Dropping the Urn -- Burning the Man

Reblogged from Chai Kadai:

• 

The end of a year, the start of another one, comes with a sense of celebration all over the world. It’s just celebrated on different calendar days in various cultures with their most unique festivities. Crackers in some towns. Grand feasts in others. We decided to break away from our regular routines and travel to Goa this New Year. We reached on the morning of the eve and took a drive down to the beach where we chose to stay.

Read more… 571 more words

something I wrote a long time back:

blabber phase #03

the last story has convinced me to stick to this act of typing, writing. just keep it going. something managed to excite you now and that can’t be the end of it. now apparently there is a danger of thinking so aloud on the internet as i am making myself vulnerable to the evils of society – people stealing ideas. now, why have an idea if you are so bloody secure about sharing it? if you have an idea only for the sole purpose of making money the world really has no use for it, it helps only another person only in search of making more profit. if you have an idea to tell a story, and you’re not really wondering about how much money it’s going to make you than you worry about having the money to produce it, what’s the harm in sharing it. so what if someone steals it. the amazing thing about stories is that even if you steal from me and say it, or i steal it from you and i say it, we both can never say the same story, if all we are worried about or rather occupied about is storytelling. 

now speaking about black holes. though i am not really up to date on scientific properties of it, the concept of a black hole just thrills me. the last story i wrote obsessed about this was… About a man who worked on creating the nuclear power plant and then retires with his lover to the greenery of the jungles in the Western Ghats for peace. Both of them build this box that magically devours everything in it to invisibility, even light. So, it is kept in this dark room. When his lover dies of some horrible painful skin allergy, he puts her in the box. Now a friend who visits him to give his condolences steals the plan for this bloody box and then it soon becomes a genocide weapon in this world, causing great amount of State-endorsed deaths. Later, after great protests, they dumped these boxes in the sea and everyday  more of the sea disappears into these boxes, an eventual doom anyway awaits this world. The lonely scientist not able to face the guilt of having created this weapon, on one night, steps into the box himself. poof.

as you can there was no scientific enquiry, but rather a lash out on all kinds of injustice i saw happening in this world. even though i did say what i wanted to say, in retrospect, this story actually tells me i was fucked up in my head. i am fucked up in my head even now. black hole or no black hole this is what i have to see the end of. a narcissistic quest. what the fuck goes on in my head? 

sudha is playing some videos that are raking up some unpleasant and equally pleasant memories. they are blowing through my head. the laughter in the room makes me blind. so vulnerable i am to such triggers. and usually what people think of me as is detached. i usually don’t stay around for dinners or lunches, go to reunions, funerals or marriages, engagements or showers. the only three social events that i feel okay in are arbitrary home parties in close friends’ houses, underground or over the ground raves, and cast parties. more than this i find very hard to extend myself. not because i am detached from these friends. instead, i actually think about my friends and family all the time, someone or the other is in my mind, i need only a certain smell or taste to trigger certain imageries. 

 

blabber phase #02

i think blabber phases shall become a regular feature on this blog. i’d probably even dedicate a space for it on the top bar, once i have blabbered enough. 

from the last post one possibility: what if all friends and acquaintances land up one day to teach me the important lesson of keeping in touch? see that doesn’t excite. as much as the high moralistic result of that story, placed on a protagonist such as me – so reclusive, so forgetful, so choosy about phone calls or emails or dinners and lunches – might appeal universally on a sentimental level, as probably a sunday afternoon film on star movies, i don’t see it going any further than that. however, i do comprehend writers of sunday afternoon films on star movies do earn in numbers i can’t even talk about. 

nevertheless, making that life-changing story impossible, because i am just stubborn to change that about me, i have to move on. that means more blah blah blah. the problem with real life characters is that people stereotype and i haven’t really studied psychology or psychoanalysis that much, even in terms of theatre, to fuck an audience up mentally by playing around with how they relate to stereotypes. and maybe, that is for a later date, something i can’t really be ambitious about right now. note written, kept, if someone else does work that handles this i should scrap book it so i can create a delusion of how i am still very interested and curious about this. but in fact i am interested. i just don’t see myself doing anything concrete anytime soon. so for now the morale will be low. note saved for later. 

ingi has been sitting right next to me for the last post and as I am typing this one. one of her eyes are open. she sometimes sleeps like that, just to keep a watch on me. when i am alone i can get very stupid. maybe, not work. maybe, drink too much coffee. maybe, switch on the tv. maybe, flip from here focus on something else other than writing, because then I wouldn’t have to feel so bad about myself. apparently writer’s block is one of the most common topics written about in the online world. not surprised. but, i have to come to a conclusion writer’s block is basically this – you want to say something, you just don’t know what it is, and you can’t really believe you can have something to say to this world. and you have already crystallized the forms in which you need what you want to say to come out even without figuring what the fuck is actually in your head and hence the silent evenings on the terrace convincing yourself that you have this metaphysical mental block towards writing. i think it’s a little pointless in hovering about this imaginary block of wood, instead of just getting down to the physical act of it and then desperately hoping maybe now, maybe in seven years time, you will manage to crack what you want to say to the world. 

slump. 

what do you want to say to the world sam? ha. non fiction is so much easier way to say that you know. ah just shut up will you, say it or i’ll chop your head off. 

recently, i came to the solution that the prison (as much as believe the current college) as an institution is pointless. why? okay, i was supposed to wait till i put this together as an “essay” for chai kadai, but you know what i don’t think i’ll be pouring any of the bullshit in my head in any form, if i don’t forget about forms

ingi over the years has actually acquired many human behaviourisms, or actually our behaviorisms. she is sleeping now and she is twitching her legs like me, lying on her side as she was just a smaller replica of baba, and almost snoring like sudha. 

