Anger

is what ruled me - it's not that I have not known, but every time I re-read what I have written some time ago, I am struck by the rawness and ferocity of the one emotion that thrusts itself out from the thicket of words.

Like a wronged whore with breasts heaving. Ravaged and torn and mutilated.

And then there is the crowd. But of course. Hyenas. The world needs scavengers too.

What heals anger? Save amnesia?

Words

Sometimes I have the urge to use a word just for the beauty of it.

Like ‘incessant’. Said that word out aloud several times and was quite taken by the feel of it on my tongue. Inncessssant. Hmmm. Liked the subtle nuances of its meaning – incessant touch bruising, incessant love cloying, incessant lure story of my life. All unnecessary, yet quite charming. Used it once, took it off because quite unnecessary.

Some words have not yet been used. Like absinthe. Guard it preciously. Jade velvet covered viscous word emitting dull green glow. Very precious word which I say out aloud. Also fact that its liquer. Forbidden. In the mind absinthe tends to poison. Poison. Careful.

Hubris. For obvious reasons. The image is of an Egyptian canine face. Anubis.

Tenebrae. Darkness. Grief. Self.

Lament. Inconsolable. Unadulterated beauty. In pain lies love, lies beauty.

Subjective Opinion

I don't like Paulo Coelho. There. I said it. I liked 'Zahir' and that's about it. Extreme spirituality gives me indigestion. Besides, I don't like the whiny prose either.

Kundera is better. Only slightly. He's more objective about the whining.

I like Shashti Brata. Especially 'Confessions of an Indian Woman Eater'. Also, 'My God Died Young'. I like the irreverence.

I read Rebecca (Finally!). I didn't like the story, or the too-detailed prose.

I still like Poe. I don't like Ayn Rand. But I liked 'Anthem'.

I like Jeanette Winterson.

I don't like obscure prose merely because it's obscure.

I want to read good fiction.

Any suggestions from my random visitors?

Catione

Yesterday, I dreamt of this word ‘catione’. It doesn’t make sense to me, but a voice whispered it over and over and over again. It said, Kat-e-own. I tried reasoning with it that such a word does not exist. But as voices in dreams are, this one too possessed no body to call its own and therefore, presumably, no ears to listen. It was just a thin whisper that formed in my head in irritatingly short intervals.

I concluded, while still asleep, that it meant ‘Caution’, I am warning myself of some impending danger. Fascinating stuff I tell you. I can sense Freud turning over in his grave.

But then thefreedictionary.com gives me a rather insipid explanation (though the pronunciations do not match). Catione is merely ‘cation’ in French and other languages. A positively charged ion characteristically moving towards the negative electrode.

My plot for a box office hit turns out to be a really boring documentary. Sheesh!

IgnoRantus

Just as I reach the crescendo of fretting about gender play at work and the related dynamics I hear about the New Zealand bird called Kea. Keas are clever birds that bend rules and create their own to adapt to the constantly changing world. The strategy seems fair, but unless it is tried and tested in a particular work environment one can never tell. It’s tough being a woman at work. And an ambitious one at that. An ambitious woman is almost an oxymoron. How dare she be ambitious? Does she not care for her husband and children? Does she not know what is good for her? These are not openly proclaimed, but implied in every deed and word.

The very fact of being female closes political doors, I am completely at a loss as to decipher the hieroglyphics on the walls or to decode secret languages. I am rudely shoved into unfamiliar terrain, nobody sympathises because this is what is in store for ambitious women. A young male is equally a novice in office politics but is clued on earlier into the dynamics of male interrelationship because that is what, unfortunately for me, a present day workplace largely is.

I am picking up, though. And fast. In time I fear I will be so much an expert at playing slick smooth political games that I might end up hating myself. A large part of career progression is about histrionics. Men do that, women hesitate to do that - I think. Arse licking is something that men do discreetly, going out for a drink with the boss and doing small and big favours for him and generally getting to know him socially and collectively leching at other women, which form the cornerstone of male camaraderie and bonding. Women are denied that window of opportunity to interact thus. Those who do go out for a drink with the boys run the risk of being seen as easy and willing to sleep to the top. And though one may care two hoots about what others think, such an image is a sure fire way to career suicide. If one is serious about reaching the policy making levels, ie.

I do not know if I am ever going to reach the policy making levels. I am not happy with the trillion restrictions I place on myself, but when I try to think outside of those restrictions my mind screams at me to get a life. The very notion of being a servile, sycophantic hyena who gnaws on discarded bones to start with and just waits for an opportunity to ease into the charmed inner circle of the jungle king is anathema to my soul. Career is slavery. You are a slave to all the bosses, but you swallow your ego for the paycheque and for the sake of future opportunities, and take it out on your subordinates when it gets too much. And therefore the restrictions that cut blood flow to my normal real person life for the sake of a career seem meaningless and soul selling. I do not know if men feel this way at all. Or are men so conditioned as to ignore such things at work? Just as women are conditioned to compromise and adjust? And maybe such conditioning is good?

Gah

At the start of his career, he was my favourite. I loved his dimples and his black eyes. I have grown out of the teenager crush, nonetheless I could still be biased when it comes to him. But I have a sneaky suspicion I could be right, for I think I saw immense compassion and understanding in his eyes. Those were the eyes of an honest man who respects and cherishes what he has, a man who can identify with and relate to the evolvement of the same spectrum of emotions in another.

Or am I still such a fool as to be taken in by the charms of a black eyed sorcerer? After all that life has taught me, after such vehement assertions as Ne humanus crede, am I still a patsy for liquid, black eyes? The thought is so depressing I might be driven to suicide. Gah!

