A Connected Life

I bought a television yesterday, and

got a high-speed data connection. Next week

I will buy a refrigerator, and a washing

machine. And an airconditioner, to prevent fresh air

entering my apartment. Start with a number greater than

thousand, divide it by two, add something. That is the number of

people I have in my phonebook.

I am upgrading my smartphone, sixty four gigabytes of

memory- more than all the printed pages I have read

in all my life. I will know three thousand people, on all

the social networks there are. I will walk tall, shoot glib comments, make

jokes, get total strangers to identify with my sense

of humor, or melancholy. I will connect with everyone. And,

at one am, I will shut down my laptop, and

cast my eyes over this

accumulated detritus of modern living, what

we call life. I will go to the contact list in my phone

and wonder, which of the three thousand people I know

will talk to me.

Deja-Vu

There is a sense of ‘seen-this-before’, as

I move into this new place. A couple cartons

of clothes, and five of books; wiping the spines of each

before the packers arrive- stay cool, guys, it will

take a month to unpack- I am lazy.

Take a number less than fifty, subtract

something that gives twenty two as a result, and

once you have that, restart life every four years. Refresh

memories like they are running on 3KBPS connections- ‘should

I refresh, or is what I have already,  better?’

It has been a life like a disused highway motel, everyday

a new person. Or the same emptiness,

with a new face. Something needs to be said here,

maybe, in another hour, there will be a point to be made.

In the interim, let us watch TV. There is

a guy playing cricket, and many people watching him. I always wonder, those

fifteen guys, do they

ever feel the way I do, the center of ninety thousand people,

do they mind the attention? How do they live- when

everyone depends on them? And when, no-one does?

What does it feel like, to be lonely?

Origins

Someone asked me today, how long has it been. I

said, twenty four months, more or less,  depending on

the frame of reference. Or the question

you were asking. It might as well be twenty four years, or

more. What do I refer to here? My first heartbreak? The

first job which made be swing between ecstasy, anger

and despair? The time I was born? Who will bear witness

to the origins of sadness? Who will point a finger and say, ‘here. This

was where it started.’ A shady tree in an alternately sunny-rainy afternoon

is a convenient metaphor. There is nothing much to it:

an ability to invent realities at will. And any sadness

can be justified. I have a cause for my grief, hello-

this here is a picture of the girl; that night

when the parent talked till dawn; this evening

when I realized it was all lost. Evenings meant for

moping about do not offer solutions. There is nothing

to be said about this, really. There is no place where it starts, though

it might all end somewhere.

People

This morning, I was thinking of people

we meet once, ships in the night-time, exchanging

signals through the dark, and then

gone. This evening, I am thinking of people

we live with.

Sometimes, it seems, life

is one interminable traffic jam. All of us

anxious

to get away from each other. All of us

stuck, in the same space

we would rather not inhabit.

Taboo

There are topics one must never touch upon, matters

not open to discussion. As the nights go along, one

must never mention anything about any

emotional attachments. This world is startled

at this phrase, it creates awkward

situations.

At no time, should the word love be mentioned, as in

I loved you; or love you still. It causes raised

eyebrows. Such a quaint notion, not

at anytime should such things

like moonlit nights be recalled. Mockery, waste

of time. You are not here, and this is what

all of it is reduced to.

It comes with its benefits. You are not

here. So, I don’t have to care

about how full of smoke the house becomes

due to my smoking. I do not care about the

arrangement of the sheets and pillows now. Or if

they are clean. I still take the trash out,

every day. But the clink of

empty bottles- no one has to obsess over it,

now. Now that you are gone, I can stay awake till

early morning, and stare at the fan, cursing it

for moving too slowly. I can look at

the wafting smoke from my cigarettes, and

watch the plumes dissolve. Slowly, disappearing to leave

a poisonous shadow which cannot be remarked upon. Just

like my life.

Now that you are gone, I

can mourn you without you interrupting me. I can

be unloved, now that I no longer have your love. Now that you

are gone,

I can quit everything you quit me for.

But Never Again

I have read a lot of stories, and

written a few myself. There is no way

I can comfortably describe this plot; yours’, and mine;  there

are no roses drying on windowsills here, not

unless they are in waterless vases left

ignored for a lifetime. There is no struggle

to forget what did not happen, unless it

happens in a whiskey haze. There might or

might not be loss, this plot is

unclear on value. It is a strange story,

there are resonances of a past I might

or might not have lived through, of

silences which might actually have been

arguments.

This is a strange place to be in a story, one

where the road does not branch out, a mundane place

with only two options: forward, or back. And I, sweetheart,

have had enough of heartbreaks. So while I walk on, I

will do what I damn well should have done, a lot earlier.

I will walk on. (And occasionally turn back. But

don’t wait.)