Less is the new more.

haven't been feeling very awesome fantashtick in awhile.
and
it
shows.

Ebb

I am ill, at boba's, restless and trying to let the rise and fall of his chest against my back, the swirling smoke from dying ambers, kings of convenience on low lull me.
but I am restless.
with thoughts of faraway
somewhere between south asia and the atlantic
faraway
with thoughts
of mind meeting heart
heart meeting body
his heart beats so his body touches mine
and it is as real
as his warmth on the nape of my neck
but I am not here with him
to meet him with the same realness
I can only meet him in mind
and even this, is but a hearty claim
I will love him if he was here
with me
somewhere faraway
between south asia and the atlantic.
And I will rise and ebb gently, persuasively, lovingly
so our hearts will be lulled.

I don't intend to impose my madness on your saturday night plans, but sparklehorse is telling me to.

Raja says I'm manic and maybe I am. It's easy once you just accept it, she says. I have for the longest time. I'd also like to believe that I am and have always been objective. But when you don't invite Tyra Banks to an America's Next Top Model Party, then I guess a bit of bitterness is due.

I'd like to think that I'm the kind of altruistic bundle of goodness that doesn't expect returns from people, but it still hurts, damn it! The problem with doing good for the sake of others' is that it gets old - that YOU get old. It's quite simple. It's a hypothesis that's been proven time and time again by the likes of nice guys like a friend of mine. That friend of mine who always seems to finish last, whose morals and sense of ethos much outweighs his need for personal gratification, most importantly, his primal gratification.

And I'm beginning to feel old. Where the closest of my friends are at their prime, seeking their personal, primal gratification, I am once again alone, wondering why with such strength, youth and exuberance at their disposal need I even try to facilitate this acquisition. It's that 'survivor' mentality to behave and perform to the fullest of your capabilities to be indispensable - hunt, cook, make fires, procreate. And so I try to ensure the mental/physical/emotional upkeep of my peers (however ridiculous or frivolous) and in doing so have proven that not only am I dedicated to this pursuit (in the pursuit of others' pursuits), but am also rather susceptible to the simple manipulation of my seeming indispensability. In other words, I think I'm being used and abused at the underlying pretext that I am providing and living up to my self-imposed requisites and obligations as a friend.

The world is an oyster waiting to be shucked for the possessors of brute, brains and brawn. I throw in a bit of heart in that equation but feelings are weaknesses that are irrelevant to the great primal theory.

I have failed to prove my worth to this tribe. By no merit of mine have I adapted or even tried to, because I'm just too old to justify myself, my good to anyone, much more to the ones I feel I've always been responsible for.

The votes have been cast.

I now absolve this responsibility graciously. I am relinquishing control, entirely.

And I am accepting my mania whole-heartedly.

Speak to me.

I think I've become incapable of staying awake past 1am. And perhaps that is good.
I seek solace in nusrat ali khan and similar morose melodies of east indian sensibilities. And perhaps this is another externalization. And perhaps it is. I wish to master at least adequacy, at least in all great romantic languages of the world so that I can understand their poetry genuinely, honestly with nothing but sincerity in my heart and naivete on my tongue. I ask for nothing more of now. I just need understanding. Speak to me in ten different languages. Let it not be beautiful merely because of my ineptitude to grasp nothing more but intonation and rhythm. Let it be beautiful because it means so, because I understand it as beautiful, without the incredible incredibility heavily dependant on the incoherence of my heart. And then I will speak.

Sometimes, I get flashes of melancholy – the kind that weighs me down and follows me, straddling on my shoulders for days. These flashes don’t have specific triggers. Maybe they do, the eyes, eyes that make me feel ashamed of my ability to even afford shame, or melancholy. I was riding the bus yesterday. At a bus stop, a group of teenagers were joking and messing around, laughing rambunctiously the way children do. Then I saw him - a chubby adolescent boy, standing in the shadows, less a foot from them, just looking out, looking at me, looking into me. He was dressed in the same school uniform, carrying the same baton as the other kids but why was he alone? Why wasn’t he laughing with them? Why does he look so sad?

Sometimes I tell myself that it’s okay, that it’s all okay, that it will be - these people do have loving families, enough to eat, idyll lives, no worries, but it’s more of a consolation for myself than anything. The reality is, these problems do exist. Maybe not for the faces who’ve triggered my concern, but in others, others I’ve yet to encounter and worry for, to the ones I dismiss, find no cause to care about, maybe even despise. And that makes me worry.

Misery is a luxury. At my darkest I’ve repeated this. That I should be grateful that the worries I have are often fixable, that the only grief and illness that ails me are the ones that are unnamed, inexplicable, often self-conjured, existential, and more significantly, escapable. Granted I find the escape route from my head.

Until I do, I’ll carry on looking out of windows, withstanding and containing my occasional compassion, helplessness-induced melancholy and hope that we both have strength enough to rid the demons that hamper us.