Being Stupid

Conventional wisdom would beg the question – Why would you dive headlong into a situation that has a huge chance of blowing up in your face?

Because all I’ve done these last few years is follow conventional wisdom. It worked wonderfully and brought me to this point – now, I’m ready to be stupid again.

Because stupid is fun, because stupid makes the world go round and because stupid lets you feel more things than safe. Because I have a feeling it’s possible to be stupid and safe, all at the same time.

Play Me My Drug of Choice

I've had a hyper-emotional couple of days. There've been too many people to meet, too many voices flying about, too much coffee drunk and too much felt - most of it very happy and completely up my alley. But still, the creature that I am, I'm tired and I need a dark, cool place to recede to. Alone, thank you very much (I say it with love).
I haven't slept in days. There's too much shit buzzing in my head - again, all happy - but just too much. Last night I had a horrid headache just behind my left eye and I finally fell asleep at twelve. Only to wake up at 4am. So frustrating. For the first time in my life, I begged my doctor mother to make like Conrad Murray and give me a fucking pill. She said - take a walk.

I needed me some drugs. So I plugged into my ipod. Played me the tunes that always work and shut my eyes. Perhaps it was the exhaustion, perhaps it was the whole smorgasbord of emotions that I'd been carrying with me, but I felt myself getting sucked through a rabbit hole of time and landing smackdab in the middle of 1995 - class X boards, me and my Sony Walkman, playing my first official Beatles tape and realising for the first time that I was an entirely different human being from the one I thought I was. Listening to John Lennon's 'Love', I discovered that unlike the rest of my family, I was a cryer. Music gave me the permission to feel things that were real inside me, but had been relegated to the 'irrational' side of my brain. Music brought to life my inner melodrama...and it's a side of me I love to this day.

Since then, I've tried to find succour in many other things - food, drugs, therapy and even writing. But there's no place that feels more like home than that riff that bypasses logic and makes a beeline for my gut. Aren't we supremely lucky beings? :D

I Done Drafted The Damn Thing

It's done. The first draft was approached with trepidation...had to virtually sneak up on it. Did the guerrilla thing and finished it. It's far from perfect, I would even say it is deeply flawed and unformed in many ways.
But it has the farm fresh goodness of a first draft. I have a first line, I have a (lovely) last line and I have a mess of stuff in the middle.
Went to bed at 3am with a smile on my face, woke up at 10am with a smile on my face.
And tonight, I go to bed at an earthly hour, Thank God.

Oh, and I finally visited the Miditech office. I am convinced it is run by the spawns of Satan.

AAArrrrghhhh

It's nearly 1am and my friends would be surprised to find me, the quintessential early-to-bed, 'morning person' up so late, fourth night in a row.
I am trying to finish a story that I started and something tells me it can't be done in the daytime. It's driving me mad, this thing. It started off, like most of my writing ideas, with an image. But unlike other short pieces that I've started and completed within a few hours, this one refuses to be coaxed into completion. Even as I blog this blog, I am entirely unsure that it will ever reach completion.
Two pages down, I knew from the first sentence, that this would be a story that was way beyond anything I've attempted in the past. It requires a complexity of thought that I often find myself incapable of bringing to the surface. The story has everything to do with me yet the language eludes me and makes me feel like an alien trespassing into territory that's not mine.
There are two principal characters. One is the observer, the silent spectator who is the catalyst for the second character's drama to play out. He's not so much of a problem.
It's the woman, the second (or actually the primary) character, who poses the problem. She has a painful past that she is attempting to resolve, more for herself than for anyone else. She hopes a single encounter with the story's observer will help her get there. This story is about acceptance of oneself, one's traumatic history and most of all (it strikes me now, as I write this) the power of simply being seen. This woman needs to be seen by another in order to face her own self.
These are the profound realities of my own life, as it is right now. I know that I am stuck to my past, in very unhealthy ways. It's like the wheel of a car being stuck in the mud. I'm pushing the gas peddle as much as I can but there's no give. There won't be any give until I haul myself out of the car and get someone to help me.
Which is why I struggle with this story so much. I don't want to use the frills and flourishes that I usually employ. I want it to be as stark as possible. I do this, not for the benefit of the reader, but for myself. To prevent myself from running away into my escapist nooks. I've known for 3 years now that I need to face some very big things that happened to me. I also know that I need to share those things with someone outside myself. Even if it is just one person, I feel it is time for me to get real.
And if I can't find the words, then my characters in this story will have to do the work for me. But right now, at 1 am, it's proving to be tougher than I thought.

