Tomorrow is a long time

If today was not an endless highway,
If tonight was not a crooked trail,
If tomorrow wasn't such a long time,
Then lonesome would mean nothing to you at all.
Yes, and only if my own true love was waitin',
Yes, and if I could hear her heart a-softly poundin',
Only if she was lyin' by me,
Then I'd lie in my bed once again.

I can't see my reflection in the waters,
I can't speak the sounds that show no pain,
I can't hear the echo of my footsteps,
Or can't remember the sound of my own name.
Yes, and only if my own true love was waitin',
Yes, and if I could hear her heart a-softly poundin',
Only if she was lyin' by me,
Then I'd lie in my bed once again.

There's beauty in the silver, singin' river,
There's beauty in the sunrise in the sky,
But none of these and nothing else can touch the beauty
That I remember in my true love's eyes.
Yes, and only if my own true love was waitin',
Yes, and if I could hear her heart a-softly poundin',
Only if she was lyin' by me,
Then I'd lie in my bed once again.

Old songs, sisters and a goose

Oh all I need right now is a call out to the universe. Hey universe! I still hang in there!

I am here.

I got to 23 but I think I did pretty well at it. No Banuvie, no aging anxiety. I did pretty well for myself being 22 and all. I SAW DAVE MATTHEWS BAND IN CONCERT. LIVE. ALIVE. And I travelled a whole bunch. In India, USA, Italy. I saw Lyon and Budapest. I shifted bag and baggage to Barcelona. I saw Spain. I saw the Mediterannean and I saw the Atlantic. I learnt a smattering of Spanish. Tried speaking in Italian with that Spanish. I tried a calcot, and oysters, and octopus, all for the first time. Pig's feet and ears. I fell in love as if it were for the first time. Almost every day. I received my first love-poem and I got my hands on pho again. I hung out with my sisters. How could I regret the passing of such a time?

And now I'm 23, and while last night I almost choked on a baby octopus and might have to begin fighting for my rights with Giorgio against a GOOSE, Neha will be here on the 16th! For her birthday! More cheers for sisterhood. And then Numz will be here soon enough : ) This may as well be a letter to you (Banuvie). I'm listening to Queen. Thinking of high school. Wondering how can Queen be so moving and tragic, when the music itself sounds so unlikely to be so. How can they make sounds like woo-woo-woo and still be so good? I'm so happy and healthy, and glad to be here! And no, the room remains dirty, the thesis is reclining to point zero, the job is unfound, the exam remains unstudied for. Familiarity equals fondness, no? Hardly, but look at this night, its 3.10 here, 21.10 in Atlanta, 20.10 in Houston, 6.40 in Delhi. The sun recycles my world every few hours. And I had delicious mojitos last night in an awesome cuban bar, over a 120 years old. Life is pretty neat.

Oh and about the goose, its a she, with multiple names, Jean-Yves (when they thought it was a boy), or Giorgino, or Giorgina, looks upon g as her mama/papa, eats all the time and shits out more than her weight in a day. She's cute but she's a bird. And those are creepy. She was bought as a gift for Marco from his mad Belgian friends because she had eyes like his, blue. But no one looked carefully enough, for hers are gray. And Giorgio's, they're green. SOMEBODY?

Okay, Banu, add a 'Dear Noovie' to the top of this post. Though just now I have been assured me by a "if you want i will read it" from g.

Sigh. Here's to friends and family who assure you with their love.

This is I think my favourite vid

Strong sad and strong happy

I don't remember what music played in the scene in I'm not there when Heath Ledger's wife realizes the relationship is over, in front of the gray black large canvas...but I know had it been I WANT YOU, it couldn't be more perfect.
It was what played when they made love, in a love scene that is more appropriate than any of the terribly serious scenes that make us/some of us all gush a little in our tummies, because it is in fact, more happy, and much more realistic, isn't it? And how perfect was I WANT YOU there?
Anyway why I'm speaking of this is because right now I find myself terribly upset, upset enough to burst a couple of nerves. And it is Blonde on Blonde, 'the album that changed the world', that is most comforting to me. How can Bob Dylan do that? Make happy music that is most comforting in terrible moments? Put sad words into a song that sounds so hopeful and optimistic? And of course execute it perfectly.
How can something excited be soothing? Maybe he has managed to capture the essential of life, the philosophy that eludes some, I don't know why. But he put it in a song, canned it there.

And so I name Bob Dylan, GOD.

Que quieres?

Quiero tranquilidad, quiero hablar esta idioma, quiero orientación, propósito, inspiración...quiero un gran futuro, pequeño de sus maneros suaves.
Quiero carpe diem. Con tranquilidad.

