Reflections within and without....

Relationships come in many different flavors and there is no denying that but even in the closest of my friendships, one difference I have always noted is the extent of 'privacy or space' we have afforded each other. I have some relationships that are based on this tacit, implicit acceptance of each other - where words are often insufficient and superfluous. We know how much we care and we let it be. We don't question, proclaim, pick and choose words - we just are. 

And then there are other relationships where there is an abundance of words, where arguments are dissected, hashed out, said aloud, as are reconciliations. Where saying everything, somehow holds the key to being close and staying together. Words are a big part of these relationships and my ineptitude with them often works to my disadvantage. 

I have learnt and grown with both these kind of friendships. While the former was my refuge on days when I did not want to talk and there are many like that. The latter, were the ones that pulled me out of my cocoon and helped me externalize my angst and frustrations - and I have had plenty of those too. 

In my reflections on these two kinds of relationships, I have found a state of ambivalence to both modes of operation and yet I exhibit a preference to holding onto my thoughts, my own state of mind, my own feelings about things - up till the point where there is no ambiguity about what the events are actually going to be. And yet, over the years, my friends have cajoled me into emptying my mind to an extent that, now, I find venting out to them a relief. But this is always a game of thresholds for me because to me - on an ideological level, talking seems futile, while reflections and musings seem to hold the key to most problems. 

Incomprehensible as it may seem to most - this worked the best for me... 

This dilemma about my preferred mode of operation has lingered with me long enough so that I recognized shades of it in the article from New Yorker when I came across it today. My idea of self, the foundations of my relationships, my need for words and my complete ineptitude with them at times, all resonate deeply with this conflict between our private, inner self and our need to connect. 

At that point, I just had to share it here... 

After all, most reading is a process of uncovering someone else's work in finding better words to describe your thoughts... 

Here are some excerpts from the article that seemed most pertinent to me but the whole of it is beautifully written. 

Woolf often conceives of life this way: as a gift that you’ve been given, which you must hold onto and treasure but never open. Opening it would dispel the atmosphere, ruin the radiance—and the radiance of life is what makes it worth living. It’s hard to say just what holding onto life without looking at it might mean; that’s one of the puzzles of her books. But it has something to do with preserving life’s mystery; with leaving certain things undescribed, unspecified, and unknown; with savoring certain emotions, such as curiosity, surprise, desire, and anticipation. It depends on an intensified sense of life’s preciousness and fragility, and on a Heisenberg-like notion that, when it comes to our most abstract and spiritual intuitions, looking too closely changes what we feel. It has to do, in other words, with a kind of inner privacy, by means of which you shield yourself not just from others’ prying eyes, but from your own. Call it an artist’s sense of privacy.

“The compensation of growing old,” he thinks, is that “the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained—at last!—the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence,—the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it around, slowly, in the light.” By learning to leave your inner life alone, you learn to cultivate and appreciate it.

And you gain another, strangely spiritual power: the power to regard yourself abstractly. Instead of getting lost in the details of your life, you hold onto the feelings, the patterns, the tones. You learn to treasure those aspects of life without communicating them, and without ruining them, for yourself, by analyzing them too much.

And you gain another, strangely spiritual power: the power to regard yourself abstractly. Instead of getting lost in the details of your life, you hold onto the feelings, the patterns, the tones. You learn to treasure those aspects of life without communicating them, and without ruining them, for yourself, by analyzing them too much. Woolf suggests that those treasured feelings might be the source of charisma: when Peter, seeing Clarissa at her party, asks himself, “What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? … What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement?,” the answer might be that it’s Clarissa’s radiance, never seen directly, but burning through. Clarissa, meanwhile, lets her spiritual intuitions lift her a little above the moment. Wandering through her lamp-lit garden, she sees her party guests: “She didn’t know their names, but friends she knew they were, friends without names, songs without words, always the best.” That’s the power of artist’s privacy. It preserves the melodies otherwise drowned out by words, stories, information.

“Sharing” is, in fact, the opposite of what we do: like one of Woolf’s hostesses, we rehearse a limited openness so that we can feel the solidity of our own private selves.

Every now and then, too, you come across some artwork that expresses Woolf’s sensibility in an altogether different idiom, refreshing it. Since I first stumbled across it a few years ago, I’ve watched Lucinda Williams’s 1989 performance of “Side of the Road” hundreds of times. The song is built around a simple metaphor: Williams is driving down the road with a loved one, and happy to be driving. Still, she wants to pull over to the side of the road and stand there by herself. “I want to know you’re there, but I want to be alone,” she sings.

If only for a minute or two, I want to see what it feels like to be without you. 

I want to know the touch of my own skin
Against the sun, against the wind.
I walked out in a field, the grass was high, it brushed against my legs.
I just stood and looked out at the open space, and a farmhouse out a ways.
And I wondered about the people who lived in it,
And I wondered if they were happy and content.
Were there children, and a man and a wife?
Did she love him and take her hair down at night?

