End of Summer (Re)Affirmation

I love blues riffs, Norah Jones, wooden flooring, sunsets, New York, Bangalore and ECR.

I'm probably a romantic.

I love peace - good weather, water, sunlight, green stuff, great music and the people who make it all matter.

Alliterations great. It adds spice to life. :)

I love Juan Antonio's father in Vicky Cristina Barcelona who refuses to contribute his art to the world because after all these years [the human race] "has still not learned to love." A futile war, but he has a beautiful point.

I love that I still have this old bottle of Bawls after 6 years.

I kinda like that I'm going to be a doctor.

Time to hold it all together.

Blah Blah Blah

Blah Blah Blah Blah

Blah

Blah Blah

I'm staying home.

Hungry.

Blah

:(

Lately, a lot of people I know have become militantly individualistic. Individualism is imperative, yes, but there has to be a balance.

I've realized this because I kinda went holy warrior on the individualism thing the past couple of months.

The 'I' is important, yes, but not if it blinds you to things. Once you start being your own worst enemy, once you start cutting out the world around you - that's no good. I suppose its a paradigm - yourself as the only truth worth knowing, but its a paradigm that has made me unhappy the past few months. Unless you turn into like the Swiss family Robinson, except on purpose, there's no way that that paradigm can sustain itself without constant friction. And as I well know, excess friction just turns things into the previously mentioned war of attrition. Which is just stupid. Who wants to live life that way?

My personality ,unfortunately, favors engaging with my goddamn society. I'll always have an unparalleled degree of detachment or aloofness, because I need it. I don't really trust people or have faith in them to let too many get too close, and frankly I consider dealing with large numbers of people who try to get close a nuisance that I don't want to put up with. Ouch. But true.

Strange, considering that my name means - close, intimate, someone who is dear to your heart. When I prefer to skip in an out of that exalted region.

Perhaps its just youth.

I'm immature. Avowedly.

But I'm loving every moment.

Friendly Neighborhood Inchworm

This post actually has nothing to do with an inchworm. I just happen to love the photograph. Its so cute, and reminds me of the old house - where I found this poor unsuspecting inchworm.

Does anyone read this? I'm beginning to have serious doubts...Oh well...I shall go on shouting absurdly into cyberspace - for some reason its a indelible need.

I like big words. I love proper diction even more. This things become an inner dialogue. A little more stream of conscious -y than I intended. Wonderful.

It would seem that in addition to being a regular all round geek, I'm also an English geek. Not as in the nationality - that would just be stupid. (Says the girl that photographs inchworms in her free time - I think I've lost all right to judge lol)

I'm thirsty. This really isn't about anything - which isn't good.

Here's a list of Facts etc.

1. I don't enjoy television - its a waste of time. Nothing good is ever on and you have to wait for ads to finish.
2. White people are really thin
3. I enjoy working out. In a demure ladylike way though, not a buff man way. Haha, yea right. Demure. Ladylike. Me.
   
4. People on TV reality shows cry a lot. When they do, I change the channel
5. My sister and I enjoy wearing tourist T-shirts in our free time. Most of them are of places we've never been too.
   
6. There is a lot of sunlight in my room - it blinds me
7. I feel like I'm underground when I'm in my hostel room
   
8. I don't know why I'm making this list
9. I have mixed feelings about going back to college
10. When people stop being normal, they start being interesting
11. I am a quasi-narcissist
    

Saturday Nights at %$sil)n

Saturday nights in my new neighborhood ain't no everyday affair.

These people know how to celebrate. And the moods infectious. Ooooh Yea. (I'm can barely sit down right now. I'm about to embark on a full force bike ride to dissipate energy).

To the right is a child's birthday party. Full with green lawn, white frocks, pinata, sword fights and since this IS an expat neighborhood, light sabers. There are at least 40 waist high kids running around screaming on a beautiful Bangalore evening. Idyllic really is the word, for them at least. Because with kids birthdays, if you remember, the parties not over when the party is over...theres always the goody bag/return gift/loot that everyone gleefully waits for.

