I wrote you a letter on a fallen leaf.

It was hot today. 

The sun burnt my back and forced my eyes closed, but I found comfort in that uneasiness that came with the heat. 

As I sat underneath the tree, contemplating the life around that seemed to be overcrowding me, so much that I had to forcefully cut people out time and time again, my eyes fell on a fallen brown leaf that stood that lay on the grass, in complete contrast to the bright, perfect greenery around it. 

I stretched my hand out as far as I could before I could touch the reddened tips of it gently, drawing it close, placing it in the palm of my hand. It was almost as big as my hand, if not bigger, but no matter how gentle my touch, it crackled at me morosely, lifelessly - almost as if it had already been broken even though it looked whole. I ran my fingers along the veins of the once green leaf, as it continued to crackle.

I placed it back on the soft earth and the perfect green grass seemed to immediately wilt as it came in contact with the rough brownness of the leaf. I felt a strange sort of kinship with the leaf, as I stared down at it and it seemed to stare back at me in complete understanding. 

"You too, huh?" I said softly as it crackled in response. 

I wrote you a letter on my leaf, placing each piece of my broken soul, heart and... hope - most of all, hope - one by one, carefully with the words that I wrote. The leaf seemed to bend - it seemed to get heavier, with every stab of my pencil - but it stayed with me until the very last word. I stared at the palm of my hand that held...... all of me, and slowly and deliberately, I crushed it in the palm of my hand till my fingers bent into a tight fist. I heard the sickening crunching sound, but strangely it seemed more peaceful then the unbearable crackling death that each movement seemed to inflict on the leaf before. I opened my palm to see all the pieces of the leaf lying quiet... peaceful... still. I let the pieces fall from my hand, but before it reached the ground, the wind whisked it away along with the my broken words.

I wonder how much the human heart and the human soul can take? I wonder how many times we can rebuild our hearts and souls again and again before they slowly break into such tiny pieces that they cannot be put back together? I wonder if in the end we're like the leaf - no matter how long we try and stay different from the green grass, eventually our souls and our ideas and our hope are bound to be crushed by someone or something that comes along ? But most of all, I wondered if just like the leaf that found stillness and calm in that defeat - we too would welcome the breaking of ourselves into tiny pieces? The tiniest of pieces that would finally, FINALLY allow the wind to blow us away into nothingness.

... or somethingness? 

"I began to run. The trees were dark, their leaves wet through. They looked like small black clouds themselves, those trees, each one shedding its shower of rain. The streets were empty. I ran through puddles of fast-flowing water, reflecting the lightning-fractured sky. All the loneliness and all the love I knew collected and combined in me, until my heart was as swollen with love for her as the clouds above were swollen with their mass of rain. And I ran. I ran. And, somehow I was back in that street, back at the doorway to her house. And then I stood there, clawed by lightning, my chest heaving with a passion that was still running in me while my body stood still. 

She came to the open doors to look at the sky. She was wearing a thin, white, sleeveless nightgown. She saw me standing in the storm. Our eyes met , and held. She came through the doors, down two steps, and walked toward me. Thunder shook the street, and lightning filled her eyes. She came into my arms. 

We kissed. Our lips made thoughts, somehow without words: the kind of thoughts that feelings have. Our tongues writhed, and slithered in their caves of pleasure. Tongues proclaiming what we were. Human. Lovers. Lips slid across the kiss, and I submerged in love, surrendering and submerging in love myself. 

I lifted her in my arms and carried her into the house, into the room that was perfumed with her. We shed our clothes on the tiled floor and she led me to her bed. We lay close, but not touching. In the storm-lit darkness, the beaded sweat and raindrops on her arm were like so many glittering stars, and her skin was like a span of night sky. 

I pressed my lips against the sky, and licked the stars into my mouth. She took my body into hers, and every movement was an incantation. Our breathing was like the whole world chanting prayers. Sweat rain in rivulets to ravines of pleasure. Every movement was a satin skin cascade. Within the velvet cloaks of tenderness, our backs convulsed in quivering heat, pushing heat, pushing muscles to complete what minds begin and bodies always win. I was hers. She was mine. My body was her chariot and she drove it into the sun. Her body was my river and I became the sea. And the wailing moan that drove our lips together, at the end, was the world of hope and sorry that ecstasy wrings from lovers as t floods their souls with bliss.

The still and softly breathing silence that suffused and submerged us afterward, was emptied of need and want and hunger and pain and everything else except the pure, ineffable exquisiteness of love"

Shantaram, pg 399-400

... those grass-stained jeans.

.... I feel unsteady again.

I've been feeling it slowly creep up on me, little by little, for the past week. I've been spacing out in conversations a lot, having alone smoking-bench time a lot, listening to... indie a lot.