so forgetting forms. forgotten. last month’s note in puck bulletin by pushkar raj got me thinking about the state of prisons in india. the koodankulam struggle, the arrest of soni sori, and free speech being jailed day after day in this country, got me thinking about what is this whole point of arresting and detaining and what the State uses it for. i actively started thinking about this only a couple of months ago, after many people i knew by name or face were either harassed by police or arrested for being part of protests for a more dignified life, whether in Koodankulam, Kodungaiyur, Kalpakkam, Manipur, Tibet, or Chattisgarh. 

the prison industrial complex debate has been brought to front by activists part of the critical resistance in the past few years (in America). the brown v plata was a decision taken by US Supreme Court last year mandating California to reduce their prison populations by 30,000 (137.5%). now, california government’s solution for this is to shift tens of thousands of prisoners from the state to the county level, therefore opening the doors for funds that will help them expand their county jails. critical resistance has been fighting for a long time to dismantle one of the planet’s largest prison systems which constantly attacks the state’s poor, working class and communities of color. more information is available in long research reports by these human rights organizations, and with quoting them specifically i should be able to elucidate this further. 

however, quite a bit of overload on lectures by prof. angela davis, prof. ruth wilson, and prof. john smith. wondering about the origin of why we think its okay to punish and on why the prison (and its related atrocities like death penalty) on a governmental (universal) level is marketed as the best institutional possibility of correcting a society. so instead of focusing on prison reform here should we rather be looking for prison abolition, an alternative to prisons. and will that not be a more humanitarian protest? wondering only. not throwing accusations. why have we misconceived punishment (positive and negative enforcements) as a method of instruction, as one of ‘structural equilibria of society’?

last night, rahul and i talked about how it is so tough focus while researching. with so information available to us, and so much not available to us (which we can get to only if we have finished plodding through what is already there) there is so much to know, so much to ask, and so much more to know about. every day. the personal ethics of meticulous workaholic researchers like so many others i know. no personal ethics at all and we are still developing it. see our colleges didn’t really demand any kind of academic inquiry into our subjects. so other than personal motives to dig and delve through history, there wasn’t really any external need to be academic. now the only thing college wanted out of us was attendance in boring lectures, which was essentially teachers dictating notes, we writing it down, and hall tickets, pink slips, blue slips, and yellow. 

but coming back to storytelling and whatever it is that i do, i really don’t know where to go. i read all these short stories last week, you know in between reading up on the all the laws and acts and debates relating to prisons. thought of adapting. i love the idea of adaptations. adapting julius caesar convinced me i could spend time in theatre. but i don’t know actually adaptation. adapt what? nothing seems to excite me. slump. 

what fight do i fight to be sure of what i want to be vocal about on stage, in life or anywhere? and do i see it as even a possibility for me to recreate this anger in the mode of storytelling? it is the magical realism of toni morrison, gabriel garcia marquez, folk tales,  george melies that excites me. that is what i want. 

… okay for a few minutes there i went off to Facebook. sorry. digression. anyway, there bernard bate had put up a link to this amazing discovery of a black hole devouring a star in the centre of a galaxy 2.7 billion years away. now there is one in the centre of the milky way too, “our” galaxy. and i think a spectacular dinner scene is what my play shall be. a hungry bloody black hole in the middle of a galaxy in the middle of no where, trying to choose from its menu a small snack, and maybe let’s throw in there an orbiting planet filled with delusional living beings. now the executional possibilities of this could cause yet another slump, but for now, this is what we can work on. 

limitations:

# cast

# time (one ten minute play and 53 minute play)

# budget

# deadlines (23rd May and 31st July)

 

blabber phase #01

i just wrote a very good friend of mine a cribby cribby note about how my head all so consumed by the that stupid term - writer’s block. only when i hit send i was looking at the email and i realized the act of writing hadn’t really been blocked. i found pretty easy and quite fluent while typed off. blah blah blah. so. with all permission from readers who choose to be readers here, you will for the rest of the scrolling down as this might take, i will be blabbering. blah blah blah. it’s after all strange sounds i make that i can understand if i have anything at all left to say to the world and then i might be able to do the mental math of the viability of my energies spent in pursuing two deadlines for script submissions. must say, with no story in my head. 

sometimes, i let more than a few minutes pass away wondering how it might be a good option to at least dream about transforming into ingi (our cat). her life doubtlessly more peaceful. mine just excessively boring because i so easily run out of steam. i am always sitting on the top of my head. no wonder my shoulder pains so much. something like that stupid American movie Shutter. i hear there’s a more scarier Japanese version. everything seems to have a scarier Japanese version. 

so what is troubling me nothing. my laziness. my inability to push myself. oh my god i sound like my fake IAS coach. blah blah blah. does a director have the right to put three people on stage and just make them say blah blah blah for ten minutes, only because my head is saying that now? blah blah blah. maybe, if i’ll be able to stand my ground at after parties talking about the importance of experimental theatre in shattering the audience’s normal expectations of a medium of storytelling. i can’t. 

so is script writing at all viable for you sam? maybe, you have to rethink this entire thing. is writing for you? is theatre for you? there we go, slump. 

all the ideas and exciting new stories that seemed to come across do not sit well in the limits of these deadlines or festivals. and when i have to write for something else. slump. 

such impossibility of getting anything done, with a head like mine. no focus. no purpose. no. 

i am always just worrying about daily problems related to banks, bills, shifting house… and then i shout inside my head no one should be expecting me to write now. No one is. Really. 

i just have so many people living inside my head. fighting with each other. 

digressions. distractions. 

slump. 

