The Perfect Imperfect World

So, I have been reading novels and watching movies from long ago and I realized that people from back then were wrong about what future would be like.

Today's world is not overrun with machines and aliens. The world is not ending or sinking or exploding into flames. For all we know, these events might have been at the risk of happening at some time in the past but they never did.

Over the course of 200 years or so since the advent and proliferation of modern computing technology, there have been so many changes (since we all know what these are, I will not repeat them) that has caused our world to go from a breeding ground for thoughts of destruction and sorrow, to our world today. We do not know if there was cause for the pessimism that those writers and movie-makers felt. But it must have been a definite threat for people to universally agree that the world was on a downward spiral.

Our world is not perfect today. We have long established that humans subconsciously reject the idea of perfection, as a concept that does not evoke truth and balanced behaviour. But this has been the state of the world since time immemorial. And it continues to be. What is new is that we now can choose to keep it this way.

Unseen, unknown, unheard

Like a clown's makeup
at a radio station
Like a fragrant rose
On the ocean floor
Like sweet string sounds
On the planet Mars

The Next World

I wonder why the people of the past were so pessimistic about their future. Stories based on the future were always about death, destruction and famine. People were supposed to be ruled by machines or aliens. They lived underground, in dirt and grime, in box-like apartments or some such ugly setting, to escape from the cruelty of the post-apocalyptic world. It seemed to always be a life of terrible sorrow and misery.

How wrong they were. 

She used to be me

I press a button
to resume a game
that I started before
Don't know how long ago

That day like now
I was bored and tired
I had nothing to do
No one to talk to

That connection
That bond I shared
with some one I used to be
Who was quite different from me

Soon this new person will arrive
here for the first time, again
She will have all my thoughts to see
I hope that she sees more than me

Come home, Persephone

Frost bites into Earth
Ground gels into ice fractals
All life awaits spring 

Passed

Sometimes it feels like long ago
Sometimes it's like yesterday
But I'm jubilant, delighted, elated
Ecstatic, euphoric, exhilarated
Those days are now far away

Sudoku

Blocks and numbers play

Interspersed between white spaces

Not easy to fill 

Spidersense!

Interconnections
make the whole world a big web
My mind is the spider

Darkness

Silver moonlight shines
Casting long and black shadows
Highlighting darkness

Sleep-time Solliloquy

I moved as though I was floating across the lawn. My long and flowing robes rustled around me and moved gently with the wind. Then I decided, not consciously though, that I need not walk at all! I could bounce along the small grassy mounds. And I did. I bounced like a ball and leaped to thrice my height effortlessly. It was an exhilarating and beautiful feeling. While I bounced up and down the lawns I thought : "Gravity is like our concept of God. We do not see it. Yet we feel it and know it is there. We believe that it is going to keep us rooted to the ground and not let us float away into space."

I don't remember the rest of the dream.

Normally, I mix some of my waking imagination with the stuff of my dreams when I write about them. But this dream is just too precious and wonderfully weird to write as a story.

Signal to noise

A thin line divides
A world of sweet harmony
From cacophony

Strong deep hope

Have hope
And never lose it
And know that life can go on
As long as there is laughter

Breathe deeply
And experience everything around you
And know that life can go on
As long as there is love

Believe strongly
That the world can be better
And know that life can go on
As long as there is song

Living Laughter

Laugh loudly and hard
Laugh because you are alive
Live cause you can laugh

Crash, burn and rise

In anguish there is hope
With the crash at the end of every song
There is the boom at the start of the next

Seaworthy

Sailing through the dark seas
Watching through the glass
The wind died to a light wheeze
And she wished it would be back

Her home was in the ocean
Right in its vast heart
Her mast stood proudly open
So the wind could do its part

She would gladly go wherever
She wouldn't even care
Away the wind could carry her
Any place, any where

As long as she sailed away
She was happy to be at sea
Didn't want to steer to bay
Here, happy she would be

Stringed euphoria generator

A soft gentle tug
Reverberations calm
and electrify

Persevere

Building blocks
Ticking clocks
Learning on the way
In the end
You transcend
What's in your way today
Bit by bit
You see to it
Then you'll have your say

Disconnection

There is a low thundering roar from a distance and I know that it comes from a dozen cars on the highway. I try harder at the pedal to get home sooner and away from the freezing cold. There is no one around me and a chill runs down my spine - literally too. I decide to make the most of the situation and help myself by singing as loudly as I can. My own voice bounces off the frozen pavements and parked cars before coming right back to me. The low thundering roar increases in intensity as I get closer to the highway and I can now differentiate the individual cars passing by. Each one hurtles away from in space heading towards a destination far away while the people are trapped in their own spaces, where they can sing and have their voice bounce back to them. The sight of me, a strange bundled creature wobbling down on my bicycle must also impress them in the same way. Maybe they think the same thoughts as me. Maybe that is the connection we have even if we have not shared a single word between us and in all likelihood never will.

