My Too (Many) Cents

 Welcome to Midnight Hysteria. Not my Poetry blog but rather the feeling, or the state of frenzy it was meant to express.  There's a restlessness that resides within me. It is a feeling I felt again today after a long time. the product of a mediocre, aimless day, powerful philosophical ideas, a lack of self control over my hedonic pathways, a self deception about the consequences of my actions that couples together into an amazing cocktail of artistry, self-hatred and romanticization.  Each motion of my thought is so rigid it threatens to choke me. Yet the creative self destruction, the tribute to which is every drop of happiness in my neural circuits is crying so hard for expression that it just cannot be compromized with.  In the friction of these two opposites, are published incredibly self aware, bittery sarcastic, utterly pretentious streams of thought. I find it disgusting honestly, yet I find it impossible to not express them.  The charcter of my philosop...

 I was trying to draw a deathbat from Hail to the King when your subtle remark reminded me that my sense of view had been twisted and my eyes had been deceived. Why was it that I had not been able to see a simple observation? As I probed deeper into that feeling, my sense of perception morphed around me. There was creative goo there that did not yet have the requisite skill to stand under focused attention. I brushed up against pure chaos; A will for expression without an outlet. It pushed up against the inside of my head and yet could not yet find an expression in strokes on a page. And so it now finds itself in the words of a blog.  What is art? It is too broad a question. My mind jumps to find a reflexive answer that seems unassailable enough that my rational mind won't want to dissect it.  Art is a phenomenological orientation to reality. It is what I see when I look at your eyes. Into the pupils inside as they expand and contract, breathing the air and moisture throu...

 I set aside my phone and close all the tabs that dig the fingers of distraction into my skull. I have a rough idea of what I want to write about, a stew of thoughts that has been churning in my head for the past couple of days. I do not quite know what the end result will look like, of what styles may be played with. Right now it is a stream of consciousness bursting at the seams. The rhythm of my writing unloads its anxiety  onto this page, and as I see flashes of the old me in this writing style I want to move slowly from it.  To more spacing. More breath. More cadence.  From veins that bulge as one tries to hit a high note in a song, to a gentle mellow baritone rising from the depth of my diaphragm.  Discipline and Freedom is one of my favourite duality to confront. All the metaphors - of the masculine, order, logos seem stale. For in the recent past I have given in to the feminine. Given in to love. There is a discipline borne out of anxiety - one that sees...

I could not turn and live with animals.  I see a dog sleeping on the ground, the weight of his body pushing into the gravel on the road. A warm monsoon breeze floats on the air, and a replete smile dons his face as he continues to sleep in a foetal like position. I envy the dog, and the freedom with which it is snuggled into life's bossom.  As I walk back I see a tree. The leaves sing to me the wooshing hymn of a banshee and the tree floats over it, bathed in the yellow glow of a streetlight. The breeze disconnects it from the world and its sensations and gives it an ethereal floaty feeling. And yet there is something constrained in both of us that I see bursting at the seams. In my reflective self absorption I remember a metaphor. I want to experiment with what emotions it brings out in me as I ascribe it to myself.  I limp back to my hostel room, after a day of "practice" and fall to the bed. The weight of my body presses into the pillow too, but there is a cortisol fil...

 hi life, I don't think we've met before. I am. None of those qualifications that I add to the phrase after that. I'm just me, a bundle of memories tasting your lapping waves against the shores of my mind for the first time in a bit.  I'm a sexy musician with a deep taste in words and conversation. I'm a hacky engineer jugaading my way through the decadent depths of the sewage of late stage capitalism. I am the fire of a stage that bathes a performer in the flame of the audience's expectations. I am a writer with a scalpel scraping the inside of my skull.  But I am also none of those things. I am the deep void conjuring truths into existence. and I have recently felt the world shifting beneath my feet. As it shifts further and further, faster and faster I look to ascribe meaning to it - the call to an adventure a young man faces, a hero's journey, my dharma to others and society and many other thoughts pinched into my skin by the others. But you know them. A...

