Readin Anais Nin

I have this tendency to behave in a certain way when I am reading something. A latent behavior of Acting, though I am in no way an actor of any sort. I think its an exaggerated version of the experience of reading a book or even watching a film. You are so taken in, flown away into the stream of what you are experiencing, an out of body experience, that you just don't want to come back into your body and who you are for quite sometime. Its a freeing experience, like suddenly you have no identity and no sense of self, you are a blank canvas. You can fabricate and be whoever you want to be. You can be a pirate, a Jack Sparrow, a vampire with the flowing long coats and boots, and the swagger and the wayfarers, and a cigarette dangling off your lips as you walk down the street, and nothing can touch you. All that runs through your mind is that "I am Awesome."
That is just one way to have an out of body experience. The other things are more spontaneous. Its like what the government thinks will happen to impressionable minds when they watch violence and debauchery on screen. Shah Rukh Khan smoking in Don, the eggheads fear, would inspire children and people who love him to smoke too. It doesn't matter that they smoke anyway, as a right of passage. I know. I used to be a fourteen year old not too long ago. Its the pull of the forbidden. You're not supposed to do it. The scary experience of being kids and going to a booze store and buying really horrendous vodka, and hiding it in very conspicuous ways and consuming it in filthy little corners of a house empty and presenting a golden and perfect opportunity. Buying the damn things isn't hard, not in India. The scary part is the fear of who will walk by and notice, especially acquaintances of parents, and God help you if the cigarette guy is the same guy your dad buys from (This happened to me). Anyway, I feel a compulsion to do the same kind of things that the character in a book I'm reading does. Put on the same pretensions as they do.
For example, if I am reading of a writer, who constantly talks of his/her art and expression and thought, I want to write too. If I watch a film of an artist who keeps a journal of fantastic illustrations as a form of a visual diary, I want to do that too. And I do.. I have a collection of notebooks and little journals, filled with one or more pages with illustrations I don't remember doing. And they pile up.
The impetus to write this post is me reading Henry and June ( Anais Nin), and thinking I too need to say something. But the eternal problem lies with what comes after the first step into creativity, i.e., opening a fresh journal, with pretty and colourful pages, and facing into the blankness. Blankness of the page itself and of the mind. I want to create, but I have no idea what. And there are no impulses. The blankness of the page immediately stops being liberating and becomes suffocating upon first viewing. And anything you force yourself to put on it becomes immediately hateful in your eyes.
These days, I can look at a blank and beautiful collection of papers and feel inspired a little. Its actually quite like premature ejaculation or the first experience of a teenage boy touching a member of the opposite sex. Its over as soon as it starts. Hence a journal of a hundred and fifty pages, remains untouched except for the vomit of excitement on the first five. Oh, the plans and the plans, that go down the drain the moment pen touches the paper!
Sometimes, as I am reading something, I get surprised at thoughts coming out of my mind. I am reading Anais Nin now, and after the urge to write was considerably under my control, I thought that it was amazing, I liked the language. Then I felt " This is So Pretentious!"  A woman who lived entirely in a warm cocoon of herself, and people like her. That's all they talked about, apparently. Obsessing about every strand of hair on top of they heads, their eyes, their mouth and their skins. About how they felt, and how wonderful their feeling are, and how intelligent and intriguing and wonderful their minds were. They need no reinforcement from anyone else about their magnificence. But the strangest part of these observations is the sudden realization that "Hey, I'm actually thinking! My blank coconut shell of a head is actually not empty at all, it has a couple of straggly thoughts!"
Reading Anais Nin is actually a two fold experience for me. The first part appeals to the visual artist in me. The experience of the production values of the book, is charming. I love the publication design, and the cover, the texture of the paper, the consistency of it. I look at the print of  text, and I notice that it is thick and a little runny. Probably a wrong or faulty print. But to me and my imagination, it looks like the story has been written in quill, by hand. Its got a hand made quality to it. And since the book is essentially Anais Nin's diary, the feeling of reading what she wrote in her own hand is reinforced. This is very enchanting.
The second part of the experience is a self exploratory one. As I am reading, I am running the same exercise every other reader of books go through. I immerse myself in the story, and she wrote well, with fluidity, so it wasn't very difficult. And as I do this, I also try to understand and relate to the characters. And I can't. They are so very different to me. The voice, the decisions, everything. What remains the same is the compulsions which urge her to write. It is the same in every creative person. What attracts and what distracts. In this I identify. But her actions I cannot. It is very jarring for me to face a character so unlike myself, yet so much the same in a book. It doesn't happen too often. And because of which I end up asking myself questions about what I would do in the same situations. These questions lead to much more specific and probing questions of what Nin wanted from her life, and what I want. And the answers become more clearer and lucid in my head, and there is a sense of closure that comes with finding a calm spot at the center of the chaotic tornado that is everyday thoughts and doubts.

