so then..

The people who hang around long enough to make it to my every day

2011-04-15T01:32:00.001+05:30

We lead webbed lives, the old faces and new ones tend towards each other.

Every once in awhile the faces stop flinching, are quiet, hold steady, take deep breaths and whisper familiar words.

Before I know it, the new faces remind me of all the other people I have known, and have never gotten quite enough time to spend with.

Maybe it's because they just wouldn't stop flinching.

Everyday is such a storyteller.

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came suddenly

2011-03-16T19:31:00.001+05:30

The Beatles - BlackbirdYesterday.mp3 Listen on Posterous

Dry, brown grass, a dirty window mucked with dried rain.
Not much to do, but to focus on paul's voice
Before I knew what the words meant
Before I knew it was about yesterday.

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Andrei

2011-03-16T11:50:00.001+05:30

Crooked hands, crooked legs, pleading eyes, hunchback, he could have escaped the pages of a fairytale thriller.

I got talking to Andrei when I saw him settling for the second time in a row to a plate of roti and honey.

He used to sit by our table at the beach every day.

This time he saw me looking. I was watching the honey slide down his palm from the rolled roti, I think. He closed his eyes, his eyeballs rolling up before the eyelid actually shut. He opened his eyes to form a complete grin and smiled right at me. Oh hell, I thought, that was just for me. Disconcerting.

I looked back at my book.

The next morning I saw him on my way out to the beach, clearing all the ashtrays in the restaurant into a plastic bag. He had the same quality of fairytale shiftiness I'd seen the day before. He smiled his big smile at me. Too familiar. I nodded, adjusted my bag, and looked out at the sea. It was raining. Nothing doing, I had to sit and wait, the camera'd get wet. I watched him openly this time, as he emptied the tobacco out from the used butts crushed in the ashtray. He kept talking while he cleaned them out. Hands under the table at work with the cigarettes through it all. No one was up for miles around except the two of us.

His brother had taken care of him when he was growing up. It was he, who'd suggested he come over to India on a holiday. It was expensive but Andrei had saved. The Russian government gave him an invalid's pension. It was too cold to get out much in Moscow either way. It hurt him when it was cold. It wouldn't be long before his brother would be back from the beach across the hill he said. He'd almost run out of money, he said, laughing. Did I want a puff of his joint he asked. He mixed all the tobacco pickings with the little buds. It rained a little harder outside.

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today is crackling with new thoughts

2010-12-03T16:48:00.006+05:30

gulp.

...and look what I got by the end of the day

Woo.right outside the front door

2010-12-03T02:25:00.001+05:30

Woo.ablution

2010-12-03T01:22:00.006+05:30

flowers from the bush near the water tank on the terrace with the raw mangoes strewn over the floor (careful, one mustn't step on them) and more jasmines from the bush down the stone path leading up to the house, near the well which we don't use till the monsoon has past, he whispered into my ears.

this blast from the past of an image emerged a couple of weeks ago though in karnataka, a brahmin picking flowers from his bush on the terrace right after his morning ablutions in the pond. and grandpa? he isn't here anymore.

Woo.the tale of the butterfly and the shirt pocket

2010-11-23T01:53:00.009+05:30

an image is the result of the shock of two images..
these ones were 5 minutes apart
colour pallettes don't seem all so mysterious after you've hung around in a place for a bit.
the patterns step out one by one, carpe diem, carpe diem!

Woo.2

2010-11-19T22:45:00.004+05:30

I wasn't looking out for faces for a change. he didn't seem to mind, my black friend.

Woo.1

2010-11-19T22:01:00.003+05:30

we were almost all alone

Woo.0

2010-11-19T21:43:00.014+05:30

I met this guy on the beach some days ago.

He started following me after I took this picture.

I guess you get attached to people when they've seen you all howly.

11th November, 2010

2010-11-11T22:29:00.002+05:30

2010-11-09T13:13:00.003+05:30

If I keep falling in love with the world again at this rate, I'm going to make myself sick

Bard

2010-11-02T23:46:00.017+05:30

Poetry.
Being on its side, and then stepping on to the other side to see what it isn't.
That's what I'd done.
To dot out the journey,I'll try using words from everywhere, all the better to get the image out faster at this moment. It seems urgent that I write about it right now. I'll try.

Like my addictive French philosopher once said at the end of a bitter search for a happy death...'nothing was left now but the transparent truth which is the opposite of poetry.'
But he was wrong, because I met my old cluster of poets again recently. The bards.
The bards who entwined all of us as characters together for a time.

I had moved from a search between the gaps, those ghosts between all those those things once said, to only things which had a tone, a voice, cold facts, evidence, solid, opaque, resolute evidence, it had been 9 long months before I walked back recently into the unknown, played on a chance, happened to meet them, these bards of ours, and bam! fell back onto what I'd always known: I needed to be faithful to life, intrinsically truthful, a work has for me to be at once an exact factual account and must never leave behind that poetic dialogue I am constantly entrenched in. As plain as that. It's not about courage. It's about faith! This mad groping through unfamiliar paths has got to be accepted as a way of living my life. I cannot afford to be tired because my hands tingle with what they must, and most importantly can say.

No wonder I could only speak of the horses in the present continuous some time back . Stuttering , stammering, utterly truthful, clear, but who else could hear it, but I? That's what haunted me.
What joy, to find a tongue again now.

We figured it that night, me and the bards. We figured it again. I am happy to be living. And I vow to not forget. Because I have seen this, we have seen it before. And the poetry will persist.

Almost as a sign two days back, I saw the horses again,... on a road near the city, like a sign from nowhere, only this time, they had their forefeet tied together, it was hot, they stumbled by and stared at me like they always do. A happy death would not be in the transparency, or the search for it. Because transparency is what I'd started out with in the first place.

Conquest of the Useless

2010-10-27T13:14:00.001+05:30

'...because I am going to be on my own as a producer. For a moment the feeling crept over me that my work, my vision, is going to destroy me, and for a fleeting moment I let myself take a long, hard look at myself, something I would not otherwise do - out of instinct, on principle, out of self-preservation - look at myself with objective curiosity to see whether my vision has not destroyed me already. I found it comforting to note that I was still breathing.'

