On a trip in rush hours.

23rd August 2017.

I just finished a mug of black tea and can use a cigarette, but since no one in my family knows that I have associated myself with such vices, I will have to be content with the caffeine only, it’s okay though.

I cannot see the dark clouds over the yonder as it has darkened up already, but I can feel the wet breeze on my face, I can taste the rain around it, possibly it will rain again tonight, the day has been uncannily gloomy, sort of upsetting, heart-wrenching too if the sentiments aren’t kept in check; this is not a good day to read poetry or look at anything that can bring back stuff you wouldn’t want around.

Now if I remember correctly, I wrote a ‘prologue’ last night, and I don’t remember much from last night. A particular amount of time, like an hour or so is blank, I remember bits and pieces of it and right about now I’m trying to go back there and see if I can pull things back out.

I have always believed that it is a better choice to abstain oneself from unwise choices and habits. I once was a person who absolutely hated the concept of smoking, but we now know that I indulge into that voluntarily and at times I am the conceptual ‘bad influence’ on other people; I actually enabled two individuals with the habit of cigarettes, not something I’m really proud of. So as long as I was a good guy, I kept myself in a constant check, but shit happens, from cigarettes to Blenders Pride and Tuborg, I came a long way. However, I will still say that I haven’t been addicted to anything as of yet. Right now I can’t smoke or for the next one week or as long as it takes, it won’t bother me at the least. It was and always is about control.

Last night was one of those nights when, after a long period of serious misanthropy, melancholia, and sort of seething depression, one would really say ‘fuck this’. I say depression, although I don’t know if that’s the right word to use here, I don’t know what depression is, I’m just going out of my limb here and say that I checked my essential symptoms on Google and I either have depression or diabetes, I’m going with the former one here. So I said ‘fuck this’, and for the first time, I tried weed.

I have heard things about this particular narcotic, and it was possibly this information which somehow gave me the balls to try that, in basics, last night wasn’t about fun for me, I wanted to get high, wasted, for once I needed everyone to shut up.

Here I should make a note that narcotics and I, we don’t have a very good relationship, and I cannot handle stuff. I remember one incident from a time back then when I tried something at school and I ended up tripping balls. I seriously have no memory of that day apart from the fact that it was sports day and I was there, that’s it. So it was a bit obvious that something was bound to happen and it did.

Obviously, it wasn’t at my place; it was at Ashfaq’s den (not his real name – Ashfaq, Bismil, and Jatin are our pseudonyms), we chose this place, and it was an invitation to me and since I trust only these two, I agreed. Now I’ll just cut to the chase.

I knew the basics about how to do it – puff, puff go and relax. Tutored by the other two, I took two drags of the joint and passed it on, counting on that, I might have puffed 7 or 8 times. 

At first, it feels nothing that’s like the first 3 minutes for an amateur or a beginner like me. After the 3rd minute (I kept a count or tried to, I don’t remember), everything slows down, like really slow, slow and descriptive. You can hear your blood rushing in and out you can hear things better, I remember I was smiling at something and I have no idea why. The other two kept a check on me. 

Everything was normal (by the parameter of joint logic) until a certain point, and then it happened. I remember being melted away on the sofa, unable to move, I couldn’t feel the floor beneath my feet, everything went slower and slower until I just sat there looking at the ashtray. Someone was asking me something, maybe, I don’t know, I was busy collapsing inside myself, the implosion was overwhelming. I realized I had a cigarette in my hand but I don’t know what happened to that – I was there and nowhere.

For the first time in weeks, I was at peace, I was calmer than anyone, the other two who have the experience were active enough as if it was nothing, and I was in a place where none of these things mattered. Every resentment, every despair that I have known again in the last few weeks was gone. 

