fine lines

watching the odyssey compelled me to weigh my love for physics vs my love for philosophy because that's what every nolan film is about. a debate is the dark knight questioning existentialism vs the hollow victories achieved in the prestige; but it gets settled once you realise that the thin line between physics and philosophy was only very recently drawn. and i think a compelling argument would only infer from observing the thin line between nature and life for that is what physics and philosophy really are - physics being the study of nature, philosophy gets toned down to only the "life" aspect of nature and the ideas that nature produces. the odyssey stripped down to philosophical bones was a study on human nature and how the magnetic pull towards a forgotten identity was enough to fight the pulls created by the urge for sex, food and immortality itself.

the personification godification aspect of these urges as gods was the biggest satire being played on by a mortal favourite, as odysseus tricks all of these urges into turning on themselves and giving away the very host they were supposed to thrive on, which was to stop odysseus from reaching back home.

historical physicists' questionings thrived on chain breakages in the continuity of logic and observing simultaneity. nolan does something remarkably similar to lay about the breadcrumbs for us to follow which lead to the crevices of the fracture that he had created in some intuitively accepted concpet such as identity, morality, ambition, etc. which end up carrying the core ideas of his movies.

now for more of my nihilistic love towards nolan comes from bounding the viewer to beg the question about when a meaningful pursuit reveal its destructive nature. when the very thing that gives life meaning begins to consume the life that gave it meaning in the first place and whether we ever realise the moment when the pursuit becomes the destruction itself.

the island of the sirens

transcendence of art beyond what is expressible, shipped as a figment of expression nevertheless, was not something I imagined I would witness as tempting mermaids lying on the island of the sirens. 

All the things you wanted to be and then all the things you wished you never wished for.

It was a delicious itch you want to scratch but you find it under the skin and can't reach it.

So the delicious itch becomes unbearable.

It told you what you most want is what you most can't have and that what you most can't have is what you already had and had already lost.

It was a song of all the promises I failed to keep. And it told me I don't really want to go home.

is odysseus describing what he hears from the island of the sirens when hes tied to the mast of his ship.

---

Expression shipped as the musical instrument becoming an extension of my body, or the clicking on the zip file on a mac immediately extracting it or the thumping of a motorcycle exhaust through my spine, were forms of relaying emotion I had tasted. 

But testing new waters came with a fresh block of ice embedded with the blade and the blood of my own tongue has become irresistible now.

Since no words or music could do justice to the actual sirens odysseus might have heard, as a viewer, we're attempted on, by depicting the sirens as the light at the end of the tunnel (a direct feeling of what odysseus' description makes me feel) while also making us believe in the promise that the tunnel would actually lead to it.

So, in essence, the depction, i.e. the figment of expression expressed as ekphrasis about the sirens is being shipped carrying the transcendence of art in it, being the very idea of what those sirens could stand for. 

Its self referential by nature.

hiraeth

Yesterday, on my roof, I sat for a long stare into the gusty clouds, fixatedly wondering about what I had expected life to be.

And it was exactly this: a slow cool breeze caressed the little sensory hair on my earlobes as the moonlight filtered through the scattered pattern of the leaves hanging off of an overhead lemon tree. In my twitching nose there was left a funny feeling by the blooming spices minced in ghee on the stovetop rising with heat through the chimney as if directly being fed to me from the concrete enclosure I call my home. Windchimes dancing in the distance gave me a sense of security capable enough of immediately dozing me off but as I resisted the urge to do so - an anti catalyst flew swiftly sweeping away my sleep - chirping away to locate it's home or maybe prey on a worm. I could feel the humidity slowly leave the soil towards the sky clouding my mood inducing it of a trepidation-like state.  

I felt an uneven calmness pulsating through my body only to realise that I was experiencing this in the moment and wasn't fantasizing about a passed memory; it was in a way the realisation that joy and pain were both parts of me and identifying with either was a choice of mine, in essence, giving the choice a nature of certainity over uncertainity.

But then I got up and went back downstairs to the real world.

barriers

There is a calmness that runs through my me when my parents call on me to give them a foot or head massage every once in a while. While the frequency of this happening has dropped quite a bit as I've grown older and its maybe because of the apparent curtain that has begun to materialise between us which makes it easier for them to look away from the loss of innocence in me. Or maybe because the child they had raised seems to be taking onto real world responsibilities and would feel demeaned when asked for a foot massage.

But that is not what I wish to write about, but instead about the very thing that I scream inside of me, every time I see this look in their eyes - a look which seems to be holding back love.

Because how inordinately lovely is it to be able to demand love when you feel like it.

As I grow older, I've begun to understand the tragedy of growing up to not be a subduing version of responsibility but rather a negotiable commodity of affection. What must've gone through their minds to transition into living this lie of love being a negotiable quantity that they have to earn rather than claim with full fledged entitlement like they used to? Or is it something that I did? Was I the one to pull the curtain between us as a veil to hide my loss of innocence?

