The Workout

Dawn- hustle, bustle, begin the tussle

Sleep deprived; not worth the hassle?

Au Contraire.

Every effort at the local gym
makes my heart ready and my body limp
with fatigue. Good fatigue,
one might say
( though this is not really going the six pack way)

Fatigue that puts air conditioning in my head

for the day's heat ahead

Drowning out anguish,

kicking anxiety's butt

Slapping self pity's creep

Letting me breathe

Breathe in, go slow

Breathe out, there's the effort

Sometimes, it doesn't hurt as much

sometimes, a bit too much

Doesn't matter

Its not the body I'm healing

It's all in the head

Hustle, bustle, begin the tussle

here we go again

The secret I'm beginning to get:

The pain's really the gain.

Sobriety

Morning:

It was a meek, milky

blue sky
calling out
to say hi.

Hmm. So so long,
its been
that I saw a streak of white
race across my sight

It was passing jet fuel

posing as cloud

Look at me,

it screamed aloud

I'm going, I'm going

and you ain't with me

I figured that

It must've been some big journey

that a past self had been on

Well, the jet's gone and so has that man.

Noon:

Thought to myself

If it was a Jet

and I didn't see it

Maybe the sky was better

without it?

Sour Grapes always taste better

when they aren't w(h)ine.

Jets without traces

Leave no trace of crime

Evening:

The thought moved me and my day

along with it

till it became quiet night

I looked up for my next no- surprise.

(The city's bright glow

tends to overflow

and filters out factors

like stars and other non-actors)

Night:

Dust settled,the stars came on

with feeble might

wasn't even a fight

with attractive streets

and other pretty sights

But memory took over

and maybe closer

to things still sore.

Of course, it felt much more

As i replaced the sky I was seeing

With the sky I'd seen before

Mesmerised, I wondered

If this is what it is to be sober

Then I'd go beyond October(!)

and look at newer things

with older eyes

and older things

with younger guise.

to be (hopefully) continued...

The Joy of Boredom

Bring me my old self
And some ice-cream, cool drinks and a comic book or two.
 Ok wait don't;
The law of diminishing returns
 has ensured
That the ice-cream is blah.
The lemonade is not worth it
The comics are banal.

Bring me my old self
That was very sorted.
When all I needed was a day's worth of plans and dreams
and the delicious feeling of doing nothing about them.
And feeling better for it.

Bring me my old self
That will talk to my new one
And make him listen.
Listen to the music.
Of cigarettes smoked staring at the night sky
Of fences climbed to get rid of messes
Of motorcycle rides that suddenly got cold
Of stolen times when the heart got bold.

Bring me my old self
get him to slow down enough
To get bored and restless
and see the depth in its dullness.

Bring me my old self
I'll introduce him to my mid life madness
He'll get a kick out of it
and laugh. Of course, with a tinge of sadness.

Binge Watching

Airplane rides, from Pune to London: not good for extra long legs. So I've decided to forget about trying to desperately adjust every other moment, sit ramrod straight and watch them movies all the way through (forgetting sleep).  Yes, you see a lot of rubbish. But then you get a movie that does the magic for you.

This time: The Revenant (ok-doke) Black Mass (overhyped) Irrational Man (creepy but compelling), Burn after Reading ( weirdly funny in parts- John Malkowich going batty over a moronic Brad Pitt trying to blackmail him)

But the magic happened to me with The Big Short. Never thought I'd see a film about the subprime mortgage crisis without falling asleep, but wow. Taut, funny and compelling. Superb performances from Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, a couple of other younger actors I don't know the names of, Steve Carell (very good). And the compelling Christian Bale. Throw in  TV chef Anthony Bourdain to explain what a financial technical term is, and you know the movie is kind of special.

Just for a bit, all that flying discomfort was forgotten. Or maybe it was the drinks kicking in, finally.

An Ordinary Life

I've heard and am tired of the statement "live your life as if its your last day". Frankly, if it was indeed my last day, I'd be too worried to enjoy anything. My younger daughter gave me a different spin on this one a few weeks back. It was deep. I'm just beginning to understand how deep it really was.

She told me, in the way kids too, that she's fed up of this whole make your life enchanting and extraordinary business (she's ten!) If it was indeed her last day, she would live it like an ordinary day. Because ordinary days are what anyone will actually miss when they are gone. Mind you- not the bad ones. Just plain ol' normal.

That's so true. I will miss the mundane, the boring, the staid, the in-between. I will miss the newspaper and the coffee. The wait for the bus. The walk home from work. The mildly funny tv program. The quick conversation with a friend.That's what fills most of our days in any case.

Ordinary days make special days stand out. When you go on that wonderful holiday, or when you get that raise, or your kid does her homework on time.

Dear God: Make my last day an ordinary one. I will cherish that.

The Pot of Gold

The crazy, rainy, windy, sometimes sunny (but never warm) days bring forth loads of rainbows. As I saw a particularly stunning specimen today, I remembered the pot of gold thats at the end of it all.
Rainbows are a horizon phenomenon, meaning that you can never experience yourself under one directly. You can look, but thats all.

A crazy thought went through my head then. Perhaps I'm standing under a rainbow as well, right now, not knowing it, and someone else is seeing this rainbow at their horizon.  We are all standing under rainbows, not knowing it.
 It's as if we have the pot of gold and its invisible to us.  Whoa. The metaphysics of it made my mind stop for a while, as I drank in the promise of the rainbow that I saw in front of me, at a distant edge, and the fulfilment of an imagined one, over my head.

I think I need a drink or three to sober up.

Always take the Weather with You!

So when did we all start complaining about the weather? In London, everyone complains- probably a conversation starter more than real moaning. But hey, in Pune, they complain even more. I wish I can take all the wonderful people in Pune complaining about the weather for a week in London right now.

But let me stop complaining about people complaining about the weather. That's no better. What I wanted to share today was the way in which kids are oblivious to the same climate. I picked the brats today after school and we decided to brave it in a park to read a book and have a sandwich before going home. Here I was, feeling that sheer nip in the air and the kids were just interested in the nearby geese or the book I was reading them.

Perhaps we lose the internal heating system when we grow up. Or perhaps we lose the ability to have fun no matter what the minor inconveniences in life are!