Sudha says ‘This is you saying you cannot focus, in good language’. At least he thinks it’s good language. :)

sometimes the word process, the act of being in a process consumes me. it procrastinates my means to any end. to find something, stick to it – look into it – is by itself a process to me. it is to bite into an apple all the way to its bitter, grainy seed, wondering where all my teeth and my tongue have been, where all these molecules have come from. once a man who came to speak at my school, or this is a scene from something  i dreamt up, told us something about atoms.

atoms are everywhere. they are always moving around. my daughter is now 2000 miles away from me. but i am inhaling her. we are all in each other.

as a kid a lot of what he said remained spooky. then what he said sounded like don juan’s voice. now it’s my head bustling around.

where ever i am, whatever i am doing, whatever my means, whatever the possible ends, there are fractals of distraction; a microscopic fungal growth that spreads – a million more questions every second.

have you ever wondered if a pineapple would like itself if it was turned inside out? when a mind wavers like that, my only concrete thing to puzzle everything in to is story. that’s why storytelling amazes me. i am not great at it yet, but this short journey of playing around with theatre, film, writing, myself has been great great fun. however, today, we are sitting a day late for one of things we were supposed to sign up for. quite fed up of being busy. but still desperately wanting to be busy. ideas caught inside our head. nothing amazing us too much. small talk. the weather out is reallllly nice. we should go to the beach. even all of that said in love. we are bored.

let’s eat and watch a movie we decide. choose a movie i say, to get some time to write all this that’s in my head. secretly hoping, maybe a play will pop in to my head. then i’ll know what to do with it.

bleah

continuity, building up a vocabulary and method with largely the same group of actors after a number of productions, leads to work of experiment and improvisation of a sophisticated kind

said Peter Hall.

in story of a process i wrote differently. somehow my mind was shut down to his words. it still is. some times i find myself defending myself in front of this apparition. the same group is quite an impossibility. some times even boring. maybe, no play of mine could be perfect in a sense. because, the performance for me is one part of the process. the performance the presentation is bound to get better. it’s the entire process my heart is at.

****

but i am re-reading these words of his i have jotted in down in a notebook. staring at it, in fact. it definitely will be so wonderful to have a group we can stick with, to mull over things with, to throw things at each other, but does that group necessarily need to be the actors? does acting alone make theatre?

maybe, yes.

maybe, no.

still at my first step.

trying to figure out.

so bleah!

but wait let me just finish the Peter Hall quote. it is after all only those lines mentioned above that i am reluctant to digest.

continues

everybody involved can readily acknowledge that the work is picking up where they left off. but in english theatre [any theatre], even at a highly subsidized organization like the RNT, it is most often the case that the director is starting each production with an ad hoc group of actors, a diverse and nervous group who, preforce, must be turned quickly into a company … breakthroughs of trust and courage occur amidst an atmosphere of mutual respect and good humour.

smiling.

off to sleep.

goodnight.

bull

 

 

 

 

 

 

*finally got a digital camera and been travelling quite a bit. so once in a while i have only photos. 

in a bucket’s way to say

this is to you radio

me knee deep    forever

in love

with a vibe or two

sometimes they play the right songs

then i have to sing along

maybe sometime

just sometime

you’d shut up and listen to me     radio

abrupt end

line of thought

downfall

#

(self-potrait)

the approach

extract from Introduction to Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol:

The following account, given by Gogol himself to some of his friends in Moscow, shows how he wrote at least parts of the novel:

This is the sort of thing that happened to me. I was travelling one July day between the little towns of Genzano and Albano. Half way between is a miserable little inn, standing on a small hill, with billiard table in the main saloon, where people are constantly talking in different languages and the billiard balls never cease clicking. I was writing the first volume of Dead Souls at the time and never parted from my manuscript. I don’t know why, but I felt like writing as soon as I entered the inn. I ordered a small table to be brought and sat down in the corner of the saloon. I took out my manuscript and, in spite of the noise made by he rolling balls, the rushing about of the potboys, the indescribable din, the some, the close atmosphere, I became completely lost to the world and wrote a whole chapter without stirring from my place. I consider this chapter the most inspired in the whole novel. In fact, I have seldom written with such inspiration.

cooking eggs with every meal

Chaos Chaos, the protozoan, can be spotted with the naked eye. It dances furiously, creating new worlds every milli-second. Chaos Chaos invaded my brain, as an idea of a three year old. Amidst books, people, theatrical spaces, restrictive communities, my mind dances exploring new ways of existing.

***

Baba and Amma were leaning on the wall smoking cigarettes. From the pile of books on either side of the bed, one of them would read aloud for me — Karl Marx, Freud, Mills & Boon, or William.

***

A baby’s head is like an omelet, its understanding of the world, let alone the real and unreal, is very scattered. Baba said before he gulped down the last bit of coffee.  I am always battling against circumstance and time, refusing to let them solidify my body, head, and mind, by reading, writing, making plays…

***

For three hours, this fifteen year old girl and I had with love shared every minute of our lives with each other. So you never read? I tried to mask my disappointment for a while. Will you at least try? She punched me on my left shoulder. Why ka, what’s the use of reading books?  This agitated me. The three hour love had dissolved a bit.  I needed to clarify. So, do you watch or read anything? She thought for a few minutes and shot me with her crude teenage humour. There’s no use.

***

Recently, I read The Hidden Dimension by Edward T Hall an anthropological exploration of how humans interact with public and private space. It altered the way I had conceived how four people can use a space and rewrote a play. Online I read about Chaos Chaos.

***

As we get older we have to be careful not to become hard boiled eggs. Baba added.

#

reading & writing – a month of it. a dream to turn my house into a library. 

read Saraswati Park, You’re An Animal, Viskovitz!, Zapatista Stories, To a Dancing God, DA-da, and began Dead Souls

so much about reading and writing. a wonderful trip.

why not walk around with an mp3 recorder?

