"Nobody Knows Me At All"

When I was a child everybody smiled,
nobody knows me at all
Very late at night and in the morning light,
nobody knows me at all

Now I got lots of friends, yes, but then again,
nobody knows me at all
Kids and a wife,it's a beautiful life,
nobody knows me at all

And oh when the lights are low
Oh with someone I don't know

I don't give a damn, I'm happy as a clam,
nobody knows me at all
Ah, what can you do? There's nobody like you.
Nobody knows me at all

I know how you feel, no secrets to reveal,
nobody knows me at all
Very late at night and in the morning light,
nobody knows me at all

Nobody knows me, nobody knows me, nobody knows me at all"

-The Weepies

Message in a bottle

After the longest day or the shortest... (depending on the perspective one chooses to align oneself towards, in terms of what really qualifies as a true measure of 'time' - is it a long day when there's all the time you need and want to do all that your heart desires, even if it meant doing nothing at all... or is it the longest day when its that much time spent not doing what you truly ache to be doing at that point... sometimes I think time, as we understand it..has no real meaning at all: but I digress... so getting back to my original train of thoughts).... after what seemed like a really long day at work...y'know that time when your head is wandering towards all the things that you remember having had the time for... all the things you aren't doing anymore.. those thoughts- the kind that always get into trouble...:)- those thoughts brought be back to this little chunk of bandwidth that I call my space. Invariably these thoughts follow a similar pattern everytime- it always starts off as " i need to write my blog today...I'll do it tonight.. " ..I might even start off with a line or two.. telling myself that this will motivate me to complete it when Im home..and consistently..and yet never ceasing to surprise me ...it never works. There are at least, at given point, 5 unfinished blog posts languishing in the folder- clearly, I am in denial of my fundamental indolence :-) Afterall, there is only this much one can skim through with the brownie points earned on "good intentions" alone :-)
So... this post is going to be published...irrespective of how horrible it reads right now to me. After all... why is it that we blog..the ones who do i.e. What makes us believe that we have anything worthy enough.. if not unique/ not eloquent/not fun..but simply worthy to say, to earn to sit pretty in a shared bandwidth ? Is it just the manifestation of the fundamental human need to share one's thoughts, to be heard- but then, you can find a live audience for that, can't we...(even if you have to semi-tranquilize them with narcotics if needed...:-) )- or does it merely feed our fundamental narcissism- that it feels good to be read..understood..praised? :) Maybe its all this and more... I don't really know for sure. I used to believe I write for catharsis..and in my very early pre-blog era writing days.... I think that was completely true. But I suspect that if that's all I wanted.. then this blog would have been truly anonymous..and thereby a better tool for catharsis-motivated writing.
There are many days... esp. the past year and half, that I've wished I had kept this as an Anonymous blog as it was originally intended to be...
Anyway... today my thought on all of this ...is this... :-)...
I think we write...mostly because we like to... for nothing more and nothing less. For the joy of it.. irrespective of whether we have any talent for it(sadly :) ). We like to write... because it feels good; because (strangely!) words can still do so much- even if its only to our heart's satisfaction.
And this joy is enough.

I feel..on my good days...and esp. on my not so good ones.. these paragraphs are my little notes- the ones I scribble, never re-read, and carelessly stuff into a bottle and fling with all my heart into the ocean of nothingness called the world-wide web.
My little posts are written for the same reasons people write messages into bottles and fling them far and away- they are written to be found.. they are written to be read and ...hopefully mean something to someone other than yourself (myself).

Happy Halloween!

Carpe Diem - Sieze or Cease!

