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It all started when the piece of wine red glass cut my vein and a million soldier ants swarmed around me.As I lay there helpless watching with a bunch of red rubber bands stuck in my throat darkness throwing its violence at me, my left hand pinned to the bed with a hundred nails, my blood oozing in fibres of gold and life-green, the glinting eyes of the mechanical purifier sucking at my blood, spitting it back into me..I breathed my last. Bubbles ran into my left hand like cosmic energy and went on to kiss my heart. It started as a convulsive pain, a twitch to begin with and moved to a pang of longing..the one I felt when I went blue and bloodless with fear as a child. When the shock of anger grabbed me with a breathless grip before I realized I was dying and a sudden rush of air burst into my lungs as wails emerged from me, tears streaming down my eyes. A helpless victimized indignance erupted in me back then. Now, only helplessness remained. The victim had even lost the qualities of remaining a victim and had turned into a boiled egg. The indignance had turned into a limp winter day biscuit. Now pain was incognito. It had become a lifestyle choice. Needles were friendly skin, vein and muscle invaders. Shame was naked as a big blue whale out in the beach. Anybody could grope on you. Someone would be weeping around you as though you were already dead. Your eyes would still watch and your head would still process laughter. Only your muscles won’t move. Tears always mingled themselves with laughter and nobody could make out the difference. When my body begged for warmth it was gifted with rigours of cold. Suddenly I would find myself between sleep and waking legs swinging up in the air, two strangers holding my head and ambiguous laughter echoing in my blood vessels. Suddenly I would be retching. I would mock at the order the world seemed to fastidiously preserve and tidiness would get covered in blood and vomit. I was on wheelchairs dizzy as a bumble bee, on stretchers with feet burning like camphor…then they threw me on to a bed of yellow sunflowers and anesthaesia and an angel called dad gifted me with the punishment of life. Now I have grown feelers of silver, infinite eyes of death have opened in me and now I realize I have travelled to another terrain. Here people mistake obnoxious fumes for fragrance and blood for water. Here they drill holes into the hands of God. People travel all day in deserts grit pricking into their toe nails and wade through radioactive slime ponds to find lotuses. I scream and scream out to them but their eyes have been hypnotized to see green. To them death is a receptacle full of monstrosities called lives. To me death is a lover. How will we ever fall into the pages of the same book? I too once was there. Now I am here. Now there is no going back. In Lethe, the river is still as a mirror. In Hades, the ferry runs one way.
When two complex minds meet the result is chaos. All conversations are indirect. Love is expressed in images of colours and bizarre creatures and phantasmal places. There are presumptions and circumlocution. Convoluted speech and a googol plus digressions. Somebody teach us to talk direct, short sentences. I am tired of word games and layers of meanings. I wish I could speak like small spells – crisp and effective. I can express myself better without words..I hate the idea of language..it is inadequate. I saw myself wanting to convey something and went beating around every mulberry bush and found myself in a quicksand that dragged me in. I only knew I did not want to be there.
Well, even in this post I cannot say things directly. Bless me!
| Your Quirk Factor: 91% |
 You’re beyond quirky… You’re downright bizarre. You’ve lost touch with social norms and what’s appropriate. And you’re loving every minute of it! |
Fragmented conversations
Feelings incomplete
Hanging by a noose between
Silence and Security
Swallowing sweet songs contemptuously
Reluctantly spitting out words of measured value
Misers in love
They dole out sweet moments penuriously
Holding back the warmth
That might possibly drive away
The haunting winter in another heart.
Misers in love
They pestilentially infest
Every nook and cranny
Of this unfortunate earth.
They cunningly hide the healing flame of love
Allowing darkness to reign in broken souls.
Trust they gulp with great difficulty
Affection they fear
Intimacy hunts their nights down
Driving them insane
Thoughts of having to spare
A few golden bits of themselves
For an undeserving other.
Misers in love
They hoard and hoard portions of themselves.
Yet
A few shrewder feelings
Escape the cold dungeons of their hearts
And manage to work their way out
They remedy such mishaps
With urgent curfew.
Misers in love
They choose with caution
Adjectives that may become compliments
“You’re good!” they say.
“But remember,” they hastily add,
That does not mean anything!”
Everyday disappearances
Passionate reappearances
“If you can wait and not be tired of waiting”
Holding their prey in uncertainty
Abrupt farewells are their specialty
When their victims move to warmer zones
“Trust not!” they say.
