Friday, February 20, 2009

Epiphanies of my punctured night

Almost like epiphanies are not well timed and recorded on video. There are some sentences that play in head like prime numbers. Like the haikus of Basho, I feel myself grow an inch or two in weird times and sometimes being stripped in public in the revelation of little talks. Like yesterday, she was talking about how her mum fed her food and I got a vivid memory recall of how I was fed similarly till I was in seventh grade and I wanted to rush home and cry and get my mum to feed me bhaakhri and moong daal.
That was the stripping of the bare naive person inside. Moment of truth comes when I cannot sleep until I have cleaned the room and my clothes and everything else and in this I think about the conversations of the day and then play the same cassette of the past incidents of eighteen years of life. I think about how I have been able to utter irrefutable common truths with so many subtleties and I felt like a photograph in sepia light on a cloudy day about to break into a downpour. Probably I keep reverting to the old past cassette because they are cemented referal points for similar experiences in future and present. Like a wasp in October. Cam you even imagine that in this mind which appears so thoughtful and preoccupied with a line of thought, actually play seven or eight stories at the same time: exercise and become thinner, save money, finish assignments, finish reading, perform better, look good, don't forget deadlines, i am hungry, i miss mum and dad, i wonder where mosquito is and finally why should I even care...
In such moments I take a deep breath and just throw myself on the bed like at the zenith of pathos and cry my heart out. Then suddenly someone sings "Stop crying your heart out" and I just begin to wonder if I am wasted enough or what. Then, I calm down and read and realise that all I really want to do is travel and read and teach, go to as many places possible and that is the consolation for a wavering life between extreme ambitions and apparent lack of a feasible goal. Also, I forget while writing, become blank, become irritated and then think for two minutes. Yes, I recall...
Whenever such epiphanies occur and I feel more stable than ever, I cannot come to look at the past as a stupid, foolish or impulsive memoir because for me there is not a higher present and a lower past. What I have done in the past of time, I am very much capable of doing and becoming like that even today and in the future. With puffy eyes and a cup of coffee I sit and write and again go to the compulsion of thinking if I actually write well.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Do you know what Aquinas said? Nevermind. Joyce spoke about epiphany as the great essence. Too much on your mind methinks. A better processor is required.

Can has become cam(typo).

Lily said...

processor has been insufficiently consistently slow since birth. and load is almost the same ever. sigh