Bedraggled story

I am still alive but one of these days I am going to kill the old man, the annoying-whiny children, the horny tomcat and the banging neighbours. I can’t go to sleep because for some strange reason this particular neighbour of mine starts some hammering job in the middle of the night. So you can imagine the throbbing in my head each time the hammer hits the nail on its head. Then I am woken up by this black cat that meows the whole night because it’s horny and needs to shed off his high level of frustrated testosterone. As my eye lids slowly droop down and from the cracks of my drowsiness I see dawn filtering through my curtains; just when I am about to submerge into my well-deserved sleep, I am woken up by this wrinkled, hunched–back man, with the most vicious temper - who starts off the day abusing his helpers and kicking them too. Then my old landlord decides to bang on his car to fix a dent. I live right above his garage, so every morning without fail he turns on his radio and listens to the 6:00 a.m news and does his share of talking loudly on the phone. So, the past few nights have been very annoying - waking up with puffy eyes and a nasty frown. Sigh! Oh and I forgot the kids. God, they drive me up the wall with their “mmmmuuuuummmmmmmyyyyyyyyyy” (note that it’s like playing the E string on the violin by an amateur or your finger nails across the blackboard). I am tired of getting out of the wrong side of the bed. Take pity on my bedraggled state of mind.

East of Eden pg.147

“Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of man.
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.”

Guilt

“Guilt, for Poe, is “perverse,” and perverseness is the desire for self-destruction. It is completely indifferent to societal distinctions between right and wrong. “Guilt” is the inexplicable and inexorable desire to destroy oneself eo ipso.”

Mundane

The mundanity of life gets to you. Lethargy seeps into your coffee as you mechanically stir your black oblivion manifested in your Monday morning wake-up drink. The procrastination creeps into the mounting mails that need to be replied to. The irritation scratches your peace of mind as the telephone ring incessantly jars your eardrums. Nothing seems to inspire you out of the routine pace of the dragging footsteps that have lost their initial excitement. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. They are all the same. Days calculated in hours, hours in minutes and minutes in seconds. They all just tick the same thing. It is the resounding echo of the days that are passing by, moments that are being lost, and the lost opportunity of forgone dreams.

12th February

I used to love this day of the year. It was more exciting than Christmas morning when I could let out a sigh of relief knowing that I had been in Santa’s good books. There is nothing like Christmas but there is a totally different anticipation when your birthday approaches. I used to look forward to my birthday. I am sure everyone did when they were young and without worries but I think the whole idea of birthdays change, as you grow old. Every kid loves that day, because that day you become the cynosure of all eyes. The most coveted piece of the cake was the big pink sugar rose that would make every kids salivate as you paraded around sucking it slowly. I remember once when my brother got a Nintendo Gameboy on my birthday. I was devastated. My brand-new “frock” with pink ribbons and lace, the big pink sugar rose on my cake and my presents did not interest me any more. All I could do was stare at that Nintendo that my brother was holding and playing Contra. I cried my little heart out until I could not resist cutting my cake and opening my presents. It used to be so easy to soothe one’s tears away with simple things like “My First” Barbie. But over the years nothing has really changed. Birthdays are still a day of anticipation but in a different way. It no longer has a child’s excitement. You realise you are getting older, and that things are not getting any simpler. Birthdays do get spoilt but it’s harder to wipe away the betrayal and tears. Why, I have nursed some of my friends’ heart on their birthdays because they got dumped or that nobody remembered their birthdays. There are no longer grape juice and innocent games of passing the parcel or musical chairs. It seems to be an excuse to get drunk so that you can forget the fact that you are getting closer to your first grey hair or the first wrinkle or both. Or so that you can bear some of the people in your party that you detest but had to invite them because of some random reason that made sense to invite them. Children are so easy to appease with some balloons, streamers and party hats that could make all the children play with each other but as you get older things get more complicated. There will definitely be at least three to four cliques in each corner of the room; there will be tepid conversations being dropped here and there. Nobody will arrive on time, and they would leave after freeloading on your drinks and food to go to another event. Even though you have worn all your new clothes and feel really good in them, that confidence will slowly deteriorate. Skinnier girls will fuss about how fat they are and then you start to feel really uncomfortable in your own skin and party. Sometimes I forget how old I am and I have to do some addition and subtraction in my head. When I was younger and some aunt or uncle would say, “So, you’re six now,” I would answer back in my most adult voice and correct them saying, “I am seven.” You would want to make your list as long as possible because that meant you would get more presents but there is now inverse relationship between the length of the list and your age. As you grow older you want your list to be as short as possible, with people that you actually want to be with and not because of some social etiquettes so that you don’t affront anyone. Birthdays are a day of mixed emotions, somewhere the little kid inside of you still love the whole notion of cakes, balloons and being the belle of the party. Maybe the next birthday I will do that. Make it an intimate affair and just do silly things and be uninhibited to celebrate how a birthday should be. To come in terms with another beginning and celebrate life.

