Ode to yesterday

That was a dream in the still of the day
that kept talking in a very soft
low-pitched, silvery voice
until I stopped listening 
at that very second when the fan switched on and the
little voice in my head pressed
rewind
and replay 
at a greater faster quicker volume
that beat too fast.

Magic without a T.

Image from somewhere in the internet's depths.

I have an archive of beautiful images from around the place.
Photographs, posters, fashion and artwork which is exciting, inspiring, technically emulative or simply something I'd love to keep around me.

The above image popped up and reminded me that today is

The Day I Gained Purpose in Life! 
The Day I registered my grad film, my final year project!

that I don't write much save Tweets or the teensy blog/ DA posts.
Which is sad, really. 
There's just so much less to think about when I write. It's easier to put words together in text, than have face-to-face conversations or participate in stilted Facebook chat sessions.
(I should just post on my Blog. And tell people to read the daily RSS before we meet.Simple aforementioned problems solved.)

Coming back to the point,
Words are powerful. Radical Self Love from my favourite blogger in the world confirms that.

The more I realise that the only thing constant in life is change, I love life a little bit more. The minority of happy people on the planet can subscribe to that notion.

The Now is:

The unbeatable roasted lush of Coorg coffee, made in a steel filter every Ahmedabadi morning
September weather spells of warm wakings up in the cold morning
The unavoidable,hilarious and exasperating daily updates of the neighbour dogs,brought to you by your lunch buddy 


Skinny lizards skating over  the peppery ceiling searching for roaches
The new forevers of rediscovering Neruda on a tattoo quest
The old forevers of Radiohead,Jefferson Airplane,T.S Eliot and
the blazing nows of the Xx, HerSpaceHoliday, Vampire Weekend and all the indie music in the world made for you and only you


Ego-tickles and skin-tickles and goosebumps,
Beer and perfectly made eggs in honey-teriyaki sauce to share,
Letters from never-lost long-ago-still-here girls in penguin swimsuits who
made houses out of orange tang, dinosaur baths and magazine covers FYVP  when
the roof tiles were unguarded and  comfort came years, years later in a car-ride


Sister cats waiting in Mysore town with babies that are sprouting like acrobats
Photograph sleeping in folder not awake not  yet not again
Insomnia over  coffee dates and dirty drawings of furtive couples in stretchy pants and brown sugar

spells now in not so many words,

none at all.

  
  

The Lady of Shallot

Sideswept
windswept
The words pass me by
Hair covers my eyes and
falls into my mouth.

Speeding cars
Tails of light and blur
red and bright
clashing
clanging
A sound that's too far away
and too close for comfort.

My elbows rest on the rubber edge
crossing
bending
as I peer
Searching past the motors and mouths( which in all probabilty,are the same.)
The rear view mirror catches everything and
nothing
A nothingness that falls like glass and feels like falling.

A strange sense of being the Lady of Shallot,cast upon the river of traffic.

My ceiling is the sky tonight.

Wait,
was that you calling out to me?

Yes,you.
The one with the lost eyes, the one who's staring
Staring right up at the sky
Almost as if he's expecting it to hurl a thunderbolt right at him
and burn him to the ground.

It's me.
The one you woke up last night,
with firecrackers of memories
and a torrent of luckless afternoons to boot.

I thought I heard you calling me
and so I awoke.
Heart iced frozen solid
lips cracked and forming
slightly forgotten(now) and fragile words of hope.

Who wouldn't?

Wait,it was a false alarm.
It must have been the wind breathing through the curtains.
The switchboard that bent its spine and brushed against my foot.
Unloved dogs seeking solace under my bed
and instead murmuring funny familiar fanciful and forgotten words
that crept their way into my pillow-case.

I stayed awake for a long time,
perhaps hoping to be on a beach.
The floor looked so smooth,speckled and polished,
stretching like the Chennai bay beneath a landing plane.

Moonlight played sail boat with my slippers
and the ceiling dissolved into a sky
of glue-on florescent stars.

I breathed deeply,until I could smell the salt and the warm dust.

It's funny how you were still standing there,
pale fingered.
With your toes slipping
slipping into the sea
and away from the shores that suddenly clung
clung to my feet with an urgency

"caressing and possessing me.."

Dare I grow Old?

Musings.
Revisiting TS Eliots' Prufrock in Visual Language class
Memoirs of visiting Rotary Old Age Home in Mysore
Indigo train rides to Madras
and longer,whirlwind journeys to smaller towns
And through it all..
Grandparents
still holdin on to the last vestiges of loveliness
Gracefully falling.

Coastward bound.

Im coastward-bound again,next wednesday.
I'll smell the peculiar saltiness of Eliot's Beach again,which reminded me of sweet corn chicken soup when I was a 5 year old on the seaside roller skating rink.
I'll go to Kilpauk and reside there,my first time in twenty years.
I'll gasp and make fisheyes at myself in the auto rear view mirror as usual,because Im two decades old and still consider it twenty years born in that not-so-little burning sandy signboard-cloistered city of Madras.

"I grow old,I grow old ,
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."

In between,I'll continue to develop on this wanderlust that seeks respite in the passages of my bloodstream and dream of the Orient,cherry cheesecake,blue bath tubs, tirupathi laddoos that I can never have,and that cold crimson-tiled house with one markedly empty,suddenly devoid little upstairs room.

I'll also say to myself:"Sing a song of happiness"

Of loss and love and learning to fly,of writing words that have a life of their own and spring across the page like jackrabbits.

Last night it was Oct 16th and Aug 1st

Can you
can you
Can you
Can you see the burning light?

Did they
Did they
Did they snatch your dreamless hours
and turn them into wakeless nights?

Have I

fallen

in
to
the
spiraling
twisting
strangling

voiceless empty void of the voyeaur

Did not wake up to nothing last night
Did not snap my knuckles
Did not cry for you, or you, or those two
Did not see darkness no light only white
white
white
the sun rose

and I hated he who stole my nightmares and gave me this
this
this dreamless sleep
this engulfing,stabbing
whitehotblade
that went through one shoulder
and swallowed the rest.