Sellophane

I lie flat across the grassy slope enveloped by the fragrance of an emergent mist. Above me the illusion of a thousand shimmering stars etch themselves across the patchy suburban sky. Inside me I can feel the echo of a fossilized dream pulse. It is in these purple and golden hues of hidden memory that I seek the answers to questions that are tattooed underneath my skin. I do not have to construct these questions, they are a part of me, engraved onto the very consciousness of my being.

It is this question that makes me human. This question is not forcibly constructed and imprisoned in the framework of words, punctuation marks, paragraphs and margins. It can't be scratched onto the electric white paper by a tyrannical hand. It is more than that.

It expresses the desire of a comma to connect yet separate thoughts, ideas and hence lives. Within it pulse the melodies of forgotten memories that remain unsaid like exclamation marks basking in the glow of silence. It is a question that dares not end with the illusion of a question mark but the smile of a new sentence, a new beginning, a new memory that a full stop promises.

As i lie stretched out in a suburban park, where the sound of children's laughter and the occasional rustle of an unknown creature in the undergrowth seems to envelope me like a memory of a forgotten lullaby. It is then that I realize the nature of this question, that seems so thoroughly drenched in my memories. It is around this question that I have randomly arranged the jigsaw pieces of my memories.

I have realized that my life is but a blur of memories. Memories that are painted with broken colors of not just that past but also the present and the future. These memories define my life and allow me to live the present and envision the future. These memories pulse beneath the skin, the bone, the muscle and the sinew. These memories define the path for immense oblivion that the unknown, unnamed and unanswered question promises.

I felt the tender kiss of the breeze on my skin as I reveled in the understanding of the question. As the star light dimmed into the hazy concoction of blurs and memories that I had created, I realized that words no longer clutter my eyes and questions no longer cluttered my mind.

I close my eyes and let my mind wander into the world of memories where smiles traces into the dust are more alive than the blood that gushes in my veins.

-------

I wrote this in the summer, also the Image is by Francis Bacon if I am not grossly mistaken...

1. Metallica- Unforgiven II

Can't really explain what this song meant for me. It successfully converted me into a Metallica addict even though none of their other songs barring a few measure up to this one. Can't explain, but this song playing from my sony speakers in an empty room reeking of darkness, it somehow changed me. Never been the same man.

2. Led Zeppelin- Babe I am gonna Leave you.

The guitars. The dream like, the craziness, the perfected screams dripping with the sheer genius of the band. Gnash. Killed me and created me, in one go. Thank you Led Zeppelin.

3. Death- Voice of The Soul

A friend described the compulsive and often convulsive feeling one gets after reading this song as simultaneously being raked by nails and being fed some divine narcotic at the same time. Bliss. Pain. Divine Harmony. Simply Divine.

4. Pearl Jam- Black

I know you are going to be a star in someone else's sky, but why can't it be mine. Oh why can't it be mine. Together. Together. Together...

Don't want to say more for this one.

5. Van Morrison- Moondance

It's a marvelous night for a moondance.
So many nights, this song and me. The moonlight, a lonely cigarette drooping off to sleep in between my fingers. So many of them. Somehow somewhere the song is burnt onto my memory or maybe my soul. The proper terminology/nomenclature to implement right now fails to kick me in the ass and make itself noticed. Van Morrison. Sigh Sigh. Gnash Gnash.

6. Iris- Goo Goo Dolls

Fuck man, what a brilliant sky, what lyrics. At times I felt as if someone had somehow ripped my heart out and somehow splattered them into words. Fucking Amazing.

7. California Dreaming- Mamas and the Papas.

I like. I love. I am.
I heard this song when I was I think somewhere between 10 and 13. I think it was my father's friends house. He's dead now, squished over by a snorting DTC bus. He fed us chilly chicken and chow mein and had a black dog.
All of this I remember because of the song. The song I heard again after approximated 5-7 years.
I still like. I still love. I always am.

8. Oasis- Wonderwall

Cheers me up, no matter what. I love Oasis, there songs speak of an invisible triumph that's not achieved. I wish I could write something like that one day (Notice I say write, not sing!)

Can' t think of any more, Work In progress...


Image: Ratul's room, his guitar, his photo.

