Rainmen. Puddle me not.
Hiatus. As much as I love to wallow in the self-loathing that causes me to throw this word around to anyone who would listen, I have no mercy for it. I look outside the window and I see the battleship-grey rain-clouds gathering in their all-too-familiar formation, and it makes me smile. This means that I will be writing about this later. I’m perplexed because, lately, I have come to realize that I’m feeding this strange apathy to all human emotional overlapping .The wisps of smoke that rise from the flaming end of my cigarette struggle to challenge the bigger ones that loom overhead, failing blithely in their attempt to do so. As I watch the flames flicker weakly on the sidewalk and as the first drops douse the orange embers, I am confronted by an overwhelming desire to pull my parka tighter around my shoulders and take a walk. So, I glibly manoeuvre around the wet, mossy path and hold my breath till my sneakers hit the asphalt. Once they do, the downward spiral begins. The neurons spark, the blood starts flowing in clogged veins and I’m faced with an endless river of contemplation – one I am terrified of crossing.
As he likes it.
I am a philanderer now. There is little to ponder about, really. I find conversations meaningless and despicable. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s the ignorance that has settled in so thickly around me that I can unwittingly catch a cold with it. Or, maybe it’s the generalizations that accompany the ignorance. I am sure I am doing Charles Bukowski proud. He must be proposing a toast to me, in that unseen dimension he now lives in. The problem is one thinks one can escape the mundane sobriety of day-to-day life by hiding in some life-saving idealism, some innocuous propagandist philosophy that I have managed to scavenge from every single influence/experience, but that is misleading. It does a grave injustice to that John Coltrane saxophone that I like to call my Mind.
My steps echo through the night. The road is wet and uninviting. The puddles that are forming in the hollows are muddy and shallow, and the ripples that are being etched on their surface forget their impermanence. The rain falls in thick, glossy sheets around me, trying to defeat the phantasm that walks on the road.
I always thought I was above these frail excuses. The averting-of-eyes and the shuffling-of-feet. I have nightmares – not the ones that leave you in a cold-sweat and have you clutching your chest at three in the morning, but the ones that paralyse you when you wake up, making you look at the beautiful, petal-patterned bug on the ceiling trying to do figure-eights in that particular square. Of the women I have slept with, of people whose advice I so relentlessly chose to ignore, of faces whose names I can’t even remember holding their long, bony fingers and shaking their Diophanic heads at my arrogance and at my inability to worship at the very shrine the foundation of which I laboured to build and reinforce. I call them the Triad. Maybe I am fucked up. Trapped in the continuity till my brand of hell freezes over, and I am left clutching at these walls trying to find a handhold here and a foothold there. I have pointedly dismissed the people who mattered and subtly ignored the ones who didn’t. My inherent ability to judge people at first sight has now led me to speculate some more on the various anomalies of the subjectivity of human emotion. To the ones who like to Kafkize everything, I am going through what many call a mid-life crisis. Were it not for the fact that I haven’t reached middle-age yet, I wouldn’t have written this.
There is a tramp sleeping on the sidewalk, or what looks like the remains of a tramp. He’s lying in a pool of his own blood. If I were my usual, unfettered compassionate self, I would have called an ambulance. But , no one deserves my kindness today. The sky flares up as the lightning rents holes in that black blanket. My cell phone beeps. I whip it out perfunctorily and I see I have a message from the girl I slept with yesterday. She is trying to remind me that I have a session with her tonight – unfinished business, she calls it. And she whispers sweet nothings to my side of the electronic airwaves. Tut-tut. No swapping of bodily fluids today. I think my masculinity just telescoped on itself.
The Quality.