Behind us is a party getting ready to rock itself all night long, and though it is a middle aged persons party, i mean this quite literally. If the banners and decorations sound stage, speakers, DJ Console and lights are anything to go by, I get to stay up all night listening to great, amazing, good ol' Rock and Roll. As long as they don't bring a live band I'm good.

:) :) :)

Yes, I know, I'm not actually going to be at any of these parties...but hey, beggars can't be choosers.

And besides whats a great party without the people who would make it great.

:)

I'm Off!

Google Analytics, Pirate Ships, Being Let Down

I've been far too conventional of late. My posts are actually on a single topic! They have focus! I can't let this continue. Shame on me.

Actually, the only reason I continue to write on this blog besides a totally arbit need to communicate with the eternally stoic outside world, is because I've got a google analytics thing on it. So I know, that I have had 11 absolute unique visitors since late April who have spent an average of 3:57 seconds on this site. I salute you!

Pirate ships...what was it that I wanted to say? Oh yes. Since our stairs are now being oiled/varnished/sanded/painted they are effectively defunct. So we are required to enter the upstairs of the hosue by climbing a rickety old wooden ladder. Its so much fun. Now why didnt they have something like this when we were kids.

Oh yes, and Quarterlife the show...has let me down. The video blog component has reduced and the relationship drama is on the rise. Another victim of the demands of the braindead masses. Oh well.

One week left of vacation - must work on building up the fortress against good old college and my peers...who i just love.

Bangalore really is an amazing city. I love it.

Quarterlife

I'm in love with this online show called quarterlife. Simple enough story, a group of friends, their lives. But their thoughts, the things that cross their minds, are so parallel to what happens every day in my own head, that seeing it out there is like some kind of relief. Like I'm not the only crazy one thinking all these things - continuously.

I especially love two characters, Dylan and Eric.

Watch it, if you know me, you'll see why.

As if the show isn't amazing enough, the website...quarterlife.com (and i'd hyperlink if it wasnt 2 am and i wasnt tired), is this amazing forum for creativity. I suppose there are more like it on the internet, but i'd use this one simply because they were smart enought to promote their community by creating as an advert an original series. How better to expose a site geared towards creating, and sharing, and community than making an original creation of the very same. The audience that would love the show would be driven towards the site.

Humans are amazing really.

Creativity is the only God.

Feminism

This is from a while ago, never posted it

I've finally finished reading A Room of One's Own (Virginia Woolf).

Some passages were particularly striking. (Since when do I sound like a brit???)

If Virginia Woolf were still alive, I'd be in love with her I think. I mean this in an entirely platonic sense, obviously. A Room of One's Own didn't offer any new information, but confirmed some of my deepest beliefs, or rather misgivings, about people and the way we work.

"Life for both sexes...is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion as we are, it calls for confidence in oneself. Without self-confidence we are babes in the cradle. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable, most quickly? By feeling that one has some innate superiority - it may be wealth, or rank, a straight...for there is no end to the pathetic devices of the human imagination - over other people."

• My favorite example of imagined superiority and pompous self-confidence is that that occurs in postings, after a not normally diligent student has studied the requisite, and come forth, shining and superior in their armor of knowledge. I have not yet heard a more comical tone of voice than the lofty for-once-in-my-life-i-know-it-all-and-am-master-of-the-universe tone in which they address all us lesser mortals. I of course know this tone quite well because I'm quite liberal in my use of it ;).
  
• Errare humanum est
  

"So tortured and pulled asunder by her own contrary instincts"

• Recognize this person? I certainly do. Couldn't have worded it better myself.

"...the mind of an artist, in order to achieve the prodigious effort of freeing whole and entire the work that is in him, must be incandescent....there must be no obstacle in it, no foreign matter unconsumed."

• What I wouldn't give for an incandescent mind. If I consumed obstacles and foreign matter like I have been mangoes, I'd be unstoppable.