It is the work of documenting, that has increased my faith in first hand information. Without experiencing it, and meeting a story face to face, we cannot take back any essence; forget giving it to others. The act of re-telling should be transparent.

facebook updated. this blogs hangs on my clothesline.

working on a documentary now. learning how to tell a story i don’t know yet. there are strings. they too, hanging.

it’s women.

they are haunting my head. they are in me, my printed body. they seem to have these voices, deep hidden stories, so many convictions, so many troubles, wherever whatever they are. My breathing patterns are heavier after sun down.

…there is this translucent purple beauty to this smile they share. sometimes, the skin on these faces ask me, ‘is there trouble in neglecting beauty products?’ the dusty photo on the wall, where the skin sits tells me that it has too many stories. i had the most horrible skin in my twelfth grade and first year college. it was rough, bulging with fat, and tired. i always feel i have seen too much. i don’t know if that is good or bad. i didn’t feel good in this skin. it took me four years to be happy with my face again. a thought:

every story walks past you. everything is a story. and each story has to be retold – expressed. to be freed. to walk on. to move on to someone else. stories are clouds of air walking around amongst us. 

**

documenting – my way to an essay

i’m feeling the worst i can feel tonight. i have had a pretty nice day, but certain things etch bad moods. then again, it is the PMS swing and i don’t want to make a big deal about it. one thing i know for pretty sure, i’ve got to sleep real super early tonight, there’s no two ways about it. i think sometimes whatever other people try around you i end up feeling left out, teary, and heavy-hearted. tough luck. stupidity.

but, i guess writing should find me a way out of this rut and a way into a smiling sleep.

….

definitions

this is the title.

some lines -

A system is created to assure freedom, sustenance, survival, and knowledge. If a system is failing to offer this at all turns and walls, the system is unmistakably faulty. Most systems we subscribe to today, or rather worship, and refuse to think beyond, are very much like this.

i’m backspacing quite a bit now. i know i want to write. i know what i want to write about. but they’re these full stops in my head annoying me. i am going to start again — there’s an essay jumping about in my head that i have to get out.

definitions (contd)

Space is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction.^[1] Physical space is often conceived in three lineardimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum known as spacetime. In mathematics one examines “spaces” with different numbers of dimensions and with different underlying structures. The concept of space is considered to be of fundamental importance to an understanding of the physical universe although disagreement continues between philosophers over whether it is itself an entity, a relationship between entities, or part of a conceptual framework. – wikipedia

no no no. i want to talk about not only the space we see when tilt up our heads. it’s the space around us. everywhere. the space i create for you. the space you create for me. the space we imprison ourselves in. the space we dream about. the city. the village. this blog. the shop on my street. spaces we create everyday, with their ever changing shades. it is the politics of space – public and private – the hows and whys, the what and wheres — i’ve been thinking about. recently, everything i think about have been choosing either theatre or publishing as a large mould to fall in to. so, this too; this exploration of space comes from theatre and shall travel into publishing. i hope. now hope you please sit in that locker, i have some business to take care of. no hope before actual work. okay?

let’s start with this space i am using, paper, pen, blog.

15.01.2012 in notebook

(definitions)

edward t hall,

One senses that there is also a growing awareness of a loss of relatedness to the world at large. This loss of relatedness leads to an increased need for organizing frames of reference to aid in integrating the mass of rapidly changing information with which man must cope. The Hidden Dimension attempts to provide just this… This approach underscores the fact that man is first, last, always, like other members of the animal kingdom, a prisoner of his biological organism. The gulf that separates him from the rest of the animal kingdom is not nearly so great  as most people think. The more we learn about animals and the intricate adaptation mechanisms evolution has produced, the more relevant these studies become to the solution of some of the more baffling human problems… In writing about my research on man’s use of space — the space that he maintains between himself and his fellows and which he builds around him in his home and office — my purpose is to bring to awareness much that is taken for granted. By this means, I hope to increase self-identity, intensify experience, and decrease alienation, In a word, to take a small step along the road of self-knowledge to help reintroduce man to himself.

the month of november, assembled from many companies sat a greying desktop in front of me. it had been a year of fiddling around allpoetry.com. i’d been writing like the mad hatter. under very depressing circumstances, much  like so many others, i needed a space for self-pity and rants. my family might not have had the strength… (to be contd) current cut in few minutes. 

**

the hair

sometimes in the mirror i look serious

frowny eyebrow one anxious eyebrow two

then run into each other

the messiest road accident ever

much like the labrador down this street

it has its ways

to speak anger, sorrow, pride, joy

and then my light mush

that darkens with pollution

smokes and age

a bit of really invisible hairs everywhere

not much of a forehead either

small like my ears

and then starts the flow

of ever growing hair

one on top each other

they like company

and cry when i separate them

good friends they are

the armpit does have its share

but i shave it off a habit,

the legs too like a baby’s bottom

most of the times

a nasty nasty habit

one tiny hair on my left breast,

a proud one in love with itself

the hair that ought to hide my vagina

i trim so carefully, ever so rarely

the climate here begs me to

but every time i chop, i pull, i wax, i shave

every single hair, i hate

myself

why so willfully bear that moment of pain

why so willfully give away what my body wants

why so willfully live in denial

i think women should be hairless!

sick me.

butterflies

i feel like tomorrow i have a math exam. i need sleep.

the global village #03

last time i was here i talked a bit about cities. the city in pyramid is a must watch then:

no time to write now. i have a huge amount of work to finish. so bye.

how do i treat this blog?

that’s what i actually want to write about and yet again it is edward t hall’s words in the hidden dimension:

when i am writing, everything else stops

not for me. i treat this blog, pretty much like any of my notebooks. there’s a huge amount of randomness here. there are ideas, questions, references as they come by me.

quite contrary to edward’s temperament, when i am writing, everything begins.

and there’s something about blogging — the connection (with internet), my actual notebook next to me — reading, writing, dreaming, watching videos, listening to news, mindmapping, drawing — so much. it’s like the minute i sit to write — everything begins.