I promise you there is nothing to worry though. I go through phases like these periodically, usually after an extended period of mindless happiness. After too much of it, the louder, perpetually morose Shiva gets a little wary and reminds the happy-happy-joy-joy Shiva to shut the fuck up and pay attention.

Usually when I start feeling this way, I distance myself from the people who know me well, bury myself in books and try to find new meanings in words that I have read over and over and over. It's humbling to go from feeling that superficiality of just being happy to the pure completeness that words and the emotions attached to them, make you feel.

I once used to read books rapidly, one after another after another, never letting myself give them time and space to fill my mind and touch my heart. I think i used to be scared of letting them do that - they didn't make me feel ecstatic. They made me feel quietly joyful - a feeling that was so much more frightening.

I question why I'm here a lot. But when I found that happiness and the simplicity in life by not paying attention to anything around me, I stopped wondering anymore. I stopped asking myself questions - I let myself float in the superficiality of the world that we've created around us. I let myself go to my classes and listen to people constantly teach me how to be superficial and find some sort of comfort in the deep, deep hole that we've dug to bury ourselves. Thank god for the morose Shiva because everytime I start losing myself in the warmth and comfort of the bubble of satisfaction, she comes and gets me out.

Today, I sat underneath my favorite tree with my favorite book, with the sun warm on my back, the wind blowing my hair and my feet dancing happily, celebrating their freedom from the laces and buckles that constantly bind them. The trees rained leaves down on me as if celebrating my return and I gripped the soft, wet grass with both my hands and flattened my ear against the earth to hear it breathe. I chased around those cotton-ball-ish things that fall from the cottonwood trees with my pencil around the fluttering pages of my book. I stared out the blue sky and white clouds, the yellow sun and pondered my own insignificance.

And most importantly, I read and I listened. I read slowly, understanding the words, pondering over them and letting them fill my senses and give way to the smile of understanding that is so much difficult to find, than my frivolous smile of happiness.
:)

... on a lighter note, have i TOLD you how much I love grass-stained jeans?

All we need is lust.

I spent a beautiful day on the coast. I felt the sand tickle my feet, my teeth chatter in the cold and the wind mess up the good 15 minutes that I spent on my hair. My hair found comfort and company in the wind... it was kind of cute. I let us both have a day off before I tied us up and constrained us again today.

I love that sand. I love that smell. I was thinking about how easily, I could live my entire life sitting on those rocks in that thin t-shirt, feeling the cold wind and the soft, grainy sand.

Of course, it wouldn't be a very long life, but it might be a more meaningful one... or a less meaningful one - I can't decide.

After dipping our toes in the Pacific Ocean, we drove to a movie theatre and watched Duplicity. We had to choose between Hannah Montana and Clive Owen - I personally choose Hannah Montana - I'll admit it and let you judge me. It's just that I knew that I could not do a romance right now. I'm done with romance movies for a little bit - especially ones that aren't funny and are about two tortured people torturing each other - it hits way too close to home.

I also knew that if i went for Duplicity and sat through the beautiful Clive Owen say heart-wrenching dialogues that a team of carefully selected writers wrote, who, exactly like me have been on a overdose of happy endings, I would quote them on here and then proceed to analyze the crap out of them. I was trying to save me the heartache and you the irritation.

I failed - I was outvoted by my "friends". I'm so sorry.

You know what's coming next - I can't stop it. It's bubbling up inside and I can feel it. I cannot not say it. Just do yourself a favor and close the window - close it. I don't know how many blog entries it will take for me to get over this - but I assure you that there will be a ton.. you don't HAVE to sit through this.

I wish I had that choice - I would totally take myself up on that offer.

But I don't.

So here goes.

"Do you know how frustrating it is to know that you're the only man who can ever come close to understanding me?" Claire Stenwick (Julia Roberts)

These movies are going to be the DEATH of me - I swear to god.

Isn't it bad enough that we spend such a big, huge chunk of our lives trying to understand ourselves? We're in our own fucking heads - we know everything we feel, see, hear, say, smell and we can't put those five senses together and construct a fucking personality. How fucking sad is that?

And how fucking sad is it that we feel the need to have somebody else understand us? And how could we possible hold somebody else to something that seems so incredibly difficult? Do we just look for standards that can never be met?

Or do we do it because we've been told that "love" - whatever the fuck that means - supposedly overpowers every little "impossible" situation. Intangible love is supposed to conquer what more tangible things like seeing, feeling, smelling, speaking and listening can't. And by thinking someone else can understand us or at least pretend to understand us, while we can't, makes us automatically think it's love. We feel so blessed that somebody's given us an answer, given us a personality, gone where even we couldn't go - that we don't even stop to consider what that answer might entail.

I was reading The Symposium by Plato (And I swear, I don't quote Plato in everyday conversation - it's that class messing with my head again). These bunch of philosophers are "hanging out" drinking and talking about love (2000 years and nothing has really changed.) And each of them gives a speech about what they think "love" is. Now while most of these were either obnoxious or ...obnoxious, this one speech stuck out to me. It's by this philosopher/comedian called Aristophanes.