What Barfi Did to Me

Today has been one of the bigger melancholic days I have had in a long time. Damn, that doesn't read like a proper sentence.. Well, it was a very melancholic day.
I moved into a PG and I feel more isolated living with a roommate than I did living by myself. I cannot explain this, but I hate it that this explains the old adage that people can be lonelier living among people than living with themselves. I just feel like I gave in and posted a facebook meme.  In fact, I think there is one up on my  feed right now, reading the exact same thing.
Somehow I don't have things to look forward to. And I cannot seem to count the positives in my life anymore. I was bad at arithmetic anyway. I go to work, but I'm past the two month stage, so the shiny excitement is gone. And I have exactly ONE go to person in this entire city. ONE. Maybe I have not cultivated anyone else, or I never seem to have the energy to look people up and call them and do things. But it seems easier to feel shitty doing things by myself and feeling pathetic about it.
I have ranted here about how society has conditioned us to want to be with people and if not, feel pathetic about being alone. Well, I don't think I can rant about it anymore. I can only just say that it feels shitty to be in a public place like a movie hall and be by myself. Yes there is a freedom to cry in the darkened theatre and I indulged in the unfiltered melancholia and let the tears fall as I sobbed quite shamelessly as the movie I was watching pushed the buttons. Its like I paid three hundred bucks to find a place and a subliminal permission to cry. Somehow, I had stopped allowing myself to feel sad and lonely. It had become very scientific and clinical. I would coldly observe that I was quite alone, and hence lonely and that was it. I moved on to volubly project the pleasures of being by oneself.
Yet it only takes one thought and a day and a series of situations and the water escapes the hands of the little boy with his finger in a hole in the wall and the sea escapes. Everyone at work goes home for the weekend early because they are done, and can't wait to get out of work, while I sit, potter away, working, because what else would I do? Come back to the PG and feel more isolated because the person I'm rooming with is not really my friend and doesnt talk so much? The one person who I can call on, is broke, has her own thing going so im on my own. Blow number One. I try to fix the situation. I decide to go to a movie. I go, get a ticket, and a healthy dose of looks from couples and friends who are there to watch the film. Yes I feel like more of a freak. I watch the film, and I cry. Because its about home, my home, my state and moral of the story is that everyone falls in love and finds someone to love or to have, or life is unsuccessful. Even mentally and physically challenged ones. Subtext is, you don't have anyone, and look at you, sitting by yourself watching this and crying.
Why is that always the moral of the story? Why is it being reinforced through every fucking possible media that you need companionship and love or there is no hope? What about people like me? Living away from their homes, out of touch with their friends, working, and has not had a single hug from any living person in months? Why is there no positive reinforcement for people like me? Why does no one say, its going to be fine, there's nothing wrong with the way you are. Why are there no positive reinforcements for people like me that doesn't enforce the concept that companionship and a relationship is the only way to be happy?
 Because dammit, I want to be happy. I want to be satisfied with my sparsely populated life. I want to be absorbed happily in things that I feel compelled to do, like draw and write and read, and not have niggling thoughts at the back of my head that I'm enforcing a practice of activity in order not to notice lonliness.
But fuck this. Fuck the way that I'm feeling. Not even art will come out this. Let alone dreams. Dreams that I can work at. Its just a fuck all day, thats all.

I saw boats this morning, with blue sails, glittering in the sunlight, among the mirror the waters of the lake create, with wind playing hop, skip and jump joyously between them. This is a happy day.

In case you wanted to know what I look like when I'm moving houses/cities

Think before I speak

Spoke too soon, when I wrote that last post. I had to move out of the house last weekend and move to safer environs. The reason has been a little exaggeratedly illustrated below.

Being an Adult

At the ripe age of twenty six, I have finally set foot unto adulthood. I have finished education (unofficially, of course) and now earn my own keep. It is very surreal. There was a point, only some months ago, when I thought this would never happen. But ab mere paas  gaari nahi hai, flat hai, aur chakri hai, though I am sorely missing my mother, though that situation is not going to be rectified anytime in the foreseeable future.