Werner Herzog, Munich-London, 8 October 1979
Conquest of the Useless

2010-10-27T12:48:00.004+05:30

Ranjita doesn't care too much about getting married.
But the wedding date has been set for May. She's already 19.
She has to or there may be no one around to marry her, she'd be too old.
She's not going to have babies, not for some time, she says over her shoulder, as she points to the plants in my balcony. This is where she wants her picture taken.
He works in a hotel. He'll do well. He has style. She'd met him once. She's going to check around about him. You can't trust anyone these days.
"It doesn't take too much time to fall in love, don't you think?", she says.

the carpet weaver's little brother

2010-10-20T15:40:00.007+05:30

Manali, 2009

Of love

2010-10-19T22:22:00.003+05:30

that feeling when you've just fallen in love, single conversations have you imagining them talking and rising into a star filled sky, strings of stars unfurling from their sides,
And the words just lie there floating lazily in the liquid ink

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last night's dream

2010-10-08T17:18:00.001+05:30

Yesterday I was on a spaceship

it kept stopping over on land every now and again

and we'd go out to walk on the land and see strange fruit

the journey on the spacecraft wasn't a particularly pleasant one,

we all knew it was headed out on a suicidal mission or something

I can't explain the feeling..

a dull heat, all red and blurred at the edges..

somehow, the places we slept on, the beds, felt important

everyone was happy they had a comfortable one,

we always found our way back from land to board the spacecraft again

like there was no other way to think.

But I thought about it, that way of thinking, only after I woke up.

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2010-10-08T13:34:00.004+05:30

It helps to consider yourself to be a character in a book, and then when placed in the middle of its folds, one can look around with clear eyes.. It's not the first time lives are being lived, or being chronicled. I keep getting bottled messages from the books..so thought I'd record a passage from the 1700s which applies directly to mark the working lives of me and my close ones, wrt the relationships broken or mended along the way.

'The second distinctive trait of man..is his aesthetic sense. While a beast wants that which may quench its thirst and satisfy its needs, man often requires contentment and pleasure beyond his instinctive needs... The second stage of social development is possessed by people living in civilised cities belonging to those virtuous realms that raise men of morals and wisdom. In such places human social organisation tremendously expands, giving rise to increasing requirements..the third stage... is reached when various transactions take place between human beings in this society, and elements of greed, jealousy, procrastination, and denial of each others' rights crop up, giving rise to differences and disputes. In such a state of affairs, there appear some individuals who are ruled by low passions and are disposed to commit murder and loot...
So said the sage Shah Waliullah.'

I got this one bottled in Insomnia and other stories, Aamer Hussein,2007

au milieu de la jour,

2010-10-08T11:20:00.014+05:30

I found Tomasz Zarachowicz's corner in Manek Chowk, Gujarat.
Didn't see Panda M anywhere though.

2010-10-06T23:07:00.003+05:30

'Everywhere these days the mind of the poet and the public mind confront each other.

The sun comes cracking down, and the mind of the poet finds meaning in the public mind. The wind blows, and the public mind finds structure in the mind of the poet. Snow is all over the place. Both are wrong. The mud is greener than the grass.'

apaa

2010-10-03T13:27:00.009+05:30

"She had prepared eighteen to twenty nice hand stitched dresses, all in time for you.

When she was admitted in the hospital she instructed the nurse to get you to her in the best of the little dresses.

We had a brand new ambassador, not my own,... given by a friend of ours to facilitate taking her to the hospital

and to bring you back safely..

And from then on you've always been in a car

basically you were born on a silver plate

and we've been taking you around on a golden plate..

So that's the story till now

....now you're a rascal

so that's that...."

Apaa paused then for a bit, I could imagine him looking outside at the water, little crinkles by the sides of his eyes,

even more crinkly now, since he was thinking of that other time.

"...... I remember all the dresses mummy had made, about eighteen to twenty of them

basically to cover your body

so they could move easily over your head, with the back open

all the best of cotton

so there would be no rashes

you were such a cute little girl

we had given the name even before you were born

and now you don't want to talk to either mummy or me."

He laughed his gentle, rumbly laugh. And I smiled, here so far away in Mumbai.

With apaa still on the line, I looked at the cityscape around me distractedly, and slowed down a bit,

....it wasn't familiar all over again. goddamit.

.

2010-10-02T16:58:00.004+05:30

It is true..when one travels one is almost always on the lookout for the next person to talk to.
John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley, 1962.

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Hathphool

2010-10-02T16:43:00.003+05:30

We were passing through the inner ways of Jamalpur.

Mounds of earth, cemented firmly into the ground,... a hurried cemetery, broke out of the pathway leading to her perch.

Sugra biwi sat in a vignette of light.

Nadira walked to the cupboard and brought out a tin box full of coloured photographs from the almirah and put them on the floor in front of me. Sugra biwi giggled, pointing at the string of pearls the 'photography walla' had put on her hair.

A brood of children in the family crowded in at the doorway, blocking my source of light.

Sugra biwi laughed shyly, working her fingers on her prayer beads in starts, as they giggled at her.

She glanced at me furtively as the girls undid my hair, and layered it out evenly over my shoulders. And we looked at each other for a moment.

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Khepa

2010-09-28T20:16:00.001+05:30

I find a million people in a single book,..I wonder sometimes about he, who tries so hard, to find all the books in a single person.
Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel

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quiditus

2010-09-28T17:43:00.006+05:30

siddhartha was hanging at my place off and on whenever he got away from his hideout in Lucknow,these last few months. This sketch,amongst others, scratched itself out as he was waiting for me to wake up in the morning.

The real ones

2010-09-27T21:33:00.002+05:30

Fate keeps putting books in my way. I never really know whether the writing was actually so powerful that I cowered under its weight so painfully,or if it were just per chance that the book matched the turns in my own life. Characters have almost always mixed in seamlessly with the real life ones from my every day.
When the conversation leaves much to be asked for with the real ones, I am usually content in sitting back and being silent again, saving the thoughts for the rumble in my head, with only the faintest tingle of distaste lingering still in my mouth, at reality.
Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel

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2010-09-27T14:52:00.003+05:30

I thought exactly the same strain of thought about seven years back, and it has been quite a journey since..

'On my return to Bombay I found my unease growing. I wished to escape from my home and walk on and on until at last my feet reached the end of the world. I ddi not think then that such a traveller would only reach ultimately his starting place and that our ends,our real destinations,are our beginnings.'
'
An excerpt from the writings of Kamala Das,1988
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Khadija

2010-09-26T11:02:00.002+05:30

I found Khadija crouching near my office at Santa Cruz, waiting just outside the mosque for a relative to come out. After the veil over her head slipped off I think she started to get to know me a little better.

