That lip-stick !

It’s roughly eleven forty five (which means that 15 minutes from now) yet another morning belonging to my eclectic existence will depart hand in hand with a bit of my being to dissolve in the fog that last evening was. The evening in question commenced around nine-thirty subsequent to my arrival at a local bar followed by the familiar embrace of a pint of their local finest! A hard day was about to dissolve along with the rising di-oxide bubbles and (hopefully) good and meaningless banter.

And then the almighty laughed!

I believe my departure was stamped around mid-night and somewhere in the said time line, in order to defend (to be read as re-hash) a point I had made earlier, a statement involving some unfortunate combination of Lip-stick, lump of cow dung, her appearance, etc. escaped the black hole that my oral cavity is! In my defense, the offending statement was driven ONLY by genuine concern for the said colleague (which even she agrees to).
Unfortunately, she ended up rather offended and all that (maybe rightfully so) and thereafter there was nothing I could say that was presently acceptable to her or others. Anyway – to abbreviate the pain in this story, a well researched course on public speaking and basic sensitivity to ladies' sentiments etcetera followed. I sat there, gallantly, took it all in, even braved a coat of the said lip-stick and then legged it to the nearest exit without much regard to finesse after that.

On the way back home, having cranked up my gassed up vehicle and my aerated brain and engaging both in the required gears, I tried to see the reason behind my delightful evening. I agree that the apart from the gender there are quite a few difference between a man and a woman. I can, at a purely acoustic or basic plane agree that the statement might have packed more than the required wallop and could have been delivered in better “taste”. However, what confounded self was that since when did the underlying meaning and thoughts got relegated to the back seat? It’s a dangerous slope and here is why…

<<Analytical reasoning>>
Every other person apart from ourselves can be interpreted as a collection of attributes that we prioritize in our heads, which alters their proximity in our personal space. One of these attributes is “meaning”. If we prioritize meaning over the surface, transparency will follow.

Otherwise, at best one can hope for is selective familiarity!

<<slightly human reasoning>>
Nothing says it better than what was said by Martin Luther King Jr. …
“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

Either way, lessons learnt are:

• Silence really is golden!
• Next time, drink alone! (spare your friends…)
• A "light" brew after Bass, just does not cut it.
• Some lessons will have to be learnt the hard way!

So much food for thought and all this for $20.00 (including tip, and taxes …)

Hmmm….could have been worse.

-A

This pursuit.

My attention was recently directed to what Franz Kafka once penned (and incidentally also occupies a stable berth in my electronic mail signature) – “By believing passionately in something, we create it. The non-existent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired”. Quite frankly, despite the acute reservations and sentiments harbored by a significant chunk of humanity pertaining to its author, self on occasions (totaling more than one) has dissolved in the inherent rightness of these lines.

Recent events and the ensuing fallout from the same, has created a very riddling state of being for me and now, much to my own dismay, I find myself trying to justify the absolute in the said claim by Mr. Kafka (which was a very comfortable blanket that I had wrapped myself in). My primary stumbling in the aforementioned qualification is trying to figure out, whether the scattered desires in my possession are even perceptible or to be slightly generic – is every desire (complemented with the suitable degree of passionate pursuit) reachable ?

Digging deeper, it turns out – that all our pursuits are somehow knotted with some second being – which more often than not, presents a reasonably respectable degree of challenge in unthreading the same. Quite often than not, all the rationality and the supporting structure of “logic” and all that is unfounded by one moment of realization. In one instant we find ourselves pursuing a break in the thread – and after that, remains can only last for so long. Silly and terribly naïve (despite my best attempts at re-affirmation to the contrary) that I am, I find that I didn’t even drop the breadcrumbs along the way.

And this seems to me – is fairly applicable; whether what I have been wishing and wanting for my own existence or those who are my own building block. They say, hoping against hope is foolish and more often than not, a tragically fine symptom of immaturity and the associated dribbles. Nevertheless, one thing is perfectly apparent – if passionate pursuit is to be attempted, a certain instances of such symptoms should be present in the being. That seems to be the price for sign of life ! (if only a sign)

So has the thread snapped – possibly so. Do I feel wary – most definitely so. Am I changing my loyalty to what one particular Austrian said… not presently.

and I AM smiling !