"How are we fallen!Fallen by mistaken rules,/And Education's more than Nature's fools;/Debarred from all improvements of the mind,/And to be dull, expected and designed;/And if some one would soar above the rest,With warmer fancy, and ambition pressed,/So strong the opposing faction still appears,/The hope to thrive can ne'er outweigh the fears."Lady Winchilsea (1661)

• Lucky for me, the sentiments expressed in this poem have not been particularly relevant. As a child I was actually been debarred from anything that sickens the mind, which of course is the opposite end of the spectrum. Yes, barbies may promote a negative body image and are anatomically inaccurate, but hey, when you're 5, does it really make a difference? And if you're still playing with barbies beyond that age...well, get a grip.
• Of late though i.e. India, I've been introduced to this attitude, which I did note even know existed. Not in areas of academic achievement, but personality development outside academics. This poem would just about do it for anyone who lives in contention with their society.

"It was a thousand pities that the woman who could write like that, whose mind was turned to nature and reflection, should have been forced to anger and bitterness."

• Positive mental imaging people
• But again, like I mentioned before, its a war of attrition. Anger and bitterness sometimes just take over.
  

Moving Day - AAAH!

I woke up this morning, happy and blissful in my sleepy-happiness and began to think about my life. (What else is new?)

Curled up in my bed, I came to a not so unobvious but nevertheless important realization.

About the weather in Bangalore.

The weather in Bangalore, even in the dead of summer, is harmless. Its not a physical presence, threatening to smother you with every breath you take. No, no, it goes about its business, and you go about yours. Rarely does it get in the way, its like an affable neighbor. The sunlight illuminates what needs to be illuminated. It serves the purpose of beauty, when it filters through the leaves in the garden outside. It makes the day, bright and cheery.

But never trust your neighbors, because you never really know who they are. The two-faces of the sun prove this beyond any inkling of a doubt. The weather aka the sun, in Chennai is actually the Grand Master of the Evil League of Evil (screw that dead horse or whatever guy). His life goal is to kill us with his intense bone scorching hotter than hell power. His militant, out of control, fuck you!, tyranny turns the otherwise happy, pleasant, sometimes even cultured people into well...Chennaiites - the summer edition. When he finds out that the more fortunate ones indulge in a mass exodus to saner places like Bangalore or Ooty, he burns even more wrathfully. The ones left in the city, well I fortunately don't know what happens to them, I tend to head the mass exodus.

But evil aside, I'm glad we live in Bangalore, where the weather is happy. And it likes me (the climactic pattern of Karnataka was created solely out of deference to me, of course). And it understands the concept of benign and indifference.

:)

On another note, we're MOVING!

The movers are here.

Ironically, despite all our cross-contiental moves - I was almost never around for the put your life and comfort zone in cold, dark, dank cardboard boxes and have them carted away by strange muscle men part of it. I'm afraid I'm not a fan. Especially when they put my books away; I really don't like. I can here them taping up boxes and sliding it across the floor as we...write. To that place. That commune of people in big shiny houses who seem more than a little out of touch with reality. (Because I'm so in tune :) )

On that note, I must go. Life supercedes this blog. Showers and other hygeine matters call. And if I am not careful, all my stuff may disappear, so I really should go now.

A Great Album

I just realized that I've never paid tribute to one of my favorite albums of all time. In Reverie by the Princeton, New Jersey band Saves the Day.

For those of you who keep up with latest releases, this album is old news. Released in 2003, people. But of course, great music is timeless.

Saves the Day has a sound that is truly, for lack of a better word, unique. I really haven't heard anything like them, and I've got quite an eclectic taste. On first listen, the lead singer's voice may seem nasal and puerile; the music - simplistic, poppy and unsophisticated. Its very likely that you will be tempted to write them off, as I did, as a group of uninspired teenagers with nothing to sing about and nothing worthwhile to offer.

These guys however, are the case to prove the point that first impressions are not everything. Oh no, not at all. You'll find yourself walking along the streets of wherever you live, humming their music. For no apparent reason. I'm not talking about stuck-in-my-head in the annoying, slightly embarrassing way that Britney Spears songs tend to get stuck, but in a way that creates a need for more.

And if you are the slightest bit enlightened, you'll go back and take a second listen, then maybe a third. If you still don't get it by that point, then keep trying, but not too hard. Music is supposed to be fun and personal after all. There's no point looking for something when your musical judgment may just be woefully inadequate.

