Island life

"No man is an island entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent
A part of the main"
- John Donne

But lately many of us have been operating from our island mode.

The fear of the virus is taming the social animal within us, and not all of us are responding well to this. But, we have all been reacting in our own ways.

For a while social media kept us connected. Together we went through the different phases of lockdown life - the kitchen experiments, the garden improvements, the zoom calls, the cool pyjama looks, the learn a new skill phase, the Netflix overloaded groggy eyes, the previous travel photo re-uploads, the hashtags of new normal...  to eventually now, when it is no longer new.

Now, after a good 6 months or more, some of us are beginning to understand what it means to live in this new world... which surprisingly looks not so different to the old. Everyday is very similar to the previous. And it is becoming a lot more difficult to whip up a new trend to remain excited or entertained by it all.

Our survival instinct tells us that we should adapt to this 'change' but to me it seems a little ironic, when everything around us seem so unchanging and static.

It is no longer an apocalyptic drama, but a cold reality which seeps into us and becomes part of us. We are no longer frazzled by the numbers, the deaths, the business and the economic losses. Although some of us are still waiting, we don't really know for what, and when.

I wanted to write a story of me embracing my island life, but it is turning out to be that of the island slowly engulfing me. I know the answer lies in my ability to change the lens with which I look at the world, but this is easier said than done.

For today, let me just focus on not sinking, I guess.

Happiness, punctuated.

Shiawase 幸せ- It's the Japanese term for happiness.

But my interpretation of this happiness is not the giddy feeling of overwhelming ecstasy. Instead it is more like a lying down in the field, looking up at the sky, watching clouds float by while being aware of your beating heart - kind of feeling. You know, the kind where your heart is filled with gratefulness towards the universe, simply because of the existence of this very moment.

It probably takes years of living, breathing, dreaming, failing, falling and restarting to get to such a moment, and will definitely take more of the same to recreate another similar instant. But when in such a moment, a smile escapes you, in spite of this understanding, I guess you can call it happiness?

I have always been a coward when it comes to this flavour of this particular emotion. Always insecure that admitting something like this would open me up to pain and hurt. I am not sure when in life I became so protective about myself and why, but it felt as if it is taboo or a vulgar state of mind.

But the fact that today I simply allowed myself - in fact I didn't even have control over it, so cannot say "I allowed it" - to feel this way, and say it out aloud without running away from it - probably means something. 

And this 'something' is probably nothing too big or small; it simply is a semicolon in the passage of my life.

My time with time

Displaced

A frozen moment

disturbed by chirping crickets

- Already summer?

Clarity

Driving on high-speed

motorway be like, one step

and then a-n-o-t-h-e-r.

Last few months I have been witnessing this elastic property of time. Like it stretches on for a while, almost paused, allowing me to pay attention to even the gentlest sounds of breeze or a crunch from the leaf that I stepped on. 

And then again at times it feels like I suddenly woke up in another time or a different season, kind of shifted from where I was. I don't know if this is just me, or if the lockdown has been making people feel a bit disoriented. Whatever it is, I decided to make these little haikus of some of these unique experiences within my head that I have been going through.

Would love to hear your story too.

The new normal

I keep hearing the term a 'new normal' too many times these days. And I cannot deny that the past few months has been instrumental in me finally picking up on the weakened voices inside my head.

I wonder what long term mutations we went through during our isolation and disconnection time.

...

Anticipation

A world disconnected,

and dire, apocalyptic -

end of season 1.

The new romantic

Could you avoid me?

If you do truly love me,

this midsummer night.
...

As expected, the concoction of too much sleep the morning before, a coffee consumed late in the day stirred together with (now) once-a-decade kind of rare creative juice flowing meant that I was awake most of last night.

In it together

Keeping with times is important. And when it is not possible to keep running, trying to make tiny, minuscule attempts of movement is better than not doing anything.

And so here is today's attempt at revival of the writer in me. Or better still, revival of the person, who was capable of holding a thought until it's discovery through expression.