Creation

I have vowed to maintain my sanity in the face of unemployment and poverty by doing one thing creative everyday. So one day I took to sewing with a vengeance, the next day I painted a tree (which for some reason has a red trunk which looks rather morbid) and the day after that I invented two phrases (pl find 2 blogs below) and then yesterday, I started work on a short story.
But it's Monday today and while all my friends are in their air-conditioned offices, I'm sitting here getting thoroughly bored and inspiration-less.
All I can come up with is this visual in my head of a maternity ward with bedfuls of screaming women in labour, all lined up against a wall. On one side of the ward is a full orchestra. When the orchestra strikes up, the women start shooting babies out from between their legs. Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Like those automated tennis ball-throwers I've seen on TV. The orchestra reaches a crescendo as a row of men line up across the beds, in wicket-keeping stance, all ready to catch the deluge of slime-covered babies.
Running back and forth between the baby-shooting canons and the baby-catching fielders, are masked doctors and nurses, slipping and sliding on the goo-covered floor.

I need an occupation. Universe, can you hear me? I need an occupation.

My First Time

This is the first bit of adult, non-work, non-journal writing I ever did, way back in 2005. I had just quit a job in TV and was working as an editor in a very RAW-like wing of the Ministry of External Affairs. There was no one in the office I could relate to except a co-worker called Parvinder Singh. He turned out to be the sweetest, most encouraging and intelligent young man, who welcomed any and every piece of writing that I chose to email across the hall to where he sat. If I have any self-esteem at all, as a creative person, I owe it to these first exchanges :)
*********************

Inertia

"I struggle to find my niche," she said, sprawled languidly across the length of the soft, velvet chaise-lounge, "What lies within me? How do I coax it out?"

Somewhere in the background, muted sounds of the television; the Pope is dying on CNN.

"I have lived out more than a quarter of my life - but what have I lived through? Nothing has left a permanent stamp. Nothing, which needs to be washed out with ink." She pulls on the long, thin cigarette that dangles from her lips, "Everything is...wispy...gone before I can give it form and character...(mon dieu, the tummy rumbles...is it lunchtime already)? If only I could be faithful to what roams in my recesses..."

With each sigh of resignation, she releases a perfect wave of smoke that swims across the room and quickly dissipates, "If only it were that simple - that I could exhale, and the Truth in all its splendour, would be set free." She enjoys watching the shapes, the simple act of liberating her breath, make. They remind her she is capable of higher thought, of recognizing the identity of things beyond their literal meanings.

She stubs out the last burning bits of her cigarette and stretches out luxuriously, ensuring no tension remains in any inch of her body. "It is so uncomfortable to live with the knowledge that genius could lie within."

With that she rolls onto her side, sinking deeper into the belly of the couch. In a while, the soft, sophisticated purr of slumber fills the silence.

2nd April 2005

My Contribution to the English Language

Some crazy guy on You Tube has taken a still image of (my one true love) John Steinbeck and animated its features against his voice talking about the Grapes of Wrath. It's really well done and just a little bit creepy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aRxZDKTo1s

Anyhoo, I'm reading his Journal of a Novel nowadays. At one point he bemoans the fact that young authors are no longer inventing new language. No one's coming up with new words or phrases to keep English fresh. So I thought that if I call myself a writer, that's the least I can do. Here is my contribution to the English language.

1. Spacey Cutlet. As in: I left the stove on when I left for work this morning. Now everything I own is carbonized. I'm such a spacey cutlet.

2. Bledy Feck. As in: Bledy Feck! I left the stove on when I left for work this morning. Now everything I own is carbonized. I'm such a spacey cutlet.

I have no doubt in mind that long after I'm gone, these little contributions of mine will ensure that my good name is interred in the annals of history.
Annals...hehehehe....