Etcetera

Start…And there we go observing analysing breathing every moment in I felt wiser today because we saw it all happen didn’t we all those levels all that depth the shallowness we saw it all and then we went blind not the darkness but all that white light it was like a light so bright it stopped your cornea from registering anything else four souls tied together at the root but all shooting randomly in different directions it was then that we realized the commonality the predictability the essence of stupidity from where it all stems what did we do then we sat back and we enjoyed the view we gazed at the distant horizon we admired the redundancy that was this moment we gave it its due we never categorized it or classified it but we called it a feeling a relative measure of judging things when our minds stop working we lift ourselves up only to experience the thrill of the free fall and what then you ask well then we just do it over and over again till that too becomes a part a part of our calculative lives our timed moments our future that we thought so hard about yet it never quite turned out as we wanted it to how we never stood on the terrace of that huge skyscraper in the black suit our hair flying our body numbed how we never stood there and thought of jumping after achieving the unachievable conquering the unconquerable we never had our movie moment our perfect background score the perfect words to describe the imperfection in all that perfection it all seems so fake now and then we get back and we try harder to see through all the layers deep down into the root but it isn’t there it has gone with that dream that nightmarish dream the aspiration the motivation to do good to see it all go bad to achievement to realize the futility of it the event to mark the end of all events it all goes down the drain and then we see it crushed cramped conquered only to try to try to rebuild that what was lost that that didn’t seem to be but was there all along we feign ignorance to make us stop the thought from going to places where they shouldn’t go they should stay with us those thoughts we remind ourselves but the physical manifestation defies our thought of controlling those other thoughts and then we see it because they’re out there they’ve separated themselves from us they are a whole new entity and they defy us and they mock us and we are standing alone I am standing alone I gave rise to this being that stands defiant and here I am trying to prove it wrong to prove myself wrong it annoys me like all those things that annoy me but in essence have been born of me if only I could stop if only I could stop…stop.

 – Aakarsh Kishore

I really worked hard to make it converge. They made me realize that it is not consciously done. It just happens. That is how it has been built up – unachievable, unsurmountable…nirvana. You know they’re serious when they’ve got words for it. I beg to differ – literally beg for difference, indifference more like. They didn’t let me complete my day. They came in the way, I wanted to tell them that it was not going to happen anyway but they had to make sure… they always make sure. Strike him hard, check his breathing…

The point… the unreachable singularity seems dwindling. It goes farther as I run towards it. Even metaphorically, it all seems wrong. The apparent contradiction arises from trying to explain it in terms of… words. It should come closer, it should defy all logic. It should be theory of relativity without the hypothesis, the unexplainable in simple, plain terms, the crescendo at the beginning of the composition and then there should be some more. The irony is endearing. Going from one singularity to another singularity changes the meaning, redefines the redefinition. But it has to be there, they can’t be right about this one… too.

Going backwards in evolution, inventing some more, discovering a lot less… I made my peace just to unmake it again. It thrills me, makes it complete… the unresolved questions leads to many more till I’m walking among them, senses numbed (uncomfortably) and without a clue. The completion that makes it incomplete, the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle that does not fit. They hit me again and I seek shelter. The pain helps me reconfigure, it manifests itself in some more words that come out all right and all wrong at the same time. I kick the pieces away… they were never supposed to fit, the picture was right, the design all wrong.

I question this… not to find an answer, but to prove again that I exist…  

– Aakarsh Kishore

Flashes of bright yellow light bulbs blind me. I was conscious throughout. I am thinking but I am not. Will I be able to maintain coherence?  I was coherent the last time. My déjà vu keeps repeating itself. I am speaking about rationality and justification for that rationality thus rendering it irrational (as such) only to wake up from the dream that has become reality in the dream only to wake up to the real reality which ends in a dream-like unreal eventuality. Play with words I will. Invert my sentences I will. Change a paragraph I will.

I will have finished the line of thought before I had written it down. Joy… joy to everything. I will stop thinking but I just realized I did that yesterday but not the day before. I will think the day before but not tomorrow as it might just re-repeat my repeating déjà vu all over again… and again. I want logic to govern my mind, structure is much desired. I read and I read somewhere that the structure of art is more important than art itself. I want to disagree, I disagreed yesterday but tomorrow I will want to agree. If I could only agree to the disagreement… today is now, I hereby disagree to that day’s agreement. I will present a counter-argument in due time, time that has lost itself today. Today is about flouting those rules, tomorrow will be guilt but today is hypocrisy. Time (in essence) to switch to another paragraph.

I close my eyes, enter the realm, calm myself, restrain my physics, I sit straight while I lie down, I let them go… they live, they are alive. I had taken a pill to ease the pain but I will not let it ease my pain. I will let it pain today. I want to let the pain pain, let the depression depress. I will defy the ease that eases the pain. I shall pain myself to defy the ease that eases my pain. I won. I lost. I lose. I will win tomorrow but today is all about losing.  The victory is loss today but not tomorrow, tomorrow the victory would have been gone and lost to today. In memory of all-pervading loss, I introduce some more structure to my randomness. A paragraph will be born.

