Anthem for Doomed Youth

Background Music: Lament by All Angels

Once in a while, I like to post the works of poets whose words inspire me. Without literature, my mind would lie barren. Here is a famous poem written in World War 1, by Wilfred Owen, called 'Anthem for Doomed Youth'. Think deep and let every metaphor set your thoughts aflame.

Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

...

Untitled Dreams

Background Music: Speed of Sound by Coldplay

Words. They seem to quench an undying thirst inside of me. When I read a novel, my hands quiver with the love I feel towards every syllable, every comma. These words stand plain and lifeless until they are opened, and like a flower, they bloom in our minds and nourish our existence.

I need it. Even if I consciously avoid it, I can feel my tongue forming words inside my mouth, my thoughts aligning themselves into words, sentences, paragraphs. There is no moment more romantic than that. You are barely aware of your surroundings yet the world inside your head throbs with purpose and meaning.

Do you realise that when you die, all that anchor you are your yellowing manuscripts? The untouched manuscripts pages which live for you, exist for you. Emotions you thought you were never capable of drip out, like tears, a fountain of truth and lies. Because for us, illusions and reality are childhood friends that link arms and walk the paths of our imagination.

I can feel the unhesitant footsteps entering my soul, and encouraging me to run. Run forever in the fields of language, the stars of expression, the winds of freedom...all controlled by the tides of inspiration.

I am submerged in the waves.

Saying goodbye

Background Music: Atonement from the Atonement Soundtrack

I am sitting here, in my room, trying to plough through my work and battling thousands of feelings leaking through the cracks in my sanity. That was when this song began playing and suddenly, the bottled emotions burst open and now I find myself sorting out the glass pieces and its contents spat across this floor.

Memories enter in drops and leave me in an ocean to drown.

My heart ached, my tear glands awakened from their dry slumber. Suddenly all my pain and grief was focussed on the loss in my life. Death. Of my grandmother. Sometimes, you never realise how much a person co-existed with your life until they leave you. When their ghost wanders around amongst the loneliness. When silence becomes suffocating. When the pain throbs through your thoughts. It's knowing that someone's missing that causes time to constrict. The past opens up, like a black hole, drawing me inwards. The laughs, now echoes. The hugs, now a vacuum, the smiles, now frozen in photographs.

I miss you. More than words can ever express.

The Edge

Background Music: Maestoso by Frederic Chopin

Funny isn't it, how a substantial part of our lies balance on the edge of the cliff of trust and happiness. I usually peep over and look down at the fall, the dive into suspicion and paranoia; at the hungry waters, licking away the base of the cliff and devouring every sense of faith.

So, I keep standing there, at the edge of my cliff, contemplating my fate. Will I stand here forever, loving you, holding you in the tight grip of my hug, or let you wander away as I wait; wait until my heart has gone cold? Should I dive into the ocean, the beckoning dance of the hypnotic blue and the giggling white waves? Its mysterious darkness where I may find silence and peace. How it calls to me, deceiving me, luring me with its coy finger, tightening the veins around my neck, and constricting my breath. Yet the wind behind my back taps on my shoulder, climbs up my spine, pulling me away, reminding me of the need to believe, to trust in my world. It tugs at my heart, circles me in earnest and sets my thoughts aflight -- hopes, dreams, love, joy. I don't trust either, both have a tug of war, and I am the rope in the middle.

And I still stand. On the edge. One leg brushing the emptiness of the world below me, where my life escapes, one leg rooted to the earth, where my life blooms. I'll be there. You will find me there. Standing. Watching. Musing.

Memories

Background Music: How to Save a Life

I have always believed in the significance of those around me, moulding my life and carving the finer folds and layers of my skin. Somehow, everyone seems to have contributed to my papier mache model -- plastering paper, washing with glue, and flooding with paint. And occasionally, some paper peels away (thanks to the innocent imperfections of all my creators) and links with a whole new world, like a child's fingers groping the uncertainties of every moment. This is the moment of self-realisation, when stability tears away to reveal the honest simplicities within.

