Trips

It starts with a mild throbbing in my head. The throbbing is sickening, I feel an urge to vomit. But I don't, I know there is nothing to vomit, I have tried before - it only makes things worse. My Quack says that cerebrospinal fluid has lumps in it and that causes pressure in parts of my skull. He doesn't know what causes the throbbing to start or stop. Damn those quacks - they never could do their job properly. When these lumps aggregate into big lump - the throbbing starts and then - the madness. They breakup after sometime - ironically the pressure of the skull breaks them up again and they disperse waiting for their nest mass meeting. Sometimes I feel that they are like union workers trying to revolt against my body - they have a secret agenda and they will keep putting pressure [sic] till my brain accedes. However I'd be screwed if I know what they want - maybe they want me to die

The throbbing increases slowly. I have to stop doing whatever I am doing and go lie down. I don't even know what is going to happen - the lumps congeal at a different place every time so its a new god-damned all expenses paid trip for me every time. The only thing common is that after every trip I am left with vivid memories and killing headache.
There are special straps on my bed, they can be used to bind my body if it go to spasms - one of the particularly violent trips had seen me to go on a murderous rage and trash both the orderlies at the institution. Normally one of them - I don't know their names, both of them are big huge hulking bodies that are called in when some guy goes berserk. I had broken the hands of one and the nose of another. Finally they had to use elephant-sized dose to tranquilizer to get me to sleep. I had spent the next six months in solitary - self imposed according to the institution but I knew better than to be around those two guys when there wounds were fresh.

I lie down on the bed and press the red button - some orderly will come in soon and strip me in - these steel fibered straps - ordinary nylon straps are too weak to hold me me if I go into rage. I close my eyes and try to ignore the throbbing, I try to think of something else - that busty nurse who comes in on Thursdays, she is quite a tart that one. She wears that sort skirt and sometimes she flashes to me. I wonder what she wants. Maybe we could get into some quiet corner and ... .

Damn the throbbing is too strong to ignore, I always forget that it becomes this strong. Its like my whole brain is being pounded by jackhammer. I am already firmly strapped in - the orderly must have done while I was thinking about that nurse. Damn! Damn! Damn! Soon I will pass out and it will be black till I wake up. Then I will remember this trip - slowly but vividly.

I pass out

Why do I write things in a blog?

I guess sometimes you have to be honest to yourself. You have to ask why you are doing certain things and if you understand yourself completely when you do those things. So well this is not compositions (to my non-existent readers)

Well for one why do I write this blog? One generally supposes that blogs are mean to share thoughts with other people and given the traffic to my blog the only one sharing my thought is me and that's really not a lot of sharing going on is it? Of course I vaguely remember trying to search for an easy but permanent repository of my compositions and when I learnt of blogs (Hey I am young!) I thought "Hey, that's the best way to do it." I won't deny that I harboured some vague notion of becoming a popular and well read blogger (well I am yet to find a writer/poet who thinks that his/her compositions are not good ) but well my main objective was still to use this a repository of my thoughts, in fact I often read up my old works and try and think what the hell was I thinking when I wrote those!
So far my dreams of popular blogging haven't seen any light yet but then I guess I am too proud (egoistic/narcissistic) to even try anything to make that happen. I guess there's stuff that you can do to make your blog more popular - leave comments on other equally desolate blogs and ask them to leave comments on your own - mutual back scratching or something similar. Of course there are other oblique ways, I could join forums for budding poets and writers and try an see how the people there react to my compositions. But well I have not done anything to that effect yet.

Which brings me to the moot point, am I afraid of criticism? I have asked that question many times and more often than not my behavior says well yes, I am. Unfortunately that does not seem to bode well for my career as a PhD student. As far as I can see the best way to improve in academic circles (and I guess most other places) is to jump in the fire, burn a bit an d come out a whole lot wiser. Seems like I am the kind of person who stares a t the fire a whole let, sitting on the edge but never jumping into it. Okay enough of that extended analogy, anyway analogies stop making sense after sometime. So the question I guess is how do I deal with it. The fact that I wrote this whole thing down in a public blog readable by anybody - I wonder If I understand myself at all ?

Anyway some events in the near past have made me realize that while all this dilettante-ism is all very good but if I want to express myself properly I need some sort of training, formal or otherwise to make myself heard clearly, perhaps even to myself. So there that's said.

A concluding thought. I write these things in a blog that nobody (or maybe a thousands of people who read but never post comments) reads and it seems that this is an ongoing dialogue with myself - some sort self motivated and self generated catechism. I wonder what that means.

Questions?

Sometimes you should ask questions.
But questions get lost in the effort to rhyme
(A pandering to simple brains?)

Then I won't write a rhyming line
Not by intention or effort at least

Then you may ask me why call it a "poem"
Why call it a "verse" (there are types - open they call it)
I don't call it "poem", I don't call it "verse"
They are just my thoughts, expressed the best I can

Some use color, some use the stage
I chose words. But I digress.

We will ask questions here.

Of Dragons, Dolls and Divining Dandelions

Did I dream last night?
I don't know, I don't remember my dreams.

Perhaps I dreamed of dragons?
Fire breathing, terrifying, big-huge dragon
A dragon that ate a virgin every month
And then roved around the forest
Terrifying small animals, fighting large ones
And maybe visiting his old pals up the hill
To have a nice chat and drink

Where do dragons go when they get old?
When their fire is quenched and teeth weak
When they are no more limber to catch
That mischievous running doe
Dragon's Sunshine old age home?
Perhaps they sit there all day long
Complaining about the cold and fire
Reminiscing about all the virgins they had
And how the young generation is not fair?


Perhaps it was of dolls?
Big, huge, dominating yet unalive dolls
Small, evil and crazily laughing dolls
A scepter of stilled human form
The dolls that lay in a line on the room wall
Staring at the space with their unmoving eyes
I wonder what they think, these dolls.


Or maybe it was dandelions.
Dandelions the word, not the flower.
Yes, I also dream about words (not the thing)
Da-n-de-li-on-s What a beautiful word!
What beautiful harmony, what smooth sounds
What mysterious voice of human mind
Speaks to me through these words?
What is it that I can divine from these
Mellifluous, harmonious and cogent syllables?

Da-n-de-li-on-s! Dandelions! Dandelions!

How was it that we created such a word?
That to me surpasses the beauty of the thing itself.
What lies hidden in those minds
That coined these words, to me they are
What the thing is meant to be
Not what the thing is.
A beauty that resides in our own minds
A beauty beyond compare,
A beauty unexpressed, a beauty so rare

Perhaps that is my bane,
To see the beauty of words, but never the thing itself.