Bodies crash

The open window breathes in
the dim light and cool breeze

that caresses the body
bare and beautiful, soft and smooth

the shadows add to the contours
that stress the passion and ignite the senses

a desire to explore the textures, curves and crevices
and feel the passion bursting forth...

the pleasure that unfolds is a pleasure shared
by both the souls

Connections

The masses are dreadfully inconsequential in my scheme of life. Once in a rare while i crash into someone who is free... free from the inanities of conformism. It's like a patch of warm sunlight on a chilly day. Like a dew drop in the desert :-)

There are no boundaries to connections. Startling similarities become a pleasant reality. Words become redundant because the foundations are already built. Built by the reality of our existence. Words serve only one purpose then; a means to accentuating more pleasure in our (already pleasurable) lives!

Sharing visions, thoughts, feelings and actions is what makes a relationship. Anything short of this is a compromise usually struck to camouflage the voids.

My life is wonderful! It's worth living... :-)

The dance

I close my eyes, clench my teeth, lift my arms and face another man with tensed jaws and heavy breaths.

We dance in a painful synchrony raining punches upon each other, with our bodies feeling the consequences of every decision; his and mine.

My instincts peaked and yet Boom! a stray fist lands right into my jaw. I look back and smile... It's a privilege to bear the consequences of the flaws in my style.

I charge again, we spar again and this dance goes on till we can barely move. The feeling of being matched by an equal in skill... of a fight where victory or defeat doesn't come easy... of two eyes sure and passionate testing each other... is ecstatic... it brings me back those visions i hold of standing high up on a tree and challenging the storm with arms wide open!

Money and Freedom

The primary argument in a session yesterday was whether nations should be grateful to their colonizers for the infrastructure and systems they left behind. The very base of this argument was ridiculous!

The primary concept under debate was making a choice between economic progress and Freedom. Putting these as options together is grotesque.

Politics!

There will always be variety in the human race, there will always be anomalies, there will always be miscreants and reformists and governments and conflicts. The very thought of aligning human beings with a common code of conduct is unrealistic.

We are not heading for a more uniform world full of peace and prosperity. Let us have this very clear... There will always be someone or something to fight so as to mitigate the damages inflicted upon our lives and our freedom.

Freedom!

What makes this concept so amorphous?

Does doing something out of self interest involve stepping upon another man's toes, stealing some one's bread and harming someone intentionally not as a reaction but a deliberate and planned action?

Here is my stand...

The only morality I know about is living of my own productive capacity and free will or die trying. I refuse to live life as a compromise. At the same time, I do not want to die, therefore, I will do what it takes to live life on my own two feet and not as a parasite.

Where do I draw the line?

Don't corner me. Don't deliberately try extracting from me what I hold most dear. I will defend it because I love it.

Apply this to the national level... Inconceivable! I know.. But then, that is my only political point of view. I wont even try to superimpose this ideology on the behavior of governments and nations.

"Hey, you!", They will shout, wielding a gun... "WE are going to make something of your pathetic lives whether you like it or not."

"WHY!... The impudence of it!... You have already lost your right to ask that..."

Every man has a part to play. I refuse to play messiah. The president plays his part, the terrorist plays his, the revolutionary plays another, the peacekeepers play more... I play mine. Nobody writes my script but me and I don't try changing anyone's scripts either. They make their choices and I make mine.

So much for my penchant for Politics!

A smile

I close my eyes
and breathe in the cold air

Dwelling in those moments
of passion that form a part of my being

I feel the very emotions that
flooded me as we coalesced

I live again amidst those rushing visions,
those ignited sensations

These are the memories
that I hold close and embrace in my solitude

These are the thoughts that
bring a smile to my soul..

The Atheist

We often succumb to usage of incomplete words to define a consummate thought or feeling. I made the same error while using this word... "Atheist". Literally, it means a person who does not believe in God. Though this is a sweeping statement, I would like to define each of these terms for myself.

God. People regard God as everything they are not, everything that is beyond their comprehension. It is in this context that I am an Atheist. I do not believe in what I do not understand. Blind faith is an emotion that I will not evoke, not as a conscious choice but a natural way of life. That makes me an Agnostic Atheist to be more specific.

