Cubic(Ho)le

As i sit here in my hole of a cube, i wonder what it is to be like one of the species surviving in the cubes around me. If you thought a married life with family and kids can become boring, you might be right in an ideal world. For the species i interact on a daily basis here, home could be a pretty happening place. Their days are spent amid the greyness of these multi-storied, rectangular, bland clusters of the so called skyscrapers. They come in like a flok of sheep, doing their ant parades, mechanically pressing the buttons of the elevator , flashing their RFID blue badges, gorging caffeine from their venti size coffee cups, and swinging their modest laptops. They are there when i get to work, and there after i leave, these perpetual pests, have they lost the urge to seek out of this smothering mundanity ?

For all i know i find it hard to accept that this is what i am going to turn into. To come to grips with this seemingly certain future and culmination of my ambitious youth. Years will pass by so quick, not in pain or bliss, but in a numbing complacency of a modestly paying job and a undemanding life-style. Till the day you sit in the same cube, year from now, with thinning grey hair, wodering what had happened to all the years of your youth, why have you chosen to be what you have become, and write a post on it just like the one you are writing now. You will do it cause its easy, easy to sit secluded from the world in a cube of your own, justifying the years passing by with the the sum you accumulated in your bank account, and the not so often weekend trip to vegas. Getting moulded and attuned to an acquired notion of happiness, which all the people you know in the herd are seeming to be content with. You might even go as far as running (crawling ?) a marathon with your colleagues, just to show off how wild you still are in that balding skull of yours. They will tag you with terms like assistant, junior manager once in every 10 years, giving you a false sense of achievement, like a piece of rotten meat in a lions cage, this will keep you domestic enough to still hang a poster of that ex-sports phenomenon you always ramble about at lunch. Don't be fooled, you would never realize it while you are in it. You will still be a winner, just like your dad/mom wanted you to be, living up to the expectations of that 4th grade teacher who used to mark excellents! on your homeworks. You will be the talking head of a few meetings, displaying all the corporate vocabulary you amassed over the years, skillfully executing the 10 golden rules of social interaction seminar you were defaulted into.

It wouldn't be too long from now, the day you will be going back to the university you once graduated from, with aspirations of no less than a noble laurette, representing your little no-name group in the big umbrella corporation. Trying to live up to the expectations of those front row, four eyed fools, you will ramble on about how planning is important for a successful career, how you once were just like them, and about the importance of personality development form an early age, and all sorts of bull you can think of, like a cubicle cowboy, a fucking rockstar of the rats!. Making it sound like the most exciting job one could ever imagine to be in, you will manage to con-in a few fools to join the herd. How far will you go before you hit the wall ( of your rat hole ) ? Wishing for a second chance, wishing you were never born, wanting to start over, to be a kid again, to experience the forgotten stiffness in your pants, to be truly wanted, to wake up and have a smoke without a worry in the world, to not look at the clock 24 times a day...

Hope you remember this rant, for your own good, just call it quits when you think is the time and have no regrets on it, remember this feeling while you are going through it, cause once you leave it your brain is destined to forget how numb you have once become, and will end up making the grass greener on the otherside.

Curtain Call

The miles i traveled mock at me through the clatter of my chains of bondage.
Come far i might have, to a few i am still at home.
How does the river tell the spring, it's headed for the ocean ?
Whisper the songs of pain from the graves,
"Behold! the liberated one, you are a myth, for we are still alive".

Stranger i am, to my own skin.
Stranger was i to the kin,
awaiting to weigh me with their social scales.
Stranger i choose to be.

Awake, i dream of the shores of solitude far away from here.

The Journey to the East by H.H

It's refreshing to know that there are still books around that can convey the message of great saints such as Gautam Buddha, in such a subtle, elegant, and time-less fashion. The book starts of as an attempt by the author Herman Hesse to chronicle the experiences of a few remarkable years of his life. H.H uses the post-war period in Germany as a greater stage for depicting a sense of urgency in the lives of people seeking a liberation from the eternal recurrence of life.