Detoxify your mind

Things inside your head seem so much bigger than they actually are. The thoughts that run in your head seem to be endless, the questions in your head seem to only get longer and confusing, the fears only seem to burrow more into the dark corners and the worries seem so heavy. The mind gets crowded with so much to think and worry and fear, that all that you hear are cacophonic voices in your head telling you different things. It gets congested inside that undiscovered realm of the body that utilizes only 2% of its capacity. The claustrophobic environment that your mind has to deal with makes it paralyzed and impotent to think clearly. There is too much of muck inside the crevices of your brain and the squalid environment decays the rationality of thought. All that you have kept hidden and forgotten seem to petrify your logic into doing something. But once you say or clear out your past in your head, things become clearer and calmer. Things that seemed so big inside that small space of your head are so much smaller and insignificant. Then you wonder why you made such a huge deal out of it. Why you held it inside of you so long. Why you did not tell anyone before. Once you hang everything outside and clear the attic up there, the congestion disappears and there is more room for sensible and happier thoughts. A big sigh of relief is exhaled. Things in life are not as big as we make them seem. Detoxify your mind with healthier and happier thoughts. All you need to do is clear out the things that you have stored up and have not used it in a long time. Get rid of thoughts that impend you from thinking forward. Wipe clean the worries that stump you in life. Kill the fears that paralyze you and find answers to the questions you always had.

Fat Girl

The next time a woman, be it any of my girlfriends including me or even my grandma, asks if her ass is looking “huge,” I am going to tell her, “Yes, it so huge that your ass enters the room five minutes after you have entered the room.” If another frequently asked question of if her boobs are looking big, I am going to say, “Yes, you enter five minutes after your tits enter the room.” If I am faced with another question of if her boobs are sagging, I am going to say, “Yes, I think you can throw them over your shoulder like a regimental soldier.”
The obsession with ones body has infected everyone, every women of every size, colour, hair, height and smell. How have we come to be so concerned about such trivial matters in life when there are more important things in life that we have to be concerned about. The statistics of 34-24-34 seems to have more relevance in our lives than that of the statistics of victims of AIDS, sexual abuse, war, violence etc. the superficiality of the glossy magazines and the kind of life they portray seems to have more relevance and impact than that of the images of people dying or the world being torn apart by politics that has no heart and humanity left in its objective.
Everyone is a victim of narcissism, indulging in ones appearance. One has looked into a mirror and reflected on what they saw, finding flaws and torturing and wishing of how to get that body that they have always wanted. The incessant fixation on a body, an ephemeral body that’s just a covering for what is actually inside that matters have gained so much of prominence in the society that it is sickening.
People abuse their body and make themselves sick so to attain the body that they envy for. Every girl has a fat and a skinny girl inside her, where the skinny girl’s taunts can be so destructive. The mind of a girl, where she sees herself ten times more heavier than she is and where the skinny girl inside her ridicules and drives her to hate herself and to deprive of the joy in life for not being skinny. The maddening obsession to be skinny consumes you, that all you think is how ugly you are and how much more beautiful you would be if only you were skinnier. There is an inverse relationship, where the value of yourself goes up as you lose more of yourself. The less you weigh, the more beautiful you feel or yourself.
If it was that simple to kill the skinny girl in you that torments every living matter that you are made up of. Life would be so much simpler if we were not made to fit into a particular shape. If others were not so fixated on how you look from the back, front, left side, right side, top and any other angle that they can observe you from. Everyone is beautiful but there are so many who do not realize it and will never accept it. If only it was much simpler to appreciate and enhance the inner self and worth than obsessing on the ephemeral manifestation of man made statistics.

