Slow Death

In the clock tick routine day, there comes at times a moment that forces you to think, to ask, to search, to belong. The once blissful solitude suddenly screams with the pain of lonliness and makes you wonder did you always make only the wrong choices. You try to serach the super confident optimism that once echoed, life is what you make it. You dial a number and probably never get through and if you do you never reach to the person you once knew. You open a book your all time best buddy and somehow each word seems to ask you another question until you are lost in the thoughts that make you wonder who is real, what is surreal. You play your favorite songs and each perhaps makes you feel more incomplete than ever. You plead, you writhe, you beg for release, until you become a slave of your own emotions. And that which was once your strength seems to have ruined you until there is no repaid. Tears don't help, the pain is too sharp, you know there is no healing and no turning back either. You dig deeper, open wounds, let the hurt flow, until you are drenched and your spirit turns blue...acheful.
Then comes the end, you slowly kill, bury, and write your own tombstone, "Here lies a me, who once knew joy, who once loved selflessly, who once danced to the song of life......now I am dead." The ritual done, you are ready to exist and wind yourself up into the next tick of the clock, cold, morbid, waiting to kill again.

-Monica

Absurdity Spells

Sleepless Slumbers
Wakeful Dreams
Soothing Pains
Acheful Comforts
Uncertain Committment
Lasting Fleeting
Unanswered Questions
Questionable Answers
Clear Shadows
Hazy Brightness
Lost Me
Found in You
My Glimpses of Absurdity
Absurdity Spells...

Book Thread - June 2010

Book: After Dark
Author: Haruki Murakami
My Thoughts - Great read...freshness in style, structure, story....nothing mundane

Set on the background of an hour by hour passing night in the gigantic Tokyo City, this 200-pager is a total delight for the reader. A page turner for its mysterious plot, a sensual treat for the lovely imagery, an innovative approach in its narrative technique, the book makes you take a deep breath, close your eyes and re-run the events on your mind's eye. The story of the in action Mari and in contrast to her asleep sister Ari woven alternately through short chapters and a 'point of view' as a narrator, brings to fore many practices in the dark, whether it is the passionate band rehearsels or thriving of love hotels for making a living and while all these surface story threads keep you focused, alert, and wondering what happens next? , running on the backburner yet of foremost importance is the life story of the central character Takahashi and the sisters Mari and Eri, who finally break the wall of disparate life and unite in the bond of sisterly love.

Point of high for me is the superb choice of words Murakami makes.

Some fav lines:
'Then as if inserting an emotional punctuation mark, she heaves a great sigh!'

'That people's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn't matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They're all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed'em to the fire, they're all just paper. The fire isn't thinking, 'Oh, this is Kant,' or 'Oh, this is the Yomiuri evening edition,' or 'Nice tits,' while it burns. To the fire they are nothing but scraps of paper. It's the exact same thing. Important memories, not-so-important memories, totally useless memories: there's no distinction-they're all just fuel"

-Monica

Shadow Play

Setting rays cast the magic spell and make the shadows dance
Up and down in a sprightly jig the shadows move in a trance
Little does their innocence know these moments are last and few
For with the dipping of the sun their happiness shall die too
And tomorrow when it shines up with the halo of its bright fame
Crazy shadows will be trapped to play anew the sun's pleasure game

-Monica

The Dead Day

The faint echo of the doorbell, the sharp trill of the alarm clock, the sunrays struggling against the window panes, the distant humdrum sounds……all signs of another day….no not the new refreshing dawn break, neither the bright hopeful beginning, just another routine run of the mill day….
I struggle to keep up to its expectation, I give in to the temptation of recreating the magic of the night and close my eyes…..I try to feel, to sense, to warm up to the beauty that last night held….I strain to hear the echoes of the sweet promising words, I crave to cuddle into the tenderness of belonging, I try to breathe the fragrance of togetherness…..but the spell seems to be broken. Instead of the colors my eyes search for, I sense a void….a snigger at my foolish dreams and a hollow laughter at my desperation.
My well tuned mechanical body clock ticks its fake chime of rise and shine……rise and shine I ask myself? Yes it’s time to say good morning to reality……to a dead morning that wakes on the funeral ashes of half weaved, impermanent, colorful dreams. I get up.