Now If I were to assume that God were a supreme entity. Then that would be me. I am the center of my world, so that makes me God according to this analogy. I assume that every self respecting individual would say exactly the same thing and not subjugate his or her own existence to that of a higher being.

However, this entire exercise is futile. Firstly, I label myself and then try explaining it. What a thorough waste of time!

Burst of life

A light streaks across the pitch black sky
lighting up a path reflecting the glow above.

The water pours from the heavens with a graceful caress
touching my warm skin as though to comfort a body
rearing for action, craving to fly into the dark night towards the setting sun.

The droplets streak diagonally across the glass like
tadpoles of light with a life of their own hurrying towards
what seems like home.

The puddles smoothen the rough roads and carry away the
remains of the day making way for another morning
of toil and rest, joy and distress.

Glory to God!

What instigates such a passion for this guy called god that brings tears to peoples eyes as they sing with all the energy they've got worshipping and praising Jesus?! I had to ignore the meaning of every hymn to enjoy the rhythms in isolation.

They disembodied the concept of God for starters and labelled Jesus with it. The implications of this is self-evident. I can never be what I believe is god. So you are a servant down on earth simply to exercise God's will? You'll find most Christians nodding vigorously in approval to a statement such as this.

The implications of this could be disastrous. All I have to do is create an amorphous, benevolent entity that will always love and forgive you no matter how pathetic you think you are (which is usually the case), and I'll have a bunch of individuals flocking to this theory with every ounce of potential they have. These religious honchos don't need to be spectacularly intelligent to see this as an opportunity to further their personal purposes.

I'm an Atheist and it amuses me to have people asking you everything but, "what do you feel?" They don't want to hear anything that would lead them to questioning their faith. I am not capable, on the other hand, to have faith in something I do not understand. I refuse to bow down to some one's image of greatness detached from everything human. "Don't be afraid to shout Alleluia in this church!", the priest told me at the church today... He thought I was afraid! The thought of it had me smiling in mirth for the next 5 minutes. Afraid of what?! Their God?! The congregation?! Him?!

Every task that requires human potential to see it through they, "leave unto the hands of Jesus" as though humans are born impotent! They are born subverted to the power of some twisted amorphous conception either of an idiot or an exceedingly smart and evil man.

What disgusts me is that they can use this entity and concept to justify any action in the name of their damn God (paradox intended!).

Look inside yourself with an open spirit, free of fear and preconceived notions. See what you find and then tell me if it's anything less powerful than this concept of God. I've found myself and that's all I will require to take me through my life. The spiritual food of religion is nothing but bullshit for me useful for producing a lot of gas... That's all.

Floating

Solitude is rejuvenated. It stimulates my senses. Sitting amidst a confluence of nature and concrete, I was craving for my camera.

Alas! That’s one of those beautiful things I left behind.

What then is my alternative to expression? Words, of course!

I’ll embark then on a description of the world that surrounds me at this very instant.

It feels like a symphony of man-made geometry and natural abstraction. The towering trees partially embraced by the setting sun standing proudly upon waves of grass punctuated by tufts of shrubs in shades of yellow and green, all coalescing into a sudden perpendicular burst of concrete, glass and metal.

The sunlight falls at angles across the façade of a cubical structure out of which sprouts a wooden platform held together by triangular metal beams which seem to grow into another identical cube of glass and concrete… in various shades of grey.

The symbiosis I witness before me seems nestled against the backdrop of a clear blue sky with rough streaks of clouds that looked like an artist ran a brush dipped in water right across the fresh blue expanse. Amongst these haphazard patterns one could see almost perfectly straight parallel white lines left behind by a stray airplane.

The people around me are at peace. Laughing, smiling, talking, learning, thinking…

I feel free as I walk down these corridors. Free to reach into the infinity that surround me, free to feel, free of facades… It’s analogous to a perpetual outward burst of ecstasy when the space around you is splattered with the colors of your spirit. Orgasmic!

Such is my university.

Shudders

I shuddered with anger today. The kind of anger that brings me tears. The kind of anger that stems from my respect for humans... for mankind.