Her brother, Imtiyaz, in the meanwhile ran into the mosque to wash his face. He ran back and sat right next to her. This is Imtiyaz's washed face.

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2010-08-05T01:52:00.025+05:30

been getting wet in the rain
.
waiting
in the city these days
.
.
I let it seep in
I wait
and then when I'm dry I'll smell a bit
unwashed

Steinbeck sits with me from time to time, come, I'll read some out to you..
.
.
'...In all my travels I saw very little real poverty, I mean the grinding terrifying poorness of the Thirties. That at least was real and tangible. No, it was a sickness, a kind of wasting disease. There were wishes but no wants. And underneath it all the building energy like gases in a corpse. When that explodes, I tremble to think what will be the result. Over and over I thought we lack the pressures that make men strong and the anguish that makes men great. The pressures are debts, the desires are for more material toys and the anguish is boredom. Through time, the nation has become a discontented land...'
John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley,1962

2010-07-28T12:16:00.004+05:30

A friend asked me the other day if all this work in the city was eating at the soul
I raised my eyebrows, I wouldn't have put that phrase down to reflect my life as it is right now.
I said, "No.", quietly...but I did get to understand why I had been fighting all these days.
At last I understood.
..why the words would only come out laced in a poisonous tree sap, of late
..the words were fighting, without even my knowing it
this habit I've developed of actually speaking what's on my mind at all times has its ups too then?
every time I speak my mind, I start thinking of my ma...of how when I was a kid, she said I didn't have the right to just translate thought into word and spill them..it still feels like a luxury, only meant for some mysterious 'adult' somewhere..
I let that rule go a couple of years back..
it's given me a monotone voice
it's given me a cool, calm in the face of deceit
it's given me a steel edge in the face of bygone lovers
a very queer thing.

I woke this morning, and read a few pages from Joyce, ' A portrait of the artist as a young man',1916
...'To remember that and the white look of the lavatory made him feel cold and then hot. There were two cocks that you turned and water came out : cold and hot. He felt cold and then a little hot : and he could see the names printed on the cocks. That was a very queer thing.'..

careful in my emma thompson voice

2010-05-29T12:53:00.005+05:30

i seemed to have had a brilliant bit of sleep
i woke up and had these thoughts of utter clarity
i understood some things about people i thought i had understood long ago
we move from relationship to relationship
with dogs and cats and men and women
and reach points when we must part
the scene changes
it is morning again
and we sit looking at our spent hands
wondering at their capacity at working the earth,at how we tilled and tilled with them

i know now that i mustn't wonder
life is like an infinite dance
you never lose people
if you have worked hard enough with your senses when they were around you,that is,
they always give parts of themselves for you to keep
and with it the freedom to give it to others
it's always the parts that they tend to have deeply contemplated upon that I end up having in my lap by the end of it
and I am happy for it
happy for all chewed-on thoughts
thoughts like books
like films
like music
real-life-people-thoughts are so much more fun sometimes
so raw, and smelly,
like time, really,
to extrapolate,..much like, well, this line I overheard emma thompson recite in a film(oh and how she does recite, warm fuzz everytime in the cockles of me heart)..here she comes now....
time moves so slowly. it weighs down. while time, in fact is so scarce.

did you hear it in her voice?
i sit sometimes and listen to my thoughts in her voice
it helps in things like clarity
no garble
words
pristine words
not vague
not pausing too long
careful with the punctuation.

Click here to set a title.

2010-05-28T02:18:00.002+05:30

i used to take pictures of my life sitting on one of these benches at a point, about 5 years ago
it's about the same time this whole catching images thing started, I guess
I used to purse up my eyes shut tight and will the moment I was living to be recorded hereby in my head.

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the wrotten word

2010-05-24T14:49:00.002+05:30

"...according to the legend, the dragons remember your name in the old language. and you must never disclose this name. to tell anyone your dragon name is to give them power over you. any time they call out to you, you have to go to them, you are drawn to them.

that afternoon in your house, i felt as if i was telling you my dragon name. and now you know it and you can do with it what you will."

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cutting chai

2010-04-16T20:27:00.001+05:30

home made 'cutting' carrier

notice how the design of the metal mimics the body language of the chai wala !?!

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lines

2010-04-16T19:41:00.001+05:30

unnati and abhinav and I are here in Mukundgarh to make a film,..Unnati's film,a documentary, on her ancestral village, Mukundgarh, we've come here way early (the rest of the crew joins us later) to let the town seep in a little into the blood circulation.

And the seeping has been potent, I find myself waking at 6 am to catch the shadows forming on the terrace of the beautiful haveli we live in. Simple lines are amusing. It's so quiet,that I can hear myself think.Then I stop thinking.

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waiting in the sun

2010-04-16T19:27:00.001+05:30

mukundgarh makes you feel like it's waiting for something

waiting for a person

a celebration

a mourning sometimes

the furniture waits,the sun passes over. politely. searing its path through

the people stare into the distance

quite like the faces in the frescoes

plastic bags slide past on the empty road scratching noisily at the surface

sluggish, heavy

the streets speak strange languages here

sound echoes

the scratching sounds incredibly close

LPG cylinders travel the same way the plastic bags do

people are shy, they can be woken into curiosity

they need their space though,and it's an idea I've come to work out as a method in my head for some time now

I give them space in the compositions too on this 8 Mpix cam I accidentally got my hands on.

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mukundgarh electric

2010-04-16T19:25:00.001+05:30

after a long time ceramic diodes stare me in the face from the tops of electric cum street lamp posts(you can just about see them glint in these dark photographs)

i don't think i ever studied about them in engineering,these beautifully shining ceramic pieces caught in the jumble of wires,

we skipped past the obsolete pieces,such as these ceramic fixtures,while studying electrical components.

one just about studied enough for the exams, and writing thoses exams were what i'd imagined arranged marriages to be like, you get strapped to each other and then you don't do the parts which you were never asked about. Perhaps in rebellion.

anyway, these guys,up there have been reduced to abstract art in old towns like mukundgarh,at night time they seem to coax the old crumbling frescoes back to life

very functional pieces of abstract art.

i can't imagine why i didn't study about them, the damned things, how the hell can you know what it means to have electricity if you don't know how these beautiful creatures keep this little town's pulse going!

i guess engineering missed all the interesting bits.