Clear white lines are visible all across the black face. I will paint them black. I will repaint the white lines and make them black. Black will have been back I would say. I have to make the black come back from the darkness. The white is the absence of black. I am painting. I am an artist. My words are art – black and white. I am the horseshoe on the skyscraper, the pinball machine in the living room. I had been silent. Silence that was not golden but black, and so black is back. I made an error, I am going down a one-way. I chose the wrong prong of the fork. I want to go back. Reverse and rephrase.

I will continue this tomorrow like I had continued it yesterday. I went back to continue it from today. Continuation was the key. Completion was the objective.

I was rational.

I was argumentative.

I meditated.

I mediated.

I was lost, I lost.

I was structural.

I sum up, I was wrong. I will be right. I had been righteous. Today I will be right. Tomorrow I’m going back.

 – Aakarsh Kishore

It takes him some time but he finally gets there. He might have been there all this while but the realization comes today. A little late, perhaps? He doesn’t think so. He looks at the path he has treaded so far. He smiles. He wipes a tear that finds its way across his face. He looks down the road that lies ahead. He looks grim. He doesn’t feel grim. He feels peace…peace that he has never known, peace that he never thought existed. In a vision (perhaps), he sees faces running towards him, faces that are contorted…contorted with anger, pity, envy…no, contorted with fear, he concludes. He feels no pain, his mind refuses to react. For a moment, he fears numbness, but just for a moment (he is too used to the feeling for it to vanish even today). He thinks about them…no thoughts come. His realization is complete.

He starts to walk, slowly at first. This sensation is new to him (so far, he had crawled, dragged and scraped). His shackles of guilt and regret have come undone. No, not really…he can still see them bound tightly to his limbs. Then, how?, he asks himself. He sees that the chains are not attached to anything anymore. He has pulled at them long enough to know this (but he still can’t believe it). The shackles are something he will have to carry with him. They will not stop him anymore but will keep reminding him that they did, once. And they can, again. He walks freely but he feels their weight with each step. This, he choses not to ignore. This, he knows, he cannot ignore.

He meets the storyteller. The storyteller says, “You, over there…you, with shining eyes and troubled mind. Come, sit with me. Sit with me and I shall tell stories of joy and hope, of pain and despair, of truth and respect, of lies and deceit. There is much to learn from my words. I am the all-knowing story teller. I have dedicated my existence to your cause and that of your kind. My words will give you wisdom, enlightenment and hope. They will teach you, guide you and restrain you. Through my tales of kings and queens, of cities and wars, of love and hate, you stand to learn all you need to know to walk down this road. What say you? Won’t you come here and sit with me?” He looks at the old sage and these words, he says – “No, I will not. I am not the one to be inspired by your stories. I am the one on whom your next story, your last story will be written. Use it to justify your existence. I am on the path of justifying mine."

 – Aakarsh Kishore

Dear stranger

I’m inebriated enough not to re-read or edit this tonight. I write this with a purpose. I don’t write this for your pity or sympathy. I write this because I want to. Do not stop me. Do not make me think. Hear me. That’s all I ask tonight.

I wanted to kill myself tonight. I’ve played around with that long knife I keep hidden in my drawer before but today, when I kept it on my wrist, the cold steel inducing pleasure in my body, I really…really meant it. I’ve been done today. I have always written to you about all the changes I have brought about to please myself. I realized today its true worth. There is none. Even as I write this, I know tomorrow is going to be a better day where all will be forgotten in my pursuit of fulfilment. But I can’t stop this…this…now. I didn’t kill myself. Obvious as it might sound to you, stranger; it took a lot of cowardice to get to this point. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go through with it and so,I chose to write…I chose to tell you about this.

I have changed since the last time I talked to you. By now, you must be quite used to my constant changes but honestly, every one of them has been very hard for me. I justify these changes by telling myself that I do them for me. I do do them for me but not ‘this’ me…I do it for the other me. (MS word is asking me to consider this fragment for revision…fuck you, Bill) Today, it so happened that a person praised me for being humble and that, I believed, beat the whole fuckin’ point. I’ve talked about jumping off the cliff and flying and I’ve talked about holding on to the edge and acting like a coward. Trust me, stranger, I’ve done both and they are equally unfulfilling. Too long have I let go of my essence to get a new set of essences. Today, I realize there is no correct essence. I will never have anything to hold on to. They wouldn’t let me hold on to anything. They will not stop until I kill myself and even then, they’ll make me a hero for all the stupid reasons.

Stop, stop. Do not go on like this. Find a new way. Don’t be stupid. Stupid, naïve stranger. Do not try and understand me. I say this not with arrogance but with concern. You have been down this road and have managed to fool yourself somewhere in between. Do not ask the same of me. I can’t pull it off. It’s my fuckin’ flaw and try as I might, I will never learn to live with it. I envy you tonight for you sleep and I do not. I envy you for your self-imposed ignorance for I know it took you a lot of effort to do it. I lack, I fall short. I find myself wanting.

I tell myself – Rejoice, fool, for tomorrow has to be a better day. You are too much of a coward to honour yourself with death but intelligent enough to create yet another lie that will help you prolong this insanity. Live, live in this madness till the next time it falls apart. Search for answers to questions that you create. Kill time. That’s something you can do…at least. You fuckin’ coward.

 – Aakarsh Kishore

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