T minus something. Living with "that" sense of Urgency.

The clock is a little over 10. At the night, at the gym.

While I am trying to walk around limping from the squats, I come across this man again. A man who looked like he was in the mid-40s. Well, it has just been three of us that quite Wednesday evening if we count in the young lady who had been somehow trained that well to catch run for an hour-long on the treadmill. Let’s count her out here.

This man, had been running about and shifting weights and had been almost performing what otherwise could simply be said a pretty well executed overall body workout. -with absolute enthusiasm. The only thing that stood out was this man carried with him a heavy apparatus on the back with a couple of twisted wires going right to his shaved bald head. Looked like they were all plastered to his head and the man seemed effortlessly aware of it and not at the same time.

I chose to let the man train at peace.

However, we met again right after our sauna, and oddly (Scandinavia) he started to chat up and the pleasantries, and I did manage to sneak up my wondering.

The device was a targeted electro-simulation to the brain of his, tuned to dismantle cancer cells. The man was in his late-stage brain cancer and I was looking at a dead man. He spoke about it, seemed to not one bit shy away from talking about, and seemed to be absolutely positive that he was going to the grocery the next day to pick stuff up for his favorite recipes. He seemed to hold the spirit of a two-year-old, the light still in his eyes and ever more youthful than the 30-years who often complain about the cost of changing tires to their new cars or the new boss.

My heart froze.

Frozen not at the reminder of the shortness of it all, but in what one loses out in the pursuit of all things irrelevant and of things that don’t mean. Of wills and wants and distractions and sadness with things. That one inadvertently gets caught in the loop of pursuits that would account for nothing.

If at all it begins feeling this way, I stop and question and this gives me clarity, although momentary, on priorities. That one needs to live with a sense of urgency. And perhaps, isn’t this urgency is what makes it beautiful at all?

We are here with finite time. And in this finite time, we can only do finite things. And how much of it are we doing today that would contribute to having felt fulfilled? Isn’t this what bestows meaning? Are we in the pursuit of what we consider meaningful? Or are we living games set forth by external factors which were also nothing but merely a consequence of the non-assertion of the million other things?

The countdown, T minus is ticking. And this very fact should encourage everyone to start living life with intention, with a purpose that one has created for oneself, and for the pursuit of values one holds dear.

Casettes. Value in striving to preserve.

Somewhere mid-2002 , I remember clear as crystal having been dropped off at a distant relatives place in the middle of an unbeknown city, a cassette which I bought along which I packed for the 4-day trip, “custom burned” if that terminology applies to those cassettes at all, was the one thing that kept me sane and provided a sense of refuge in the stranger’s house in a strange land which spoke a strange language.

Those twelve, handpicked, 6 minute long symphonies were something my own refuge. In this particular event, the cassette’s role shined through. These cassettes were means to music. -well, the only means of getting in touch with music.

Anyone who has ever got to use these fiddly little things surely would have gone through the harrowing experience of seeing the reels come apart, meaning parting time with your favorite piece of tune. One is careful in lending them lest they are handled incorrectly and again signifying the parting with your favorite piece of music.

As one looks at the reels spinning while a piece goes on … an abrupt stop or a jam to the cassette means a ready but careful next step of taking a pause, deep breaths, a careful tender to unmake the knots that might have occurred, loosen the jam with any available tool lying ready at disposal (in my case it was usually a ball-point pen) and getting back to the song but only with a higher pulse rate now. But all’s well again and that sense of accomplishment.

Should we say Fast-Forward? Rewind? Sure. Good luck not jamming them again as the risk always existed given that both actions require a much higher spooling rate than the normal playing commands. So, at any given time, the best part of the song was the part of the song you were listening to -or had to be.

Now, this makes me wonder.