Romance en un pot fe fer

Finalmente, lo encontré. Una fotografía de la intersección de Rue Mouffetard y Rue du Pot de Fer.

Muchos recuerdos están asociados con ella. A la derecha, a la esquina, hay un restaurante dondé probé por la primera vez los escargots. ¡ Qué rico ! Con una salsa verde y mucho de aceite…estuvieron suaves y llenaron de sabor. Como niñas, Aditi y yo nos emborrachamos de poco de vino tinto. Después de, me acuerdo ir a la clase de microeconomia, ¡ Qué desastre ! Enfrente de este restaurante, a la esquina izquierda y arriba, hay otro restuarante dondé hay acuerdos buenos. Muchos de compañeros de clase, mis amigos, fuimos aquí a probar raclette y fondue, comida mas típico francés. Fue una tarde relajada con muchas risas. Le restaurante llama ‘La Vieille Tour’, que significa una torre vieja. Yo todavía tengo su tarjeta con una pintura de la misma escena…

La camino en el centro, tiene un suave en el centro y consoló mis pies cuando llevé ponerles y salí en la noche…a veces, fuimos a un bar un poco delante, a la izquierda. Se llama Hydeout. El Martes o Miercoles, no me acuerdo cual, cervezas son mas economico ahí. No fue un bar muy limpia, y ¡ la musica fue terrible ! Un poco delante, siga todo recto y gire a la izquierda, hay la residencia Concordia dondé Giorgio y otros chicos se quedaron. Toda la pequeña calle es llena de acuerdos caros como ellos. En un tiempo poquito se acumulé, no se como. Quizá es Paris...espero volver. Otro día. Algún día.

I like post-it's

2009 needs to be a year of change:

2008 was spent trying to change. Post-it's all over my room and diaries full of to-do's. Everything was in an attempt to reassemble, rearrange, restart.

2009 needs to be a year of comfort in my toes. Right down there, in my toes. They need to touch the ground, grip the ground with certainty and ease, my toes.

An easy grip is most often beyond me. And yet I'm fair enough free. Free enough fairly.

Oh and I'm doing nothing well presently. And it isn't because I don't try. I try enough fairly...I need 2009 to be the year of gimmeabreak.

rainbow dreams

and so I got this delicious Xmas gift, a bit early, it's a set of the finest oil pastels one can buy. They're handmade, brittle, smooth, rich, break into powder when applied, break into bits when pressure is applied. I don't know how to use them of course, I didn't imagine I'd have to prepare myself for such eventualities &now to only make myself worthy of them :)

And the colours: Black, Vandyke Brown, May green (B and D), Prussian blue, Ultramarine deep, Madder lake, Permanent red 3 deep, Orange deep, Permanent yellow 3 deep, White. Colours can only be defined in specifics (as is with food, with love, with everything fantabulous) but who would have imagined poetry in such strange specifics. Strange singularities. Permanent red 3 deep, now there is only one of those in the world.

My bed is smudged with the crumbly powder of these things..I wish blogs could have footnotes. Because I like margins, I like subtexts, I like comments and notes and anything that reduces the sterility of plain text. I like pastel crumbs on my bed, I like colourful dreams. I like, I like.

Hello hello

Dear Blog,
Suddenly there is no one to vent frustration on, except you. Except you aren't human and don't react to meaningless hurtful jibes. You don't respond to loud voices and whineiness. In fact, you can't even distinguish them from other media of communication. What kind of loser are you, really?
Thank you,
Me

dismal abyssimal

Everytime I hear/see/think of the city I want to go back and live there. In Paris.

So I just checked the UNESCO site thinking my whole life has probably been a conspiracy to get me prepared to work there, but the website doesn't think so.

Beatles' I want you is playing (Abbey Road) . Can you imagine how it amplifies this situation. Frustration encrustation.

But Paris, ah, Paris. She's representative of all things beautiful and unfathomable. 'Beauty you can't own', now where did I hear that? But I do remember speaking about it...how the only true beauty was the kind you couldn't own, it seemed so obvious then, now seems to be some trippy conversation I haven't much recollection of. Except that I was walking down the Rambla, towards the sea..or was it towards Universitat..and why does everything seem so vague?

Anyway, so I guess this post establishes I'm in Barcelona. For a while now. Yes, yes, Gaudi, Picasso, Miró, and all this revolving evolving art. All this nouveau reggae, all this marijuana scented contentment. The only problem is, I don't belong. Sunshine isn't for me.

I'd much rather take the Bd St Michel, thank you so much.

