A dismal day, of dismal hours and minutes and seconds to match, one can't help but feel the fire, I guess. Get pumped up. Want some heads rolling on the ground, want some feet kicking it out at them. Faces beneath the foot, a stampede on the race for nothing but victory.
Proud to present to you, the official artwork for 'WARCRY'. Version 1.
(For the ignorant, 'Warcry' is meant to be the last addition to 'My Book of Rhymes', although first conceived. Not like 'saving the best for last'. The best would come when willed and absolutely desired. That's about it.)
I thought I’d name this post as ‘Rhyme and Reason’, on a personal point of view that the said terms can never come together, as one has to always have an element of absurdity or at least, ‘obscurity’ for the sake of rhyme and no, it’s not a compromise, it’s just words slowing down for the tune to run with them, and once the pace is set, they’d just quicken together.
“words are stalled in a line,
it’s tough to make up my mind,
‘cause there’s not much of
rhyme in reason;
this is just my rhyme”
Setting aside the fact that I got to write ordinary lines, there’s a hint of pride that I got to twiddle my first tune and associate legit words to it. Very simple, and I got reminded of a ‘Swell Season’ song called ‘The Verb’, so I thought I’d write something sober, yet emotional, reminiscent of the stuff that Glen Hansard comes up with. So I guess this could be my tribute to him and to ‘Miss Incredible’ Marketa Irglova, and to the amazing music and lyrics that they come up with, solely to mesmerize and induce an amount of joy that can’t quite be paralleled. ‘Strict Joy’, as they put it themselves.
I’m not going to complete the song. I don’t know enough notes to do so.
"See, I refuse to believe that my life's gonna be just a string of incomplete never to lead to me anything remotely close to my home life..."
- 'HOME LIFE', John Mayer.
'Heavier Things' - An album that happened to set the stage that he stands on, right now. Back then, you know.
Not the same man, no, I do know that. I'm not kidding myself otherwise, either. He said he's waiting on the world to change, I guess I'm waiting on him. A lot of things past, a lot of things said, it's said people crack under the strain anyway, but it still hurts, for I've never seen him as 'people'. Maybe I should. Maybe then, he'd prove me wrong. Either way, I'm still here. I doubt if there's the remotest possibility that he'd be reading this, but I'm still here.
I guess we're 'In Repair', now. Not together yet, but we'd be getting there. I hope.
I didn’t need to open the door to let her in, that would only have proved her wrong and shattered my belief, for at that moment, I wanted to believe. Tough times, you know, waking up with longing to see eye to eye what you dreamt the whole night about, what you wished morning came faster for, what you wished would never ever let you oversleep, because this was just too important. Much too important than anything else, even examinations (with varying degrees of preparation), even interviews, even a date with your wife-to-be, because this is something that could eventually lead you to it, or so you like to believe. And belief is this vice that you’d wish you never held, once it starts to hold you back.
I didn’t tell her anything she couldn’t see for herself, and there was nothing she couldn’t, I had written it all on my mind and she was close enough to not miss out even on a single letter. I leant myself on both my arms, feet firm on the ground as I sat on the side of my bed, and she sat beside me, legs hovering an inch from the ground, for she was short. I smiled. I was looking nowhere but at her feet, at how she swung them back and forth from time to time, at how she swayed, deciding on the rhythm of the world as she did that, and I couldn’t help but be mesmerized. She was still a girl, still the girl who was as young as me, despite attempts from folk to marry her on and on and on and on to the same man, writing incarnation after incarnation and I could tell that she was tired, her eyes told me that. I looked at them. I’m not someone who could tell hazel from green and brown from black, but I could tell ‘impacting’ from ‘not’ and she had the prettiest pair of eyes I’ve seen on a girl: pretty big eyes that came alight when she smiled, and she was smiling right there, looking into mine, asking me not to worry, telling me everything that went wrong went wrong only to make ‘fine’ sound better than just that. And she said the world could do with a little more magic, with a little more faith, as faith is fun, it’s like the eternal game of hide and seek and you find you can never exhaust yourself playing it, refreshments galore. I told her I never disbelieved in her, and that I only waited for this moment to come, post eighteen years of penance under the veil of cynicism, for I can’t tell the world that I believe in no part of the cloud but its silver lining. She laughed, not at my pitiful metaphor, but at how glad I was making her, how light she felt despite the load of all the world’s responsibility, including mine, and how I was responsible for that, out and out.
