Asking the moon

Does it take greater courage to enter a state of renounciation, or renounce the right to do so? Is it more noble to love those you would otherwise hate, or evade the smoldering passion of both? Should seeking nascent attributes like courage and nobilty override our primal instincts, or do we owe a debt of authenticity to evolution? Need we discover the dynamics of our urge to categorize, and in so doing manufacture another category? Might non-existence trump existence instead, and in a cataclysmic swoop liberate us from our prison houses of infantile cognition?

Separation

Separation is a noble art
Higher than the unity of fools
For a bondless existence
Hides no vantage point
Lugs no baggage upon weary shoulders

Though none may deign to point out the parts
Or with a brushstroke conjure an oasis
But one can only truly possess the night
With an intact heart

Unknowingness

What resources can any individual hope to summon, when confronted with an abomination such as this? They say one man measures up to another through the reflection of his soul in another's eyes, through the appraisal of his relative place from the outlook of another's countenance. Yet no such affirmation is possible, and the wretched soul is left to bear the entire haunting weight of uncertainty; of unknowingness. No sympathy drips from the abomination's furling locks, no meat lies awaiting to be shared at the end of the blade it wields. For all you know, a reinstatement of cinematographic continuity in your imagination might just render the blade deep, deep into your heart, a convolution of redness and steel, as the world celebrates a new dance choreographed to the rhythmic spurts of blood...

Blue Talisman

Before the first sounds were ever uttered and the ingenuity of relating these sounds to meanings descended upon our kind, how much more mystical must the conveyance of these meanings through visuals have been. As if instinctively, the hands acquire cognizance of their place in the sensorimotor network and delicately, almost reverently, materialise these ephemeral meanings dictated by the elusive majesty of our mind. At what level must they somehow relate to one another, such that the common bond of humanity continues to abide? What characteristics begin to narrate the wonderous tale of cultural diversity? How deterministic are the correspondences between colour, shapes, brushstrokes and the message we yearn to leave behind? How variant are the functions behind a seemingly congruent pair of visuals? Will a blue talisman subdue even the most incompetent of oriental vampires? Or can a crucifix penned by brush and ink conjure the grandeur of cathedrals thousands of miles away? And even thus, after our mouths have long been opened and viciousness long since flowed!

Foreign Love

There is a paradoxical manner in which our overall security dwindles as we live longer in our customary environments. Though the flesh and perhaps even the mind slowly become complacent and gradually grow inert, inviting a fallacious interpretation of comfort, our affective faculties begin to develop a protuding edge that is so difficult to define - such that any semblance of a foreign incursion into our lives provides a bizzare hope for a new beginning; a positive chance encounter; a divinely scripted coincidence destined to span across borders and blossom into infinite beauty. And hence, armed with knowledge of our old usual selves which appear to be welcomed by these foreign incursions, we misread our experiences as a premium with which to purchase a stake in the reciprocity of what we dream to be new love. We forego our own benefits and compel a surge in our sacrificial spirit, and even though our surface sentiments may deny it, we are merely investing in the hope that this tiny new crack upon the boulder of our drab existences may usher in a fresh stream of romance and salvation. Why is it then, that we continue to strum our lutes, profoundly alone? Be warned, for even the most spectacular of fire crackers succumbs to nature's demands that it must eventually fizzle out and know the name of ashes. Bow your heads and stay anchored then, you may say? At least the barnacles faithfully accompany your every reflection upon the water, be it murky or clear.

Parade of Human Oddities

Parades of national magnitude are precisely meant to match up to the accumulated interests and expectations of their collective audience. In this case the latter potentially spans over three generations, thus spreading across a whole range of progressively different hopes and dreams along with it. Imagine the initial reluctance to witness this smudge of human aspiration; this cohesive glue that smears red and white across our faces, congregating annually for a grand duration of two hours and willingly subjected to what I call a "symbolism squeeze"...an endless cacophany of music, rapid array of images and choreographed manoeuvres which portend to condense the decades into a creamy soup, altogether served with rhetorical toppings. Utensils, however, are not provided, for that would be too much of a crutch for the chef's liking. Can such an intense surge of representations really codify and breathe new interpretative potential into our collective consciousness? Will delightful dances and melodies bore a hole through our insensitivities and disconnectedness with whatever meagre history we possess? Do we define courage, fortitude, love and kinship along prescriptive lines characterised by temporal doses of emotional medicine? Should children frolicking in fish costumes and the frailty of elders guarding flags in the wind signify anything beyond phyrric merriment? Perhaps the unlike-minded; the carcasses whose blood have gone cold; the argument-churning-but-otherwise-inane individuals can never comprehend, nor will ever want to.

