Thursday, July 19, 2007

The inner life

I shifted to a new place.

On Sunday evening, quite late, I stood watching the waves from my basement. The waters seemed far from me—a wilderness stay put right in between. Milky hoods rose up from the surface, stretching and commingling, before crashing into the embankment along the periphery of the row of buildings. There was once a beach there. Was once a beach there, there? There, there was once a beach. Now, there is none.

Over the years, the waters have slowly, certainly, inundated the shore so much so that residents of the buildings survey the watery expanse with eyes that are daubed as much with a lurking foreboding as with an accustomed, yet sheer, thrill.

What’s wrong with this world? Nothing whatsoever. Except that even birdsongs might not be to everyone’s liking.

I trod on ground laid thick with granite chips that had been wet to an almost black by the mist in the air. In the windy cool of the darkness, my body broke a thousand bubbles of spindrift that floated in the air.

The sky was patched in a nightly shade—billowy, rippled, shifty—and collapsing. An aircraft flew through the clouds—its lights helping upward-cast eyes follow the trail—before being muffled by cottony blankets.

Within me, there were a thousand voices speaking in languages that I couldn’t talk in. All assumed personas spoke forth with immaculate articulacy. I remembered weak smiles that had chapped the corner of lips. I could not remember when I spilt into two or even more. A wall was the only thing I had carried along with me, like a treasured item of furniture. And wherever I set my dump, I surrounded myself with it. Sporadically, when the need arose, I filled up the thin, craggy lines of fissures.

Why do people come together? All associations based on loneliness, ennui, a desire to vent, to pour out—what is their destiny? What reduces the strongest relationships to the sharing of everyday banalities? Why is a celebrated form of dependence called love? Does it occasion a loss of individuality in exchange of a secure companion? Can two people who do not need each other, who are complete in themselves, who do not pursue company for want of a listening ear—can’t two such people—come together?

I feel empty, incomplete, like hastily strung words that have not arrived at their denouement. The crux is within. The lights that will guide me home will shine on me while I’m wandering alone on streets that have no name. The door within will answer my knock on a murderous night.

Nowhere…can the world exist except within us.
Our life passes in transformations,
And what is outside us grows steadily smaller, until it vanishes…

Anonymous



16 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like the last two paragraphs before the anonymous quote. Nice thoughts have been raised.

So, you've moved to where now? We should meet up sometime.. perhaps for dinner or a movie. I've been wanting to catch The Queen. Drag Charl or Avans or anyone else from Cats to hang as well, if you can.

Anonymous said...

Well... not just "anyone else"... but you know what I mean.

satyajit said...

hehe, i get your point. I was shocked out of my seat when I read 'anyone' but ya we should meet up. And I want to watch the Queen. I'll speak to Charl and Avs.

and thanks..I love the anonymous quote. it pithily says everything.

Anonymous said...

I loved the last two paragraphs before the anonymous quote as well! Such a beautiful picha u paint, Sats. Makes me wanna come there and give you a big hug.

Hanging out with you two and Avs (both Avs maybe) is a top plan. Can't wait.

CandidConfessions said...

"What reduces the strongest relationships to the sharing of everyday banalities?" - That spoke my mind! But after much thought, isn't the passage of life just that ordinary? To me, it is!

Psyche said...

Actually for me the third last paragraph, before the quote, was the truest of them all... Beneath the layers I heard a familiar voice cry out... Lovely!

I wanna see The Queen too!! And oh to give Jerry a hug!!

satyajit said...

charl: thank you much...

candid confessions: hmm

psyche: thanks

Psyche said...

ergo: how is it that you can leave comments on Satz' blog, but not on mine??

Anonymous said...

Psyche,

You have change some settings on your blog to allow non-google/blogger account holders to leave comments.

I hate blogger with a passion, and refuse to use my old account from there. Of course, i'll comment on the blogger blogs only because I want to, for various reasons... but that's as far as I'll go in patronizing this pre-Web 2.0 (primitive by Internet years platform! :)

SUCHARITA ROY said...

its in the same continuum..in the banalities..in the needs and the independence..the lights and the darknesses and the paths and the travails and the steps and the pauses that life moves on. someday you will break that wall and want to look out just like the sea has moved in below your apartment..the crux is in living without trying to find answers to the unanswerable..and knowing that the light is somewhere you can reach, and that you are on the way.

satyajit said...

How to know all that you've said without asking questions? i'm not looking for a framework/philosophy to answer all questions but what is unanswerable really is subject to argument

Anonymous said...

This thread is taking on a decidedly Wittgenstinian tone.

satyajit said...

Ergo, you talking abt Tractacus? I dont know much abt Wittgenstein except that he believed Tractacus to be a one-stop solution to all problems philosophical :-)

SUCHARITA ROY said...

it depends on a person which way he wants to go about..either believing in the possibility of an answer and being hopeful about finding it or decidedly choosing that an answer does not exist just because it is oblivious...and the very idea of not setting up a condition of "dependence" or "need" for an association is a condition in itself..and is it really that easy either..to do it..because it would make us as inanimate as every thing else that floats around with an identity to it that extends just upto itself. look around you...some of your previous blogs.." an english education","shade and shadow" and the one about the family in keonjhar reflect it abundantly..about how precious everything that seems mundane at an outward glance actually is.for those people involved...all of them complete in themselves

SUCHARITA ROY said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
SUCHARITA ROY said...

and yes..decidedly i do not know about who wittgenstein is but i work with as many people as the ideas you people work with. i dont think much about it. my ideas are based on a huge gamut of emotions based on them who i observe and learn from..neonates to geriacs...in the best and worst phases of their lives...