Truthfully, the last few weeks have been a throwback to everything I thought I left behind. I have been sleeplessly chasing around thoughts that shouldn’t bother me, waiting for something or someone to happen which has just left me enraged and restless again, lucid daydreams had turned into dreadful incubus which reaches out and chokes me to death and I wonder have I been forgotten or abandoned because I cannot keep being an afterthought. It has been painful and I had to resort to old habits of punching walls again. Pain begets pain. The trip last night was blank, I was somewhere away from everyone and I was better off there.

Around an hour later I came back to my senses, or at least I got my motor functions back. Ashfaq asked me whether I felt cosmic because I certainly looked like I have left. Well apart from the moment when it was unbearably dizzy for me and I almost puked (as I said - relations). I remember my answer was somewhat like – I don’t know cosmic, I know dark.

That was just the first joint that rushed me to a place of solitude and calm, although it was dangerous, I liked it; I was a welcomed stranger in an outland and I came back without saying goodbye and I don’t have any intention of going back, not anytime soon. I just wanted to forget stuff, forget her (it’s always someone, all the time), I wanted to scream out the last bit but this works.

After that I had a beer and another joint before we went to sleep, it was the first sleep without a dream, it was a blank space on the ceiling which kept on going deeper into the night as the songs from the earphones were crystal clear to me, and I can actually hum out the song if I try.

As of now, I’m just heavy, my reflexes are a bit out of coordination, and I guess that’s a thing maybe. 

I think I will be fine, I always do. I won’t need another trip

Now then, it will be better if I wander off, it’s raining here.

Goodbye moon men!

Feeling good - prologue to something maybe.

I think I'm in my faculty but I'm high, wasted almost.. so let this be the prologue to an angst and stay open.

Regards.

Hyde

20th August, 2017

I am!
Actively participating in your self degradation,
I am the flaw in your plan,the miscalculation,
I am the scars you Revere
and I am the disjointed origin story of you.
I am the absurd suicidal ideation you have
when you smoke one too many
and I am the self preservation you have,
carefully chosen in introductions.
I am the dream of reason you long for,
and the surreal story of exuberant despair.
I am unjust, I am what you are in your lost inhibition you are so familiar with, I am radioactive; I am the reality lost upon.
I, in finality of your pathetic formation,am the Deus ex Machina of your broken altar, the raging rabidity you'll need.
Yours truly,
I am,
Your alter ego​.

Wrong Color.

27th July, 2017.

Which one?
If I had to choose?
All I write is gloomy and so broken,
shattered into pieces, you'll risk cutting yourself.
All I can do is run and hide and act,
and write about crushed bruises
and broken lights.
I don't want to.
While I wait for you to lose your spirits under a spell of wrongs (which I don't want to)
you won't even see me.
You'll look at me but you don't see me,
do you know what is that like?
Would you ever?
Would you give me a new choice?

________________

I would write something not boring later.

Maybe goodbye was the only way - Rest In Peace Chester.

21^st July 2017.

20^th July 2017, 12.04 AM. My usual routine of wasting time under the veneer of productivity got interrupted by one devastating news. Chester Bennington has passed away.  The lead singer of Linkin Park committed suicide at the age of 41.

Chester Bennignton? No, wait, that is a hoax, it cannot be. Fingers ran faster than the wind on the keyboard, Googling the authenticity of this abysmal news. Chester Bennington?

12.10 AM. It was true. He is no more.

There had been many deaths, celebrity deaths in recent times, but this news was overwhelming and heartbreaking. Alan Rickman passed away; Leonard Cohen passed away, Chris Cornell too and much more. But none of them shook me, or us up like CB’s death did, and there is a reason.

Linkin Park is not just some band. There had been many rock bands, maybe influential and more ‘hip’ than this one, but Linkin Park was our (the 90’s kid) safe haven. Most of us who are now in their mid 20’s and so forth, who are into rock music and such, or even those of us who just love music for music, Linkin Park was our base. I would bet anything that of those who claim to be a rock fan, a good number of them had started their journey from songs like ‘Numb’ or ‘In the End’ first and then they moved towards bands like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and so forth. You weren’t cool in school if you don’t know the rap verse in ‘In the End’ or if you cannot lip-synch ‘Numb’. You weren’t considered a hipster (school days definition of hipster is as childish but it was something!) if you didn’t have the first clue what was Meteora and Hybrid Theory. These songs became the daily anthem for a lot of us. I remember when I used the school bus, I had a friend who used to bring his cell phone and we listened to these songs first from his playlist. Linkin Park was what defined us in the 2000’s and above.