and this blog is a notebook. my ideas would lie here fragmented until i actually find a way to mesh, separate, develop, cross-reference, and create from this.

free. open. out there.

the global village #02

…continued. link

i’ve seriously been multi-tasking for over a week now. every night, i beg my head please please please don’t get a new idea, just get the work done. and boom. a new idea. a new thing to do. one minute i am drawing. the next i am washing vessels. the third i am watching tv. the fourth i am writing. the fifth i am editing a piece by someone so totally random. sixth i am choosing what to put next on screen at chaikadai. seventh i am checking what all i am supposed to do. eighth i am making all the pending calls. ninth i am cutting up newspapers for possible collages. tenth i am back on my notebook. now as usual i am exhausted. 

anyway, the city, the global village… continued

i started reading and writing about cities, because i am actually interested in exploring the other end of the spectrum: free love. by free love i mean not just the act of freely loving, but i am encompassing all kinds of freedom as free love. because, love whether for yourself or for others is what creates freedom. so, with regard to understanding the politics of space, i am reading edward t hall’s anthropological book the hidden dimension. here’s a quote to begin:

Man is an organism with a wonderful and extraordinary past. He is distinguished from the other animals by virtue of the fact that he has elaborated what i have termed extensions of his organism…man has been able to improve or specialize various functions. the computer is an extension of part of the brain, the telephone extends the voice, the wheel extends the legs and feet.  Language extends experience in time and space while writing extends language. Man has elaborated his extensions to such a degree that we are apt to forget that his humanness is in his animal nature.

i am actually waiting for some money to pour into my bank so i can buy alessandro boffa’s you’re an animal viskovitz. just a reminder.

when i walk around chennai, especially on this recently developing IT sectors, i look at all these high rise buildings. the constant construction, has made the microclimate of these originally sprawling marshlands highly humid, but dry. my nostrils burn. there’s cement lining on my face. i am going to take an hour to clean up. these high rise towers remind me of some tower of babel obsession the world is up to. who has the tallest building? who has the longest bridge? who has the biggest nose?

absurdity.

man is a social animal: teachers chant this during sociology, philosophy, biology, history, economics, and anthropology lectures. humans are animals. that puts me at peace for now. because, now i think searching for the animalness, or like edward t hall puts it, the humanness in my animal nature, coming back in touch with it, would do me good. that’s one step to free love.

abruptly stopping this as usual. i want to write a new blog post. bye.

the global village

i’ve been reading and writing a bit on humans (as individuals and as societies) and their interaction with space. it brings me back to an idea. an object. the boundaries that i create for myself, while defining myself as an individual, surely gives me more leeway in terms of creative and spiritual (or rather philosophical) pursuits. but, like we jotted down in chai kadai today, it is a sense of community that i actually long for. living in a city, it is the hardest to find. bringing back the individual into the community, is extremely important. i think rummaging through literature on biology, sociology, anthropology, art, theatre, engineering, architecture, philosophy, psychology, history, and maybe anything else that might pop up, would open a few doors for me. for today, the notebook opens with city planning:

i studied this in school, environmental studies – an extremely comprehensive major. our teacher, suchitra akka, had actually compiled material from various sources on a variety of issues that are of critical importance: planning, development, ecology, law, philosophy, agriculture, and many more. we had entire books, pages xeroxed from hundreds of journals, downloaded material from everywhere on the internet, and a lot of field study. technically, today i am just trying to recollect, and there was this one bit on city planning (on different zone models) that popped into my head, and i think it was piece by miller. this article was mostly just images, but was trying to assess, as far as how the world has already been developed, what could be the most suited model of a city that supports social and environmental equality, a urban heart based on sustainability. he saw the city as a reflection of the anatomy of the society that created it and lives in it. he also takes into account that cities are ever-breeding living beings. he picked (if i remember correctly) three city zone models — concentric, sector and multiple nuclei.

one of the earliest was created by ernest burgess in 1924 — concentric zone model. the image reminds me of a similar image my economics teacher, kumar anna, used to explain david ricardo’s theory on rent and value. burgess superimposed the city of chicago with his theories on human ecology to find this model. as i read more, i actually figured that burgess’ model was very much based on the bid rent theory. pleasant surprise, economics actually didn’t fly over my head!

homer hoyt, proposed the sector zone model in 1939. i like his name. i have to go sweep the house and cook now. so i am going to leave you with the images of the sector zone and the multiple nuclei zone models. they are pretty self-explanatory, so i have to say goodbye (for now).

it’s raining here

i’ve had a tough day. maybe, just maybe, multi-tasking is not for me. but, without multi-tasking i’ll die. anyway, film, paint, words, phone calls, the day has been so hectic that i’ve missed some pretty amazing appointments in its course.

as far as the week goes, success may not be the exact word, but fun and happiness, a little bit of my back feeling like it has been torn into pieces, and excitement wraps it all up so nicely.

painted a wall. 

things can’t get better than that can they. other than that PMS instigated irritation with all those people thronging around the wall, ‘sam, what can i paint? what colour can i use?’ – all those voices all around – i thoroughly enjoyed it. i’m waiting for the photographs to reach me – as usual. and maybe, then i’ll add it here.

anti-nuclear

tomorrow is the big day. the concert, the theatre, and for that i am currently painting an umbrella. never thought of doing that before. so that’s one good idea to be written down so i don’t forget.

it is raining here

so i hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow during the concert. SPACES is open air. but the umbrellas might come to use then!

signing off. more painting.

bye

hardly a beginning for a story

the pain in my abdomen is all too common for me to talk about it, specially. and i do have friends who might think of me as ‘sick’ for such ideas, stories, and questions. but it isn’t the pain that is bothering me now, or ever. all it needs is a large glass of beer and me to be alone, unfettered in my imagination. but life runs on how much work you get done in a day. at least for those of us who need constantly replenish our bank accounts to get by – day after day.