Trying to pass on a legacy
Of mistrust, paranoia and cold-heartedness.
In that still lake
Sleeping like a blue mirror
Sleeps my dream
Like the road that winds
In minuscule hope
Of a traveller who might come
Tomorrow…
My love,
Life is not futile
Nor is it a vague array of events
Eyes are not windows
That watch in helpless anger.
They dart and flow
Like quick silver cautious
We burst yet we are bubbles
Of a million slippery colours.
A potter’s dreams are shaped in clay
The woodcutter’s dreams
Make crosses and crucifixes.
Life like a wealth of torments
Teaches you to breathe
Like kaleidoscopes made
Of broken glass bangles.
All eternity flits by
Moment after moment
In dynamic stillness.
Flow my love
Let your sleep be filled
With the frolic
Of white water froth.
Drench yourself in rains
Of lemonade and sticky liquorice
Life will wash you and clean you
Vigorously wiping you
With a downy towel of fleece.
Flinch not when life feeds you
With bittersweet herbs
Walk on in wonder
Sporting shameless pink glasses.
Spill soup
On your new white idea
Watch stains emerging
Like opportunities.
When popsicles shrink
Their sweetness stays
On marooned tongues.
Balloons of red and yellow
Float by like smiles
Watch them trot by
Turning into themselves again.
Make water patterns
On cool concrete floors
Shutting ears to elders
Watch little ants climb
Onto your pencil tips
Stroke them
With a strand of love..
Burn with the fire
Of tireless hope
Wipe away the long face
Clouds are not candy floss
Yet
There are a million more
Black and orange
Butterflies to chase.
My swan,
Ripples disappear
People are paddles
That help you glide on
Fledgling dreams
Fluffy and fragile
Cup them carefully
In your little wings.
My feather,
Fly into everywhere
That lies open
A million eyes watching
From above and below…
Lean on my shoulders
In weary seasons
Then fly on
With fresh breezes.
If you figure out the bull written here, please let me know…
“The Development of an Oppositional Discourse by the Colonized in Wole Soyinka’s “Death and the King’s Horseman”
Post-colonial theory seeks to give a voice to the oppressed. Theorists such as Said, Spivak and Bhabha have sought to deconstruct the Eurocentric bias of knowledge construction that understands all reality in comparison with Europe’s reality. The concomitant effect of such bias is the creation of unequal power relations. Concepts such as orientalism, subaltern and hybridity have provided a theoretical space for new discourses by the marginalized and the oppressed. The West had viewed the Orient as a reaction to its own insurmountable presence, as a mere by-product of its own existence, devoid of a pro-active presence rooted in individual histories or conditions. Political psychologist Nandy feels that the construction of the Occident was a confrontation by the colonized. Such a construction created categories, concepts and defenses of mind which represented the west in terms of the non-west’s experiences. Nandy believes that it was the innocence of the colonized that eventually defeated the oppressor. Thus the creation of the “Occident” by the colonized is a critical move by the oppressed in forming an oppositional discourse.
Frantz Fanon in his “Black Skins White Masks
According to Soyinka “The Colonial Factor is an incident, a catalytic incident merely. The confrontation in the play is largely metaphysical, contained in the human vehicle which is Elesin and the universe of the Yoruba mind – the world of the living, the dead, and the unborn, and the numinous passage which links all: transition.”
“It is of course true that the African identity is still in the making. There isn’t a final identity that is African. But, at the same time, there is an identity coming into existence. And it has a certain context and a certain meaning. Because if somebody meets me, say, in a shop in Cambridge, he says ‘Are you from Africa?’ Which means that Africa means something to some people. Each of these tags has a meaning, and a penalty and a responsibility. All these tags, unfortunately for the black man, are tags of disability . . . I think it is part of the writer’s role to encourage the creation of an African identity.” Chinua Achebe”
Actually this is how I began writing my post-colonial studies assignment two months back (with the same colours.I had hoped atleast the colours would inspire me but to no avail.) The rest of my class submitted it two months back. I did not. It was not borning. I kept fighting for it day and night but I could not write even one sentence that made sense to me. It was horrible. I think this would be the one prominent thing I would remember about my college life. I would tell my child some day how I struggled for this assignment to be born.
