What I Like These Days

Long hours on an empty road, and a cup of cutting chai at the end of it. Hip-Hop music bleeding through my speakers, loud enough to shake my soul : Common, 2pac, Nas, Jay-Z for the obvious choices but I bump The Roots new album, my iPod serendipitously played the entire Doggystyle album while on shuffle! And my car transformed into '64 Cadillac, chromed out and rollin'. I play B.O.B. and Drake and J. Cole and my smile gets wider and wider. I've even started flashing the peace sign coupled with that New York head nod 'Sup to people stuck in traffic around me. Bombay City knows not what to do with the kid.

I love my new Chevy. Twenty years old, but she still got it. A little love, a little paint and a whole lot of toil, and you should see her. Girl looks mean. Can't go too fast but like Kanye said, "Ain't no rush to get grown, pump your brakes and drive slow homie", which is exactly what I do (plus she can't really go that fast). But when you drive a car like that, with the joy she brings me, I don't need to go anywhere - I am the destination.

The monsoon, brothers and sisters, the monsoon. I had forgotten what a Monsoon (capitol absolutely) used to be before I moved back here to the tropics. We're talking wrath of God rain, wash you down and knock over trees rain. It's so beautiful when it catches you out on the street. For the first ten seconds you hate the world, and then it washes even that hate away until you're left smiling, wet, and fucking care-free. The world's problems and your day's stresses just do not matter for that moment. Granted it turns Bombay into a fucking nightmare but we're Indians - we get used to it.

Did I mention coffee? I must have. There have been many odes to Coffee that I have written, and yet...it's never enough. How I adore thee, I refuse to count the ways. You wake me up, and supercharge my days, you fill me more life than the absent Sun's rays. You make my breath smell like coffee bean trays. And my poetry stinks even after I drink you, but I find I don't cares.

The fact that I'm writing again. God bless the ghosts of Hemingway and Billy Shakes, and Shelley and Yeats, and my main man Wallace Stevens. God bless them for watching over me and making sure I strayed not too far away from our beloved Pen. I'm grateful that I found my way back to this art I love, and this desire to be better at it. I love it. Now I just need to dust off the old sketchbook and get that sketch hand strong once more.

The trailer for the new Stallone movie "the Expendables". Damn! Have you fellows seen that shit? Looks friggin AWESOME! It's probably going to suck but best believe this man-child shall be at the first day first show with coffee (of course) in hand and a giggle prepared. Nicholson can act his ass off, Spacey and Pacino ain't no slouches either, Bardem is the dude and Robert Downey Jr. is the king - but Stallone? Stallone is the ultimate dude. Ay yo Adrian, I'm back! Word! Welcome home Sly, welcome home. Show em how it's done, because his action scenes aren't blurry and annoying like all Hollywood action scenes have become, with the camera shaking so hard and fast you get a headache before you get a clue. Stallone don't speed the camera up, he slow it down. He wants you to see him knock a mother#$#!'s teeth in.

And many more things, but I'd rather be doing them than talking about them. So I'm going to go and do that right here, and I'll tell y'all about it tomorrow.

One love...