Outside my window

Cloud-streaks splashed across
Soft tinges of grey  and blue
Above white expanse

Just right

Stop, I said
Don't fill it up

The glass is half empty
Just as I want it
Or half full if you like
Better than nothing at all
Much better than too much

When you need to hear them

Unnecessary words
When spoken at the right time
Maybe necessary

Dream Factory

I tiptoe in
And find myself
face to face
with the Cheshire cat's grin

I wait and wait
For the spinning totem
To stop its trip
And reveal his fate

Dorothy's flight
From Kansas city
I want to join
And I just might

Fictional or true
Eureka said Kekule
I have benzene
The snake said it too

I wont search and think
For more dream references
Instead into the dream factory
I myself shall sink

The final page

--X--

He had searched for meaning all through his life. He had turned to religion, tried to create his own family, tried to connect to people... he had tried it all. After seeing failure repeatedly and horribly, he decided to quit it all. All in the search for meaning. He decided that he would live with nature and search for meaning within the deep recesses of his own mind. He would leave behind people and their artificial worlds. He would cut himself loose and sink into delicious depths of reason and knowledge. All by himself. He would write and record. He would create ideas. He would observe his own thoughts, catalogue them meticulously. In the end, all of it would make sense and he would achieve his purpose. 

As he wrote, he was consumed. He became obsessed with his interpretation of his world. He created his own concept of time. He created his unique method of counting it. He shed his worldly needs. He lived with nature and cut off any minute reflection of his painful and prolonged search for the answer to the question - why am I here. 

As days became months and years, the writer had became a part of his environment rather than sticking out as the only outside element in the jungle. In his mind, he had achieved much more than if he had remained in his previous life.Yet, sometimes he would sit at the edge of the jungle and stare at the lights in the distance that came to him as a sign of humanity's existence.

On his last day on Earth, he sat at his desk writing out what would be his last page. With his monk like existence and utter lack of contact with another human being, the writer had become the enlightened one. And he had as proof his hut that was filled with stacks of neatly inscribed paper. A lifetime of learning that came almost entirely from his mind alone. He was a philosopher and a sage. His quest for meaning had long passed. He had created a guide, a rule book for everyone to live by. The ultimate gateway to meaningfulness and fullfilment.

That afternoon he lay bent over his desk as the floodgates of the sky opened. The monsoon brought the walls of his hut down as his eyes stared into the distance. The water carried every sheet of paper that the writer ever laid his pen on. The water carried it into the river and then into the ocean. The words that had given his life meaning, the words that had recorded meaning in them, dissolved in the murky waters turning it into inky blue depths.

The End

365 Diary Entries

Day 24: I feel spent, unoriginal and some what stifled. There is a pressure to say something and make sure that that something is true to me - it has to be honest, it has to represent what I feel at this moment. Also it is important that this is in a form that is at least mildly entertaining to others. I know that people read my blog because my hit counter keeps ticking, but the lack of feedback sometimes makes me feel a bit unhappy. Yet I think that maybe with feedback I would get nervous and write untruthfully. Or maybe grapes are sour I want to do more here but I don't know how to proceed.
 

Day 35: The series that I am writing now is a unique experience for me. I write whatever comes to my mind while trying to conform to the previous day's general layout. I have absolutely no idea where my story is going and which direction I would like to take it in. I do not know when it will end either. In the end I may end up with a story that is quite unreadable, but I get a kick out of inheriting a set situation from the previous day. This requires a different kind of creativity. My general aimlessness is a bit unnerving at times and at other times I feel really happy to have no direction. Heh.

The writer and other people

--IX--

There was not a single other human being in a radius of a few miles around his hut. It was just him, trees, birds and some unseen animals. There was a time when he was right in the middle of a sea of people and he felt so lonesome. Just the thought of being this far from any means of contact was exhilarating. He had great respect  for his fellows, but there was something that did not allow him to ever connect with them. In any case he had done well in the jungle. And he was not doing much for his kind. It was much better this way, he believed.

The writer's morning

--VIII--

A few hours before the sun rose, he woke up and breathed in the jungle air. A few moments later he was straining as much as possible to convert the vague images and emotions of his dreams in his mind into words before he lost them.  His hand moved across paper in swift motions as though it was racing against his brain - trying to capture its contents before they vaporized. He stretched his limbs and took a bit of time to recall where he was and what was going on. The reiteration of the knowledge of his surroundings hit him and filled him with a strange mixture of happiness for his miraculous escape and bitterness for the situations that caused him to attempt this escape. It was going to be a beautiful day. 

The writer's dream

 --VII--

As sleep crept over him he thought of what he would write the next day and how. Words danced in his head and he slipped slowly and effortlessly from concrete thoughts to wordless dreams. That night he would dream of the ending to his story.

Something set him apart

--VI--

The writer was an ordinary man. He did not have extraordinary capabilities. His teacher would say that he had no talent at all. But what he had was beyond the reach of most regular humans - perseverance. Of course this was debatable. But the writer had a history would prove this beyond a doubt.