Back again

Its been a pretty long time since i last posted anything. I'd completely forgotten i even had a blog with so many entries in the first place. I remembered thanks to a certain someone; though i doubt he even knows. I also discovered I have two blogs running parallel, and both in Blogspot. Howd that happen? (scratch scratch). Ive decided to keep one running and import the other post here. Its something curious. I'd totally forgotten about it as well. Here it is:

The 22nd of July

I’ve always wished I’d find a message in a bottle, washed up on a beach somewhere. Wish granted, though there were some slight alterations – a message on my bathroom sink, about to be washed off by my sister (she thought it was my purple paint patch, post rainbow painting on unseeable bedroom arch – otherwise I wouldn’t have got permission – which I had splashed there by accident).
The day did start weirdly, though it didn’t feel like it at that time. For starters, everyone was asleep like they were in a coma, even though the cock was crowing it’s head off, and I was annoyed ‘Cos I had woken and couldn’t go back to sleep. 4:55 AM. My sisters weren’t stirring, and what’s more, my parents were asleep as well, which was strange ‘cos they rise and shine, regular as clockwork (at 3:45! for Tahajjad Prayers), after which they wake us up at 4:30.
Made my way to the bathroom (didn’t freak me out that I was the only one up – hey, I like it when I’m the only one up). Ants on the floor. Ants on the ceiling. And a whole population of swarming ants carpeting the walls around the sink. Distributing food I think. Or carrying tiny eggs. Picked my way across, washed my face, grabbed my toothbrush (didn’t want ants crawling all over me, though none of the ants were even bothering about hiking up what, for them, would have been Mount Everest ) and took off to the shower cubicle, where thankfully, there were no ants camping out or organizing any rallies. They had all pretty much cleared out when my sister’s woke up; there were just a few stragglers near the window. The ants aren’t significant, how can they be? But I don’t want to leave out any details.
Fast forward to about seven thirty in the morning. I am in the kitchen tearing up dead vegetation for lunch, my sister’s in the bathroom, scrubbing it, when she calls. Hollers really. When I get there, she points towards the sink and ‘read this’ she says.
I looked. Purple scrawls. I made sure it was not some sort of ink web, before I called the real experts, a.k.a, mom and dad. Disappointingly, they were not impressed. After a few nose – touching – sink scrutinizes, they left the curiosity in our inexperienced hands. We were bound to go berserk with weird conjecture at some point, maybe even start seeing things that weren’t there, just to add some spice. My sister is adamant that the ants must have done it, using the bright purple soap we had at that time as ink. Ants. Right. Aliens were not cancelled out either, though that idea didn’t last for long. Ghosts (not interesting enough, so that died out as well, before it became anything). I obviously found it very intriguing. When all the hype had died down, I took in a candle (which I had to sway this way and that to stop my eyes from becoming too accustomed to the light and so render the script unreadable) and wrote down what I could make out. It was Arabic, no doubt about it; none. Each letter I wrote down, I recognized. I did have a hunch, when I first saw the writing as to what it could be, but I didn’t want to say it and make everyone see it my way, even if it was not (‘you’re right! it does look like Arabic’). At first, I thought it was English written backwards, Da Vinci style – I use to do that for a while. It was slanted and looked like it had been written by a brush or a calligraphy pen. My father thought it was me (hello! writing on the bathroom sink?! I may have done some weird things, but this? Once again, knock! Knock!), because it looked like my cursive handwriting.

There’s another purple patch appearing on the right side of the sink again, and one brush stroke, like an elongated ‘Z’, down its side.
We thought of letting it be, but my mom scrubbed it out.

One day, I was playing; playing amongst the garden life, under the dappled shades of watchful trees, trailing a squirrel or a hopping sparrow, or even sitting; thoughtful, against the old bark, contemplating pleasantly the shapes of the clouds in the bright blue sky above me.
Sometimes, I would walk over the lawn, the dry grass crinkling under my bare feet, brown and wiry, jutting out of the ground like wrinkled old men, bent and furious, whispering of no tomorrow, of a sun that would never rise, of doom.
I laugh at their silly muttering, feeling as light and carefree as a fairy; happy, as I felt my days stretch far away, like one long golden road, spent in the garden that I loved.
I splashed in the waters of a cool brook, gurgling deep over the stones, the bubbles tickling my toes. It could be fish, bright, glittering nuggets of color, dashing across the pebbly bottom, as I walked, chasing them lazily with my oversized feet.