The fear of external influences lingered within me. I was afraid that I was becoming someone I was not, juggling masks and forcing them on my weary face forever. But this uncomfortable thought was replaced by a the reassurance of finding a part of myself in the journey. They all unleashed a dimension in me that lay buried in the silent depths of my turbulent surface.

Thank you. This is to everyone. For the smiles, the tears, the photographs, the bruises, the confidence, the embarrassment. For making me smile involuntarily at my past, despite falls and giggles as we hike through our hills and valleys.

Laws of Motion

In physics, or any science for that matter, you usually get two answers, or two explanations. One is 'in theory' and the other 'in practice'. Take our pillar of wisdom, dear Mr. Newton and his laws of motions. An object will continue to move at a constant velocity unless acted upon by an external force. Famously, the object would keep persevering forward, till even the milestone called 'eternity' has been passed long ago. As many philosophers so optimistically claim, our human spirit is undying, forever racing ahead, nothing to slow us down. Then why does a ball which you roll across the floor crawl to a stop after a while? There comes the spouse of the laws of motion! Friction. Hand in hand with life, it seems to be determined to stop us all, to draw a line to our desires, to leave the faultlines of disillusionment on our skin.

Similarly, the fibres of my existence is torn between the branches of these two very opposite directions of what you dream of doing and what you do. Paths which lead away from each other but seem to sleep under the same category called life. The result? Choices. Tears. And a small flame coughs up and dies within you. Although most of the time, my emotions lie underground, forgotten and hidden, they resurface when the ground is churned, and the poppies grow out amidst all the destruction. I will grow. I will find happiness.

Searching...looking...dragging burdens the entire time and finding the smiles of yesterday.

The piano keys to the locked doors

Background Music: Nocturne in C-sharp minor by Frederic Chopin

The soft sounds are like whispers in my ear. It seems to thrust itself into the muffled noises our lives have reduced to. A quiet tinkle, so subtle like that of a dew drop falling from a leaf, yet so powerful as those rain storms that whips up your blood and allows every cell, every ion in your body to turn towards the thunder and lightning. The music seems to release a part of me that I thought was locked up forever.

I love the piano. In that simple statement, my life hangs. The notes seem to slice through the cerebral custard of our brains and speaks of simplicity and subtility in such a grand and complex way. When I see others play, it is as though the music seems to be flowing out of their heart, through their fingertips onto a black and white surface.

Hear it again. Pick up the old, forgotten CDs and let it speak for itself, not through lyrics, but through the hammering of steel strings, disintegrating my voluntary silence and leaving fragments of raw emotion, dangerous and vulnerable.

Wind-swept

Background Music: Bring Me to Life by Evanescence

Although I know that I am not answerable to anyone, I must convey my apologies for staying away. Writing is almost a confrontation with myself and as a result, I discover answers within me which I never wanted to accept. And in the process, I break myself apart and reconstruct the shards of my existence. Often it is not inspired by self-will. This violation to recover the truth revolves around one word. A word which, even phonetically, seems to pulsate with the power of its meaning.

Change.

I welcome it and I reject it with the same passion. As a restless being, I yearn for that fresh breath of air; that moment when I crack the ice surface and gasp in that new found oxygen. But even that air soon begins to inflitrate my nostrils, inhabit my body, forcing out the past and suffocating me with the present. Then why does it scare me, you may ask? This is all I have to ask you in return. What do you do when the world around you seems to spin ahead, leaving you alone and empty? What do you do when the fear of falling is replaced by the desire to belong? You change. This manipulative word, this chameleon of a word, reflects itself and cajoles you into becoming what you are not. A life where you cannot find yourself. A mind where your thoughts are rotting, metamorphosing into the deathly dungeons from where your nerves begin to regrow. Bloodless veins, spreading about you like the roots of a tree, clutching you with the strength of dependence, possessing you by defending its territory.