She dropped a tear on my shirt as she wept with joy, leaning on, and I lifted her up by her chin, telling her to not weep, for she would flood the world otherwise. She closed her eyes as a drop trickled down her cheeks, onto my thumb and to the ground from my elbow. And I stopped the next to come with my eyelash.
She disappeared in a puff of smoke, ten minutes later. What happened before shall stay a secret, barely revealed.
I had helped move the world. Something I would sleep on, anytime.
It’s not alien (at least to myself) that I’ve recently developed this habit of rising before anyone else could, and I know that’s virtually impossible, but I guess that’s why I’m being nothing but real when I say that I’ve been waking up before the soul next to mine and the soul next to his, in a tangle of souls that all wake up after I do, and I know I sounded godly saying that, it’s because I actually feel so. Awakening is definitely something else, a contest that knows no time, but I guess I’d still be getting somewhere with my eyes wide open, I’d still be better than the best sleepwalker alive. But only with flashlights and a cell-phone.
Darkness is cute. This isn’t part of a gothic leap, but definitely, darkness is a lot more reassuring than silence or white noise, and it needs no say that with ‘darkness’, I implied nothing but ‘darkness’ and not something like ‘dark, without sound’ or ‘dark, with ghosts screaming aloud’, which means one can bias darkness to favour oneself, as long as he gives it something to mate with, like music for instance. But I find that it’s not the same case with silence, even in the brightest of lights, as without people around, I’ve never felt an ounce of optimism more than what I was supposed to feel, what the silence was supposed to induce, and that’s nothing, really. And I tend to hallucinate, yeah, which doesn’t make me neurotic, it only makes me skilled enough to be able to bring the images in my mind to the outside world, but constrained so that no one but myself can savour what’s being shown, because it can’t be seen by anyone else. It’s often something very graphic, for the eye cannot distinguish substance from shit, I’ve been told it’s all in the mind, and without the mind you could end up treating shit like everything else, and everything else like shit and everything is at par and that’s like the ideal world. An ideal world where being is banned, and you can’t be something else either, because you’ve got to ‘be’ to be that and so you can’t be.
She was outside my window, the window that faces the corridor, the corridor that glowed with every single fluorescent lamp turned on. I blinked. She would’ve been gone by then if she had materialized out of nothing, or an equal amount of air, but I know that I saw her coming from around the bend, clad in her best, the best they always dress her in. Gold. Stones. Crown. Anklets. Bangles. Silks. Not overdone, for I held the brush, you know, I don’t mind ornaments unless they came in my way, and I guessed a little wouldn’t do much harm. And besides, I couldn’t imagine her without them, it’s not my fault, really. And it’s not my fault that she’s always got to be this pretty, for through the ages, through pumpkins and pussycats and every odd and end that’s played her in a film, there’s only been one that’s lasted in my mind, particularly because she was only as old as I am now and because there’s nothing that connects better than age. Not even Nokia, for that matter.
I’m not the gymnasium person. And I know I could be found there almost every day, but that doesn’t need to, and that doesn’t mean that I’m a gym-person. I’m more like one who’s trying to get out of it, you know, lifting things is not my thing, and I’ve never lifted anything considerable, only encouraging discouragement every time I try. From everyone around, that is, I’m not a dejected soul drowning my sorrow over here, I’m sorry if you’ve started to think that this is yet another “I’m all alone” post, it’s not, anyway. Always had an eye on frailty, always thought ‘fragile’ spelt ‘amazing’ and felt amazing, because then I’d break before I break, and that’s bullshit actually, I made that up just a second ago, so it’s not like that’s a driving force of sorts.
“And you would seem so frail
in the cold of the night,
when the armies of emotion
go out to fight…”
Standing amidst weights and measures and sweat that would cool away if I stood still for too long, I don’t think it’s a place enough to romanticize, or to start a chain that starts far from where I was, and there was this out-of-the-way reminder of this Dylan song called ‘Buckets of Rain’, an odd blend of groan and subtle folk-guitar, and emblematic words, I felt I ought to write something on those lines, and it didn’t take long to fit ‘Ten Pounds’ instead of ‘buckets’, although I’m sure that none today would weigh that much, this said ignoring the steel buckets of yesterday. I guess they survive even now, but serve to be nothing but today’s reminders of yesterday, so it’s technically a peek through the periscope than the big picture itself, so I guess I’d not dwell on that a lot.