A cold hard smack.  And I landed right on the ground. I grumbled and turned to look upwards into the expanse of the night.  Or what I could see of it trapped within a concrete cage.  There was a rememberance of a dream that was quite forgotten. It irritated me because I could not quite remember.  so I went back into the world. slumbering through what she had woken me up to.  A bundle of money sat in a jar.  It glowed profusely with an aura of others' illusion. Of blood, sweat and tears. An autocratic monarch that had ruled their lives.  And yet when they came to it, it still ignited in them that subtle smirk of power.  The kind that makes even the most sensitive embrace, rape.  There is simply no alternative to this they had said.  man's gotta make his bread.  And in my cortisol filled reverie through the thronging heart of samsara.  I was inclined to agree.  But she reached out to me again. On a monsoon night.  The t...

 An aphorism is the most pretentious form of writing. Except for every other form.  There is a certain rhythm to the internal tone with which a paragraph is written. A sense of song and improvisation as these words leave the tip of my metaphorical tongue.  Today, I don't really know what I want to write. I do have a why, a spark of inspiration driven forth by some conversations to brew into a thunderstorm that demands articulation.  But I don't really care about being incisive with my writing.  To probe into the depths of humanity's deepest slumbers.  Rather, I have been inspired to be -  ignorance today. To play with resistance.  The iceberg of my thoughts has long since been submerged into a water of the deepest spiritual garble.  Metaphors that are extremely powerful, that come straight from the void.  But. But. I don't like them.  When I speak them through the voice of a reigning monarch instead of a Digonesian rebel who has gi...

as I walked back from my lab after another late night Netflix binge, the humid breeze lapped against my skin doing no justice to the storm brewing within. When I walked past the lights and chatter of the people around me, my innermost thoughts once again took refuge in the solitude one finds with another entitled judgemental prick at a party; the sort of love a repressed father gives to his children, unable to tell them how much their proximity and play means to him except for mock outrage at the foolishness of their actions.  And though whatever flows here was also borne out of that cozy corner in a dimly lit club, what I really wondered then was how good it would be to have a soul to share this with again. The disgusting squishiness that vulnerability provides - the relief and tension of the feeling of a body sliding on top of yours, emotionally and physically. My mind turned to all the beautiful people who had inhabited my life, and it took a special depth of perspective of this...

 This is my attempt to understand EH Carr's Chapter on 'The society and the individual' by articulating my thoughts about it.  There are mainly two arguments that the chapter seeks to make. The first is whether the historian himself is an individual. The second is whether history itself is made by great men or not. Carr's reaction to both of these is in the negative, with a little bit of nuance to it.  Part I. The first movement is to point out the false dichotomy in statements like those made by John Mill that "individuals are not different when brought together". This implies that there is a possibility of an individual without society or a society without an individual, which is impossible. 'No man is an island onto himself'. Though we may express our individuality in the ultimate freedom by commiting suicide as shown by the protagonist in Dostoevsky's devil, it is still bound by social forces.  The author points out that ethnonationalism based ...

I have been assigned the reading 'What is History' by EH Carr. This is my interpretation of the first chapter as I attempt to make sense of it in my head.  The chapter is arranged quite similarly to a dialectical movement that flows through different phases. In the beginning, the author presents a dilemma, two opposing views: That of Lord Acton and that of George Clark - differentiated only by a span of 60 years.  Where acton represents the 'optimism' and 'clear-mindedness' characteristic of the end of the Victorian Age, Clark represents a pessimistic view, expressing concern about whether an 'ultimate history' could exist at all and whether any serious historian of their times would consider it a tractable problem to solve.  In the backdrop of this contradiction, which the reader must hold in their heads, the author raises the question 'What is history' which we slowly start a dialectical movement into.  However, what we start with first is ...