For one thing..the date shown for this post is inaccurate.. this is being posted a good 3 months after the last blog. I was wondering what would,if anything at all, drag me back to the world of the written word- i had to stop writing- there is after all, only this much one can say about nothing at all (yes, even me :-) )
I'd like to label it as some kind of writer's ennui- but that's just a fancy way of saying that the striking of midnight didn't quite turn this pumpkin into ..well, a writing diva (so im ..umm 'tweaking'.. fairy tales a little bit - what else is new :) ) :-)
Fact of the matter is that I ran out of things to say- felt like I didn't read enough, think enough..or feel enough- such is the life of an automaton.
Then I got this email from a friend, fairly out of the blue- in a manner of speaking i.e.-'coz i hadnt heard from him in a while;and considering the content of his email, it couldn't have have been more serendipitous-
He wrote that he awoke that morning thinking, this:
If the average age of a person is considered to be around 70 yrs- we have, as a broad approximate ~ 3600 weeks of life: of which,if the last 500 weeks are spent in the winding down process and the beginning ~1500 weeks are used to merely get to the point where you are truly ready for 'life'... it leaves us a measly ~1600 weeks to make something of our lives- to live out our dreams- few or plentiful as they may be..to just "do" ..all the things that we want to, have to. Sixteen hundred weeks - really...thats it! And somehow when a lifespan was laid out there in weeks...it felt so terribly....abbreviated.
1600 weeks to get our acts together to truly live- to get beyond a definition of merely existing.
It isn't much at all, is it?
(now, who in the name of God and all bright things, wakes up thinking things like this!.. that's a completely dfferent story in itself... :) but M described it as "mid life crisis".. come early.. - i just say he's a rare bird, indeedy :-) )

Time, or our lack thereof has a way of lending perspective like no other shining mirror.
It has the strength to shake even the most resolute/ conditioned of us, automatons (moi being the case in the point here)..

'Carpe Diem!' is more a mantra, (or should be) than a slogan...
Sieze the day..and the afternoon, the evening, and the night and then all over again.. :)
I have found the most brilliant and lame of excuses to not pursue things I thoroughly enjoy or to find an adventure ...but it seems so pointless when you know that you're setting yourself up for the kind of regret you don't have the luxury of time for ....:-)

That morning it appeared like the Universe conspired to show me the numbers.. our ever dwindling stash of gambling chips :-)..

So I plan to Sieze, or less I'll cease in vain :-);
Or, in the immortal words of C&H ..(always)"Go for the Gusto!" ) (who can say it better :-) )

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Shower Song...

The first verse and title happened in the shower this morning... the rest at the end of the day. Its too rhyme-y to be a poem- its an attempt to be a song- it goes to anyone who can set it to a tune... i hope the rhythm gets through.

Love is a many splintered thing

Love finds you
and you let it go
tell yourself that,
there'll be more
They tell you
if your love is true
he's only bound
to come back to you...

love oh love is a many, many splendored thing
love, oh love,is a many many,
one too many many, splendorous thing

But that's not how
this story goes...
You watch him walk
the same old road
down that path
away from you
into the arms (for-ever),
of someone new...

love..oh..love is a many, many,
one too many, many ...splintered thing...

Memories were
easier to bury
our good times
were so few and so hurried..
And so its funny
how regrets go
Hindsight caught
what was missed in throes..


love..that...love was a many, many,splendored thing..
and yet love, that love was a one too many, ...splintered thing...

Time has passed
and the deed is old
'Have moved on'..
is what everyone's been told..
I don't quite know
what I miss
it can't (oh no!)be him
then what is this?


love..oh..love is a many, many, splintered thing..
love, old love is a one, too many, ...splintered thing...

Dreams are but
our castles in the sand,
feel as real
as the grains in our hands,
And last about
just as long
as the chorus line
of your heartbreak song...


love, oh love, when are you a splendored thing?
love oh love, who deserves a splintered thing?


-- the end------

Back to the future...

Dorothy Sayer summarized it best when she said-"A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought."
That pretty much says it all about my postings of late-nothing original, nothing thats involved more than a simple copy-paste action. But I wonder if to be truly creative and consistently so, one has to pretty much live in a bubble- completely out of touch and oblivious to things said and done or be completely convinced that they can say it better every time.

I sadly know that I only write as a form of catharsis ... I only write when its the only way. Other times, it just feels like I'd be trying to reinvent the wheel and less artistically so.
And yet as human beings we seem, most of us, to possess this need to- say what we need to say...even if the words are borrowed-

Driving home late from dinner yesterday- with a clear night sky and a full moon, it was almost tempting to turn the headlights off and make my way back in the moonlight. An old R.E.M. song - the only remnant piece of memory of a moonlight night, from a summer like many others spent up in the Sahyadri ranges, came back as a gentle soundtrack for the night ride. This was from a time when in our adolescent angst, everything seemed so much more..than what it finally turned out to be-everything was far more intense then- perhaps such is the nature of everything imagined :-)held together only by a promise of an experience and not by the pillars of it. Often times, it seems to me, 'What-if's' are far more engaging than the 'what is' :)
This by no means is to discount the experience of an experience, so to speak-- but its just amusing to see how for people like me, things are ironically, more real when imagined :)


NightSwimming


Nightswimming deserves a quiet night.
The photograph on the dashboard, taken years ago,
Turned around backwards so the windshield shows.
Every streetlight reveals the picture in reverse.
Still, its so much clearer.
I forgot my shirt at the waters edge.
The moon is low tonight.