If I stray away too far from you, don’t go and try to find me.
It doesn’t mean I don’t love you, it doesn’t mean I
won’t come back and stay beside you.
It only means I need a little time
To follow that unbroken line,
To a place where the wild things grow,
To a place where I used to always go.

From an entirely different angle, Williams has captured the same idea that we find in Woolf’s novels: that there is no final, satisfying way to balance our need to be known with our need to be alone. The balance is always uncertain and provisional; it’s always a matter of dissatisfaction, give-and-take, and sacrifice. Because an artist’s privacy is a state of mind, rather than a matter of law, there are no rules to help us master it. It’s up to each of us to balance the risks and rewards—to trade, in right proportion, loneliness for freedom, explicability for mystery, and the knowable for the unknown within ourselves.

VIRGINIA WOOLF’S IDEA OF PRIVACY
POSTED BY JOSHUA ROTHMAN

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/joshuarothman/2014/07/virginia-woolf-idea-of-privacy.html?utm_source=tny&utm_campaign=generalsocial&utm_medium=facebook&mbid=social_facebook 

Mercurial stillness...

The universe is a vast space filled with silence. We all carry that silence in us, not as a dark, vacuous, empty space but as a stillness, that connects us to what lies beyond. A stillness, that reminds us of the eternities before and after us.

A stillness that urges us to look beyond the concerns of everyday, and into life itself.
Life, they say is a marathon, not a sprint; but for the past few months, life has felt like a marathon-long sprint as I have been trying to race with and against time. Trying to keep running, to avoid falling from this giant, ceaseless ferris wheel.

Like the mice being tested on the rotor wheels for their motor performance; I too felt, like I was being tested - by some one. Or may be something. For weeks, I had good musculoskeletal strength, good persistence and stamina but even as my body carried on, my mind felt rudderless, fatigued, exhausted, scared and helpless. After those initial weeks though, my muscles too felt like the tightly strung chords of a violin and they groaned loudly when plucked.

But despite the weeks and months, I did not give up and the wheel wouldn't relent. 

After months of this ceaseless battle and at the end of miles and miles of running, my feet and my mind just wouldn't and couldn't stop. They were gripped by this mad frenzy - a visceral need, to keep moving, to not stay still, lest something go wrong.

But how long can fear propel you? At some point, the body is left fighting the fright without the adrenaline.
That's when fatigue sets in, a fatigue that tires the mind, more than the body. A fatigue that leaves you feeling drained, of more than just energy as it saps away hope, happiness and love.
Life becomes a computer program, a force of habit - with strictly regulated hours of sleep and wakefulness, that followed rhythms of habit and not of will.

Sleep becomes death at the end of a long day, everyday; deprived of dreams, the sense of rest, calm or peace.
Meals become the mandatory pitt-stops that you must make to keep the engine running.
And all this while, a tiny voice in my head kept asking me to slow down. But tiny voices are easily drowned in the roar of deadlines, to-do lists. In the angry voices and in the relentless echoes of the mind.

But then one day, a storm broke through all defenses and laid claim to that primal silence of my heart. In that silence, I could finally hear the little voice urging me to stop. Reassuring me, that nothing would go wrong. And I finally succumbed to the fatigue.

That day, I ignored all deadlines and lists, and I walked to 'my' cliff. The cliff overlooked the pacific, but in my mind, it teetered on the brink of eternity, this vast unknown. At that edge, I sat. And I wait.
I wait for that stillness from beyond to find its way back to me.
I wait for that inner silence that has been shattered into bits with this flurry of activity.
I wait for the tiny drops of that shattered silence to roll into the center of my being. To come to a standstill and to become a meaningful whole.
I wait for my mind to reach that stillness before it disappears again.

On that wonderful sunday morning, I sat there, on my usual bench, acutely aware of the gentle breeze, the sunlight streaming in and the distant sound of the ocean. I will myself to forget all but that sense of stillness. That quiet and that peace. And that sense of awe that liberates you by trivializing your existence in the grand scheme of events.

It takes me a while to drag those fragmented pieces from the different corners of my mind but finally, I have a glistening mercurial pearl in the core of my being.
I close my eyes and I can see its brilliance.
I urge it to stay with me. I plead to everyone and no one in particular.

With that stillness, I become aware of the vastness of time and space before and after me. I feel like a spectator to my own life, as I stop by the edge and watched life itself flow. I was a happy bystander to my own life and at the edge of that eternity, no problem seemed big enough, no sorrow seemed deep enough and no pain seemed vast enough.

I had finally found myself in that stillness and I wasn't to let go.

IF

IF

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

- Kipling

Slow down...

Running has always symbolized everything desirable in the world for me - freedom, effort, reward, stamina, endurance, solitude and perhaps most importantly, free-spiritedness. Running with the wind-in-my hair brought me closer to myself and strangely to the world around me. The steady rhythm of my pulsing heart and the rhythmic footfalls would often take me to a place of peace and rest - far from the turmoil of the world. 