When the storm dies down, you are left exhausted and settle into a deep slumber amongst the fallen leaves and crushed flowers. Lying there until the moment of change sweeps you off your feet again. I am waiting, take me away with you and wrap me in your lifeless arms...

Slipping away...

Background Music: 'Rescue Me' by Dario Marianelli (Atonement Soundtrack)

The mind is so subtly intricate, the beads of memory sewn into the fabric of life, but what happens when all of that crumbles in front of you? When reality is frayed, and the threads of sanity escape your weak fingertips? What happens when you can no longer control the voices in your head? All that is remaining in the emptiness is the ghosts of the unknown, the slideshow of yellowing, tattered photographs.

I am one such person who lives in the past, my thoughts constantly dwell upon the unsaid, whispering within this hollow cathedral of a body. But I find it comforting to huddle amongst these companions, and the idea of losing this is haunting.

This post is not a lecture on various psychological conditions. I just want to creep into every mind.....The old man who cannot remember day-to-day words, stringing phrases with the stammer of doubt.....the woman who lives in a past she once belonged to, now the moments just evaporating into the air.....the child that dutifully represents innocence and simplicity yet whose mind is churning after confrontations with life.....the teenage girl who cannot separate herself from who she is to what she's become, afraid of the crevices and cracks in the perfect and protected world around her.....life itself that seems to have lost itself in a broth of truth and lies.

Questions. Questions. An echo for an answer in this tormented soul.

In the Alleys and Aisles of the Mind

Background Music: Tire Swing by Kimya Dawson

Under the delirium of the afternoon sun, I decided to return to the familiar rattle of the keyboard. As I stared out of the apartment window, looking down on people scurrying like ants through the labyrinths of life, the thoughts came flooding in, breaking the embankments of distraction. I wondered whether everyone walks these streets with dusty secrets lying in their minds, burdening their lonely hearts, isolating them from you and me. Its all that clothes them, these lies, sheltering them from the harsh draught of truth. Imagine if they were all on display, a digital display flashing ominously above their heads, revealing years of well-kept secrets.

Most secret keepers don't realise their reactions and expressions open the rusty gates of their treasure box of secrets. Speak to them and you will be able to read them like an open book, despite the fact that they try too hard to keep themselves hidden from human judgement and opinion. I am acquainted with some such people and it is chuckle-worthy to see how their minds are as elaborate as that of the dishes my grandmother used to make. So many ingredients to cover up one secret after another, but the smell still wafts through the air, enticing everyone in its reach. And similarly, I find secret keepers interesting, there is an indescribable aura about them simply because they live to guard their mind. It's like holding water in your palm, it will leave you at some time.

I do not spare myself from these generalisations and scrutinies. I do keep some secrets, but they stay in the past, in the dingy prison cells of my mind. Don't worry, I'll spare you the concern because they'll stay there, untouched and forgotten...

;)

Sounds of Silence

Background Music: Claire de Lune by Claude Debussy

Silence the noises around you, the incessant ringing of mobile phones, the cars whirring past the sighing roads, the gossipping trees, and most importantly your talkative mind, chattering away. Questions. Suggestions. Planning ahead when you've still not left the past. Tuck them all in bed and let the silence envelop you. Hush. Can you hear it now? The faint murmurs of your heart; your soft breathing; the unnoticeable tremor of you fingers colliding with the air around you?

This is how I feel at this very moment. Indestructably fragile. My pulse encourages my fingers to race with my mind. To write. To release every emotion from these fingertips. And here I stand, (or sit on this rotating computer chair, rather) expressing myself to the world wide web of the internet. And yet, within all of this excitement, I am afraid that the subtility of this calm will cease to exist once I close this page and resume my duties. That is why I write. It is the only place where I can find myself, know myself completely and still get lost in my explorations. I write when my mind is leaking with thoughts, emotions puddling at my feet.

And on this day, you have navigated your way to my cove, my home, furnished with words. Your life has not begun if you spent all this time waiting for the world to reach you, shred away the lies and the embellishments, and search for the light of moon within.

:)