 Things have happened very fast. On the day that I finished the last hurdle into my diploma, I had mentally prepared myself for a long and arduous wait until someone hired me, very convinced that my luck with my diploma (or the lack of) would most certainly run into my attempts to become financially independent. But then I discovered what I now believe is the secret to most things in life (at least with me). If you are struggling with something, you will struggle with it for a LONG time, to the point of feeling that its never going to end, but when good things happen, they happen out of the blue and in a hurry. It’s still a little unbelievable for me, this having a job, and it’s a pretty decently paying first job too, with really flexible work environment, and the people seem nice. I don’t know how I lucked out here. Some might say that its karma. But you know what happens when one is forced to keep swallowing shit. You become convinced that you are a genuine cent percent shit eater. And no amount of good things happening to you can convince you otherwise. You keep on imaging the shit-throwing bogie man around the corner. It’s become a way of life. It’s basically Hinduism. I won’t even go into the finer implications of that one. It’s become who you are. Confidence and mental peace is a thing of the past. You are just sapped of any positive and optimistic energy.

 But am I happy with where I am now? I don’t really know, truth be told. The knocks never really stopped coming, you see. I got the job, and that was fine. I uprooted myself back to Bangalore as soon as money would allow it. And I had a temporary refuge with a friend, who has been the most generous with me through out my three years here. I mean ‘above and beyond’ levels. I thought I could take my time to fix things up for myself. But shit happened, and I woke up one morning to find myself not knowing where I was going to sleep the next night. Well, I made it through that phase, and I am grateful for all the help that I got.  Now I live in what can be called “the digha hotel”, with I, myself and some other chick who lives in my head.

 Its been a month and a half since I started work, and basically had my life halfway in a non tremulous position. And since the head space is calm, I’ve been rediscovering my old friend from No. 76, SFS Colony, loneliness. And all the beautiful side effects that come with it. It doesn’t feel odd at all. I am savoring the isolation with a side of self pity. You know you are truly jacked when you start enjoying your own self pity trips. There is also a certain amount of madness involved with living with yourself, and only having yourself for intense company ninety percent of the time. It starts showing from week two. You talk to yourself. Aloud. Swear at things, and talk to them, and be really surprised to hear yourself talk, or just be surprised to hear yourself say stuff your brains probably thinking but—shit--- You never hear yourself think, generally, do you? It’s bizarre. It feels like someone else is talking through a voice which can only be your own through a very obvious process of elimination.

Then, you start having feeling excited about men you just met because, damn, you haven’t had any form of human interaction with anyone but two people for months or weeks. It’s scary, because it seems real. But again, you’re jacked if you start enjoying the excitement, while knowing all the time that you’re just doing this because you are bored and it’s probably not real. That depressing thought is the side of self pity of which I spoke of before. This is the self pity which tells you that this is the real life, and it’s not going to change so basically any human interaction will follow the current trend of superficiality and will probably not last, and more importantly, is not real.

 But I am learning something new. I am learning to be by myself and to enjoy my own company. And doing this while not living in my own head. I am re learning to wander around places in the city with no agenda, just because I want to and doing what the hell I want. Walking by myself around Brigade and MG Road while looking at how beautiful the evening sky is and how amazing the city looks, is a treat which is hard to discover if you are constantly with people. You can’t just stop and look. Or sit on a bench or a low wall and stare at the sky, just because you can and you want to and there is no reason not to.  I went and watched a movie by myself the other day. It felt strange to pass by a theatre and just popping in on a whim and buying a ticket to whatever was showing then, after office. My head said that it was pathetic to be going to a theatre alone. But it wasn’t an unpleasant experience. Just a little sad. But I have professed to how much I am liking my current side dish of self pity.

I don’t know why is it that I am conditioned to want to not be alone. Most of us are that way I know. But I find it strange that because of this conditioning, I cannot enjoy it as much as I should. It’s like being Catholic. It’s like I’m not allowed to enjoy being by myself without feeling lonely and wishing there was someone there with me. And I know myself enough to understand that I don’t truly want anyone there, because I’ve become a person who is uncomfortable with people and being social. I don’t want to make the effort. I don’t feel like it. Ideally, I wouldn’t mind being with someone whom I don’t have to talk to, but just be. I don’t really want the mental pressure to talk and entertain  another person to make that person’s effort worthwhile. So this feeling that I wish I had some company when there is no reason for me to want this is very inconvenient.

But it is what it is. And I guess this is what ‘adulthood’ is all about.