The Rhythms Choose Us

..."Don't want your grip, don't want your greed..." screams Metallica into my ears through a pair of headphones that never fail to accompany me through these nights. One of my best friends that stuck through thick and thin. The next number to be streamed into my ears is the number called "One" by Metallica. With a thumping rhythm, a melody of its own, this has always been one of my anthems, drumming in my head through all my highs and lows. Sometimes I wonder if it’s we who identify with the music or the other way round, we are identified by the music..? Do we choose the rhythms or is it the rhythms that choose us...is it that we choose to live or life that chooses us..? This thought takes me far off to Valencia, Spain where a friend who I met during my travels, lives. I've never been to Spain but I've seen enough of beautiful Spain on tv, heard enough about beautiful Spain from people who've been there, or so as they said, listened to enough songs about beautiful Spain, enough to be able to imagine Spain in its famed splendor. My friend, the lead guitarist of "Eudemonia", a band that experiments with 'philosophical music', is a serious musician.
From one of our conversations, I started feeling that we cannot create music, but rather that the rhythms flow into the mind of the composer. Maybe a fragment of the ‘Universal Music’ that for some reason, or no reason at all, chooses one of the abundantly scattered subconscious minds from us out here, and seeps in note by note, until we have a rhythm in this dimension in a form that all of us can interpret...a song! What actually is the element that we call 'inspiration'? It definitely is not something resident in out minds, as we do not have inspirations throughout the day. Is the term 'an inspiring thought' even sensible? It's the 'inspiration' that brought about the 'thought' in the mind. Hence, the 'inspiration' and 'thought' are two different entities. So if the 'inspiration' is not another thought of the mind, then how can it be classified. Is the 'mind' even the seat of the inspiration at all......?

Theatre Of The Absurds

Dim streetlights shielded by the milky mist,
where lanterns in a timeless moment swing
for the wayward to home, their bundles of confusion bring.

Sometimes don’t you feel like we choose a mask everyday from our locker along with our shirts and flaunt it all through the day, finally taking it off before retiring to our solitude at night...a role through out the day and it is only when you are alone that you really are yourself with no mask and without a script to follow. Don’t you think it’s time to finally discover yourself for who you really are…

Rest a while, in the eden of oblivion…
Loosen yourself, in the gallery of your masks…
Introspect yourself, in the mirror of solitude…
Swallow a few tears, in the closets of your memory…
Resurrect once again, in the chamber of anonymity…
Arise, flaming…within the light of the smile of a beloved face.
Outstretch…reach into where you can yield to love and life.
Step down from the dais where life lives betrayed…
Step out, from the 'Theatre of the absurd'.

Credit card number, bank account number, social security number, license number, passport number enrolment number, telephone number,…number number! Sometimes don’t you feel like your identity is some combination of digits and alphabets! Don’t you feel like screaming out “I AM NOT A NUMBER!”

Stars, pretentious twinklers, peek into the milky splashes
over vacant hearts lost to numbers and cards.
The crescent growing, smiles in humor wise
over broken souls, defeated by pains and scars.
While I, in benumbing solitude try to figure
how, between souls, 'spaces' from 'distance' do differ…

We all need our ‘space’ but do you always realize when your cherished ‘space’ becomes a ‘distance’ and you become a castle with the drawbridge raised…and the ‘ivy starts to grows over your door’…

Figures huddled together around
the campfire that flings their lonely shadows afar…
Strange lights that illuminate the packets of void
amongst iron masks, cast with smiles…
Don't wait for the curtain to fall, only death the curtain boy's cue.
So let's step out…from the 'Theatre of the absurd'.
Let's listen to the serenade of Life…
And we may finally start to LIVE…

Meditate

-a journey through space, time, values and definitions.

Turn off the lights, close your eyes…lets form a circle and hold each other’s hands. Yes, let the music play in the backdrops of our minds. Now listen to me intently as I guide you through a short soft journey, and we may come back with the experience of evolution…

Midnight friendly to dreamers,
under the banners of peace.
Searched for the truth of reflections in the mirrors of illusions?
Now meditate with intent, to unify with the eternal cosmic affinity.
Hum a tune in harmony to the chants of the angelic bands,
Meditate with intent to unify with the essence of the truth…

“…there now…it’s working, isn’t it? The Heartbeats! You feel it, don’t you? Now we’re getting somewhere… carry on, I’m with you. The ripples through your back!...pay heed now. Sometimes, the Truth is best perceived through closed eyes.”