Emptiness Has A Twin

Recently I have been feeling increasingly vacuous, as if newer and newer levels of emptiness are waiting to be discovered in the deepest recesses. Somewhat tragically though, I realise soon enough that Emptiness is of two entirely different breeds falsely claiming a common descent. Firstly, there is that occasionally pleasant state of confronting a tabula rasa, whereby consciousness presents your ego with an empty slate; a canvas washed clean with hyssops of time and chance. How freely can seeds of inspiration then be sown, how indescribable the anticipation of fresh sprouts of renewal! You paint the sun and sketch the stars, and elect your most favourable azimuth for them to reside in. You feel cleansed of false memories and break free from the shackles of karma. Every opportunity becomes a handsome stallion, unopposed on the vast plains of your mind...And then there is the flip side; the profound realisation of Emptiness as Absence-Of; such that even the beginning of its contemplation is a cardinal sin, for then you presuppose some entity in inherent nothingness. Dare you speculate on the texture of this quintessential emptiness? What do you make of its colours and sounds, what do you surmise from its pulsating walls; its ripples of hurt and pain? An intoxicating invitation to endlessly descend, till you master the intonation of silence. O Fool, listen to your own chuckles of misery when you discover how similar it is to your heart!

Rebirth

Polemical whispers rejoice in the fall

They quicken my footsteps while redeeming my crawl

Shrivel and learn a shrivelling myth!

As if if I drift I might sanction the rift

Between the Giver, why do You relentlessly stare;

And author the line between hope and despair?

Your eyes are like knives;

Till I realise the greatest prize

To be still and await a second demise

Time and Time Again

The most fascinating aspect of time dilation must be what they term as psychological time dilation - the dubious yet undeniable feeling that time flies when we are having fun and grinds to a virtual halt when we deign to suffer. Its charm lies not merely in the absence of obstruperious equations - since anything psychological automatically divorces itself from arithmetic - but in the fact that genuine to the spirit of relativity, every individual experience and hence every unique frame of reference must be taken to be valid. That is certainly why a trip to the dentist or dinner with parents-in-law may be thoroughly enjoyable to some, but a descent to Hades for others. But how then does the "mind", or whatever ephemeral object demarcated by the constructs of psychology, participate in a seemingly material process governed and calculable by physical equations, to a satisfactorily vigorous extent? How can we be certain that psychological time dilation is not merely a metaphor fortunate enough to be blessed by a scientifically grounded source domain? But enough for now, I feel that this blog is taking me ages to formulate.

Chris Benoit

Those of us who grew up watching wrestling will remember, as we progress through the years, how our perspectives towards the great profession evolved while the constancy of our passion always remained. As children we cheered the on-screen heroes and jeered the villians, having no inkling of the backstage politics and manoeuvring which provides the world of professional wrestling with its charming ambiguities and intoxicating blends of fantasy and reality. As we grow up we acquire the lens of skepticism and begin to dissect the parodies, dramas and social critiques, or simply laugh our heads off at those priceless moments of wrestling ludicrity. To me, wrestling is such a lure because the squared circle represents a melting pot, where you throw in all of reality's burdens, conflicts and desires, project them onto outlandish human prototypes and resolve them via simple dichotomies of A versus B, as if righteousness or evil or sin or lust carried themselves in neat 300-pound packages. It is this grevious but intentional misunderstanding of wrestlers, and what they truly mean to the world inside and outside of the ring, that brings me such a bolt of pain and confusion upon hearing the news that Chris Benoit has died, bearing suspicion of murdering his wife and kids and commiting suicide thereafter. The accursed Vince McMahon death angle, the chilling no-show at Vengeance PPV, then the bombshell; another dastardly attempt by Fate to paint a portrait of connections out of human misery. If Benoit really carried that enormous emotional baggage around, finding little solace from his onscreen character and compelling himself to live out the Rabid Wolverine while suppressing the wretched soul beneath, should we who are still alive today move on with renewed respect for the great man and the business he has fought his entire life for, or should we come to turns with our endless tryst with professional wrestling, and come to realise that afterall, the squared circle is but a haunting microcosm of our hapless world?

