Learning to breathe - part 2: Are transformations wishing wells?

So who's your Chris Powell?

The habit of watching real people living through ups and down die hard. The viewer-writer is always looking for more and more stories to inspire, to tell, to refashion into a poem or a non-fiction piece. Sometimes the lives of these real people whom she watches only from a great distance in time and/or place finds a seat in the corridor of characters she assembles for her novel that she will write someday. Either way, she can’t stop being a voyeur to life.

A character in a medical drama on a television channel once said that people watch reality shows in order to escape from them. That is but only one side of the coin. There are couch potatoes and then there are potatoes who want to be French fries. Okay, that was a really bad metaphor, but do you not agree that life is like a coin with two sides and the connecting joint that has no name?

Most of us flip that coin around all the while, unable to hold onto any particular face of it. Most of our lives are like the edge of the coin- connecting the heads and the tails and existing without an identity. What happens when we actually, I mean, really, really, truly recognize this fallacy of our lives? Either, we choose to live on in this in-between-ness with a sense of never even wanting to achieve either the heads or the tails of it. Or.

Or, we choose to push ourselves across the boundaries of this in-between-ness and into the domains of the extremes of either head or tails which in turn calls for an intense overturning of what we know of our existence. Ah! That sounds like the material of fictional protagonists!

The difference between the fictional protagonists that we usually encounter in films and novels and short stories, and us plebians, is that, they usually achieve a successful transformation, and the story ends there. We, on the sadder hand, always remain tangled; or rather, mostly remain confused and tangled in the matrix that is the process of transformation. So, what should plebians do? Here's a shortlist of choices:

1. Never venture into the extremes that create confusion and tanglement.
2. Forever venture into the extremes that create confusion and tanglement.
3. Think for ever and ever about what to do and hence remain indecisive forever.
4. Live a thriving life filled with ecstasy and injuries, choosing the opportunities of purposeful living over the ever-present fact of life being a wipe-out show of sorts. (another show I sometimes indulge myself with)

Chris Powell in the reality television show "Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition" urges his clients to choose option 'd'. They appear on the show with unbelievable amount of excess weight. During the course of 365 days, the client is shown to achieve a goal to lose whopping amount of fat from the body. Now, these are usually people who instead of dealing with some kind of personal issue, had chosen to not care about themselves and participate in binge eating. And then, this guy who introduces himself as the one specialising in transformations, appears. 

This guy, Chris Powell, takes them on a journey of realising and facing some of their well-hidden emotions. Does this show have a fairy tale ending? It does and it does not. Some of these people do fail to keep up the motivation and falls back to old habits of binge eating and/or not caring about themselves when things get out of hand. You know old habits die hard. While some keep trying. They slip off their mark. They get up and they keep trying.

What does one do when one has a bad bugging old habit that die hard? What does one do when in spite of that habit one desires to lead a purposeful life, acknowledging the bruises that come along with the joys of life? Think of a rose, and, breathe. Sit up straight wherever you are. Feel your spine stretching down your back. Roll back the shoulder blades. Look up straight from your computer screen and breathe. Inhale 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Exhale 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Repeat till you feel profound as a wishing well. 

And then, maybe, write a response to this post? 

After-thought: A., my husband, sounds like Chris Powell when giving me a pep-talk . Hmmm. 

(To be continued) 

On why all things change and yet none do

There is nothing that is the absolute truth in this temporal world of ours. When you and I hold a day old baby in our arms, and touch its soft, smooth skin, you and I are in the here, in the now. You and I do not think of the bruises and the wrinkles that time will bring upon it, though time will, in its own sweet pace. The truth of the child is in the now. No other truth exists at this point. 

Often we meet people, in social gatherings and in mirrors, who feel their lives are a lost cause. They think their dreams are too late to be awake. Sixteen, twenty, forty years have passed since they had this dream. It is not sympathy when you and I say, under our breaths, that we know how they feel. We really do, because you and I have felt like this, at some point.

You and I may have walked through those stormy zones of the mind. You and I may have been drenched and left dripping like a crow in the storm. You and I really know the weight of wet straw and the eventual loss of it. One of us may have picked up fresh, dry straws and stuffed the scarecrows with them, creating them anew. The possibility of another rain and another storm washing it away didn't stay longer than a breath in the mind. It is at this point in our lives, you and I were there and then. You and I were in the here and the now. 

Life rarely lives up to the blueprints we create at the beginning of our lives. At the beginning, you and I were childish, full of dreams, full of confidence that all those seemingly absurd dreams could be made true. As we walk down the road, the blueprint doesn't seem to match the route. You and I still hold on to it, for some time more. We still have some hope left in our youths. We take a few risks here and there, make a few abrupt jump cuts. For one, maybe, the blueprint now seems visible in the road that lies ahead. For the other, the blueprint seems to be a distant truth, as distant as the truth that years ago, the mature body was a lump floating in amniotic fluid. The blueprint ends up in the dustbin by the road if we can retain our composure. If we are struck by rage, the roads are strewn with bits and pieces of something that you and I once called a dream that we believed in. 

As the pebbles and the boulders seem to lie right at the place where you and I intend to place our singular foot, we laugh at the childishness of those dreams. You and I share the joke all along the way. Our laugh thunders through the journey, maybe. And yet, something within feels like the empty place left by the oil drilled out from the earth's core. A collapsing empty space, away from the eyes. You and I are nowhere. We are not in the here, we are not in the now. 

