Monday, October 17, 2011
Sunday, July 10, 2011
On creeps and ball games (cooler than Radiohead)
It’s a different ball game. That means it is a ball game which means there is throw and catch, pass and snatch and most importantly the ball is in the air only so long as both keep it going. But, what if you were pitching all these balls full of fragrant potpourri and the choicest of your tickles and pokes to some player who’s not your game? Well, the balls don’t return and occasionally if one does; it’s a smack, literally on the face. That, dear reader, is how a creep feels.
While most creeps are easily identified, warded off and branded by all of us, including me, you will never know when you end up on the other side of the ball game. Creepiness is relative and so is desperation. Mostly desperation is nothing but failure on the part of the recipient to reciprocate with equal enthusiasm. So, the poor hypersuperduper enthusiastic ball pitcher sees the embarrassing loud thuds of his public displays dwindle and droop into small bounces, all leaking desperate sounds as they fade into the darkness of awkward-irretrievable-relationships-that-never-started. I recently faced much such ill matched word exchanges.
One fine sunny day on the right side of morality can make you start creep bashing. But while you embark on that fantastic adventure of social inclusion, do spare a thought for all that avant garde-ism in your Dali-advances-on-women or some man wanting to race cars on some woman’s naked chest. Basically, we all like to hear of such momentary forward sparks and gasp in the delight of the imagery but, come to your own world of daily misgivings, ‘dude, that’s so creepy…’ Greet her with a friendly word for a whole week continuously or stalk him in admiration for all the fascinating information you discovered on Google search, write an extra friendly word on the text message or simply give an unexpected hug and you’ve blown it.
That is not the worst. For those of you who have been on somebody’s creep radars, you would know that straight faced speech with a perfectly drained asexual tone, carrying the burden of civil refrain from hitting your face: ‘Ummm…I just don’t talk to people I don’t know’. (In your heart you say: ‘Yeah, balls!’) Yes, because those who say such things never solicit friendship or more from attractive or interesting or talented or simply pleasant strangers. Never. They only rely on their trusted network of friends (who bitch about them) and acquaintances (they met one night at the wild party and got hanky panky with) or well, more talented and uber cool people (they randomly met at a conference and approached because they simply mistranslated sex appeal to talent).
The point is, people are pussies and flaneurs (persons who walk about aimlessly in the city) exist only in Baudelaire books. Also, for those in denial, everything is about a sexual experience. The impulse that you cloud under ‘fellow voracious reader’ or ‘Pink Floyd connoisseur’ is basically just your sex chemicals alerting your charm radar. And, that’s not bad news. Once you’ve acknowledged this simple idea it becomes so much easier to allow more people a chance to add colors to yours otherwise guiltless life. Think about it the next time you shamelessly feign shock at your encounters with a creep.
Yours sincerely,
Oddly bisexual woman with potential creep behavior
While most creeps are easily identified, warded off and branded by all of us, including me, you will never know when you end up on the other side of the ball game. Creepiness is relative and so is desperation. Mostly desperation is nothing but failure on the part of the recipient to reciprocate with equal enthusiasm. So, the poor hypersuperduper enthusiastic ball pitcher sees the embarrassing loud thuds of his public displays dwindle and droop into small bounces, all leaking desperate sounds as they fade into the darkness of awkward-irretrievable-relationships-that-never-started. I recently faced much such ill matched word exchanges.
One fine sunny day on the right side of morality can make you start creep bashing. But while you embark on that fantastic adventure of social inclusion, do spare a thought for all that avant garde-ism in your Dali-advances-on-women or some man wanting to race cars on some woman’s naked chest. Basically, we all like to hear of such momentary forward sparks and gasp in the delight of the imagery but, come to your own world of daily misgivings, ‘dude, that’s so creepy…’ Greet her with a friendly word for a whole week continuously or stalk him in admiration for all the fascinating information you discovered on Google search, write an extra friendly word on the text message or simply give an unexpected hug and you’ve blown it.
That is not the worst. For those of you who have been on somebody’s creep radars, you would know that straight faced speech with a perfectly drained asexual tone, carrying the burden of civil refrain from hitting your face: ‘Ummm…I just don’t talk to people I don’t know’. (In your heart you say: ‘Yeah, balls!’) Yes, because those who say such things never solicit friendship or more from attractive or interesting or talented or simply pleasant strangers. Never. They only rely on their trusted network of friends (who bitch about them) and acquaintances (they met one night at the wild party and got hanky panky with) or well, more talented and uber cool people (they randomly met at a conference and approached because they simply mistranslated sex appeal to talent).