In it, together

Friends and coworkers,

  Cohabitants and lovers,

Coviding 'gether

P.S.
This is my first haiku attempt - A Japanese art of writing a poem with three basic constructs:

• 5-7-5 syllable
• Seasonal element (kigo)
• and most important - A cutting word (kireji) which juxtaposes two ideas. 

To my speck-tacular self...

Quick, I need to capitalise on this flow.

Ride the waves of this perfect rhythm that is propelling me forward. At times like this I always feel like standing with my arms open and accept- wait not even that - possibly challenge myself to stand up and be more than a speck while a drone camera is circling around me and taking the perfect zoom out shot.

Not that there is a problem being a speck. Every speck has a life of its own. Especially when you look at that speck through a magnifying glass and zoom into its delicate, symmetrical fractal self, repeating and asserting itself. Who am I to deny this beauty?

Speaking of beauty, a concept so ephemeral and dynamic, yet we want to put a lock and key on it by defining it through a myopic lens of branded posters. Seriously, how did we even fool ourselves into loving static images of ourselves, when in reality we are such fluid and ever-morphing beings?

Sometimes I end up having these real honest conversations with people who I think don't really understand me. So once when one such person asked when I'd be ready to write my book, I simply told him I will do so, when I find the courage to be openly vulnerable, and that I am not there yet.

And this really is the honest truth. I have known since a while now that the reason I cannot write content that I myself like reading back, is because I have fallen into the habit of hiding behind words. Art is a double edged sword. It can be used to express yourself, but also to create a pretend wall that can hide you from yourself. And there is never a single answer. Some people revel in creating make belief universes, but for me I never felt comfortable with that genre. I know for me to be able to write, I have to allow myself to reveal the truth, the mediocrity, the darkness, the insecurities, and the myriads of not so dramatic anti-climatic relationships that make me what I am today. I have to own my every little nothing, and even if I am not proud of them, at least be accepting of them to be able to create my kind of expression for my kind of audience.

And my favourite audience has always been this electronic void - even today, as I come back to you, without any polish and rather low self confidence as a writer, I still want you to feel what I am feeling, and understand me, as you do yourself.

Fight club - return rendition

Fight

The only word that seems to always make sense. The only word that I don't want to hear, because I am afraid it would need me to move my arse.

Having gone through a phase of being a perfect consumer, I have come to observe something. There is content that makes you smile, cry, be frustrated, rejoice, hope or feel good - that's just drama. They know what they are doing. There are page turners, and those that hit you hard and make you pause and think. In the end though, you move on to the next one.

But every once in a while something comes along and makes you want to fight. Fight for yourself, fight back. Save yourself from becoming merely a consumer, but stand up and be part of life. Or just be something.

In the past I had many such moments. During those impulsive moments, I have made step changes to the course of my life. These days however, it is hard to come by anything or anyone that moves me that much. Is it because I am not paying attention? The world outside seems to only affect me on the surface. Like no wound is deep enough. Like everything is a mere moment, disappearing before it even takes a concrete shape.

Is it that the pace of life is such, we have to fit in too much in too less a time?

Or is that time is only an illusion?

Am I running out of excuses?

It is silly to look for an excuse to want to claim back your life, right?

At this point I will accept even a short return of faith. Because there really is no point in life, if we don't fight any more. Fight to be something.

Alas, that's the only word that makes sense, after all.

p.s. After my previous mournful account of one sided love, I guess I should have taken the time to at least say that it was not all that unrequited after all... I guess I was not rejected. For more than a year, I thrived in that joy and even today, I am not sad. I am grateful for the acceptance, and for being loved back by the place I fell so in love with. Today's monologue is not about feeling sorry for myself, but on the contrary it is because of the love and acceptance that I have always received in life, I always feel I am not living up to the expectation from myself. Like I know I can do more, but I choose to vegetate at times, and make silly excuses to justify vegetating like saying 'it's only organic'.