Avalanche

Well I stepped into an avalanche,
it covered up my soul;
when I am not this hunchback that you see,
I sleep beneath the golden hill.
You who wish to conquer pain,
you must learn, learn to serve me well.
You strike my side by accident
as you go down for your gold.
The cripple here that you clothe and feed
is neither starved nor cold;
he does not ask for your company,
not at the centre, the centre of the world.

When I am on a pedestal,
you did not raise me there.
Your laws do not compel me
to kneel grotesque and bare.
I myself am the pedestal
for this ugly hump at which you stare.

You who wish to conquer pain,
you must learn what makes me kind;
the crumbs of love that you offer me,
they're the crumbs I've left behind.
Your pain is no credential here,
it's just the shadow, shadow of my wound.

I have begun to long for you,
I who have no greed;
I have begun to ask for you,
I who have no need.
You say you've gone away from me,
but I can feel you when you breathe.

Do not dress in those rags for me,
I know you are not poor;
you don't love me quite so fiercely now
when you know that you are not sure,
it is your turn, beloved,
it is your flesh that I wear.

- Leonard Cohen.

Easily the most lethal song I've heard in a long time. Falling miserably in love with his songs.

I talk to you to talk to you. The conversations now veer on the superficial. I'd like to think that it doesn't mean much, but it does.

All these sticky spider webs of feelings came and engulfed me through the day. I slept half awake, floating in the space in between; semi conscious, aware of my slumber. At times I sank deeper and deeper and imagined myself meeting Nakata and watching him converse with a cat and hoping for fish rain. I woke up feeling strangely still as if in a dream and spent the subsequent hour reading Wind Up Bird Chronicle. At the end of it, I was Toru Okada, I had a well inside me where I went and yelled “The Emperor has donkeys’ ears”, every time I felt upset and sad. And the dark well swallowed up my thoughts in which she walked every day.

Neverland

Each day I live like a fool, believing in a story as pretty as this.

Can't believe it's taken me so long to discover Colin Hay. It's THE voice. And an honest song.

Time travel...

It's been AGES since I got to do this. And I miss it so much. Sit in my room with my songs and my books. And then it’s freefall.

I travel back in time, walk down the crowded lanes. Every turn is new and has a new shop. Some sell counterfeit currency; a black market. I wonder if the police know about it. It seems so obviously in the open. I'm suddenly scared wondering if there's a reason why these shops operate in the open. I wonder if it's safe at all to be here, worried about her. And in a minute that thought is lost as I look up at the little piece of sky I can see through the overcrowding cables, half broken tiles and crumbling balconies reaching out to each other from both sides of the road. My eyes are caught by the mess of tangled wires that clog the sky view. Wisps of blue smoke and the smell of fried sweetmeat catch my eyes and fill my nose. There are jewellers, clothes shops and glittering colourful wares all around. Cycles, rickshaws, pushcarts cramp every stride I take and it takes skillful weaving through them to make any progress. Enchanted and in a trance I don't realise how far I've gone losing myself in the lanes. Right now I'm partly there in that labyrinth of life and partly I'm a shadow following my companion and myself. Walking, watching and wishing that moment back.

I travel back in time, to my corridor outside my room in the corner of the 1000 acre campus that was home for four years. We've just got back from dinner eating ice cream and stand in the end of the corridor in front of our rooms. S and I can't stop ourselves from taking P's case over L's legendary faux pas. Somehow, right now I can see three figures in the dark in that corner guffawing, standing from where I am in between C and D blocks on the 1st floor connector.

I travel back in time to my silver fort. Sitting alone with my music. Purging my system. Feeling everything from awe to anguish in flood of thoughts, for a fleeting moment I feel I could fly off into the dark sky, speed across the waters of the sea before me. A sense of power engulfs me, removes me from the city behind, tears me away from my regular average life and throws me to my imagination.

Today I write bad prose. Nothing comes to me anymore, the feelings are much more intense and the sense of being trapped is much harder to take.