I don’t like forcing ideas out. It is somehow unnatural and painful both for me and my words. To me an inspiration has to be strong and the flow, free. Finally, today, after months of evading the deadline and the professor, I decided to confront the phobia. I had my lunch and entered the library at 12.00 p.m. and laboured for 2 hours, after which a beautiful baby was born. It was about the notions of space, the governance of space and the politics of space in Wole Soyinka’s “Death and the King’s Horseman”.
There is not a single friend of mine who does not know of Wole Soyinka now, thanks to me and my infinite cribbing.
The problems in the creation I observed were the following.
1. Apprehension of the subject I took up.
2. Apprehension of results.
3. Apprehension of Soyinka and his intense and extraordinary play. (Honestly, I first thought it was about Humpty Dumpty!)
4. Apprehension of my professor.
5. Apprehension of anything related to “Death and the King’s Horseman.”
If I ever find time I shall type out the assignment I wrote today. Ah! Feel like I am relieved of constipation…crude scatological image but nothing else can explain my feeling better..
When night drove on her chariot, old
She wrapped her mysteries in stone-cold
A disturbed bird uttered a coo
A painful tear painted it blue
When fragrant flowers filled the bower
Moonlight drowned the forest tower
The lonely maiden lay awake
As fishes ruffled the rippling lake
The night held a thousand songs
For fluttering hearts where love belongs
When all was quiet except the night
To the wildest hearts everything is right
Oh! What is it that pierced my heart?
Sans doubt it is the Cupid’s dart
Wild and wet red drops did gleam
A rain of fire, It’s Cupid’s dream
She melted in his powerful arms
Cupid’s quiver was full of charms
The dark dream of Cupid’s presence
Enveloped her very essence
Wings of Time took a feathery leap
Love was lost in slumber deep
When Psyche bathed in moonlit beams
Cupid is true yet Cupid is a dream
As daylight raised its grayish head
Cool mist gathered round their stead
The palace rooms teemed with mist
In long harmony their lips kissed
Psyche’s lashes dripped with dreams
Cupid is real yet Cupid ’seems’
Farewell Psyche! When I return
Do not let the candles burn
When all is dark and everything is right
It is yet another Psyche’s Night…
______________________________
I wrote this poem in December, 2002. I identify with this poem in 2006. Sublimation in forethought, they call it!! :p
I recommend this amazing handwriting test to all of you. Do it a bit seriously. It was bang-on when I took it!
Here is an edited (censored!!) version of my report…
Lioness has left lots of white space on the right side of the paper and the writing seems to be moving leftward as it creeps down the page. She has a fear of moving forward. She seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. Lioness seems to be clinging to past events, withdrawing, and spending lots of time thinking about what happened or what might happen in the future.
Lioness exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although she may not intend to deceive or mislead, she blows things way out of proportion because that is the way she views them. She will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of her material world. Lioness allows many people into her life because she is accepting and trusting. She is sometimes called gullible by her friends. That only really means that she trusts too many people. Lioness has a vivid imagination.
Lioness has a healthy imagination and displays a fair amount of trust. She lets new people into her circle of friends. She uses her imagination to understand new ideas, things, and people.
Something is incomplete in Lioness’s life. Somewhere in her life there is some disappointment, non-fulfillment, and interruption.
Lioness has a temper. She uses this as a defense mechanism when she doesn’t understand how to handle a situation.
Lioness is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect her ego when she feels hurt. She pokes people harder than she gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny. They can also be harsh, bitter, and caustic at the same time.
In reference to Lioness’s mental abilities, she has a very investigating and creating mind. She investigates projects rapidly because she is curious about many things. When Lioness slows down, then she becomes more creative than before. She has the best of two kinds of minds. One is the quick investigating mind. The other is the creative mind. Her mind thinks quick and rapidly in the investigative mode. She can learn quicker, investigate more, and think faster. Lioness can then switch into her low gear. When she is in the slower mode, she can be creative, remember longer and stack facts in a logical manner. She is more logical this way and can climb mental mountains with a much better grip.
…and so it goes on….
Tags: Handwriting, Graphology,
I recommend this amazing handwriting test to all of you. Do it a bit seriously. It was bang-on when I took it!
