My father had an odd way of punishing us as children. When we did anything bad he would just stop speaking to us. It would go on for days and was terribly painful to be on the recieving end. I remember crying because he wouldn't reply to me,  always had to keep trying and trying desperately until he would relent and be normal again. I have learned as an adult that this is called stonewalling. I have also grown into a very successful stonewaller. People who piss me off become invisible to me. I understand such behaviour is ultimately pointless because those that will feel affected by my stonewalling will be those who care about me, the assholes don't give a shit about whether I talk to them. 

Human beings are born with a tendency towards hurting other creatures for their own good and even pleasure. Leave human kids unsupervised and no doubt you will have a Lord of the Flies situation. It is adults who must teach children that it is bad to hurt other human beings. But in doing so the parent also makes the child weak and vulnerable to the attacks of others who do not have this sense of morality ingrained so deeply. All big questions in life somehow end up being paradoxes. 

One of my most vivid memories from when I was about 14-15, is of bunking school to go watch a movie at New Empire theater. The movie was American Beauty. Even as I could feel the uncle sitting next to me get shuffly and uncomfortable at the sight of rose petals raining down on Mena Suvari's naked body I knew that I had watched a thing of beauty far beyond the comprehension of my 15 year old mind. They don't make movies like that anymore in Hollywood. Now you go to the theater not to see beauty, but to see things getting blown up...Monsters destroying whole cities, sometimes a lot of cities. I have nothing against superhero or monster movies. In fact I love them. But to quote American Beauty itself ".Sometime
 there's so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can't take it, and my heart is just going to cave in." Maybe it will be good to see a plastic bag floating around for a good few minutes could soothe our tired eyes. 

Those Moments of Unexplained Happiness

Life they say is a dreadful void, and in between dark and empty days, there is sometimes a little unexplained twang of happiness. It is supposed to be these little breaks in the clouds that keep us going. But for some time now, I have lost even these little moments of happiness. The only breaks in my constant bitter sadness is when I see someone even sadder than me by sake of nothing but misfortune. It doesn't reduce my sadness, rather makes me even sadder, only less sad about my condition and more thoughtful about the human condition... how we are doomed by our birth circumstances... geography, economics, politics, social structure, to lives that are nothing but a struggle to stay alive. What does one who is doomed to suffering by birth stay alive for? The fear of the painful process that is death? The fear of what lies beyond? Does the blind man who lives on the street and begs for small change from people out for joyrides in their fancy cars ever feel any twang of happiness that makes his life worth the while? In the night he takes the little money that he collects and buys himself a bottle of country liquor that kills him slowly, or some low grade drugs that kill him faster and he gets high. That is the only twang of happiness he can hope for. Happiness is an illusion, a moment when you can forget the reality of your existence and take pleasure in it. Whether one needs these illusions to help them stay alive, whether one really has to stay alive? I really do not know.

An epiphany of sorts,
In the middle of a busy day
Takes you by the hand
And leads you to places
You never wanted to know.

I was nested peacefully
In the place that I had craved
Though falling apart at the edges
Justified by the safety and
The comfort of avoiding change.

Reality, however well disguised
Has an inherent nature
Of showing itself in time.
Things fall into place
Though not the places you want

(Incomplete)

