eternal sunshine of the spotless mind - diary entries

yesterday i finished with the theory papers we had to write for the final term. the last of which was political science. not a subject i ever thought would arouse interest in me, by the way. 

seems i have a very fixed view of myself. my likes and dislikes. who i am allowed to be.

i love it.

anyhow, one of the questions from the paper was 'explain the elements of a state'. and that question made me very happy. not only because i knew the answer down to its bones, but also because i liked explaining things.

a certain element of a state is territory.

territory of a state refers to its own metropolitan territory (land, sea, airspace) and all territories for the foreign relations of which that state is responsible.

a fixed boundary.

where other states hold no jurisdiction, and where the state itself exercises its sovereignty.

a place of its own.

i wonder if i have a territory. borders. limitations. all of those. 

because, if i were a state, i would have an open border. it would be nice to visitors, because (i hope) they would discover things in my land, that would change them. experiences that would open their minds. 

with a gentle request to leave the flower gardens as they had found it.

i wish i had better boundaries.

that required painstakingly long permits and procedures to get through.

because it is human nature to extract. 

perhaps

even if i did have boundaries, there would be armies tearing through them to extract whatever they can.

when i decided upon the subject, i had no idea it would be as profound.

or maybe i infer it that way.

too many metaphors.

things aren't this poetic.

maybe the blood is just blood.

-

all the ghosts that would tread down the hallway 

do not frighten me today

i ask them whether they are my children.

this is a strange interstellar.

how long have you been here?
have i always been such a horrible mother?

i had such a vivid imagination of them at 9.

now they just look like the people i see everyday.

how disappointing.

-

adolescents are difficult creatures

and i met many in their worst years.

sometimes when i get asked if i blame them, i smile and say no, i do not. 

at the time, i too was growing. and growing is an ugly process.

it is cruel to blame children who are simply living, believing in their own set of rights and wrongs.

in the web of they-ruined-mes, how could i not be the one that understands ?

if i don't, it'll kill me faster than they ever could.

-

marceline

is it just you and me in the wreckage of the world ?

that must be so confusing for 

a little girl.

and i know you're going to need me here with you

but i'm losing myself,

and i'm scared you're going to lose me too. 

-

there is a mosquito that buzzes down in front of me. i am visibly annoyed by it, but i try to focus. there is an exam. mosquito is irrelevant. 

mosquito flies up to the top of the laptop lid.

Aedes ? 

i swat my hand around it, motioning it to leave. mosquito is unbothered. i receive no plausible response from the insect.

i groan. 

mosquito now flies up beside one of my paper butterflies on the table wall. it sits there, silently.

i think, now's my chance. i can very easily kill mosquito. no more disturbance.

mosquito is motionless.

the moment is intense.

and i pause.

i look at mosquito and wonder what he has done to be killed by me. he is simply existing. would i be killing him for existing ? would i kill mosquito if he were a butterfly ? do my morals have aesthetic criteria ?

i lean back and take a good look at mosquito.

i can see mosquito's thin legs.

i wonder if mosquito is a she.

in that moment, it was easy for me to kill mosquito. 

it was easy for mosquito to harm me. (not with the intention of harming me, mind you. only because it is in mosquito's nature to do so.)

yet, we sat. 

motionless.

enjoying the silence together.

mosquito left late at night.

some say it isn't that deep. the insect was too heavy with blood to sting you. you were too afraid to get blood on the table wall.

-

i was going through a couple old screenshots of my writing from two years ago.

there was one that did not make me wince at it.

if i had to write heeya as a character,

she would be the antagonist.

because no protagonist is as evil as she is.

heeya ruins all relationships

especially when she stops getting what she wanted from it.

she feels no regret or guilt.

she exits the room just like her father does.

maybe she realizes it isn't quite right when she reads old texts.

she hurt a lot of people.

she isn't safe to be around.

oh she absolutely needs a villain arc.

because she believes that without him, she would never hold so much power.

because he stole her love and now she has none.

what a half assed excuse is that ?

it wasn't until the end of the year that she realized she had no friends.

none.

because now she needed to talk to someone. now it was 2 am.

and it hit her like a truck.

when she was waiting on a message from a guy she had been stringing along. 

someone she had known for a month.

her heart broke.

her vanity and her ego stand as heresy to her peace.