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Stills

2010-02-07T16:18:00.015+05:30

Picking my way through the streets of Bombay,I reached the sets of an advertising film. I was handed an SLR to bide my observation time. Being on a shoot with no assigned job is a nightmare. I was glad I had an eyepiece.
my brain cam saw a little kid at the door.
hands behind the back.
wringing fingers
barefoot
shifting weight.

I have had my reservations about advertising.
It's to do with my general belief in the point of living.. I don't think we were actually meant to do much other than worry about how our food would be grown. But we are where we are,and many lives together have created the concept that we are required to live out.I read the papers everyday and am more convinced of it all the time. Like today,I read this article about a tiger in the Corbett reserve who killed this woman who strayed into the tiger reserve. The paper reported that 'the tiger seemed surprised at his kill'. The number of tigers in the reserve has been increasing. So have the tourist resorts around it.
The tiger was surprised.

So,with this whole thing about films,'the point of it' gets a bit muddled when the film's sole agenda is to sell something like a bar of soap.
Now,I hate films which are provocative... which want you to cry, get angry. They become like the high strung people sitting in your living room who want you to see their truth and accept it as an absolute. I find it very difficult to get such people out of my front door. Because there are no absolutes. There is no truth. There is your truth. And there is mine. I'd like to see your point of view and see if I fit in there. I don't want you lunging at me. Ad films lunge. A market makes use of this, to me distasteful, power of film... because it makes use of a projection of images to showcase all the things someone wants you to find desirable. Evoking lust,evoking jealousy,need,anger,guilt. And worse, evoking the stereotype.
I stared at the intricate trellis work above the set, as the riggers set the stage for this new sale.
as the actor held out her hand to catch the light for the accomplice, our projector,the camera

I watched an old man, part of the cast,sitting on his assigned chair as the gaffers set up for the next shot.
He'd come on the set with a little bag,the size of a toiletry case with a strap,the kind my grandfather carried with him whenever he was making a journey.
He made his way through all the wires and furniture and people to the other end of the space., treading carefully,so he wouldn't stumble. He set his bag on a table,took out a plastic glass and took a sip of the water he'd brought with him from home. He found a half used bottle of mineral water nearby,and refilled his plastic glass,replaced the lid. Then he took out a little tin of dried fruits and munched at them, hurriedly, looking to the sides as he tried to swallow. He probably didn't want to delay the next shot,though I knew it would be another hour before he'd be called to take his place in front of the camera. He zipped his bag, choosing carefully a new location in the midst of the jumble of wires, so it wouldn't come in the way of the set up.Then he went back to sit at the place he'd been shown to sit by the casting assistant.
And then we sold a brand new bar of soap.

2010-01-30T12:00:00.005+05:30

it comes every once in awhile
whistling from afar
wind,and water, followed by the sound of padded footsteps
flute sounds
in this city,curiously it comes while I'm in conversation with someone
while I look into their eyes as they speak.
you look into a person's eyes long enough and you can start climbing into the dusty swirls you see there
spend a little time and the dust specks yield and you can watch them hover slightly at your touch.
today it came as a wee bird sitting by my window sill
a sap green spray on its white chest
i rush out to the quiet dark sea
mercurial
i roll over and lie on my back
i find i can breathe here
the warm water pressing against my ears doesn't frighten me
i spread my arms and stare at the stars
i think about the day
and how little i speak
i close my eyes,
all conversation feels unnecessary
i don't need exchanges
I seem to be able to understand you from your form,you see?

fish and hats

2010-01-29T20:42:00.005+05:30

many thoughts racing together all at once
and I can't wait for them to come out

the problem is they all threaten to come out to together and I'm quite sure I won't be able to work my fingers fast enough, or even speak fast enough to get them all down,
a few will fade into the fog and become one of those mountains you can see only on a clear day from a sea coast.

somehow walking has been helping this newly devised cause of mine, this nervous steely urge to (convey,associate?) this school of fish,my thought, to a space I can watch them swim in..
but i don't think I can hold it off too long,the signs are everywhere, like in the Steinbeck book* I was reading today, these lines popped up..

'Kino put on his straw hat and felt it with his hand to see that it was placed properly,not on the back or side of his head,like a rash,unmarried ,irresponsible man, and not flat as an elder would wear it,but tilted a little forward to show aggressiveness and seriousness and vigor. There is a great deal to be seen in the tilt of a hat on a man.'

and I thought immediately that there is a great deal to be seen in the way a man holds his hands while walking as well,something I've been grappling hard to catch in my films for some time now..you'd notice it if you were on a street and walking in a tightly knit mass of people, it happens gradually to you..about the time when you actually become aware of being a part of the bobbing crowd,a strange energy, like being in the mosh pit of a crammed concert,you bob...you move like a single mass.. that's when sometimes the mass breaks down into two groups magically in my head a)there are men who move their arms (or the arm closest to you in any case) in a slant, behind their bodies to a side as they walk by you and b)there are those who don't. That's two states of consciousness right there.. a) sees you, responds,reacts without thinking, arms move in a slant behind torso, b) sees you, walks by, walks a distance, and looks back.every time. b) freaks the hell out of me.
there is a great deal to be seen in the way a man holds his hands while walking.

*the book..john steinbeck's 'the pearl'(something I was going to write about earlier because it struck so many chords,but later thought against it because it's just too damn truthful, and if you're too soft ,you'll get depressed and if you're too hard, you would wonder about the poor man's depressed state of mind, it's all got to do with your hat.)

porcelain

2010-01-27T18:38:00.007+05:30

today for a change my mind treated me like i was a little porcelain doll, gently,no jumping-out-from-the-dark-spaces action...
i was walking on the street when it happened, it came up on me from behind,..like a warm rush down my neck,like one of those showers early in the morning after a whole night out working on a set,the morning light glowing through the curtains as you step out, .....I've been lucky to have many of them in Ahmedabad.
So it happened here,just now,in Mumbai, on the streets..and for some reason,I raised my hands and looked up at the patch of sky just above. I felt unconquerable.
and I smiled so wide.
Back then at home in Ahmedabad, I'd hang up my towel and take a walk around the house, and take a good look at all the sleeping people, my film crew of eight..thinking in my head ' These people are working on some words I wrote..these people don't understand all of the words or where they come from, but they trust(?!) me, and whatever it is I'm getting at'.and I don't need to ask them why.
These are the moments that make me want to keep making films. This bringing together of people from different parts of my life,...all piled in a car at dusk, and falling asleep on each other as we head to a field to catch the magic hour for something someone said once. It's the only energy I need. Every poet,artist,film maker, mad man's words make sense then. right then at the magic hour.

russian kink

2010-01-21T17:12:00.013+05:30

this is vasili zorin

these frames kind of remind me of the little snatches of full colour frames I would catch a glimpse of at times in the animation studio when one of the guys would actually get down to bringing his characters to life in a story.
the last one with the girl and the cat seem,to me, how the perfect keyframe to tell a story could be.
in fact i saw a house just like the one in the background down in gokarna,in karnataka recently,complete with smoke wafting out of the high rafters near the roof.one frame,so many corollaries brought out into the sun. brilliant.

i absolutely adore his kink radio series.
good lord where do these guys get such opulent colours from?
the blue is the thread
i am convinced

in the meantime, take a look at Jasjyot Singh's character Rajubhai,a tailor from Amdavad and the character design process he followed through.