Movie Thread - May

Movie: Rain Man
Cast: Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise

Monica likes it as a one time watch.

A good attempt at a touching story, but honestly misses to touch that chord within. Tom Cruise, our good old hurt-vengance Charlie, on the death of his father discovers that he actually has an autistic big bro Ray. On a get even attempt to be an equal beneficiary of their rich dad's inheritance, Tom 'steals' bro Ray out of the Instituition. The return back home to LA to get an official custody and thereby the inheritance, turns into a learning and discovering journey not only of the genius and lost childhood Rain Man big bro Ray is, but also a trip into self exploration. Dealing with a failed business, care taking of an autistic brother, coming to terms with a traumatic loveless childhood to finally using bro for minting money at casion but equally attending to his pancake, K-mart shorts, and wanting to learn dancing needs, spoilt lil Charlie finally becomes Ray's Main Man.

Separation at the end, due to Ray's requirement to retun to the instituition then only spells reuniting of two brothers bonded in love than inheritance.

And btw Valeria Golino does play her sweet caring girl friend self well though editing her role out will not make the slightest difference to the movie...quite a wasted charater then.

Like I said earlier, a good one time watch, will make you smile often and maybe moisten your eyes too.

Book Thread - May 2010

Book Name: 44 Scotland Street
Author: Alexander McCall Smith

Since I read this book before I decided to write about books I read, I am only writing a quick excerpt here. Nothing against the book, but I would feel I am not doing justice to the many others I read before. So as I have decided I will start from what my reads are currently. So is me :-)
Coming back to 44 Scotland Street, no second thoughts, the book is an absolute fun read...quick, interesting, and light. Focusing on the typical English society with its many shades, the story has multiple threads intervowen through its central character Pat. Each thread focuses on charaters and relationships and brings to liget the farce that is society and the warmth of true friends. Does not make you emotinally charged, but leaves you with a fond smile and hope that you lay your hands on another McCall Smith soon for a lazy Sunday afternoon!

My fav thread - Irene and her son Bertie

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Book Name - South of the Border, West of the Sun
Author - Haruki Murakami

Since I first picked up Murakami by chance, my opinion about this gripping author has not changed, he sure writes intersting stuff in a welcome fresh style, whether it be his left to concluion thrillers, his page turner short sories, or his pleasing to the senses passionate love sagas.

I read South of the Border, West of the Sun start to finish yesterday and this 186 and a half pager to be precise, still has its spell on me. I know hat sounds a like an overstatement but the book makes you live through emotions so strongly it is difficult to close it and brush away that unsettling feeling within you to another day. The beauty is no one is a hero and no one the bad guy, weaving the love stroy through the central character Hajime and his childhood admiration who remains his soulmate Shimamoto-san, the book remains clean of judgement. As a reader, it is difficult to pin down any character as black or white, you simply accpet them as they come, with their flaws yet their beauty. As in all his writings I have read so far, this love story too is a treat of passion to the senses and leaves you high through some passages. It is also a depiction of the frgility and wekneses of humans albeit without the right or wrong tag, this I think is the beauty and strength of it. Most stongly the sense of hopelessness and sadness runs through the book and it is on a very rare occasion that you find yourself smile in a carefree fashion. Mostly a tear striken smile is what remains but the book makes you want to go wild and cry your heart out without shame. It does not glorify pain but if you are as emotional a heart as me (or maybe more) and have experienced the sweetness, beauty, and biterness that is love then you are sure to read this book through the end and feel that light sense of pain that remains....especially the last couple of chapters make it difficult to remain strong and not break down.

Will not forget the manner in which Izumi is portrayed in the concluding chapters of the book. Glass, hardness, void......the emotions are on a all time tumult with her icy coldness......my irrepairable dmamaged inspiration.

Also a salute to Yukiko for the undying spirit of loyalty and coming to terms with reality, something I am sure each one struggles with.