If one should be glad to have had this experience at all, at least once or all along. Perhaps if this was one singular aspect that teaches one to work for and fix things than to discard them at its very first sign of malfunction or simply a suspicion of it. If you don’t like a song? Skip it. Fast Forward it. Wrecked a screen? Buy a new phone! Lost a mix-tape with the other innumerable amount of trash one collects along the way? No problem! Spotify has it! Broke a chain on the commute? Who needs greasy hands anyway? Call an Uber! -A ready availability of the means where the means are simply means but to find no end.

1999, the cassette was the means to the end of owning a little 4-minute escape into a vast ocean of imagination and your own corner for rejuvenation. The means was the end. Today the means being in multitude and the very proliferated choices it provides negates the end.

I wonder if a kid born in say 2010 will be ever be given the marvelous opportunity of tending and mending to things that he/she might come to hold dear if he/she comes to hold dear something at all for a start. Can he or she get to plant an acorn and see ti grow into a magnificent oak that dictates tending all along? Can he or she get to go down on knees to ardently pull out the weeds around the oak if they get to consider it near and dear in the very first place? Near and dear are things of perceived value, where replacement is not a choice and are things worthy to put up a fight for, in some cases, as a journey for life. And given one is proliferated with choices that are not only a million in number but also milli-second or less away from availability. - and in some matters, a swipe away.

With the deepest well intent, I wish they get to rewind by hand, a cassette - at least once :)

The world could use more poetry. Joy in the slow.

The joy of seeing it through,
to celebrate this beautiful in-between.

Sometimes I wish my co-passenger has read sonnets through. That when we talk about summer, that we both are reminded the summer times and blooms from pages and pens of the bard. That the summers we are talking about are the same summers that invoke the roses in question by Frost. perhaps, they are the same summers that bring about the meadows to bloom as the ones in Romance - where white flows the river and bright blows the broom.

Sometimes I wish the 9th grader when taking up English lessons reads, gets to pause and reflect the moment when James and Della catch themselves in a moment of realization of what the other has done for them, in the Gift of Magi. To just realize that in his coming days, maybe when he takes off to school, might run into his own Della only to miss her for what they call to be the many other fish in the sea. for the “it just didn’t work out“

Sometimes I wish my neighbour simply has a dusty old copy of Byron at his, that when he visits my mine, he exactly knows why the few pages of stars from a book I have been reading about has more than three bookmarks and seem surprised that I have inked many pages of little scribbles. But perhaps skipped the suggestion that it be maintained on my PC. And I wonder where would I store my dust? Contains the scent of the days I have inked them, the scent of the meal mother made that evening, the scent of a joyous tear at relatability, the scent of the pupper who was a companion for 16 years was still a pupper in my lap back then. So that he would find it relatable when I say I would rather have them as papers, with a wink.

Sometimes I wish, my friends have read Tagore, to say to keep the head held high without fear, when they do want me to watch out for decisions and advice to conform as it is the simpler way. To know what a herd is, to know what a summit is. That it might be cold and lonely up there, but the inflicted pain upon the summit is far worthy a pursuit than to dabble in dust in plains. That have they pictured the bloodied right hand of the old man Santiago, the rope that slides slicing through his will, the marlin that shoots to the sky and that sight although by all chance could destroy the man, but can never defeat him and that of his dreams about lions. Of that of sunny days and lions.

Sometimes I wish people stopped and stared, at the James Sant’s Fear, Courage and Despair, to see those eyes of the three women, to translate what it meant in their own lives. To digest it and see it through acclimatize in the mark of their personality.

Sometimes I just wish my immediate surrounding took it in. Took the time to take it in.
Put themselves in places and time that leads them to find solace in knowing what Levin found at the sight of Katia is to be found in themselves too. That they when they see it through, not in impulsiveness, not in reactiveness, but like that sip of a fresh brew on tenderly drowsy weekend mornings, to be cherished for it is. That one had the patience to listen, to empathize, to make and meddle and keep good times in the world, to see colour, to splash colour, to be kind where you can instead have the opportunity to exercise authority, to walk in fields of grass, to feel the contrast between wet-mud and that of the clustered blades of grass, to find joy in the innocent joy of a child to whom the world is still a place to thrive, to be present, to show reverence, to be the opposite of fickle, to show pertinence, to celebrate the joy of the knowledge of another, to give the chance to take in the very-thing, to do things that are just not to survive but to live.