Hope and other demons

There are days which are bearable, some days which you could even call "good". Then there are days like this, full of nothing but an overwhelming existential crisis. I wonder if anyone else feels this way at all? You wake up in the morning, it's a Sunday, the weather is nice, the sun in bright. You have your breakfast and think you will read for a while. You get into bed and then there it is suddenly. Waves of lethargy, your whole body hurts, it hurts so much that you start thinking of dying, how good it would be to not feel this pain anymore.
I have nothing that I can use to justify my existence. The only thing that keeps me from taking that final step is thinking about my parents... these people that I can't live with anymore, but I can't bear to hurt either. I was always unfit to exist but somehow I tried to cope with the world around me, worked hard and tried to make something of myself, gave my heart and soul to another human in trying to make sense of this existence. Yet the best laid plans blow up on your face.
My hopeful friend tells me I must have made some mistake somewhere. Something I didn't do, somewhere that I didn't put in my best. Sure, I wasn't perfect. But I had my heart broken, and all my efforts,trampled underfoot just because I have bad luck, because I was doomed to fail.If luck is on your side, you will get things done and have things work out your way without even trying and is luck isn't working for you, you can try try and try and all you will do is fail fail and fail.
These last couple of years have made me so confused and even more weary of the world than I have even been. How does it happen that one has accident after accident and then one failure after another? I was never the superstitious kind but these years have made me feel that there are so many things beyond our control that trying and making an effort doesn't even matter.
All I want to do now, if I have to be alive is escape. Escape form all the demands and expectations of this world to a place where life is simple and simple efforts lead to simple results that are sufficient to keep you going. I don't have hope any more. Out of all the demons that came out of the box that Pandora made the mistake of opening  the final and most dangerous one was hope. It comes disguised as something wonderful, a light in the times of darkness, but for the ones whose luck has run our, hope is just a monster that leads you down paths that will crush the last bits of joy you have left in your soul. You will hope that days will get better and you will only find yourself sinking further and further down to depths you could not even imagine.
I was probably destined for this fate, that girl with so much promise and such a spark grew up to be mediocre and a loser in love and life. Maybe there is a lesson in there, some sort of wisdom you can gain. But I just don't see the point anymore.

My happiest place

If heaven could be the time and the place in your lifetime where you have been the happiest, I would die and wake up in that tiny room of that house that doesn't even exist anymore. That bed too small even for one where you and I used to lie intertwined in each other. The kisses that would last forever or at least as long as entire songs. Where laughter was easy and the tears came from realizing that what we were feeling was so much love it was too much to bear without breaking down from gratitude or the fear of losing it all.
I can still remember those afternoons, when I found excuses to leave my house, only to come to that room to be with you. Those few hours lasted so long, seeing you for a couple of days a weeks filled my heart to the brim. Nothing else mattered in those moments. The world outside did not exist for two lovers, children at best, locked in the last embraces of love.
Before all the darkness, before all the pain would engulf you. And then come for me as well.

I miss you so much. I don't have anything that reminds me of you. I destroyed everything in a fit of rage, not knowing that one day I would give anything to just have one of those letters, a small trinket, anything that reminds me of you, of us. I would give anything to touch you again, your "revenge of the nerds" haircut, your geeky glasses... for me you were the most beautiful boy I had ever set my eyes on. I don't even know when and where I lost you, when love ceased to be enough, how the outside world crept into that room and blew everything to smithereens. Maybe when that house was demolished, we left our souls there, still entangled in each other, while we went about the world being grown ups, having grown up problems, never knowing love like that again.
I'd give anything to be in that room again, with you. Lie in that bed and bury my face in your arms. This time I will never ever look at the clock or say that I have to leave. This will always be my happiest place. A place that does not even exist anymore except in my memories.

Idenitity Crisis

I am confused, or maybe depressed; or both. I don't know what I am doing with my life. I am in my thirties and I have no clue what I want to do with my life, my career is depressing, my personal affairs even more so. Most of my friends are in the same boat when it comes to relationships and family matters, but almost all of them have at least figured out what they want to do for a profession. I can't say the same for me. I changed track 2 years ago, decided to go into research instead of clinical practice, but over these two years I haven't found satisfaction in this career choice either. The daily routine, the need for round the clock dedication of headspace does not agree with me. I think I have written this same post some time back, in between I have tried to work harder on what I am doing but it didn't bring me any satisfaction. I am too inclined towards the arts to completely immerse myself in science. I need an artistic release. I was going to art classes to keep my painting habit alive, but the circumstances ended that phase this month. Now I am unsure whether I will be able to carry on painting or whether it's the end, those beautiful canvases will just sit gathering dust for me to look at them and feel even more unhappy at how I have let my life go down paths I didn't even want to tread. I want to have the motivation to come back home from work and sit with a canvas but I doubt that I will, since I have given up on everything unless I was forced to keep doing it. Last time I had quit the art classes because I was too depressed to do anything, I could hardly get out of bed. Rejoining the classes and starting painting again had been a step towards recovery. But ever since I started working in my current position, I have been finding it more and more difficult to sustain the weekly art sessions. And moreover, what I was painting was not even from the heart, it was skilled alright, and very beautiful, but it did not have my voice. I want to paint for myself, to find my voice in the brush at last, but with the extremely demanding phase of starting a career in scientific research, I am afraid I will just lose whatever connection I had with art completely. I don't even have the dedication and the drive that some people in my current profession have. If they are the ones who are supposed to "make it" in this line of work and I cannot even put in the effort and hard work it takes to "make it" as an artist, where do I stand? A wasted, mediocre life? Realizing at the fag end of your life that you have wasted all your time doing things that never made you happy and that you have no more time or energy left to do those things anymore? I never wanted to end up that way. But if I am too afraid to take risks, too lazy to work hard on the things I believe in, then that is how I will end up. 

