Life at Cross-Roads

There's no going forward, and there's no going backward, for it's not a regressive backward, it's not a forward-leap, either, for how do you know which is which, when can you ever claim to figure the coordinates of any point in infinity? There is no path because the path e-merged from the whole. To be sure, all paths lead us there, but all paths had begun from there, so there's no mid-point limbo where you're stuck. And all those paths, they spilled in all directions, criss-crossing each other, overlapping each other, like strains of water sliding down fogged-up window, suddenly giving you glimpses into the other end.

Tug of War

While I try to figure

Which is the trigger

And which the consequence,

A battle breaks out

Externalities cave in.

Simultaneity takes on a horrid meaning.

Anticipation becomes the catalyst

Of a demon that I created

But know not how to kill.

I forget where my comfort zone lies

In the sphere of my inability

To face, to do things all these years,

Or the realm I wanted to leap to.

There's no single-leap shortcut though,

I've been crawling all the while

With my head buried in the sand.

P.S. My stubborn mind preferred the stagnant familiarity. I don't. I had to distinguish between the two till I won the war.

Experiences

As they say

Words fall short to describe experiences.

Photographs are still pixels away

From being a reflection

Of one's memory -

A refracted reflection,

Of the experience itself.

So what about hopes

To capture, treasure memories for this lifetime?

What about people

Who love to imagine,

And spend their lives

Living on memories

Of those imagined sights,

Scenes, smells and people?

How much more real is our world from theirs', I wonder.

Epilogue: Memories are interpretations. Memories are karma. Retrospection is imagination in an inverted frame, or a regressive mode.

Puzzled Enemy

There’s vengeance gnashing its teeth

The anger, blindfolded,  

Flagellates at my insides

Churning out a fresh helping

Of supine decay,

Feeding its crippled existence.

I shrink at the sight

Of fingers pointing at me

To then direct wobbly steps  

Of melting courage

To be able to peer at

The faces behind

The exclamations

Of accusations aimed at me.

Till I bump against a mirror,

That, I had thought to be a window.

My palms scramble for strength

Clamped on to the mirror

As I slip on to the floor

I hope the aches will

Numb me into sleep,

Till I wake up

To fidgeting arms and feet,

As the glass ceiling above shatters

To reveal in mockery

A mirrored ceiling right above,

Which I had thought to be the sky

Before I had entered the room.

 P.S. The mind is its own worst enemy. 

On Education

Indeed, over the years, all the definitions, I scooped up for exams, have been washed out from the accessible corners of my memory, thanks to them getting used to not being summoned for recollection. This is of course, barring a few things which happened to be of interest to me. For I still remember the day when mom-dad woke me up to have me get ready and wear a new set of clothes, socks and polished shoes, when I realised that was to be my first day at school. Since then, I have only gotten used to knowing, and not understanding education in the context of fourteen years spent at school, besides college, and in terms of qualifications that keep getting dropped like fused bombs around me. Taking up literature for my graduate course, is probably the best decision I have taken so far in terms of pursuing something that caught my interest. Learning and remembering things taught at school perfectly, and trying to pin them in all four corners of my memory, through semantic codewords, if I may term them so, sounded a little restricting, then and now. For despite 'words' being frightfully cradled by 'definitions', things go haywire. Miscommunication, failures, and so on.

Experiences or observations, translated into retrospective memories, having left most vivid of impressions on my memory/mind, are one of the few things I instinctively refer to, when stuck in situations I need to get the better of. Also, I would any day prefer to have something catch my curiosity and have me chase that thought till I reach a hypothesis, a conclusion, never mind if it's a dead-end. I don't want to wait for concepts to squint my very vision of myself, the world, and all that exists, and all that waits to be discovered. I would rather die thinking too much of things that make me wonder, with me progressing towards it, one step at a time, some forward, some backward, for the aim remains to go one level up in another dimension. That is when I day-dreamingly wonder when, or rather IF, I'll get to use a few or every thing I 'absorbed' like a sponge in moments of 'devoted student-hood'. And that's also when in a half-correcting, half-disappointed mode I remember what I've heard often - 'Every moment of your life, has something to teach, just that you realise the worth of it at such-and-such time.', and that's when I feel, that it doesn't seem to fit in with this situation. Maybe education in this symbolic order is just, self-regressive in nature. One that you may be aware of, but not necessarily be able to help.

The Dance of Shadows

There are days
When I walk out of the studio,
Disappointed with my performance,
Because today fear, not dance,
Made me finish the steps on time.
I can't mug up steps at the flick of a finger, you see.
I admit I have been lazy about self-practice.
I bet no one dances as beautifully
As I do in my visualizations
And some days I do amaze myself
As I perform the routine.
But when fear cripples me,
Paralyses my arms and limbs,
I wince at the instructor's polite rebuke
I knew it was coming.

The song is replayed,
Batchmates cheer
I wake up
My passion frees me
As I leap into the routine with a
5! 6!, and 5, 6, 7 AND. . . !!



P.S  And you thought your fears don't fear you?

Identity

They, you and I.
Are?
Interpretations, opinions, 
Fears and convictions,
Likes-dislikes,
History and anticipations,
Of life.
All, save the living of it, maybe?

A song heard months back in time
You mused over the major & minor,
I'd pondered over the rhyme.
Each of us 
As convinced about its presence.
Winter tastes different in my memory.

Epilogue: 
You must choose between
His bespectacled vision 
And my retrospective conclusion
But you must know 
Which you chose
And why.


Context: 

We live but one interpretation [actions being interpretations] of our experiences, chosen on impulse at times, shortlisted by some preset path on other occasions. Is it about the choices chosen and lived? It isn't so much about 'your' life really, that being a myth for we are constantly interacting with many other lives every day. An interaction of interpretations hence, converts to fears, beliefs, and so on. But what about our identity in essence?

Is life to be described in terms of the experiences [and their interpretation] that I may have had [hence unique to me and to the world] - like the difference in reflections of convex and concave mirrors of the same object, for instance. And how those experiences molded me [or I let them!], my beliefs, and preferences, since that too is a unique cluster held together under the umbrella of a name? 

What about the infinite lurking before and after - Are we the entity or the impressions?