Amorphous sensations

A shudder of anticipation

a caressing glance of acceptance

The deep blue sky is the backdrop

to this exchange of souls

The world streams by

unable to stress it's presence

Passions bloom

like flowers in spring time

Words are made redundant

in the ceaseless gush of expressions

Bliss has a form, it is this.

Fountainhead

I write this knowing that my words will be an understatement to what this book stands for. I write this, like always, for myself. I write this in my never ending pursuit of bridging the gap between thoughts, feelings and expressions.

Fountainhead written by Ayn Rand is a tribute to the heroic in man. A hero that exists in each of us most often drowned in the torrent of the majorities. The virtue of self-love is the root to all other legitimate emotions and thoughts. One must start by agreeing that one exists and then move on to using the 'I' in the truest sense of the word.

The world around treat their own existence with contempt and pass this on to their progeny. This is a vicious cycle with very few anomalies. These iconoclasts are antagonised to a point where it seems like living for oneself is a sacrilege. Selflessness and altruism are glorified and the world begins moving into nothingness. People become nothing but a collective void feeding on the fountainhead.

Ayn Rand has written Fountainhead for those that understand, accept and live it and not for the multitude that don't. What makes the book even more endearing is that she wrote it primarily for herself.

Roark, Dominique, Toohey and Keating are not people but symbols for attributes present within all of us. It's our choices that connect us to them. The love, passion, hate, suffering, conformism, selflessness and cruelty are all portrayed using these characters. The very fact that some can visualize and connect to the characters and the emotions that went into driving this character is a tribute to Ayn's work.

Pure, raw, unblemished thoughts, feelings and passionate individuality are what I saw in this book.

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being , with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest ability, and reason as his only absolute" - Ayn Rand

No black

It's a force powerful enough to shake souls and break many. I feel it in pulses searing through my being ripping through my senses. I feel it permeate but only this much. It won't break me... only make me stronger.

Pain isn't darkness. Darkness would mean attributing it with nothingness. I don't see black, I see a blood red. I choose the path and embrace all the possibilities including the most painful one. We often underestimate that one.

Why do people not want to look into themselves? Why does blood count? What makes people mould lives proportional to the norms of everything around them instead of nurturing freedom? Do I really want to know these answers? Why does the lack of answers hurt me?

I feel the rocks burning against my palms, the scorching heat on my head, fatigue piercing every muscle in my body and a heart burning with a desire to get to the pinnacle. The pinnacle of existence.. of life.. of me.

Expression

Feelings and thoughts can be so complex and unique. Most often, we use words as our means express these. There are some sensations that are painfully difficult to express in words. Nevertheless, my relentless foray into using language to the fullest continues.

"What is the alternative to words?", I kept asking myself. Why do I need an alternative to words? To get a thought across to someone who does not know about its existence and as a result does not understand it. One could choose to complement verbal expression with eyes, body language, tones, pauses, volume etc. This leads to a more consummate form of communication.

Until recently, I felt communication was necessary to express something. What when you simply know what someone thinks and feels! Makes communication redundant in this case. I do not speak of a surreal telepathic relationship but a connection where the souls are so exposed that any form of communication becomes either redundant or inadequate.

Setting sail

The oceans beckon
while the island I leave behind
has it's arms wide open in an embrace.

I take my island with me
on this journey into the unknown.

Times may change,
these moments will stay forever
engraved in my spirit.

Moments of passion, ecstasy, bliss,
connections, sensations, purity, comfort...

When I will return, i know not.
But return, I will.

Feeling emotions to their fullest
stretching my being to what seems like bursting point.

Knowing that I won't cave in,
knowing i won't succumb.

Walking my path is torturous...
and blissful since the path is MINE.

The space I call home

Itinerant, as my life has inevitably been, it’s time for another change. Talk about adrenaline rushes! The step off the comfortably predictable onto the unpredictable edge, not knowing what is to become of me. I walk away knowing and feeling only the complete existence of my body and soul. Will it hurt to leave? Yes, terribly. I now understand what Roark meant when he said that it hurt only up to a certain point. I feel it through me for what I leave behind and what I carry with me.

People may feel freedom after shrugging of their shackles of comfort zones. I was already free and venture into the unknown with the same freedom. What do I feel? I leave myself here as I move away. There’ll always be a pull because these moments are such a fundamental part of me. This does not imply that I don’t take myself on this journey. I’ve shared so much of myself with the circumstances here that they’ve become an indelible part of me. I carry all this with me wherever I go. That is what will bring me back someday; connection, love, passion, freedom, ecstasy, energy, sensuality and soul.

I’m home with the memories, feelings and thoughts. I’ll soon be home with reality.

Moderation?

Madhyamaka is the vista to salvation. This is what Buddha believed. Madhyamaka must necessarily imply moderation of emotions and actions. Passion is not a moderate emotion... in fact, nowhere near the median!

Do I really want the madhyamaka? Am i ready for it yet? Have I experienced both extremes? How is one to understand the value of the middle path without knowing the extremes?

I prefer to dwell in my passion for now. Madhyamaka can wait.

Ulysses

Typing this simple word makes my hands shudder with excitement... "Ulysses" Every time I read this poem, it fuels my passion to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield... The very thought is Orgasmic!

With tears of joy that someone, somewhere thought this way and that I am not alone, I engulf myself in the intensity of these thoughts, feelings and words...

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

Ulysses - Alfred Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife,
I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees.
All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known,-- cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honor'd of them all,
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.


This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
to whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.


There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me,
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads,-- you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho
'We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Judgement or analysis

When I think about it now, judgement is so subjective. Yeah, I'd rather call it analysis. I am doing this because judgement seems to have a moral connotation and I speak of purely ammoral inference.

Humans are too complex to be swept aside in the wink of an eye. However, most of our gut feelings are true because people have a basic aura and we learn to sense this aura when our hearts and minds are open to these inputs. Yet, there always exists a margin of error and we must be aware of this as well.

The crux here is being open to the world but not open enough to lose yourself in the process.

Judge not

For ye shall be judged in the kingdom of heaven.

From childhood, I’ve been asked not to judge. Why? Because the authority to judge rests with god. “Blah!”, I thought as a child. “Then all I’m supposed to do is see!”

This made life look pretty boring changing me from an almighty human being to a docile living creature whose life itself depended upon the judgment of the lord.

Why do I say that life is restricted to seeing? Because, understanding something in totality is what leads to wisdom and holistic understanding involves not only the subject in question but also its moral/ethical and allied impacts. So wisdom then would mean logical interpretation and judgment.

I must add to this that being an agnostic atheist adds a considerable advantage to this stance. There is no big guy writing the rule book for me perched on a throne in heaven… So hey! I guess I’ll have to do it by myself!

What makes a judgment of a human different from that of a wine? I analyze the characteristics of both and decide what I like about them and what I don’t. Then what does the world have against the former?

A human without these opinions is more like a non entity watching the world pass by and doing nothing because it isn’t allowed the right to react. Very much like a surveillance camera that watches stoically as a bank is looted with nothing more than empty black stare to offer.

I’d like to rewrite a couple of the commandments then.

1. I judge therefore I am.
2. I am, therefore I fear not another man’s judgment.

Sorry big guy. The glory is all mine for now!