Giddy Up

I was returning from high school one day and a runaway horse with a bridle on sped past a group

of us into a farmer's yard looking for a drink of water. The horse was perspiring heavily. And the farmer didn't recognize it so we cornered it. 

I hopped on the horse's back.Since it had a bridle on, I took hold of the tick rein and said, "Giddy-up." Headed for the highway. I knew the horse would turn in the right direction. I didn't know what the right direction was. And the horse trotted and galloped along.

Now and then he would forget he was on the highway and start into a field. So I would pull on him a bit and call his attention to the fact the highway was where he was SUPPOSED to be. And finally, about four miles from where I had boarded him, he turned into a farm yard and the farmer said, "So THAT'S how that

critter came back. Where did you find him?" 

I said,"About four miles from here." 

"How did you know you should come HERE?" 

I said, "I didn't know. The HORSE knew. All I did was keep his attention on the road."

        The universe and its unpredictibility is sufficiently capricious to ensure that life is forever punctuated by pitfalls, stumbling blocks, and brick walls, but for the most part people have the practical and existential coping skills they need in order to somehow deal with those exigencies.

What I mean to say is...

Relax!

The Horse knows.

Who are you?

As writers we mean 

and don't

at the same time, 

the things that we write.

Why do I consider myself a writer?

Because it is in my writings that I articulate bulk of my thoughts.

Every other form of expression is repessed in some way or the other.

You are 'how' you articulate.

Exit:Stage Left

She is pretty, but not beautiful.Like the girl next door.

Never great at first impressions, she grows cuter when you think about her.

Her voice is a bit too manly,her expressions awkward.

She doesn't get all your jokes.

She has ugly feet that are two sizes too big for her, and forever hidden from the world,because she knows it.

She has a lot of male friends, and you don't know where they all stand.

She likes to put you down in front of her friends.

She is too skinny at times,but keeps complaining that she can't lose weight.

When you're with her, the only things you can notice about her are her imprefections.

She laughs like a donkey brays.

This is what you keep telling yourself.

Never great at first impressions, she grows cuter when you think about her.

She grows on you.

When you're away from her, the only things you remember are the things that make you smile.

That make you sad that you smiled.

She is pretty, but not beautiful.You have met hundreds that were more beautiful.

Also funnier, smarter.

It hurts.

She grows cuter when you think about her.

She reminds you of the girl in the movie who was so wrong that she ended up being Ms.Right.

A cliche is a security blanket.

She reminds you of the girl that felt like destiny.

She reminds you of a long lost friend that you never had, but should've ended up falling for.

She reminds you of the girl next door that instead of being Ms.Right, just made like a tree.

And Left.

Letters to friends

The first time I went to work on a ship, whenever I felt lonely, sad, happy or just felt like it, I would write letters to friends.
The letter in itself had no agenda-it was just a mish mash of thoughts and feelings,past and present that I just unloaded on the poor unsuspecting souls.
Most didn't get it, few bothered to reply, and somehow over the years the practice fell off the wagon.
But letters to a friend was how I got infected by the writing bug...and the very act of writing, rather than its content, was what I found liberating.

This is a formal apology to one and all who have been subjected to such letters.

Bad habits are never stopped.They just get replaced.

And until I find a worthy, lasting replacement, you may have to grunt and bear a few more...letters to friends.

All the time I've lost

Could be the title of something in the future, with different connotations.
Right now, this is what it means.
All the time I've lost when I read something absorbing is the best time I've spent.
To generalise: All the time I've lost absorbed I'm something,
Is the best time I've ever spent.
Makes me realize that time is an illusion just like anything else.
Mini satoris are what makes life worth living, if not just for another day.

TEOTWAKI and Mickey

"What is TEOTWAWKI?", she asks.

I don't know.

"Just another beginning that we know nothing of"

"I'll show you a way to destroy the world, one mp3 file at a time", promises the girl I've never seen as she really is, but always as she wants me to.

She tells me she types without a single backspace.

"Suppose you've got an mp3 file of a band's unreleased song.Assume that it was composed by your rockstar boyfriend-just for you, and its the only copy that exists in the world."

"I didn't say you were gay or anything...I just assumed you were a pussy"

"Ok, now if you erase that mp3 file, it will never be possible to recover exactly that particular performance.To erase is to destroy a small part of history"

"Your action has caused a small uncertainty about the past state of the world, and uncertainty is entropy, and ergo you have increased the overall entropy and pushed the world in a death spiral from which it may never recover" 

TEOTWAKI...death by mp3.

I still don't understand it.

"Uh huh...its just another beginning we know nothing of"

"But the world is dying anyway...whether you increase it's entropy or not"

She tells me she types without a single backspace.

I believe her.

But I don't understand her.

"Did you know The sun and the moon were twins?"

"Popol Vuh tells us the legend of the twin brothers were skilled at a traditional ball game."

"It's the Mayan bible, you idiot"

I'll believe anything she says.

"These twins-when they played, made so much noise that they woke up the gods of Xibalba, who challenged them to a contest"

"Naturally, the gods defeated the twins, sacrificed them, and buried their bodies under the ball court...talk about overkill!"

"The head of one brother, Hun Hunaphu was hung on a tree of human like calabash gourds"

"A goddess named Xquic heard of this strange tree and decided to see it herself.When she approached, Hun Hunahpu's head spat into her hand, impregnating her with Hunahpu and Xbalanque, the brothers known as Hero Twins"

It reminds me of a book I saw,titled"Intimacy with God"

It with other Sex "How to" manuals.