2010-01-19T14:04:00.000+05:30

the splintered writing seems to be warming up
yay :)

2010-01-19T11:58:00.008+05:30

freshly baked music with an espresso within reach.
here's to the 'hero moment' at 00:46
hope everyone has one today :)

I think I have hero moments in my head all the time
khikhikhee

2010-01-18T19:01:00.009+05:30

thought I'd share the insight of a friend from another continent visiting India for the first time...

he was struck by the dignity,the 'curious' faith the tremendous throngs of people he saw seemed to have in life. in the race to reach first they could push their way through to get the seat for themselves, but they could also keep one hand to the chest and apologise for touching you accidentally with their foot a few seconds later.

the children were still children he felt. and thank god for that.

quite unlike the gun toting 12 year olds he saw in south america and the mother of 28 children he met in palestine, where mothers follow the vow to make more children for each man killed, word for word.

he didn't believe in God,but as we passed a particularly crowded curve near a slum where the women had put out charpoys and were brushing their hair,and children were squatting with plastic bottles of water by their sides rubbing their eyes and pushing their hair back, he started talking about God. maybe it was a God or many different Gods that made these people safe-keep the dignity in their daily living?

How could such large numbers not take the easier routes of escape?

The other day I watched a girl with sunburnt hair sitting by the side of the pavement with an older girl. They sniffed little bandages wound tightly around their wrists. They talked animatedly, and laughed.

She got up after awhile and spun round in a circle, her palms held open.

They looked like two girls having a good time.

light hearted

free

but they were sniffing glue..

I knew

and they shouldn't

they should focus

focus on making their 'process' better

i thought

i watched her spin again

and laughed out loud

i will never know her 'condition'

but I know how it is to spin like that,my palms held open

I know why I do it

who knows where God is.

2010-01-18T17:54:00.002+05:30

strange things can be nightmares.

this is half the note i wrote though..

toppish

2010-01-16T18:45:00.004+05:30

i've had a headache for a couple of days now..
and so i filled the days with alcohol,espresso shots,lots of sleep and lots of films
the head ache and all the above didn't stop the hoard of voices i usually have at the back of my head,neither did it stop their endless discussions. all projects i have ever worked on reach newer states of evolution without my trying...
all it's done for me,'the changing-clothes-brushing-teeth-polite-smiling' me is made my tongue taste like cardboard.
and as a new development(I've never felt this way before), while walking down the streets of the city ,headache and voices and all in tow, I've started picturing myself as this oriental middle aged man for some reason.
lost me there?
see,whenever i feel slightly out of sorts,or physically ill, or in a strenuously tense spot i usually watch myself like a surveillance camera ...walking the street ,or sitting in the room, or talking to someone from an angle,slightly diagonal and toppish.
this time the cam caught me as the oriental middle aged man.
caught me off guard, that one.
why those eyes particularly?
pffft..

2009-12-25T12:10:00.005+05:30

i've forgotten how to use the apostrophe.

goddamnit.

a couple of days back i thought about the people who can't get their apostrophes right

and then bam! in a flash i couldn't remember how to use it

and i haven't figured it since

if i read about it, it sounds like wren and martin all over again

and i still don't know what code they wrote in, in that book.

then i found this...

sagmeister. . and his apostrophe in the 'letter elimination business'..

ha!

i like him sticking to the type language consistently through the form,nice quite..

2009-12-22T10:54:00.003+05:30

via exploding dog

i had a lecturer who made me feel like this once.

since then there has been Pang..

must go find more echoing walls

2009-12-20T22:01:00.007+05:30

in reply to the email i never received

about music and the moving object(let's call it that shall we? and shall we also assume that all perspectives on 'found objects' which i might proceed to address here now are completely mine, and are based on all that i can show up as experience,i am not generalising,not compartmentalising,in all probability my opinion might change,but here it is nonetheless left to stand on its own in the sun for a bit. ..all charactersarefictiousanyresemblancetopersonslivingordeadbleepbleepyeah....)

music is a series of objects appearing, the 'layering'..the appearance of one layer after another is all part of the pace I'm trying to build. it changes with mood.i figured this a long while ago,though as is always the case i had no clue what i was doing, it led me to read poetry again strangely...baudelaire, nabokov,godard :) and as i read more up on it and came across the name of the classification for such appearances on sound ... synaesthesia ( i also realised i did not have it.dammit.)
anyway, when disney made fanatasia all that time back it was not synaesthetic either. i got an old vhs of it from the kmc and saw it. nada. not.
as usual an impressive product though.
so.speaking.
sometimes i pick the half notes as my foundation, sometimes i wait for the thing the guy puts in for his own amusement and accompany it with a repetitive motif for MY amusement...kind of bring it(the sound) out of the woodworks for a bit,with respect though,not too much out now.
about collecting sound and taking it from there, i dunno...i don't think there's enough time to compile ALL the sounds that strike and then play backgammon with it(speaking of which,we need to play it,backgammon...its sound and visual in little black and white markers), i think aiming to do that will make an epic of an experiment. and then you'll forget where you started from. i suggest writing, not about the theory but the visuals that you see, the moods ignited,colour,.. keep your footage as layer one, write out what it feels like in more visuals, examples from your daily life if you will, and then leave it free for your friend of sound to produce. that itself will be a stunner. because by that time you should be ready to string the original thought-what came of it- the thought now- the idea of sound for now- and then his idea of your sound.
it sounds like fun.
only you'll have to keep the feet rooted
grow your antlers, so to speak.
tag.

i think putting it into words demystifies the goosebumps. but then. if it provides for a board and spring spring. why not ?
:)