the idea of a loud share-auto, the crowded roads, the horns, the signals, the batter with random faces, all to get forty sheets of paper hurts – even more than my abdomen – perhaps because of my abdomen. so no work has actually been done. the kitchen stays. and every other assignment has halted.

a chunk of flesh feels like it is tearing itself apart – prancing about my torso. i have half an hour before my legs give in.

shutting this down. when my eyes tear off the fan and my back off the floor, i will leave. and if i leave, i will be back.

until then…

magazines

two months back, i decided it might not be bad to try writing for magazines again. usually, they have pretty nice people. i find it easy to write. so nothing wrong with that equation. sometimes, the assignments also get thrilling, because i’d come across a story i wouldn’t have thought. all this writing for lifestyle magazines. anyway, so i put together for myself (and freely distributed to a couple of my friends) a database of magazines (online) that would be interesting to write for. now, what’s left is to convince myself to write once in two weeks. i think that’s a fair push to give myself.

##

good news. two articles published. in global adjustment’s culturama: [it's not my best writing, but i had great fun working with the team]

november 2011 | page 22 | click to read

*

december 2011 | page 25 | click to read

**

scrub scrub scrub

#house cleaning. #no posting. #a message to close the deal. a mess is a mess however handled. but little by little it’s “fun” (?) to unravel it. back in half an hour. bye/

there’s a cockroach in my room

been making calls. it might be better if more people pick up the calls. spent an entire day not knowing my phone was in silent. missed a few calls on my part too. anyway…

two nights back there was a cockroach running about in my room. since the lights were off, every time it scuttled across i got a little shocked, until I saw it relaxing on the laptop. i was trying to see what i could get in my hand, to just shoo it away from my sight. a shampoo bottle, which actually had no business next to the bed, came handy. two seconds after shooing it away, i became a melancholic melodramatic idiot, just in whispers though.

#

tortoise coil. goodnight repellent.

HIT

#

when i was five or six, i didn’t have much tolerance for cockroaches, lizards, and ants. i used to carry around baba’s (my father) big rubber chappals to squash to death all my enemies. once, baba caught me while killing a line of ants. he shouted. i broke into tears. he doesn’t really shout at me that often. nor does my mother actually. it’s just that when they do, i well up, almost involuntarily.

but somehow ever since i’ve been against killing cockroaches, lizards or anything else i necessarily don’t eat. i went back on vow of not killing ants just sometime back, after they decided to infest every single inch of this house. and i am sorry they don’t respond to vinegar that well.

#

okay. what is actually bothering me? think. think. it’s this. i even went ahead and posted my question on askphilosophers some time back, but anyway they haven’t approved of it for some reason. so whether you’re philosopher or not, here’s my question:

ever since, i started serious work on the anti-nuclear debate, i’ve tried real hard to listen to the other sides of the argument. For instance, the government has already gone ahead and invested so much money, would they even think of going back on it?

the question

why do people think it’s okay for ten to suffer just because maybe a thousand might benefit by running their coffee machines?

a nuclear plant is not only a disaster when malfunctioning; it is a disaster when functioning. world over, there is not a single nuclear plant that is not protested against.

 

Image by Squallwc via Flickr

late dinner

10.40 pm.
this entry is not being made directly in the blog. i need to cook something to eat, but don’t really feel like it. most of the times when i am alone i just whip up some random pasta and soup with whatever is available. today, i decided i’ll make rasam and chow chow. the decision is still the same.

.

so i’ve still been thinking about throwing open the writing process. removing editing, grammar, and backspace out of it.

.

i’ve always dreamt of having a typewriter for myself, it’s just that it costs a bit, and maybe some day i will get myself one. it is the sound and feel of the keys, something a desktop or a laptop just cannot give. these keys on my laptop are almost feather touch, and it doesn’t feel like i’m putting much energy into this.
of course, pen and paper rule the day. notebooks are actually a great favourite of mine. i’ve had a few on and off. just has a feel of: carry-me-anywhere-save-anything-you-want-only-maybe-rain-or-coffee-could-erase-my-memory-but-don’t-worry-since-i-am-a-notebook-even-disasters-actually-have-a-way-of-making-me-important.
memories after all only matter in our individual head. it’s the feeling of a memory that we actually hold on to.
the typewriter. this master instrument doesn’t allow to erase. the blotched letters are blotched, they are not exactly aligned, and the type emboss into the paper. there’s one font. no spell-check. just it’s sweet noise that keeps me awake. i love it so much.

.

in my tenth grade summer holidays, i joined a typewriting course. i used to type before that, in my father’s typewriter, which never had ink. then i eyed my uncle’s electronic typewriter for a long time. by the time i knew it, computers had taken over, the sounds had been submerged. i went and joined this course, because my father thought whether it was typewriters or computers knowing the qwerty was a good skill. it was good to have the instinct on your fingertips to just guide you to the letters without having to gaze at the keyboard all the time. so the paper, the screen in this case, is all i see. i type. it appears.
however, after long hours of typing, i have to crack my knuckles a few times before my hands feel okay. nevertheless, the strain and pain of a typewriter interest me.

.

the fact is while i have whiled away over three to four hours watching sitcoms and slowly sipping on vodka, i have also been kind of exploring design in my head. ever since i took up the responsibility to get the visual ambience and layout done for the justice rocks concert, many questions and many related ideas have popped into my head.
when it comes to bringing together print, ideas, statistics, science, art, performance (music/theatre/basic), it hasn’t perplexed me, but i might say it has excited me. (a bit too much.. he he). a corner of my head would like to add that much of this is probably under the influence of alcohol and you could go ahead erase everything said. but, this is what you and i get whether it’s the odd day that alcohol beckons me to two drinks or if it’s just me sitting around minding my own business. after all the exercise i have chosen for myself is to throw myself open.