His explanation of love is supposed to be a jest which is probably why it makes the most sense of all. He talks about how "humans" at one point had two faces, four hands and four legs - they were basically two people joined together, with their faces back to back.

They were in three sexes - One had two females joined together, another had two males joined together, and the third had one female and one male. These creatures felt so powerful together, so complete that they felt they didn't need anyone else. They turned extremely obnoxious and challenged "God" and his position, which ultimately pissed the gods off who in turn, punished these creatures by ripping their bodies apart.

So they landed as "half creatures" - with one face, two hands and two legs - the way we are now. Now these halves, became so depressed with themselves and felt so broken - literally - that they would yearn for their other half. They would try to heal their wounds by making love to each other, trying to become whole again. But the only time that they felt that real feeling of "wholeness", that powerful feeling that they felt in the beginning - if only for an instant, was when they found their soul mate - the one that they were ripped away from and made love to him or her.

...

.....What I love and hate about this is that it defines love and uses terms that we still use in our everyday lives.

- you make me feel complete.

- we fit together

- you are my soulmate.

- i feel empty without you.

- complete me

-define me

.... I've never felt as incredibly lonely as I did while reading this. It's okay to have a theory out there hanging around about soulmates and love and sex and whatnot, that is perpetuated by our stupid society and our stupid movies movies, because I can fight Anne Hathaway and Meg Ryan getting in my head.

But when you read a theory that was written more than 2000 years ago, describing your situation - using the same words that you would - how do you fight that?

And then I started thinking about us in this context.

You and me. Me and you.

I thought about all of our choices that we made.

What if.... the reason I can't be "whole" with you is because I'm terrified - terrified of feeling that same moment that is described above that people crave? I crave to be with you - there's no doubt about that. But for some reason I can't give into it.

What if the reason I'm scared is because I know that after feeling... that highest of highs after we're together, my lows - and there would be lows with us - would be so much more pronounced? What if I don't want to acknowledge that power that being with you makes me feel? What if I don't really completely love you right now, because it hasn't been cemented yet... and I don't want to make it that permanent?

.

But what I really, really wondered about more than me... was you.

What if... that promiscuity that you keep harping about isn't really your denial of love? What if - what if... it's your embracement of it? What if - you're just trying to find what we're all trying to find - except that you feel that wound more deeply than we do? What if you're actually trying desperately to find that soul mate?

.... Here's the real question -

What if you finally - FINALLY - found that other half - that soulmate, that person - that you need and want to be with who could really heal that wound but then... she just refuses to be whole with you?

What would you do then?

Oh wait, that already happened, didn't it?



This is a modern interpretation of the creation myth by Aristophanes. It's from Hedwig and the Angry Inch and it's called the Origin of Love.

Last time I saw you
We had just split in two.
You were looking at me.
I was looking at you.
You had a way so familiar,
But I could not recognize,
Cause you had blood on your face;
I had blood in my eyes.
But I could swear by your expression
That the pain down in your soul
Was the same as the one down in mine.
That's the pain,
Cuts a straight line
Down through the heart;
We called it love.
So we wrapped our arms around each other,
Trying to shove ourselves back together.
We were making love,
Making love.
It was a cold dark evening,
Such a long time ago,
When by the mighty hand of Jove,
It was the sad story
How we became
Lonely two-legged creatures,
It's the story of
The origin of love.
That's the origin of love.

Random #8916347691439907.

Philosophy is getting to me.

In a good way.

Wait, no. In a bad way.

Wait, no. I can't decide.

I'm usually used to tuning off in those big lecture halls after 15 minutes of listening to The Droning Voice. I tend to tune out and then draw those characteristic ugly cloud-like flowers, that follow me around everywhere, while contemplating ridiculous notions and ideas in my head, which, by the way, happen to make their way into this blog more often that not.

The (non)problem with philosophy is that it encourages those ridiculous notions in my head, instead of squashing them. And when encouraged, my ideas tend to be... out there.

I talk a lot about how I like to be "outside the box" , Okay here's a secret - don't tell anybody BUT, I actually happen to .... like the box... a lot, infact, but I don't think the box likes me. And I feel like it decides who gets in there, so that's a problem.
I feel like that oddly shaped piece of a jigsaw puzzle piece gone wrong that nobody can ever figure out, that people curse to death and then just decide to keep out of the game. For a long time I tried to force myself inside that stupid box. Honestly, it was just very uncomfortable for everybody involved - the box manifested itself as the middle school clique that I tried to get into and the Commerce with Maths class that I strongly considered for a while there (Yes, tgus box has done me some favors :) )

Anyway, this box and I came to an understanding eventually, after all the pushing and shoving. I couldn't be outside of it and I couldn't be inside of it, so I was stuck somewhere in the middle. Even though I was *technically* in it, the lid never really shut on me, because of how uncomfortable my shape was.

