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Showing posts with the label Hope and Despair

Musings

So much to write! After a very very long hiatus, I am writing here with an enthusiasm that I have forever felt for writing blogs. It's been over a week that I am unwell, down with cold and a bad coughing fit that seems to swell itself in my heart and then just drown me into an endless pool of misery. Even made me thought how I have aged in a week since being unwell. The reason why I took to writing today is quite simply this- the way we slog ourselves to death on the pretext of working, earning a living, precariously swivelling on a pendulum that compromises our health so that we earn monies, our bank accounts remain fat when we lose our health, mind and deteriorate mental peace. I, also, unfortunately fell prey to this vicious cycle and ended up losing control over my health, both mind and body.  Today, as I write this, while in my workplace where I am surrounded by colleagues who are laughing loudly, discussing a myriad affairs, I feel strangely comfortable in all of this. ...

Camus on a rainy day

I started reading The Outsider by Albert Camus last night after a not-so-great reading week. It dawned upon me as I started going further in the book that this was about a man, a young bloke who is seemingly unambitious about his life. I instantly wanted to shut the book and stack it away from my reach. While we all know that Camus's writing is depressing as hell, this book particularly came as a surprise to me. The young man who perhaps mirrors a life most of the people live, subconsciously, mostly to just fill their stomachs, work the grind of eat, sleep, earn money, raise families and then die, here this young man doesn't seem to have a purpose in living. He works at a small office, is unresponsive to work in the manner that when his boss asks him about shifting to and working in Paris to head operations of their office, he declines the opportunity. The woman who he is friends with asks him if he'll marry her and he replies saying if she wants marriage he'll marry...

Inside the mind of a monster

I don't know what made me come up with this title but there's something that's going on in the back of my mind that I haven't given enough thought. I read about being two people at once in our brain while we are really struggling to emote ourselves into the world to other people and perhaps, to ourselves too. I have been visiting a place that has a lot of full-length floor-to-ceiling mirrors and I think they are making me very conscious of the images that keep relayed on all walls because everywhere I look, I see myself looking back with different eyes. It's very creepy to feel my own eyes on myself through these mirrors. I don't know how and when mirrors became an integral part of our human existence since I cannot recollect what our ancestors did without mirrors back then. But then we forget that the standards of beauty were yet to be defined back then. This post is not about body images/ beauty/ physical perfection or the likes but more about delving into t...

Happy Birthday, F.Scott Fitzgerald!

Happy 118th Birthday to  F.SCOTT FITZGERALD! A beloved author. Oh! How I love thee! “That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”  I've been swooning over his dishy looks ever since I read him. ;)

Soul-searching with A Poem and Camus

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting over and over announcing your place in the family of things. Does this happen with everyone?  If there is a soul, it is a mistake to think that it is given to us fully made. It makes itself here, throughout our life. And life is nothing but the long and agonizing labor of giving birth. When the s...

Hope and Despair

It’s not that we have to quit this life one day, but it’s how many things we have to quit all at once: music, laughter, the physics of falling leaves, automobiles, holding hands, the scent of rain, the concept of subway trains... if only one could leave this life slowly!! This is written by Roman Payne in Hope and Despair . And I am very intrigued by the subtle philosophy that lies in his words. His book Rooftop Soliloquy is interesting! Though I've not read it yet, I got to read excerpts from the book on his website. Sure looks like a dreamy setting. Since its Paris and Architecture and the cover looks great as well.