You still breathe

When your heart is broken

You want to tell how much it hurts

And the only ears that matter

Are the ones that cannot hear.

Scream,

if only to make space 

for some silence in your heart.

For in that silence you may catch

the faint sound of your breathing.

You're still breathing...

After all these years

After all those falls

After all the countless times you've wanted 

someone to hear you

someone dear, dear

and only got deaf ears

You're still breathing.

And though you stand like

A statue from the Rock Garden

Your broken shards are still held together.

Be forgotten,

if only to let go of the fear

of not mattering.

For all the chapters you've been erased from,

You still exist

You still breathe. 

Done

I’m done anticipating

when I’ll come home

and find a note in your stead

I’m done keeping

the ears of a dog

Alert to catch sounds

of people moving out

Strangers moving in

You blow like breeze

And I settle, like snow

I think we both know

We were never meant to be

And yet we’re pretending

That I can flow

And you can stay

Because today’s not that day

We want to call out 

the elephant in the room

The wall clock is just where it was

Wardrobes neatly arranged

Why upset things?

But I’m done watching

the wall clock tick like a time bomb

And the wardrobe

that any moment now

can spill out skeletons 

If I broke this glass bottle

That’s sitting on this table between us

Broke this careful silence
And announced that it was time to leave

The ghost would be out

It won’t scare us as it does now
Hiding behind these curtains

To the new

To people I care about, who I hope will know that I mean them.

Begins another new year. My smart-ass side says, big deal. Yesterday 2014, today 2015, change of just a date, madness, consumerism, conspiracy, group-think, empty lives...I quite like this smart-ass side of me. Sometimes it makes sure I'm not giving in to mass hysteria or social pressures of pretending.

But then there is this other dreamy, touchy-feely, life-is-too-short-for-being-smart side of me that says, "Lets play to this crazy fiction of the new year and use it as a chance to say what rules of normal behaviour in daily life disallow us to." Today, I am letting this side speak up. 

So then, I want to first tell you that I miss you. Like really. But I don't say it otherwise because it can sound rather creepy. And uncool too.

I miss being witness to your life and you being witness to mine. I'm not saying that I wish we called each other up more often, for I know that life is happening in so many different ways to all of us, each dancing to a rhythm that is unique to his/her life, that to ask one to step out very often could turn into a tedious reporting ritual. That's not what we'd like to do to each other.

But when through an occasional call or mail, or in the odd but wonderful chance to see you again, I am reminded that you are the holy ghost in my life as I am still in yours, it makes me feel that though I have my own seat on this roller coaster called life, you can look out and see me and I can look out and see you, when we want to, and that's reassuring enough to know.

So the smart-ass side. You know how it scoffs at new year resolutions, "They're so mainstream. You need a new year for a resolution?" You don't. And yet  a couple of days ago it struck me that if you look at it as a new year resolution instead of a new year resolution, then it starts to make sense differently. It is a reminder that I can be new, if I choose to be. It is a strange thing, familiarity. Parents that wait for the child they knew to come home. Friends that hope to meet the same friend that they said goodbye to many years ago. Lovers that claim they know each other better than they know themselves. And my own self that tells me I am this or that. An elaborate set of enactments to find, define and fix each other. So then when you change, it almost seems like betrayal.

But I am beginning to see the new year resolution as something that tells me that while my past makes me who I am, my present will make me who I will be. And so like a river that makes its path as much as it is made by it, I can be myself as I also make myself. It is liberating because it acknowledges that beyond a point it is futile to analyse and know yourself because the self is not a crusty, inflexible mould. So in that sense, new year resolution revealed itself to me as a modern day 'rite of passage', passing me from being to becoming,

Why am I telling you all this? One, because you've always listened patiently to my compulsive pondering over the stuff of life. And two because it concerns us- you and I. Because if a new year resolution means that both you and I can be new individually, then perhaps we can be new together. It could mean being excited at the idea of meeting the new in you as much as feeling warm in your familiar presence. It could mean not being disappointed when you do not confirm to my idea of you because I care too much for you to nail you. It could mean letting go where there was imprisonment, It could mean hope where there was cynicism.

So then, my new year resolution is to let the new in me come to life, when it feels the need to. And to gracefully accept, even welcome, the you I have not met as much as the you I know so well.