2009-12-20T14:41:00.003+05:30

the later i sit working
the more complicated my methods of solving problems get.
last night i sat at 3 am and made a complex set of 7 layers
i looked at it in the morning and tick marked one box.
7 layers sat in the rain.
it was like putting the lights off on a dirty garage.
i am many people.

tired animals

2009-12-12T12:33:00.004+05:30

recent explorations are bearing fruit.
siddhartha is here and it feels great to have someone who understands the language in the same room.
.
.
mumbai is a sad city
traffic,strangers you do hurried work with, and the internet,...that's what this city seems to be about
the clubs are filled with lonely people
they take pictures of themselves constantly
the camera seems to be an important alibi for most of them
everyone is locked into the feed..
it reminds me of the time in kerala when my grandfather passed away. the funeral was a dull green event. he was in the drawing room with people all around and when it was time to take him to the cemetery, people crowded in family order to take photographs with that ghost like thing lying down which looked liked nothing like my grandpa anymore. i refused to be a part of this ceremony.
but as my mom reminded me ,these are established societal practices.
one must do them. there will be an album.
who are the mysterious viewers of such albums?

anyway,
the only times it does seem to live,this heaving tired animal which is young mumbai,is when the positive energy is imported from elsewhere..
recently i was relieved to see it when our set from London were down to perform.
it had a pulse. i can see some light.

i decided it was time the place spoke back to me. hell,i spend days waking and working here.
they mustn't be lost in the flurry,...( when you travel a lot these sort of instincts tend to kick in )
so.i moved to a new place.
:):)
i've got a huge window in front of my bed and like it has been the routine through the Army life I have built my encampment.
the sunlight enters at the right angles through the window.
and i have started writing again.
'sigh'.

:):)

2009-11-24T11:39:00.001+05:30

i woke up
and you were sleeping
why do we stay in places where your sun does not know my sun?

2009-10-19T12:05:00.000+05:30

I think it's always been about the spoon.

2009-09-25T17:09:00.001+05:30

bleddy

2009-09-13T16:38:00.001+05:30

Here are lines from a ghazal I found...
"I lost my beloved,I looked for him everywhere.
I looked for him in the hills,
I looked for him by the sea,
I found him at last
In the corner of my house."

2009-09-13T16:33:00.001+05:30

It is strange how much space the camera catches in a single frame.
Why only that much?
and why so much?

2009-09-13T16:32:00.000+05:30

As you move away from the mountains they seem to inch closer to you.They show you their real height,see?
But you have to get close enough first.

2009-09-13T16:17:00.003+05:30

I saw that in their frank portrayal of horror,of anger,desire,greed and lust for power,they do not merely terrify the onlooker,they gave him an opportunity to confront those parts of his energies which he was repressing,to confront ,understand and master them,to turn them,as the Oracle had turned her hysteria,into a power to heal.

I remember feeling something like this but I don't remember where...
i think I've seen that violence in me.

There will be a character who will die while looking at the picture.The picture he has been in love with.

Unrelated all. But they fit.
No?

2009-09-03T18:12:00.004+05:30

Alanis Morissette - Crazy
by louphil

where are the madwomen in my attic oi?!

for all my women who've stood by me through these wonderfully windy times
who've spared me the who are you and what are you about look.

'

in a world full of people only some want to fly
isn't that crazy?
yes, we're never gonna survive
unless
we get a little crazy

'

love and then so much more love to you.

2009-09-03T14:57:00.003+05:30

the age of the drifting souls

i will try to make my peace with it.
or this tape will just keep playing and playing again
and i'll fix it every time
but one day the words will be garbled
we will not hear the tune
and then what will we do with this obsolete means of entertainment?

2009-07-13T01:36:00.003+05:30

there was this ring I had
on my left hand

I feel for it sometimes
when I'm not thinking.
it is no more there.
and I still find myself surprised
sometimes from my sleep.

turquoise and silver
just a decoy now.

6:36 AM

2009-06-17T21:08:00.003+05:30

ditto.

2009-06-14T17:29:00.002+05:30

eep.
seems this place was getting autoposted.

those thoughts were meandering elsewhere.
.
.

in cochin..

2009-06-12T22:20:00.015+05:30

i met a wall today
it had such an awful lot to say..

*click the smaller bit to see.

2009-06-12T12:57:00.000+05:30

nobody can make coffee like my ma can.

2009-06-08T21:06:00.002+05:30

It took me so long to look at the object through its shadow.
.
.
The earliest I can remember was when I was 9 and in an art class at school in Delhi.
I was drawing a cat in a boot,a picture I had come across,
and as was my method of drawing at the time,I focused with all concentration on individual lines,and how they were landing against each other.never the whole picture.
just one line in relation with another line at a time.
but for some reason the picture didn't seem at all like my copy
and I erased and redrew but it was of no use..
that's when I noticed the shadow of the cat on the boot in the original,and then that of my drawing and saw two absolutely different amoebic objects.
and that was it.
It was my first hoist into exploring.

And it still helps :)

2009-06-05T12:09:00.000+05:30

i want to go to bourbon street.

2009-05-31T01:09:00.003+05:30

Alice wraps herself up in a tune and jumps off the cliff with the fields of rye.
Holden watched on without moving.

2009-05-31T01:07:00.000+05:30

what could I have done.

2009-05-28T17:27:00.002+05:30

transcripts from the film,'Dans le noir du temps',Jean Luc Godard
a part of 'Aria',1987

'
In the darkness of time
Why is it dark at night?
Perhaps, before, the universe was still your age, and
the skies were shining with this light, but since the
world has got older it is going far away.
And when i look at the sky between the stars, i can see
only what has disappeared.

The last minutes of thinking
I think therefore i am, the game of being is no more the
same as the game of thinking, why?
The feeling i have of existence is still not mine. It's
a reckless feeling, it was born in me but...
Nothing lasts, there has to be some limits in the number
of books, all the throats together, all the spirits
together, and all their production are not worth any pittance.
Because this is the end of everything

The last minutes of memory
The unsuppressible

The last minutes of love
Yes, you are young, in the full of your strength, but i'm
going to die, farewell. I don't want to leave you, i don't
want to get you back, nothing, nothing.
My knees are on the ground already, broken, nobody tells me
about anything, you wounded me and i told you so.
We don't love each other anymore, we never did

The last minutes of silence
What was the number? What was the number?

Too little what one can say, always one has to speak

The last minutes of history

The last minutes of fear
I don't know what's going to come afterwards, i cannot and do
not want to know it. But if this is what i want, if i want
glory, celebrity, if want to be loved by men, i'm not guilty
of desiring this indeed, of desiring only this.