She tells me she types without a single backspace.

Note to self:Must learn touch typing?

Everyone wants to make a goddess out of me, but all I want to be is Mickey Mouse, she once said...later attributing it Fitzgerald, the writer.

           "In time, the twins became great ball players like their father and uncle.Gods of Xibalba, asked for a rematch, defeated them, ground their bones, and threw them into a river"

Mickey Mouse was actually supposed to be Mortimer Mouse.

I still don't know what Goofy is-certainly not a gander,gorilla or a giraffe.

"There the Hero Twins were reborn, first and fish and then they slowly evolved into itinerant performers Returning to Xibalba for revenge, the Hero twins contrived an ingenious trap.After they demonstrated a variety of astonishing feats, Xbalanque beheaded Hunahpu-and then made him whole again."

Why is calliope essentially female?

Has there ever been a male counterpart?

"The gods were so delighted with the beheading rick that they begged to partake in the same trick.The Hero twins appeared happy to oblige and began to dismember the Gods"

Is now love blinder than ever? 

If one can fall in love with nothing but the finite permutations and combinations of 26 alphabets that come on a computer screen ?

but offer infinite meanings?

Where do all the lost meanings end up?

What do they all add up to?

"As soon as the gods were all but dismembered, the Hero twins delivered their ultimate blow by refusing to restore the Gods into their original state"

Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man, said someone many years ago.

Humans are forgetful...history is not.

Do I claim it as my own now?

Does it matter?

All she wants to be is Mickey Mouse.

I'm far from mortified.

"The Hero twins emerged victorious from Xibalba-and rose as the Sun and the Moon.Each day they reenact their journey to the underworld and their joyful return"

"The End!"

I want to say-death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.

What does it mean?

"Guatemala"

"I'm going there this summer,with a friend"

I'm afraid to ask.

No, lets be honest.

I'm afraid to know what I think I already know.

If the whole is greater than the sum of its parts but parts of me feel like they are holed in places and hastily patched up, where do I stand?

       I've lost my confidence that I understand anything in this world...my personal meaning, however inadequate is all I have.

It is not a humbling insight.

It terrifies me.

You can be my Mickey Mouse, if can I be your anything?

But I'm Married

I said goodbye to my comb with a pair of scissors.

It was the quickest way to be someone else in the mirror.
For a while.

      
    It was painstakingly long-and a pain in the neck-figuratively and literally too.

          Twice I spilt blood on the floor while slicing off my pinnae...tiny little nips, at the edges-with a quick but unsure footing and rapid snip-snip action.

Pain and red hotness welled through my head-my hands began quivering...and made my progress that much slower and much more painful.

I record my thoughts the way a dog marks his territory...there seems to be a method to this madness.

But I contradict myself.
        There is no method to any madness, so as to speak...that which lacks a method, either intuitive or through logical deduction can be truly termed madness-Einstein was talking about insanity mind you, and not your garden variety madness.

     

The dream was like a chicken bone lodged in between the teeth.Vegetarians-please dont ask me to explain.

   There was a large house, in which I had gone to meet someone-
someone I once knew,
and at once I knew it was a dream.

But I was curious of the unfolding events-which were quite unlike the recent few days of travel and isolation.

In the big palatial house, where we met, there were kids in one room playing with bright neon toys who invited me to join them.

I did.

              It was a confusing game, where they tied neon pink rubber balls filled with helium to their heads and bounced them off by headbutting them.

The only thing I remember about the game now was that it wasn't as easy as they made it look.

            And that she was waiting for me in the next room, with a look of a mother who knows you've broken her favourite perfume, or a wife that has caught you jerking off to scat fetish videos.

      Only women have the capability of speaking volumes with a single look.

Men sadly don't have the necessary amount of estrogen to interpret the same.

A disembodied voice boomed somewhere in the mansion.
It was the infomercial guy...I could recognize him anywhere.

"Do I want her for the entire night?

"Nah...twenty, maybe thirty minutes at the most"

"After that I might actually have to start a conversation with her!"

"Now who would want that!"

         In the next room, when we met, I tried to force myself on her-that's the awful truth...that I was being a dream rapist, that I tried to hug and kiss her...and the most distinct sound that I remember was my beard rustling as it rubbed against her cheeks.

            Maybe this vivid memory of the beard rustling against her cheek was a self defensive  mechanism of my psyche, because I've never grown a beard so far in my life, and maybe this was my psyche's way of distancing the self from the actions that I clearly was horrified of committing.

         You see, I would later tell myself, it was the bearded man who was forcing himself on her, not you, even if it was your own dream.

      You see, you are still the same guy, the guy who usually asked permission to hold hands or never asked for a phone number until it was given, or opened car doors and drew chairs.

You are still the same guy...

     The palatial mansion was was made of white marble, with golden & lapis lazuli borders, whatever that means.

           Strangely, after the initial token resistance, she caved in, and began kissing and hugging while softly moaning- and in horror I stopped myself, and blurted out something, which I will reveal later.

               She stopped for a second, and gave a silent acknowledgment of what I said and threw herself back to continue the amorous act that I had initially initiated.

    I grew increasingly confused and guilt ridden as she pushed me onto a marble lounge and woke up at the same time I fell on the marble lounge with a thud.

I woke up to me saying..."But I'm Married!"