yempty

Grey is the colour of Regret

2010-08-30T12:58:00.003Z

It may be the clouds
or the quality of the light
or the quality of life
that I've chosen

It may the roads unwalked
the detours taken
the scenery unchanged
the thoughts smothered and killed

It may be all things leading to this point
or just a few
What weights must be released
to stop sinking in this oily slime
bubbles mark where I fell in
what will mark where I finally settle

It may be choices and karma
it may be sanskar and incomplete intelligence
it may be will-lessness or willful deception
it may be nothing but just the lens one uses

But this is dread and regret like a cement block
Acting both at the centre of the rib-cage and the feet
Dragging at 9.8 m/s squared, minus the upthrust from viscosity
Pulling everything down slowly

It's odd I feel, that the oil is pushing me up
While drowning me
As if urging me to live, while killing me
It's the mixedness of all things that makes it hard to identify
Just why it must all collapse
When I thought it was ready to fly .

XXXVI - Too old for potential, too young for self-actualization

2010-06-14T08:47:00.006Z

36 is the square of 6 and also a triangular number.
Making it square and triangular.
36 is the sum of two prime (17 + 19), the sum of the cubes of the first three integers, and the product of the squares of the first three integers.
It is also an abundant number.
It is the number of inches in a yard, the number of gallons in a beer barrel.
The atomic number of Krypton.
ASCII code for the symbol $.
The number of chambers of Shaolin.
The probable outcomes with two die, the number of plays Shakespeare wrote.

All in all, a good age to be. A good age to do. A good age to dobedobedo.

The Spring of Discontent

2010-02-08T06:00:00.000Z

It must be the season again
Which is why everything is so irritating
It's perhaps the imminent onset of furious summer
Or the fading away of my own spring
That makes the odium turn to rage
The listlessness to rancour
When will I make peace with the world
When will I not suffer from seasonal moods
When will the spring of discontent dry up
Turn to summer with the glorious sun of self-actualization

Venting without a plan

2009-12-03T06:29:00.003Z

Purpose = pushpin = poetry
If only one could believe that Utilitarian principles governed one's life
If only one could know what's right
from what could possibly, may possibly be
if only free will felt more like it, or less like Free Willy
when will the answers come
when will things be done
meanwhile I continue to age
fester with potential, unspent and unrealised
I see the life my parents lived and I worry
It's so short, so fleeting
how long before I commit to doing something
instead of surviving everything
Double bugger double damn
I gotta gotta getta plan

Oh blah dee

2009-06-18T11:15:00.002Z

I've been feeling blah for a bit
Dunno if it's a seasonal hit
I don't know what to do
I'm hating and hating what I do
And sometimes what I do not
I live without a single thought
Bored out of my wits and without a song
I'm usually blah, March to May
but never this far in the year or day
I seem to have copped out sold out shipped out
everything but made out
with my potential, sense of destiny
and now I'm down on bended knee
not proposing but waiting for decapitation
a release, onanism anything for a fraction
of purpose of blahlessness

Happiness

2009-03-30T06:32:00.002Z

unhappiness meant unhappiness with mediocrity
with doing everything that has been done before, thought before, written before
now that I'm happy
does that mean I'm mediocre
and is that supposed to make me unhappy
is this a lovely circular loop from which one can't break

it isn't.
I'm happy, I'm alright
the only nagging feeling is of having deceived myself for all these years.

Ecdysis - Skin shedding

2008-12-01T10:51:00.002Z

I have a thick skin, a thicker skin than most
Thickened with years of callousness, cynicism, odium, doubt
But I didn't sleep for much of the weekend
Some nightmares, some random thoughts on what I would do if I were trapped like this
What in a hotel room could be made into a weapon, a defence?
And I grew angry simmering on a slow flame
So I read the world press to grasp what I felt
Islam, kafirs, India, Pakistan, porous borders, pervious resources
Kashmir, human rights violations, ISI, counter-intelligence, bad governance
And the flame flickered as my anger dissipated
But I wanted to be angry requiring a channel for the well of self-righteous rage
And I realised how vulnerable we are now, perhaps more than before
For our cumulative anger could so easily break upon the wrong shore, the wrong back, the wrong battle
Everything seems complex once again
Perhaps I too would be leaden-footed if I was the government
Am I to fight back, am I to soothe or am I to repair
My anger fades, becomes a deep seated neutered powerlessness
The only thing I remain angry with is News channels claiming exclusive coverage
Do they really love their TRPs above all?
My skin is shed along with my exoskeleton
But what should I do with this blood covered flesh?