Brain Dead Nonsense

I can’t seem to be up for anything. Time for me to sleep, to play with the reverie fairies or battle with the subconscious demons or float in a vacuum of restlessness. Exhausted but why I’m not sure. Day passes with not much yet I’m so weary. An empty weariness, wandering. Trying to pass my time and figure out what to do. Lost and bored. Nothing stimulating to immerse me into a torrid affair with it. Life seems so wasted but time will make up for all the moments that I have killed with nothingness. I will yearn for those moments and wish that I had utilized that time more efficiently. The luxury of doing nothing will be coveted. Pure rubbish. That is what I am talking about. Random thoughts going through my head and nothing to sustain them but these black and white words. What the fuck, I’m totally lost. I can’t even make a decision to make a stupid decision as to whether I should sleep or read my books. Oh, the dilemma of being young, to procrastinate and be bored. Being too precautious, too rational makes you lose out on life. Worrying about so many things can paralyze you, make you rationalize everything that you should do but you end up doing nothing. The little philosophies that I have in my life do nothing to inspire me at the moment and I wish that I could be inspired and just be non-rational sometimes. I worry about too may things or think about all the possible things that could happen and then I don’t execute anything and then nothing happens. Too many stratagems and no action. How pathetic. Too many restrictions on myself because of my stupid way of rationalizing things. I am rationality’s foe. I am brain dead and King of Leon lures me away from trying to rationalize anymore.

Dirty Gol Gappas

Life definitely gives and takes. There is no doubt that one moment you have it all and the next moment you’re stripped naked and left vulnerable. Everyone that you meet will have some self-pitying, self-remorseful, life-changing experience that radically changed the way they saw, heard, tasted, smelt and touched life. Eventually everyone will have one, even those on their deathbed. Everyone has some regret in his or her life and that makes life more bearable because it makes everyone more human and relatable. The degree of pain, love, joy, struggle, betrayal etc are all the same but all at different times so that each one can feel their pain even though another can empathize with the emotional pendulum each person encounters in life. The paroxysm of emotional intensity that each one has to endure cannot be avoided. It can be delayed but it is imminent. Life sounds so clichéd at times because of the similar and familiar stories that we all have heard and can relate to but life has not lost its charm and is still inspirational and that’s because we have one lifetime to prove, gain, lose, laugh, being in love, being kicked in the balls, discovering great sex even at the age of 80, discovering your sexuality, losing friends, gaining family members, listening to great music, going bungee jumping, realising that the best listener is actually deaf, dealing with PMS, being bitten by a dog or biting a dog’s nose, being chased by a pig, having embarrassing moments, eating goat balls, swimming with carnivorous squids, relishing dirty gol gappas prepared by a vendor whose fingers might have just scratched his balls or dug his nose and the list goes on as to how undiscovered life’s spectrum can be. How vast life can actually be when you step out of the clichéd realm that you have surrounded yourself by. In the experience of one’s life there are countless things to do, imaginable and the unimaginable. We are so bounded by norms that impede our non-conformist and adventurous selves to break free. Maybe that’s why ordinary people can become extraordinary because they dare to indulge in life. How I envy such people who can truly experience more than I can. All I do now is wish and hope that someday I can truly venture out and taste, hear, see, smell and touch life in a different way.

Black Thoughts

The impending feeling of sadness and lethargic aspirations slowly permeates your thoughts, making you doubt yourself. The premonition you can sense - the feeling of being consumed by bleak thoughts and despondency- engulfs you again. Makes you feel so hopeless and lifeless. All that seeps through you is that dejected feeling of defeat. Not being able to withstand the demeaning thoughts and voices in your head. The perpetual weltschmerz that you face and feel every moment; the quest to question all that existed and exists. Everything seems to be a lost cause and that is when you drown into a black pseudo-reality that takes hold of you. The happy thoughts and moments seem so far away. You strive so hard to hang on to your sanity and calm. You want to put everything right but that seems the hardest thing at the moment. Everyone knows this feeling but the degree varies according to your demons. The only thing to get you back is to think hard...a conscious effort to banish all pessimistic elements in your head, all negative lingering voices. To just concentrate real hard until it exhausts you, that all you want to do is sleep. Sleep, an escape until you are more rational to sort things out. To convince yourself that one day you will be ok, that you will love yourself one day. I just wish that someday was today.