I Grow Love In My Backyard

I could die, as I live
in stories I weave
Spin webs around me
and never, never leave

I grow love in my backyard
Hide songs in tree hollows
Dreams in cottonseeds
I slavishly follow

I blow soapy bubbles
I'm in them, I soar
They stick, they burst
I blow some more

It's madness, hell yeah!
I'd hate to be sane
You're ashes, I'm dust
We're dying all the same

Don't save me from darkness
Don't tell me how it is
There's nothing out there
That I will ever miss

The Girl in the Ivory Tower

The girl, up there, in the ivory tower,
She smooths her nails with scented flowers.
Her curtains are gossamer, for up so high
There's no one who sees, for her to be shy.

There ain't no ground beneath her feet,
She's light as the air of summer sweet.
So she drifts with the wind, in and out,
Sleeps like a feather on rainless clouds.

And when it is dark, she lets down her hair
To merchants, paupers and princes fair.
Candles flicker, fade, burn out,
But nights are longer, colder without.

With tales of courage, of love and sorrow,
Of faithful pasts and Godless tomorrows,
They gift her little boxes of the world out there,
She who is light as the sweet summer air.

Come mornings and she puts the boxes below
Her bed, full of stories from ages ago.
She gathers her pleats and straightens her curls,
Sends for some of the neighbourhood girls.

They drink, they eat, they chat and laugh,
Some complain of the insolent staff.
She sings with them the songs of ivory towers,
As she smooths her nails with scented flowers.

Under the Moon

Like the moon you emerge

When the sun goes down.

That which was real

Becomes shadowy,

Shadows become the truth.

Moonlight shifts like mercury -

Deceiving as is deceived,

Enticing as is enticed,

Discovering as it reveals.

Sight loses its hegemony,

Touch and sound take the ground.

The silver soothes the sun-burnt soul,

If only for the night.

At the break of dawn

Life sheds its robe again,

Dances the naked dance.

Everything as is,

With nothing to conceal.
Mocks dreams, perhaps.

Belying its other half,

Ever so skillfully.

Humbug

I will not have you love me because I can write beautiful letters. Nor because I can sing a song about it. I wish you could see beyond the dances I can dance and the work I can competently do. But how can I blame you when I myself fail to see beyond that? Is there anything more to me than a set of talents, pretty plumage to strut about with and signal some kind of genetic advantages? Why must I feel loved because you think I am better than others? 'Better' is so transient, so slippery. Come rain and it is washed down to 'as good', come winter and it acquires layers of snow-white superiority. I guess I am looking for something that transcends all of that. I guess we all are. Ah! The Great Transcending Truth. Humbug!

Go(a)ing beyond...

“Let’s go to Goa!”, J exclaimed. I tried to match the excitement in his voice and said, “Yes!”

How many times have I heard this proposition from my friends. How many times have I faked wistfulness. And how many times have I heaved a sigh of relief when the plans have flopped. Goa to me was a cliché. An urban myth equivalent of the Fountain of Youth : All the young and the yippee at heart head straight to Goa because Goa is what Dil Chahta hai. Every story traveling from Goa had the same elements- booze, beach, babes and Bollywood. Bollywood because what you did at Goa seemed to me heavily inspired by what Bollywood projects as the cool things urban youth does when it holidays.

So it wasn’t the Goa factor that excited me. It was going on a holiday with J that did. I would not have minded Jhumari Talaiyya either.

Beginning Goa with a traditional Goan wedding was a good way to start as it was very far removed from the Goa of clichéd images. It was J’s friend’s wedding and to make things even better, the wedding was a small affair. No wedding choreographers, no staged performances, no fuss over toothpicks and tissues. The ceremony did not take forever and people could soon move on to what mattered most- food. A large steel bowl of gelusil-pink liquid lay at the entrance of the food court. Veritably, it was called Sol Curry – Curry for the soul, I interpreted. Seven glasses of the pink curry down, Goa began getting rosier. Booze is only half the story they tell you.

In the evening we rented a scooter. Six years of life in metros had made me completely forget the joy of gliding down the road, wind kissing the skin. For the first few hours we must have stopped twenty times only to feel the freedom of stopping wherever we wanted to- something we cannot do with autos and buses. Stop! There’s a pastry shop! There’s a coffee shop! What if we miss a place? We can turn around and go back! Scooter was freedom for the middle class us and Goa was beginning to be the open sky.

