You Start Dying Slowly..

 

You start dying slowly
if you do not travel,
if you do not read,
If you do not listen to the sounds of life,
If you do not appreciate yourself.

You start dying slowly
When you kill your self-esteem;
When you do not let others help you.

You start dying slowly
If you become a slave of your habits,
Walking everyday on the same paths…
If you do not change your routine,
If you do not wear different colours
Or you do not speak to those you don’t know.

You start dying slowly
If you avoid to feel passion
And their turbulent emotions;
Those which make your eyes glisten
And your heart beat fast.

You start dying slowly
If you do not change your life when you are not satisfied with your job, or with your love,
If you do not risk what is safe for the uncertain,
If you do not go after a dream,
If you do not allow yourself,
At least once in your lifetime,
To run away from sensible advice…

- Pablo Neruda

Sad Goodbyes

Despite the endearing nicknames and the heartfelt promises of keeping in touch over bbm somehow it still feels like a dreadful goodbye. One that I dont want to say.

Life takes me through these twists where I often do what I dont want to but have to because thats what I have wanted all along. Its too bad that I started loving the journey more than the destination. Its too bad I let go of people I ll miss forever.

                                                 

 

I have had my chances. I have tried and tried. I have stitched life into me like a rare organ- Sylvia Plath

I sometimes get very scared that I find myself identifying so strongly with early twentieth century mild to strong female feminist authors who ended up killing themselves. Virginia Woolf walked into the sea with stones in her pocket. Sylvia Plath pushed her head into the oven. Her children were asleep in the very next room. And I am not talking about identifying with the common intention of committing suicide. It’s the suicide of a bright promising mind rather than the mundane destruction of a life.

Is being an intelligent aware woman a left handed compliment by God? You might be good enough, but destined to go through life unappreciated. It irks me when I read about aspiring women authors in the early twentieth century who sent their works to publishers under a masculine pseudonym to avoid discrimination of their works because of their gender. What really saddens me is even today I find many women not confident enough to accept their sex and whatever comes with it. The name ‘JK Rowling’ doesn’t sound like she is a woman, does it ?

I have many friends, both guys and girls alike who think girls cant be friends amongst themselves. One of them was a girl I was on very good terms with. Listening to her, I felt like a metaphorical Sylvia Plath on her way to the oven in the kitchen. If I cant prove by example, I wonder what other method is convincing enough.

Answers, anyone?

How to be happy..

 

Be sad. Grieve the bad things that happen to you. Allow yourself to feel terrible because it’s the only way you can ever really feel good again. Don’t say “I’m fine!” when you’re actually not because it’s only going to make you feel worse. There’s no shame in spending an afternoon in bed feeling sorry for yourself. There’s no shame in giving someone an honest answer when they ask how you’re doing. It’ll feel liberating actually. Saying “I feel like crap!” is the fastest ticket to “I feel great!”

Have healthy amounts of sex. Treat it like it’s a vitamin. Have you taken yours today? It’s essential that you feel desired and connected to another person. Have sex with someone on a Tuesday and watch it tide you over for the next few weeks. Feel complete and fulfilled, like you’ve just crossed something important off of your to-do list. Go up to your next partner and tell them, “Hello. Something is missing from my life and I believe it’s your penis or vagina. Would you mind having sex with me so I can be restored back to health? Thanks so much. You’re such a good person.”

Realize that being happy is a conscious decision. You could be one of the lucky ones who has happiness come easily to them, but most people need to make a concentrated effort to feel good. This doesn’t make you weak or a phony. It just means that you’re a person who knows how bad life can get.

Delete the toxic people in your life. They can include The Friend Who Makes Me Feel Bad About Myself, The Friend Who Will Only Hang Out With Me Behind Closed Doors, And The Friend I Can’t Depend On For Anything. This an ongoing project. Toxic people don’t go away overnight but it’s important to recognize who they are and begin to cut the fat. If you’re unsure if a friend is toxic or not, just ask yourself the question, “How often do I find myself pissed or upset at this friend’s behavior?” If the answer is “OMG, like a lot!”, you got some trimming to do.

Don’t feel guilty about doing something you knew would hurt you. Don’t beat yourself up about sleeping with the boy who makes you feel like crap the second you orgasm, or a night in which you got too drunk because it doesn’t do you any good. You just shame spiral about it, which makes you more inclined to do it again. You have to be like, “Yikes! I shouldn’t have done that again because I know it makes me feel bad but, oh well, I did so let’s move on and hopefully learn from my mistakes.” Understand that you’re going to be doing a lot of stupid things in your life so you can’t fixate on every single one.

Do more of the things that make you happy and less of the things that don’t. This might sound simple and obvious but, hi, it’s not. Sometimes you don’t even know something is making you unhappy until you actually take a step back from it.