And if I were strange enough to substitute sunshine for Bd St Michel and vice-versa, I would pick St Michel any day. And even though St Michel is overrun with the tourists and Rue Moufftard is simply, absolutely fabulous, it's St Michel I'd chose. We sometimes must make these choices, you see.

As for now, the coffee inside me is ringing in its reminders with its sugary overtones, I need to pick up my study of nonstationary data with unit roots, the much too dim light is closing into my brain, my pupils are dilating, my head is hurting. Time Series, time series. I need to go.

Love, so much love.

Anuva Seth

I want to make a time series of the number of posts each month published here, I want to fit a trend (there won't be any), I want to detrend it anyhow, I want to check it's stationarity, check it's seasonality, see how the Delhi weather and climate of all the foreign exotic locales affects her whine-iness, try to correlate personal angst with number of posts. Look for causality. I want to make up for a lot of lost time.

But I have forever to do so. Or at least a similarly long time.

Gentle as a smile in the sadness

I am in the wilderness
You are in the music
In the man's car next to me
Somewhere in my sadness
I know I won't fall apart completely

- Sade, Lover's Rock

Kashmir

A place left behind by time.

Shelly's photo.

Empty space I fill for myself

Real love, thats what it is like

www.rasmusbak.dk/Crash.wmv

What is so wonderful about DMB is not only their melody, but the lyrics, the realness of emotions, no deep fancy sublime poetry; instead real, poetically prosaic real, real, real, real, love. Love like its meant to be, love in everything, love in breath, love in bad breath, love in walls, love in toes, love in clothes, love in smiles & frowns, love in sweat, love in old wounds, love in swallowing, love in being.

Love. in. breathing. every. breath.

Love vs Life

I like watching the label counter, love vs life. Love is winning 10 to 9. As if they weren't irretrievably bound to one another.

Ultimo tango a Parigi

The scene when they first meet, she opens the windows, or the doors to the balcony, as he walks the lighting corridor/room, and as he walks in the darkness, she fills it with light & her multitude of reflections, beautiful.
Simply, beautiful.
-------------------------------------------------

http://www.ibiblio.org/stabley/lt1.html

About the interlinkages between Francis Bacon's art and the movie.

Reminds me of the beauty of art, its significance as an expression of being, of cinema being art. Something truly remarkable and inspiring.

-------------------------------------------------

Find myself going over the movie in still moments, tracing the fabric, the richness of visualness in the film, the intensity, the anguish; the pathetic-helplessness of ours, the feeling of the power love & sex command over us.

What a beautiful film.

Fuckersome

An Ex tells me I'm continuously self-righteous, and since I feel the furthest from being so right now, I wonder if its his bitterness, or if it's a personality flaw (mine). If I really am righteous even when I haven't any reason to be.

He also tells me that I have the ability of having people think I care, that I am nice & loving. I could say No! I really am (to some extent at least), but I cannot because it occurs to me, that I don't really know how much of us is who we are and how much of it is who we wish to be/who we pretend to be/who we have conditioned ourselves to be. If its admirable to be 'nice', and it happens that someone is 'nice', is that them or is that them trying to be something valued?

Is that me, this, who this person is? Is my action me or is it what I'm masquerading as?

I feel like a 14 year old, all over again, with these questions hanging above me.

I am perhaps a terrible person. It's a frightening thought, and what is even more frightening is that I haven't ever suspected it this far.

Accordion lady on a Berlin bridge

Strangers in the Night (Sinatra)

One of my most perfect moments.

Miscellaneous ponderings at 2.22 AM

REM's Diminished speaks for me right now.


A thought came to me, that maybe the reason why people keep journals is to have something of their exclusive own. I think we, as humans, feel secure in exclusivity somewhat, we inculcate it with care and affection, we treasure it.

We feel safe in things we hold up to the world and say "This is mine, entirely. You can't have it".

We're saying it right now, in the deepest abyss of our souls. Right now.

So, what is it that is yours?


My classmates have been stirring the soul a lot these days, using that word - soul. Maybe we're a dramatic bunch, maybe it's the lack of vocabulary. I've never quite stepped in there, into the soul. Someone said today, jumping from one relationship to another poisons the soul. Another thought Barcelona would be good for his soul.

I think the soul is as dead as God is.

Since I think that, I must be unhappy.


I find myself at a complete loss, I've become such an agitated person. Never at ease. I remember, a few years ago a common friend of Mo and mine said being with him calmed me as a person; I don't remember being disquiet before him ("AT ALL!" I want to scream at her). I don't see this person as myself, she's always troubled, never at peace. Mo's gone now, I hope she too disappears.


I don't know where this sickeningly structured, mathematically perfect, grammatically conforming, superbly routinal style of writing is emerging from. She isn't me.

She isn't me. When will she leave?