god is work

A friend of mine worked in an office where people complained all day.
They were unhappy and wanted to leave but didn't. A budget cut
happened and many of these people were laid off. As they cleaned out
their desks, they cried. People in the greatest most powerful country
in the history of the Earth, trapped as slaves in their jobs which paid
60,000, 80,000, 100,000. The money did not matter, I am sure all of
them yearned to be out in the sun and not working for the weekend or
that 2 week vacation in a resort in the Caribbean. Instead they were
stuck 8 hours plus, in front of a computer in air conditioning. Damned
if they did, damned if they didn't. There was no way out for them,
they were destined to be unhappy.

I have visited "progressive" do gooding organizations that look the
same. The work they do is suppose to be different yet I see no
difference. Everybody in front of their computer in an office, all
day, working, as if process did not inform outcomes. When you talk to
many of them they look just as tired and worn out as the rest. They
pay lip service to the importance of their work but in an abstract
religious way. They choose something that made it easier for them to
sit in front of a computer all day, thats the difference, but what
equalizes all of us is the slavery to the office and the computer.

Makes me wonder about my mother, a clerk in an office for 20 years. I
remember I went to work with her once and she spent 2 hours licking
stamps and sealing envelopes. I thought, wow, I am at home watching TV
and fooling around while my mother seals envelopes so that I can fool
around and watch TV. My mother never complained about her job, never
said she was tired and I came to realize she was adored at work. She
worked mostly with African American women and was the first Indian
woman in her unit. At her retirement party I realized what a presence
she was for the office. She was everybody's confidant and took on
people's work and helped out everyone the best she could. In her own
way she forged goodness and light in a dark situation. Thats what I
have realized always, that no matter how bad the situation, humanity,
goodness, the light, lurks somewhere somehow with someone. Our free
will comes in, in choosing what side we want to be on. Maintaining
love in darkness, when nobody is watching and we don't know why we do
what we do. When you will get nothing in return and you still pick the
path of light.

I do that but don't feel alone. I have always imagined that I am being
filmed, not in a big brother way but in a french avant garde way. I
want my film to be beautiful, I pay attention to my movements and even
how I soap my belly. I remember to smile from time to time and make my
bed in the morning. To let the tea kettle whistle as I smoke listening
to jazz. Reading the paper on the can, writing poetry in the wind,
blowing kisses to the pretty school girls in plaid skirts. Yeah, the
camera never stops.

I asked my mother if she liked her job. And she said yes, it was nice
for her. It was good because she knew she was giving me a life,
putting food on the table and helping her family get ahead. She had a
purpose and it was other people. Those people in my friend's office, I
wonder why that wasn't enough? Why were they unhappy and my mother
happy? Maybe they wanted more, or expected more from life. My mother
was content that she helped support her family and educate her
children. I don't know if that will be enough for me and I wonder if
that makes me worse or better as a person.

Henry Miller - The original motherfucker

I finished "Tropic of Cancer" and convened with
the original Beat spirit, the grandfather of us
all. To think he wrote this in the early 1930s.
I couldn't believe it, I kept looking at the
date of publication and said no, it can't be,
must be the 60s. It is raw and vibrant, a
feeling hard to feel nowadays. What he writes
about is truer today than ever: man is becoming
weak, western civilization is over, success is a
sham. Where are the men of action, of
determination? Who are willing to more than
just die, no, not more martyrs, but people who
are not afraid to LIVE and love, as that is much
more difficult in our solitude. Don't let your
solitude overwhelm you. Allow it to strenghten
and make you more loving. The point of
everything is love and health. Evrything else
is just empty ambition.

The book moves with dynamic audacity, you feel
the rush of the truth in you and don't know why.
You forget what its about yet you want to be in
it, feeling what Miller feels starving in Paris,
it hits parts of you that you didn't know felt
anymore. It awakens. It enlivens, it makes you
want to jump and scream and shout to all those
helpless idiots watching football and on their
iphones saying "like", "like", and you want to
banish the word LIKE, because its destroys free
thought and silience in your mind, when people
feel the need to speak but really have nothing
to say. Take in the no talk.

In finished henery miller as I was watching
scorscese's "no direction home", so its been
quite a trip for me. Both works of striking
beauty that go quite a long way in furthering my
feeling and purpose here in America. There is a
war out there, always been there, and miller and
Dylan understood and lived life with that
awareness. The greater difficulty in America is
that it tries to convince you otherwise. It
makes you let your guard down and then kills you
with its food, alienation, technology and bad
music. And then come the pharm drugs and you
are on the life plan. You become their slave
and pay and work to maintain your disease. You
don't know what hit you, it happens quietly for
many, they justify their weaknesses and before
they know it they've lost desire, they don't
even desire desire, itself.

--

(k)new

When I was a child, i was separated from my mother to take a trip with
my father, to india. My grandmother died with a picture of me held
close to her heart. It was decided that I was to be taken along to
cheer up the family and touch her body before cremation. There is a
picture now, of me touching her dead body, it's striking, the contrast
between my baby vitality and her soulless shell. They tell me that it
led to a hysteric scene among the women of the family, particularly
because I had no fear and naturally paid reverence to her spirit by
kissing her face. You may not believe me if I tell you I remember that
day and that moment clearly. I remember the sun coming through the
veranda, and my Billu bhaiya, a portly fellow of 28 who bobbed me up
and down, I can feel the smiles coming toward me through fits of
crying, the scene filled with a contradiction of emotions and
sentiments. The joy of my life and the sadness of loss. The suffering
would become worse, my Billu Bhaiya would be murdered 6 months later,
thrown off the tallest building in connaught place, 13 floors to his
death. He would be doused with alcohol and the papers would report a
suicide as the accused were Delhi's most powerful. In a fit of poetic
irony, my father was the chief engineer of that building and it was his
pride and joy to have built Delhi's tallest skyscraper. Only to lose
his nephew to it. My father had bad luck with buildings I suppose as
the other building he helped build, the world trade center, has met the
fate my father promised would never occur. "That building can
withstand an impact of an airplane, its new technology..." I heard him
say that over and over. The new building was a civil engineering
marvel, fireproof stairwells and a design meant to resist the impact of
a plane. Bam.

After a week, it dawned on me, that my mother was missing. The
realization came in seeing her picture in my uncle's house. I took it
and threw it to the ground, stomping on it and crying. All pictures
of her had to be removed. I would go into unbearable fits of rage and
heartbreak in seeing her image. In recollecting this memory my mother
finds this amusing or perhaps she was secretly touched as she has
always had a bias to those who show their suffering, who express their
feelings. When a close family friend died and his daughters shed no
tears at the funeral, my mother was appalled. There was no greater
crime for her. She couldn't understand how anyone could remain
emotionless and composed in the face of death. I make it a point to
cry to my mother. I know she is the only one that understands and sees
it as a good, healthy, natural thing.

Life is fragile and any moment not spent savoring it, is wasted. There
isn't much time and the moment is only now that we have. What a sin it
is to complain or be bored. I never understood that word: bored. To
be bored means you are not paying attention to the wonder that
surrounds us. The problem is that we are conditioned to want more than
we need. We get used to screens, and gadgets and forget how
mesmerizing simple things like our breath, moving in and out, is. A
life force moves within us, our body is in a harmony that sings its own
music, if we let it. And then there is our imagination, those pictures
in our head, we can think and imagine almost anything, its a moving
picture show. Our very own film, yet most people don't see it and most
people let the outside control the inside. Control your film, be your
film, let nothing change your world. Because if we don't control the
content and let it flow than it overflows us. "Letting it flow" is a
misinterpreted concept. It doesn't mean a lack of responsibility and
consciousness, as many people do. It means consciously, very
consciously letting things come to you but being aware throughout the
process and feeling the universe working with you and in you. Most
people associate inaction with letting it flow, when really it is an
active form of doing nothing and allowing the harmony and the spirit to
come in you.