.

10.55 pm.
i still have to cook, but somehow just don’t want to. i am waiting for that feeling to change. writing as great as it is, sometimes takes over everything else – the things i have to do. writing at large is the cause of my procrastination. now, i’d probably give anything to be living in a house next to the beach with my typewriter next to the window, growing all the food, and making just enough money just by throwing words at people to live okay. in other words, minus the house next to the beach, growing all the food, and the TYPEWRITER, that is what i do now.

—
sometimes this freewriting takes you somewhere. sometimes, you are left with just this.
FULL STOP.

khakhi trousers

biking

successfully got myself out of the house and went to the meeting. good. bike stopped in between. idling problem. thinking of getting a cycle. would be able to manage a ten kilometre radius with it i am sure. but, to even think of the main-roads gives me heart-burns.

ongoing personal research

been reading a bit on history of criminal justice and history of ‘police’ as a system. curious about the policing system. when or how actually did this idea of coming up with rules and giving some one the authority to police these rules come about? moral policing. police and the State.

anti-nuclear energy

images are brewing in my head. sitting tonight for working on it, maybe thoroughly.

stork

is flying.

**

**

phlegm

coughing. sneezing. for a while now. been working on the stork gif. reading. eating. watching my family, a british comedy series. don’t really feel like getting out of the house today. my head is heavy. but, i just have to.

been thinking about police brutality, nuclear energy, and flying. after posting mr. v pugazhenthi’s letter on chaikadai, the first comment was from mr. m g hariharan. he runs a blog called understanding ramayana. and is also a part of the yahoo group Indian News Window, which posts and shares largely things about how Hindus should take over Muslims. so. he said, I should probably shut off the electricity at my place before i talk about nuclear energy. he comments on most things we publish, usually anything that sounds to him like anarchy or communism. he has asked to shut up several times. But, that’s the fun of internet, the most people like this can do is block the blog and not what we speak.

i am ready for 20 hour load shedding cut. i can live with it. anyway, the power goes off half the time at my place. i might have to live in poes garden to get unlimited uninterrupted power supply. also, maybe he just doesn’t want to even hear our arguments against nuclear energy.

i agree with what jeny told us:

Lenin said “Choose your battle” . I think you shouldn’t choose to engage with him. He can go on ranting like a superficial idiot. When some one can not dialogue and dialogue with some kind of sense they don’t have to be engaged with. Save up your energy to irritate him even more

i have to go out into the roads. have a meeting. hopefully, i shall get over this thing that’s refusing to let me move.

**

phlegm.

stork

my partner, sudharshan, just showed me an hour back how gif animation sequences are created on photoshop. he said, probably i should try something.

picked a stork from one of my early sketches called story of the murderer

let’s see where this takes me tonight. click on image if the animation is not playing.

this has taken me more than an hour. but this is bloody addictive. still trying.

**

the idea of totally breaking free

the outsider sits not alone, not in depression; but in this pure restless curiosity. she pokes at the things concealing the hidden. she prods them with a stick she found on her way there. her only determination: she’s going to let whatever happens to happen by itself.

is this the death of common sense? an old voice asks. are you seriously going to let things so loose? haven’t you heard of the dangers? the dangers in a world where labels like hippies and anarchists are derogatory? 

i am a certified schizophrenic [just that i convinced the doctor to give me a chance to probably figure out another way than prescription]. something, i take to pride. because, that probably gives some odd credibility to the craziness i like to have when doing something. i just see my human brain, when charged with language, images, memories, something like a search engine that is having an epileptic fit. it keeps jumping, making random associations, jumps up and down like a pogo stick. for instance, why did i choose to say pogo stick. i’ve never really seen one before or used one at all. movies. maybe, the image from mary poppins i saw when i was six years old. and thus random associations and disassociations pop up in my head.

i approach even blogging with this craziness.

this is something i wrote on this very same blog, that i advertently moved to drafts, only because i felt like it. with what i’ve been saying, what follows makes sense:

So blanking out is a very crucial part of my things-to-do in a day. It is the frequent blank-outs that take me to different worlds or spin me around in the same world where I am now washing dishes and makes me think…

“Rust, grease or oil are not permanent. Lime and vinegar manage to wash it away with a light scrub. Maybe, I should start making my own soap instead of buying all these brands. Maybe, many more things can be made like this at home. Maybe, that would reduce economic strain and would also give me so many nice things to do at home. I should really bring this place down and clean it.” Slowly, I’ll blank out completely, and I’ll have memory of only a few words after hours of work – blue, desire, journey, and lime. These were the words I came back with after making coffee.

I think it is extremely important to let our minds waft in the wind jumping from reality to what may seem unreal. It allows me to freely associate, correlate and understand this world and all that it throws to me. Of course, just sitting blanked out doesn’t help. This same family, my mother, my father, my sister and my partner, write, draw, perform, and make things in this process.

so, yes art, writing, theatre, body, thought, breathing, balance, understanding of society, understanding of self…actually merge into one another. it’s the how part of it that makes life fun.

to be called abnormal is fine. to be asked to become ‘normal’ makes me ask, what is normal? getting up at six. drinking caffeine. going to work at 9. eating lunch at 12. eating supper at 7. sleeping at 11 p.m. ? there is actually no one definition of normal. only things we are used to seeing or sensing vs things we are not used to. the latter confuses, irritates, and questions our already perceived notions of life. why do most people find any mentally challenged child to be weird? Because, they are reluctant to break through that confusion and irritation.

for me breaking free is actually a privileged and cushioned process. i have the money, the house, the family, and the friends circle that support immensely. there have been days of hunger, of depressions, of fights, of crying, of walking out, sometimes even of police. nevertheless, there is support and the lack of societal pressure, whether it is colour, class, caste or religion that decides it. my gender or sexual identity too, with the people that surround me immediately (other than those whose acquaintance could not be diverted or averted, or those whose acquaintance i just accept despite their politics), hasn’t been an issue.