Worst Case Scenarios

2008-04-21T06:50:00.003Z

No swingin lothario
No intrepid impressario
No bikini clad beach in Rio
I'm the king of the Worst Case Scenario

I think 'em bad, I think 'em blue sky
I think 'em with the chips stacked high
I like em to hurt
And I like them with the luck gone dry

But it's not because I'm so dark
And it's not because I like bein' blue
It's coz no matter how much I plan
I'm caught off guard and without a clue.

Alcoholic Clarity

2008-01-31T15:40:00.000Z

There is an alcohol induced clarity
A settling down of nerves
A calm
Where if you can stop drinking, you can feel the spikes
In other people's energy
And thus tell their greatest problems or joys
fears or moments of happiness

And when I'm like this I'm either really useful
or really manipulative.

Alcohol is my psychic gene
In the last decade more than anything else
Being high has defined what I am.

Has made my most memorable and most forgetable moments
Alcohol makes me clairvoyant, alcohol makes me verbal
and alcohol makes me uncouth
All essential parts of me
The three qualities I would use to describe myself socially.
The other would be a mixed up personality
Ponderous or flaky
Serious or fun
the Sage or the fool.

And alcohol can make me either.
Alcohol is my mistress
my guru
my mother.

On Answers

2007-12-06T12:22:00.000Z

Build it and they will come
Be light and be fun
Empty your mind go Vipasana
Be quiet be open
Be a conduit for energy
Just be
Jest be
And wait
Don't gyrate, don't twist the mind
the mind alas, doesn't have the answer
it barely understands the question
Don't accept don't shun
Don't expect that there'll be just one
Don't expect in fact
Leave it

It will come.

Or if if doesn't you won't be worried about it
You won't be hurried about it
You won't be about it
May be that's all there is to it
Like everything else that's important to you
Be counterintuitive
Give it less importance and it will come
The final divine cock-tease
The only things that come to you are things that you don't need
Attraction is a flow
from lower to higher
from need to desired
of wanting to not wanted

The answers will come when you stop asking the question
when the question itself is meaningless.

Empty handed

2007-08-20T06:21:00.000Z

I used to be a palmist, I guess I still am. I guess more than any book that defines me, that makes me, my daily palmistry has made me what I am. I look at my palms every day. Sometimes hopefully, as I see a new line emerge from the folds- from the patterns of the skin. Sometimes with fear. Yet I do this everyday. And as new theories about lines emerge from books or the subconscious, I try to change the lines, will them to change, will life to change.
But life resists, almost telling me to believe in other things. To not put so much stock by destiny. To embrace other arts. To think for myself, to live in the present.
And life likes teaching me lessons.
But like life, I too resist. There must be a plan there has to be a plan. Plans leave signs, and signs if you know how, are readable.
But why read the signs why be interested in the outcome why not fight the good fight?
Because because because. Because there is self interest and desire and the life one wants.
Then why not live it, why read the signs?
Life beats me in an argument every time. But life loses the sale.
I still read the signs, I still try and interpret, and still pit will against foreboding. It must be something wholly irrational. It may be paranoia, neuroses, a hollowness. But it's a stronger pull than an argument, stronger even than proof.
So I look at my hands every morning through bleary eyes and I think what can this mean. Have I made a step that has a possible outcome ten years hence or is this too temporary, fleeting, ultimately meaningless and empty?

What would make me happy?

