Returning the RagDoll

What a long time it has been since I wrote last. I finished my last post some months ago with the vehement assertion that I had "grown up". Sad (or happy) to say, my opinion has changed. Haren jestingly noted that he found it hard to believe, and four months or so after writing that post, I too can't help but laugh when I read it. A lot, I mean a lot has changed. Easiest would probably be to start with the last thing that changed.

As of Monday, the 14^th of July, 2008, I will be another aimless university student following a useless course which will qualify me for a degree as a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Peradeniya. How or why I came to this position is not clear, and I really can't believe it. This, like the SATs, is another example of how I do things (ie: fill out and hand in applications), knowing fully well the repercussions, yet not expecting them to happen when they obviously will. Either way, I am now in the middle of a jumble of birth certificates, financial documents and six black-and-white passport-sized photographs with my "name and student number written clearly on the back" and a really bad cold. None of which I want.

The above mentioned phenomenon which just happened to me has caused me to leave my job, my house, my life and my love back in Colombo and move back with the motherhood here in the peaceful hills. Not that I'm complaining though! The job was getting a bit tiresome, and as humble advice to people who can't conform: DO NOT TAKE REGULAR (OR irregular for that matter) 9-5 JOBS. I'm serious. This is a very good lesson I learnt during my after-als-and-nothing-to-do period. I can't conform, and I should stop trying to, because I only fail. My house was becoming a beautiful home (to the surprise of very many people who were aware of the state of my bedroom here in Kandy) yet the house-mate and the constant stream of visitors was starting to get to me. Those new friends of mine, the "sweet and focused" girls I met a few months ago, got a big hard kick in the rear for being paranoid religious fanatics who don't know it. Sorry. My life still goes on. Earning was fun, and I had developed to the stage of being able to handle responsibility of having to find and fund my own meals. My LOVE is the next new thing :)

It seems a bit ironic that I finally found somebody who can actually give me everything I ever wanted in my man, only to find that nobody really wanted me to be with him. Social prejudice is a weird and messed-up thing which ruins people, lives, minds and most sadly, happiness. This definition needs to get on the Oxford Dictionary. I think most of you (at least two of the three people who read this blog) will agree with me. So I decided that I was going to let social prejudice find itself a pastime (various grotesque ideas related to reproduction come to mind) and let myself be happy. I am :)

I admit, the unbeatable *wink* style has got cramped thanks to writing boring pieces on press-conference and other bored-freelance-journalist related compositions, but I plan to get back to being the awesomely talented and prolific writer I once was ;)

"Patience Iago!"

Blargh!

The same music pounds in your head each and everyday, the same computer screen stares back at you, not giving anything, not taking. The randomizing has ceased and been replaced by absolute randomizing; a pattern of doing the same things due to not having anything to do.

New friends are scary, but somehow always "better" than the old, probably because you don't know anything about them. But these girls are sweet, focused and not like me. I will surrender to their influence and "change". I am already a better person because I have decided this. My mind often tells me I'm hallucinating. My mind has also decided not to listen to itself. I now listen to somebody else. I sometimes tell myself I can't hear. But this is me hallucinating again. But I don't listen to myself when I tell myself I'm hallucinating. Telling myself wouldn't really help anyway, because I can't hear.

I don't listen to what I say anymore. I listen to what I think. I'm discerning between the two types of thought these days. The thoughts you think and the thoughts that occur. I suppose the thoughts you think are the second stage of the thoughts that occur; like the egg and then the larvae; which means I'm differentiating two things I can't differentiate; like black skin and white skin. But you CAN tell black skin from white skin, although we choose not to. But I choose now to decide which thoughts of mine move from the "occur" stage to the "think" stage. These are MY thoughts, which lead to actions which are MY actions, and they are MINE and I have every right to decide which thoughts go where. I have every responsibility to myself, the people I love, the community I belong to, and the rest of humanity itself, to decide which thoughts go where.

You see, I really AM growing up.

Changes and GLF continued

Three weeks away from home and it's not really obvious that so much has changed in my life. I look the same. I talk the same. I think the same. But nothing is really the same cus I feel different. Thanks to Saturday evenings at church. It's funny, I wanted things to change, I always wanted things to change, but nothing changed 'til the time was right. Now nothing has changed but I feel right.

I still don't know where my life is headed, I still don't get along with my mum, I still don't wanna be home, I still can't understand him, but I'm happy. I am aware that "everything's gonna be alright…" and that nothing can go seriously wrong, and that's good enough for me. Too good, really.

Coming back home to an over-protective mum is pretty traumatic after spending three weeks with a really cool grand-aunt who sees you for an independent individual, and I'm not really taking it too well. But it's all good. I've been designated 'celebrity' in a sarcastic tone by a certain bitter individual and so I'm living the life. I'm back home, I've got places to go and people to see, that I will go and see.

Okay, cut (the crap) to the chase, I started dissecting GLF and must finish. Thus we travel back in time to Friday the 18^th of January, Galle Fort:

 

Event 018:    The Power of Poetry with John Mateer, Tishani Doshi, Jeet Thayil, Indran Amirthanayagam, Sophie Hannah & Vivimatrie VanderPoorten

Some of the events at the festival found the attendees disappointed that the special guests were not present due to personal/security reasons. Yet this was one event that I would have been glad to learn a speaker (or maybe even two!) absent. There's this tiny stage at the Maritime Museum and seven people stuffed on a stage is NOT pretty. The conversation was a bit random, and some of the poets (noticeably Indran!) were caught going off at tangents at length, making it rather dull.

Tishani attempted to connect the conversation with the title of the event and eloquently put forward the idea that poetry arises from a feeling of powerlessness. Some agreed, some didn't, and there were too many opinions to keep track of.

Sophie kept telling us how modern 'poetry' was not poetry. The basis of her argument was that poetry is essentially a branch of music, and music, essentially consists of regular rhythm and melody. Thus it follows that since poetry cannot have a 'melody' as such, it MUST have a regular rhythm. I argue that in the modern sense of the word, rhythm is rhythm, whether it is regular or irregular. Modern music sometimes has no set time-signature OR key, but it is nonetheless, music. Most beautiful music at that! Her argument is then continued by John, who writes free-verse. The no-rhythm man reveals that some 'poets' write prose, break it up and arrange it in lines of different lengths, then call it poetry. True. Yours truly is an addicted felon! But is that a reason to lash out against free-verse as a whole?

Jeet remains blissfully ignorant of the whole conversation, and when asked for an opinion goes "I'm sorry, I was drifting, can we read our poetry now?". Every time. But hey! He's clean-shaven (bald?), wears a sarong with hiking boots and has a geometrically constructed face. He looks arty enough to be excused. So he read. This was the first of six readings with left most of us with a striking revelation about poets: not all can read as effectively as they write. Tishani especially (no offence) killed the poem she read. The poem itself was amazing, but one had to ignore the voice and imagine seeing the words on paper to enjoy the experience the poem had to offer. Sophie, on the other hand, was an absolute treat. Being a performance poet obviously helped. At the end of the poem there wasn't a soul not laughing, at least smiling!

I went to see these people expecting inspiration. Sadly, I got a lot less, but still, the tiny brilliant moments were worth the disappointment.