Sunday, September 09, 2012

My encounter with my poet


On a fine Sunday morning, I felt restless. And sensed something was afoot with my beautiful poet. He had been cheery and productive for the last week. Which was great. But I know that the man lives on two levels. And if its happy and cheery on top, it's obviously coming at the cost of something below. Like someone drawn towards the depths of the sea it admires and fears, I probed. And I got a series of messages in return. Which elevated, provoked, disturbed, saddened, alarmed, frustrated, enamored and absorbed me, sending me on a whirlwind of thought and emotion for the rest of the day. 

Most people stay in one space, and I adjust my thinking and reactions to that. My conversations with Darshan are as practical as they are whimsical with L. I laugh at Wendy Holden's chick-lit, and delve into the intricacies of humanity with J.M. Coetzee. I enjoy the straight forward, well paced story telling of The Pirates of the Caribbean and lose myself in the magic of Before Sunset. 

But what do I do with someone like Vik who straddles the worlds with an apparent comfort that would shame people of intellect and character? The answer is - nothing. I can do nothing,  I control nothing. For the first time in my life, I subsume my ego to the complexity and circumstances of another person, and all I can do is react - laugh, love, fear, retreat, reach out, plunge, extract, laugh, love, fear - and expand my intellectual and emotional reaches to accommodate and partly absorb the words and energies that come my way. 

This is what my came my way today - 

Creatively I draw a blank…or actually…I have nothing to tell the world…I have a huge blank and myself and my people

I’m blank…and don’t have anything to offer the world and that is painful for my existence. My mind gives direction to my will…and my heart does some preliminary ratings…emotions are a cauldron in suspension, my desk has taken priority

Your locus of control is external…which will always keep you charged and excited and effervescent, except for the days when your discussions are dominated by idiots, then you get angered. But you are good at making good of a temper.

I am all internal…and what can grow on an island, where deserts rule, cacti, and floods, extremities. Very few people can survive me. And that’s the bitter in the sweet pill, the fear that people have – that one day I will turn around and shut myself out of their lives, towards my own extinction.

The fear that you probably have too…you bring out the artist in me…and that artist suffers every day by own consumption…of what it does not service or be a part of…the wanderer needs the roots of wandering, but how can a wanderer grow roots. But the roots grew and the wanderer did not; what belonged to the world, belongs to lust now.

All that I said will not lead me out of my predicament. I cannot obviously renounce the world. All of this is mental masturbation, which is classified as lust driven. Lust driven by the origins of lust…the wanderer still hurts for its lust of withdrawal from all things permanent and seeing the world, its depths for its own sake. That is the allure…and that is not lust, since lust is insider and allure is outside.

I cannot take two years off and live the dreams that are distant. For that I have to be born again and different. And sometimes I question this life’s worth…pennies I guess.

And with that, I will work towards my make-believes. 

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