2007-07-31T10:31:00.000Z

Sandeep my friend, sometimes guru and usually thought provoker, asked me this, forwarding a query by Dandin. All people concerned are thoughtful types on weekends and so this is a pretty decent conversation and bonding opener.
And while I thought of many possible answers, I didn't give one. It wasn't required at the time. But I guess it is important to have a list of things that would make me happy. However, temporary.
So here goes:
1. To have a series written as successful as the Bartimaeus trilogy if not Harry Potter
2. To have all my close friends close by and alive and full of jokes
3. To have the love of a woman, one woman, who I love back- fiercely, possessively, completely
4. To have many other women want me
5. To have more money than I can spend in this life
6. To have visited at least a hundred cities

That's it. I hope it doesn't condemn me to unhappiness. And the numbers don't indicate priority (that changes daily), just order of thinking.

Ghost writing

2007-04-08T16:34:00.000Z

I used to be interested in the arcane
the otherworldly
the not known by everyone.
And so I never learnt the normal things
Names of trees, flowers, stones,
architecture, poets, rock bands.
Except the very basic
Rose, Eliot, U2.
Just to get by, to not sit blank through every conversation.

My interests were other people’s interests.
In an Omnibus, a burnt CD, a website
a patient crash course on a drunken evening.

But these too are gone.
Not only am I alone I am self contained now
literally, entombed by myself.
Alone, uninterested, cut off from the world
its media, its people, its low concerned voices.

And I pity myself
not just because, I for having no interests, am no longer interesting.
No it’s not just for the loss of vanity
it’s for the loss of life, liveliness, spirit.

And I wonder how I go by all these years
shamming interests when there weren’t any.
When the only abiding interest was myself.
And now that I pause and look inside
that too is gone.

Another Rant

2007-04-05T21:09:00.000Z

Or another alcohol induced
moment of clarity

I've identified the cause of my death
it's a small and simple word
'Great'
wanting being it projecting it
Wanting more than anything else
that this would put an end to all the insufficiencies
inadequacies
inequalities dealt out by nature, circumstance or a benign God

It's an opaque word for me
with no dimensions
no depth to analyse, no sides to consider
and unfortunately, despite being opaque
not having a shadow I can locate

Just a deep desire
a desire fuelled by nights such as these
with wine, women, words
expensive wine, rich women, wasted words
Where one wishes to offset
the S-Class with a joke
the Cigar with a quotation
the Armani jacket with a self deprecatory comment

But alas the words only get under my skin
The words
and the lack of reaction
the lack of recognition
the anonymity
the middle-class loneliness in a who's whose kids' Delhi
the belief in literature or art or history
that somehow
that all that one believed in
was not a lie
not hollow
not empty.

Raat Baaki

2007-03-19T22:10:00.000Z

Progress is slow
superstition high
The nights are slow
the days pass by
Purpose is elusive
Must ambition die
I sit awake
Pushups and crunches shall have to wait
If only I had the will of Leonides
or his body even
If only I had the beauty of Narcissus
and not his self-love
If
only
If only I could write it think it do it not regret it
If only I could sleep dream wake up at dawn
Not fight to make the day meaningful
Not fear the night yet unborn
If only my thumbs were longer
and other organs too
If only I was less fickle and gifted too
If only I believed in myself and less so in passing angels
Muses godmothers the ancestors demi gods
But however it seems to be left to these palms
to etch out some lines not be shown a fraud

What if if then if only
Not nand nor nxor
Not logic not hard truths not science
Not this way not this end never this empty

My Empty Morality

2007-03-03T10:52:00.000Z

No it's not philosophy
nor decon-ning systems of ethics
nor indeed a subtle double-think
nor in fact cliched double standards
it's just empty
or may be not
when you feel the strands that bind
that make you virtuous are unravelling

And it's pretty damn damning
Intent action and desire
all unite in actions
that are wrong
well not right
but certainly not done with the greater good in mind
certainly not done without over-riding self interest