This semi-autobiographical allegory, takes us closer to the mindsets of a selected few mavericks of a society, who wanted to experience transcendence through a deeper reflection into one's own mind. These "outsiders", "hippies", "cult-members", or as however they are ridiculed today, becomes insignificant once we get a glimpse of their purpose.
The literary genius of H.H is in not ever revealing the so called "rules", followed by this secret society but yet conveying everything one would want to know about its purpose. Every one who wants to join the society is first asked to reveal his innermost purpose for wanting to be a part of it.

No matter how ridiculous or juvenile one's reason to join the society is, all they have to do to join is state it honestly. This is remarkably different from what we see in the so called vedic societies, religious congregations who recruit individuals for a single goal of attaining eternal piece/heaven/or in some cases 104 virgins. The difference is that in these religious congregations, the will to be a part of a whole is imposed. Even the desire to be a part of the whole to attain the so called purpose, is enforced. So far as, the purpose itself is dictated to you.
This puts forth an important Question, how can you see the oneness/the whole/ the mere fabric that binds us all together in this eternal dance of energy, if we are not allowed to accept ones own true self and its desires ? If all your life has to be a journey towards a single door, that leads to hell or heaven, and if there are a fixed set of rules to guide us to the door we choose, how bland and meaningless is life ?

"The Journey to the East", as i saw it brings forth these important issues, and suggests how easily we get brought in to this so called "life", which essentially pulverizes into a tedious routine in recurrence. How are we to go beyond this cycle, and experience the energy that binds us to every animal, and life form in nature, if since birth we are bred to ignore these as irrelevant, and our minds are fixated into solving these meaningless puzzles tagged
"Get a Job", "Get a fucking Car", "Mission Let's get laid before College", "Get married", "Support a family", the list goes on till the day you die and here comes the last one "Look back and have no regrets". Is this all there is to it ?

Yes, the story ends abruptly and the Question answers itself.


PS: Thanks a lot M for the book

2007 In retrospect..

The year 2007 has been one of the years i've actually perceived the motion of the world around me .. in ways more profound than the factual revolutions due to textual convolutions of the time-space continuum. Both personally, and professionally, the events in my life have guided me into new paths, places, experiences, and situations i have least expected. The bitter sweet symphony of my life, was audible once again.

In an attempt to chronicle my state of mind, and come close to re-discovering this place in my life, some where along this path.. i am listing a details that will hopefully come to my aid in the future.

Literature..
While 2006, was more of Nietzsche, Flaubert, Maugham.. and the depiction of life,
the way it is supposed to be.. it is.. and it was.. 2007 was a journey in to the
literary genius of Paulo Coelho, and Albert Camus. Though distinctly different in their styles, these two authors, have opened up and explored in great detail the vagaries, and preconceptions in the mindsets of a society. "Happy death", took me into the mind of a
so called vaga-bond, and made me realize how fleeting and similar the experiences in ones life are. "The Fall" took me in to the mind of a superior human being, who's life trail would often be tainted with perversion. This master piece, is a strikingly deep monologue, that has a potential to tear down the "neo-cortex" of behavior, and give a taste of the animal instincts that are so dominant in governing our perception of good and evil. "Veronika decides to die", has been a touching, depiction of the dangers of having pre-conceived notions of what is considered "insane".. and it so elegantly, shatters the two-faced mirror that separates US and THEM.
"The stranger", is an enchanting drama, that happens in the life of a man.. who is unscathed, true, blissfully ignorant to the societal norms, and who provokes us to question our own belief in Love and Providence.. To me it was a amalgamation of "Fountain Head", and "Vernon God Little".

Books...
1. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
2. The Will to power by Frederich Nietzsche
3. My Uncle's dream ( from selected works ) by Fyodor Dostoevsky
4. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
5. The art of film making by Alexander Mckendrick
6. A Happy Death by Albert Camus
7. Veronika decides to Die by Paulo Coelho
8. The Fall by Albert Camus
9. Secrets of the hearts by Khalil Gibran
10. By the river Piedra I sat down and Wept by Paulo Coelho
11. The First Man by Albert Camus
12. The Stranger by Albert Camus
13. Creative Dreaming by Patricia Garfield

Places...
This year was remarkable in the amount of miles i had to travel on road. I very much enjoyed the experience, quite a contrast to my inert lifestyle in state college.
In sequence, the states i visited on my road trip to santa clara,
PA,
Ohio,
Indiana,
Illinois ( Chicago, University Park, Lakeshore Dr, Sagar's Apts),
Missouri,
Iowa ( Homo's town with the pimp mobile, Ames )
Nebraska,
Colorado, ( My first stay at Estes Park, Co Rockies!),
Utah,
Nevada ( The sin City Stopover at the strip),
Californya ( nya nya nya! Is for the homeless)
People..
M,
Tom,
S.C,
Tatti,
Eric T. Cartman,
Sus,
K,
Pnadi,
R.D.C,
B.Sagna,
Pratush,
Chetan,
...