Murakami might have been a pick by chance bu it certainly remians a pick of choice for a long time to come.

My Silvers

Knowing shatters all hopes and brings bitternesss along,
When I know not what, I continue to hope in spite of hope,
At least then deep within the silver imaginations live,
So let me lie in my make-belive silver web,
And then when I have to die let the silver strings strangle me,
To my ideal ignorant death.

-Monica

Once There Was a Me

I sit back and look at the shards that were once me,
A few minutes back I tore myself to pieces,
And bit by bit I let each burn to ashes,
Now the handful of ashes stare back smilingly..fondly perhaps!
I carve me out of you then,
Untouched, Unbroken, Unattached...
Now I do not cry, but keep wondering how to smile?
Now I do not hope, but I have forgotten what it was to dream too
Now I do not hate myself, but have lost my ability to love as well

So now I gather the ashes and let them flow into the colorless seas,
never to find me and never to be found again.

-Monica

A New Attempt: Books and Movie Thread by Monica the Critic ;-)

With the race against time life I choose to live, my only savior angels and books and movies (though the frequency graph is a all time low, in fact it has hit rock bottom). Now I quite give myself the airs because I get frequent calls and messages seeking recommendations on what to read what to watch etc. And though the 29 years of life are fast catching up and my foot nears the grave, which in simpler terms makes me forget names, numbers, books, and movies, I quite fancy myself thinking o it is just the stress of super busy life I have pushed myself into, but well the real secret is I am growing old  Now I hope I didn’t say that too loud. But well even if I had said it in undertones, anyone would understand by the fact that I have already wasted a long paragraph to say something as simple as I forget stuff and then it is most embarrassing when I begin to say o that author its on the tip of my tongue, o you must watch this movie, now what’s it called now……?
So I have decided to maintain a thread on movies I watch and books I read to make life simpler and also to high standards on my consultancy advice, not to mention the fringe benefit of being able to pass on my blog link to many and creating potential readers ;-)
Now I know that you know that I am trying very hard, this is not me and not my style……I am actually killing the humor…..this post looks like a Cntrl C-Cntrl V attempt and looks like the Cntrl C didn’t work quite well….so will stop the jazz right here……about to watc Secret Window and The Grand Illusion post lunch…will update soon.

Irrepairable Damage

Ends and losses are always painful, they leave a void within, a vacuum that never can be filled come what may, even when time comes jauntily by and offers to be the proverbial healer. I seem to have lost a special part of me the other day and yes I feel the vacuum where a friend used to be earlier. Now I may not have been a responsible daughter or the feel good sister, but I have always felt (or maybe I should start using past tense)….so I used to always believe and feel good about being a true friend, a real friend, someone with whom you can laugh and cry and I genuinely felt I was one such. However now that is lost. So how did I manage to lose the friend that I always believed I was? Did someone better come along, someone a better friend than me? Well you don’t end being a friend if someone better comes along, you just remain all the more, no matter who comes along. Then? I didn’t cease being a friend by myself, but the joy, the love, the right, the responsibility of being a friend was taken away from me, I was declared to not have the capability of being a friend. I therefore feel the loss so strongly. So now there is a vacuum, where the friend in me earlier used to be and I do not know what to fill it with, because where will I find another friend like me?
Some damages are irreparable, my damaged emotion of being a friend for instance.

-Monica

Fragments

I lived with a memory
I loved a dream
You destroyed that memory
I shattered that dream

Now I live with a self
That is really not me
For the memory took the dream with it
And the dream is but a broken memory...

The Road

This road has taken almost human dimensions for me. So much so much so much do I share with it and like a true friend it silently listens without complaining, without judging, and most importantly without ignoring me, or at least I say that to myself and smile.

I go to and fro on this road at least once a day on a usual routine workday and then sometimes even twice or thrice to meet my work needs, personal needs, and mostly to meet my own expectations for my one-sided love. This road then hears me speak out my unvoiced thoughts aloud. It knows all about what happened on any given day at work or about an evening I spent with friends and most certainly about my love life. Maybe by now it can guess my moods and feelings based on how slow or fast I drive, the songs I hum, or the cuss words (my vocab is limited to such an idiot, stupid, crazy fellow…but nevertheless it is a clue) I mutter under my breath.

