A Letter to My Muse

My dear Chimera, 

I have only just found you. My being is in awe of your fantastic presence. You are the aurora-coloured magic I had dreamed of as a girl, obese with stories of such romance that they set firmaments exploding into being. But while one soul-tentacle stretches towards your unearthly beauty (with such blinding pain, I, it, wish that it would just rip away from me and dissolve into you!).. another cradles a shriveling heart. And yet another curls protectively, sometimes so suffocatingly, in so motherly a twist, around a sore, bruised, and slippery mind. 

When I ripped through that still-tender dimension we shared, I felt Alice-like. I had drank my way through such strange brews. In each pulsed the essence of love, the same gravity defying untouchable jelly that we'd spun our shared web from. I drank what I did not know. The base ingredient I thought I had understood... But the spirits do not whisper wisdom into everyone's ears. So, since my soul could not pierce through the properties of every such alchemical potion like yours could, I fell into folly.

Perhaps twas because I am such a poor student. Perhaps I am just a fool running from  the shade of one excuse to another. Such bootless conjectures, here I slash through them with the shards of a broken star, and there they will reform in moments. They rejoin to creep up on the mind and heart I try to keep hidden and breathe their noxious, chilling breaths over the failing organs. So I just avert my gaze from them, for now. (They will get their fill of fretting soon enough...) 

But what I did, remains. I drank of the decoction in an alien cocktail, blowsy and
naïve. And such a beast I felt awaken in me. It raised its brutish head, and snuffed. I ignored it. It shuffled to its feet, I looked away. It roared, and I closed my ears, stupid and vain. Stupid and vain, because the noise was in my head, and now it was trapped, ricocheting deeper and deeper in... When it flowed outwards, I could no longer contain it. How could I have caged myself, even as I was not the same? I grew fangs, my fur bristled coarse and brown. My spine arched, and some distant moon raised blood to my eyes. I threw back my head, and jaws that ought to have remain muffled ripped that sweetest place I had ever known, the dimension of togetherness we had learned to call home.. to shreds. 

Pieces of ourselves that had become the foundation of this dwelling, they seethed, some burned. Others shot out like shrapnel. The impact blew us both away, didn't it? And now, I see you in the distance. And you hear my dumb, animal cries. 

You must keep  away from this beast, and I too fear to approach you. What creature have I become, so raptorial, yet consuming my own self with every carnivorous bite? And you... do you also see some odious apparition reflected in the meeting of our gaze? 

I caught a mixed perfume of regret on your skin before we were flung apart. Yes, you worked magic on me. So much of it unknowingly. But I was your hungry apprentice, wasn't I? My dearest one, I am not a monster of your making. 

I am simply a species unknown. As are you. 

But even through these half-blinded eyes your glamour rushes through. Your glow, like an overpowering tide, suffuses me even across this distance. It calls me to you, my Chimera.

I would rush to you. You ought to know this. But I have learned a new kind of fear. It has taught me a belated lesson in halting my steps. So even as I see the wounds I gnashed across your being, even as my heart nearly implodes with the need to offer my own blood and flesh as some paltry dressing, I cannot. 

A jinn that I had rubbed into being, released from that philter I upturned into my hungry maw now rides with me. Sometimes besides me, sometimes curled about my shoulders. I swallowed its heart when I fished it out of its home. I do not know it as I knew you, but a finely twisted bond of fear and love chains us together. Chains, that sometimes we fight to control. And those tentacle arms of mine flail, unsure and floundering in these unknown tides. 

As for that distant moon... it weaves its tortuous orbit in and across this infinity. I twist towards its every motion. But the magic we wove together lingers. It still courses through me. It still tints my vision. It reminds me that I now walk with an empty space within me that is shaped like you. It reminds me that I have made twin incisions in you that leak life and love drop by drop. 

But there is no hope of approach. There is not hope of return. There is no hope that this was all nothing but a tumultuous dream. So I write this to you, to let you know that I have embarked on my via dolorosa.

And every breath is a prayer to love, that it might catch you, this exquisite and  delirious jinn, and perhaps me, and someday heal us. 

Forever yours, but nevermore yours alone, a pathetic crimson monster.

Not a drop to drink

Life does not allow me to see myself as a unity. It’s as though I’m a pack of tarot born of bizarre dreams and a feverish brain-hand synapse – a neverending pack, images that are the times of my life flying, flying, filling the sky of my existence like clamoring birds. This is why I don’t have a tattoo yet. I’m inconsistent. My chameleon skinned life is indecisive, always twitching, never in control or aware of itself.

When you’re always changing, you’re always moving. A rolling yarn loses all its wool, systematically annihilating itself in its quest to live.

I remember when I wrote of myself as a river – I was young then, not afraid of clichés, typing out my thoughts and beliefs in boldface.

