The Phantom Room

After a long and epiphanic taxi ride, I finally reached my destination.

I stood in the foyer, studying paper-thin strips of blue gleaming under the shut doors. Unbearable despair and loneliness filled me up. Which one was it? Have I come to the right place?

I opened a door at random. The room was dim and tidy and filled with an enormity of a sea. There was smoke everywhere, through the smoke I saw him sitting on a low bed covered with husk. Just behind the bed ran a nice little river. Was it a river? Or a stream? Whatever It was, many fish lived in it. The fish didn’t care about my loneliness or despair or why was I there. The fish ate the weeds that grew in the stream or the river.

Water was streaming down the walls and gathering in a pool on the floor.

Hernando and Rachael were in their nightdresses. It seemed they had just made love.  

I exhaled them like the human-shaped river of smoke that had leaked into the room.

--

I woke up at three a.m. The moonlight lit up the room and its objects: bed, books, blood-soaked sheets, lamp, and a baby as if I'd turned on a lamp.

P.S. This is an excerpt from a scene where a man is trying to re-piece an event after being under the heavy effects of opium.

Moving with the cosmos

 The idea behind movement is to invoke deep feelings in the soul. The word movement here is not the same as we understand, but here it means to move in a rhythm. When we align ourselves with the way the stars are arranged in a constellation, we move with the cosmos. 

So, the above sounds esoteric, right. Well, to me it does too.  

Here is how I deconstructed these thoughts that moved within me. 

Movement is like music, when there is conscious movement, the soul sings. When there is a semi-conscious movement, the soul whispers, and when there is an unconscious movement, the soul mumbles.

P.S. This post has an informal quality, perhaps, even a tinge (could be a heapful) of what exactly is being said here. Let the question remain and let it float. It will unfurl itself in mystic ways like the way the universe makes us move mysteriously yet consciously if we are willing to listen.  

 

Magic of colors

Disclaimer: This post has to be read by keeping the logical brains aside.

Through these pictures, I make an attempt to understand the relationship between the colors; red, blue, and yellow. And what happens when they meet with each other. When does magic take place?

Imagine that a human being is made of three parts: body, soul, and spirit. Corresponding to these are the colors: red, blue, and yellow. 

In these pictures, when red (earth) meets water (blue), a brown is formed which is the color of the bark of a tree. The blue (water) leaves the earth and meets the yellow (sun or spirit) and transforms into green leaves. It is this balance that leads to the creation of leaves. Similarly, in human beings magic takes place when the physical meets the spiritual. A transformation. If we follow this imagination, then we observe in the other picture, how the green has turned into orange by taking in the red. In this mango tree, the leaves are almost violet and with a lot of red and a little blue. The flowers bloom at this point. 

Are we able to see this magic in nature? A magic outside and magic inside.

P.S. This is a brief understanding of Rudolph Steiner's observations on colors in nature and human beings. It may be esoteric in nature.

 

Coffee beans

Coffee beans roast on a woodland hill,

A melody rose up from a lonely rill;

The kettle whistled only to wither away,

No one heard what the brook had to say,

The drowsy world dreamed on.

Gliding through the curtain frills, a whiff crept,

Till It fell on the bed where a drunk slept;

A murmur and a frown lit his wrinkled face,

nonetheless save the gnomes their enigma could trace,

For the drowsy world dreamed on.

 

Beans popped like corns,

A floweret bloomed beneath the thorn;

The scent of the beans waylaid the sleep,

waking even the dead from their deep.

 

while the charms and joys inspire like the picture of dawn

like the playthings of Nature and Time - 

they gleam and are gone.

On its wings, the morning wafted away

 While the drowsy world dreamed on.

 

Lost to be found

You can't possibly sit and write here

what if I try

He pulls out his phone, turns the audio recorder.

ईस भीड़ में मेरी रुह बह गयी

बहते-बहते गुमशुदा हुई

मैं इस रंजिश में बह गया

कि वो कभी आयेगी कि नहीं

He looks at the Ferris wheels and tries to count the number of spokes. Each one is different, yet when they turn, they look the same. 

This is how our lives are, we are going round in circles, I need to find myself before I find us.

He turns and gets lost in the labyrinth of people.

P.S. I am continuing to post some words written based on the picture prompts given.

Picture prompt 18 

Write 100 words on the picture. 

Vantage point

The vantage point I had chosen, wasn't just conscious, it was an act of conscience. I could see him soaking up the mixed hues of the sky. I took an aim right between his eyebrows. All I need is one clean shot. And he can bid adieu to his life, his life of conceit, deceit, and an irrevocable redemption lay on the other side for me. 

Why is this hesitation? Why are my fingers not able to get the clasp, the grip I want. 

you've been brought here to carry out your gift of destiny

The voice in his head reminded him, his clasp gets firm, his mind clearer but a shred of doubt.

Fuck it. I am going to kill him. 

And he takes the shot, piercing through the glaze of the pretentious landscape.

P.S. The prompt is below

#Day17Prompt

Today we have a picture prompt.

Prompt: The attached picture

Rules: Write 100 words (prose) or 15 lines (verse) on the picture.  You can describe the place, the mood, the emotion, the place from where such a view is afforded... your imagination is the limit!

Free souls

 Free soul, that's what she called them. They were everywhere, patiently waiting for the opportunity to grab some unclaimed bit of matter.

Should we go for the table fan oscillating and droning, or those wires, gaunt wires, under the light of the bulb?

The free souls spoke in sepulchral voices.

I see those stitches laddered down on her face, a big bloody piece of cotton sticking out from her mouth where her teeth had been broken.

There was nobody else in the room. They gazed intently at the walls riddled with bullet holes, grey colored, paint worn out, and fallen like pieces of soot.

P.S. The above is a piece written for the prompt below.

#Day16Prompt

Today we will try something different.  

Prompt: Describe a place

Rules: Prose (100 words) or verse (15 lines).  Describe any place - it can be indoors / outdoors / fantasy.  

Delta challenge: Try the Implicit method (#3 below) to describe the place.

There are 4 ways to describe a place:

1) News report style: It was a large airy room with large windows, painted pastel blue.

2a) Very explicit: She liked her room.  The high ceiling combined with cross ventilation from windows on opposite sides made the room cool.  The large painting of a fall scene somehow was calming.

2b) Less explicit: She twisted the doorknob and the door swung open.  She had to shade her eyes with her palm as sunlight reflected off the citrus yellow walls and assaulted her eyes.

3) Implicit: "Why don't we get an electric chimney?" she asked.

"And where will the money come from?" he asked.

"Ok. At least, let us put ceramic tiles no?  Otherwise... scrub the wall too much and the distemper peels off... don't scrub and the wall blackens like this," she pointed.

"Why to spend so much money on a rented house?" he asked.

[Information conveyed: kitchen, messy walls; rented place; they are not very well off so it's a small kitchen]