Dance

As we live in the stolid, callous material world we might develop a nagging suspicion that some undiscovered truth lies in the intangible portions of our dwelling. A draught of wind, a ripple upon some pebble's intrusion into water, or a strange sound from the bellows of a musical instrument from a hitherto unknown culture. Indeed what is culture itself but an increasing and inherited accumulation of perceived differences, even as the intangible common essence of humanity struggles to rip apart the veil! What a noble testament to the ability of music to sabotage the seams, when I behold a nymphette gyrating to the Conga while no part of her yellow drips away. For all we can surmise, the gift of tongues might have befallen on the raptured audience, who begin to acquire a thick Hispanic accent in praise of our supreme dancer. Watch as she transforms each sashay into a mudra, showering endless meanings upon your desires. How much would you give to partake of this fascinating trance, to enter this mystical moment of intangibility, whereupon a nibble of undiscovered truth may seek audience with the Majesty of your mind?

A New Dwelling

Creatures that fly pack up their meagre possessions and memories, seek new pastures every now and then and venture off into unexplored territories. Never do they desire to linger, for they effortlessly every ounce of the old experience into the new, rejecting any break in the continuity of their sanguine existence. How remote the likelihood of us following suit! For every moment in our stride connects with solid ground; every unintentional caress of the earth an embodied manifestation of our togetherness with the soil. Never can packaged, ephemeral sentiments and memories disassociate themselves with the physicality of our presence. Sing a new tribute to the anima loci! Can there be any remaining doubt to the wistful question of our inability to saunter the skies like sparrows; to traverse the plains like lions; to glide through the oceans like whales, savouring freedom each step of the way? Or must we interrogate every poet, every songwriter, every craftsman and wring their necks demanding an explanation for the excesses of their longing, their hatred for the noble art of forgetting?

Till the Beginning

Surely it must have been the most delightful of melodies that first pierced our forefather's dusty eardrums; the sweetest of aromas that first wafted into his curious nostrils; the first drops of dew from an infinitely early sunrise that first tickled his poetic fancies; the first brush with fire that tantalized him with the mystique of passion. As with all other sentiments and understandings that we label the precursors of our emotions and intellect, what sage can capture the overwhelming essence of Beginning? In all that we do, while we train our eyes forward and spur our dreams and fantasies to that point in time we call the End, how foolish we are to turn our backs on the Chief recaller of memories; the bestower of melody, harbinger of scent, author of aesthetic inspirations! Yet imagine our mortal surprise, when we are rafted back to one magical beginning after another, and begin to realise that a glance over our shoulders is all it takes, for every Beginning and End to reconcile in a cosmic embrace!

Legends of Old

Hearken the Legends of old

Meandering as flesh turns to dry bones
Set upon forgotten stones
The curse of time can blunt a million knives
Can crucify our lives
But can never tincture a lover's soul

Charming Faces

Charming faces
Exchange caresses in blended spaces

Fools and geniuses barter places

And after another toss of the nickel

I pile my regrets on lacquered cases

As Above, Hence Surely Below

A sanctuary amongst the clouds, such that even its most ancient inhabitants may lose their way between loftiness and humility. For the millions who clamor beneath its peaks, what would they not sacrifice for the mere opportunity to lick the cesspool of clouds with famished tongues? Yet a scroll-bearing sage patrols the mountains, eager to reverse the spelling of Ascension. Who dares wager on the permanence of notions such as verticality, which might one day hurl those who spin their wheels in the sanctuary, mocking the plight of the cesspool lickers, unto the very lands they despise, shattering their illusions to smithereens? For what is looking down, but a subjective inversion of glancing up? Amidst the beauty of the mountains, however, we may happily conclude that contradiction, delineation and division serve nothing than to draw us nearer to Marxist harlequins. Ponder, instead, on the One in All and All in One; on planting sorghum on an assembly of clouds; of carving ivory on mud-ridden plains. Then shall the universe hand you a key, a ticket to the theatre of infinite continuity, after which every dream sanctuary shall be erected firmly on the landscapes of your heart.

