The Idea-smithy

From Sandman: Endless Nights

Most people want like a candle flame, flickering, wavering.
But you want like a forest fire.

Getting what you want and being happy are two very different things.

When there is nothing left to want, all you do is wait till there is nothing left to wait for.

And what when there is the world to be wanted?
Like a forest fire, like a volcano, like a flaming, blazing star, like a thousand shooting suns?
And along with desire, the equal knowledge that what you want can never be
Like a parallel universe of ice, diamond-hard and bright

Waiting is all there is, for an end that will never come since resolution can never be reached without possession.

I once said that when I want someone or something, I want them like the air I breathe.
And people like me can learn to survive without air
Gill-like swimming around in the pools of substitutes

But one never forgets what real air tastes like.

The otherself was on the phone.
Best Friend was entertaining…and trying, successfully almost, to be entertained.
Astra opened her eyes from the earth-healing meditation and hugged her mother.
Precious was in deep slumber…one hopes.
All was as always with the soul-family.

The pater and mater were hugging the alter-pater and alter-mater at the airport.
The photo-negative was muttering a silent plea.
The villians were smiling at their families.
The eternal love was kissing his wife happy new year and saying hello to the big Three-O.
The cast was in their places, ready on cue.

Preacher was admiring the stars (human and astral).
The child was grinning from ear to ear and counting down 7…5….4….6…3…..
Shooting star was watching the fireworks with a sinking feeling in the stomach.
The badgers stood firm, feet planted on the ground, ready as ever.
The peripheral was intact and the circle complete.

A hundred little bubbles were bursting inside her head
While tiny light-bulb filaments flared and sizzled out inside his
As the grey-white filaments of air swirled around them
Each of them donned their party-hats and hung on the matching accessories -
Brilliance, exuberance, cheer and a wide smile.

Home was waiting and watching
An eternity, a lifetime, a constellation away
While the blue-green planet turned another revolution around Sol.
I smiled back.

2 October 2004

Sometimes life comes at you
like a thousand asteroids rocketing through space
And hits you,
one at a time and then more and more and more

Till the reality sinks in
That there is no planet, no sun or galaxy

All there is, is the vast, still brooding space
That you are.

Meet me on the other side of the moon
And walk in shadows with me
It won’t be all dark
You put a gleam in my eyes
That will lead the way for a stroll into madness

I’ll take you right up to the edge, walking blind
But just on the brink,
I promise to tell you
And let you decide
Whether to take a step farther or not

And if the decision to walk be yours,
I’ll fall through the night with you
Into an everlasting sea of silver light
Till one day, the man in the moon watching another couple take a stroll together
Smiles…and one of them hears it…and smiles back
At him. At you.

But know also that,
If then, you deter
You will find yourself alone in the lightless shadows
To make your way back alone
I won’t return to show you the way
And - what’s more - you’ll never see the gleam in my eyes again ever

I’ll have forever one way or the other.

Do you see mud and sludge?

I see the footprints of hundreds of busy feet that walked before me.I see history being created….little histories, not major sagas. Just the history of ordinary people living ordinary lives. I see their footprints as erasable and forgettable as them. But not unseen. I saw them, after they had passed. I saw them, I did. I see my own footprints layering over theirs, left behind to be seen perhaps by someone else? Or overlaid by yet more footprints.

We are a city of ordinary people and dirty buildings. No grand monuments or pretty scapes, no great people breathe here (and I’m not talking about Bollywood, Page 3 and the glitterati).

I first blogged under the moniker of ‘Just a statistic’. That I still am. One of the teeming masses in this vast mechanism called Mumbai. So many people enter this city everyday with a dream, hoping to leave a mark behind on the world. Seeing these soon to be washed away imprints on the station floor made me wonder whether anyone here really does. And whether it matters. The real Mumbaikers, the citizens, the salt-of-this-earth is just moving mud on the railway platform. And then we’re gone.

Poison,
Was laced into
The first glass of sweet wine you offered me

Since then even water tastes like fire

From betrayal is born vindictiveness
And for those of us who never forget
It is akin to the demon child born of a mortal womb

You will always be the poison in my sweet wine

I am nothing, if not Intensity in person. And I’m bored now.

Do I fall in love out of boredom? Do I feel things because they’re plain entertainment? Alright, you were right then.

If love were a poem, I’d be an ode to your being.

If love were a song, I’d be a serenade to you.

If love were a painting, I’d be a blind artist.

If love were a banquet, I’d be a casuality of gluttony.

If love were a bottle of vinegar, I’d be pickled in it.

If love were haute cuisine, I’d be tender meat stewed in its juices.

If my love were a letter, it would be silent.

If my love were a word, it would be misspelt.

If my love were a sentence, it would be self-referential.

If my love were a question, it would be rhetorical.

If my love were a language, it would be Braille.

If love were a disease, it would be my the cancer in my cells.

If love were only enough, I’d be the answer to all the world’s questions.

I only wish it had been a shot of cyanide. I’d have been dead with a smile on my lips. But there is life. There is also an empty glass in my hands. I’m waiting.