The kids played by the river. For that is how they had grown.  The wisp bearded guru watched in stoic solitude with his legs crossed, as the seasons passed.  He watched as the boys grew up; From scratching their knees as boys, running around for no reason.  To sturdy, young princes - sharp of intellect, resplendent of valour and strong of morals - through whose bodies ran liquid steel as they went to war.  The guru had taught them all he could, about all he knew.  And in this process of growth itself, he himself evolved having given his all - in tending to their feistiness, in his devotion for the truth that had rubbed off on them.  And yet, all that had been bestowed upon them was Shakti, Durga, Kali.  The boys were themselves just vessels, for channeling what was gifted to them.  As they sunk under the surface of her many mysterious contours, the fire at their core kept their spine upright and perception focused - they started seeing something m...

Each word I write is a prayer of gratitude to that which comes through me. It is only with this evocation that I may begin writing in the earnest.  I am a child of the ancient east, a land rooted in such spiritual depth that may not be uncovered in eons of the superficial passing by we have begun to call life. This esoteric romanticization of that which is mystical by a mind petrified into rationality. This is maya.  A student once approached a master and told him he had had an awakening experience. Yet he had forgotten the depths from which he had emerged and wanted to "get back" to them.  Everything flows, and cycles and grows. Like the vines engulfing concrete.  And yet this too is maya. The master told him. The student came back again after months of study. Having noticed deeply the contours of his mind, with the instrument of his intellect.  Master, I have seen the purity of this knowledge, distilled to its essence until it can strike a hole through a ...

A whispered prayer escaped the dream of an artist's most sleepless night.  It asked god in a sincere manner whether it would be allowed to piece together a necklace of words for its own amusement today. The innocent selfishness of a child creating a sand castle.  It had earned its worth in the mundanity of the writer's everday existence.  And so he picked up the pen, not to move another towards his point of view, nor to examine truth in the blazing fury of intellectual dissection. It was a tender and loving movement.  Like dew drops sliding across a leaf.  Like the meticulous smile of a parent whose child has come back home, softly balancing on the bow of their lips a wrenching heart and feelings that threaten to overhwhelm. The roll of a pebble on the road, kicked and forgotten yet merrily singing along to its own destiny.  I pick the pen today not for truth, but for what it can bring out of me.  A tear of gratitude. A night of solitude.  The scr...

 My drum teacher once told me that every great musician stops hearing the sound of others music after a point in their career.  They no longer look at others engagement with their instrument with greedy eyes that try to imitate ideas. It is a different place we must go to as humans. Only in channeling that tempest are we truly living, Competition is mediocrity for with that we will never end up changing the face of a field itself.  In such a situation, what is our relation to the giants who came before us? Those who inspired us to reach these heights in the first place? The truth is the fire that burns in this other place. It is beauty and love too. And to pursue it sincerely demands a certain discipline.  One can play beats for 40 years of their lives and not understand the internal magic of the drums. That which brings clarity, musicality and otherworldliness.  To play sports like a musician and to play music like a sportsman. To imbibe the quality of inspirat...

Humans are beings born of thunder. Stolen from mother nature in her throes. Each of us has a grand potential. A message in a glass bottle, a prayer cast out into the chaos of the universe. Sincerity is the bedrock of all sacrifice As it is the bedrock of all desire. In the raging inferno of the sincerity of their quest, there are humans who discover remarkable things. Truths that bring tears to their eyes. Truths that bring humility to their presence. Truths that bring mastery to their movement through life.  There have been many among us who have had a thirst for life itself. Their inquiries into the deepest facets of existence have filled our religious libraries. We have formed cults around them as our dirty hands try to grasp the brilliance that shone through them.  Forgetting in those moments that we are forged from the same metal.  Such a realisation should fill a rational human with shame as to the trivialities they have let themself become conditioned by.  The...

 The reluctant prince must learn to use the scepter.  The flourish of magnificence is the beginning of the end.  Power flows and multiplies uncontrollably The applause, the praise, the cheer the money.  Yet the deafening presence must rule it all.  Silence the crowd in its aura.  There can not be a moment wasted on the unserious masses. For he is finally beginning to believe. His power is his shakti , his beloved.  Forever ready to be by his side.  In the dance of intensity, the world is delivered. From its abject meaninglessness.  To serve always,  To empty himself completely, To ravage her as she gifts him love and strength again and again. The humility that comes from intuiting the presence that shakes the confines of his humanity. They are the only clothes an emperor should wear. Namaste.