Lately, I've been feeling that the jigsaw piece is getting bigger and more odd, yet, strangely beautiful. It just keeps wanting to take in more and more and it keeps getting larger and larger. So much so, that it kind of scares me how big it has gotten and how big it will get. The box, now, seems so... insignificant. It's trying so hard to keep up and try and fit around the puzzle piece, which is so incredibly exhilarating.

I'm terrified, but honestly, kind of excited. =)

I wonder how much larger it can get before it bursts into a thousand little sharp wooden shrapnels, and the box wins again.

La dee daa dee do.

Much too heavy? Yes, I think so too.

.... Oh and did I tell you I got new shoes?? They're beautiiffful. I won't be able to wear them a lot, but I CAN look at them, which totally makes up for it.

Love :)
Shiva.

how do you say masochistic and REALLY REALLY mean it?

I think I might just like playing the role of a tortured artist.

I can't see any other reason why I might do this to myself. I take some sort of sick pleasure from feeling pain. I think *you* might have rubbed off on me, more than I liked (and less than you would have - literally. erhm.).

Anyway, I refuse to give this more importance than I already have. I've already declared myself mentally unstable by asserting my undying love for a phone (which is basically the form you've taken after all this time). "I wonder if it's possible to have a love affair forever"? Could I BE more dramatic?

The sad thing is that I could.

Anyway, I refuse to keep hammering a crazy picture of myself in everybody's head, even though *you* would probably love that. At one point in my life, when I was very much smarter than I am right now, I told a friend that the only way they could stop repeating patterns is to STOP... repeating patterns.

I'm 5 years older and so much more unwiser, so I'm going to take the advice of that so much funner, skeptical, sarcastic and amazingly un-tortured Shivangi that used to be.

Oh, I miss her.

In related news, I am taking this Philosophy of love and sex class this term. How do you say "bad timing" and really, really really mean it like you have never meant it before?

Bad fucking timing?

Fucking bad fucking timing?

Fucking bad fucking timing fucking?

Nope, doesn't work.

I have to sit through, what would otherwise be a very interesting class, and listen to a really great professor try and define love for ten weeks. Ten weeks. I have never had a class that tried to define ONE term for TEN weeks. Doesn't that tell us a lot?

We started off with this clip from a movie called Moonstruck with Cher and Nicholas Cage. The scene had him try and define love and he kept yelling about how it was not about butterflies and happy moments, it was about pain and suffering and sex and heat and breaking our hearts and whatnot. God, he was so loud and obnoxious. It was like my whole relationship with R was put on a large screen, and I was watching it, telling Cher to run run run. Cher instead got into bed with him, and the movie ended with me watching the whole thing from a distance, and not being able to do one thing about it.

I didn't even get popcorn to sit through it.

Seriously, how do you say "bad timing" and REALLY, REALLY mean it?

hush, shush.

The phone crackled silently into her ears. It was a sound she’d become addicted to – It was their silence that always managed to drown out the chaos surrounding her.

She heard him breathe and she pressed her ear closer to the phone tightening her grip around the cord, closing her eyes.

It was the same silence that they’d felt, after they’d said those perfect words, two years ago, while she lay, fitting perfectly, in the nook of his shoulder, feeling his breath tickle her neck.

It was the same silence that fell dully and heavily, months later, seconds after words that were never supposed to be spoken were finally said, amongst all those tears and the anger.

And here it was, again.

“When silence gets comfortable between two people, is when it starts getting scary.” He says, after a while.

She smiles.

I love you, the silence said. They pretended not to hear.

He loved her. He knew that, even if he tried to deny it to the world and to her, even to himself. She made him feel like he’d lost, yet won, his own favorite game. She made him feel things that scared him, that made him want to walk away, and although he did try to turn away a bunch of times, he somehow always managed to end up in the same place.

She didn’t know what she was feeling. It was a strange mix of fear and love that she’d somehow gotten addicted to. She was used to being the jigsaw piece that never fit anywhere. The fact that she did, with him, terrified her.

The silence washed around them, waiting patiently, for them to find the right words.

“I… have to go” they both said simultaneously, hesitantly and abruptly.

Hush.

The dial tone broke the calm, and she pressed the red button as hard as she could, cutting herself away all over again.
She stared into the darkness at the small light of her phone fading away, almost chiding her in a way, waiting patiently for the phone to ring as she stared at it.

As it sat looking back at her silently, she felt suddenly uneasy- she started to drum her fingers, tap her feet mindlessly, as her mind screamed out words to her

sound, noise, clamor, clatter, noise, sound, noise, uproar, chaos, scream, rage, noise noise noisenoisenoise.

But the silence remained.