Are our blueprints of dreams truly an outcome of a child's play? What about the potential you and I felt as we tapped our earths? Was it a dream, a fantasy of the child who can create universes out of nothing? But, was life not born from nothing that can be tangibly called 'living'? Our dreams, dreams that you and I nourished, can not simply be a passing toy! Even as you and I tear it apart, from our bodies, they stick to our souls. You and I can't find anything to loosen the adhesive.

Dreams are relative as is the truth about them. They transform as caterpillars do to butterflies or tadpoles to frogs. Yet, they retain the quality of dreams - that which can be a truth - may be in a different time; but truth it is nonetheless.

As you and I meet such individuals again, in conversations or in mirrors, let us remember to share this little joke of relative dreaming.


Image/s: Same tree, same time, just with two different application modes. In Lund, Sweden. By self.

Learning the elements: Earth (Concluding part)

mothering

While the symbol of the continuous cyclical order of things and life is addressed, in the previous post, there remains another part to this element that none will deny. The element of 'motherhood' bestowed upon this element is essentially feminine, or so it seems. The female body conceives and gives birth. Hence the association of the female nurturing self with this element is understandable.

Rewind to a time when life, as we remotely understand it, possibly began. 

From where did this unicellular organism evolve ? From the water, the scientists say. The birth of life happened in another element and the life of man is and was nurtured on land. The idea of the mother earth is, then, an evolutionary realisation.  Humans are terrestrial creatures and thus this element has gained motherhood. (We are yet to know of the possibility of human beings as amphibians).

It is an interesting experience for the blogger as she reviews the notion of the 'mother' earth. The image of 'Gaia', the spirit of the earth; the image of Sita; the fertility images since pre-historic times - all of these direct us to this singular realisation that, the human kind has attributed the role of the nurturer to earth since it has appeared to be the primal necessity for human existence.

Before the blogger had started scripting this series, this idea, the earth as the mother, seemed elemental to her. Now, as she writes and reads and delves more into the thoughts that made earth the 'mother', the blogger realises that, the 'mother-ing' of this element is more of a convention. It is done by humans seeking security in the psychological comfort that arises from bestowing this nurturing capacity to a singular element. For, imagine living without the other elements - without the knowledge of fire the human race couldn't have survived this long; without water a human being can supposedly survive for about 3 to 5 days on an average; without oxygen a normal human being survives for a few minutes only! The blogger is surprised at the conditioning of her logic that had yet undoubtedly made her believe that, earth is THE mother!! 

Captain Planet and the Planeteers

The blogger wishes to conclude the re-learning (if she may say so) of this element with reference to a cartoon series she devotedly watched during her early youth. This cartoon series was titled Captain Planet and the Planeteers. The spirit of the earth encapsulated in the character Gaia, bestows on five youths, across the five continents, with magical rings that can control the four elements, the fifth being the Heart, symbolising love and compassion. When the powers of the five rings are combined, a fantastical entity emerges - Captain Planet, whose power is derived from the sun.

As the blogger was writing this post, she was constantly reminded of this fantastical Captain, one 'born' (if the blogger may use that expression) from the combination of the varied elements of nature and from an element that the humans share with the natural world - the heart/love. The 'mother-ing' of the element earth becomes re-interpreted in this perspective. It appears that the elements, both individually and collectively, nurture human life in this strange celestial sphere whose 72 % is covered in water alone. The idea of the 'mother earth' is far from being gendered. It is possibly a metaphor for that part of the cycle in which we, humans, exist; the part of existence that we acknowledge as life. 

Images: "Mothering" - image of statue in Prague. by self. 2010.

"Captain Planet and the Planeteers" , the web.

season of closures 2: make a new moon

you could wish this remained this and that remained at a distance. all the things remain clear as it is in this moment. but the world is not static. it is like travelling in two times- the one in which you see others moving and the one in which you move but can't feel the swing. the days will be longer. the light will be stronger as the solstice has knocked at your door. you wished the moon was decadent with all the dark spots- an image of the cursed victor of sorts. but, yesterday night, it slipped into a moment of oblivion, where victory is sparse and denial is lost. it was at that space of non-being that the moon was yesterday night. eclipsed by the now, all the routine grudges died down. this is always blended in that. 

it is the time to pack the lies into cardboard boxes with deep red cross marks. you need to send them to the cellars or to the dump-yard. this is the season of closures. close all the debt accounts you have accumulated over the year. tomorrow is, and always will be, a new day.

stopgap

At times too many thoughts and ideas crowd the top level of the body. It almost reminds me how the top of the mountain is usually painted as if shrouded in mists. Too many water particles getting heavy at the top. Guess am at that part of the mountain. The droplets of words and ideas are getting collected in various soul-buckets. 

In the mean time, am sharing with you a translation that I did of the bengali poem, "Anandabhairabi" by Shakti Chattopadhyay, some time back. A special thank you to Supratikda for initiating me in this process.

The Joyous Bhairabi

By Shakti Chattopadhyay

in that room today, the image has dipped;

it wasn’t like this at the monsoons’ end-

with rain-drenched blooms in the gardens

was the joyous bhairabi.

no shepherd boy comes to that lea,

banyan roots shed no tear at the enchanting flute-

yet, when the rains dig through the clouds,

streaks of lightning are found.

wasn’t it known that such hard times

leap and seize the cock’s red crest?

wasn’t it known that in a squandered heart

the miser’s gains rest?

wasn’t it known, though the seat be vast,

the heartland is not known that much?

wasn’t it known, much that I know

is but oceans in the nails?

in that room today, the image has dipped.

it wasn’t like this at the monsoons’ end,

With rain drenched blooms in the gardens

Was the joyous bhairabi.

Translated by Susmita Paul

© 2010