- S.R

Sometimes, you get this intense feeling to be by yourself, that for once, the people around you would let you alone… yeah I know that feeling, one friend cuts in. I love it when my whole family is snoozing in the afternoons and I’ m up all alone, walking through the house…it’s so peaceful. I don’t like being alone, another says, eyeing me balefully, I’d rather always be with someone. Well I know what each of you are saying, I think, but what I’m trying to express is not like that. It’s nothing like that.
It’s not turning yourself into a recluse, keeping away from your living, breathing companions. It’s walking out into the wilderness, away from civilization and breathing, the first real breath that you have taken for ages, in your own skin.
Sometimes you just want to scream ‘Cos you’re going nuts here, day in and day out, the same slogging repetition, when you know you have to be out there doing what you were meant to do, doing what you have to. That warm as it maybe in this clearing, with the fire roaring, and friends and family doting around you, you know that you have to get up and leave at some point ‘Cos there is a jungle path out there that no one has traversed before, waiting for your bladed arm to cut down the thick, stifling branches, leaving a trail in your wake for others to follow, if they want to or not.
I think I am meandering away from the topic. I was talking about wanting to be alone, away from people. Not lonely-alone. No; more like I- value- my- own- space alone. To you know, assert my own identity. To start being my self? Something like that, but not exactly that either…
Sometimes it feels like I’m biding my time. For..? I have no idea. Just that one day, all that is collecting beneath the surface will culminate and merge into a tiny dot and then explode, catapulting me like a cannon to God knows what.

Colonel Mustard: Do you like Kipling, Ms.Scarlet?
Ms.Scarlet: Sure, I’ll eat anything.


v v v

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are loosing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired of waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet not look too good nor talk too wise.

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master,
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim.
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster,
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn out tools.

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch and toss,
And loose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them ‘Hold on!’

If you can walk with crowds and keep your virtue
Or walk with kings – nor loose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but non too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute,
With sixty seconds worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son

v v v

I was never a poem lover. I used to consider a book of poetry a waste of pages, and these books were never touched by my other contemporaries either. The school preferred to keep them though (it seemed to add a distinguished flavor to the library – AAAH poethry), so they collected dust on the shelves and occasionally sprinkled it on the other books (out of spite).
I preferred the straight forward and witty kind, if at all I ever bothered to read any. But funnily enough, when I’m stuck with writer’s block, I funnel out what I want to express through verse – nothing serious; I try to put in a pinch of humor to alleviate the boredom of reading it over, and to stop it from becoming straight faced and solemn like an Emily Dickensian. When it came to her, comparison to the Greek language finally becomes justified – it maybe pure ecstasy to some, but I simply cannot understand it. Never tried to.
I did try new avenues from the usual four line rhymer ( like the poem I made out of punctuation marks, but later couldn’t figure out what I was trying to say), and I normally stick to mono topics. The Chair. The Egg. The Reflection. The Shadow.

I came across this one (‘IF’) first during sixth grade. It was printed inside my school diary (which existed solely to write down our daily homework – I never used it) together with an essay on the dying habit of reading and some hymns. I remember being pretty impressed by it, though I still hadn’t realized most of the things the poet had written about. I was also into Rudyard Kipling, and was intrigued by his connections with India (the school I was attending at that time was also purely Indian, planted in Omani soil – very patriotic, I recall).
When I left, I tore out the poem (the diary was more useful recycled) and stuck it into my JournaL (camouflaged to look like a math notebook – very realistic, ‘Cos it was my math notebook – I have about three volumes now; all assorted subjects).
One of my friends said that her grandfather used to read it to her uncle when he was little. Pretty neat.

Commandment ONE of any truly civilized society is this: Let people be Different.
- David Grayson

To write or Not to write?

Cant think, brain numb,
Inspiration wont come,
Bad ink, poor pen,
That's all, Amen.

My first proper blog that serves no apparent function, but exists just to publish things as it comes out of my head. I have several others snorkeling around the web, all with no identity and no more content than a few measly lines of unhappily vague introductions.

Pretty unsure what to type in really. There was a time (note past tense) when i could churn out strings of jointed letters on the most dullest subjects. Now my vocabulary has dried up and my writer brain has shrunk to the size of a peanut. Nano peanut.

At some point in time , I had this weird urge totest my (vain) assumption that my writing skills were inborn talent, nurtured by a creative brain. I wa so sure o f myself that I wanted to find out (if?) I was right So I stopped reading, (not entirely-I couldn't resist the occasional, juicy pieces of work that flitted my way) and actually let go of the habit. Being in the middle of my O' level years helped, 'cos of all the studying (not that I did- but worrying that your not studying takes up as much thought space and time as actual studying does).

Come A'levels and I couldn't even write a sentence without checking it a million times to see if the words were in the right order. What was worse, exam prototype answers had firmly nabbed me in the back with their vicious claws (I start every other sentence with an evaluative 'however'). What then is writing style other than writing through a dead man's hand?

Conclusion? A much used cliche, but nevertheless, here it is- writers are not born , they are made. Some of the enlightened ones out there may alredy know this, but to me, it was like after years of thinking other wise, Copernicus finally finding out that the sun is the centre of the universe and not the earth.

I got what i wanted. And it's taught me some things, this 'experiment'. Not to take things for granted is one. It's also turned me into more of a cynic. I dont

put that much of effort into writing any longer, because, - it's just no longer there.

But (theres always a but),no matter how critical and negative i get about my writing, it'll still be one of the things i had, lost, but still keep close to my heart. I can talk to save my life,but i express myself best through writing. Words just flowed out of my pen, through my nib, onto the paper. Once.