4007 : Wake up and smell the coffee

I am drowning in my poison. Its the brown liquid called coffee.

Nothing warms the soul, like the first sip of the perfectly roasted cup of coffee, to start the day. Your heart says, if this is how the day starting, can it really be bad?

4006 : Cats in the cradle

Picture this.

I am with a friend and kiddo at Starbucks @ India :-)

We are seated at this almost center of the room at a table for 4. There are tables and couch seating on all four sides of us. As we continue to chat....at some point a young pair (not sure they were a couple, but would soon know), both around 18-20 walk in. They take the couch on the other side, where I can see them as I also look and talk at my friend on the other side of my table. 

They both look like me/like us. Well dressed and reasonably well off. Girl is wearing a black hoodie and the guy is wearing white t-shirt with brown trousers. Both of them are wearing spectacles.

They rest their backpacks on the couch. Both slump on the couch. At some point in a few seconds the girl stands up. She removes her hoodie (the way guys would remove a t-shirt). She is wearing nothing but a sports bra underneath. This bra exposes a bit of her cleavage.

Once she does this (removal of the hoodie) she again slumps back on the couch. Meanwhile the boy who is on couch has not moved his eyes off his laptop.  He is staring at something and typing.

The girl opens her laptop (both of them are using macbooks) and she too begins to type. As she is typing she comfortably stretches and then rests her head on the guy's shoulder. The guy is leaning towards her. As in his upper body is at 15 degrees off the perpendicular, leaning towards the girl. 

In a few more minutes, the girl now adjusts her already resting head and finds a small crevice in the boy's neck/shoulder. So her head now rests neatly on his shoulder as they both continue to work. 

Both of them are working looking into the screen. Almost wordlessly, infact not even looking at each other. At some point (in a few more seconds), the guy now rests his head on her head (which is resting on his shoulder). So in some sense they both are resting on each other.

Neither of them are even involved in this actively. They are working. The girl's in "your face" sports bra and cleavage has not even moved a dime for the guy. They comfortably now continue to work and type away - each into their laptop.

At this point, I pry my gaze way. There is so much implicit intimacy here, right? Whether they are lovers or not - they just seem to trust each other so much, they are fine with each other's bodies, work and even nonchalance.

I would wish them well. Always. Stay blessed :-) strangers.

Just in case they ever do split up, each of them should hopefully use this as a baseline for future partners. Which means they would not he short changing themselves and hence being sub optimal.

I also  realized in that moment....This is what life is supposed to be. This is all life is supposed to be. This is poetry. This is love. This is trust. This is intimacy. This is most importantly shared and blissful joy.

And if we agree on all of this, then should we not wonder - how little it costs, how much it means and gives us all. And yet why don't we see more of this - in both public and private.

Love at this end becomes joy, and quickly becomes a rare blessing.

4005 : Losing

Losing all is personal again. The world creeps on you, and at the same time, life seeps out of you.

Fight the invader, or stop the leak - what will you choose? Which battle is the one to fight? Either one you choose, the other will win on you.

And that sums up my today. My present. 

Every single day I tell myself, fight, tomo is another morning. The sun will shine, and probably brighter than today. Not today. Today - I feel like resting, totally tired, washed away. Battle weary. 

Today the rain must fall.

4004 : My brain is singing again and again just this......

 Through these fields of destructions, baptisms of fire....

4003 : Reading List 2022 : #15: The Outsider by Stephen King

I finished the Outsider by Stephen King. Its a strange book. I loved the first half and hated the second half.

Read at your own peril.

Overall 7/10

At 576 pages brings my 2022 reading to 4596 pages.

 

4002 : Javier Marias

Go well, dear Sir - Javier Marias.

Only one person in the world can write a sentence like this and make others fall in love with love.

“I did not want to know but I have since come to know that one of the girls, when she wasn’t a girl anymore and hadn’t long been back from her honeymoon, went into the bathroom, stood in front of the mirror, unbuttoned her blouse, took off her bra and aimed her own father’s gun at her heart, her father at the time was in the dining room with other members of the family and three guests.”