To see the very same continuity inculcated in lasting to the end of the page and not given to flip of a finger for the next feed. Perhaps masking itself as the same continuity that the heart needs but the heads flips to convenience. That along with the flow the prose, or the bumpy endings of sometimes rhyming words put together in funny looking paragraphs, along with the sight of fading sheet of paper that is not shy to show its age, and when the heart and the mind caress this flow like that of freshwaters in spring fighting to go about but still kept within the disciplining creases, - character is built by ensuing insights. - Identity found in relatability. -This existence celebrated across time. And solace found and wanting to be found in this lifetime by a celebration of another.

Sometimes hoping that they had these dusty copies, to squash me down on my accidentally ignorant comments on their beloved pieces of art and to gently put me down with their own blooms and memories of summertime and to begin teaching a lesson on ..why the world could use more poetry.

A dilemma.

A decision to shine.
A decision to be.

I have always struggled at the idea of a blog. Well, at least in the context of one where you write in an opinion, a take of a day, a commentary on a scene, or spill out a thought - voluntarily, out onto a sheet to be read by anyone all the while not asked by no one in the very first place. I find this idea is very conflicting and in extreme dissonance with it.

-Not to be mistaken for introversion.

It is more liken-able to someone who prefers to listen more than to contribute opinions on every single thing that comes ones way (well, what’s the need to?). Stretch it to when not-asked for it and one would understand my take on this. Although I thoroughly enjoying writing and sketching things on paper , I have never felt the need to pull it out and people to have a commentary on it. Then I realize I am no artist of words and a blog is not for art’s sake.

I have sudden pangs of revelations where I realize that the very many I look up to, those who have been my lighthouses on hazy days, and anchors in stormy ones were almost unanimously opining experiences and revealing inner most vulnerabilities clear as crystal to the crowd when no one asked for it.

I wonder what if Emerson never chose to write about Walden for those experiences were his own. Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Goethe - exited with sketching their deepest sorrows onto an indifferent crowd only to prove as guiding light to thousands that would follow a hundred years later. Though scattered as stars are, miles and miles apart, yet the light never fails to reach where it needs to and where it is needed. Marcus Aurelius , although an exception that kept the journal to himself , I am would have slipped in words that poured nothing but wisdom.

The ant-life post a couple of months ago was precisely an exercise to reveal a part of myself that I, on an otherwise normal day will have no reason to bring up, no reason to be understood, nor be asked about. Yet the chunk reveals me a bit better than my opinion about the day’s weather.

I guess at the end of the day, there is a joy in hearing and being heard. And maybe it is the joy i have missed for long. A long long time.

I think the paradox of self-expression to utilize elements of oneself to create something to leave behind , a proactive effort of wanting to reveal oneself in the most honest way though one of the very few things that bring true joy also slightly weakens the knee, when such an effort sometimes feel like echoing into empty mountains.

ant-life

Spectacular moment from a spectacular collection of things from Richard Linklater.
”Then it's like we have met”

Excuse me.

Hey. Could we do that again? I know we haven't met, but I don't want to be an ant, you know? I mean, it's like we go through life with our antennas bouncing off one another, continuously on ant auto-pilot with nothing really human required of us. Stop. Go. Walk here. Drive there. All action basically for survival. All communication simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along in an efficient polite manner. "Here's your change." "Paper or plastic?" "Credit or debit?" "You want ketchup with that?" I don't want a straw, I want real human moments. I want to see you. I want you to see me. I don't want to give that up. I don't want to be an ant, you know? …"the confrontation between their souls." It's like, um, freeing the brave reckless gods within us all.

Then it's like we have met.