Going to the beaches in Goa is like the char-dham –yatra: you cannot miss any. With only three days in Goa, the long checklist for beaches would have left us with just enough time to teko our matthas at each. Or worse, click a good we-were-here facebook picture and fool ourselves into thinking that we really were there. But the good part about holidaying with J is not worrying about checklists. Carpe diem we say, seize the day as it comes! We had barely dipped our toes into the sea, when something else seized me – my fear of water-bodies. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t anticipated it. It’s just that I had made the unreasonable plan of sitting at the beach and reading a book and J could wallow as much in brine as he wished. Apparently J did not appreciate this plan and dragged me shoulder deep into the sea, despite my protests. I told him I would die! He gave me some scientific theory about saline water and wave motion making it difficult to die. I didn’t care a damn about science! Science is based on assumptions!  What if we are discounting some factor? I had never even been waist deep into the swimming pool and here was a monstrous sea, threatening to swallow me up!  He asked me to look around and take inspiration from children half my size riding the waves. I wanted to advise him never to make a career from motivational talks as they were only irritating me. But before I could open my mouth to tell him that, something twice my strength pushed me. The wave was affronted.This was it! Goodbye world! 

I was going down and under when my crash landing was saved by a hand – J’s. In Hindi movies this sequence is usually accompanied by a moment of manufactured silence followed by the romantic strumming of guitars. In my ears I could only hear the loud pounding of my heart and the high frequency sound you hear when you’re going to faint. Followed by a highly amused laughter – J’s laughter. He asked me, “maza aya?”  I wanted to tell him something very filmy like, “tumhe marna mazaak lagta hai?”. Instead I said, “haan”.  Perhaps for similar reasons why I said yes to going to Goa in the first place. Seize the moment, I told myself. Seize the fear. We spent the whole afternoon in the sea, he frolicking in the waves, I between fight and flight reactions. To say that I overcame my fear would be an overstatement. That’s the stuff that happens in movies, followed by symphonies of triumph. But I did have some kind of a confrontation with my fear- sometimes managing it, sometimes panicking. And I confess that in some little corner of my heart, my chicken sense of adventure did have a good time. Goa was about becoming who I wanted to – a braver me.

Goa is also about becoming who you cannot otherwise, about living your taboos. Young women in shorts who are probably dupatta clad back home, a little self-conscious, but very pleased with their men flaunting them. Mummies, papas, bhabhis, bhaiyyas soaked in playfulness. The sea seemed to dissolve all inhibitions and social barriers.

In the beginning I mentioned my distaste for the Goa of clichéd images – where everyone comes back with the same stories of having lived ‘the cool life’. These stories smacked of wannabeishness to me. Three days in Goa and my distaste was dissolving into something more palatable, even enjoyable. To see us all become someone we wanted to, whether Kareena on the beach or hippie on the rocks, made me realize something that changed my outlook. That we were all enjoying our little acts while we could, however unoriginal they may seem to be. As I looked around at the firangs wearing hare-rama-hare-krishna on their sleeves, at teenagers flaunting tattoos on their butts, at young married couples canoodling amidst the sea, I felt as if we all knew that little bits of freedom can be claimed only in these little acts, in a stage geographically and psychologically far removed from the home-context. The beauty of Goa , perhaps lies in being the stage that allows the other side of our selves to manifest.

You and I, In This Beautiful, Imperfect World of Ours

Somethings stand the test of time. Some friendships are like that. You may think this statement to be one of the most cliched ones I've ever made. If that is so, for once, I do not give a damn.

Thank you for still reading on. The last few days have been reunion times - with some old friends, some not so old ones. As I went to meet them, there were some uncertainties in my mind. Will it still be as we left it? Will I still be able to be myself, carefree with them? Will they feel the same about me? We are still fairly the same as voices over the telephone. But would the re-embodiment of our voices evoke a different response from our nervous systems? 

There is the initial warm-up time, just like how some muscles in your body seem a little strained when you decide to exercise on the new-year's day after four years of hibernation. It almost always begins with a much abused, "so what's up", graduating to factual, non-sentimental recap of 'events thus far', sprinkled with a dash of some old-time humour to put us on the same track, gradually metamorphosing to things we really care about, things we were dying to talk about. Apparently, both my friends and I went through the same initial hesitation to slowly find Time where we left it. Like a song, it almost always comes back to the sam. Thank God!