A piece about "Nothing"

I want to write about nothing. Is say this to the one who reads a piece of writing, that means something. Turn your heads away and dissolve yourself in the process of looking for patterns, this is about "nothing". But to the ones who are tired of this process of abstracting everything we do into something meaningful. To those jaded souls, i speak to you.

Try to recollect this single moment on every firday afternoon, in the place you work. The moment where you are looking forward to a sense of relief, this feeling of a change in the monotonicity, a week of work breeds in you. Notice how beautiful that moment is ? No matter how mundane a weekend you have ahead, this moment of anticipation has a beauty of its own. Like the anxious, face of a 12 year old kid, before opening up a wrapped up Christmas present. Hidden inside the layers of wrapping paper was your moment of joy, the hope of a perfect gift, that would make you ecstatic. I am referring to the joy in that short instance of time, before you open the present. It's the same joy the moment i talk about on a Friday afternoon brings to me. Though deep inside your heart, you always know that this gift or this weekend is going to be no different, a glimpse of hope still lingers on.

Subconsciously, we are all tuned to wait for these moments that would change everything from the way it is, to the way it is supposed to be. We don't realize that this anticipation, is the only fuel that keeps us moving, smoothly through the course of time. There are days in our lives we run out this fuel, when the chalice of hope is dried to the bottom, by the gusts of montonous hours.

Hours, that are all the same no matter how far you travel, how many new people you meet. The hours, never different, never filled with the moments you hoped for. In this state you wait and have a constant urge to abstract, the mundane around you in to the "moments" you were awaiting for. Each of us have a varied threshold for how long we could sustain such a state. Some give-in too early, and hit the bars for drinks, on a Friday evening, sitting in the Happy-Hour and wondering what's so "Happy" about this "hour". The free drinks and food, soon cease to fit into the awaiting moment, and you move onto make a conversation with the opposite sex, hoping to dig your moment out. Some even go to the lengths of justifying themselves, may be this was the moment i was hoping to change my course. And they live through the illusion of happiness, till they wake up in bed the next morning, with another moment hunter lying next to them fast asleep. Then the justifications you made last night become glaringly-obvious falsities. And you can feel the mundane wheel turning again, throwing you back in to the civilized forest, in the hunt for a change.

A few of us even try to stay in the illusion a little longer and try to re-capture the moments of the inebriated Friday night, to be the moments of happiness that you always looked forward to. It is not difficult to push your mind back to the state of abstraction, it will spin a story for you, a seemingly beautiful one, about last night. This too will break-away, the hours are cruel, they leave no soul illusioned for too long. Your weekend moves on, your BBQs, your hiking trips, your picnics, your pot-lucks, start alluring you, like those cheesy TV-commercials,calling you to be a part of it. And experience the joy, that those faces on television, seem to be sharing.And just as the gaps between the commercials, make you aware of the flipper in your hand, the period between the so called fun-events, give you an option of choosing the way you want to spend your hours. Your hand is too lazy to flip the channel, and so is your mind, too lazy to think of your own idea of "fun". Think of the times when you were really hungry, and some one has setup the table with all the stuff you would rather not eat, but you know that you are too lazy to cook, you would go ahead and fill yourself wouldn't you ? So are these fun-events that fill your weekend, a table not set for you, but nevertheless the one you eat at every time.

Pardon me my friends, who get offended when i say "you", i include myself in it. But,today i chose solitude, i flipped to a station "I" thought was fun. And, if you still feel, this made no sense, read the title of this post, or the name of my blog again.

..Time machine or just an Elevator ?...

