through me. I understand only through me. I experience, define, explain ... only through me. Only through me.

Without the me within myself, the world for me is a void: a huge void that lies outside me. A huge void which seems to be huge because it is so senseless and so meaningless without me. A huge, senseless void. A huge nonsense.

I focus on myself ... my thoughts ... my urges ... the me within me. I focus on my essence, my consciousness, the feel of my feel, the me within me. How will I even tell you about it! I don't know!

My essence, this consciousness: What is it to me? What is my essence, the only thing that I feel belonging to me, to me? I get nowhere. I get to nothing. It is a nothing! Yes, it, my essence, reveals itself to me as a void!

I am an emptiness, so wide and deep, so vast and huge.

I am also an essence, aware of itself. Absurd yet blissful self-awareness! 

I must stop writing. But I can't. If I don't write, I speak to myself. My head fills with my inner voice, which, after a while, becomes merely a noise -- just a humming sound.

Breath deeply. Breath deeply. Breath is my strength. Breath connects me to my body. Breath is a bridge between my consciousness and concreteness.

I am an emptiness. I am also an essence. I am an empty essence, a pure consciousness. 

Lo and behold:

"I am an empty essence, a pure consciousness."

Perhaps, I am a black hole: an isolated, point singularity in the wide, vast, continuous space; yet so deep and dense and huge.

"I am an empty essence, a pure consciousness."

My eyes should be cool, but they are not. They are burning like sun. They are burning like two volcanoes!

"April Goes Away"

"April goes away."
Pain of departure,
Pain of losing,
Deep within my heart.
My heart doesn't let go.
It's like that.
Weak and dreamy,
For it sees only the form,
Not the content.

My head sees the content.
What was the content?
"Nothing," it says.
There was no April to depart!
Therefore, no loss and no pain.
April was a form I created,
A framework, a window
To look at a content
That was not there:
My life in April!

Form conceals the content,
Or non-content.

--sandeep, april 30, 2014, chennai.

Morning Melancholia

Every morning is different. Yet, each one is of a certain type. 

Some are silent, some are noisy. Some are wet and some are dry. Some are hot and some are cold. 

Some remind you your own past: a beautiful day in your past, perhaps. That is nostalgia suddenly aroused within by the morning. I love such mornings. Remembering the past makes me feel that I have been around for such a long long time. 

Some mornings are lazy. You would want to sleep more, only to feel never satisfied! 

Have you ever experienced anything ethereal? That you sense when you lie on the bed, alone, awake, your mind calm and restful, your eyes closed? You can sense the world beyond your eyelids. I cannot express that feeling in words. That is why it is ethereal! Indescribable! How would I love to keep myself in that state forever! 

No, but that is impossible.

Nothing is permanent. To be permanent is against the nature. It is against the universe. The universe is dynamic. The cosmos are dynamic. The nature is dynamic. 

All the happy moments are also like that. I can't keep them with myself. I don't own them. I lose them, always. Perhaps, it is because I lose them that they seem to be worthy. It is only after I lose them that I realise I was happy! 

Am I repeating myself in my writings? Don't I have anything new to say? This may be my paradigm. I may be stuck within me. Do I want to escape? But where to? There's no escape for me from myself. So it seems. There's no exit. So it seems. 

Life is a constant flow. The more you're integrated with the flow, the easier your life will be! You'd be happy, contented! 

Really? 

No, I can't believe so. Because, life is to never feel contented. Life is freedom. Freedom is an eternity of discontent. Contentment and freedom cannot coexist. No, they cannot. Life is a big lake, maybe as big as a sea; maybe a sea itself. You can only integrate yourself with the waves on the surface. Waves that you mistake for a flow! Beneath the surface, invisible to the beholder, chaos are always present in the form of random under-currents. They are your discontent. Deep below there! 

No, I am not repeating myself.... Taat is somtin neu thet I havv juts writtet. I om naut repaatttig miselph. I am creattign mysolg. I kmoww thqt I am nott wrjttjng preoparly; jou mey fynt id difikultt to reod. I finn id difgicalt to wrifte tou. My diffcluty rpresett my diskondett. Thay represett, nott mai lakc of defire to ritte, batt my dasire bieng diffeeted. My defaetaid dzyres: my lfe's untercorrants! 

HIT! 

Loneliness

I am lonely not because some mysterious glass-wall separates me from others. On the contrary, my loneliness is the very invisible glass-wall that separates me from others.

Against All Interpretations [Thanks to Susan Sontag]

Extreme alienation from the surroundings. Ultimate castration from desire itself. Loss of desire. Nothing else to hold on. Horror. Everything around becomes phobic to me. I wonder why I suffer this destiny! Is my life over? Extinction of desire marks the end of life. But I am alive and I don't want to die! Oh my nonexistent God, show me what's out there to hold on to. Show me my way! 

Do you know what is my proof of being alive at the moment? 

Hunger! Uncontrollable desire to eat heavily something delicious and thus to hold on to life and earth and nature. 

The disgusting women living around me wonder if I am impotent, for I am showing no desire for them! Not even my gaze betrays any sign of lust! Strangely enough, the only desire that is thriving inside me is to kill them and eat their flesh. The meat from their curvy calves, fatty thighs, tender hands and bulging abdomens. Would that be delicious? 

Hunger can make a man an animal and an animal a stronger animal. Desire for sex will make an animal weaker if it is a male and stronger if it is a female. Lust makes a woman a dynamite,  but a man an idiot. A very stupid idiot! I am not an idiot. I am an animal, a hungry male animal.

On Writing

To write is to think seriously, to struggle for clarity and depth, to reminisce the past, to dream about the future, to converse with the present or to kill time, that is to live with no purpose.