Caught Between Woolf & Yeats

— Posted inLiterature — 5 min read

I was browsing through a selection of Yeats’ poems (he happens to be my favorite poet of all times), when among many poems familiar and known a rather unfamiliar one caught my eye. Frankly speaking all his poems tend to enthrall and reader and keep him or her captivated for hours. There is of course my dearest one, “Lake Isle of Innisfree” and others like “Leda and the Swan” or “He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” and many others that are well known to lovers of English Literature. However, one particular poem caught my attention today. Sharing it with my readers on this blog :

Ephemera by WB Yeats (written 1884, published 1889)

‘Your eyes that once were never weary of mine
Are bowed in sorrow under pendulous lids,
Because our love is waning.’

And then she:
‘Although our love is waning, let us stand
By the lone border of the lake once more,
Together in that hour of gentleness
When the poor tired child, Passion, falls asleep:
How far away the stars seem, and how far
Is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart!’

Pensive they paced along the faded leaves,
While slowly he whose hand held hers replied:
‘Passion has often worn our wandering hearts.’

The woods were round them, and the yellow leaves
Fell like faint meteors in the gloom, and once
A rabbit old and lame limped down the path;
Autumn was over him: and now they stood
On the lone border of the lake once more:
Turning, he saw that she had thrust dead leaves
Gathered in silence, dewy as her eyes,
In bosom and hair.

‘Ah, do not mourn,’ he said,
‘That we are tired, for other loves await us;
Hate on and love through unripining hours.
Before us lies eternity; our souls
Are love, and a continual farewell.’

William Butler Yeats

What made me ruminate about the above mentioned poem was the similarity of its language with Virginia Woolf’s prose. Then when I flipped through the pages and started going through his other creations, the similarity became even more evident. I have been currently re-reading Woolf’s “The Waves” and I’ve earlier read her other creations like “Mrs. Dalloway”, “Orlando” “To the Lighthouse” amongst others. The language is punctuated with images and sounds, both limpid and mellifluous to say the least. The same applies to Yeats too. It is as if the stanzas of his poems paint pictures that are both exquisite and vivid. Woolf does the same too. The pictures float and dance in front of my eyes. They tend to hold me and my emotions at ransom, forcing me to finish reading whatever has been laid out in front of me.

The resemblance is uncanny between these two virtuosos of literature. One focuses upon prose bringing out the virginal beaut of words underlying every sentence, and the other splashes paints across his canvases of immaculate poetry. And I am caught between these two, or rather I am tossed between these two like a tiny boat caught in the midst of two whirlpools of similar emotions and words. Words that resurrect my soul from within the clutches of a moth eaten civilization. Words that make me view the world differently, both as a reader as well as a writer. Words that carve out new pathways for me. Words that make me realize that my ultimate destiny is tied up in knots of words and emotions that I must unravel during the course of this tiny and insignificant life of mine. Before I end, I must share a few tiny gems from “The Waves”.

“Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I must push my foot stealthily lest I should fall off the edge of the world into nothingness. I have to bang my head against some hard door to call myself back to the body.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“There is, then, a world immune from change. But I am not composed enough, standing on tiptoe on the verge of fire, still scorched by the hot breath, afraid of the door opening and the leap of the tiger, to make even one sentence. What I say is perpetually contradicted. Each time the door opens I am interrupted. I am not yet twenty-one. I am to be broken. I am to be derided all my life. I am to be cast up and down among these men and women, with their twitching faces, with their lying tongues, like a cork on a rough sea. Like a ribbon of weed I am flung far every time the door opens. I am the foam that sweeps and fills the uttermost rims of the rocks with whiteness; I am also a girl, here in this room.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“I have made up thousands of stories; I have filled innumerable notebooks with phrases to be used when I have found the true story, the one story to which all these phrases refer. But I have never yet found the story. And I begin to ask, Are there stories?”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

These two and others within me have been pushing me desperately to begin my new novel. Thus, I will return again to this blog whenever inspiration strikes me. Till then au revoir ! And happy reading !

Virginia Woolf

Old Posts from an Old Blog

— Posted inLiterature, Writing — 2 min read

Sharing a couple of posts from an old blog that was secretly hidden somewhere in this big virtual world. Managed to resurrect it from the ashes of the obscure and the decadent. These are disjointed writings. They are neither poems nor prose, but rather effervescent thoughts that have held my mind at ransom at various points in time.

“Out of the blue grasses and the wood smoke rise tiny dreams of unknown lands of the East. Out of morning dewdrops and the mist that hangs like a wispy thin curtain of misplaced love rises a life so little and insignificant that perhaps a gentle nudge of a truant breeze is enough to scatter it all over verdant meadows like abandoned dandelion tufts.