The last minutes of eternity
Live his life

The last minutes of Cinéma

Last vision

Evening, he says. Evening, she says, Evening, they say.
'

2009-05-27T01:39:00.001+05:30

Alice will never learn.

2009-05-27T01:18:00.002+05:30

'But these wordy coincidents cannot be without incident!'said Alice to the Queen.

2009-05-24T11:48:00.001+05:30

this song has a strain,maybe the way he lets his voice sway at the end of the verses,like he's just sat through a conversation which went nowhere and came out to breathe and sat by the street.and lit a cigarette. and it is evening.and he didn't know because he was indoors. and he wonders why he didn't come out earlier.and the birds fly home overhead. a shoal of fish.
he watches them inspite of himself.
beyond the end,is nothing.

.
.
.
more of this sound here.

2009-05-23T22:19:00.006+05:30

i was asked yesterday,what it meant to write,but not write everything,
how does one do it.
i had a reply..talk straight.don't spare the detail.
people can't see the absolute anymore.
you are safe if you write from that void,from that truthful void which only bears witness to you.
.
.
i don't know whether to be happy or sad.what solitary lives we live..
but i've never had patience with the tragic in the past,
and can't stand it of myself either
touché camus.
the rebel,maybe
but never fallen.
godard shoots 'socialisme' soon and I couldn't be happier.
lines from 'forever mozart'...
'...knowledge of the possibilty
of representation consoles us,
for being enslaved to life.
knowledge of life
consoles us for the fact that representation
is but shadow.'
'..It's what I like about cinema
a saturation of glorious signs
bathing in their light
of absent explanation.
My master once said,
"I conceive of nothing as infinite,
how can i conceive of anything as infinite."
"Listen,"I said,"imagine a space,and that beyond this space,is more space
and further on there's more and more,
it's never ending."
"why?", asked my master
I was stupefied,
"If it ends",I shouted,"what's beyond it?"
"If it ends,beyond it is nothing",he answered
My master was the only philosopher who was sincere.

viky,sits listening to mozart.
forever mozart.
un film de jean luc godard.

2009-05-23T22:03:00.000+05:30

it's back to the goddamn drawing board.

2009-05-21T14:03:00.001+05:30

i was just thinking about the day I asked you what your name was..
what a strange day

2009-05-20T12:25:00.005+05:30

and if what was written down there were to be a song,it would sound something like this

☝courtesy:sukhbir singh sagoo

yoyo ramble relief

2009-05-18T11:48:00.005+05:30

how many paths must I stray away from so I don't have to see you again.
.
you from the attic in the hill with the honey jars, you,of the cocker spaniel dreams,
of the home on the twin hills,of the horses..
.
you in the clothes store trying on the clothes I knew you'd fit just by seeing your photographs, the clothes which would have fit thAt loved one. you were that loved one, and you've never met me,but I knew,I knew you fit better into the frames I was being rammed into..do you know your photographs are still up there?
.
.
and you from the streets of Pune, you of the scrawled on wooden table tops,you of the war time tomb stones,you,you who had no questions.
.
and what about you of the wheat in the football fields,do you know about the film I shot in those same wheat fields?will you ever see it?
and you and you..

I don't mourn you
but you are parts of me still walking solitary ways
how many paths must I stray away from so I don't have to see you again.

2009-05-10T09:13:00.003+05:30

month after a shoot and it starts all over again.
the pictures have started connecting in my head
fiction.. a story,this time
it's dusty in the pictures
these ancient silent figures seem to have found their outlet
I seem to only be a facilitator
facilitating with no compulsion
working in automation
drawing on some deep quiet vessels of calm
one step to the next
.
.
slow
.
.but I move

and I can still tell what doesn't fit.

2009-04-16T18:39:00.002+05:30

kokoschka..

2009-03-17T18:28:00.004+05:30

and we are what we share.

2009-03-17T18:09:00.000+05:30

you are what you do.

2009-03-17T17:36:00.002+05:30

aquarium fish are strange
when they're about to die,their heads turn up to the water surface
and they keep bobbing up and down losing balance
sometimes they do cart wheels.

2009-02-16T13:07:00.003+05:30

might I confess a latest addiction..
speaking to strangers in even stranger lands on work
stifling grins while wondering about the weather across telephone lines
loving for example, that a Mr Galuszka is aware of matters
Ga looo szzka.
lol...
my life is brilliant.
and i will never stop being amused by the puddles of water
:)

2009-02-16T12:23:00.000+05:30

a thought occurred
based on a couple of dreams I’ve been having,and well,on real life as well..
it’s about this girl and the mad people in her life.it’s about the people becoming the monsters she dreamt them to be in her most paranoid moments.like your worst fears are just waiting to be thought by you.and life will take just the turns you think out for it..she ends up comforting the people she has ended up wreaking such havoc on..
because everything(….applause please) is in your head. no?

lol..

2009-02-14T13:31:00.002+05:30

those were strange times
She stepped back after the three year hurricane and look at the abstract collage of things that had been, since she'd checked last..
you know the sort of list one comes up with..especially when one has no time for the sort of list..
how many guys were slapped?
how many people walked away?
who was left?
how many animals reached out?(and I do mean non humans…lol)
how many books ?

she removes her bangle when she thinks
.
.
as soon as she picked a book though,the only thing she was concerned with was when she’d finish it.

2009-01-31T13:28:00.000+05:30

part of the script i'm writing..
this could be dialogue.this could be images.this could be music..
don't know yet..
.
.

'
it felt like i'd been traveling for just too long one day
i couldn't remember their faces any more
it felt like a new one was getting in every time
a new one i was wary of all over again
sometimes i'd look up to see why he chose to look at me now in his rear view mirror only to find him to have changed shape yet again.
once i made one stop for half an hour,when i got back there were six of them standing where i'd left the one.which one was it?
till one,this guy sitting on a pavement ,smiled.
i walked blindly to him,he got into the auto rickshaw,and sang a strangely familiar tune.i sat back in my seat.he was the one from the morning,it was alright.
'

Purple lit early mornings

2009-01-31T12:47:00.000+05:30

today a friend and i were having dinner early in the morning.
he started laughing madly suddenly.i looked passively at him over the eggs. he stopped and resumed his serious expression,
and said,"You're a joke.a JOKE.
Y'know something that's funny in the end?"

I woke up in the morning laughing.lol.