Try to do things that terrify you because it will make you feel like a strong evolved person. You’ll scream, “I’m a person who conquers fears. Yay!” You might even be able to join some sort of club, or at the very least, get a gold star.

Be honest with yourself and other people. In this day and age, there are so many opportunities for BS. Don’t be afraid of #realtalk.

 

*The original article can be found on this awesome website:-http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/how-to-be-happy/

 

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.
I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.
I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,
and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
Like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue."

- Pablo Neruda

From "The Vagina Monologues" - Eve Ensler

It is not an invitation
a provocation
an indication
that I want it
or give it
or that I hook.

My short skirt
is not begging for it
it does not want you
to rip it off me
or pull it down.

My short skirt
is not a legal reason
for raping me
although it has been before
it will not hold up
in the new court.

My short skirt, believe it or not
has nothing to do with you.

My short skirt
is about discovering
the power of my lower calves
about cool autumn air traveling
up my inner thighs
about allowing everything I see
or pass or feel to live inside.

My short skirt is not proof
that I am stupid
or undecided
or a malleable little girl.

My short skirt is my defiance
I will not let you make me afraid
My short skirt is not showing off
this is who I am
before you made me cover it
or tone it down.
Get used to it.

My short skirt is happiness
I can feel myself on the ground.
I am here. I am hot.

My short skirt is a liberation
flag in the women's army
I declare these streets, any streets
my vagina's country.

My short skirt
is turquoise water
with swimming colored fish
a summer festival
in the starry dark
a bird calling
a train arriving in a foreign town
my short skirt is a wild spin
a full breath
a tango dip
my short skirt is
initiation
appreciation
excitation.

But mainly my short skirt
and everything under it
is Mine.

The Archipelago Of Kisses by Jeffrey McDaniel

We live in a modern society.

Husbands and wives don't grow on trees, like in the old days.

So where does one find love?

When you're sixteen it's easy,

like being unleashed with a credit card

in a department store of kisses.

There's the first kiss.

The sloppy kiss. The peck.

The sympathy kiss.

The backseat smooch.

The 'we shouldn't be doing this' kiss.

The 'but your lips taste so good' kiss.

The 'bury me in an avalanche of tingles' kiss.

The 'I wish you'd quit smoking' kiss.

The 'I accept your apology, but you make me really mad

sometimes kiss'.

The 'I know your tongue like the back of my hand' kiss.

As you get older, kisses become scarce.

You'll be driving home and

see a damaged kiss on the side of the road,

with its purple thumb out.

If you were younger,

you'd pull over, slide open the mouth's

red door just to see how it fits.

Oh, where does one find love?

If you rub two glances, you get a smile.

Rub two smiles, you get a warm feeling.

Rub two warm feelings and presto-you have a kiss.

Now what?

Don't invite the kiss over

and answer the door in your underwear.

It'll get suspicious and stare at your toes.

Don't water the kiss with whiskey.

It'll turn bright pink and explode into a thousand luscious splinters,

but in the morning it'll be ashamed and sneak out of

your body without saying good-bye,

and you'll remember that kiss forever

by all the little cuts it left

on the inside of your mouth.

You must nurture the kiss.

Turn out the lights.

Notice how it illuminates the room.

Hold it to your chest

and wonder if the sand inside hourglasses

comes from a special beach.

Place it on the tongue's pillow,

then look up the first recorded kiss in an encyclopedia: beneath

a Babylonian olive tree in 1200 B.C.

But one kiss levitates above all the others.

The intersection of function and desire.

The 'I do' kiss.

The 'I'll love you through a brick wall' kiss.

Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the Earth,

like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.

Isn’t it ironic how we sometimes associate freedom with a place? Nowhere on Earth will I ever feel as hopeful as I feel here.

Sadly, this euphoria is not without its disadvantages. They don’t have AC/Heater here for the extreme temperatures. Not as small price to pay as many might think.

I used to think that you were mine

And I knew I could tell you 

              … how I felt.

You were my soul

Part of my whole

My anchor and My being.

But then I had to go

You see, I have to have

A life of my own.

You Don’t Know What Love Is

You Don't Know What Love Is
but you know how to raise it in me
like a dead girl winched up from a river. How to
wash off the sludge, the stench of our past.
How to start clean. This love even sits up
and blinks; amazed, she takes a few shaky steps.
Any day now she'll try to eat solid food. She'll want
to get into a fast car, one low to the ground, and drive
to some cinderblock shithole in the desert
where she can drink and get sick and then
dance in nothing but her underwear. You know
where she's headed, you know she'll wake up
with an ache she can't locate and no money
and a terrible thirst. So to hell
with your warm hands sliding inside my shirt
and your tongue down my throat
like an oxygen tube. Cover me
in black plastic. Let the mourners through.