And maybe out of all this is awakened the desire to go back to the old..the known…the easily understood pathways…

Swept away by the wind…”

“At sunset the horizon bled in gold and your face bloomed like a rose.
At sunrise I watched you promenade across mists bathed in my autumn dreams.

Sunsets and sunrises. Moments fly into eternity.
And here I stand clutching a throbbing heart to a hollow chest the shape of an ancient oak tree.

Visions of sunsets…”

So much for now. Till something new strikes my mind. Au revoir and happy winter !

a snowy landscape with trees and clouds in the background

On Writing & Being Myself

— Posted inPersonal, Writing — 2 min read

Once upon a time when I was still ruminating upon the fact as to what genre of fiction I should delve into, many suggestions were offered to me by near and dear ones. Some advised me to try my hand at horror, others believed that science fiction was my genre, and still others talked about writing a series of crime thrillers. What all had in common was the concept that I should try my hand at bestsellers. Well, I did believe at that point of time that I was indeed capable of writing a bestseller. Today I do not. I have never really been someone who has had the acumen to produce a bestseller. There are many more accomplished writers who can easily do that. Perhaps what I am capable of is simply being the slow and languid writer whose writings are pockmarked with surrealism and monologues. This is me and this is something that cannot be altered easily. And therefore, I cannot compromise with my writing too.

This December I propose to embark upon my second novel with full commitment. And surrealism will be its genre if there is any such genre. I do not wish to write too much about the world as it is, but rather about the world as I or my characters see it. There will be a marked difference from what is and what I perceive it to be. The difference will also be highlighted by monologues, both internal as well as external. Most importantly, everything will promenade around peace and around all that which signifies the rainbow hued emotion of love. Because at the end of the day, everything is about peace and love. And everything else is redundant or ornamental to say the least.

Monologues & Peace

— Posted inLiterature, Personal, Writing — 4 min read

Deleted an erstwhile post on Bobby Darin and his famous song “18 Yellow Roses” because it verged upon things too personal. And I am not here to discuss anything personal except for that which I consider to be an ode to peace. As mentioned in an earlier post, most of my writings revolve around the concept of peace, or things related to peace (could be emotions too). I tend to avoid violence in my writings, unless of course they are tangentially related to peace in some manner. And coming back to the concept of peace, the word has been used and abused in a million ways (if we take diplomacy and international relations into account). In the social context, peace may mean different things to different societies. For some merely procuring food every day can denote peace, and for others rallies and revolutions bring forth the same. In my writings (those which are literary in nature and not academic at all), peace features in ways that are both realistic as well as metaphoric. I believe in the concept of the internal monologue, which often becomes the primary backbone of my novels. Maybe I have picked it up from writers like Emily Bronte, Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf and J.M. Coetzee. They have always been my favorites. Their words cajole limpidness from within sentences. Their writings transport the reader to other worlds where dreams and internal worlds hang heavy over external stimuli.

In my case, I attempt to delve deeper into the concept of peace. Both at the societal level as well as at the cerebral level. Internal monologues are essential for any human being to not only understand and evaluate this world, but also to assess his or her relation with the outer world. We are a part of this outer world and yet technically we are not. We tend to be suspended somewhere in between. We wish to talk to ourselves, but the outer world rushes in each morning with its share of duties and obligations, and tends to tear us away from all those unspoken conversations that could have happened. This is something none can avoid. Even the most dedicated writer may try to lock himself up his study and block all kinds of external distractions, fails at some point. The outside world will rush in and overturn all those well constructed thoughts, till nothing remains except odd scraps of conversations that we have held with ourselves and our characters.

I am no exception to the above. I tend to hold my internal monologues or rather dialogues with peace as often as I can. Yet the world tends to come between us. Between me and myself. Between my conversations with peace, love, and other emotions that are essential for the survival of every human being in this fast paced consumer-oriented world. The Internal monologue has become more necessary today than it was ever during earlier times. We live in a world dominated by fast paced thoughts, images and sounds. We are seldom thrown into an environment that is languid and slow. We tend to sprint through each day with the energy of a marathon runner. In such a scenario it is difficult to converse with peace let alone cultivate the same.

Still, the hope remains. As writing remains. And so does the eternal attraction of literature. Someday in some quiet corner of the world, peace will once again unfold and fall in waves over all those willing to encourage conversations with it. Amen to that !

Au revoir ! And live in peace….and I return back like a prodigal writer to my manuscripts.

man standing on stone looking at sunset

PS: Congratulations Vivaldi on integrating Vivaldi Social (Mastodon) into the browser. I am a bit wary of using the same since I prefer a life away from anything social (online or offline), but I sincerely hope that more members join this venture and acquire the much needed freedom from big corporations as well as from social media despots. Good luck !