Sometimes

Sometimes I wonder why I wonder so much, when all my muscles get weighed down just by the pressure of my thoughts. Sometimes I drink one coffee too many and start feeling ants crawling around behind my eyes and an itch right under my foot. Sometimes I leave the lights off in the bathroom so I can't see the mirror. Sometimes I write so badly I vow never to write again. Sometimes I can see my name in lights and a beautifully wrapped book with my name on it in the hands of a pretty girl. Sometimes I'm just plain shallow. Sometimes I can spend the day reading Batman comics and think it a day well spent. Sometimes the loneliness and anticipation that go with my acting job get so heavy I want to sink into the ground and give it all up. Sometimes I drive into rush hour traffic just to feel like I'm part of the herd. Sometimes I want to leap out of my car and start dancing on the roof. Sometimes there's a whisper in the air just behind my left ear, like someone said my name and then disappeared. It's always a female voice. Sometimes I wonder about that. Sometimes I actually believe in destiny. Sometimes I feel ridiculous for having done so. Sometimes I accept party invitations just to remind myself why it's better to grab a good book and stay home. Sometimes I actually have a lot of fun. Sometimes I catch myself thinking Bombay is a good city to be in now and then. Sometimes I look and love every single thing I see. Sometimes I walk into my apartment and for the first time since I left home at seven years old, feel like I'm returning to MY home. Sometimes I feel like shit, and wish I could forget, and just be normal for a bit. Sometimes I can count the number of friends I feel I have without raising a single finger. Sometimes the love overwhelms me. Sometimes I pick up my phone and go through my contact list, and wonder who I should call just to hear another human voice, then I switch the phone off. Sometimes I watch silly Hollywood movies and eat chips and feel completely at peace. Sometimes I actually slow down when walking in the rain, while everybody dashes around. Sometimes I dream of her, sometimes I actually see her face. Sometimes when I sleep I do so on the floor with no quilt and no pillows. Sometimes I wake up and feel like I've slept for a week straight and the most important moments of my life have been missed. Sometimes my phone rings and I refuse to answer it or look to see who's calling, imagining instead who I wish it was. Sometimes I wish I wouldn't think so much. Sometimes I wish I wouldn't smoke so much. Sometimes I wish I wouldn't write so little or sketch so rarely. Sometimes I actually believe I'm gonna rule the world with my eyes closed, in slippers sipping Sangria wearing a black robe. Sometimes I want to leave the country and travel to the Shaolin Temple and ask them to teach me kung-fu. Sometimes I want to pick a fight just to get knocked out. Sometimes I have nothing to say and I just stare and smile and wonder when the other person will figure it out and shut the fuck up. Sometimes I write without pausing, like this, and read back what I've written and start laughing. Sometimes I think - time to look for a good shrink. Sometimes I smile and start over.

Lonely Friday Night

i get lost in these streets,
with no one looking to find me,
every night's another trial,
that I lose, guilty of crime, me
and all I used to think defined me
dissolved somewhere between goodbye
and the first time you kissed me and smiled
we broke curfews and drew shadows
like curtains and breaths like sips of wine
we poured into each others mouths
everywhere we huddled was a little shrine
to hope and love and a future and all
the silly little things that seem sublime
to a boy whose sixteen lost in first love
with the scent of your hair on my mind
that still hasn't faded. i never touched
your heart, you never returned mine
now these girls wonder why my
eyes never return their smiles, and we
never seem to make it past the point
labels get attached and roles defined
i'm sorry i kill us quick, darlings, before
your smiles shine in my eye likes hers shined
and fills me with that traitorous hope
that broke my heart and left me blind
wandering these streets hunting for a scent
i know to be hers but hope never to find.
dear god i'm strong but helpless under these
chains you chose to bind me.
release my heart, release my love,
and let a jasmine breeze find me.

Tongue Tied Up

They leave me reeling, women do. Tongue tied up and hurting. I know this may not be the most original subject for a piece. It certainly isn't an original predicament for us men. But I swear to the Goddess, every time I talk to these here girls feels like the first time. Each conversation begins with me not knowing a damn thing about speaking to women. Like I'm sailing in uncharted waters with no map, no depth awareness and no destination in sight. And if I like her, let's through in some shallow reef beds and a squall on the way, shall we?

I wonder if there will every come a time when I can breeze through a conversation, hitting all the right notes with precisely the right rhythm. Instead, even when a conversation is going well, and her hands keep fixing her hair, and my smile keeps getting Cheshire wider, I feel like I'm a musician performing a piece that I've never played before, but one the audience knows intimately and refuses to let me look at the sheet music. Too dramatic? Well how about a song they've requested only without telling me. I'm supposed to guess what they want to hear. And I can't mess up neither, because then smiles will disappear and frowns parade out the door.