I felt this while flipping through a collection of some war photography covering inhuman acts of war through Afghanistan, Iran, Vietnam and other nations ravaged by human evil. Calling man an animal for this behaviour would not do justice to any animal. Animals kill to survive. Man begins to feel sadistic pleasure while inflicting pain and death around him. Animals aren't capable of cruelty. Only man can feel pure cruelty.

Mangled, bloody bodies grovelling in the dust and debris of the world fallen around them devastated by grenades and bullets. Faces of humans contorted with wrath, weilding guns and batons, looming over another human who is cowering for his life... his very existence. I saw evil in those eyes.

The brilliance of mankind overpowered by evil! A man staring coldly at another man squinting in helpless anguish with a revolver stabbed against his temple seconds before his death. Right wing activists slamming a chair against the head of a dead leftist already hanged with his body already broken. People surrounding this scene some staring coldly, some in awe and some smiling. I won't describe the smile.

WHY?!

Taking pleasure in another man's suffering. What could instigate such a feeling in man? Why?

Making human life the equivalent of a twig that can be broken at the whim of a fanatic. Why? Don't they see the potential and value of human lives? Don't they love themselves? Don't they feel?

Politics! It's horrendous just to imagine the honchos doing the high-level diplomatic talk while nations destroy each other. Not addressing the loss of lives but the protection of some amorphous concept of 'society'! Are those people who are killing themselves and killing others not part of this damn society of theirs!

What is the solution? To destroy the people who are already dead... I wonder if there is an alternative... Until then I will believe in and do what is most necessary when it is most necessary.

Life!

At the age of 13, Lydia fell in love with a grand opera tenor. She kept his pictureon her dresser, with a single red rose in a thin crystal glass beside it. At the age of fifteen, she fell in love with Saint Francis of Assisi, who talked to birds and helped the poor, and she dreamed of entering the convent.

Kira had never been in love. The only hero she had known was a Viking whose story she had read as a child; a Viking whose eyes never looked farther than the point of his sword, but there was no boundary for the point of his sword; a Viking who walked through life, breaking barriers and reaping victories, who walked through ruins while the sun made a crown over his head, but he walked, light and straight, without noticing his weight; a Viking who laughed at kings, who laughed at priests, who looked at heaven only when he bent for a drink over a mountain brook and there, overshadowing the sky, he saw his own picture; a Viking who lived but for the joy and the wonder and the glory of the god that was himself.

Kira did not remember the books she read before that legend; she did not want to remember the ones she read after it. But through the years that followed, she remembered the end of the legend: when the Viking stood on a tower over a city he had conquered. The Viking smiled as men smile when they look up at heaven; but he looked down. His right arm was one straight line with his lowered sword; his left arm straight as the sword, raised a goblet of wine to the sky. The first rays of a coming sun, still unseen to the earth, struck the crystal goblet. It sparkled like a white torch. It's rays lighted the faces of those below. "To a life," said the Viking, "which is a reason unto itself."

- Ayn Rand, We the Living

I'm home

Home for me is just to be
with swelling sails, out at sea

Strange is the urge that seems to grow
both for the ocean and the shore

My eyes follow the setting sun
greeting the journey that has begun

I feel the wind against my chest
as my heart beats back in jest

As I turn to see what was left behind,
another horizon is all i find

I choose which way my boat will sail
come tide or darkness, wave or gale

Full speed ahead!

Well, here I am. New place, new people, new lifestyle, new priorities...

Yet, I don't feel alien to anything around me. I feel exhilarated with the amount of discoveries I will make and intrigued by the novelty of my circumstances, fascinated by the opportunities, not alienated at all.

The world seems to form around me blooming before my eyes as though it existed because I exist.

The variables don't change substantially with geographical boundaries. The basic set of emotions and reactions amongst the people around me has remained the same. What differs is the circumstances that instigate these reactions. What matters the most is that I have remained the same.

I look into the horizon occasionally, knowing that beyond it lies the world I left behind. It does not make me grieve. "It's just another horizon", i think... "another journey that I will make soon". Until then, I'll feel the ground I'm standing on, breathe in the fragrances around me, learn from my circumstances and grow.

This journey of life is spectacular! I wont let it stop. I'll follow the sinking stars unto the horizons that never seem to end until the sun sets before me. Ulysses feels like my comrade as I speak!