ultimately she is a trashy magazine story that pays very little.

now she misses whatever affection they gave to her before opening her side of the car-door on the highway.

she should have been better. more protected.

melodramatic.

i find a letter then. a letter i ended up tossing in the bin, because it lost meaning.

i give out an exasperated sigh.

dearest you,

they say when you love someone, they become a part of you. a part of the air you breathe, and the clothes you wear and the water you drink. they become home. you make me feel at home. like the world maybe isn't as horrible as it seems. you are possibly my favourite person in the whole wide world. and if you never want to speak to me again, i'd understand but i need you to know this. i hate you so much. but not as much as i love you. it feels criminal what you are doing, but you're doing it , and you don't do much wrong, so i do get it. perhaps it is adequately deserved. it is criminal how you shall be immortal to me. it hurts because i didn't lose you once, i lost you when i called and you didn't pick up, when i looked for my favourite books but they all knew who you were, and i lost you when i knew that all i did for you would never be enough. not the gifts. not the devotion. none of it. 

will you remember me ?

i let out a loud laugh. not in a disrespectful way, but still.

i was a very sensitive child. 

this letter was to so many people who, on receiving this would have a similar reaction to me at this moment in time.

this was a little pitiful.

i need to clear my gallery. 

next ?

falling in love to sarod music.

soft. slow. unconscious.

falling in love to sarod strings 

like saving bus tickets in your pocket

like giving you a bite of cold samosa

like walking barefoot through puddles.

like running away with your things, just to have you run after me.

like wearing your watch for the day.

like giving you a leaf i picked.

like falling asleep on the metro ride home.

falling in love to your unconscious humming.

unspoken. soft. still, unconscious.

reading how you were in the past, is uncomfortable.

not because it makes you go all 'eesh'

but because it makes you want to warn yourself.

to say that, you've perceived it in a very profound way.

it's not that deep.

all of those instances looked nice from the inside of my head.

from the outside, it was nothing special.

i thought there was more to it, back then.

apparently not.

the last one brings a smile on my face.

dearest traveller, 

happy birthday. in the thirteen years of knowing you, i had imagined everything but this moment. forgive me.

at a crossroads, i am glad you took the decision you took. i don't think i'd ever be what i am without that pivot. in an cynical, ironic way, i am yet again grateful to you.

for making me.

i hope you are happy today. and if you're not, i'm sure you will be. you've always seemed to land on your feet.

today, i am miles away from what you remember of me. as i write this, i put my head out of the car window and look back. almost cinematic.

from my point of view, you look like the background painted into white noise.

irrelevant.

this won't be going to you anytime soon.

not like any of them did.

have a happy 17th.

from your well-wisher.

with all the theory i study, i will never possibly be able to understand the mind nor the brain. it is only conceit that allows one to say that they do.

i have become more placid with time. whether it is the apathy that has settled in, or a learned restriction that softens expression, i am not sure.

i am often simply an algaed lake.

-

बहो मनोरथे सचो

अभिसारे पहलु सुनील बेस

काजरा नयने सागाजे

बायने कुसुमे सजानूँ केस

सखि हम मोहना अभिसारी जाऊ

बोलो हम ेटत सुख कहा पाउ

with a hope in my heart, i dress myself

in a gentle blue, draw kohl in my eyes, rest flowers in my hair (embarrassed at myself)

i am on my way to meet the love of my life,

oh tell me, where shall i ever get such happiness ?

जमुनार पारे गहना

आधारे घणार पावैं माझे

पिया से था मोर बेदना

पतर मोहे लागे बैठे ाचे

सखि हम मोहना अभिसारी जाऊ

बोलो हम ेटत सुख कहा पाउ

in the dark, in the storms,

my lover awaits me patiently, i tell you.

now i am on my way, to meet the love of my life,

do tell me, where shall i ever get such happiness ?

सखि चिर अभागिनी हम

बैठे एकाकिनी पोहनो

राजनी टोबो नैलो श्याम

सखि चिर अभागिनी हम

i must be eternally ill fated,

for alone i waited all night,

yet he did not come.

कृष्णा काजरे पिघला

साजरे नयनेर नीर धरे

े कठिन पठा बृथा

मनोरथा बिफल अभी साड़ी

सखि हम कबहुँ न अभिसारी जाऊ

दुखा लाज ेटत सेह नहीं पाउ

the kohl melted away,

this path so arduous, all affairs have gone astray

i promise you, never shall i go again,

for this is a pain too heavy for me to bear.