Vivaldi & Democratic Opinion

— Posted inPrivacy, Software, Technology — 2 min read

It was quite a pleasant feeling to see my article on “Is Social Media for Writers?” featured on Vivaldi’s choice of featured blog posts. The pleasant feeling was soon converted into surprise when I further noticed that both snapshots of my post and Vivaldi’s blog post on their social media site “Vivaldi Social” coexisted on the same web page. This confirmed the fact that unlike other social media sites like Facebook or Twitter etc, Vivaldi does encourage individual democratic opinion. My post would definitely have discouraged quite a few people from joining Mastodon or Vivaldi Social, but strangely the company chose to feature it without any qualms regarding the above mentioned matter. This clearly illustrates the fact that the company definitely welcomes all kinds of opinion including dissent. Perhaps it is this that is a cardinal element of Mastodon. Last evening I read somewhere that Mastodon had garnered 80 million subscribers within a short period of time. This is definitely a huge achievement. And although I am not a part of Mastodon or Vivaldi Social, I still take this opportunity to congratulate them both. This signals the liberation of social media from the clutches of media barons and corporations.

Thank you Vivaldi for encouraging and promoting democratic opinion. I look forward to more democratic dialogue on all virtual platforms in the future. Just like the real world outside needs more democracy, so does our lives online.

i m a little girl i m a little girl i m a little girl

An Ode To Peace

— Posted inPersonal, Writing — 1 min read

An Ode to Peace seemed like an appropriate tagline for my blog. I usually write about peace. Violence seldom features in my writings. If it does at all feature, then it is simply there to highlight the effervescent and ever elusive nature of peace. As I have mentioned in a earlier post, that which seems natural or that which seemed natural during our years of innocence is no longer there. Being conditioned regularly by external stimuli is what makes us resort to violence (whether verbal or physical) in the most natural manner. This blog will henceforth not only feature posts about my writings and my journey as an author, but will also focus on the concept of peace, analyse the same and try to understand why peace failed both as an ideology as well as an emotion during these troubled, mechanized times.

Au revoir !

in flight dove

The Importance of Being Original

— Posted inPersonal, Writing — 3 min read
green ceramic statue of a man

Picked up “Waves” by Virginia Woolf from the library at work today. She has always been a favorite writer. Maybe because her voice is extremely original. The first time I read “Mrs. Dalloway” or “Orlando” I was rather taken aback by her strong voice, a voice I had not expected would belong to a woman living during her times. And her books have taught me a very simple thing. Being original and having an unique voice is what matters in this day and age when people are in a rush to emulate each other, be it the physical appearance, the lifestyle or even the mental attribute. Antonio Gramsci spoke of cultural hegemony. He spoke of governments trying to snuff out the originality among the populace by violently imposing cultural standards upon the same. Maybe that happened in Mussolini’s Italy, but we live in a democratic world today (or at least a world where most countries have embraced the concept of liberal democracy). And still we are slaves to cultural icons imposed upon us by an all pervasive media. Where is the originality ?

It is quite strange that although we recognize the fact that every single human being is unique with a life that can never be replicated, we still try to fit everyone we know into pigeon holes. The same goes for our creations too. We write words that others have written elsewhere, use expressions that others have used elsewhere and often view the world through lenses tinged in the colors of emotions both common and easily fathomable. In a way we are victims to the same cultural hegemony that Gramsci spoke of.

Now the question arises…when can we break free? And another equally important question follows…how can we break free? Can emptiness solve the problem? Can originality be discovered within the eternal depths of emptiness? Can making the mind empty and free of standard modes of thinking help us to go back to the state we were in when we were born? And can that wondrous feeling of seeing the world for the first time sans any kind of reference or previous assumption assist us in bringing back our primeval originality? Many questions that do not have answers unless the mind is emptied and the soul is freed from the iron grip of hegemony.

Pretty random thoughts. Not that I sat down to write anything concrete. Simply let the words flow. Nothing more. Nothing less. So much for now. Au revoir !

PS: I did not think that I would write so frequently on my blog. I guess it’s the natural flow of words. And that which is natural should never be curbed nor truncated to suit one’s needs.