Dear Lord, if I didn't love the delicious awkwardness and slow conversation tango of it all, I would no doubt have taken vows of chastity and secluded myself upon a forbidding forbidden mountain-top with only my ice-hard nipples for company, the second I hit puberty. Now there's an image! I still remember the first time I saw that first girl smile, when I was a boy, and had no idea why a girl I've seen smile before, has suddenly smiled like she's never smiled before. And what's going on in my pants? Do we ever really outgrow puberty, or does it all get camouflaged under practiced poise and what-we-think-to-be Humphrey Bogart swagger?

I can get them to smile. I can get them to laugh. I can stare into their eyes without feeling cliched, and with absolute certainty, and absolute joy, get lost amidst the twinkles. What I wanna know, what I'm writing to understand, is what in the name of Cupid's waxed testicles happens to me after that? Is it that I snap back to a banal, unpalatable reality so abruptly that it ruins my optimism and poise? Does my cynical mind fast forward through scenes of the entire relationship/association to come, up until the ultimate undramatic uninspiring end (whichever end of the uninspiring spectrum it may fall) and revolt in denial, and in desire for an Indiana Jones romance complete with bullets whizzing by and fisticuffs aplenty and hot Nazi torturers and eternally witty banter throughout?

I know not. But I need an intervention, or a clue, right fucking now. Life cannot be a Milan Kundera novel, and it shouldn't. I don't think I have the maturity or the joie de vivre to see that much drama through. I'd probably ask for the check and chicken out at her doorstep.

Ha! At least I amuse myself. It's either that or prescription pills and a silly looking psychiatrist. Pray for me...

Soul Scraping

I haven't been writing. Everyday I sit myself down and say "today" only to find myself on my bed and night with all my thoughts unsorted as sleep takes me under. It's been months.

It's always struck me as strange and a little disturbing how swiftly my attention shifts from intense and riveted to uncaring and superficial. There are many things that I was good at, that I loved to do, that I felt I had real talent for, that simply fell by the wayside on my journey towards today. Talents lie dusty in my attic, cobwebs stretch across my dreams, and the man I am today is not the man I'd hoped to be.

I loved writing this blog. I don't know why, and I know it wasn't the sort of content that most people wanted to read or even had any interest in, but that even a few did and responded and question made me feel a little more confident about the dearest of my talents - writing.
So after many many unforgivable months of ignoring my metaphoric pen, here I sit, fresh out of the shower with the taste of coffee still thick on my lips, wondering just what the hell it is that I have to say.

But I didn't start this blog to say anything at all. I'm no preacher, no expert on any subject, nor very interesting in the important ways. I'm just another flawed wanderer searching for an oasis in this here desert of life. I write to understand that wandering. I write to understand the journey. And in the end I write just to write. This isn't soul-searching I do, it's soul-scraping.
Writing takes me away. And where I go there are no truths, nor any lies, and words can describe and overcome all evils. Where I go I am forgiven my false, and my suppressions, and my constant pretending. My skin doesn't writhe with the inertia of this life, and my dreams don't scratch at the insides of my eyelids, like good dogs locked in bad kennels.

I go to a place where she never walked away from my disregard, and she smiles slowly like I remember. And we walk down fragrant, monsoon-wet streets, our bodies fitting like jigsaw pieces side by side, her chin on my shoulder and her laughter in my soul. Then I return...and take a breath. All I can hear is my unquiet silence, and the traffic outside, and the petulant staccato of my keyboard, as I struggle to finish writing before my mind wanders away again.

That may be the truest reason behind these posts - the desire to nail my thoughts down. To make them sit still long enough for me to have a look at them. Will that interest anyone? Doubtful. But I'll be here, now and again, scratching at my third eye, wondering if there're any eyedrops for my condition.