What I hear in this album are lyrics so poetic, yet so simplistic, that they're beautiful without being out of reach. Layers upon layers of instrumentals - something new every time you listen. This music is malleable. It changes with your mood.

I can't get over the light/dark imagery. I'm a sucker for juxtaposition. Especially when despite the differences, there is a confluence, an entwining. A syzygy (the conjunction of two things without the loss of identity).Violent words and hyperbole, contrasted with gentle music and delivery - it gives me the chills.

The music really does put you In Reverie.

If anyone has given it a listen, let me know what you think!

Bitching - Read at Your Risk

Of late, its become exceedingly hard to blog.

The utter deterioration of my writing skills aside, I'm held back by a desire to uninhibitedly bare all, the need to keep myself at a healthy distance, and an irrational fear of grammatical errors. My backspace key might go into overuse exhaustion.

When did expression become so difficult?

Probably around the time I decided (yet again) that the only things that were constant enough to deserve my attention were books and music.

Its wonderful, yes, to listen to music and immerse yourself in another person's expression. There really isn't anything as pure, as untarnished as a good piece of music. Words don't match up for the simple reason that more than half the time, and perhaps this is my migraine talking, they are not sincere. A majority of conversations, are crap. Action is important. Words really don't mean much.

And at the end of the day, expressing yourself is the most important thing. Because if you can't do it adequately, you'll never lose that sense of isolation, nor will those around you.

I don't know if this makes sense beyond a teenager -esque angsty ramble, but its coming from somewhere obviously. Perhaps I should tap into that place.

On another note, the Cherry Tree at our soon to be home is now my favorite spot. Sitting there this morning, eating cherries and reading a book, was relaxing to a great degree.

I'm tired. I'm confused. I can't remember any....words.

Blast from the Past

English Period 8
December 2, 1999
Memory Narrative Final Draft

The Horrors of Automatic Lock Cars

Imagine coming back from a party, on a cold, dark night as a young child. Imagine how frightening it could be to be left in the car. That, is what happened to me on a cold, dark night, when I was young child.

I was five years old, a shy, and soft-spoken little girl. While my aunt was getting out of the car, I tried to tell her to unlock the door for me. But unfortunately, she and my cousin stepped out the door, with all the remnants of the party and somehow, forgot me in the car.

At first, I thought they were just going to step out and then help me out. By the time I realized that they had forgotten me, they were up the blacktop driveway and going through their white, garage door. As small as I was, I knew that all I had to do was undo the lock, and step out the door. But that day, luck was against me. My cousins had a blue Volvo where the doors opened only if the engine was on. Only then, did I realize that I could be stuck there the whole entire night.

I sat there in the pitch-black darkness, listening to the silence, The skinny, bony, skeleton-like branches seemed to be monsters hearing the insects buzz, and smelling the cooking from inside the house, and other figments of my imagination creeping towards me. Then, I started to cry. I was truly afraid, for the first time I remember. After crying for a while, I somehow, pulled myself together, and between sniffles tried to think. The warm, lights in the house somehow gave me courage, and hope. I could feel my heart beating, and heard the occasional roar of a motor, on the road. Suddenly, I had a great idea.

In my own car, I used to sometimes climb in and out of the window just for fun. If I could do the same thing here, then I would be free. I tried to find the window operator, but it was too dark. I almost gave up in despair. Then, I saw a figure walking towards me. I was so happy, I wanted to scream with joy, almost immediately, the figure slowly looked around, and not seeing me in the car turned around and went slowly back into the house.

Finally, my head hit something on the ceiling and the light in the car turned on. But as I said, luck was really against me that day and the window opener was the kind that opened only with the engine on. After waiting in tears for what seemed like eternity: I saw my father walking down towards me. I was so happy. My dad opened the door, and I ran out to him in delight. After that, we walked into the house where I could smell delicious food cooking, and the merry laugh of my family.

After that day, I was a lot less shy. I also decided I did not like Volvos. This silly event will always stay in my mind. Nowadays, if I were that quiet I would be eating, drinking, and sleeping in cars.