2009-01-19T15:30:00.001+05:30

baby duties at my table today

2009-01-19T13:51:00.002+05:30

when you're hit by a lot of vocals you tend to settle down into whatever is easiest on the ears..listen to 'rewind' by Goldspot on my 'nefarious'(**yes ,yes arpit..we will exercise these excesses**) podcast.

to get some things out of the way,on my long saunter around the western coast i had lots of things dying to come out in some form,so before i get over the urge,permit me to exegete.
firstly,if you're meaning to ask me why the words are hurling around corners and being slammed in your face,then,i'd tell you it's because a friend and i have decided to exercise our late(nt) vocabularies...something must come of mr. mCaulay's superbly successful endeavors which have left me me with broken hindi,broken malayalam,broken french,broken italian,broken marathi.

one must do something with this strangely sound english then.who knows, the writing might even seem to be in cipher to those used to their packet of ten word vocabularies.even better.lol...how much can one iron out the wrinkles for the sake of deconstruction.'Balls to it.',she says.

for those who are still reading,(lol...)our game involves not using any thesaurus or dictionary in the extrusion,like while one is writing...because more often than not we're frighteningly bang on with the exact meanings..god knows what all is stored in the recesses of this brain..

like this word my friend adopted recently..
nubivagant, adj.
moving through or among the clouds

ooh..

2008-12-03T20:41:00.000+05:30

a,the
bombay

i have seen it coming

a bombay can happen because everyone has stopped looking at their everyday

i contort
i twist my insides out

.
.
i will find the way
the ways

it is just the everyday that you have to keep a check on to keep a bombay impossible
everyday
look at the people around you
look people in the eye when you talk to them
remember their names
stop for the dog
don't give money to the children who beg on the street
or any able bodied individual who has resorted to begging
eat less
walk more
walk
hug people like you mean it
live like you mean it
t
h
i
n
k
.
bombay happened
because we insist on not thinking
..we.

spring clean

2008-11-19T09:41:00.006+05:30

i would climb up to your room to wake you.
we would sit side by side in the vast vacant space of your room and stare for a bit.
and then you'd start putting things up on the wall from the packing.

but the camera has no interest in embodied space.

we will stay the strangers we were meant to stay.

2008-11-14T11:09:00.001+05:30

i just spotted my newest fears.
i gave them words.
i'm ramming them head on.
it's easy,i can see them now.
words are good for something.
lol...

2008-11-08T23:46:00.003+05:30

Today is Sunday

Today is Sunday
For the first time they took me out into the sun today
And for the first time in my life I was aghast
that the sky is so far away
and so blue
and so vast
I stood there without a motion.
Then I sat on the ground with respectful devotion
leaning against the white wall
Who cares about the waves with which I yearn to roll
Or about strife or freedom or my wife right now.
The soil,the sun and me..
I feel joyful and how.

Translated by Talat Sait Halman

Nazim Hikmet

***
I know what you mean,Isa.:)

2008-10-18T12:25:00.005+05:30

something i'd written in 'anger' once,sometime last to last summer, to one of the profs i debate a lot with...

y'know half the women writers never really got to write what they really thought coz it was so difficult to get a chance for their writing to be published or circulated in the first place that, at the end of the battle they were seething with just anger.you can't reach anyone with anger.i can't afford to be angry!
i was angry here.so i couldn't move.
things have changed so much since...
the revolution is within,i have found my channels,we'll see what happens..lol..
no answers coming from no messiah anywhere,from no system.
.
.
anyway it might as well be read
.
.

'Recently I was eve teased by five men, there were four other people sitting at my table. They were all highly 'intellectual'. Books were more of weapons for them than anything else. Yet day before yesterday, they could not say one word for me. I fought sir for twenty minutes,after staying quiet for forty. But somewhere towards the end,..all I could think was that whatever I do, however much I read, figure out, these men will still be able to feel naked in front of them. I realized I am doing all I do, reading whatever I read all because I am being 'allowed' to do it. It is an allowance. In the old history textbooks I used to laugh when there would be sentences like 'The women of the Parsi community were well educated'. We are almost a different animal species. I have been allowed to be just by my family, not necessarily the rest of the society. Those men had the guts to go ahead further more because the men at my table were 'observing' the developments. I walked out of that restaurant. I didn't want to speak to any of them, but over the next two days they spoke to me, some 5 hours at a go, they told me about the 'psychological bunkers' they all had taken cover in,how I hadn't given them 'margin time', how I was fighting quite well and they were just waiting for things to 'escalate some more'. Some more? Till I got hit? If those men had me in an alley way,sir, I would have been raped. Would they watch for it to escalate then too? What is enough? How much thought and theorizing is enough? Why do I have to be resolute to the fact that these things happen and will continue happening because I am physically weaker, because my kind have been subjected to this before. When do I get to breathe in something other than the liminal space my parents provide?

That evening in the restaurant sir, I suddenly got tired .I got tired of always being the screaming 'aggressive' woman. So then maybe I should shut up? Maybe it would all be peaceful then? A lot of women do that..not only when they're being abused as in this case, but also at work . Some stay quiet,but there are others who've probably been hurt so much that now they use their bodies. They now abuse themselves. They throw it around at men and feel justified by the sparkling results in their work. I can't stay quiet and I respect my body,so where is my space? I cannot shut up.'

musical

2008-10-13T16:14:00.000+05:30

2008-10-13T12:12:00.000+05:30

...'He had to move. He was excruciatingly in command. He had to step
deeper into his terror and further out over the void. There was no
other way. To his left was a rounded outcropping of rock and on the
other side of it a means of descent. Make for over there. He let go of
his left handhold and slipped off one strap of the backpack, then
switched hands, then slowly the other strap. He let the pack fall down
to the rocks below. In some far-off place, in some unreal time, he
hoped the flashlight had not broken.

Then slowly, he began to inch his way left, cranny, by cranny, hold by
hold. He made slow careful progress. He was half way across. With the
toe of his sneaker he felt out the loose-fitting rock in the next
cleft. He kicked away at the broken bits of rock. Nudging his way in,
he tested its strength. It was Okay. He transferred his weight over to
it. It held. He trusted it, committed to it. All his weight, now. The
rock slipped and gave way. His knee banged against the rock wall, his
foot forced down violently, jangling in the air, weightless. I'm
falling. I'm dead.'

andrew boyd

2008-10-08T11:49:00.000+05:30

'the most obscure poem is addressed to everybody'
audiberti