I came home last night and my mother told me of her time at my cousin's
wedding. I'm not close to her and didn't go and to be truthful I don't
like to go to events full of Indian diaspora. I feel inadequate and
unhappy having to essentialize myself based on my work. The adage "you
are what you do" is never truer than in the indian american community
(note i write indian american, Indians are much more diverse and much
cooler).

I start worrying about things I never worry about and if its not a
sense of inferiority that engulfs me, I take on the other extreme. I
develop an artificial sense of superiority, a defense mechanism I am
sure, deriding the bankers and doctors as not having truly lived life
(would that be so far off?). It becomes bad, I'd rather just be who I
am and be with others who have no pretenses and just want to come
together to break bread and drink the wine, and dance a little.

This is blog is back. I am in a new city, again in a new place, and
again with an overwhelming need to reach out to cyberspace. I send my
love to you, people, out there. Somehow, in an Andy Warholesque way, I
feel I can get to a truth in this exhibitionism. At the very least
this blog does wonders in charming the ladies.

60 years of independent tyranny.

Just when I think that I can't write anymore, that nothing new can be said, a voice arises from my depths and speaks to me. "Write". It's as if I don't write I don't live. Like a Japanese tourist without a camera, I feel out of place and unable to feel what is happening without capturing it. Some write to understand, I write to feel, to examine and mull over my words months later, it gives me strange pleasure, as if I am moving within a house of mirrors. I don't know what is real but I know I am in there, thats the very least I am sure of, or, at least the illusion is big enough to convince me of my existence, of my powers. I feel alive.

The real reason I began to write was to become great. A part of greatness is imitation. The chicken and egg is really a representation of the mind and body. We don't know which came first, they both come from and effect each other. Similarly, if I follow the habits and superficial idiosyncrasies of the greats, that connection, in that moment of doing/imitating, I feel close. I know that wearing the king's robe won't make me a king but the feeling, it's still a great feeling. Is it enough?

I've always wanted to be other people and change bodies and experiences as casually as one changes clothing. That's why growing up autobiographies were an obsession. And then I discovered cinema and I realized I could do it. I became enthralled by the endless possibilities of existence. What do you want to be? I want to be everything and everyone. From hitler to gandhi because it is a way to know truth and also madness.

All great men wrote. They kept diaries. But do all great men have blogs? Lets forget this is a blog. This is something deeper. This is a forum for the expression of my alter ego. A way for me to connect to obscure corners of the earth at the same time. I want a 14 year old girl in vietnam to read these words and kill herself. I would then have accomplished something with my life.

There is a strange devil inside me I have always nourished with jack daniels and marlboro reds.

The rugged sensationalist in me.

Back in America, after a year filled with life and energy. It feels good to be back in New York, a city constantly re-inventing itself, in flux and on edge. More than that it is a kind of home and after this trip back from India, it's all I have. India will forever be intwined with my destiny but New York, if I am honest with myself, is where I am really from. Walking the streets here after a long absence makes me see and feel differently. Its a momentary feeling and pretty soon one gets caught in the maze but for now I am a ghost from faraway lands observing and looking at people, as they look past me.

Queens is full of beautiful Queens, all fashion designers should recruit models here, this place is the land of diversity and the future will be even more fantastic as we mix and merge to form new races and ways of being.

Mamacitas!

I am back and this time it feels right. Excuse the absence, the pondering, the self indulgence. This blog is about to get back on track soon. My emotions were too strong, I couldn't write about anything else but myself. Thats my weakness, pretty soon I will get back to examining the world, for now I leave you with a wonderful letter sent by a dear friend in response to my posts on India. There is insight and beauty in them, and I want to share it with you. Enjoy and keep on fighting the good fight.

______

Gabo man!

I hope you arrived safe, and are back to basking in the predictable, comfortable uniformity of USA!

I went through your blog- thanks for honouring my off-hand statement so! It was not meant to be so profound, actually.

Anyway, I wanted to relate a story which I thought would ease your suffering about the changes in India..

I recently went to a crowded passport office cell. A picture of chaos and indifference on the part of authorities, frustration and anger on the part of public. The counters are few, people are many. Inadequate or no instructions anywhere about what documents are needed, how to fill forms, etc. Officials are not impolite, but they have no qualms in sending a person back if one word is missing on the form, though the person has waited 1 hour to get his turn. Queues are ill formed and confusing, adding to the overall anarchy.

I am in the queue for “special services”, for example change of name after marriage, damage of passport, exhaustion of pages, mistake in passport details, etc. The office makes sure that one has to be present in person to submit this application. You can see all strata of society in that 15 person line- really! From lowly menial labourers struggling to make ends meet in Bahrain, to rich spoilt kids in low rise cargo pants. Also many ageing villagers aching to join their offspring who run news stands in Rome/Washington/wherever.

I had the good fortune of being in this queue for the 2nd time- the first time I was sent back because this counter could not find my record in their computer, and the counter that was supposed to help me was closed for the day, by the time I got my turn and received this information. I think I can claim to be knowledgeable in analyzing the human drama that  unfolds in this queue everyday.

The progression of emotions in the mind of each queuer, regardless of social status seemed to be exactly the same! Here is how it worked:

Stage 1: Disappointment and disgust at the lack of public service and systematic approach in Indian authorities.
Everyone believes that things can be done in a better way. There can be more counters, there can be more transparency, there can be less red tape, one shouldn’t have to waste a day to come here, etc. Some are more vocal than others about this furstration. Some at the back of the queue also yell out their frustration to the person at the counter far, far ahead- get a move on!

Stage 2: A strange, unreasonable conclusion that were there lesser people in this country, all problems would be solved
The “system” is without shape or form, it is difficult to imagine whether it is beautiful or ugly, smells good or stinks. It is easy to blame the system but difficult to hate. The population is ubiquitous. There is a lot of ugliness, a lot of stench- sweat, body odour, farts. It is much easier to hate the population.

Stage 3: Extreme anger and intolerance towards others in the queue
As the queue advances, the same people with whom one was exchanging backgrounds, joking, philosophising- suddenly seem intolerably obnoxious. One concludes that this is a jungle, and everyone else is a threat to one’s interests. If someone wants a pen to fill out a blank field, all are eager to push him to the back of the queue. In the front of the queue, whoever was earlier quiet and patient begins to shove and push, and to thrust their papers into the officials face- in the hope that maybe he will grab them before the person who is in front. There are quarrels, names are called. At this time, there is only one enemy- the person in front in the queue.

Stage 4: Open hostility towards fellow sufferers
Misery does not love company in this case. In Stage 2 and 3, one believes that if others are eliminated things would be better. In this stage, it becomes apparent to one that others also feel the same way towards him! There is now insecurity, anxiety and a call to arms. Everyone is sucked into this spirit- the most docile must also fight and push.

I went through these stages in my first visit, and in the second I had the luxury of observing others go through them. Here are my questions- is our society inherently irrational and selfish, and makes everyone else so? There is a mandate to the officials that everyone admitted into the hall must be attended to, we knew it. Then why is there anxiety and insecurity? The person in front of me was poorer than me, less educated and much fatter. Then why was I so jealous of him? The girl behind me was pretty, pleasant and soft spoken. Then why did I despise her so, thinking she was being pushy and unreasonable?