Here is an edited (censored!!) version of my report…
Lioness has left lots of white space on the right side of the paper and the writing seems to be moving leftward as it creeps down the page. She has a fear of moving forward. She seems unwilling to face the fear of getting started living now and planning for the future. Lioness seems to be clinging to past events, withdrawing, and spending lots of time thinking about what happened or what might happen in the future.
Lioness exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although she may not intend to deceive or mislead, she blows things way out of proportion because that is the way she views them. She will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of her material world. Lioness allows many people into her life because she is accepting and trusting. She is sometimes called gullible by her friends. That only really means that she trusts too many people. Lioness has a vivid imagination.
Lioness has a healthy imagination and displays a fair amount of trust. She lets new people into her circle of friends. She uses her imagination to understand new ideas, things, and people.
Something is incomplete in Lioness’s life. Somewhere in her life there is some disappointment, non-fulfillment, and interruption.
Lioness has a temper. She uses this as a defense mechanism when she doesn’t understand how to handle a situation.
Lioness is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect her ego when she feels hurt. She pokes people harder than she gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny. They can also be harsh, bitter, and caustic at the same time.
In reference to Lioness’s mental abilities, she has a very investigating and creating mind. She investigates projects rapidly because she is curious about many things. When Lioness slows down, then she becomes more creative than before. She has the best of two kinds of minds. One is the quick investigating mind. The other is the creative mind. Her mind thinks quick and rapidly in the investigative mode. She can learn quicker, investigate more, and think faster. Lioness can then switch into her low gear. When she is in the slower mode, she can be creative, remember longer and stack facts in a logical manner. She is more logical this way and can climb mental mountains with a much better grip.
…and so it goes on….
Tags: Handwriting, Graphology,
Hello Trash bin,
My best friend. The one who always was there, whenever I came back. Here I come. One more time. Thanks for waiting for me this time, like you wait everytime. This time is the last time, though. This time I don’t come to you with a bowed head and half-singed feathers like Icarus. This time I did not lose my self-respect, my self-worth, my time or my energy. This time I am contented trash. I have lost my heart and soul to someone worthier than me. I come to you because you’re my refuge at the end of the day. I come because I had nothing more in me left to be offered. I don’t come to you like last time with tears and a muddy face and bruises on my elbow. I come to you beaming in radiance like an accomplished trash.
I have been specially routed here because becoming trash is a beautiful process. We are all born fresh-smelling, edible and mouth-watering. We get wrapped in little boxes with pink satin ribbons around them. We peep and grope in expectation waiting to be picked up by the right hands. We want to be tasted like lip-smacking wares. We want to melt in mouths and descend deeper into someone’s experience. We don’t want to be spat out in disgust or remain undigested. We don’t want to be licked on the surface like either walls of a cream biscuit. We don’t want to be spewed or excreted in an untoward manner. Anything unnatural shakes our integrity up. We want to be natural trash.
If I was born a feather and the bird shook me off indifferently, I would be hurt. Then, if I were to land inside a man’s ear, I would be disgusted. The purpose of my existence would be crushed. But..trash bin, in your haste don’t conclude I am one of your other occupants. I am not yesterday’s newspaper. I am not a broken glass. I am not a rotten egg. Be proud. I am one of your little children who has come to you in full splendour – as trashed as trash can be.
I am not stupid like a banana peel nor ignored like that old man. Nor am I suppressed, oppressed or tragic trash. I am loved , contented ..needed in the bin because I am all used up, just like trash should be. So let me come to you dear old bin, and sleep in your crevices because I have been sent here not as trash but as a memory, for later retrieval, as a reminder for future records. Give me my little space where I can crouch before I am swallowed by your depths. This time I wont seek to wake up again and go out for someone else who will take me. This is time I am used up. Contented. Served my purpose. Unrecyclable. I flew my flights as a feather. I am this mess of gooey wax because, as a candle, I made a difference.
We are all trash out here. Some of us think we are people. Some of think we are wanted people. Some of us think we are important people. At the end of the day, trash bin dear, you are our refuge. We will come to you feeling loved and warm, like coming back home to be swallowed by your unconditional, all-consuming mouth and feel at ease with fellow trash. Really, I am not sure if any other fellow-trash of mine received such honour as I did of being sent to you with extreme care and brimming tears, but among all trash I feel insurmountably superior.
Here I come. Once again to your cozy depths.
With lots of warmth and love
Trash.