Thoughts captured in pretty red capsules. Swallow them whole. With diet coke or a cup of ice tea. Consume over-spiced potato wedges and think about stuff you don't really care about. Buy a case of blank CD-Roms and then fill them up with useless, forgettable junk so as to systematically preserve and then forget these things. Laugh like a baboon at jokes that you don't really find funny.
I need smokes.
It's amazing how dependent I have become on these cancer sticks. And that too in such a short time. Well not really, is five years short for a eighteen year old. Smokes of randomized precision bathed in nicotine.
Plastic Thoughts and Gelatine Trees.
One messed up dream.
Dead goldfishes floating in the stale murky waters of a thousand minds. Long Distance Phone calls. Dire Straits and acoustic solos dried and kept to toast alongside an empty expired packet of malboro cigarettes.
What is the purpose of a purpose?
An aim, something to achieve. But why? What's the point? We are goldfishes here.
How would you die?
Would you float or sink?


Image: Alfred Stieglitz- Equivalent Series

"
...I can place myself anywhere in
space or time.
I can summon the dead.
I can perceive events on other worlds,
in my deepest inner mind,
& in the minds of others,

I can

I am"-

Jim Morrison

Yet another week has passed by, approximately the 870th of my life. (I assumed that there are 48 weeks in a year) What really came of this love-infested week that seemed to plague Delhi in a weird wave of pinks and reds and cupids and unlikely heart-shaped objects?

Well for one I have more or less come to terms with loss of my cell-phone. I think I can do without it till like my finals in April. I watched this movie called 'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels', saw the video for Linkin Park- Numb for the first time in my life. I heard the song 'Lonely Day' by System of A Down for the first time. I also heard the bong and original version of the hit song 'Bheegi Bheegi' (For all those who are blissfully unaware of the shitty trash that bollywood dishes out on a regular basis, it's a song in the film 'Gangster'). Well the So I guess I can safely assume that I am culturally better off than last week.

I have also realized that I am capable of finding joy in other people's happiness even if it means being metaphorically kicked in the fucking balls. It's a weird feeling, like wearing a certain type of clothing for the first time or like wearing formal clothes and bouncing off to college. I have also more or less settled things with my ex. (If you are reading this then I hope you know I still love you, but I can't go on with the way things are right now)

I haven't been studying but then I guess I still have tonight and tomorrow to get rid of the stupid prickly guilt that comes along with it. Sigh Sigh, the pain of doing something you actually enjoy. I have also realized and accepted (or at least semi-accepted) that I am quite addicted to cigarettes. Which is obviously not a good thing...I don't like the dependence that comes with an addiction, any addiction...

What else have I done this week?
Well I attended an unusually large amount of mentally corrosive classes. Except Friday when I couldn't well be bothered. It rained a lot this week, and oh! How could I forget we went to Paharganch. Paharganch which could well be defined as the place where the mystical lands of musty rupee notes meet the part of the city where prostitution, poverty, drugs aren't just some topics to be discussed carefully underneath the shadow of worried frowns and creased foreheads. It exists. It breathes, it pulsates, like any living creature trying to survive in this highly messed up world.

So what have I done this week? Anything really worth reading, well not really...

Alas the ink bleeds and I can write no more.

Stubs
Memories that hide in the dirt,
hide from the booze in a broken bottle and burn the ends of an untouched cigarettes.
Memories that pierce the veins and rust my thoughts.

As time crawls over my tattooed skin and dissolves in a languid nosebleed,
I find myself frozen in the shadow of her grin.

An image that spins in my head.
One I can't forget or encase in the precise fumes of a cigarette A dream is stubbed before it burns...


(c) Hanedin 2007

[Kaya and Hanedin are on top of Hanedin's terrace looking upwards towards the starry, patchy sky. Their Nicotine enhanced fumes clouding their vision while cars race against time trying to catch the glare of their own headlights on the black asphalt. It's just another conversation, like so many others. SOAD- Aerials playing]

Kaya: What do you want in life? What makes you happy?

Hanedin: What do I want in my life? That's easy. To do my BA with really amazing marks and then hopefully do my Masters from somewhere really brilliant, preferably abroad. Then get a well-paying job or even better be a successful writer and hence be reach. While I am at it, I want to meet a girl who I can love and be loved in way that would make me want to be with her for a really long time, say five years. And if it's not to much trouble to the genie hiding behind the fucking dustbin I might as well become really thin and get like six-pack abs, play soccer to really fucked levels, play the guitar really well and so on and so forth. What do I want in life? That ain't so tough...

Kaya: So in other words you little aquamarine freak, you want a really amazing life, perfection. That's what you want. That's funny man! Pass me the cigarette.