It was the one thing that I have always wanted to do - even when I couldn't actually do it. When my breaths were clouded by puffs of asthalin or when my lungs hated the very air they breathed refusing to cooperate - running was all I wanted to do. Not swimming, not tennis, not pilates - just running. Years of steroids, anti-histamines and inhalers later, I can run today! Perhaps not a marathon yet, but I am a lot better than where I started out from a couple of years ago - gasping and wheezing my way to the kilometer mark.

Over the years, even as this simple act of putting one foot ahead of another at a steady clip has morphed my body, it has also constantly moulded my mind. In fact, I am probably still trying to learn my most important lesson - to slow down.

A simple five letter word - speed, has stood for all that is good and desirable for so long. Speed, to me, always correlated with efficiency and was always desirable and subject to improvement. Despite the childhood stories of the hare and the tortoise, I only learnt to blame the over-confidence and lack of consistency of the hare, not its speed. 

But that was the understanding of youth - where faster meant better. 

Today, I know the virtues of being slow and steady and I also know that I have always tried to run faster than I should. Both on the road and in life - making speed my biggest handicap. 

My biggest weakness.

The one thing that would restrict me to shorter distances and hold me back with longer recoveries. 

I had always pushed myself too hard. I was the survivor who was trained to pick the difficult option at every intersection, because 'life is never easy'. I was the one who pushed myself in every way imaginable, chasing dreams, passions and goals - so much so that life felt like a long, interminable marathon, where I was breathless for a large part of the way. 

In my eagerness to finish, I would run faster and harder - only to tire myself sooner and further. It was a vicious cycle where the only solution was to learn to slow down. 

Today, after months of conscious effort, I have slowed myself on the road - a little but not enough. I run longer and easier. 

But the same skill needs to be applied in everyday life as well. Sadly, life doesn't come with easy mile-markers and stop-watches. One has to learn to pace oneself, to know how much one can and must endure. 

Each day, as I slip on my running shoes and head out in the evenings, I try and remind myself to slow down and to enjoy the happiness for as long as I can - to not go chasing the end. Even as my feet hurtle down the familiar terrain, I will myself to slow down because there is a long road ahead. 

This is a reminder for the rest of my life too - to slow down and to not rush into things; because sometimes the journey is more important than the destination and there is a long, winding road ahead. 

Hope...

I have often favored the harsher reality of life over the vague uncertainty of hope. Somehow knowing the truth and being prepared for it seemed better than the optimistic hope that keeps you unhinged from reality.

But today, when hope is actually dashed, and reality has made itself clear - somehow, I prefer that sense of hope - however tempestuous and elusive it may have seemed. It was enough to let me get through to the next day. It was enough to let me sleep and wake up.

It held a possibility, however small. Undaunted by probabilities or statistics, It held a possibility. It was enough to keep me calm in the face of the storm.

Hope is the thing with feathers 
Emily Dickinson 

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

I hope I learn to value that little bird and its song without words. Because sometimes, you are just not ready for that storm. Sometimes, even that glimmer of hope, however remote, however uncertain, is sufficient to keep you together. 

Remember that - will you? The next time you want to curse hope for leaving you vulnerable, uncertain and confused. 

The passionate embrace...

In a room full of people, they stood in deep embrace.
Passionately held in each other's arms, they swayed to a rhythm and as they did, they were creating music.
Music, that was heart-breakingly beautiful and rapturous. Music that was making me go weak in the knees and sending chills down my spine.

They stood there in a crowd, cloaked with an intimacy that made me feel like an intruder. Their passion and oblivion from the rest of the world made me long for the same.
To lose oneself in trying to discover oneself anew.

They swayed with each other, neck to neck and hand in hand. They were aware of no one but themselves. They rose and fell, moved and stopped, laughed and smiled - all in perfect synchrony. They were two people with a single heart beat, a single life line. I could almost feel a pulse of electricity coursing through them both - joining them with an invisible bond. They swayed and twirled, they lurched and rolled, they cavorted and pranced - all in perfect unison as I stood there feeling nothing but awe and envy. Their eyes twinkled as they danced with joyous abandon.
They smiled to each other when they hit the perfect chord. They nodded, they whispered, they mumbled and they smiled through it all. They were two people in one passionate embrace. And they created music that had a life of its own.

For that one hour, I couldn't tell where one began and the other ended.
For that one hour, the man and his violin were creating magic and I felt lucky to have been there.

Even as my love affair with the notes of a violin continues for more than a decade now; today, I felt inspired into becoming more actively involved than just being a passive bystander. To stop waiting for that magical day when everything will fall in place but to find something now! To find something to do for the pure joy of it...
To find something to lose myself in...
And hopefully rediscover myself in the process..