If the world that i perceive through my senses is a grand symphony of molecular interactions;

If a sudden bang set out this chain reaction, this eternal dance of energy particles that are governing every action, every minute change that is happening right "now".

How does some one explain an erratic behaviour ?

To be precise how does a un-premeditated action affect this whole universe, that i am supposedly a crucial part of ?

The Question brings up the issue of premeditation, can anything be premeditated at all ?

For instance, the words that i am writing right now the flow of ink from this pen; The movement of the ball this is taking place as i write is as complex and as inexplicable and unpredictable as the universe itself. One might argue the physics behind it, but since the origin

of every moment of my hand is a result of the electric impulses sent by my brain through the central nervous system. I have little control on what i exactly want to do.

To make this phenomenon that i call an "error" more apparent, let me illustrate the series of events that have led me to actually write this post. I was taking the elevator on the 7th floor of my 12 storied apartment, to do some laundry on what seemed to be a regular lazy Sunday afternoon.

I got on the elevator with a laundry bag in one hand and detergent in the other, voila! nothing great about i hear you say. Yes, you are right.

The "error" happened when i was pressing the floor button, i had to get to the 1st floor, and i clearly missed and pressed "3". Yes, the lazy Sunday afternoons I'd say. Though i corrected the mistake by pressing '1' again. I knew that the elevator would stop at '3' and i will be hitting the close button.

So where am i getting at ? what is the significance of this event ? If the "butterfly effect" as it is referred to is happening with every action we take. What would be the magnanimous outcome of this so called "error" ? Was i pushed in to a parallel universe ? Did i travel light years just coming down that elevator ? Did this small error change the entire course of my life ?

I can never know the answers to these Questions, as i lack the reference, on what my life "would have been" if i hadn't pushed the wrong button.

If one thing is for sure, i.e, i wouldn't have even thought of scribbling down this one a piece of paper. Not Me! i would have just dragged my lazy ass upstairs in the same elevator and pondered over the first thought that would have occurred to me, till i would realize i was going now where with it or have one of those physical urges to please myself in the easiest possible way.

So the Questions still remain,

Did i just travel light years into a parallel universe, was my elevator a time machine, is time travel happening all around us or was i just doing laundry tonight ?

....Sad but True.....

There are no facts, only interpretations and points of view.
You’re no better; you’re no good, than the situation itself.
Take your calipers, take your weighing scales,
bury them six feet under, along with your judgment.
There is nothing that wasn’t done before,
there is nothing that you can do about it,
there is no escape from this saturation.

Momentary Lapse of Reason

Darkness is all around, nothing touches me nor can I touch any.
I felt my way through the madness, daemons of desire whispering in my ears.
I hear the mission bells tolling, calling me to the light far away.
I take another step in hope, towards the sounds of soothing numbness.
Don’t leave me now, my throbbing heart; I still need you to make it through.

Here I am, in the light again, waking up to another dream,
Lost hopes are lingering on my shadow, trying hard to grip my conscience.
The wheel turns around and round, running with the hands of time.
Stops with a rattle of money, the slot machine of my future, with a $ $ ..
What’s it going to be this time, despair or more fuel to keep my machine turning?

Bowl of Desire

The bowl of desire enigmatically replenishes despite ones
conscious efforts to empty it. We either torment our senses
to master it or moan inadvertently jaded and enslaved.


How rational is it to think one is rational ?! When all we are
is just another ant-colony to an eagle flying high.
Don't judge a person by his words,
doggerel is all it can be to the
one who watches from a distance.

We wait earnestly for the curtains to go up,
and gasp in pleasure when the girl in the box disappears.
It intrigues you to the point where you would want to
ask the question, how does he do it ?

But before you ask that question, ask this to yourself.
Do you really want to know the science behind the magic trick ?

Would you rather be mesmerized by the ignorance of it all and keep
guessing in vain ?

How distant have we become due to the so called "reasoning" ?

How much would you give to loose it ?

How badly do you want to zoom out of your mundane existanse ?

Love you seek without pain is no different from a bland meal.
Nihilistic, is what you prefer to call the chain of thoughts that scare
to break your shell. You prefer to lie in the womb dreaming endlessly, don't
you ? Day after Day, it's a new dream you wake up to.

..Sip this..