I sensed a similar anxiety and frustration in your blog. You mentioned several possible causes- the rift between haves and have-nots, lack of awareness and decency in the semi-educated, the heat and maybe some others. None of this mattered in this small cell (it was air conditioned) and I strongly suspect none of this matters in the larger scenario as well. Something, some alien virus has infected us Indians and made us intolerant. I struggle to find a rational explanation to the intolerance but none fits. In the end I tell myself- Man is naturally intolerant. Indians in the history books and in our memories were a superior, nobler race. They were more gentle, more tolerant and more kind than normal humans. Now, with the world opening up, Indians are becoming more and more human, and hence more and more intolerant.

Sometimes we see traces of the better nature- you saw it in Siri Fort with The Last Cigarette. I saw it too in the queue, when the person in front of me (whom I had so far branded as an uncouth, overbearing Punjabi emigrant lout) offered to go out and get copies made for some obscure document for himself as well as for me. He “offered”, I did not ask him. Such events seemed to bring a feeling of serenity and mental peace to those directly involved and also to immediate observers, reminding us of the glory days when we all understood the connection- that we were all part of the same universal yogic super-consciousness, and noone was different from the other (or something to that effect, I don’t know the exact details).

I think Shashi Tharoor is right. WE are decaying, my friend. That is the reason for our displeasure. People around you are decaying as well, but that is no cause for displeasure. Our anger is generated from within. We crave for an Indian Benigni but refuse to be one, we profess the message of love but still cannot stop despising and envying!

I wonder if there is anything that can retard, or stop the decay? Yoga, Vedantas, Vivekanand, Ramdev, etc. seem promising hopes. Deep down, the cynic in me feels that Earth is hurtling towards an inevitable and quite natural destruction, and this is just one of the symptoms. Lets stop kidding ourselves- let us preoccupy ourselves in our businesses, jobs, and studies so that we don’t need to dwell on this unproductive stream of thought.

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And I still haven't found, what I'm looking for

I'd forgotten how frustrating life in Delhi is. The traffic, the heat, the bickering family disputes, servants, the showing off, the class battles, the sexual repression, the hypocrisy, the aggression, the nothing goes your way, the poor transport, the heavy heart attack food, the pathetic night life, the post colonial inferiority complex and nothing is simple or easy. In the past it made me feel alive and now I am tired of it.

The traffic, it's leading to "road rage", incidences where people kill each other over minor disputes while driving and parking cars. Blue line buses also kill daily, operating without permits as mom and pop businesses with little governmental regulation and control where unskilled drivers kill and then flee the scene.

Delhi traffic epitomizes the law of the stronger. One drives with no rules and gets away with what one is allowed. The honking, the screaming, the chaos of it, I don't know how people here manage. I guess they don't. A friend I met yesterday said that Delhi culture is Delhi traffic. No matter how developed you make India, the traffic and the people at heart will remain the same: bestial.

The heat, oh, what a love affair I have with it. It knocks you down, it makes you sweat, and it turns me on. That’s the one part that I won't complain about. Its tough but it’s a good tough. Sitting under a fan, drinking water, taking numerous baths and eating mangoes. Did I mention sex? Let me mention sex, I feel sorry for all those AC fuckers, I am ceiling fan fucker sweat dripping tasting smelling man. The heat is the real star.

Family disputes and bickering has always been apart of Delhi's social fabric. Goes back deep into our classic epics, the bhagavad gita is about a war within a family where God tells man to kill his brother so the modern take on it is no surprise to someone well versed in Indian mythology. Doesn't make it less hurtful though I have come to terms with it and done my best to accept it. Many of these disputes go back years and the line between truth and fiction is blurred by emotions, I even forget what’s happening and what to feel. At least the family care enough about you to hate you, though it is all veiled in a hypocritical civility.

It's this in-between my family is stuck in, between the modern and traditional. New values, new money, I can feel the desperation in many of their faces to not miss the boat. They try too hard and are too fearful. I keep trying to explain to them that instead of looking for magic solutions like computer training, the non-technical, acts like reading, are what make people successful. Computers are just brains, you need a soul to drive them to where you want. Certain fundamentals are universal. You need to be intellectually curious to do well, and that usually comes from within and a simple habit of reading, of wanting to know more than what you are a part of, that’s when real change begins at the personal and bigger level.

Literacy is not getting better, neither is health in the holistic sense. You shed the diseases of poverty to take on the diseases of middle class consumption. Where is progress in that? Something deeper is required, and India has that potential. Half the world’s NGOs are in India! As Shashi Tharoor says “India is not, as people keep calling it, an underdeveloped country, but rather, in the context of its history amd cultural heritage, a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay.”

If I can't explain this, "Being John Malkovich" does. That’s a film that explains consciousness and how one day you wake up in a big house with a fancy car with a blonde big boobed wife and you wonder how you got there. "Letting the days go by/let he water hold me down, letting the days go by/water flowing underground"

Managing servants. Its great to have people do what you tell them for meager wages. There is always that constant connection to the true children of heaven, the poor. They never do end up doing what you exactly tell them to do and many times they become burdensome and not worth the trouble. I have seen people yell and scream all day at their servants and there are numerous cases where the servants kill masters leading to paranoia amongst the elderly.

A strange dynamic over all and something I have always felt uncomfortable with. It’s an entire sub culture, that’s what’s so perplexing here, the existence of many worlds and layers. The poor live very differently than the rich, and then it becomes more diverse given the region you are from and your particular culture and language. And then comes caste and then we are in many sub groups, I can never keep up.

When I was younger and more Marxist I would do what I could to know and romanticize the rickshaw wallahs, the servants, the poor, till I realized we are all the same in all classes. There are good and bad, enlightened and ignorant in all populations. I've also learned to feel less sorry for the poor. Ok, the absolute poor that have nothing to eat and are ravaged by preventable diseases is unacceptable but I speak more of the moderate poor who have the basics. Most of my upper middle class family is dying slow deaths in the form of over consumption and stupidity. Why would I want the poor to join in the suffering? Everyone has their problems; every situation has its enlightened and frightened side. You just got to figure out where you are and follow the light. Follow the path of love, and make magic where you are.

Benigni, Benigni, we need an Indian Benigni!

People are afraid of losing the material not due to physical necessity but more out of the respect it garners them. It's about power and showing off. My cheap nokia phone bothers my brother in law to no end only because his driver has a better phone than me. The idea that his driver would have something better than me is not inconsequential. It is a signal to the driver that my brother in law doesn't take care of me, and subsequently sends a message that my brother in law lacks power and class. In a jungle like country with obscene inequality the rich need to shock and awe the poor with gadgets that are more for demonstration than utility. You have to scare people not to fuck with you, or they will fuck with you. Fear is the ultimate weapon here, especially in a land where the rule of law functions unpredictably.

There has to be a difference between the haves and the have-nots. Otherwise there is confusion and looks are what most people go on, especially in a country of 45 percent illiteracy. Skin color, clothes, gadgets, everything is about being in the right group. The poor get harassed daily, there is much evidence of the poor internalizing their feelings of inferiority and lacking sufficient empowerment to demand basic state services. Fucked up.