The point is, people are pussies and flaneurs (persons who walk about aimlessly in the city) exist only in Baudelaire books. Also, for those in denial, everything is about a sexual experience. The impulse that you cloud under ‘fellow voracious reader’ or ‘Pink Floyd connoisseur’ is basically just your sex chemicals alerting your charm radar. And, that’s not bad news. Once you’ve acknowledged this simple idea it becomes so much easier to allow more people a chance to add colors to yours otherwise guiltless life. Think about it the next time you shamelessly feign shock at your encounters with a creep.
Yours sincerely,
Oddly bisexual woman with potential creep behavior
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
The thunder thieving
It seems strange to me that lumps in memory only happen to a few of us, at least consciously. For me, a concentrated mulling is the roadblock of the otherwise speeding attention wagon, like water passing through a pipe with lumps of acerbic soluble substances, passing each time, melting a little of that and this, renewing throbbing pain, nostalgia, anguish, little brush strokes in the larger dark daubs of angst. I should not even begin on the German-ness of angst; it turns me into a Greek tragedy conversely.
The beginnings of an Indian summer, although drastically changing with the passing days, still ushers in the usual love-hate with sweet heat and occasional breezes in the 4 p.m. culmination of a not hurried, never occupied day. These days remind me of the “mighty heart” metaphor, huge and bulb like, rising like hopeful dough, deflating in familiar normalcy. Despite the general pleasantness of these surroundings and a color palette of dark browns and ochre of the shedding trees, anticipating little moist spells of air, when I am spiraling down, it’s just further downhill. No self picture of a girl with a backpack and a paper plane in hand, no catching the wind in hair as faint freckled pink turns to sandstone on skin, nor any spontaneous buckling under a greenwood tree and reading some Rilke poetry. It wasn’t always so, of course, not until the newest lump.
He and many others laugh, or dismiss with a “not-again” groan, when I often mention of my cruel ‘love-spots’. Of love I have much to say, but that is reserved for wittier days. Love spots are typically those ‘Alchemist’ spots where “the whole universe conspires for you to fall in love…”In my case,music moves my cheese. In the last remains of my romantic imagination, there would be a spot, a situation and a song in the background that would all ‘enable my access’ to love, like a bomb blast in the background and a Faiz recital in the side wing or a sulky Darbari song. Less dramatic, to wake up and march in the lobby to Bjork or walk through a loaded day with Fiona Apple and get drunk and lip-sync to Portishead. The list goes on and love-faces could be many. But, basically, one needs a background score to the play of daily life! This should answer my parent’s persistent surprise at teens with headphones.
The more I realized this, the abysmal lack of possessing one became. An i-pod that is. Or any music player, I am not an Apple snob. Switching over, after months of losing it to you, oh nameless thief of a commodified market, I weep silently every noon. This is where the impersonal industrial society pokes me in the shins and this defines oppression for me. Not burgers and colas and sky scrapers.
There used to be a roaring cloud above the head with ears stuffed beneath. The thief stole all my thunder away. Gone far away.
The beginnings of an Indian summer, although drastically changing with the passing days, still ushers in the usual love-hate with sweet heat and occasional breezes in the 4 p.m. culmination of a not hurried, never occupied day. These days remind me of the “mighty heart” metaphor, huge and bulb like, rising like hopeful dough, deflating in familiar normalcy. Despite the general pleasantness of these surroundings and a color palette of dark browns and ochre of the shedding trees, anticipating little moist spells of air, when I am spiraling down, it’s just further downhill. No self picture of a girl with a backpack and a paper plane in hand, no catching the wind in hair as faint freckled pink turns to sandstone on skin, nor any spontaneous buckling under a greenwood tree and reading some Rilke poetry. It wasn’t always so, of course, not until the newest lump.
He and many others laugh, or dismiss with a “not-again” groan, when I often mention of my cruel ‘love-spots’. Of love I have much to say, but that is reserved for wittier days. Love spots are typically those ‘Alchemist’ spots where “the whole universe conspires for you to fall in love…”In my case,music moves my cheese. In the last remains of my romantic imagination, there would be a spot, a situation and a song in the background that would all ‘enable my access’ to love, like a bomb blast in the background and a Faiz recital in the side wing or a sulky Darbari song. Less dramatic, to wake up and march in the lobby to Bjork or walk through a loaded day with Fiona Apple and get drunk and lip-sync to Portishead. The list goes on and love-faces could be many. But, basically, one needs a background score to the play of daily life! This should answer my parent’s persistent surprise at teens with headphones.
The more I realized this, the abysmal lack of possessing one became. An i-pod that is. Or any music player, I am not an Apple snob. Switching over, after months of losing it to you, oh nameless thief of a commodified market, I weep silently every noon. This is where the impersonal industrial society pokes me in the shins and this defines oppression for me. Not burgers and colas and sky scrapers.
There used to be a roaring cloud above the head with ears stuffed beneath. The thief stole all my thunder away. Gone far away.
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