A few years ago, Pirsig spoke to me through Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. He casually referred to that metaphorical ‘high-country-of-the-mind’ that I just talked about. Yes, there are a stolid few who take a ride in that high country. I’m part of that tight circle, regardless of my age. The only fucking difference is that some of these few choose to drive Boxsters with half-a-gallon of gas, while I am driving an Alfa Romeo that needs a gallon of gas and various types of spanners. The problem is that there are no filling-stations in sight. And as the Romeo grinds to a halt, I have to find a sparkling stream that I can drink from, and a nice beer joint (that doubles up as a strip-club) where I can flirt with buxom bartenders and cuddle with tattooed strippers. It seems to me that I am in need on a new eyeglass. One that wipes itself rather than falling to pieces in my hands every time I raise them to look at an aspect of myself that seems terrifyingly irrational and sullenly awkward. And then there is the Triad. That little piece of Hades I was condemned to live with. Heh. Today, I tend to lose my patience at stupidity a tad earlier than in the good ol’ days. Snapping my fingers at it when I see the insecurity peeking through the poise. Hello, hideous little David Copperfield. You just found out that the rabbit in your hat is actually a lousy Easter bunny by day. Anyway, I have no idea why I am being so obtuse now. The point is, one just can’t extrapolate communication and relationship theories to the paper-napkin-subtleties of everyday life. There is bound to be that one incident, that one throwback to minimalistic interaction that leads you back to the acreage by the nose-ring. If it weren’t for the fact that we are an emotionally and conversationally inconsistent species, we would have been living in harmony. We paint pictures of our sordid lives on Facebook and Twitter, but then hop on that sordid bandwagon, without checking the axle. Saddened I am, not because of what people do (for that is their business,so to speak) but because of what I’ve become. I’ve never cut myself some slack before for being a hypocrite. I never was.
Ah, the horror. Sprung springs.
I am thankful to the Gods-that-be for the honesty I have shown myself. I know the next generation of youngsters are going to be as fucked up as it gets, and I am downcast because I have nothing to do about it. Nothing to do as morality falls apart, shaft by shaft. The thing is – the concept of morality as a philosophical bubble changes with time. But, yes, as the level of intelligence and complacency grows, no one can actually knock away at the bitter bricks in the mortar. Every generation will have that one fault line that will lead to it’s eventual falling apart. The question is, can we – and more importantly, I – build and graft better principles on that heap of rubble.
I take shelter under the corrugated tin roof of a garage, for the rain is now unforgiving. As it pours down upon all and sundry, I am forced to genuflect before it’s colossal ego. I slowly extract a damp pack of cigarettes from the inside of my parka, take one out and put it between my lips. As I take the lighter to it, I catch a glimpse of the rain-clouds. They are black and motionless. Waiting for my Cigarette to be lit. Waiting for the Red to be seen.
Fellating Myself.
Rainmen. Puddle me not.
Hiatus. As much as I love to wallow in the self-loathing that causes me to throw this word around to anyone who would listen, I have no mercy for it. I look outside the window and I see the battleship-grey rain-clouds gathering in their all-too-familiar formation, and it makes me smile. This means that I will be writing about this later. I’m perplexed because, lately, I have come to realize that I’m feeding this strange apathy to all human emotional overlapping .The wisps of smoke that rise from the flaming end of my cigarette struggle to challenge the bigger ones that loom overhead, failing blithely in their attempt to do so. As I watch the flames flicker weakly on the sidewalk and as the first drops douse the orange embers, I am confronted by an overwhelming desire to pull my parka tighter around my shoulders and take a walk. So, I glibly manoeuvre around the wet, mossy path and hold my breath till my sneakers hit the asphalt. Once they do, the downward spiral begins. The neurons spark, the blood starts flowing in clogged veins and I’m faced with an endless river of contemplation – one I am terrified of crossing.
As he likes it.
I am a philanderer now. There is little to ponder about, really. I find conversations meaningless and despicable. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s the ignorance that has settled in so thickly around me that I can unwittingly catch a cold with it. Or, maybe it’s the generalizations that accompany the ignorance. I am sure I am doing Charles Bukowski proud. He must be proposing a toast to me, in that unseen dimension he now lives in. The problem is one thinks one can escape the mundane sobriety of day-to-day life by hiding in some life-saving idealism, some innocuous propagandist philosophy that I have managed to scavenge from every single influence/experience, but that is misleading. It does a grave injustice to that John Coltrane saxophone that I like to call my Mind.
My steps echo through the night. The road is wet and uninviting. The puddles that are forming in the hollows are muddy and shallow, and the ripples that are being etched on their surface forget their impermanence. The rain falls in thick, glossy sheets around me, trying to defeat the phantasm that walks on the road.