बृथा मनोरथा सचो

अभिसारे पहलु सुनील बेस

काजरे नयने सागाजे

बायने कुसुमे सजानु केस

फिर आजु मोहन अभिसारी जाउ

सखि बोल ेटत दुःख कहा पाउ.

without the hope in my heart, i adorn myself again in blue,

with a sadness in my eyes and with flowers in my hair.

now i am on my way to meet the love of my life

tell me, where else shall i find such pain ?

-

my hands still look small.

funny.

as one grows up, 

the hand stays constant.

you can't really tell that your growing up at six. your hand is large for your age. yet small.

at sixteen, you're looking for your mother's withered hand in your own.

nearing eighteen now,

i look down at my hands.

they look just as they had looked at ten.

nine.

eight.

seven.

six.

large for your age, 

yet small.

-

i was listening to a song the other day. people give too much importance to the song instead of what it made them feel. 

what i felt, sealed the process of me coming to term with things that now seemed to have happened a lifetime ago.

a few mes ago.

we can't be friends

but i'd like to just pretend

you cling to your paper and pens

wait until you like me again-

i'll wait for your love.

i have packed all of my history into boxes.

a year ago i would have gone to lacuna.inc and drained out my memories.

now, i'd rather keep them.

i wonder if they know i'm not what they remember of me.

that i've forgiven them.

that i don't even know what i'm forgiving them for.

-

to feel anything deranges you. oh, to be seen feeling anything strips you naked. off your clothes. off your skin. in the grip of it, pleasure or pain does not matter. you think what they will do what new power they will acquire if they see you naked like this. if they see you feeling.

feeling.

when i die, i shall have been seventeen for years. by december, i would be a ghost.

i would have loved and lost, and you would be the last to know if i bled.

-

h: i don't think you can explain who i am.

0: you think too highly of yourself. or nothing at all. very paradoxical, very schrodinger's cat.

h: you talk a lot.

0: and you are a sadistic isolationist. we may just be on the same page.

h: when people read this, they'll think i'm a schizo

0: that is new.

h: what

0: the 'if people read this'

h: it's always been there. i'm just not an expressive person.

0: you suffer from a strange detachment. this feeling that you're watching everything from the outside. from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time, out of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all.

h: i am never telling anyone that you're the cat in my comics.

0: people might just never talk to you again, if they realize what a mutation of a person you are.

h: it's never happened. it won't ever. right ?

right ?

-

i recall a very nice conversation with a therapist i used to see.

 

she had asked me, why i could never stay where i was. why i looked for the next best thing.

 (her tone bore the connotations of  'oh she looks for an instant gratification, a stimulation to feel something. anything. empty mind?' is it bad i could hear her thoughts? perhaps that is why i knew how to tailor my responses to get what i needed)

i thought for a long while. of a response. i would be honest for once.

i sat in the chair in front of her, and looked around. at the afternoon glare on the glass table. at her stack of pens. at the blinds. 

"i think, it is because i have always wanted very much not be where i was. maybe the problem is, that i was never anywhere at all. my life has always been very empty and unreal, and its thinness embarrassed me. a lot like, like how one is embarrassed when wearing a thin piece of clothing. stained. torn. oishob."

hmm.

"sometimes it is almost as if i am in the danger of vanishing. like just, being not there. but then again everything i feel, at times, is so heavy. maybe i wouldn't mind vanishing for a few months, at least. until the intensity dies out. 

i can't even say this sometimes. it just comes out like a baby's wail. very incomprehensible, but then again, you know something's wrong. just not what."

and ?

"i don't know. it's weird to say these things. it feels so below me. 

like, i don't want to be alone. i want to be wanted. and i'm lonely. and i'm scared. and i need to be truly loved, and touched and be held. that need, more than anything- scares me. it's like i've opened the lid to some eternally insatiable pit. 

and then i stopped eating very much.

and when i combed my hair, bunches of it fell off.

accumulated on the floor, adding to my disquiet."

silence.

"do you think i'm crazy ? do you hate me ?"

i did not know her last name.

-

                                           La Jeune Fille et la Mort-Marianne Stokes (1908)