A vampire or a victim, depends on who's around.

What if all this is not just something that needs to be squashed but a symptom? I owe it to myself, to myself, and I say it again and again till it means nothing.

Pamuk -

In 1970, when I was eighteen, I—like all Turkish children with an interest in books—took to writing poetry. I was painting and studying architecture but the pleasure I took from both was fading away; by night I would smoke cigarettes and write poetry, which I hid from everyone.

Read the rest that causes such restlessness.

Apna Gabo Marquez -

Like many great writers attending college for a subject they despised, García Márquez found that he had absolutely no interest in his studies, and he became something of a consummate slacker. He began to skip classes and neglect both his studies and himself, electing to wander around Bogotá and ride the streetcars, reading poetry instead of law. He ate in cheap cafés, smoked cigarettes, and associated with all the usual suspects: literate socialists, starving artists, and budding journalists.

Makes me laugh.

Well, it's been ten years and maybe more since I first set eyes on you.

Some days I love forums and databases and lists. The fact that I have one dress and unused heels. That people on different continents wish me happy birthday and I teach them how to pronounce one of my several names. Reading on pavements and writing poems in my car - I like that I am that person regardless of whether it amounts to anything or not. Impromptu movies with feet up in lazy boy armchairs - how decadently it pans out for me. I don’t know what PMS is but if it gives me uninterrupted sleep and the license to read in bed the whole day - hell, I’ll take it. I love that Heartbreaker makes me so happy, that blasting music in the morning while having coffee is now routine, albeit morning being 1 p.m. and to think that life will simply carry on this way.

I want to wake up to subterranean sounds, to dew and lawns and a river rumble in the distance. The sharpness, the crispness of a morning that a bungalow invites in. I want to be bored and well dressed and have suitors and bookshelves. I want Buddy to be able to have a bath in the back lawns and run and run till he has a stitch in his side. I want to have a people moving in and out kinda house. Where we sit at the dining table long after lunch with beer, in the afternoon sunshine, talking, dreaming, smoking, drifting - and we retire to write, or have sex, or work or whatever takes our fancy and let the evening take its course.

Sadness, Look how She dances.

I know, I know - no blog post for awhile and then of all the painful things in the world, a poem. All I want from you though is a> Uff, I can't be bothered to read, skim, scroll, close window. b> Eyes swim but actually read and realise it's a weak, fuck all piece with no backbone.

Just one over the other would suffice, just so I know. Please. Because it has been so long I can't understand my words anymore. Also, any title suggestions?




They all talk of it, Borges, Kundera, my heart,
The yearning for other places; mountain monasteries, riversides cafes
It fills up the day, inventing companions, travels, homes, children, interviews.

Sadness is bookmarked all over;
In polite waiters and Late Night Radio
People in uniform waiting at the bus stop with their tiffins.

In a disappointing subject, oh how the prospectus lied.
This city doesn’t enchant anymore, doesn’t inspire poems or elegies.
I’m tired of its universities and tombs, its markets and roads, its police and parking lots.

Sadness is in evening garb bought during the day,
In changing rooms with loud sexual music, thick drapes and flimsy party wear
I don't want to corset my jelly belly, I’d pick pajamas and my audioslave t-shirt for you to fall in love with.

I want to retreat from life for awhile
Go back to perfect pictures of European streets in National Geographic
Longing can be sustained more than hotel towels and air sickness and disappointment.

Sadness is in matching earrings, in sleeveless sari blouses
Summer smells in the midst of synthetic woolens, AC vents in a crowded place
No one to notice everyday secrets, Shampoo smells, timetables made and Band-Aid cuts.

Restlessness; I keep asking obvious questions
They answer in baroque, in hard bound bookshelf glory
But its never the one I’m looking for, I’m back to square one o one.

Sadness is in protesters lined up, tired, excited; not unlike a picnic
Weathered flags and sweaty headbands, couldn’t quite catch what the banners read
I looked in the papers the next day, why all that energy, that production, all it said was Traffic Jam.

And I pass by, I pass by. Never knowing exactly what,
Only vague noises at the back of my head, What could be important enough?
How could I not be?

Lesson Learnt

People, how do you protect your pictures? I knew this was going to happen..there was something completely absurd about those hundreds and thousands and lakhs of pictures out there on facebook and the ease with which I could copy anyone's picture onto my harddrive was a bit disturbing and still is.

Incident - album of postcards, not my pictures per se, but that Seriously Awesome series if you remember. Some cow in my class has her status update as her blogpost, so I clicked on it and imagine my surpirse, when there were MY pictures, up there. To be fair, she didn't say she's taken them, it was about how she wants a camera and wants to take pictures like that(would be smug if I wasn't so cheesed off.) Fair enough, but there was absolutey no link back to my page, or creditaion to me and it hit me somehwere in my gut and I went do I even have a right over those pictures anymore? What good is 'owning' them if they'vwe been saved several times over and passed off as other people's own? Ofcourse I called her and told her to take them down ASAP but it's besides the point no?

Let me give my my photo history, as a kid, growing up right through my teenage years I used to absolutely hate, detest, abhor bieng photographed. Maybe I was shy or didn't photograph well or had weight issues or whatever, but most of the snaps are of half my face, my hands covering my face and other such cranky poses. Then round about the time I turned 17 we got a digital camera, and since then, I've been chronicling - family shindigs and the rest, and off late my amateur photography has taken off, in the sense that there are albums and albums or blurry pictures of puddles and birds etc..you get the idea?

Now the thing is, over the past year or so I've been having quite a ball. Just generally, I'm happy wiith who I am and my day to day etc and I think that has a big deal to do with my willingness to pose for snaps now. It really is true the whole, "feel good inside look better on the outside." Even then, it's mostly me taking pictures of everyone else, and I collect them and every couple of months I'll put up an album of say 40 pictures with maybe 2-3 of me.

But now I'm pissed off. It's a primordial thing, to protect oneself, hence I relish the anonymity of the blog. yet, how do I protect the content on this too? On one level, I tell myself not to be so self important, no one's going to borther, but evidently that's doesn't happen not because I'm super interesting but because people are bored and have WAY to much time to spend online, myself included. Pictures DO speak a thousand words, and I've been quietly deleting those albums barring a few.

Am I paranoid? I think not. Becasue I never really took to facebook anyway. It was always a voyeur thing, and only very occassionally a keep-in-touch thing which I'm not that hung over anyway because the people I want to be in touch with I am.

So creative commons I get, but what difference does putting that c on the corner make?The damage would already be done right?