4001 : Dylan's Blues

Today, the only thing that works is Bob Dylan's mega mixtape. The ironic bit, today even that is not taking off the edge.

I have listened to Dylan for 6 hrs already. There is a good chance, that I associate Dylan forever with broken room in Connecticut.

 

4000 : What a day

How much can you lose in a day?

Sometimes the equivalent of a lifetime. 

My heart sometimes does have an irregular heartbeat. Today, it feels like - this was the day it was preparing for. Something is lost today.

"Chaabi jaise kho jaana....."

3999 : I need to stop travelling

I am so conflicted and contemplative. It drives me totally up the wall. 

Truly.

3998 : Double click

When you drink too much, you cannot double click on your mouse. Its a serious observation. Try it.

3997 : Aaye kuch abr

Kar rahan than gham-e-jahan ka hisaab,
Aaj tum yaad behisaab aaye.

What a day for a cloudburst.

3996 : Load up your guns, bring your friends

Its fun to lose, and to pretend....

So I lived on the edge yesterday. I am struggling to type this (yes fingers are quivering!!). I drank too much. 

I did have a moment of deep epiphany (yesterday and today). I am deeply inclined to veer on the edge. I will always prioritize the madness of today, over the consequences of tomorrow (that's my phrase!!....so the drink does make me write better....I think).

I could have kissed, made out with someone or jumped in the river, though I cant swim.... (no, that's about it....... I had no evil or murderous thoughts at all....but more hedonistic).

Does that make me strange? Yes. This is possibly my version of mindfulness. Of course, as I said, even in these worst (or best moments), I had utmost clarity around my Buddhist values - which is compassion, care and respect. 

Yes, I would have jumped into the river. Thats true too.

Today, if I had a choice, I would sit with a 20 pack and a liter of the bottle and skip work. Just alone with my solitude, the smoke and the peated oil.

What does this make me? You tell me.

PS: I would do this a million times over, just for the epiphany.

3995 : Another day from our figments

Do you remember that we once sat on the last seat of a crowded bus?

We laughed as if we were upto something surreptitious. We spoke of how your dream has been sliding down a canal, and how my errors are singing like a canary.

I recall thanking the vehicular jam on that rainy evening. The other memory I have is of you, nervously fiddling with that shard of thread from your jacket.

Its easy to be rattled on the last seats of a bus. We lost the battle.

3994 : Speaking to the wounds of yesterday in the tongue(s) of tomo's prisoners

Life is strange in the sense that it throws curveballs when you least expect it. 

It was a strange but very heartwarming chat with someone I hardly knew till about 10 days ago. We spoke about our deepest fears and deepest shames and yet.......we laughed like two condemned prisoners. Two criminals, caught in the act,  who have now a shared history sheet. 

I use prisoners in the literal sense too, in some cases we have been judged, and in others, the reckoning is coming our way.

We both then went out hunting for a smoke at 2am in the morning, in a city that pretty much sleeps by 9pm. We returned to finish a large pit of the peated brown fire. 

If this is how war feels like, I might just about survive it.

As you grow older, this is what falling in love might look like. (I am straight though :-) ) Two crazies confessing to their skirmishes. Safety in being equally scarred....and reaching a similar conclusion.....who gives a flying fuck?

If you hear of a prison break, you know where we hatched it.

3993 : Yeh Faasle

Yeh Faasle by Anand Bhaskar Collective has some stunning lines.... (and what a stunning composition). Listen.

ख्वाबों मैं तेरह उड़ने लगा हू
कुछ ख्वाब खुद के बुनने लगा हू

यूँ दूर तुझसे रहते हुये अब
दिल की नसीहत सुनने लगा हू

खुशबू मैं तेरी खेलने लगा हू
बिन बात यूही हँसने लगा हू

राहो मैं तेरी आँखे बिछाये
दिल की हिदायत सुनने लगा हू

This is the song I want to sing.......

Great poetry does not need complexity, it instead requires a staggering amount of simplicity. Its taken me 40 effing years to learn that.