Maybe the reason for this overwhelming feeling of throwing up when these thoughts go though my head is the realiastion that the opposite of love isn't hate but rather a restraining feeling of having to earn every act of care from someone you love. Apologising after asking for breakfast in bed. Stealing glances before having to ask me to keep myself free for the evening. Convinving and confiming thrice with me for a movie night. All were forms of growing up I knew had an inevitable arrival and they seemed to have arrived now; while I still feel like running away.

a note on duration

on buying a new pack of 10 cigarettes, I noticed something strange happening - a feeling lesser than an ephiphany but definitely greater than the general normalcy of life.

the first five or six cigerettes seemed to last way shorter in comparison to the last five or six ones.

as I lit the tip of the first cigerette from the box - it almost felt like a hidden revelation was caught in the crossfire of my dismissal over this phenomenon's mundane nature.

at first observation, waving it off as my miscalculation over how fast a cigarette burns felt like an appropriate thing to do but a delinquent peek behind the curtain revealed a much deeper attribute in the perpetual nature of how I experience life...

similar to how the days full of life with shit going down are valued higher than others, seem to go by slower relative to days adhering to a generic template. days full of monotony and some background lingering of despair.

the slower burning of a cigarette lit from the second half seemed like the days I see old friends or go someplace for an outing - a break from the constant fixation of an apparent routine.

most days have started to burn by faster not because they lack happening events but instead I feel a fractured worldview take over me while my intrinstic perspective to view them as valuable has somewhere gone missing; seeping outward through that fractured mind.

some learnings I drew from this are - that granted abundance taken as an anesthetic functions similar to how it numbs the pain, when in this case it instead classified my days to an imaginary surplus. my mind smoked away the cigarettes before my lungs did while scarcity resurrected attention in a way nothing else did and the last couple of cigarettes manifested themselves much more harder than their very ancestors ever could.

I also learnt that value for me is generated by endings rather than beginnings. that finitude is only observable as I move further away from the mammoth and its size becomes apparent. opposite to the counterintuitive notion, observability increased as I moved far away.

my days of youth, as inexhaustible cigarettes, made the percieved infinite unappreciable; forever discounting what I believe would always stay by my side.

spending years of in this mud, I noticed life accelerating, when in possible actuality it was ever increasing neglect. maybe nothing does burn faster because I see it as ordinary but instead ordinary burns fast becasue of my refusal to witness it. and by the time ive learnt to value those final cigarettes, the first ones had already become smoke and instead of my days, it was me at the very center who has burnt away.

a graveyard; or the birthplace of a change to explore my identity

ever since childhood, something strange used to happen to me. the older I grew, the more I realised it wasnt something everyone experienced... before every long family road trip, I found myself infinitely more excited about the stopovers rather than the destination itself. 

over time, the same feeling began to creep into shorter journeys—even a trip to the grocery store. Assuming this was universal made me indifferent to its existence, and in that indifference, I unknowingly began using these places as anchors to hold onto my personality.

because what even are we at a forgotten mcdonalds in the middle of 100km highway?
A stopover is a place that owes me nothing. It knows neither my name nor my history. It is where I arrive socially naked, stripped of every title, friendship, expectation and memory that constitute major traits of my identity. A clean slate.

i've always seen these places as the architectural equivalent of stepping into a changing room inside of a crowded shopping mall. the world exists just beyond the curtain, yet for a fleeting moment, i'm alone. how do I stand when nobody is looking? how do I truly behave when there is no audience to reinforce the person I've become accustomed to performing? Every action inside that room belongs only to that room; environmentally sealing my habits and thoughts while posture become artifacts of that isolated space. A tiny universe detached from the narrative of my life.

that was where I first learned to observe the indifference.

and through that indifference, I began to see the destination.

only much later did I realise that college had quietly become exactly that. Not the destination, but the stopover.

a place suspended between two versions of myself. Not home anymore, but not yet wherever life ultimately intends to take me. a liminal space whose purpose isn't to be remembered for permanence, but for transformation. a place where identities are tried on and discarded like clothes inside that same changing room. where friendgroups are temporary civilisations, opinions are provisional, ambitions mutate every semester, 

and every version of me dies quietly enough that only I notice the funeral.

perhaps that's why I treasure it more than whatever destination waits beyond it.

destinations ask you to arrive as someone.

while the stopovers allowed me to become someone.

there is a comfort here that permanence could never let me experience. headache inducing EST mornings as I sip sugarless black coffee in the mess, shivering into oblivion while the hangover of the past week hits all at once. debating into sleepless nights while defending the weaker argument simply because I believed criticism, by its very nature, is constructive. wandering through conversations with people I may never meet again, knowing that, somehow, that makes them more honest instead of less.

this place taught me what those highway stopovers had been trying to teach me all along.
that identity is never discovered at the destination.
it is assembled in the places that were never meant to be home, but tried their very best nevertheless.

incepted

I'm quitting alcohol and reefer cold turkey - but only for a while.

This sudden decision was a product of an epiphany during today morning's shower and possibly the goosebumps the song "Porcelain' by Moby gave to me. While listening to the song, besides the lyrics, the only thought clouding my mind was that an idea planted deep enough into the mind, is much more potent than the hardest drug ~ something I heard in inception and also something that stuck to me.

Depersonalisation was an idea to me at some point. Today, I stand far away from that point. 

When I'm high - responsive stimuli tinkering with my nervous system floating around in the room manifests itself to become unmistakably real. The carpet and the drapes come to life while I delve into the lines between Kendrick's poetry. Tears burst outward like an open dam and I'm unable to stop my thoughts from continuously imploding on my conscious. The weight of the world pushes me to express my

thoughts as art but my hold back becomes my inability to paint. If this isn't real then what is?

This being precisely my point - depersonalization and detachment are concepts that I once knew but have now started to feel - when I'm sober of course.