The sexual repression leads to an expression of sensuality that’s brings its own pleasure. The darting glances, the innuendo, the secrecy, you can feel that deep down, inherently we are a sexual culture, a passionate people that dance and sing and try to express in subtle ways that which cannot be expressed in socially acceptable ways. It has its own sub-plots and melodrama and a subtly that is uncommon in western post materialist cultures.

It has its negative consequences. I feel sorry for my cousins who grew up here. They want to marry to have sex, or at least that’s a part of their logic, something strange and sad.

The problem is the modernity mixed with a tradition. Ideally it could work but India seems to marry the worse of both. It leads to interesting things from time to time, but usually horrific.

My friend here summed everything up with a simple statement. He said the problem with India is not the well educated, who are amongst the finest anywhere (st. stephens, ITT, IIMs) nor is it the uneducated, who work and do as told and lead simple and decent lives. It is the semi-educated, those masses of people that get caught in-between the new Indian Dream and the fear of being a nobody and missing the boat. Those are the people with the pretensions, frustrations and fears and who cause problems with their insecurity. They are the ones who need the most help. And they are getting stupider and made to buy things they don't need.

Come on! I know this land can give rise to something the world has never seen before. I know it and feel it and wait. If not here, where? If not now, when? I don't want India to become Taiwaned. Have you seen their films, "Yi-Yi" and "What time is it there" are depressing. That whole country is like gurguaon. I hate gurguaon; I hate it so much I don't even care to spell its name properly. That’s for my next post, and if anyone wants to start an I hate Gurguaon movement, I am there. That place represents as microcosm, what is wrong with India's development.

Home, is where the hurt is

What I thought before about writing, about all actions, now has been transformed. Great things come about from careful thought and planning. If there is improvisation it is always within structure where it works best. Things have to be worked at, and for one to keep working at them you need passion. You have to like doing it and see its special purpose and place in the world. And then slowly and surely you come out onto the other side and you see it, you finally are able to see what you do with new eyes. And every time you see something in a new way, you see new flaws as well as new beauty. And you chip away at it and make it come alive. I use to wonder why what comes forth from my inside isn't as harmonious in the outer material world. Why doesn't it flow from my inner perfection? If that was the case then love wouldn't be a part of the process. It is the constant chipping away and working on a piece of writing, a painting, sculpture, that represents love, a love to the original feeling that moved inside of us that compelled us to express it and bring it to life. The feeling, that original feeling is what we continue to strive to maintain. If we are still and without fear it comes back to us and brings new life, new creation that is a mirror to who we are. We realize who we are through our work.

That's the joy of writing, artistic expression of many sorts; at its best it provides a deep self awareness. How much of our struggles is a result of self-deception! How if I could ask the Lord anything it would be to get perspective, to truly understand my strengths and weaknesses, rather than wander in the midst of a fog of self-love/hate.

To be conscious, to be aware, it is more than just art. It comes forth in other physical ways. In fasting and being light, abstaining from chemicals and then the mind clears and you understand and see things in slow motion. Drugs can work too. But they need to be done with a purpose and not done habitually. The purpose has to be self awareness, to see who we really are. Seeing will be enough, and things will get better from there. It’s easy to clean a messy room with the lights on. In the dark, you might as well sleep a deep sleep. Wake up!

The show is about to begin, is everybody in?

I am waking up. As you all know, I don't like to refer to the personal details of my life in my writings. What I eat, who I sleep with and my day to day proceedings are not what this is about. For gaboworld I prefer to write with an anonymous voice, from an anonymous place, and what I am doing, and those silly details need not get in the way of the ideas and observations at play here. That is the general rule for me in blogsphere, to make blogging anti-personal, abstract and theoretical, though I must confess, dear reader, I need to break that rule for this posting.

"Why don't you go back home to America?"

"I don't know, bad memories, I guess." - Marlon Brando, Last Tango In Paris

I am in India, in my motherland after a couple of years of absence. I come here regularly from time to time as my mother and extended family all reside here. It's a strange sort of home, a place that is a part of me, where my memories haunt me, a place that gives as much as it takes. It is difficult for me to be indifferent and this place pulls and tears at my heart and sense of self. It is only here where I realize how much I suffer by belonging to nowhere. Each trip would remind me I had a place in the world, I would feel renewed and ready to take on the world. India was magic in that way.

Now the magic fades. To feel like one is from somewhere and have it be a part of one's identity, I question this need now. A firm identity and a sense of self trap as much as it liberates. This time I feel no connection here. This trip has been difficult mostly because of my family whom I don't recognize anymore. They are thrilled by consumer goods and have lost all sense of empathy and family bonding. They pass their life in working and engaging in property disputes. The love I remember in my family is gone, most likely due to economic independence which makes me wonder if our love in the past was based on sheer necessity. When we had little we had to live well together and get along, there was no where to go. Now newspapers talk about personal space and more and more, everything that made India distinct for me is fading. Fading in tandem with my sense of who I thought I was.

I know this is a trite posting, it’s been done before, this entire east meets west business, a loss of tradition, the old going through the new. I witnessed similar things in Italy, and the longer I stayed I realized this bet we've made modernity, its sick really. Much of what I write is nostalgia and maybe you would be right in saying that it's selfish. I'll agree to that, as India was always a refuge for me from the excesses of American culture. I looked to it as an alternative, as my other world, a place where I could step away from the American machine, to rejuvenate, gain perspective and strength to fight anew. Now the fight is here, consumer society, over-consumption has taken over in a grotesque way. In times like this I understand the likes of dictators like Fidel Castro. A part of me felt in my time in Cuba that he was doing what he was doing on purpose, that he reveled in keeping people at basic economic levels in order not to quell the revolutionary energy. Give people too much disposable income and they don't care much for liberation and dignity. People will trade health care and education for ipods, as was the case with my poor black students from Brooklyn. Irrationality, it's pervasive and a greater threat than global warming. People don't know how to properly interpret their own interests, even. I wouldn't mind so much if people had real choices and then decided to shop. Most people shop because they are empty and don't know what else to do with their lives. It is why people watch TV. What they don't realize is that after a while. As life is short, shopping and TV, they prevent you from building intellectual and spiritual muscle to fight the real problems that do you the most harm.

In times like this I remember Professor Marco Cesa, a hardcore realist with a pessimistic view of human nature. Self-interest, is that what it all comes down to? I know there are exceptions, I know there is a way out, it speaks to me, there is always a Benigni in every holocaust, I just can't find him here, yet. I am looking I am searching for someone new, someone to speak of what I see around me. There is good and bad, in this new world we find ourselves in, though proponents in both camps simplify and miss the point. Marxism and the traditional left here make me yawn with their rhetoric. The neo-liberal crowd makes valid points about the beauty of competition and markets though they underestimate the spiritual needs of man. We are more than our material needs.

Many great musicians say they took to playing because they weren't hearing what they wanted to hear so they had to create it. I feel that way about life in Delhi. I am searching for that soul, that person to make sense of the chaos, and all my life I have searched for the one, and it's daunting, terrifying to realize that I may be what I am looking for. The answer lies within me. I am the one.

The more you live now, the more it will hurt to remember

It is difficult for me to judge people. Though there is something
wrong with a grand number of them, objectively. I feel very
disconnected from the insanity that surrounds me. The sufferings of
young minds. The loss of intelligence. People who live only to
survive, who live with no purpose. Who no longer can focus,
concentrate enough on anything, anyone, who do things with no passion,
no love.