Pay heed! Pay heed now… Let’s depart…
Transcend this earthly plane, rise above the dimension
of doubts and queries, complexes, thoughts and inner dialogues.
With blinded eyes and open minds,
gaze into the abyss of your souls.

… if you can’t realize your soul, at least your mind… tell me what do you feel…Can it ever be told? Will it ever be told? Will it never be told…?

Let this be a moment of ceremonial matrimony between
traditional consciousness, your sub-conscious and your super-conscious selves.
Consummate yourself in this ceremony with celestial witnesses…

…aaah! And the music stretches and pulls you inner self…shivers! shivers!?

Awaken in a chamber, ancient and lost, in the ruins of a forgotten civilization.
Study the artifacts of your mind, uncover the tombs of your soul
for it is there that the answers lie buried under material debris.
In the silent echoes of nullity, hear the voices of your soul speak of wisdom.

How long will you toil for ends that only lead to other shallow beginnings.
Materialism has captivated our souls,
can’t you hear it screaming…”Wake up! Wake up, you degenerate!”…

Wake up now and embrace the seeds of your true identity.
Wake up now to find yourself .
Shed aside your fears and doubts, expectations and inhibitions, base self, foul society and conformity,
jump over the fence, for it is yonder that your soul waits for you.

Chanting in the background – “Thou art lost to the twilight zone,
a stranger greets the morning sun.
find yourself behind your social mask.”

In this moment, we sailed through space, time, values and definitions.
I invite you to my ‘Ceremony of Redefinition’.
Let’s redefine ourselves…
Uncovered your tombs? Shattered the mould?
Lucid, formless, rudderless… seeker of eternal peace.

Can’t embrace the light, and in darkness you can’t find delight?
Hither they cry and moan, thither they laugh too strong.
Caught in between, a misfit joker.
Don’t laugh, don’t moan,
draw the iron vest closer.
Rearrange yourself in the Gallery of the Lost and Found.
I invite you again to my ‘Ceremony of Redefinition’.

Emptiness vs. Hollowness

...The music plays her own chords and I feel like only just another note on the tablature...These midnights come in chilly and windy shades. Another new year rushed in as the last one slipped by. What do we have to put on the table... and those that we do have, do they pump some meaning into our existance?
We do the fancy gig, play the 'got ja answer' jig, walk the 'made man' walk, see the 'been there, done it, seen it' view...the 'experienced' soul....maybe some of us are, but somehow it makes one feel more like a juvenile. Is it as they say, 'confused are the wise'.
...what makes me feel strange is this that sometimes even when one is at peace, as peaceful as any man alive could be, without any exaggeration, we experience this inexplicable hollowness inside. Its not an emptiness...but a hollowness. Passing through my own phases of life, I have come to realise the difference between emptiness and hollowness of the ‘self’ now. If one were to put it into words as efficiently as he could, it would be something like this I guess...An 'emptiness' is the feeling of something missing, the realisation that something needs to be added so that you feel whole. A 'hollowness' is the feeling of a void. Contrary to the feeling of 'emptiness', it doesn't signify the need of something external to be added. All the parts are there on the tray, rather, its the failure to realise the significance of a particular element which incidentally already exists, a failure to realise the significance of a part in relation to the whole. And many of us feel this hollowness inside so deeply. Whether we do to interpret it as such or not is something else. Whether we are able to interpret it is also something else.
Every man is born innocent, meaning that he does not have the ability to delve into the complexities of such feelings. 'Innocent' is a graceful way of saying deaf, dumb and blind in a beautiful way. Then he jumps up to understand the definition of 'whole'...then he strays to loose this 'whole'...then he whimpers in solitude as the 'emptiness' gnaws at him so painfully...then he runs away to some distant land and there tries to gather the scattered pieces to fill this 'emptiness' in estrangement. Then if he is able to do it, he again jumps up as he forms the 'whole'. Then he realises the definition of 'whole'. This is the most beautiful phase that is experienced. He sings songs about it, preaches it, practices it...on the whole, a 'whole' man. Suddenly, he feels not as 'whole' as a ‘whole existance’ should feel. Then he jumps up to understand the definition of 'hollowness'... Very few ever reach to this level of realisation. But when and if ever this phase is crossed over, it is then that he has 'transcended' himself and it is the beginning of his journey to the horizon…
...and so, a hollow man I be for tonight...