If someone were to ever talk about me am sure this road would certainly have the opinion of been there done that over me. It has seen me alone and it has seen me lonely too. It has seen me with my friends and with my love also. Our crazy rush at top speed (40 is the fastest my good ol’ scooty manages) to meet the hurried mornings, our easy pleasure rides to embrace the serene evenings, our laughter, and my tears…this road has witnessed it all. An accident has also been its fair share!

It hears my many thoughts, shares my anxiety and my excitements. I know it feels my pain too and so at times I just stop by the side, waiting to get a hold of myself and be me again. It caresses me with a pleasant breeze as I warm up to the thoughts of a cuddle and it drenches me with raindrops as I breakdown in hopelessness. At times I feel its sharp windy slaps when I succumb to anger and frustration. It takes so much of me, my feelings, my thoughts, my moods that I almost feel indebted for its patience and devotion. Yet each day it remains as is stretching out welcoming me with all my closet cobwebs and my dreams of future.

I am all grateful to you my dear road for being the bridge between loneliness and love, for being my pathway to passion, for being my conduit of responsibility, and my reckless carefree mate who shall one day connect this world to that.

-Monica

A Thought

I wonder at times, why am I the second choice for everyone....including myself?

Maybe the answer lies right there...

Some grey thoughts...

It is a very grey morning, devoid of blinding brightness, yet not dipped totally in the darks either. In a sense it is the soothing grey that lies between the dark and the bright. I am alone today, after quite some tiime and alone in the true sense, which means not just without anyone around me but also without anyone else occupying my thoughts. Not that I have reached the epitome of peace by being devoid of thought, but that my thoughts are focused on my own self. Infact it is like the grey morning seems to have colored my thoughts in its hues, my cloded thoughts, through which peep some very clear memories. And with these memories comes a sense of contentment. Quite strangely, I am not crying, I don't even feel the pain, I just feel content. I think back of the many things that made me happy once upon a time, and even their vague outlines bring back a smile on my face. I also remember all that has caused too much pain, tears, sleeplessness, medicines, flashes, hopelessness....but all this which has given me the strength to live through it too, giving me the been there done that feeling, and almost a temptation to tell myself, am not that bad after all. Now I smile again.

I have to make an effort to hold my thoughts from flowing in the present with all its uncertainities yet its beauty, because the moment the present claims my attention, I would want to disown my past and stop the future from creeping in. I am happy saying this too because for once this means I am really living in the present, a very beautiful present. It has all its surprises and all its schoks, yet in its own way it is undetered. It holds a promise without a commitment, it holds timlessness in every fleeting moment, and it holds relief knowing it is mine.

-Monica

A new pain

I experienced pain yet again, one more time I let myself be claimed by it, fast....engulfing...choking.....benumbing. But this time it was the physical manifestation of it. A strange feeling in the deep of my heart, something tugging, something pulling, something sucking all of me in it, like an inbuilt vaccum. It left me helpless, listless, and I truly hope without hope too....but who knows really.

And then it was darkness all around, I shut the world around me, buried my head into the chaos and then heard the clock tick time by.

This time my tears left me bereft.

-Monica

Strange Realization

Whether it is someone I lose or someone I find...I remain bereft.

A litlle bit of it...

I want a simple day
Not one filled with sunshine
But neither one thats clad in grey...

I want a serene sun down
Not one with melting hues
But neither one that besets darkness...

I want a silent night
Not one burning with passion
But neither one thats bereft in pain...

I want a piece of the sky
Not one with starry silvers
But neither one thats dipped in darkness...

I want a handful of earth
Not one with blossoms of nature
But neither one thats arid dry...

I want a gulp of the seas
Not one with a pearly bosom
But neither one thats a wild uproar...

I want a slice of happiness
Not one that lasts forever
But neither one that defines impermanance...

I want a bit of myself
Not one that knows not me
But neither one that is not you...