Writers' Block

I wish I could write again
That's the only thing I have ever wanted to do. But the words just don't flow so easily anymore. There is no inspiration. I don't know how some scientists are also such excellent writers. It itches and burns inside of me, but I cannot write a line of poetry like I used to some 7 years back. I don't know why I stopped. I used to blame it on the lack of appreciation, but that was just me being whiny. I know that I have never cared much about who reads what I write, in fact I don't want to put my personal stuff out in the open for people to interpret me through it. I deleted all of my old writing and poetry because it felt too private, too many rants, giving away too much. I have met so many people who used to read my writing and most of them have been very appreciative, even going to the extent of telling me that those words left a lasting impact on them. I have tried to write, being inspired by the encouraging words, but nothing just comes anymore. There is just a blank where I used to draw it all from. Maybe it's life that happened. I found out the hard way that everything is pointless, nothing makes any sense. When I want to write, I find it meaningless to express my feelings since those feelings don't amount to anything at all. Poetry is the most difficult thing to write because poetry takes passion and that is the one thing that has disappeared completely from my existence. How can you find passion when you are always thinking about the inevitability and unpredictability of death, the futility of human existence and the fleeting transience of all human emotion? When you truly come to believe that someone created humanity as a thought experiment and that you as an individual are insignificant to everyone in the world apart from yourself and your family in this world of billions, can you even create a thing of beauty around the petty and mundane things that happen in your life everyday? Like someone giving you attention, or not giving you attention, and the whole spectrum of emotions that the receipt or denial of attention induces in the human mind. It is beautiful when someone does, but I cannot be one of them anymore, I know too much.
Still I wish that I could write. Write stories maybe. Stories still make sense even in our empty lives, in fact stories are all we have to fill our empty lives with. I have always been engrossed by fiction, almost wanted to live my life as a work of fiction, so many people I know still live their lives that way and they are the ones still writing passionate poetry, good for them. I cannot get started on a story, I won't know where to finish. So I just keep this need to write suppressed and write bad blog posts when it gets too much to tolerate. Sometimes I think I'll write a book of my twisted philosophy. But a nihilist's philosophy ends in just a few lines. So it won't really be a book... just a flyer maybe. I will stand in a corner and hand them out to people, who will then throw them on the street, and everything will soon be a mess. Quite the reflection of life.

Love and Fear

The world around us instills fear in us. And fear is what prevents us from truly being at peace with our existence. Learning to let go of fear is the hardest thing to do because fear is ingrained in us, it is a natural reflex. Don’t go to unknown places, don’t go into the darkness, don’t be alone… it gets accumulated in us by the things that we have been told by others and the things that we have experienced ourselves. But if you don’t go to unknown places you might never find the most beautiful place you’ve ever been. If you don’t go into the darkness, you might never find the thing that you’ve been looking for. Why should we let go of things that could make our existence worth the while for the fear of living in pain for the maximum of a lifetime, which must eventually end. In the course of having plans for the future we forget the limitation of mortality. Fear is not the essence of love. To really love you must open yourself to the possibility of pain. And without love life is just empty. 

Hopeless as I feel, death is something that still confuses me. Sometimes I really feel that being so empty, I probably would not last too long. I feel like I am 60 years old, so hopeless, so pointless, while everyone around me is bustling with life. If I do really live to be that old, maybe I will find some answers, some peace and not feel like this anymore, but there is a possibility that the emptiness will actually become real, rather than the speculation that it is now. I am afraid to even imagine the kind of pain that would hold, if only thinking about it hurts so bad.
But the thought of dying early makes me so sad when I think about all that I stand to lose, all the beauty that is there in the world, so many places to see, all the times that you really feel happy and free and there is love and kindness... and so much, so much that I can't bear to lose just yet. I don't know if I will ever be ready. 