Druid of the New World

..Stopping for refueling, and they say we are going to reach Manali around eight tomorrow morn. A toot of the horn and off we go again over and across the dry barren mountains of Northern India. Naked brown mountains rising and falling as far as the eye can see. Some love song from an old Bollywood movie being streamed into the bus. Me, over the shoulder of the driver, looking at the world through a dusty windscreen...a beautiful feeling. I disassociate myself from the objective and destination of my journey, and then I become just another backpacking traveller on the road again… like an arrow let loose, like a dolphin playing with the waves... like a baby's first walk. Alone, but it's cool, it always has been. And it’s also peaceful when you have a heart throbbing for you at the end of the road... someone you’re going to rush to when you get back..."A beautiful destination to a beautiful journey".
The nights of Sarchu breathe as softly as any night of any other place. Sarchu, a night halt here before I get back on the road again tomorrow.
Sometimes when I punch these lines with the lights switched off... a feel like a wizard from the Gothic Age trying to brew a potion in a cauldron to feed the king's army so that we could conquer the world, and I would become the ‘Druid of The New World’. Druid or not... it IS a new world that I’m going to sleep in tonight.. And it's going be a new world that I yawn in when I wake up. When you understand the reason of all the Chaos in the world and comprehend the purpose of it, the underlying harmony and beauty rise up before you... and you just cannot help snuggling inside your blankets with a half-smile... like a promise to welcome each light of the day and to get nourished through each screech of the midnight owl...and I feel that smile slowly spreading across my countenance...

Civil Retrogression

A chunk of rock which we affectionately call “mother earth”…instances of infinite possibilities which we lovingly call “relationships”…a word coined by warm hearts which we call “humanity”… Sometimes I am tempted to believe we all are really “nice and civil”. The Collective Conscience has such pretty definitions to lay on the table. I could believe that we could sing songs of peace and strew necklaces of small pretty white flowers while our children play in the cradle of carefree happiness. We all want to.. We could…so how does WAR fit in??? As if famines, earthquakes, tsunamis, draughts etc. were not enough to unite us in a common plight. What happened to “Universal Brotherhood”… Just another definition to stack on the table???

The bloody victory banner flaps high…
The fallen angel gazes down, an ominous grin breaking.
Scavengers with heads high, proudly awaiting ceremony.
Powerful warriors, allegiant to the amoral regime,
dutifully return after civil retrogression.

The Necrographer raises his gore-dripping quill…
While on the land of the mortals, its brother against brother,
an eye for an eye…
Feeble resistance of the panic-stricken,
in vain against the confident evil.
The prince of darkness tightens the shackles…
Moloch… victorious tonight.

Orange morn cracks the assembly,
soldiers tired, take a break.
Limping humans in pain, homeward bound,
while the painless dead, strain for the grim sound.
Survivors envy the other end,
the dead… pointless markers around the dark bend.

Where the bugles unheard, trail off…
Unconscious strives for towering while bases fall off.
Sweet love rots to paste, trampled barefoot by the very ones…
Fear of faith, faith on fear, darkness rules day,
skin looses feel, hearts freeze cold, chaos clouds judgment.
Treachery and treason hovers wide… its brother against brother…An eye for an eye,
…and Satan still waves wide…

Peace of the Collective Conscience –Part II

The present Collective Conscience has not had a really 'Dark Night'. And we all know, almost always, there is a dark night before the Awakening. The present Humanity, as a whole is quite inexperienced, naive. Quite unacquainted with the Dark Side of the Moon, we fail to comprehend and appreciate the Light. Maybe we are learning a bit with all the darkness we're experiencing globally these days. But then again, when we'll have just experienced enough to really motivate us to clean up our acts, humanity as a whole... we would be dead...death and birth would replace the earth with another set of inexperienced souls, and we would have a naive Collective Conscience again, and then they would make the same mistakes we made, as did our predecessors.
So what do we have...a cycle consisting of three parts- experiencing, realizing, refining. But just when the Collective Conscience passes the first two parts and gets to the third part, it dies off (literally), and we have a new set of humans that begin all over again from the initial point. The only positive thing that gets passed on, besides all the scars and frustration, is theoretical know-how’s... and if we were to speak theoretically, we are already at Peace- we have nuclear non-proliferation agreements, the G8 countries are working to have no "third world" on earth, every country is working to have a cent per cent educated population with clean drinking water, AIDS is the only disease that kills, poaching of endangered species has been made illegal, advertisements against drug-abuse has been made mandatory to be aired on all national channels...we could proudly go on and on...yes! Indeed if we were to speak theoretically, we as a Collective Conscience, are utterly at peace...no matter what one as an individual experiences...we say “we have learnt”, "we are at Peace!".
(The absence of war does not define ‘peace’)
.