-Kim Addonizio

The Venal Muse

by Charles Baudelaire

Muse of my heart, lover of grand chateaux,
When January unleashes storm and sleet,
Through the black dreary evenings when it snows,
Will you have coals to warm your violet feet ?

With gleaming starlight that has pierced the blinds
Will you reanimate your shoulder's cold Marble?
Your palate dry, your purse unlined,
From vaults of azure will you harvest gold !

To earn your evening bread you'll have to swing
The censer like a choirboy, and sing
Te Deums of which you don't believe a word,

Or, starving clown, show off your charms, your smile
Wet with tears that none see, to beguile
And cheer the sick spleen of the vulgar herd.

I have decided. My aim in life is to be a basketball.

You oscillate from one extreme to another. The high of scoring a basket to the crippling agony of being banged on the ground too many times. They call it dribbling by the way.

And,Life dribbles you. Constantly.

So, why not be a basketball,if only to bounce back?

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned - Buddha

Redemption

It happens so many times. You go to a party. You are having a fabulous time only to be cruelly disrupted out of your temporary bliss by the arrival of people you seriously, irrevocably and of course, very understandably detest.

From the clenched cheeked smiles to the very discreet but obvious inspection of your outfit, your looks and your date-These are the type one of the Complete Moronic Types who feel the need to compete with everything on two, three or four legs that gets more attention than them.

The stories I could tell you..

Once, to my complete and utter delight I had the honour of being the subject of unfathomable envy to the power of infinity. Logic said that since I was thought to be somewhat fashionable, this complete jackass (a prime example of what I was earlier talking about) copied my exact wardrobe down to the silly kind of cheap hair clips I wore. Now with all my adolescent glory, I spent many an evening outwardly scowling but secretly enjoying the company of her very embarrassing faux pas’. I later gifted my pair of old shoes to her after much polishing and repairing just for the satisfaction of sniggering behind her back. Such is the devious mind of a modern female teenager.

I still have some vestiges of the above qualities left, but it had scaled impressive heights at a certain point of time. Not to sound very self obsessive, but I find myself as the best example of how misanthropists rock the world. From arm-twisting self important people (figuratively) to quietly enjoying vicarious rewards, I won every bet against society. No matter if the worlds of various detestable men and women came crashing around them. I was a master at manipulation and my sympathies were for no one.

Spending a lot of time watching American movies, reading psychoanalysis journals and with people whom I secretly believed were dropped around a lot as babies, what I ultimately decided to do was only natural.

Again, it was a party. A very memorable party. I am sure you would remember it too if you were privy to the time and place of the event.

A trusting, affectionate and credulous friend of mine had put yours truly in charge of arranging food and drink. It was the graduation party. Actually, a couple of smiles and the usual social coquetries got me the job really. After that it was only the simple affair of sprinkling a bit of tartar emetic into the food and drinks. It looks like your ordinary table salt. Very digestible and non-traceable apparently. Of course the credulous concerned friend was to be compulsorily served. I had no intention of this grand finale back firing.

Anyway, the timing or the situation couldn’t have been more perfect. Once I arrived at the venue I only had to charm my way through the elite hierarchy of lambs to reach the beverage source. I was very sad to poison all of them. But I literally had no choice. You see, I had already spent a lot of money at the chemist’s.

It made some 20 congested lines in the 3rd page of the local newspaper with the headline claiming “30 dead after excessive partying”. The article blamed everything beginning from drugs to indiscipline lifestyles.

Morons, right?

Today I am in another time and another dimension, enjoying the hard earned fruits of my labour peacefully without the interfering presence of my friend.

It was almost obscenely easy to get away with it. Just keep quiet and nobody will notice.

Life and its difficult choices…

 

And if that wasn’t enough in itself, a righteous upbringing makes the weigh-in between right, wrong and the grey very compulsory.Inconvenient and unnecessarily so. New crossroads at  every turn, I doubt if I’ll ever get accustomed to its confusing challenges. I’ve hated making so many choices in my life. Most of the times I did it with my back against the wall. But never have I hated it as much as this one.

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” –Robert Frost

A Year


While writing about my experiences last time I had no idea it would be another long year before I would visit my dashboard again.
Its been a tumultuous journey. Several heartbreaks, a few breakthroughs and the regular ounce of wisdom that only a year's worth of growing up brings. I went to several places . Too many really, for a laidback traveller's comfort. But I am at a stage where professional responsibilities always come first, in the hope that someday responsibility to myself will take the coveted place.