 Terrence Tao said in one of his interviews that sometimes some problems are just not solvable within one lifetime.  Because of being born at the wrong time, your attempt to look at the problem is like trying to climb the sheer face of a mountain with your bare hands.  I suppose with the truth it is always like that. The sheer determination to bring something into being which does not currently exist. That is what brings forth greatness.  There is great sensitivity and hardness to that. Austerities are in some sense a bulwark for the inner sensitivity to bloom.  Two authors I immensely respect are Krishnamurti and Kapil Gupta. They have tasted and embroiled themselves in truth for a good proportion of their lives.  In some sense they are like Rumi, whose writing I have also been absorbing the past few days.  However, there is a lightness and carefreeness in Rumi.  It is a ecstatic sensitivity that in its highest movement reaches up to the gods. An...

  Those books do not interest me which are not written in the author's blood and tears The carefree bounce of the sunlight from the leaves of a tree. The child's carefree singing as he skips along a path laden with autumn leaves.  The parent's reluctant joining in on the child's wild abandon, freeing them from the anxieties of a middle class existence.  As they walk along together and feed the ducks splashing around in the pond.  That is a day I remember well.  The thoughts of getting ahead in the ladder of work.  The envy of comparison with those who had been around them.  The resigned hopelessness of a failing marriage.  Exploding into a flurry of rage.  The pure desperation and frustration of two children who never quite learnt to express these things. Or perhaps were never heard.  But that is not the story I lived through.  For it was the grating on my ears, of the sadness in their anger and the softness in their rage.  Tha...

 Beauty is life itself. Here I attempt to describe what I find beautiful within the intellectual landscape in which I exist.   Abstraction is a key idea in computer science.  Each piece of the technology we use has lifetimes worth of history and memory embedded in it. Generations of scientific progress, a historical march leading to the conditions for it's production and so on. And so, you cannot go by opening each and every door you see. The genuineness of your curiosity is determined not necessarily how deep you go, because it is rather easy to be that engrossed by any thing, but how much you can get back out from that plunge into the water.  You go too far down and suddenly you're learning assembly trying to debug some python code until you run out of mental space and give up. Or life forces you to with other commitments.  A balance has to be caught in Abstraction which one of my professors described as a middle out approach; Understanding enough of the ...

 Advertisment and Propaganda thrives on humans insistence that there is something that needs to be "fixed" about themselves.  The conditioning creates the tendency to remain trapped in problems, and most solutions offered are but the transformation of the problem from one form into another.  Dynamic, alive solutions in business, sport, creativity are localized, personal and long-term - to bring a qualitative change in a person's state of mind such that they look at the problem from a qualitatively different lens, dissolving it altogether.  But the mind instantly protests when faced with the fact that there is nothing "to fix" and nothing it can fix about itself. It is the reflexive reaction of a parent when faced with the realisation that their kids are not theirs to shape, but rather have their own journey.  That reaction of a loss of control, and the turmoil which follows is not an expression of the truth; Rather it merely enunciates the insecurities and anxie...

The human is engaged in a battle everyday.  A battle between the magnificence of his being and the finitude of his existence.  He does not realise this.  With all his movements through life, he is sloppy and inefficient. Excess prevails in every dimension of his existence.  All this is driven by an unchallenged assumption that has become societally ingrained among almost all of us.  You are not here forever. This life is but a moment in a cosmic cycle which leaves you with sheer insignificance in its wake.  Yet a human is also born from the same effulgent starts that make the universe go around. It is his birthright to actualize himself, to be so fully immersed in his experience of life that he pulls the whole of the universe onto himself.  It is only when one becomes empty, that the universe can work through him. That is the real training that produces a master: To love what one does so much, To give it one's all each moment. To die and get back up ag...