The Voyager

The voyager trekked along treacherous mountains, stooping low to collect the rocks that stoically defend every vestige of his existence, till one peculiar morning came to pass where he found himself at the edge of a majestic cliff. There he sobbed, and as the escalating realization of his sheer finitude came upon him, he beheld the countenance of the sun. “O Mighty and Reverent Disk of Life! Have you risen to the peak for the solitary purpose of mocking my inadequacies? Has every nourishing ray, which I used to cherish from afar, conspired to beckon me forth to this get-together? I shudder at the lacerating coldness which you ingeniously conceal!” Whereupon the Sun hissed in all its thunderous glory, “Vanity! The pursuit of ideals; the leapfrogging of ambitions which seduces you to chase after infinity; the puerile aspiration of peering into the countenance of your precipice…those have led you to defy the holes in your moccasins.” It was at this moment when the Duplicate; the miniature voyager burst forth from the seeming beyond, teeming with young life, erupting into a mystifying cry of both victory and defeat. And on this day, as the sun continues its eternal glare, a second voyager is born.

Lhasa

Striving for non attachment, yet clamoring for fulfillment. Just like the ancients of Lhasa, who grappled throats for factionalism. Just like the young widow, who tucks a crying child under her arms and desires the return of her lover. Just like the cavalier, whose eightfold path strays into dirt roads of vanity. And in the ghostly remnants of the palace of some wayward Khan, listen carefully for the soft echoes of the Buddha’s rebuke. This is how the lost city gains her fragrance, truth, beauty, and magnificence.

What If?

"My Lord, where do you live?

Your servant lives in Hengtang",

Boats pause, just long enough to ask a question

And what if they were both from the same village?

-Anonymous

Beautifully consistent with the East Asian aesthetic tendency to compress vast spaces and entities into breathtaking, comprehensible miniatures, and thereby serenading the audience with a semblance of panorama and magnanimity (consider scenic portraits and banzais), this simple quatrain achieves that precise effect through the magic of language – The polar opposites of the pronominal “me” and “you”, creating a vastness within the poetic textuality which frames the imagery of a placid river, upon which drifts the characters’ fishing boats. Notice how such a compression of essence should never be confused with the onerous and mechanistic, albeit similar task of cartography. What is truly charming, however, is the creation of an almost wistful hope for coincidence, when the boatmen ponder the possibility that despite chancing upon each other in the poetic vastness and flux of the aesthetic landscape, their point of origin might after all be the same. Hence the minor ripples of a threat to collapse the entire miniature universe constructed within the text; hence the tension and the deliberate non-resolution of a thought provoking philosophical situation; hence the dynamism through which forces and relations inherent in the conceived vastness of the subject matter are successfully preserved and elucidated.

Values

The inculcation of prescribed, subjective "values" has become big business in today's society, compelling all to hearken even as vultures peck mercilessly in our desolete ephemeral landscapes within. Designed, packaged, mechanically conceptualized, have these desirable and irreducible moral processes ended up being codified, assigned to constricted compartments of meaning, referentially narrowed and slided along the conduits of our language? Must we now forcibly assign artificial boundaries in vain pursuit of that dubious horizon of definitional beauty? Has piety become a sub section in the conceptual overhead bridge, bearing the letters "LOVE" ridiculously spray painted over the cement by buffoons donning cloaks of authority? We have turned a deaf ear towards the pitiable cries of those who wallow in their tombs...the priests of yesterday, with their retrospectively magical ability to resonate their teachings and meanings over shared experiences, over the immense power of ritual. How I long for a return to the hearth, for the harpsichord of morality to strike a note in our collective consciousness again. That we may see and understand! Values overlap, extinguishing the pretentious borders of their neighbours, leaving a sweet aftertaste of internalization that we may all savour.

Musings about Joy

A friend, in a mood i could not percept as serious or in jest, asked me whether induced happiness had equivalent value as happiness, the former which was defined as "being forced to be happy". Who can genuinely tease the two apart experientially? Perhaps the welcoming of the new year brings in an auspicious tide for philosophical speculation. I venture to say that despite the appearance of incongruence between the two, all our experiences and feelings must stem from some antecedent, a natural consequence of living in this causal universe. Indeed the illusion of free will is the most venomous facade we shall ever know. When experiencing "true happiness" without appearing to be "forced", surely we can trace the origin of this emotion back to some previous episode, be it heralded in consciousness or not. What if happiness apparently arose from the self? In this case the aforementioned antedecent might be more concealed, but ultimately it must still spring from that vast potential we have accumulated, us miserable infants of a sociocultural gestalt too enormous to comprehend. Furthermore, let us not fall prey to that vicious illusion of the Self! It seems that the key to "happiness", then, is to isolate the moment of felicity from all surrounding contexts, slashing the cords of causality with that sword glimmering beneath the light of our determination and impetus to Joy and Liberty. Or, if you like, to find a renewed sense of existence in the ever "present" moment!