Anyway, one and a half month of nothing to do will hopefully block my writer's block to come up with more interesting articles like those of my yester-years -> this , this and this.

Stay tuned. I'll be coming back soon.

I've been dormant on my blog for over a year. Not that i didn't have the resources to write.. More like i had nothing to write.

Or so I thought ..

Looking back in time as well as through my blog I realized how impersonal I sounded. Like i run a radio show whose fans had to be kept entertained although not at the expense of divulging the dirty secrets of my life.
It took me some time to realize its only a matter of perception. Yours and what you think/dont think others perceive of you. Sounds like a whole load of hogwash .. I know. But thats the truth of it.
I will name a few blogs at the end of this post whose genuineness is the only reason behind its popularity. I look up to these people. Those who aren't scared of being frank, honest and more importantly of being themselves; to hell with what others adhere to as being acceptable social behavior. Let them practice it if they love it so much.
You may find it hard to comprehend what the fuss is all about... I'd say you are one of the lucky few who are either past this stage or are yet to reach it.

I remember a time when I so wanted to fit in that I chose to be confused rather than stand my ground. Of course, on the outside I was still seen as stubborn and ill mannered with a short fuse. My image mattered more .. because i couldn't stand the possibility of being ridiculed of who I actually was.
Ridiculing me for who I am not ... ? Sure.Go ahead.Whatever.

Today I wish I had never set eyes on some of the people I so wanted to fit in with.
Today I'd rather get my tongue pierced with a hot iron needle than try to fit in with them.

Sounds like i hate them. Guess i have changed for the better. And thankfully so. Hopefully they have realized it as well... although I still have reservations of them seeing through my thin veneer of contempt.

I am 21 and unemployed and never felt more optimistic about my future.

Regards,

A typical confession by a typical twenty something.




http://phishfish.blogspot.com
http://thecompulsiveconfessor.blogspot.com

Inscrutable Me ....

WARNING: The following post is very long and it WILL test your patience. At the end of which you may not consider it a virtue.

INSCRUTABLE AMERICANS – by anurag mathur( spoiler!)

Anurag mathur’s Inscrutable Americans is the book to read if you want to laugh away your free time. The book, of just around two hundred and fifty pages, is a whole new form of original humour within a cliché-humour with the apt grammer and hilariously literal interpretation of American slangs by the novel’s main protagonist, Gopal.

The book begins with Gopal, a regular 20 year old country bumpkin, writing a letter to his brother back in his small hometown of Jajau about the many wonders of American lifestyle. His insatiable appetite for the “American” Coca-Colas, to the pride over his ‘national hair oil’ factory and his complete bafflement when a total stranger warns him –“watch your ass”(“ Now brother ,this is wonderful. How is he knowing we are purchasing donkey?”)- everything fits in to give the character a refreshingly naïve amusing charm. Of course, what makes it more convincing is that all the letters that Gopal writes to his brother are in present continuous tense.

‘Inscrutable Americans’ is infact nothing but Gopal’s first impression of America written in a series of witty remarks and other times, just plain moronic observations you cant help but laugh at! Gopal being used to dark hair all his life asking- “Are red haired women….red all over?” and afterwards pointing at billboards that advertised undergarments- “Look! Whole family is naked!”.
The soul of the story lies in the friendship between the all American dude, Randy and Indian hair oil prince, Gopal. Some of the funniest as well as heart-warming scenes occur in the presence of these two characters. ‘Operation de-virginisation’ and gopal’s fascination with almost everything American sounds so curiously real, one wonders if it’s loosely based on the author’s own experience.

However, the story is not just about the crazy antics of rustic Gopal. As the story proceeds further, it unravels gopal’s natural shrewdness and keen intellect. It gives an insight into the life of a foreign student living in America. There are several embarrassing instances of racism, Gopal’s undying patriotism for his motherland and he in turn discovering that in America, they do not speak English, but an alien language called American.

Anurag mathur ends the story with a subtle and unexpected twist in the tail that has its own unique style. Not to be ignored, the book is a definite must read- a blessing for those looking forward to a light read and escape from the usual soporific course books.

SO u think you aren't good enough for the world..
that they will stop singing your praises one day?
so u think, everything is just so pointless ...
when one day everyone is going to meet one common end?
so u think, nobody gives a damn about anyone else...
everyone is playing a role, each striving for their own grand finale?
so u think, money is a name for golden dirt ...
no wonder it makes the world go round ?
so u think, books are a coward's succor.
and that life isn't worth that weak a gamble?
so u think, today i care for you.
and tomorrow i will move on to greener pastures?
so u think, u know what i am capable of.
by playing cunning games to get to my truths?
And now u think, whatever i write is a hopeless show.
just like a pantomime playing for the blind...