I always thought I was above these frail excuses. The averting-of-eyes and the shuffling-of-feet. I have nightmares – not the ones that leave you in a cold-sweat and have you clutching your chest at three in the morning, but the ones that paralyse you when you wake up, making you look at the beautiful, petal-patterned bug on the ceiling trying to do figure-eights in that particular square. Of the women I have slept with, of people whose advice I so relentlessly chose to ignore, of faces whose names I can’t even remember holding their long, bony fingers and shaking their Diophanic heads at my arrogance and at my inability to worship at the very shrine the foundation of which I laboured to build and reinforce. I call them the Triad. Maybe I am fucked up. Trapped in the continuity till my brand of hell freezes over, and I am left clutching at these walls trying to find a handhold here and a foothold there. I have pointedly dismissed the people who mattered and subtly ignored the ones who didn’t. My inherent ability to judge people at first sight has now led me to speculate some more on the various anomalies of the subjectivity of human emotion. To the ones who like to Kafkize everything, I am going through what many call a mid-life crisis. Were it not for the fact that I haven’t reached middle-age yet, I wouldn’t have written this.
There is a tramp sleeping on the sidewalk, or what looks like the remains of a tramp. He’s lying in a pool of his own blood. If I were my usual, unfettered compassionate self, I would have called an ambulance. But , no one deserves my kindness today. The sky flares up as the lightning rents holes in that black blanket. My cell phone beeps. I whip it out perfunctorily and I see I have a message from the girl I slept with yesterday. She is trying to remind me that I have a session with her tonight – unfinished business, she calls it. And she whispers sweet nothings to my side of the electronic airwaves. Tut-tut. No swapping of bodily fluids today. I think my masculinity just telescoped on itself.
The Quality.
A few years ago, Pirsig spoke to me through Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. He casually referred to that metaphorical ‘high-country-of-the-mind’ that I just talked about. Yes, there are a stolid few who take a ride in that high country. I’m part of that tight circle, regardless of my age. The only fucking difference is that some of these few choose to drive Boxsters with half-a-gallon of gas, while I am driving an Alfa Romeo that needs a gallon of gas and various types of spanners. The problem is that there are no filling-stations in sight. And as the Romeo grinds to a halt, I have to find a sparkling stream that I can drink from, and a nice beer joint (that doubles up as a strip-club) where I can flirt with buxom bartenders and cuddle with tattooed strippers. It seems to me that I am in need on a new eyeglass. One that wipes itself rather than falling to pieces in my hands every time I raise them to look at an aspect of myself that seems terrifyingly irrational and sullenly awkward. And then there is the Triad. That little piece of Hades I was condemned to live with. Heh. Today, I tend to lose my patience at stupidity a tad earlier than in the good ol’ days. Snapping my fingers at it when I see the insecurity peeking through the poise. Hello, hideous little David Copperfield. You just found out that the rabbit in your hat is actually a lousy Easter bunny by day. Anyway, I have no idea why I am being so obtuse now. The point is, one just can’t extrapolate communication and relationship theories to the paper-napkin-subtleties of everyday life. There is bound to be that one incident, that one throwback to minimalistic interaction that leads you back to the acreage by the nose-ring. If it weren’t for the fact that we are an emotionally and conversationally inconsistent species, we would have been living in harmony. We paint pictures of our sordid lives on Facebook and Twitter, but then hop on that sordid bandwagon, without checking the axle. Saddened I am, not because of what people do (for that is their business,so to speak) but because of what I’ve become. I’ve never cut myself some slack before for being a hypocrite. I never was.
Ah, the horror. Sprung springs.
I am thankful to the Gods-that-be for the honesty I have shown myself. I know the next generation of youngsters are going to be as fucked up as it gets, and I am downcast because I have nothing to do about it. Nothing to do as morality falls apart, shaft by shaft. The thing is – the concept of morality as a philosophical bubble changes with time. But, yes, as the level of intelligence and complacency grows, no one can actually knock away at the bitter bricks in the mortar. Every generation will have that one fault line that will lead to it’s eventual falling apart. The question is, can we – and more importantly, I – build and graft better principles on that heap of rubble.
I take shelter under the corrugated tin roof of a garage, for the rain is now unforgiving. As it pours down upon all and sundry, I am forced to genuflect before it’s colossal ego. I slowly extract a damp pack of cigarettes from the inside of my parka, take one out and put it between my lips. As I take the lighter to it, I catch a glimpse of the rain-clouds. They are black and motionless. Waiting for my Cigarette to be lit. Waiting for the Red to be seen.