As I grew up, I wrote about my excursions into the cosmic sea, adventurous, reckless, pained and hopeful.
I saw myself drowning, and the words wrote themselves before the thought itself became clear – I was a miserable little sea urchin, lost in deep blue waters, struggling to break for the surface.

And since I tried hard enough, I lunged out. The surface is not a nice place to be at. I was still not the master of my movements. The sun baked me and the waves slapped at me, apathetic, vicious bullies.

I understood that my place was below, back in the deep towards which my previous drownings had led me.
But now I was afraid. Of the dark, of the mystery that sang in my sleep, that buzzed and boiled through my blood when I was awake, tearing open my eyes and willing me to stare into the sun.

I could not face it.

The terror, and then the inadequacy. It has torn me from myself. It has transported me.

Now I am an isolated lake in some far, dead moon. Cold, still water defines me. I am crusted over with a layer of ice that glistens like the edge of a butcher’s knife. But I am weak, and treacherous. The light I steal from the heavens and reflect blinds you to the cracks that web across me. It is not safe to cross me, to get to know me though all I present to you is a surface.

I wonder now if another season will ever arrive, if the freezing crust that is my own hand pressed tight over my nose and mouth, will ever melt. And I wonder at the notions that now solidify within me. The eyes inside are witnessing the birth of an iceberg. I am becoming the impassive waters of destruction, I am creating death.
But even in my distant, self-contained misery, I cannot deny one thing. The pull of the sea. The earthly gravity that bore me demands its dues. And even from this distance, I see you. You have become the sea I long wanted to be. It’s you and your love. And my fear has doubled. It seems that I fear both you and me, now. But this ghost of myself, the icy lake in a far away moon, it does not believe it can ever return. Terror jets through me, red, bloody, blistering hot. I do not let it mar my placidity, but it unsettles me. I long to return. I long to take this chance to be what I knew myself to be, what you have shown me is possible. But I’m no longer sure if I’m welcome. I’m no longer sure if that old place of mine still belongs to me. I dam the temptation to burst through the ice, to flow, to rush, to drip into your love. I recede from you because I fear losing what’s left of pale, meager me.

Solo Cloud on Float Mode

There's something about living on campus in a residential university. It throws up some very uncomfortable, hair-splitting moments of loneliness in a crowd.

I'd internalized my mother's agoraphobia, and would usually run back home once whatever work was going on was over. And my home was sacred - I was loathe to invite just anyone in. This was something of a family hallmark, I suppose, because I feel that my home still has this aura of... well, not an uninviting quality. More of a sense of aloofness, a feeling that the front door would just like to fade into the wall.

Here, I'm often tempted to run back to my cosy little room. And do what? I brought over a couple of my favorite worldly possessions, my fortifications against loneliness and socialization. Books. Music. Movies. You'd think I'd never need step out, except to feed myself and use the big girls' room. I thought that, at any rate. 

But it's characteristic of a new life to strip away much of that comfort I derived from my familiars. 

Attempts at hurtling into the old havens of fiction and familiarity are now roadblocked by this vague discomfort. There's nothing better that the campus outside can offer me over my books and music, but its half-empty presence rings in my ears, trying to suck me like marrow out of the bone of the hostel.

I have not been an explorer for many, many years. But an impending metamorphosis is already aching in my bones... Strange that I make it sound more natural a process it is, because I'm filled with apprehension and have been puffing a slender cigarette of pessimism for a few months, now.

Echoes of the larger world are already burning like acid through my self-absorbed bubble. And I'm holding back, for as long as possible, from the paralyzing inevitability of stepping out - naked, shaking, endless.

Loneli

I was lonely, so lonely that the electronic relay of your disembodied voice, from your distant body, and apparent non-existence of your fire was so painful. I couldn't pick up your call. I was so deep in loneliness, that my chill breath was enough to freeze any vestiges of warmth that you might have puffed through the plastic earpiece.

I was a rock in my lonely need. But had it been a mood with the differentiation of a few degrees, I would have thought of running to you.
And then I would have thought of how. And the walk. And the train. And the long, long time, the waiting and sitting in a compartment so full of cross-purposes; noisy with the silence of too many preoccupied heads, trying to reassert their intentions in their own domains… i would have drifted. The currents would have pulled me away from the burning piece of flotsam in the oil-slick sea of that different, imagined loneliness.

And all in all, my offer of a distant, wispy smile, after you sliced your loveful way through strange humanity… Would have made you wish it was an electronic laugh drained through a plastic earpiece.

Tummy Ache

Sunlight glinting off the clear glass jug of lemonade pierces my eyes. My father waves at me, but I’ve already turned back to the shade. For a few seconds, I'm light-blind. I squint and slide my hand across the cool, deep grass. Fingertips touch the hem of Purvi’s skirt; I get up on all fours and shift closer to her. Her school uniform is crumpled and grass-stained – she’s always been such a slob. 