so, what actually is there to protest about personally? i have to ask this now. a small diversion, much needed. i may not protest for myself all the time. i join hands because i see sense, i see energy, i see life there. 

back. breaking free is a personal process. i am my jail. i am my freedom. there are so many things i’ve jailed like my body. it never does what it wants to. once when being part of a play production, i wrote to the director because i saw where i was so totally wrong while on stage. it is that i understand acting and especially performance in theory, maybe even visually. but there is this block that is refusing to translate it to my arms, legs, butt, eyebrows, or anywhere in my body. it was like all this understanding was just circling in my head. after, a month of exploring and repeatedly falling on my face as probably a hopeless performer/entertainer, i managed to identify two problems that my body faces. my body, which is me, a large part of me, does not understand breathing and balance, two very basics function of a moving living thing. i have been trying to unravel this for me more.

and from here i want to ask. how and why do we perceive or understand? breathing and balance are supposed to be instincts. but, in fact, so many of us get it all so wrong. like flying for a bird, a land mammal should in fact know how to walk, how to climb, how to breathe instinctively. we don’t. we all walk differently. and most of us have walks that actually injure our bodies. each of our breathing patterns are different. some take short breaths. other always breathe slowly. some times, for a minute or so, i have forgotten to breathe, especially when i tense up.

all this meandering. writing. going. writing. going. reading. eating. writing. has brought me here.

adolf wölfli. jean dubuffet RAW ART | ART BRUT >>>> OUTSIDER ART

there is no image. there is no form. there is no structure. there is me. there is what i do. there is performance. yes for the public. but no ulterior motive to be placed in galleries, printed in books, quoted in newspapers, or recognized. there is me. there is what i do. and probably the only true public outlet, even that not forcing anyone to read or follow: is this blog.

it is probably not too good to go on and on reading to find names for what it is the outsider does. she merely takes these words, these ideas, allows them to enter her own realm of consciousness, only because she knows it wants to enter. everything is gluttonous to this outsider, floating around. whether it is an idea or a person. she opens out so what is hidden might reveal or go further, making the journey better.

**

vodka break

reverse order

my kitchen smells like a pig sty. i am scared of maggots again. i haven’t really gotten much work done today. that is because the television is a bitch. addictive fucking bitch.

phew. that feels good.

i’ve always restrained my language in blogs. don’t know why.

what does writing mean to me? no one really, actually ever asked me that question. some people actually think it’s as simple as a biological action. the majority of the world voluntarily shit for money and i write. when i say, i’m writing give me a few minutes, many a times i’ve defended replies: oh! it’s only writing. unless and until someone actually wants something written, there’s not much acknowledgement. or maybe, becoming a bestselling author are the ways out. i’ve never really pushed myself to get published. i think i am still experimenting with it. it’s not like i am not ready to put it out in to the world. if that was my fear, i wouldn’t have a blog.

i’ve never been great with set rules. that’s half the reason i thought whatever happens i will write all in small caps here for how ever long that i can stand it. grammar. that’s what i actually want to talk about. it is what makes a language. it is this same thing that has to be denied, broken, mixed and thrown around in order to understand the language. of course, old appendages stay – know the rules and then break them. i’ve never probably been too great at highlighting with precision present continuous. but a rhythm of a language, the memory of when i learnt certain words, it’s flow in comparison and adjacent to the other languages i know: these help me through.

form. this i actually find difficult to decide. the non-linear fascinates me. the few words or the many words, all the same, just strewn about, nevertheless in perfect equilibrium, almost in a cosmic connection. it should be okay to write phrases, half words, made-up words. probably why i like wordpress or ommwriter for that matter; they don’t really decorate all of it in red and green all the time. not unless i choose to. microsoft word doesn’t even like passive voice. what am i writing, science experiments? apparently, passive might be okay for science too. certainly, my school teachers didn’t think so.

what in form? free-writing. that’s my type of form. it goes, it stops, it flows, it ebbs, it plummets, it shivers, all on its own accord. sometimes, after many days there are words everywhere – blogs, emails, notebooks, walls, napkins, cigarette boxes, bus tickets… this might one day become a poem, a short story, a novel if at this time these are the only forms everyone understands. or i’ll decide to wait it out and see if anyone picks up the asymmetrical forms i create and maybe bellow it out to the world.

then again benjamin frankin had said: ‘either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.’ this could actually murder every ounce of confidence i have when i sit down to write. but, benjamin franklin was still seven degrees away from creating who i am right now. i take what he says. i chew it. i don’t disregard it. i don’t shun it. i just hear ping pong.

probably some perfect time to read outsider art. (thanks to aarti).

shall be back after the reading. and maybe one more tea.

Related articles

• Few [very few] human words (dimitriseleas.wordpress.com)

the plans are not foiled

one chaikadai done. two emails done. three translations happening. not bad for a start. anyway, before that I thought some writing is good.

the past week has been about Tamil, nuclear energy, and Ai Weiwei. some new ideas, some new projects have also cropped up as interludes. a notebook, which we couldn’t really begin because of the full-chennai retailers bandh. Ai Weiwei still being read. Nuclear Energy only a few pages of a few documents left. So, now time for:

questions:

is new media effective? what about live streaming? what about global reach? but are blogs and internet just a place where people come to rant? is ranting bad?  and are most people who come to the internet as impervious to dialogue as they are when you meet them in real physical life? can’t interactive design actually help?

more questions:

what am i doing? where could i bring together art, theatre, film, writing, and blogging? do they all belong together or they are all too different? why do i like to do so many things? would it be better to focus? are people actually interested in any of this? and does that matter?

**

will be back. some work to finish.