I want my share of sanity
Not one thats know and be all
But neither one thats devoid of the echo of insanity...

-Mon

That Night

I feel the bitterness grow in me
And I almost taste the venom
The unsettling restlessness
The unending timelessness
The sheer nothingness
Of all that was ours together
I feel alone again
The presence a mere existence
I feel bereft again
Our togetherness a mere pretence
But mostly I feel incapable to be me
For long back on that silvery cloudy thunderous night
I gave away all to you
So now as we walk farther away each day
I find me trailing you
For my spirit is gone and I went too
On that beautiful silvery cloudy thunderous night with you
So now I look for the stars
The magical moon
The melting clouds
The wild winds
To question why they cheated me on that passionate beautiful silvery cloudy thunderous night
I want to know how it all happened
How I lost myself in you
How I stopped knowing myself
How I ended being me
On this long dark lonesome tumultuous night when the only thing I do...
is still secretly wish for you

-Monica

For my 5 minute nomad

He is a nomad. He promises you 5 minutes of his life, or more correctly 5 minutes of life and then moves on.

In these five minutes you must decide whether you want to:
Listen to his never ending stories and be lost in the world of magic
Beguile into the world of chaotic temptations through his writings
Dream of the neverlands in his warm embrace
Be banged back into reality with his ‘hit the nail’ advice
Cry out in his lap till you find yourself
Rest your head on his shoulders and experience peace
Be lost in his lyin’ eyes to never find yourself again

Hold on to him and let him go until what is left for you is:
Writhe in unknowing uncertainties for ever after
Pine for the passion of impermanence
Wish for the beauty to re-create itself
Breathe his memories and await his return

Until……
You live only to love him
Hope only to be his own
Desire to melt in his arms just one last time
Lose all of you and become him

-Monica

Open-Close-Harmony

I close my eyes
And the silvers shimmer
I open them
And the magic breaks

I close my eyes
And the stars sing out
I open them
To find deadness prevails

I close my eyes
And glow in love
I open them
To freeze in pain

I spend a day
I spend a night
And then I open and close again

I close my eyes
And chaos chimes
I open them
To a hollow voice

I close my eyes
With pounding thunders
I open them
To bleeding thoughts

I close my eyes
In ruthless turmoil
I open them
In frigid rigidity

…And then on some empty, vacant, bare day,
I close my eyes
And darkness engulfs
I open them
To be soothed by dark
….My Harmony

-Monica

Restless yet Relentless

I am a wild wanderer
In tryst with stability
My world whirls around me
And alien emotions choke me
I want to express so much, yet stifled is all I feel
I want to cry and break through yet frozen is how I feel
I yearn for you through the icy glass of uncertainty
And shiver with trepidation of evading thoughts
I want to hold you tight and never let you go
And I want to leave you free and long for you to return
Tell me what do I do?
Where do I take this wandering spirit, these mindless thoughts, this broken soul?
Will you heal it with your love?
Or will you sail away with the tide, leaving me a wanderer in wilderness?

All I wish is this magic to never die
Or if it has to then may it end with me in your embrace

-Monica

Purple, Purple, Purple...

Purple purple purple
It is purple thorns everywhere
A thorn called guilt
A thorn called shame
A thorn called pain
They prick and make me bleed a dark blood
I pull them out one by one
They leave deep gashes all over me
The bleeding gashes sooth me now
And cast their dark shadows
I hide in the purple darkness
Afraid of sun and light
I shield in the pain of isolation
Scarred but scared of your healing love
I close I shut I stop
No more No more No more
I stop trying to make you mine
I stop hoping for togetherness
I stop breathing your fragrance
I stop craving your warmth
I know my place and that of all
I know I will never belong
Purple thorns, purple gashes, purple shadows are all mine
The thorns don’t prick and the blood has stopped
But the throbbing remains and ever will
I scratch the wounds where they hurt most
But the blood has gone dead cold
They find expression in my tears
The salty tears I drink
I take a piece of ice and rub the purple anew
Purple purple purple
The marks are all that’s left

-Monica