Peace of the Collective Conscience –Part I

Midnight almost here, the night-buzz with its echoes ring in my ear and all is quiet here, quiet around me, and within me. I wonder how most people do not feel it although the answers are smeared all over the cosmos. It’s been smooth lately, the riding I mean. Of course a few bumps have for to be there so that you don't get paranoid over the sound of your own wheels rolling too fast. But it’s cool. This state of me that I feel in these deep hours of the night makes me want to stay up just a little bit more. If only they could feel it, they would not be so hasty to put their kids to bed so early.
It maybe too early to say, but I think that the Collective Humanity has a lot to learn about true PEACE. Maybe then we would be not so hasty to add to the chaos that is so prevalent already. When the cup of Peace can be drunk, who would waste time on hate and anger. Though we've had so many wars and revolutions, famines and deaths, so many elements of the Dark Side, the people who really did experience them directly are long gone. Death and birth has replaced the entire population since they were experienced. In a way, the present Collective Conscience has had no such experience as those who were alive then, did so...like those alive at the First World War or the Second One, the Industrial Revolution, Napoleon and Hitler...etc.
(The absence of war does not define ‘peace’)
.

Hello Darkness, My Old Friend…

“There is always a dark night before the awakening”. There can be no awakening without the dark night, for it is in the depth of that darkness, in the silence of that utter emptiness, in the solitude of that estrangement that one is nurtured to be able to embrace the Light. And those of us who have had the dark night and have awakened to the cosmic truth will never be able to totally forget that “dark night” of whatever period it was, for whatever significance it stood for, even if we tried… for it was during that phase that we felt the need to rise higher than we could have ever stood, stronger than we could have ever been, wiser than we have ever been. And we take an occasional stroll down memory lane to pay a tribute, of whatever hue it be, to our own private “dark night”….

Hello Darkness, my old friend,
I’ve come to say good-bye again.
In your cold arms I find comfort no more,
you deceive with shallow values, all so low.
I’ve found a purpose, pure and so true,
holds me close when I’m up or blue.
Yes! my friend, finally love is all there really is,
care and faith honest without any frills.
And just for a moment if you shed your darker side,
my old friend you’ll find there’s beauty even in the blinding light.
and when sometimes, your hollow self’s engulfed by emptiness,
keep the faith and don’t withdraw, my old friend.
It’s just a phase that’ll pass away before you know,
there’s lighter moments waiting around the next corner.
So just smile when you can and keep a happy face
and with a tint of hope and courage your ‘phases’ brace.
Days and nights pass with trailing hues,
gather joy from each morning dew.
And you’ll finally discover that life is worth,
and then finally my dear Darkness, my old friend…
it’ll all make sense, even death and birth.

Rhymes of the Jester

Playing with the colours within
trying to blend the real me.
Bridging the haunted gaps within.
An occasional shudder hints me that I've risen above the rest
but am banished to the valley of thoughtful strains by some ugly test.
And the boyish traces still in me,
feels foolish to another soul born in me
tonight under the starry roof, deep blue nourishing.

Glow… snowy carpets rolled over the hills
and deep purple be the hues of other ranges nearer still.
For the drums of the night do I hear
and slumber's warmth soaking in me.
Starry friend of mine, for tonight I leave you alone
to muse over the craziness among the chaos,
for you with stars adorned and the milky smears
seem unbothered by the strangeness flourishing down here.

Spread on…darkness, wrap you cloak around
for ignorance, your ally grows profound.
We rhyme to courts and jesters
fooled by time's greatest pranksters.
By illusionists mesmerized, a crowd
to cloaks and daggers lost.
In the crazy hall of mirrors,
just another reflection of distorted images…

The silence gains pitch and intensity, while
darkness hides any weak shadows in its depth....
my soul yells as another
strange dream seems to be inviting me....

Let us see the 'eternity' in 'transitory',
the 'lingering- momentous -permanence' in life's 'Temporary"....
This is Reality, the Stability between 'total-attachment' and 'total detachment' from life....
living in Life with Death in mind, both unignored....
to arise with a smile you have got to sleep with a smile.
Let today be such that tonight we can sleep with a smile…