That's why this is a verse and not prose
well at least broken lines

Lacking Purpose

2006-12-18T12:25:00.000Z

It's unexpected and very worrisome. To actually have made time for yourself and have nothing to do. you don't want to write you don't particularly want to meet people and you don't want to meet yourself. In fact, frankly I'm embarrassed by myself. It hurts that so many find me obnoxious. That I happen to be that so regularly and that if I'm not, people expect it of me and read lil bits of obnoxiousness even when I'm just cleaning my ears paying attention to the nuance of insult. But I digress.
You also have run out of excuses and have nothing left to do but find a sense of purpose. Some reason to get out of bed in winter. And I'm assuming the sceptic isn't going to ask 'Why stay in?'
Why get out, why do anything, why try to live an interesting life? And if you aren't made for something important, why try to be and lust for it? What is this obsession with purpose after all?
But I digress.
It is really about the loss of self. I have lost my sense of self-definition in the whirl of other-people's opinions and self-criticism. I think I lost respect for what I did a long time ago and ran out of sympathetic and indulgent friends in the city in the many years one's taken to lose oneself in work. And among the many confusions of morality and destiny and spirituality I think I lost a core set of beliefs. What this leads to is an emptiness of self. A not particularly spiritual state, a not particularly self-piteous state, a not particularly anything state, except an abiding feeling of hollowness. Of the rather unreal experience of living with your shell.

An empty repetitive reflection

2006-09-06T11:20:00.000Z

you wish to write poetry
to be what you cannot be
you wish to live in the idyllic
to draw on lost ancient magick
you hope it will all work out
you narcissistically suck your cheeks and pout
you like to witness the elements behind climate control
and agree that the sum doesn’t equal the whole

but you and life don’t quite close-dance
fate, destiny and circumstance
don’t believe in the off-chance
and idealism and your so called virtues
are the sort of things you can afford to lose

so grow dishonest, fake interest
lose heart, lose will, pretend
there is no available data
that projecting constantly
eventually pushes one round the bend

the elements leak through unseen cracks
crumpling eroding tearing reveries
cynics and pragmatics grow louder voices
and the sense of self
diminishes daily by the far greater loss of faith
by growing up by being awake

On fullness

2006-08-08T07:29:00.000Z

Couldn’t think of a more depressing start for the regular readers of my blog. Of whom, through a policy of elimination by depression, there remains only one. Reader, Object and Writer. The trinity of unity. The unity of empty. I don’t know if it just is a product of the chemicals of biorhythm. The reason why at times either purpose eludes me or the bulk of life seems to be meaningless. Like a dance around a space that is made meaningful by the dance but on its own has no reality. And that’s really the way life seems on such days. Not just my life, everyone’s.
So it is with meaning on the whole. Am I trying to find meaning in something that essentially isn’t meaningful? Perhaps I should enjoy the dance more, the spring in the step, the dervish-like trance that it induces. The fullness of it.
But I prefer to ignore it. As some have said, may be I prefer unhappiness, being like this. Enjoying the depth of feeling that it gives me. The sense of living, which I may or may not feel, but am not conscious about, and certainly don’t remember through words or moments. That must be it aside of a chemical imbalance, that makes this a recurrent internally alive state.
And now I wonder whether it would ever be full. And I have no answer. I don’t think I can ask for enough and I certainly don’t feel I can fill the empty space. I guess I will have to contend with enjoying the dance more, enjoy what meaning it has for me, what meaning it imparts to the empty space, around which it moves in increasingly complicated steps, and in doing so, albeit temporarily, fills it.

If you take Empty out of Empty, emptiness remains

2006-07-14T07:45:00.000Z

Right so I’ve hit it again. Another moment when you’re feeling so self-piteous, so wronged and angered. And too impotent to do anything that the result is a state of depression. Not knowing what to do with anger is so extremely toxic. And this year, 32, has been multiple moments of that.
32 = 8x4 as Sandeep puts it. The year, which marks the point when age overtakes the number of teeth you’ll ever have, naturally. When you pass the fifth power of 2. And reach the point when Jesus, Alexander and Shanracharya, all copped it. Not that we have anything in common. I’ll probably outlive everyone I know and not contribute anything to increase the World’s wisdom or my territory.
Long living genes and misery. Not death’s favorites.

