The presence of a central theme could actually be found in the act of writing, often in the end; and then one begins anew, with the knowledge of the narrative, uncertainty diminished. It's a hard process though to continue to write while threatened with various aspects of creative misgivings. A masterpiece at the first glance is more often than not unremarkable: learning to cope with that is the mark of the true writer.
As soon as I entered the dark, low ceiling ed and confined room I felt a twinge of distaste. A few moments later I was left alone with her. The business for her had begun. I checked her. She stared at me. She sat in a particular way. She was waiting to be stripped, I felt. She was overweight and, what now dawned on me, aged. She seemed twice my age. The effort to look younger had gone in vain; while I felt cheated, helplessly standing there, she moved closer to me, hiding her body in that quick movement; and hugged me. She dragged me to bed and began kissing me. I felt uneasy. The intimacy, the closeness repelled me. I couldn't be rude; but I couldn't oblige either; I tried to find a way out. She knew it. She knew the limitations her body had arrived at; she knew now she couldn't hide them. Traumatized by flesh she offered the knowledge of flesh. She tried to be the aggressor. I lay on my back, elegantly pushing her away on her back. Hands behind my head, I looked at the ceiling. She started weeping, slowly, making no sound; then she rose and looked at me....I smiled at her and thought of a way out again.....flesh....the torments of flesh...I had arrived for flesh...I saw its abuse.
A second chance- that’s the delusion. There never was to be but one. We work in the dark- we do what we can- we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.
-Henry James
He was overwhelmed by a feeling of total hopelessness, and for the first time in his life he felt the real seduction of the idea of suicide. He had always believed that consciousness was the supreme value, but what did it profit a man to be conscious if it was only of failure, humiliation and regret.
After a few minutes he didn't have to force himself to sit still, for he liked this, attempting to do something well, to the limit of his ability, on his own terms.
There is that deserted table; blank, properly arranged papers lying there since ages, unused. The fountain pens, a couple, containing the now dried ink, untouched, look dirty, losing their shine, and perhaps power as well. Isn't it a premonition of the deathly shadow of ignominy to come? In the years to come would I hate myself more than I do now?
Didn't she look like the goddess in the moment of death?
What's freedom to you?
"....like the story of the cat, where the couple was arguing about a divorce but the cat thought they were disagreeing about the giblets for its lunch."
It didn't make any sense to me hours after it had happened. My senses were exhausted and in want of more at the same time. I looked about myself; there were so much I couldn't understand: circumstances I had worked at creating staring me in the eye unknowingly, and I couldn't relate to them either. I had my desire rewarded, and I wanted more. I was physically at my extreme; so tired I didn't think I could get up and walk half a mile. I wanted to lie down and be like that for a stretch of eternity, dreamily floating in in the truth of my moment. I felt everything else to be unimportant and petty. Everything was irrelevant. Every face I saw, everyone I talked to, every voice I heard, every perception was unreal. Sometimes it gets into your insides and cuts everything there. It's not injury. It's beauty. I felt beauty all about; it was a feeling so alien it dazed me for hours. It gave me promise.
How do we create something that's better than us?
Can we create something that could make itself superior to us.....can we give a life better than our own to something that didn't exist before?
Is Art the answer? Or is it just a frail attempt? I love this feeling of being found and caught: clueless and admiring.
Can I start to try to create something?
It erases the memory of pain, torments, everyday struggles and accepted failures...and then it takes us flying just like when the enchanting queen Scheherazade tells her husband stories of flying carpets, and he, cruel and waiting to punish her, is in spite of himself enchanted. He's in another world. Scheherazade keeps weaving newer and newer narratives, metaphorically directing the carpet, taking the king into the world he never knew existed, and letting him be there; and he wishes to be there..forever...It's a spell of the carpet. A cruel cuboid three dimensional structure made of harsh cement and brick, without any care for finishing, rises out of the corner of a road, looking up at the manufacturing unit of The Hindu, pleading to be deserted, awaiting us, disregarding everyone else. It's here that a few of us are constantly stuck by a force so engaging, enchanting, delicious that we see the world through the narrator's eyes. And then we, placed there, never for once ask to see for ourselves.......depression is replaced by fantasies in our eyes. It's magic so personal, so touching, so much OURS that detailing it would sure seem belittling it.