As I am growing up, I am rediscovering or rather redefining the meaning of friendship. I used to think that the true test of friendship is how often a friend is there for you, how much is still common between you. I now realize that there is no true test of friendship. To put it to any test would be to dishonour it. The only test there is to pass is the one within my own self. Am I willing to love without trying to hold? It is a weird kind of love - both self-centered and self-abnegating at the same time. It is self-centered because I realize that after my family, it is only my friends that I can count on, that I am even fond of. In that sense, I need them. It is self-abnegating because it is the only kind of love that teaches you to love without trying to possess, without trying to label as "mine only". Because you understand that your own need for your friends is inherently self-centered, you also understand that it is equally valid for your friend's need for you to be self-centered too. And this, paradoxically, makes it much easier for you to give without keeping a count of take, to let go of grudges and larger-than-life expectations. The self-centered love leads to and coexists with the self-abnegating love. A beautiful contradiction that allows for the imperfections that are so much part of being human.

What about out of sight out of mind? As time passes by and distances separate with diligent ferocity, despite revolutions in communication technology, do friendships take a hit? If I expect to find back the same person I left behind when we were still playing Ludo, I can rest assured of disappointment. The test does not lie in the distance but within myself. Can I  accept the change in them and the change in me as a new dimension, adding to the beautiful complexity of our relationship? Or do I see the changes as markers of the end of a bygone era? As I am growing up and redefining what friendship means to me, I am beginning to think of it as two waves with a phase difference (pardon the lack of exactitude in physics) , dancing rhythmically with each other as well as separately from each other, sometimes to add up, sometimes to subtract and bring down. It is this phase difference where together and separate, love-you and love-myself, you-first and me-first coexist, which makes friendship different from anything else - not the promise of everlasting love but the happiness of being part of each other's lives; not the solemnness of sacrifice but the sincerity of doing one's best.

(I will hit the post button without reading this twice, lest I decide against it for being too sentimental and keep it forever to myself, as we so often and regrettably do)

HoHoHo

Coffee shops do smell divine
and carols add a joy sublime
In two days it will be christmas
Bombay sprinkled with gold dust

And though there ain't no snow to white
the reds and greens are happy-bright
Goodie bags with teasing eyes
wait eagerly to surprise

The sleeping hope of withered hearts
wakes up to the smell of tarts
The cynics wish they could unlearn
and steep in some ignorant fun

Pockets full and pockets half
look forward to better scarves
Blues can wait till some Monday
Hohoho it is today

Ghost Love

There you are

love lost

love unrequited

that never quite was

Turning into poetry

only because

I have to have you

and somehow salvage

the dying cause

To be or not to be

I was so busy showing, I forgot to see

I was so busy being, I forgot to just be

I was so busy making, I didn't let it emerge

I was dying too fast to hear the funeral dirge

The Well Beloved

One of the favorite questions that grown-ups like asking kids is what they will become when they grow up. At the age of eight or nine I was fairly sure of it. I wanted to be a detective, teacher, singer, IAS officer, prime minister, doctor, and secretly, a movie star! And I wanted to be all of them. The only thing that would change about the list would be the order, without any deletions. I remember that the grown-ups would laugh or smile, endeared.

Eighteen years have since passed and I realize that not much has changed. There still seems to be a list that I am following, though not by design. With the exception that it’s not the same list (well, except the movie star bit!). And that the grown-ups do not seem to be as amused about it as they used to be. I don’t blame them. I am not very amused either.

We live in a world that values specialists above generalists, a value passed down through proverbs like “jack of all trades, master of none”, a value that perhaps derives from its parent values of loyalty above fickleness, of focus above diversion. Words like “expert” and “master” have implicit in them a sense of respect. And while we have begun to beat the trumpet of multi-disciplinary with greater vigor than ever before, it still means, for all practical purposes, a gathering of the experts.

It isn’t to say that this is all bad. Just that this is how things largely stand. Perhaps this system has, indeed, evolved to be an optimized one, and people like me just got stuck-up somewhere in the evolutionary process. People who want to grow their crops and make their tools instead of devoting their energies to being great farmers and trading with other great metal-smiths. Perhaps this behavior is not economically rational. And if economic rationality is what that matters, it brings me to its anti-matter - Love.