The Music Room Ghost

That night, I could not fall asleep. I went to bed at the usual time but somehow sleep would not come, I kept fidgeting, trying to fall asleep but all it did was make me thirsty. So, I went to the kitchen to get myself a glass of water. I was suddenly jolted fully awake from my fatigued and drowsy state of mind. There was someone playing the piano in the music room! The lights were off, there was no one else in the house, and even if there were anyone, no one plays the piano at 3 am with the lights out! I was nearly frozen with fear, or maybe it was a particularly cold night but I decided I had to investigate, since any intruder who decides to play the piano after breaking into a house aroused more curiosity in me than fear. Armed with a particularly sharp knife I took from the kitchen, reassuring myself that I could take on the intruder myself as long as I had the knife or maybe just scream loudly enough to wake up at least the family that lives next door, I walked slowly and as quietly as possible into the music room and switched on the light.

There on the piano stool sat a girl, or whatever it was kind of resembled a girl. Most of her was only made of shadows that formed and disappeared spontaneously, rest of her was made of light. She almost looked translucent. She stopped playing the piano and turned to look at me, or maybe the shadows just shifted in a way to make it seem that she turned to look at me.

I stood there, unable to speak or move. Somehow I was not afraid, I was only too confused.
We stayed that way for a while, me frozen in place, her looking at me (or looking through me, although she really did not have any eyes, only those shadows that made the rest of her). Then she turned back and started playing the piano again. A sweet melody, sounded like a nocturne, I did not know the tune, but it was beautiful and haunting. After a while, I turned the light off and went to my bedroom and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep almost instantly.

She came every night for several nights afterwards. At first I would keep myself awake in order to encounter her again. I would sit on the couch in the living room and let the music lull me to sleep. But slowly the late nights started taking their toll on me and I would fall asleep on the couch as I waited for her, waking late after daybreak, so I did not even know when and why she stopped coming. One night I waited up but the music did not play. She did not come, she never came back after that.
The piano now lies gathering dust in the music room. For a while it was loved, it made beautiful music that bound together a being made of flesh and blood and one made of shadows. Now it is just a ghost waiting for another spectre to bring it back to life. 

Everlasting Love

Every time she felt like leaving, she would close her eyes & imagine him dead. She would touch his hand & feel his warm fingers as he would lie there unaware of her thoughts, and she would imagine the same hands dead, waxy and cold. That usually put all her feelings into place & she knew that she could never leave him.

He used to tell her that he would never leave her. He would look into her eyes & swear that she had nothing to be insecure about, that he would never desert her. 

Then one day he decided he did not want her anymore.

She is kind of glad she does not have to feel the devastating sadness of holding him & thinking about him dying anymore.

Anal Fixation

He spoke about the disgust he felt for people who didn't flush toilets properly after using them. She was impressed; finally a man who was evolved enough to understand the importance of flushing toilets, a man with a sense of hygiene and cleanliness like no other she had met before.
All the talk about toilets seemed to induce a bowel motion in him. He excused himself and came back in a few minutes looking relieved, as if a burden had just been lifted from his shoulders or in this case, his intestines.
Later during the evening she went to the restroom to find the toilet unflushed, complete with a cigarette butt. She flushed the toilet and never mentioned it to him or anyone else.

The Tree House

When she was younger she would daydream. She would imagine that she lived in a tree house, all by herself, she never had many friends and the few that she had never wanted to live in a tree house. Everyone assumed she got the idea from reading all those comic books... the Phantom and his tree top apartment complete with a wife, two beaming kids and a wolf for a pet; but what she wanted was just a tiny tree house where she could lie down and watch the rain.
It would rain, and it would keep on raining till everything was flooded and all the people living in their earthly houses would be washed away in the flood along with all their earthly possessions. Only the tree house would survive. She would live on all the canned food she had stocked up, watch the things that floated by for entertainment.
When the flood waters would finally recede, she would come down from her tree house to a world populated only by people who have lived in tree houses.