I start sticking dry ochre leaves into her baby fine wavy hair. She’s probably an elf with her pointy little ears, skin like cool, damp mud, and delicate birdlike bones. Or simply a bird. When we were younger, I used to tell my mother that Purvi turned into a sparrow and flew away every evening. Look at her now – her high cheekbones glistening with sweat, small thin hands fluttering on the grass, and her growing, ridiculous, adorable belly. 

She whispers something I can’t catch. I tilt her chin so that she’s facing me. She screams – long, and shrill. Her parents and mine rush at us from the veranda. Someone topples the jug of lemonade, and for a moment, the wet grass sparkles like broken glass. 

***

She’s still screaming as we sit huddled in the back seat. She’s squeezing my hand, and I'm so glad she wants me. A few minutes from the hospital the little bird has exhausted herself. This is how she is, she suddenly builds up to an explosion and falls back, utterly drained.

***

The white hospital corridor turns into a tube of speculation as we wait for the doctor to return. Food poisoning? Amoebiosis? At one point, Purvi’s father asks me if she’d swallowed a G.I. Joe, and I tell him she stopped doing that 9 years ago. Anyway, she would only gobble the heads. I think of how the toy heads are only a little smaller than a sparrow’s eggs.

The doctor returns, his face blank and frozen. We all look at the offering in his outstretched hands. My father faints, and so does Purvi’s mother. I take the ugly, wriggling red monster into my arms. I wonder if girls are called daddy, too.

Writers are crazy

(Old post)

If you think you’re a writer, the most dangerous thing you can do is a necessity. You must read others. Read the greats that have gone before, and read the goods you would look in the eye if they weren’t racing so far ahead.

A little reading leaves you feeling pleasantly buzzed, like a couple of beers on warm afternoon over light banter with a non-judgemental friend. It’s something you can go home and write about in your journal, and add a smiley face at the end of the entry even. The whole activity feels really healthy.

A moderate amount of reading can prop you up. Like that cheap coffee table with a short leg, that’s balanced on top of two second hand paperbacks. It makes you critical. It makes you imagine your mirror image looking back at you with great brown wings, a golden beak and a mad swiveling beady bird eye. You feel like you can tower about all those lowbrow peers of yours, when you’re actually standing tip-toe on your brains to achieve an illusion of height. You know enough words by now to be able to call yourself descriptive. Grammar and editors don’t scare you shitless, words don’t make you neurotic. Creation doesn’t make you euphoric. It makes you smart.

A lot of reading… OK, hold on because this is where you begin to go crazy. The roller coaster’s seat belts snap and you find the damn machines roaring down a convoluted rail, definitely not the same, sane one you espied while shifting from foot to foot on solid ground. The Books are all over your room now. You can hear them crawling around at night. In your head, of course. Words take on the dimension of a fragile glass with some very, very combustible substance inside. They’re pretty, and really fascinating too. But spooky as hell. So, it’s like you’re possessed. You must have more of these strange things, because you’re addicted to them by now. But they’re of so many bloody kinds, they make you feel really inadequate. You spend hours in your own head, frantically making more of these glass bombshells, trying to arrange them in the most explosive way possible, and running out in the middle of it all to see what others have done/are doing, how close are they to exploding in your face, oh hell, you need to get back.. make More More More!

Are you going crazy, yet?

Resuscitating the Writer

When I write my autobiography several decades later, or maybe next week, I'll make sure to add a few pages on how to reclaim youth wasted by delusions and dreams. Right after the chapter on my rude awakening.
So Yes, I was immature. And Yes, I was being a coward. And YES, I'm lazy. But I'm willing to cut myself some slack, because look - I'm suffering for it now, okay?

Now let me paint you a portrait of the artist as an uninspired, sadly regular young woman -

Things were not going as expected. She had completely side-stepped the trial by fire, the stormy lunches with her parents, and suicidal tendencies. It was disappointing, because she was getting good at those, and had come prepared for them. Posterity would blame it on Murphy, and woe how utterly uninteresting the next chapter in her life promised to be. Its working title was 'The Time of No Shenanigans or The Advent of the Good Girl'. She was afraid even her word processor would breakdown from sheer boredom. But purgatory wasn't even a smidgen of mud on the horizon.


Alright, enough. Any more and I'll cry. So here's the quick and dirty - I've screwed up, and after watching me give stellar screw-up performances, my parents have decided to intervene. The Reformation has begun. And the beginning lies in trying to figure out what the hell I want in life (apart from a lot of money, and coffee). Something must also be said of the the Reclamation bit, because that's the bit that'll be hitting you in small, smelly, gooey bits. Unexpectedly. It has wings. I'm talking about reclaiming the writer-persona, and picking up wordcraft with a vengeance. Weapons of choice are my blog, and Tyrannosaurusy word doc that'll be my NaNoWriMo novel's nanny.Yep, I'm taking part in NaNo third year in a row, and this time it's to win, baby!

I will also be plotting secret shenanigans, and adopt a secret identity to give these nefarious plots life, so you can stop crying now.