Then there are the people who kill themselves and make a show of it for
all of us to watch. Waiting for us to stop them, to help them, to care
for them because thats all they want, someone to care for them. Well I
don't care for them. Because nothing is wrong with suicide. The world
would be better if people were allowed to kill themselves. Our
hypocritical society doesn't want you to live or die, they want to keep
you working sad. They don't care for you, nobody cares for you, there
is nothing out here but the power of your mind, your spirit, your soul
that from time to times rhymes to make some poetry. If only you could
feel, listen, see in new ways. Then something would move. Something
would happen. But you don't have the desire, even. You desire, desire
itself. You want to care but you don't, wouldn't it be great to care,
to have passion, to be moved by sunsets and sunrises. To be sensitive
to beauty. If only it meant something to you.

Our society, based on over consumption and information overload has
bombarded your senses to the point that your intellect, if it is at all
intact becomes your only weapon, your one trick pony to kill all that
is real. Stop searching for the meaning and take in the experience.
Understanding comes also from feeling without judgment. Don't
struggle, just try and feel it. And then something happens, something
magical. The moment where you don't want anything, don't need anything
to make you happy because the feeling is enough. And then you want to
live, really live, even for somebody else.

For Sontag

Susan Sontag is a powerhouse. Reading her gives clarity and vision to my pursuits. I immediately am reminded of the "why" in everything I do, the importance of words, thinking and feeling. Feeling and floating intensely through her mind. I run to her when I feel disordered, when the words don't work, when there is no harmony.

It is never as clear with other people of the magnitude, the
responsibility and seriousness writing, art brings to the world. I
read her into the night last night before bed. The experience, the
thrill in reading an essay on pornography, things I always felt and
became true only when she put them to words. She placed them gently in
me, slowly diffusing through my mind, body, my heart and soul. She
makes essays rock and roll. She would make a philosopher king trade
his kingdom for her paragraphs.

How her words opened me to new possibilities of being. How a woman at
some time in the 60s in her New York City apartment with her pen
reached to touch me last night in my solitude, is the true mystery of
life. That it happened, if only once, gives me enough strength to keep
going on awake and aware, not wasting the dawn, nor counting on any
eternal reward. She's enough. She's the one.

We all go through this though only some really move. She moved. She
moves. She moves through us.

"On keeping a journal. Superficial to understand the journal as just a
receptacle for one's private, secret thoughts - like a confidante who
is deaf, dumb and illiterate. In the journal I do not just express
myself more openly than I could any person: I create myself." - S.
Sontag

There is no hope only love

In my difficult moments I remember to remember to feel blessed. I
realized that in the last few pages of "The Stranger" by Camus, the
benign indifference of the universe. The death of god made me more
religious. Knowing I could pray to something that would never or could
never exist made me happy. It made prayer worth it and more valuable
when one knew that nothing would ever come of it. The universe would
be indifferent, it would move and kill, give and take life and pleasure
with no order and reason. In such a static world there was no place
for morality, no one to hear your prayers, no help or mercy you were
alone and you better get used to it. A prayer with a guarantee is not
a prayer but a business relationship. One has to pray for the sake of
praying.

And I remind myself that I was born alone and will die the same, though
there have always been people along the way who have held me. My
mother, beautiful women, what would I do without them? Oh just hold me
before I go back into the that deep big black where your caresses and
the sunday afternoon sun won't warm our sea bathed bodies. But the
spirit rebels and wants to hold on to the beauty forever though the
more I try the more it eludes me, and the less I try the more it
spirals out of control. And I can't give up can't give in as I walk
the tightrope to your heart. Let me fall into you. Come on love.
Come on love. Just one more time before the flowers burst their life
in us.

If everyday I was reminded of the fragility and finite in the infinity
maybe I could finally live. Instead I am forced and pushed and pulled
and the more I try to figure out the more arrogant I become because I
think yes, I figured it out. And the more I know the less I know
because I realize that I am just a part of the harmony that my moments
of joy is when I flow in stream into the greater rhythm that
continuously hums around me. You got to float without sinking
and swim without trying and then you hit it and you really hit it.

Don't give up just yet. There is still much much more. Many more
characters to play and much more to feel before we leave. And we all
leave, that is the one constant the one truth: death. I miss biji and
I can't believe she is gone though she is gone. I called her before
she passed and I said "I love you" and she said "I love you too beta"
and she said it again with emphasis, with all the energy a dying woman
could have. It broke my heart though sometimes you need to break
things to put them back together again. Love to the spirit that
surrounds and guides us.

the pursuit of perfection, love or fear?

My friend's father listens only to classical music as after years of
listening he has developed an inability to hear anything else. Nothing
compares, his tastes have become refined to the point of repelling that
which doesn't meet the standard of complexity and brilliance which is
classical. I thought immediately of rock and roll and how a life lived
without it would be a life less lived. I also pondered the effects of
pursuing perfection and how it enslaves one. It is something I have
experienced with the television as I haven't watched it in years and
this past Sunday when my roomate insisted I watch Colombo (in italian)
I was struck by the advertising. It was a calm low grade violence that
I realized people get used to and no longer mind.

".....centuries from now our great-great-great-grandchildren will look
back at us with amazement at how we could allow such a precious
achievement of human culture as the telling of a story to be shattered
into smithereens by commercials, the same amazement we feel today when
we look at our ancestors for whom slavery, capital punishment, burning
of witches, and the inquisition were acceptable everyday events." --
Werner Herzog

Most people are not concerned about this. They no longer are sensitive
to whats happening to them and how they respond. When they look to
solve their problems they don't take everything into account. The fact
is everything matters, everything. All your actions are an expression
of who you are. They are no coincidences and everything has to be gone
over consciously to understand why. Why do I prefer to spend my friday
nights alone?

Even the pursuit of perfection if not done with the right intention
will haunt you. Will enslave you into obsession and stress. Its not
enough to try, the intentions and what you base your actions on is
where the answer lies.

All of our actions are based on two things: fear or love. That's it.
Simple as that. Ask yourself why you do things and whether it is out
of fear or love. Choose love, please. Choose love and I will choose
it too. Love.

Reading Tolstoy on the #7

Picture this: A man on a train reads Tolstoy while the man beside him
plays a video game on a cellphone. Are they both merely entertaining
themselves? Is wisdom to be found everywhere? There is the
egalitarian in me which does not want to confine wisdom to certain
canons and experiences but is the man on the cell phone gaining as much
enlightenment as our man reading Tolstoy? I am of course assuming that
there is something to be gained from reading Tolstoy on a train. What
is it? There is an importance isn't there? if there is then why
aren't we all playing the violin and reading proust in our free time?
Too many questions. Wouldn't we want to fill every minute of our lives
with fulfilling experiences? We don't got much time it seems and as
there is no time to waste its a wonder why most people waste most of
their time away. Perhaps its emotions that get in the way. Something
hurts us so deeply that we can only recover by relaxing and doing
nothing. Gayatri Spivak likens intelligence to a singer who has lost
her voice and can only feel the frustration of the loss of something
one is born with. Intelligence is developed naturally in us in the
form of curiosity as children only to be systematically deadened
through school, television, the church and often times the family that
has been socialized to adore and respect those institutions. There is
nothing new about this but its easy to forget what the struggle is and
needs to be directed towards. Iraq, terrorism, global warming are just
manifestations of a lack of intelligence. They don't get to the heart
of the matter. My voting democrat won't change anything for too long.
My killing my television, well thats when things start to move. Not
that I don't engage in "macro" problems but the revolution is micro and
doing the unsexy, the little things is what will allow you to take on
the bigger challenges.