Hanedin: Why? Why the fuck do you say so?

Kaya: Hanedin, the eternal advocate of randomness and chance decides to be human and want perfection just like everyone else...

Hanedin: I want to be happy. Don't fucking slobber all over my cigarette, the prospect of nicotine fumes coated with your fucking saliva ain't so endearing.

Kaya: Oh ok, lay off Hanedin! So what this is going to make you happy. A life like so many million others? A girl, a house, a car? What happened to all those dreams man. The mansion with the huge lawns facing a lagoon or a beach or a mountain. What about the animals you always wanted? The big hairy dog, the monkey, the geese, the cat, the horse? What about them man! You can't just fling your dreams underneath a glass porsche. It ain't cool man.

Hanedin: What's going to make me happy Kaya? Why am I not happy? Why the fuck am I here? My life's just a progression of random thoughts and cracked dreams. I don't want to push anymore. I don't want to be happy...It's too hard

Kaya: Give me a drag.

Hanedin: Look at the stars. They are so fucking amazing. It's like someone shot the sky and poked holes in it and the light's just leaking out of the otherside. I want to go there man. The otherside of the sky.

Kaya: Don't stop pushing, I think it's Rocky where that lisping freak of nature said something really smart- life's messed...it pushes you, bites you, lacerates you. But you got to survive man, that's what life's about. Surviving. Hey light another ciggie, this one's almost gone.

Hanedin: The stars, the moon, god, fingers that smell of cigarettes, teeth scraped yellow with excessive nicotine. Hell all of it, it's just one big mirage? How do you know it's not? How do you know we aren't just the phantom of someone's goldfish in someone's goldfish-bowl? Maybe all of this just doesn't really matter. Maybe this world I am trying so hard to figure out is just a showpiece that someone who we think is god placed in his living-room to increase it's aesthetic qualities? Why should I care about anything at all? Anything? Do you know for sure this is all real?

Kaya: I don't? But then do we really have a choice? It's life...Live it or lump it.

Hanedin: Fuck it's getting chilly up here, lets go downstairs, you probably need to call home and tell your mom that you are going to spend the night here anyways.

Kaya: Don't worry I messaged her, ya let's go downstairs, this is one trippy place though! We should come here more often...

Well honestly I don't know.
It was the weird random word that I was supposed to type in to certify that I am a human and not some bot that spams people.
Hanedin. The closest word to it in the dictionary was Hang. Hang the act of suspension, the process in which all thoughts seem to develop. As they are suspended in the self created little word of infinity.
Hanedin..Is my word..It's my name
Why?
Well one name is as good as another...
Hanedin...I chose it's meaning. The act of suspending thoughts inside a little bubble that boxes out reality and all it's distant cousins.
It's funny how all these heavy sounding words seem to have no meaning at all.

King Crimson- Epitaph

Confusion will be my epitaph.
As I crawl a cracked and broken path
If we make it we can all sit back
And laugh.
But I fear tomorrow Ill be crying,
Yes I fear tomorrow Ill be crying.

I am not that good maintaining blogs. Get to bored with 'em way too soon.
I was reading this really good porn story or erotic literature whichever you prefer...I stumbled onto this really weird
and startling reference..it goes:



"It doesn't really Eric, do you know anything about the battle of Agincourt?

"History little brother. Well during the battle, in 1415, the French,
believed they would win a victory over the English, and several of
there generals decided that whenever they captured an English longbow
soldier they were going to cut off his middle finger, as without the
finger it would be almost impossible to draw the renowned English
longbow and they wouldn't be able to fight in the future either."

"Yah and so ...?"

"The English longbow was made of the English Yew tree. The act of
drawing the longbow was known as "Plucking the Yew", or pluck yew. Well
the English defeated the French; and stood on the top of a hill above
Agincourt, waiving their middle fingers at the defeated French, yelling
see we can still pluck yew.

Over time "pluck yew" was changed into "Fuck You" and is often used
with the single finger waive. ‘Flipping the bird’ came from the fact
that pheasant feathers were used on the ends of the arrows. That's
about it."

I found it damn interesting. If it's true then it's scary, if it's not then kudos man...that's some imagination you got there...

Listening to The Door's people are strange...


Faces come out of the rain
When you're strange
No one remembers your name

Bloody Brilliant.

Today was the day that R said "I don't like to read." This has such interesting possibilities.
And here I conclude yet another first entry in yet another new blog.