But today is a different kind of empty. When the vessel has been drained but the liquid has left some of its essence. Like the wine glass holding on to the redness of the wine that has been drunk.
A residual anger. Fleeting, evaporating, but present, if just for the moment. I should throw a tantrum may be. I should take it out perhaps but conditioning, a lack of balls and a presence of manners and consciousness of other people all mixed up intertwined make it so difficult to either release or let go.

When I look at myself at these moments I get overwhelmed by the weakness I see. It’s like staring into an exposed wound, seeing muscle and tissue, blood and fibre. Fragile, easily spent. It’s god awful. Being weak and at the same time being conscious. Your defense mechanism broken or not working at all. I’m dying to express something, to speak on behalf of the wine that’s no more, the rage that was diluted, the self righteous anger forced to look back at itself.
And all I can do is write this blog entry. Eureka, I’ve discovered truly empty expression.

The Bleag of Empty

2006-05-02T18:25:00.000Z

It just had a titley thing to it. Like a ballad of some sort. But now really to explain why the dark thoughts. Because despite the number of comments (it's etiquette, people; to let the author know you have been here) I'm not that dark a person. This is a vent. Or as someone put it better; I put words to what I feel. Too many perhaps, but they are just words at the end. And being employed as a wordsmith helps. You become better at using words, without realising their power or import.

And though being blue is in part congenital and part what I've made myself and a whole lot because I suffer from such lack of purpose, it is still a phase that passes. The reason I haven't put a post up for so long was that. I wasn't blue. I wasn't particularly thrilled with the world, quite the opposite, but certainly not blue.

And this is a bleag. It must remain dark. It's not a blag, which would have gags, stupid jokes, and self-deprecatory humour. All of which I'm capable of. But there is much more romance to, more feeling to and a great degree more expression in pain. Of the self inflicted/created type.

So what is the bleag of empty?

It's a rant. It's the dirty dark lane where the aborted foetuses of fantasies lie.
It's a vent. It's a release to the green noxious gases that would otherwise not leave space in the head for anything else.
It's the exploration of the celebration of a feeling, so overpowering, it makes love pale.
It makes art young again. It makes life spectacular and yet utterly unreal. Undoable. Unbending to one's wishes.
It's the slow spelling out of 'could've been', 'if only', 'yes-but'.
It's my feeling of emptiness when the noise in my head clears. When the one thought that remains feels so lonely, it bursts into a soliloquy.
It's depression showing off.
It's blue breaking out of its monochrome.
It's an exercise in combining an empty right with a much-packed left.
It's just words in the end.

Empty at Work

2005-12-09T09:05:00.000Z

I'm usually busy at work. And when I'm not and there's no one to chat with online, no one to pfaff with around and no one really to email or write to, the wash of emptiness is much more potent. Like an undertow that's pulling you out to a deep, depressive sea.
There's tiredness and a need to sleep and in a mind so empty, the constant eruption of feelings of regret. There could be eruptions of joy, could there not? But alas, it doesn't quite happen like that. It's always regret, self-rebuke, disappointment in oneself and when self-pity takes over, the desire to believe that situations and the world are actually conspirers.

Which is why I'm beginning to doubt this feeling. It's not a neutral empty. Or optionally, happiness is filling, fulfilling. And emptiness is just sadness in disguise.

This isn't quite the poetry I wanted to put in. But it should do. For a post if not literature.

And on request, a partly deranged pic.

A drunken moment at a farewell.

Empty pictures

2005-11-28T11:44:00.000Z

The mobile phone allows you to capture moods that perhaps a thousand words or four poems don't.
The view from my room that I wanted to preserve for my month long odyssey in the Indian city of hope, glory and all that jazz by the bay.
Though the trip itself has been not very bleak but at least the blog should remain consistently so. The world and I need to stay attached to our dark side.