Advice

"Distance, like darkness and disease, amplifies"

Young Thung Who Cares - I do, I think

“Ready to take serious action against wrinkles?”

I nod my head vigorously and look up from Vikram Seth’s ‘Collected Poems’, and Claudia Schiffer goes on to explain how L’oreal’s collagen bio-spheres (?) plump up skin from underneath to bring about ‘visible reduction in wrinkles’. It’s not that I am wrinkly and crinkly and am in dire need of a face lift. No. Yet, I am riveted by the wrinkle-reducing ads and I find myself wondering if they work or not and what would be the right age to have a laser face thingy that supposedly blasts off the surface layer of skin and brings out pink baby skin from underneath. Am I that shallow? Well, seems like it. Am I ashamed of being shallow? Well, not really.

But it sets me thinking: what marks the mental transition from young to not-so-young-anymore? I used to feel that I was an old hag when I was 25. I have grown half a decade older. I guess the moment I turned 30 I told myself that I am not young-young anymore. I have begun to really grow old. Does that bother me? A tad, I suppose, otherwise I wouldn’t be talking about it.

I once knew this person who went on and on and on and ………… on about his turning 40. He had churned out a heap of poems and blog posts about this very significant event and I remember being mildly irritated by it. Though, I hasten to add, I understood, as I do now, exactly where he was coming from. It’s his utmost concern about his bald spot and his fading youth that really opened my eyes to the fact that men are equally vain about their youth and good looks as most women are, if not more.

What is it about old age that we foolish mortals dread so? Perhaps, we are afraid of becoming less attractive. And why does it matter if we do become less attractive? Why attract? Instinctually speaking – to consummate that attraction. To procreate. Bleeeugggghh. So man lives just to create and tend to the progeny? Then what of the noble ‘purpose in life’ that us stupid lot so earnestly seek? Your purpose in life is to raise your child(ren)? Sounds very much like my mom.

Are we worried about losing our health? Being dependent on someone? But that is too far off, and what does that have to do with wrinkles anyway? Or does the (beginning of) loss of youth trigger some neurological, biological reaction in us? Are we wired to respond to it and recognize this so we can take preventive actions in time to safeguard our health, if we so desire?

Or is it just that we are so conditioned by the modern world that we live in, that there is this very real pressure to look good and be young with flawless skin and svelte body. If we did not have the media constantly bombarding us with lascivious tidbits of firm female bottoms in thongs and muscular male torsos, would we worry so much about one wrinkle that has not even made its appearance? Now, I am not berating the media for this unbearable torture. Give us more, I say, and for obvious reasons.

At the end of it all, the only person who would be concerned about my growing old is me. Those who love me would love me still; the indifferent and the haters would go on being indifferent and hateful.

And that goes for all of you as well. It doesn’t really matter if you grow old. If you want to have the wrinkles nuked, go ahead. If you want to proudly display them, do. A wrinkle or two on one’s face or the lack of it, ultimately makes no bloody difference. So, might as well NOT have any wrinkles, what? Heh!

Musings @ Work

Fraud Prevention has caught my fancy of late. Also Risk Management. I trawl the Net and procure tomes of material, print them out and set about reading. Premise being that the wealth of knowledge that I assimilate now, will be of use sometime in the future - when I chair a meeting or when I make strategic decisions that will have far reaching implications. Heh.

But come to think of it, I am not too sure about the wisdom of my choice. Fraud – if I knew how to suspect and uncover ‘deliberate actions with an intent to deceive’ I would have kept away from many a persons and watched my back. Risk – if I knew how to manage that, heck, I wouldn’t even be here reading fraud-risk crap and dreaming about something that might happen in the distant future if a lucky shooting star condescends to drop on my head. If only I knew how to assess the consequences and risks of a few actions of yore!

Sigh. Wisdom dawns only when senescence yawns.

:(

Earlier, blog templates used to make enough sense to me so I could tweak the code and add pictures and backgrounds of my choice. The new blogger templates, while being extremely user-friendly to manipulate what with widgets et al, make nary a sense. I am completely at a loss. Compounding my pain is that fact that there are so many beautiful templates and whatchamallit style sheets online, and I cannot make enough sense of it all to even utilize it for my benefit. Aargh.

Writer's Block

Now it would be posh for a writer to have it, but why inflict that curse on me? I am just your average bored person scribbling nonsense, reading and re-reading it and feeling smug about those literary accomplishments. Not so long ago, I had gotten into the habit of writing at least one page of ‘something’ everyday, every single day, it seems amazing now, how I could manage to do that. Writing a page a day, people, is not easy. It takes dedication and discipline, I don’t think even Shakespeare would have found it easy to write a page a day, regularly and with consistent quality. And talking of dedication and discipline and yours truly… hrrummpph… ah well, let’s move on to the real world.

In the last two years, I haven’t written anything. Well, save for the occasional jottings. I miss writing. And I am losing it. The thought that I am deliberately and stupidly letting go of that skill brings forth an eerie sense of making the same mistake twice. I have let go of too many things just around the time I began to grasp the essence of it, or shall we say, grasp the essence of how one goes about grasping the essence of it, if that makes any sense.

I am older now. My point of view has changed. I have grown, I have become more accepting, forgiving and emotionless. I have become more tolerant and jaded. Trivialities do not excite me any more, even human beings have ceased to be exciting. Now that’s growing too old too fast, but what the heck.

My life will change again, of that I am sure. May not be for the better and I am not really prepared for that. I hope I will have the courage and that I would have acquired enough survival skills to fight it out all by myself, when it is called for. And till that time, I suppose I shall carry on with my old pastime, walk with this friend, pick up where we left off. And we shall fight this WB monster together.