There have to be some absolutes, universals, and differences as
uncomfortable as it may be to accept. For if there weren't there would
be no such thing as good and bad food, or a difference between the
spice girls and the beatles. Somethings are better, healthier lets
say. Not all actions and experiences are equal. But the problem is
how do we decide, who we do we believe as we progress through
minefields of mediocrity. Its a battle of ideas. Its a battle for
your mind. And who cares anymore? Is there enough energy left for
consciousness and critical thinking? It takes a lot of work to care
and it becomes easy to lose sight of why we bother in the first place.
Just don't think, feel good, be comfortable, enjoy life and stop
thinking. We are so tired and busy. Busy paying the bills or cleaning
the kitchen, doing laundry and becoming organized. Who has the time
anymore?

People give up and don't even realize that to give up is to stop
living. Though thats the problem with spiritual castration isn't it?
It takes away desire and you don't even have that to make you
uncomfortable, to make you suffer. Don't be afraid to suffer and long
for something. One day we will desire desire itself. But people kill
that in themselves to go on calmly and then you become like that singer
who has lost her voice and when she hears music she wants to sing and
tries to and can't but the song will forever be in her mind. In your
mind.

Lets give up then you and I as we walk beneath the empty sky. Remind
me again why we live. How to go on without being critical. For if I
am not critical and not consciousness of what I do then I might as well
not be here. And if I am not here who is writing this? Who am I ?

Thats always the question: Who am I? Who are you? Am I who I am in
times of comfort or in extreme situations? Too many questions. I just
want to be somebody. I want to be a contender.

All I know is that I have to keep writing. I only understand how I am
feeling when I write. And when I don't all goes awry. Writing focuses
me, brings me into being. When it doesn't flow I know something has
happened to my thinking. And when I am not thinking I go astray and
suffer. And I have suffered much. I have wasted much. I see not the
beauty in front of me. I lose sensibility. I, I , I.....let go and
follow the touch and the hand and the kisses......

come on woman make me great. Hold me close. Never let me go.

The meaning of resistance

Many times I have heard asked " how would you live your life if you
knew you would die x ", x generally being a short time span, sooner
than generally expected and I hear "I wouldn't be here". Why?

I live like its my last day every day and that is equally my strenght
and weakness. There is something in planning that doesn't come
naturally to the Punjabi in me. I spend today and think about tomorow
when tomorrow comes. If I will have no money then I will sleep on park
benches, look at the stars and talk to strangers to fulfill myself.

I enjoy myself because I don't believe in the future, promises they
mean nothing to me. I live today and have a simple philosophy: to
enjoy what I do. "But we don't always have the luxury to choose". To
which I say:

Even slaves sung songs, and Benigni made the holocaust a game.....no
excuses, make it work, that is the real resistance and struggle.....if
only everyone followed their heart and did what they loved then the
world would automatically be a better place....its only when we feel we
are trapped and when most people feel that way do horrible things
happen. I suppose no one wants to be alone and is afraid they will be
isolated and suffer as an individual and my answer to that is
organize.....the home schooling, environment, civil rights movements
are all minority movements that organized to make a niche for
themselves in the world. You don't need to have everyone agree with
you, you just need to be brave enough to speak your heart and demand
your dignity and that in of itself will set you free.....

"Easier said than done". To which I say who said it was suppose to be
easy? And if it was easy would you do it?

And I don't care about winning or losing, I believe on doing that which
makes me free.

"What you thought was freedom was just greed" - Bono Vox

oops

They say its your birthday...

"My 20s were difficult. I think that those are
hard years for most men. Older men want to kill
you, and girls don’t really want you. They’re
most interested in the rich, older guy. For me,
money was scarce, and I was extremely lonely.
But New York was such an exciting place then
that it compensated for all my insecurities." R. Gere

It's never what you imagine it'll be. Sex, death, suffering... Thats
a constant truth in life. Its never how you think it will be.
Literature, arts, film, all provide a glimpse, elude to the feeling of
what the experience is like but its almost always a different kind of
wonderful.

Its like that touching scene in "Lost in Translation" when Bill Murray
is in bed next to Scarlet explaining what happens to a man when he has
a child. Everything changes, and we try to understand what It will be
like, grasp out of curiosity or longing the idea of a thing rather than
the thing itself. We become obsessed with ideals, love, honor,
dignity, death, suffering, only to understand that they are
abstractions. Silly abstractions.

Why do we keep trying to understand when it will never be like the
words we read, the pictures we saw, the music we listen to? Perhaps
because there is pleasure in it. The pleasure in making the attempt.
Or perhaps we like to lie to ourselves. To pretend we know rather than
bravely face the unknown.

It does work the other way around though, ironically. Once you have
lived something and then you encounter a work of art that speaks to
that experience, it is liberating, elating and enlightening. You feel
less alone, you are caught in disbelief that someone put into words
what you always knew, what you felt, in a way, the art form brings you
full circle, confirms your experience and gives it meaning.

What would all this be like if art didn't exist? Where does art come
from? What does it mean in our life? I remember a friend of mine when
he read "Brothers Karamazov" a highly influential book in life tell me
it did nothing for him. How was that possible? My god, to not be
moved by the Russians? He was lame though, maybe he will re-read the
Russians one day. When in trouble read the Russians, an old but true
adage.

I look for art to transform me. To change my actions. To guide me.
and in my most vulnerable moments comfort me. I will often spend a
friday night in bed with poetry listening to jazz while the world gets
drunk and stoned. I'd rather scribble bad short stories in my notebook
and read them to lovers than partake in meaningless conversation about
the weather. I want to create. I feel ready now that I have lived a
little. Just a little, there is much more to do, news doors to open as
others close behind me....

We can never go back. There is no going back. And in that there is
beauty and perfection. Don't look back. Look forward. Chin high.
Don't cry. Ok cry a little. If its for the lost ones. The ones no
longer here, the ones we will see again in some other form. The ones
who loved us. The ones that don't. To all those who wanted to...its
for them I really live.

Peace.

kissinger

Kissinger's willingness to make promises became the subject of a
popular joke in Israel: Kissinger goes to see a poor man and says, "I
want to arrange a marriage for your son." The poor man replies, "I
never interfere in my son's life." Kissinger responds, "but the girl is
Lord Rothschild's daughter." "Well, in that case..."

Next Kissinger approaches Lord Rothschild. "I have a husband for your
daughter. " But my daughter is too young to marry." "But this young
man is already a vice president of the World Bank." "Ah, in that
case..."

Finally Kissinger goes to see the president of the World Bank. "I have
a young man to recommend to you as a vice president." "But I already
have more vice presidents than I need." "But this young man is Lord
Rothschild's son-in-law." "Ah, in that case..."

___________

ahh kissinger war criminal perhaps (chile coup, cambodia) but what a
colorful motherfucker he was/is. Re-defined what it meant to be a
statesman and brought a little rock and roll to international
relations. "Power is the ultimate aphrodiasiac". I respect that, his
swagger though not all of his policies and arrogance. Its always
problematic when power comes with charisma. it distracts us from
remembering that no matter who, the only response to power is to keep
it in check.

Is the world getting better or worse?