But that was a child’s idea of hip, and a child’s idea of hip and cool changes with every new thing that arrives, like today it is a fidget-spinner. Linkin Park and CB also changed their definition for and to me with their music; it wasn’t the epitome of coolness for us anymore. For a lot of us, Linkin Park became an idea and a concept.

With the growing idea of music and the understanding of lyrics, we had songs like ‘Crawling in my skin’, ‘Papercut’, ‘From the Inside’, ‘Leave out all the rest’ and so much more. Here it wasn’t the guitar riff or the drum beat or the bass-line anymore, what changed Linkin Park for me was the poetry behind the lyrics, the philosophy of loss and desperation and anger and rage and confusion. The words which made things relatable for me and to a lot of people of my generation.

A lot of my so called teenage angst days had been spent with my earphones in and the volume up high, while I listened to their songs, trying to keep the voices out of my head, the suicidal thoughts that crammed my head like demons were exorcised by this band. Chester Bennington became the voice of sanity in my darkest and most grim moods. Linkin Park was there when nobody else was and when I felt that everyone has turned their back against me. 

A lot of us had our personal fights with momentary depression, when we thought that we are misunderstood and are a bunch misfit squares in a world of round holes, we felt as outcasts and pariahs and it was during those sleepless nights when Chester and his band helped us out, made us felt understood and appreciated, when we thought that it wasn’t possible to cope with the next heartbreak and sadness, Linkin Park got us through.

And I guess it was not just the lyrics; Chester’s personal demons showed up in his songs. His problems with drugs and alcohol and his constant battle with depression perhaps made him understand the demons we had and we related to his songs and lyrics because we felt a sense of familiarity with his demons. It felt like a brotherhood. 

It made no sense that a person who literally talked us out of suicides and self-destructions felt so empty and lost that he gave up. We’ll never know why. All I know that I feel that I have lost a brother, a friend. Maybe for him, goodbye was the only way.

And this is what makes us what we are. I am sure a lot of people I know were as broken as I was with this news. We all went into denial and I assume we still don't want to believe this. Maybe this is what it felt to a lot of other people from the old generation when Lenon was shot dead and Kurt Cobain ended his life. 

It was a long night for me last night. Long, dark, crammed with past demons and heartbreaks. Every lyric was now clear and comprehensive and the memories were vivid.

On the last verge of it, I did what I was really afraid of. I had a meltdown and after so long I knew again what sadness was, I ended up crying. A dark room, everyone else was asleep and a couple of teardrops found their way out of my eyes, with the lyrics from ‘Leave out all the rest’ playing; he left all the reasons to be missed.

Goodbye Chester.

Confession.

The darkest hour wouldn't be my fear for death.
It is now the pretence that I will live, and that I'll live without you,
that I will always be there for you but under my own design.
That I will forget that I felt love once again, and it was for you, because of you.
You'll love again, just like you did before me, someone else and someone else again.
That someone broke you, and broke you again.
I loved the sincere pretention,that I put you back, I hope you'd see and you did,
and I always knew it was someone else again, not me. You saw that, saw me,
you always knew.
So I just listen to the ticking table clock,
and I let the spirit burn my nerves, pretending that I am doing better,
pretending that I will not misplaced.
I trudge beneath all the pretention that I will live, live without you, unscarred as I see you
crestfallened for someone more, as I had
for you.
Do I fear damnation?
How can I? I don't even understand it.

–-----–––--------xxxxx-----------

p.s - maybe a bit drunk.

Detox Attempt.

07^th June 2017.