I wanted to attach another pic. Not quite as dreamy but certainly as empty. The software however, resists. Placing it within the text where the flow of my wallowing gets affected. The first form of resistance to the public expression of this sort of depression. May be there is a fun-loving God after all. Or at least a digital daemon.
With such resistance and also with a regulated vent, I probably will run out of bleakness soon. But till then let's keep up the bleag.

A seasonal low

What inspires the worse feeling? Having nothing to do on a New Year's Eve? Or needing to stay at home at New Year's Eve because it's never quite lived up to all that you'd want from it. From chasing the parties, to driving in the fog, to being forced to spend the night with some seedies who're stuck with you, because you gambled this year to do just one party and not the usual tasteless hopping.

I think I'll return to poetry for the next post.

On emptiness

2005-11-25T07:33:00.000Z

Yempty is not cool nor Yiddish. Just the available expression for why empty.
I'm going to celebrate the word - empty. Or at least my feeling of, living of, experience of and yes thinking of.
Don’t confuse this site with Buddhist philosophy. If it’s philosophy you crave then this blog is closer to Existentialism than Shunyavada or Yogacara Buddhism.
Alright that proves I’ve read a bit of philo. But that’s so long ago and so rusty that if it comes out philosophical I’d be surprised.

First thoughts.
Emptiness - is both a great symbol for hope and disappointment.
And both feelings dominate my adult life.

So here goes.
4 poems on emptiness

I’ve described it so often,
it should be enough
but I still feel I haven’t done
justice to the mood,
the spirit of it at least.
There is the pain of feeling nothing
because you do want to feel.
There is the absence of words, of thoughts
and that’s why the predominant sense
is of emptiness.
Of vacuum of the drying
of what is otherwise fertile.
But no words capture the living of it.
Because words alas are too objective,
too verbal, too cognitive
and though I want to share my
lack of life of love of God
I can’t, and that causes me not
pain nor frustration but disappointment.
And disappointment, regret and this
empty feeling are the same colour inside.
Where they’re mixed up and crystallized.

…………………….

There is hope
there’s always hope.
It’s hope that colours and hope that empties
and eventually hope that disappoints.
And while it refuses to die
which I’m told or asked to believe
is a good sign.
Perhaps it would be better to be just real.
Less damaging perhaps
more forgiving of oneself, of others even.
But hope is like this little child that
refuses to grow.
Refuses to be toilet-trained.
Refuses to accept the wisdom of the
much broken of the much lived.
I feel hope. I really do.
I can tell when I’m hopeful.
Hope always feels the same.
This raw, naïve, innocence
that makes me feel so weak.
If only hope would change
would accept me, my life, the world.
But she doesn’t die, she can’t be pinned
and she refuses to go away.
…………………………..

Books music and correction fluid
pile up on my desk in a mess
I pretend they’re symbolic of my life
rich but cluttered with things to do
dirt crusted corners, paperback wisdom
piling up high on a solid base.

I don’t just pretend I hope it’s true
that the desk speaks more about me
than my actions do.
So I buy and collect odd things, clever things
things that you should have.
And dump them together
hoping, praying that the symbol
becomes the symbolized.

If you’d look at my desk, you’d think there’s
more to this man
because that’s what I’d want you to think.
But you’d be half right
and I would have half succeeded
in convincing your pattern making mind.
I am the shell, the seen the curtain
there’s nothing more than you can see
and yet I desire, I hope, I pray
to be what I cannot be.

Some day you will tidy up this desk
and find my thoughts in blue ink
and you will hope as did I
that surely there was more to this life.

…………………….
Bitterness and overdone chai
linger long after
through the day, my dry tongue
reminds me of how bitter I should be.
I scratch at the scabs
I like the fester
I like the realization
I enjoy the bitterness that I’ve created
for myself today.

I saw it coming, I felt its wash
I let it pass trying to be cool and all
and now that it’s gone
undertow too
I teeter, I spit, I cough and cry
at the numbness, the bitterness
the black feeling inside.
...................................