I don’t know much about wars, heck, I’ve never been in one. Never been hit, either, so I’d rather not pretend. Haven’t gone hungry, wanting to eat but having nothing to eat, haven’t shivered, wanting heat but not getting any, but I’ve always felt this: They’re shitting on us. And how do I know that, I mean I’ve got a nose, I’m told I’ve got a keen sense of smell and I could write about the stench of socks without getting affected by them, and I’m even living in this world amidst all this shit, and that makes me professionally qualified, you know, a green signal that always burns. A welcome sign that’s never painted on, an archway built for me.
“Ten pounds of peace
that you tried to buy, with
nothing to buy with:
a dinner delight, tonight;
ten pounds of wheat
from the hunger-deprived,
a ten left behind,
and the ten that she lied about”
Don’t break your head over this, it’s something I had fun writing.
I stood for three-quarters of the journey on my way home today, losing three opportunities to sit down in the process, pretending that they didn’t slip away without me letting them to, although there was no need to pretend, the world can’t care. I was frustrated, though. Painted a grin on my face to cover-up the fact that I was freaked out by this really oily-haired boy who was determinedly bumping his head against my pants, falling asleep. I tried to not think of the act as deliberate, but I couldn’t bring myself to try to try. I rescued my backpack a couple of times from a couple of people who almost stepped on it as I listened to ‘Draw the Line’ by David Gray, because I couldn’t afford that, it had my laptop in it. And I can’t afford my laptop, it’s a fact.
Crowd cleared a little at the CMBT, but it’s always the place that never makes a difference, for they get in as they step out, it’s a real life scenario of John Mayer’s ‘Wheel’, and one can’t help but eat when force-fed, because spitting out only makes the world dirtier. I counted five: five men, five suitcases, four made of wood and one made of leather. And I’m talking about the suitcases, and they were fairly big, so they occupied about half the length of the bus; half the place that’s there for standing. I’m not being the stickler over here, and I wasn’t, either. I was too busy watching the men and studying them, to be one. Beards. Paan. Safaris, slacks and Kurtas too. Exotic. ‘Same old, same old’.
I wished the bus weren’t speeding. I wished I could get down.
I started to ponder about who would survive. I wondered if I’d make it, I wondered if it could be the turning point of my life, where they get to find that I’m like David Dunn (from ‘Unbreakable’) and that I can’t be broken, and that a list of people who didn’t make it through would never have me on it, unless it’s a list of those who drowned, because I know for a fact that I can’t swim. I thought about Matt Damon’s emphatic monologue from ‘Good Will Hunting’, the multiple references of ‘shrapnel in the ass’ (weird, because there was a box right behind me), I thought about comic imitations of a blast, where the victims stand in rags, covered in soot, blowing smoke which they inhaled just a second ago, I wondered if I could get away with nothing more than a puff of smoke, except that I don’t smoke and the world’s no stage either. I thought of how the heat could scald my skin, how I’ve never felt anything more than ‘tolerable’ before, wondered how it could feel to be pounded by nails and bolts and bits and pieces of metal, and I thought again if I would die or if I’d survive and I remembered how I’ve never died before, and that it’s always dilemmatic as to whether one could wish for what he hasn’t felt already, but then again, there’s no one around who can tell me not to, and get away with it convincingly. A kind man then put my face at risk than my behind, by asking me to take the seat beside his, for he had seen me stand for too long. And then, as I sat, I secretly resolved that if I don’t get down by the time this song (‘Jackdaw’, David Gray) ends, I might possibly not get down again. Consciously alive, that is.
I got down before the bridge of the song, having replayed it twice on my way. I guess I can’t do much about metropolitan traffic.
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I’m not John Carpenter, for heaven’s sake. I’m not for cheap thrills, especially if I’m involved in one (I doubt if he’d be, either, if the thrill’s on him). I don’t fear blood, I just don’t like to see it flow out of me in amounts that I wouldn’t appreciate. Cuts are nasty, bruises last for weeks, broken bones stray out of control, and death is too permanent for me to desire it.
But I swear that both of the times that I got down, I wished, that on its way down the road, the bomb would burst just to prove me right. And I don’t know what that makes me.
’, so I thought I’d write something sober, yet emotional, reminiscent of the stuff that Glen Hansard comes up with. So I guess this could be my tribute to him and to ‘Miss Incredible’ Marketa Irglova, and to the amazing music and lyrics that they come up with, solely to mesmerize and induce an amount of joy that can’t quite be paralleled. ‘
’, as they put it themselves.