Who doesn't want to make the world a better place? Everyone does but
no one knows exactly how. Most people lose interest because they feel
that their efforts will be in vain. That anything they do will have no
impact. Or they become so involved in the daily struggle that they
lose track of what is best, what is good, what is right - all to
survive, and make it through the day. Is it a luxury now in this world
to care? To care about what? To make the world better, remember.
What does that even mean anymore? Your better may be my worse and if I
ask people randomly "over your lifetime have things gotten better or
worse? What a variety of answers you will get!" And if you ask within
a historical context, "over the past 50 years lets say after World War
2, has the world become a better place?" You will also get a variety
of stories depending who you talk to, an Indian, an African, a German,
a Bosnian, a Colombian, a rich man, a poor man, a woman, a holocaust
survivor, or Roberto Benigni who would say "La Vita E Bella". They
will say yes, no, maybe or perhaps both, that it gets better and it
gets worse. For how can one distinguish between these stories to know
"A Truth"? Is there "A Truth?" If there are many who is right?
Before even thinking of what is right and wrong perhaps it is better to
first listen, observe, understand. For to make the world a better
place first entails understanding all of our stories, our values,
judgments, interpretations, the data, the facts. To make the world
better we first need to understand it. To understand how it works.
What has worked and what hasn’t.

When I reflect on what the Bologna Center is and have to come up with a
simple definition of what it does and what I do here its " To
understand how the world works." I know that is a lofty goal and
perhaps an impossible one, but that is what we try to do here and the
effort, the process, is at times more important than the outcomes.
Because rather than provide you with "A Truth" as studying medicine or
the law might teach you, we are taught here to think for ourselves (and
more importantly to be skeptical), to know the different perspectives,
form an opinion and defend it with gusto. Bologna Center serves as
the center where diverse stories and perspectives can be heard, from
all over the world, where we debate and discuss what "Truth" means to
us. This dialogue this process, helps us understand the world,
combined with our trainings in economics and International Relations
give us the tools to be better informed, to have opinions and ideas.
Because ideas matter, especially in the realm we operate in of
economics, international relations and political philosophy. A quote
from Keynes to put it into context the importance of what goes on here:

"The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are
right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly
understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men,
who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual
influence are usually just slaves of some defunct economist." - Keynes

So lets get it right, lets at least try, make an effort. Bologna
Center is the living laboratory to try, test out, and figure out what
we believe to be true. It reminds us to care about the world, to
think, reflect on it because much is at stake. Our ideas matter. "Is
the world getting better or worse?" What is your answer? The Bologna
center has been here for over 50 years helping young leaders figure it
out and thanks to your support we will continue to be here, to serve
and make proud and be grateful for all your efforts in this process and
while it may still be difficult to say if the world is getting better
or worse, I can assure you, at the Bologna center “It is getting better
all the time”

Home is where the heart is

Throughout my life when the going gets rough and I don't feel well, I
go to India. I spent my childhood in Delhi and even when living in New
York I would go almost every year as most of my family and sister
reside there. As I have gotten older I have gone less and my life
feels more incomplete for it. India is a world unto itself, cliche but
true. If it was the world, it'd be enough for me. They say it takes
lifetimes to know India and I believe it. The diversity, the colors,
the tragedy, a day there shows you the complete spectrum of
possibilities, of being. Rich or poor, happy or sad, one everyday is
reminded and connected to the sufferings of others. There is no hiding
from it, there is no hiding in general as privacy is a strange concept,
something my Western counterpart has a tough time coming to grips with.
As a child in India or as an Indian child anywhere we become
accustomed to noise and developing an ability to sleep anywhere under
any circumstances. In loud raucous temples, where all - night rituals
are held it is not uncommon to see children sprawled out asleep as the
religious beat goes on and on.

One is forever surrounded by people and it is disturbing though you
feel alive, constantly. They say a great friend is one who feels
comfortable enough to impose himself on you. That is what a friend is,
isn't it? Someone who doesn't hesitate to impose himself on you. I
like that and India is like that in a seductive way. Not only imposing
but offending, abusing, pushing, pulling, making you sweat and scream.
And every other calm place puts me at unease. Thats why I prefer
southern Italy to the north. I can't deal with order and calm.

Being in the place I am from puts my soul at ease even though it
happens to be an insufferable chaos. I feel rejuvenated by the
remembrance of my childhood in Delhi. They are my most vivid memories.
I remember particularly the monsoon seasons. I have been attracted to
rain as far back as I can remember. Of all the weather conditions, the
drama of rain, thunder and lightening has been closest to expressing
how I feel inside. A torment that gives rise to flowers, that makes
the grass and trees grow, that washes away with a power to purify as
well as destroy.

The smell of the earth, where all senses intermingle. That is what I
long for, that is all I need.

Napoli, fear and longing

Sitting in a cafe in Naples I watch 8 men entertain themselves with
loud conversation, gestures and laughter. An old mad man screams at a
beautiful whore with braces who inadvertently makes glances at me, as I
sip my tea and hide behind my book and sunglasses. She has a hard look
to her, which has suffered and survived terrible circumstances and her
smile shows it. It says yes, I made it, I have seen it all, what are
you going to show me?

You ever have that feeling of meeting your death? Knowing that its in
your own hands, that if you so desire you can end it. Some women have
that quality to them as do certain cities and I could feel her (the
city) waiting for me in her tender trap. As she played with her
cellphone I knew she was waiting for me to say something, do anything
to make her feel like a lady. My manhood was beckoned, instead I
focused on ideas, on deep philosophical ideas and theories, thats what
happens. We think books will save us when they just protect us from
whores...

There would have been a time when I would have taken her to my room and
caressed her fine long black hair. Instead now I have better things to
do, excuses really, as I am tired, don't know what to look for and
can't recognize beauty in the shape of a whore. I disgust myself. To
not follow desire. I can't think of anything worse. To know that in
this world lies all our pleasure and pain and I just sit. I sit still,
I ignore it, I prefer to follow another desire. The desire to be
learned.

There is an apt saying about Naples, which is: see Naples and die. It
is the best way to describe the danger and excitement constantly in the
air here. Its how i felt the first time I went to New orleans, a city
to die in, a place that reeked of death.....and voodoo magic. You feel
that here in Naples, a lost greatness amidst a great sun sea and sky.
As you walk along its streets life and struggle is on you in you it
draws out all that you wanted to hide bursting out - lustful
exuberance.

The tough women with their Mediterranean faces waiting for men with
passion and violence.

This city inspires me to create. Madness and chaos do that, they
spring forth a need to bring life in that which is filled with death.
I attribute Naples madness to the volcano. To be constantly propelled
to explode. What a place to be in.

I have been feeling nostalgic for my father lately. Its been 9 years
now since he left me. I was a boy then and now I am a man, and with
each passing day I see him come closer to me in the mirror. I always
felt he went into my soul, inside me, to live life again, to see to
feel to touch, to hold on to a lover as everything crumbles. To go for
long walks by the sea, listening, listening for sailors.

I read "My ear at his heart - reading my father" by Hanif Kureishi and
I am half way through and I feel as though if it is a book written for
Indian boys and their dead fathers. I am sure others can universalize
it for themselves, though there is such detail about certain rituals
that take my breath away, I never knew someone else has lived through
what I lived through. That exiled Indian fathers feeling. All done
with such heart and creativity. I will leave you with some excerpts of
the sexual act as metaphor for life....

"Where does sex begin and end? Sex is often the memory of sex, as well
as the fantasy and the anticipation."

"She has taught him something useful about excitement, that it is
something to be sustained rather than evacuated"

"The attempt to make an entirely safe environment - coffee without
caffeine, war without killing, sex without contact - can only diminish
life. A world in which people can't die is a world in which people
can't live. What else is there apart from passion and its
vicissitudes?"