Love means different things to different people. It is, after all, a word with a set of complex and abstract signified. Whatever it means or signifies, it is an idea that we obsess about, an idea (or a set of ideas) that is universally felt, across time, space and cultures. And I now realize, that like many, many others, I too have been driven by my quest for love or the idea of it. Only that the quest did not ever stop at the boundary between the personal and the professional, between home and work.

As I sat through a seminar on Typography, watching people speak of fonts, letter forms and italics as if they spoke of their beloveds, I felt a sense of envy. Not because most of them were revered specialists or masters of typography, but because they had felt love. A love so strong and loyal that some of them had spent their entire lives being married to their a,b,c,d’s. And here I was, with many an affair, but none that lasted. Which made me wonder, is choosing a profession like arranged marriage? You choose first, based on a set of limited information and then grow to like it, love it, despite the compromises and imperfections? Or for that matter like any marriage, even love, where to fall in love is easy but to remain in love requires some work? In either case, it seemed like I was the 21st century Casanova. But to be fair to myself (and to Casanova as well), I have, on occasions felt love, if only momentarily. Like the protagonist of Thomas Hardy’s “The Well Beloved”, where his perfect lady love, his “well-beloved”, is but an image in his mind, whom he sees in all the women that he has an affair with, if only ephemerally, I too have an idea of what it is and I do see it in whatever I do. Only that, like a ghost, it possesses my profession for a while and then goes poof! Either the idea of a soul-mate is overrated or I am just a lustful wanderer.

And yet, despite all warnings and advice to “settle down”, like the archetypal “Fool”, I take the leap of faith, over and over again. Maybe there isn’t one size that fits all and one formula that suits all. Maybe the wise man’s path to happiness is in knowing and reason and the fool’s path to happiness is in not knowing and passion. Or maybe they are both equally unhappy paths that one must tread. Then again, happiness and unhappiness are as elusive ideas as love!

On the brighter side, my current relationship with design management does allow me to flirt with other disciplines of knowledge as well. So maybe I’m still a fledgling in the art of love, but am definitely getting better in the art of flirting! And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t having fun!

भ्रम

हृदय में मचा भूचाल
बढ़ते हाथ कलम की ओर
मानो कलम न हो, हो ढाल

भ्रम में रहती जीवित
न रहते उसके होगा
मन आघातों से पीड़ित

कि करती कैद कहानी
और हरते हर मंशा को
शब्द-रुपी सैनानी

जैसे कागज़ की ओर
नस-सी कलम में बहता
रक्त हृदय को छोड़


करता शब्दों को संचित
जागृत होती कविता
मंद-मंद मन मूर्छित..

To all my multi-vitamin pills

I was wondering what makes me hold on to some friends better than the rest. What makes some of them way more special, way more indispensable than the rest? And I think this may be the answer (or at least one of the reasons)...

Most of the relationships in life are compartmentalized. So there are mentors, people you can go out and watch a movie with, people you are agony aunt to, people who are agony aunts to you, people you can share your philosophical angst with, people you can talk work with, people you can discuss ipod with, people you can bitch about with, people who you can just be silent with without the silence being uncomfortable...

But there are very few people who are ALL or most of these. And fewer still are those who are all of these without being judgemental about you (and vice versa). Who can understand and reciprocate many dimensions of your conscious existence. And who let you be who you fundamentally are (if there is anything like that).

And though I may not be the friendly, buddy-to-all, girl next door, I think am very lucky to have a few such multiple-role friends. When you have multi-vitamin pills, you don’t really need a sackful of A, B, C, Ds...

Ball of Yarn

You lift me up, throw me down
Merrily laugh, as I rebound

You nudge me sore when I sleep sound
And when I'm awake, you turn around

You pump me up to prick me flat
You say "this" when I say "that"

How you love the games you play
And how I love being played your way

Losing Virginity

"I am leaving."

"Why?"

"I am trying to get a project in Kerala"

"Then leave after you get it"

"No. I have made up my mind"

That was a short conversation between a guy and a girl i know. The guy was leaving the college (a college many dream to get in and still can't) because, apparently, he felt he will get better experience doing something more 'live' and 'actually hands on' like a live project. He still hadn't got the project. 

"What a stupid decision", the girl said when she was out of his hearing-range.