-A

Only a woman...

A significant volume of water has flowed under the proverbial bridge since I last managed to expunge some of my thoughts out of my system. Nevertheless, so much has transpired in the interim period that a significant portion of my own belief in the good and commonsense of people near and dear to me has also drowned in the waters mentioned above. The last couple of months have definitely left me rattled and what not – and tempting as it might be for my alter-self to pour it all out here – till I lose this valiant battle, I am going to refrain from doing so.

Nevertheless, as is an unspoken rule of life in general – a certain degree of balance is inevitable (irrespective of the domain we refer to). So without allowing for any tangents, here is what happened that recently caused me to revisit some old sentiments and – all in caused an inversion of the natural state of face of self (without trying to put too fine a point to it!)

A few weeks back – one of my rather dear colleagues stopped by my lavish office (a term, I admit is being used with very high degree of extrapolation). Now my desk is a fairly ordinary fare inhabited by an assortment of books, disks etc. Furthermore, being an individual who prioritizes the latent cleanliness over the cosmetic (read that as soul over body) and can back this belief with some (rather lead laden) points; I don’t really make any bones about its state upon being critiqued by mere mortals. Anyway, my friend/colleague visited me for some purpose that was probably pegged at two-thirds official and rising, when I had to depart for some reason that is clearly fogged right now.

Of course since she was already researching some online material, any sense of guilt that may arise of conventional civilities and what not – rapidly diminished, as I legged it out of there. Upon my return, I found one missing friend and a desk that had been reorganized. There were distinct signs of a massive cleanliness drive involving disposal of extraneous object, rearrangement of objects and all in all – restoration of a work desk to what it probably looks like (when inhabited by “regular/sane” individuals) on a given day. Needless to mention, I was left with a sufficiently large amounts of gratitude, but more importantly – what came to my mind was “only a woman…” However, I didn’t say anything. Nevertheless it did get me thinking about something very elemental that is so distinct about a girl/woman.

I have tried several avenues trying to pin this down and having accrued sufficient mileage on said avenues (also involving countless extraction from verbal graves I have managed to trip into along the way), I think I see it now and here it is….The very constitution of a woman speaks out sacrifice and before I disintegrate in the myriad world of clichés here is a qualifier to the same. At its very crux – there has to be something very different (apart from the gender and other trivial stuff) that is different between a man and a woman to have a desire to give. Think about it – a woman endures pain, gives the birth, and then eventually manages to live with the separation from her child that is almost inevitable. Be it a mother left behind some sliding doors, or a woman having to give up a child at birth. And it’s not just that ability to do it – it’s the willingness to do it for a greater good that is so marvelous.

Stepping back – my friend didn’t have ABSOLUTELY any need/obligation/requirement to clean up my desk. But she did it. Of course one possible (and rather tantalizingly inviting at that) reason would be that in order to actually work at that desk, she HAD to clean it….but that despite having a rather disturbing ring of truth to it – is preceded by what I have mentioned above. It’s that grass-root level ability to just do something that is so ordinary in a very extraordinary manner, with minimal fuss and even lesser expectations that is so delicious to behold.

I have had the benefit of having been surrounded by fantastic women so far in my life (and much as it may benefit my image, not to qualify this statement), I am STILL single. That said, some time back ( and this is what I was transported back to), I realized that it’s very easy to over-expect and consequently – express an opinion about women, but it’s not very easy to be a working lady and then come home every day and religiously put food on the table and I am guilty of this offense too. I realized my mistake the day I became aware of my own limitations (of course the list being rather long on that, is still being read to me by that invisible alter self).

I had to stop for a couple of days at this point while putting all this down – because I honestly felt that there was some thing that was not being to put down. Finally I am giving up. Why – there is something ethereal about a feeling that one can’t write about. It remains exclusive. It haunts, delights, tickles and mostly – keeps that smile within reach of all of us (which is definitely something I can use, when quite a few around me are beyond my ability to reach out to).

-A

March,28/2005