Napoli! Napoli! Napoli!

A human being is never what he is but the self he seeks - Octavio Paz

Waiting for Godot

I have slowly realized I can't save everyone though I look for everyone
and anyone to save me. I need to carefully pick and choose my battles
keeping the bigger war in mind. I haven't lived like this since I was
15 and decided to take life in my own hands after reading Malcolm X,
where the enemy was the white man and the oppressor the United States
of America. It became clear, and that is what prophets and great men
do, they make clear that which is muddled and confused, they make you
see, often at the cost of nuance and complexity - but the extremism
that is fostered is needed and valuable as process. It provides
guidance in time of solitary confusion. Oh malcolm. You are my king
though you were not entirely logical or correct. There was truth in
your courage and anger. It was a suicide bomb for the mind that made
me think awoke me to the fact that something, something is going on.

In Colombia, I was living an overt war, concrete, tangible, obvious and
that is why people were happy there. They knew that one had to live
and live well because the world was a terrible place. I took that
message easily, as it is Punjabi philosophy, a way of being for all
those who grew up in conflict. It makes you strange though, you
realize that your adaption is a survival mechanism, and after a while
you become dependent on the violence to survive. Many Colombian
scholars allude to a lustful relationship Colombians have to violence.
How any ceasing of it is not psychologically possible, 100s of years of
fighting has become addictive. Safety and security would tear up their
insides if they did not have the outward violence. It's a sick
revelation, and ask anyone who loves Colombia and they know that their
love is tied with the violence. As soon as the violence vanishes
Colombia vanishes and you want to make things better, though you
secretly don't want it to end. Its a sick need. Like many people in
New York on September 11. I had leftist, activist friends who felt it
was a marxist necessity occurring, the coming of the revolution. I was
in Brooklyn with the religious who felt it was the apocalypse, the
coming of christ. What was the difference between the two groups?
Nothing, all harboring a lust for violence, a need to suffer, to have
something move and change because they don't suffer enough. Its sad
when we need tragic events to feel alive.

And my prozac colleagues why does it hurt me so? Because i thought I
was their friend perhaps, or that we were together in how we felt about
the world. Its why when I found out about your antibiotics I was
shocked. That you would think it to be so trivial to not discuss with
me was a bomb. and all the dentist appointments, the creams, what seem
to you as obsessions or a need to control is not that at all. I merge
my soul and body into yours and I need to know what goes into them
because they will go into me. You are pure and beautiful though the
system we are in is not and always looks for conniving ways to fool us
and we can only counter-act that with criticism (not complaining),
dialogue and action. A constant consciousness, a constant observing
and understanding. Note I didn't say analyzing, as that is technical,
and done without a proper spirtual-political-philosopical framework is
meaningless, or worse paralyzing self indulgent madness. I don't want
to analyze the fire before putting it out, i want to put it out with
instinct and then learn. People are so cut off so numb they keep
talking and talking. They don't move with instinct toward the crisis
because they no longer are sensitive and feeling, they are intellectual
about it. And thats what bugs me. Why do these prozac filled people
want to have sex when they can't feel anymore? When one can't feel and
it isn't about pleasure it becomes about power and perversion.

I am categorically against anti-depressive drugs. Hear me out once and
for all lord. let it be on record. www.prozacspotlight.org

For all you Americans without a culture and all your justifications -
you're wrong. You are being duped by the Big Pharm, the biggest most
corrupt most dangerous threat to health and well-being. Forget about
terrorism, thats peanuts compared to the Agri-Pharm-medical complex
which is to sicken you, make money off you and to keep you alive dead.
"Unborn living, living dead..."

What kind of society do we live in? "It is no measure of health to be
well-adjusted to a profound sick society" - Krishamurti. You cannot
silence me. Till my last days, even if I am persecuted I will tell all
and ask you to have a conversation with me about the irrationality and
absurdities of our world. I propose to have no answers, I just want to
keep having the dialogue. about important matters. I don't want to
numb myself with alcohol and relax with pot, and watch "friends" and
amuse myself to death. I want to fight to live. I want to fight the
good fight. I don't want to get distracted from our grander purpose.
I don't want entertainment. I want to work. You got to work for
peace. for justice. for happiness, for health. Everything is set-up
against you but you can do it. do it do it do it. Awaken, before it
is too late. well, its never too late, because when you die, it will
be like "eraserhead" by david lynch. have you seen that fucking movie.
see it be it use it lose it, everything is gonna be alright but...."No
eternal reward will forgive is for wasting the dawn." break on through
break on through......yeah

Why I Study (give me a kiss)

alright i know you are all eagerly awaiting a post. I taught a seminar on 70s tv shows yesterday, we were watching and dissecting "Barney Miller" show from 1975. I got pulled into some wine after and long conversations. I am in the midst of finals, I am sorry I told you that because remember this blog is not about me, it is about my life and my relationship to it, to undertstand it, observe, revel in its abusrdity and beauty though i mention the exams things only because it is related to what this post is about. I wrote this to understand why I study and what it means. I know people study for different reasons, and the predominant reason is to get a job and survive, I respect that, though I am in the other camp. What camp that is I don't know. Here is an idea with my post on studying. Peace.


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In the process of studying I realize who I am and what I value. What becomes illuminating is the process and how I choose to engage myself with it. There is a difference in whether I see this process as a burden or strengthener, whether I see the exam as an enemy or teacher. The best metaphor is athletic, of building, strengthening myself to function at a harmonious level. I remember my father in times like this as he stressed to me the importance of loving what one does. The importance of discipline, a routine and how even if one is unable to focus one must make the time to sit down, do one's duty. The act of studying was elevated to the spiritual.

I enjoy what I study and see its grander purpose and meaning in my life. It makes a difference what one studies as at times a forced discipline is used to do things one does not want to do or understand. Krisnamurti cynically noted "Discipline is evoked in order to get you to do things you don't want to do" I agree to an extent though discipline also paves the way and provides you with the opportunity to experience something new. I remember the first time I started running, how difficult it was and my inclination was to stop, give up and yet I had George, my best friend push me on, he said" you will see you will see, keep at it and you will hit a new world" and discipline is what brings you into that new world and thats the power of teachers. They give you the strenght to work hard, remind you whats at the end of this, reassure you that it gets better, guide you through the mud, help you in reflection, questioning, understanding the purpose and process without becoming arrogant and overly skeptical. A teacher-student relationship still has to be based on being humble and accepting that someone has something in our best interests. It challenges our faith in the goodness of humanity and only with a strong faith are we able to accept what one has to offer, other wise excessive questioning lead one to an incapability unable to grasping only that which can be understood through submission. I must allow to myself to simulatanously submit and have faith in my ability to be who I am, free, independent and clear. I need to build that as well.

Rather than fear as a motivator one must work to reduce stress and do things in an unrushed manner. Be systematic, like the sun and all of nature. Work hard and be not afraid to become dull and dim, you will only becoming more brilliant, like a diamond slowly polished and cleaned to be set in the mid day sun.

Cuba showed me the relationship between art and discipline. The best artists I met were fully dedicated with heart and soul, blood, sweat and tears to what they did. and they approached it as a doctor would a patient, a worker in his factory, they had the same dignity and they lacked all affectation, and bohemian astetic, it wasn't done for rebellion, it was done as a skill, it was given worth and dignity, they were not otstrasized, they very exemplified, given merit and importance. It changed the concept of what it means to be an artist and one of the most fasinating aspects of the revolution.