Becoming Calm…

— Posted inHealth & Fitness, Personal, Writing — 2 min read

Calmness wasn’t really a choice in the days of yore. It came naturally, like the change of seasons or like the waxing and waning of the moon. Slowly with modern life tumbling in and completely eclipsing the ancient one, we have to now “choose” calmness amidst a sea of never-ending chaos. I find it quite ironical when everyone (from doctors to the media to modern age gurus) talk about breathing slowly and gradually cultivating the calm that was once very natural to us. Yes, it was natural long long ago. And now something more unnatural has replaced that which was once natural…chaos. We find chaos and anarchy natural these days…loud noises, louder voices, angry faces, angrier words, road rage, raised fists…the list is endless. And we have fashioned ourselves to fit into this chaotic universe where worlds collide with worlds and all that we are left with in a cacophony of mammoth proportions. And when in the midst of all this we suddenly encounter a moment of calm, it makes us think that this calmness that has been suddenly been throw at us out of nowhere is extremely unnatural and rare.

I used to think the same too. Maybe I still think the same. But I try my best to wade through the waters of my words and reach a calmness from where none of the storms that encircle me can ever pull me away. When this day and all such days are over, I am alone at my desk, typing away my words, and all that I am surrounded by are waves of immaculate calm. Falling around me like cherry tree blossoms or perhaps like the saffron rays of the departing twilight.

So much for now. December waits for me. And so does Calmness….

rule of thirds photography of pink and white lotus flower floating on body of water

Is Social Media for Writers?

— Posted inProductivity, Technology — 3 min read

Out of curiosity I decided to give Mastodon a look (although I did not log in per se or create an account for that matter). The Vivaldi Social site allows onlookers to peek into their system without creating an ID or logging into it. I agree that the concept is extremely novel with social media being freed from the chains of big corporations, with the user not being a target of random advertisements and the like, but I did not find much of a difference from the Facebook or Twitter layout. Mastodon in all probability restricts the user from writing long posts as we can on blogs. The characters are limited as it is on Twitter and therefore articles no longer remain articles but tiny posts suited for the convenience of a reader who would like to read as much information as possible within a short period of time.

My erstwhile experience with Facebook hadn’t really been up to my expectations. I believe that sites like Facebook and Instagram are primarily for photographers or for those who appreciate pictures more than words. My posts on Facebook seldom garnered the interest or the traffic that my photographs did. People were more interested in “selfies” and “dualfies” and “groupfies” than in matters of the mind. All this made me believe that social media sites, no matter how modern and updated they may be are not really meant for serious writers or poets and creative people who mainly deal with the words. I do not wish to sound critical over here, because each website (be it social or otherwise) was created with a purpose in mind and with a target audience in vision. I am sure when Orkut (Facebook’s predecessor), Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and their kinds when they were envisioned, were probably not created keeping us writers in mind. Hence, we, the dinosaurs of this virtual world, can still safely claim blog sites as our own. We are akin to diarists of the past and nothing will suit us more than a broad canvas and a space for us to write unlimited words and characters.

Further, blogs seldom provide us with the instant gratification we need. The likes and hearts and other reactions are absent over here. We writers do not expect the instant dopamine boost that social media users are accustomed to. We may write and return in a day or two, or perhaps in a week or fortnight, simply with the desire to write more and nothing more complicated than that. Some of us blog in order to express our ideas, some of us to document our internal writing process, and some others to simply use this as a daily journal for literary or therapeutic usage. Sadly, social media (of any kind) is not able to provide us with the above-mentioned luxuries. We tend fall back into the quagmire of information influx, attention seeking algorithms and the like. So much for now. Till the writer/diarist in me returns once again.

Au revoir !

vehicle beside wall with graffiti

A Saffron Solitude

— Posted inLiterature, Personal, Privacy — 2 min read

An earlier post was deleted in order to make way for this one. Somehow the earlier one did not do justice to my evolving thoughts. Or did it ?

Snatches of memories pin me down to my internal solitude. A banyan tree seen long ago in childhood within the precincts of my school, a bridge linking two sections of an old house we used to live in many years ago, a beloved study table that my father used to use, the school hall and stage where many plays were rehearsed and enacted, an old city rumbling with street cars and colonial buildings, all this and many more. The images come in batches, Sometimes on pale winter mornings and at other times in the dead of the night. They keep me a prisoner within their translucent dungeons. I am left amidst them and words and broken pieces of sentences heard long ago in another time and space. And then when I am left alone in this whirlpool of sights and sounds and memories, they slowly tiptoe towards me; the characters of my book, yet to be fleshed out and tailor made to suit my whims and fancies. The first one approaches and then the second and then the third, and then the multitudes that are destined to follow them throughout the length and breadth of my novel. They come in waves and wash over me and my solitude becomes ignited like an autumn tree on fire. In the midst of winter. White winter ignited by a warm saffron fire.

I burn, I wither, I am bewitched by them…the words, the sentences, the characters. And all that is left at then end of a rather lonesome day is a handful of saffron colored autumn leaves being blown away by the tempestuous winter breeze.

Au revoir…A demain ! (Alas ! This English keyboard lacks the French accented letters)

woman walking on pathway during daytime