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night.
Im not sure all these people understand.
Its not like years ago,
The fear of getting caught,
Of recklessness and water.
They cannot see me naked.
These things, they go away,
Replaced by everyday.

Nightswimming, remembering that night.
Septembers coming soon.
Im pining for the moon.
And what if there were two
Side by side in orbit
Around the fairest sun?
That bright, tight forever drum
Could not describe nightswimming.

You, I thought I knew you.
You I cannot judge.
You, I thought you knew me,
This one laughing quietly underneath my breath.
Nightswimming.

The photograph reflects,
Every streetlight a reminder.
Nightswimming deserves a quiet night, deserves a quiet night.
--R.E.M.

Spring has finally sprung....aaah(tchoo!)


This one is for Tey and Horseshoe- :-)
So much for my promises of keeping poems out of this bandwidth for a while... (but then, you asked for this, didn't ya- at least Horseshoe did :)..:-) )

In any case, I really hope everyone who reads this..my quiet readers and my more conversational ones...I really hope you like this as much as I do.
This poem makes me smile every time I remember it (mostly the last verse).

I have for some reason, associated this poem, which feels like a song, with spring- writing of hope, writing with the courage of being able to look at winter's travails, writing with strokes leaning firmly into the future without disowning the bruises, that mark a healed heart, that have paved the way for this- 'newness'

:) I gush everytime I post a Seth poem...perhaps because he makes me feel so much- even when I don't relate to the exact content of his poems at times..which I guess is the art of a true master. In my opinion, anyone who has ever written a poem that was shared with people, aspires for exactly this reaction from the reader.
Seth just makes it look so easy.



From California

Sunday night in the house.
The blinds drawn, the phone dead.
The sound of the kettle, the rain.
Supper: cheese, celery, bread.

For company, old letters
In the same disjointed script.
Old love wells up again,
All that I thought had slipped

Through the sieve of long absence
Is here with me again:
The long stone walls, the green
Hillsides renewed with rain.

The way you would lick your finger
And touch your forehead, the way
You hummed a phrase from the flute
Sonatas, or turned to say,

"Larches--the only conifers
That honestly blend with Wales."
I walk with you again
Along these settled trails.

It seems I started this poem
So many years ago
I cannt follow its ending
And must begin anew.

Blame, some bitterness,
I recall there were these.
Yet what survives is Bach
And a few blackberries

Something of the "falling starlight",
In the phrase of Wang Wei,
Falls on my shadowed self.
I thank you that today

His words are open to me.
How much you have inspired
You cannot know. The end
Left much to be desired.

"There is a comfort in
The strength of love." I quote
Another favourite
You vouchsafed me. Please note

The lack of hope or faith:
Neither is justified.
I have closed out the night.
The random rain outside

Rejuvenates the parched
Foothills along the Bay.
Anaesthetised by years
I think of you today

Not with impassionedness
So much as half a smile
To see the weathered past
Still worth my present while.

Vikram Seth

"Yukon ho!"

... Or so I thought, when I had my last bag packed to move (finally) out of cow country- strangely, much to the disbelief of the sane few I knew there, I was filled with misgivings. For all that I vilified cow-land, it was pretty much the only 'home' I knew of, away from home. In many ways, I will always remember most of - everything that it was, fondly. I came alone... I left connected.

There is something so infinitely terrifying about the workings of 'change'- irrespective of how tempting the possibilities and implications of the same maybe-having played this mad game once before, I think I'm on qualified turf to say that "Change" is a game for the young- Ignorance might be bliss, but see now- innocence is what is empowering. :-)
This is perhaps why its easier for children to learn anything; its easier when you don't know what it means to fail.

At the threshold of a new decade in my life, straddling my ambiguous worlds of ignorance and inexperience, I begin a brand new chapter.
The writing maybe on the wall.. but like braveheart Calvin and loyal Hobbes, I'm off on my new journey and fingers crossed for the adventures it may bring.

So the question is, now when I'm older and none-the-wiser, how late is too late for an old dog to learn new tricks? :-)

'the answer my friend, is blowing in the wind..the answer is blowin' in the wind'...:)

Stay tuned for weather updates :-).