This is what happens to an intro when you have been away from writing for a long time; it loses the flair. I would have started with ‘hello humans’ or ‘greetings mortals’, but I am unable to follow it up with a more quirky sentence, hence this bland introduction with a lack of everything.

That being said, I guess it eventually comes to the point of habit, everything we do normally is driven by a course of habit and a degradation of such is basically nothing but the lack of usage. I can write a better rant or blog than the current one, but since I have been totally busy in other things, the practice of writing anything substantial went from haywire to null and the result is this.

I intended to write about something, something more deep or quirky or engaging, but I am rather compelled to complain about this deformation of a practice I used to follow quite religiously, there was a break in the sequence and I ended up in blithering about; and this course of following a  habit is basically wrong because it makes me dependent on things, routine makes us disciplined but it also enslaves us, and I would disagree to all of them who claim to be fine with a routine or who claim that they do not follow a routine, that is a blatant lie, used conveniently to keep one in the illusion of whatever.

For example, I just completed my Post Graduation, the results have been declared and my first thought was that now I would be living a good time; it took 4 days for the bubble to burst, because I started to miss the routine, I missed the urgency of getting up early in the morning, the rush feeling to catch the metro to Kashmere Gate, the panic of facing the most strict faculty in the class without doing the essential readings, smoking in the Dara Sikoh lawns, et cetera. Basically, I started missing the routine, my existence was and still is running parallel to those characters from Sartre’s Nausea, and I am feeling the crisis to my existence. So much so, I miss my phone’s ringtone because there is no call, there is no WhatsApp text from my classmates, enquiring about the next class and holidays. No, I do not miss my classmates, they are dumb, most of them, yes I am standing on a high pedestal with a ten feet pole shoved deep in my arse, I don’t regret that and I don’t care, humility is one virtue I am yet to get. My point is, I have tangled myself in a design of daily routine, something I thought I would never do, or at least hoped for it.

I cannot complain about the boredom though, I am hardly bored these days, I might just have found a way out of it and it seems so ridiculously easy that I don’t want to break the streak, but that’s about it, the abhorring dullness have now been replaced by a more lethal a situation and damn this one is persistent in its purpose. The definitive human endeavor should consist anything but routine, and even if you have a routine, a heavy dependence on it is nothing different than an addiction to the most obtuse drug there is. Like really, you can get high on cocaine and overdose on it and die, easy. Sigmund Freud used to shoot up a dose of it and then he wrote some of the most beautiful papers I have ever read and I don’t think he would have made routine his choice of poison. No, I am not advocating cocaine and you are not Freud, so sit down quietly. The argument here is, comparatively, riding high on cocaine seems less dangerous than walking in an abysmal trail of schedules, more dangerous is making it a habit of your days, because the moment you break out of it, the withdrawal symptoms are spine crushing.

So I tried something different or tried to follow an even older routine which seemed more creative at the moment – doodling and writing poems and when I say poems, it looks like the sheer desperation of a wannabe Jim Morrison, but hey, I am trying!

I guess what I really miss, from the given habit of days, is talking. University was a place where I talked, it made my head clear, that became a habit of choice, and I picked people to talk and avoided some. Habits are designs of our own machinations, just a bit dangerous when it becomes a constriction, as it has become mine. Whether I advocate chaos and entropy or praise the humble order of uniformity, it will always replace one habit with the other one, and at the moment, it is the fallen order that concerns me more. I do not know what is more bothersome, the growing order or the impending chaos.

That being said, I really am missing cigarettes! No, not withdrawal symptoms, I don’t have those weaknesses in this matter, by that implication I would have been admitted to some health facility due to the lack of caffeine. What I am trying to imply is I miss smoking with friends.

Okay, an open offer to whoever reads this, if you want, let’s get some smoke or something. Let’s talk and make ash. Just saying, it is an open invitation.

There, I think that would be enough of a rant for now. I think I should try to be more frequent than this.

Until next time then!

Trust in my self-righteous suicide!

Peace!