Rationally thinking, she was right. Rationally is the way we are supposed to make our decisions, right? But what surprised me was not the fact that someone made this comment but the fact that that someone was from a design school. In a design school we are taught to look at things alternatively, to understand, if not agree on, difference in perceptions. Could it not be true that what was 'madness' to her, could be 'reason' to him? Can it not be that going out in the world and playing with the 'real clay' out there may have seemed to him more worthwhile than staying in the protective realms of the institute and playing with 'simulated clay'?? Or maybe he figured out what not to do (staying in the college) before he figured out what to do?? I do not know what his real reasons were. But what i do know is that as people who constantly talk about 'thinking out of the box' in front of an audience, it is time we thought out of the box when it comes to judging people, people who 'live out of the box'.

 

This incident made me ask myself a few questions. Like what is it that has changed in me in the deepest and most fundamental way in the last few years? And i realized that it was being less fearful of doing what i believed in. Less insecure about my future (at least inasfar as my career is concerned). What brought that about? Quitting my job. Quitting my "sacred, happy, comfortable, high-growth-potential, globe-trotting, justifying-my-technical-education, secure, high-marriage-market-value, nice-girl" job. Yes, it was easy for me because my parents did not kick me out of the house. But it was difficult because it meant disappointing them, so-called 'wasting' of my education for which i worked hard, opting out of the race that used to be at one point in time my raison d'atre, my highest ambition. 

And i thank God and two of my friends who first came up with the idea of starting a business. The business did not work out and we all hit our lowest lows (not all the 3 idiots in the world end up with breakthrough patents and Kareena Kapurs :) ) but it made us more confident of our survival abilities. Even today, we are still unsettled in our lives, still clueless about where we will go. But that fundamental change has made us different people with reoriented priorities. It has taught us to look at the world inside-out (who you are --> what is your role in the world) rather than outside-in (what others think should be your role in the world--> defining who you are).

There is a lot i can share about this. And what i have said, in fact, does not say it in the best manner possible. After all, i still am in my random-half written-incoherent posts phase. Let me not have given you the impression that i am campaining for quitting jobs. That will make our economy chaotic! But let "quitting jobs" be understood as a metaphor for "doing what one believes in as a both thinking and thoughtful individual". And in that sense, "quitting your job" can be like "losing your virginity". Till as long as you don't do it, you are apprehensive about it. But once lost, you aren't afraid of it anymore and you realize how much of it is truth and how much myth.

Half written notes, cryptic poems,and unstructured posts

i wanted to write a post.

But then i couldn't, really.

It has been happening all too often.

Sometimes i forget what was it that i wanted to write about.

But most of the times i find writing about things that truly stir me- be they bad or good, overwhelming.

Writing is like catharsis to me. It's discomfitting while i go through it but gives me peace when i'm done with it.

Is that the problem? Have i realized that peace is not where revolutions happen? That maybe writing will take me away from doing? That writing will change an idea into beauty - something to be admired and that's it!

Half written notes, cryptic poems, impulsive, unstructured posts... they are my friends for now. Maybe because they understand my mind and don't let the secrets out...

Basic Instinct

Creeper in its life, creeper in its death

Down goes a tree and on another starts to spread

With arms wrapped around who would not see its love immense?

The only love it has is that of love for dependence

Thoughts In Brownian Motion

A thousand words

spoken in my head

together

all in a second

leave me speechless

i feel like i'm dying

but i know i will not

because i do not want to

not as yet

and yet my life flashes

before my eyes

scene after scene

picture after picture

all blurred

smeared boundaries

between the real

and the imaginary

was i awake then?

am i awake now?

whatever it is

amidst this buzz in my head

i realize

there will not be a second..

there will not be

a second this life

a second that laughter

a second those words

a second that evening

a second same sister

a second those tears

a second this second..

greed grips me

i want to collect

bittersweet nothings

panic seizes me

i realize

there is nothing anyone

can ever "recreate"

for if magic

could ever be recreated

wouldn't it then be

cold science?

it is rolling

rolling like a mad stone

and all the moss

that it can ever gather

is blurred images

of the grass

of the gravel

it rolled over

and called its own

i close my eyes

and take a deep breath

then another

and then many other

and then tell myself

that this shall pass

this shall pass

into another tomorrow

whence i will begin again

the same game

of creating images

of owning images

of playing work-work

playing love-love

and it won't matter then

that i know

what i know

for it is seldom that

the puppeteer does not

become himself

the puppet

an ugly truth

a beautiful dream

an ugly dream

a beautiful truth

whatever it is

i'll play along

as ever before

for i am

addicted...