Ionesco's eating at my head again. Seeing — yet again — the hermit's psychedelic vision.
House me in a quiet room in an uninhabited obscure building somewhere in the corner of a ghostly town — only an open window lets me see and feel the sturdy ever-growing tree bearing lovely pink flowers. And through the window, I see life taking a beautiful form — and I'm overcome by a strange sort of peace, with the bright sun lighting up my face into happiness.
I'm sort of disheartened today. Disheartened because I can't stand up for what I believe in. Because I'm afraid. Because I'm walking right into the bleak unknown in spite of my heart screaming "no."
But I'm going to see I get through this by myself. I'm not vulnerable.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Of Memories
The morning paper recently carried an article on "repressed memories" and how we should deal with them so we can come out stronger after we've faced our demons. This is one topic I have always been intrigued with.
Repressed memories or "motivated forgetting" are childhood or past memories that have been erased from our conscious mind. Such memories may later resurface or be recalled as a result of a certain incident or without any provocation or reason.
There are ongoing debates among psychologists and psychotherapists on whether or not traumatic experiences can be repressed out of conscious awareness and later recalled — spontaneously or through treatment. Divided opinions shroud this rather obscure topic. Some even question the very concept of "repressed memory." I don't have an opinion here as I'm neither an expert in this filed nor have I studied psychology, apart from a very distressing paper on Freud and his friends in college.
But age and experience have taught me that memory is unreliable. I have pictures in my mind of my childhood, and I'm not certain if they really happened.
I have always found it rather strange that I remember very little of my childhood. The little that I recall is again a hazy gray, but they were definitely not the best years of my life. The human mind functions in the most complex ways. It does exactly as you want without you giving it a conscious command. The mind chooses to throw out the ugly and the bad and automatically blocks bad memories; it works as an automatic defense mechanism. This is all very well and I'm glad the mind works the way it does but I'm still left with a couple of nagging questions as to what's real and what's not.
Repressed memories or "motivated forgetting" are childhood or past memories that have been erased from our conscious mind. Such memories may later resurface or be recalled as a result of a certain incident or without any provocation or reason.
There are ongoing debates among psychologists and psychotherapists on whether or not traumatic experiences can be repressed out of conscious awareness and later recalled — spontaneously or through treatment. Divided opinions shroud this rather obscure topic. Some even question the very concept of "repressed memory." I don't have an opinion here as I'm neither an expert in this filed nor have I studied psychology, apart from a very distressing paper on Freud and his friends in college.
But age and experience have taught me that memory is unreliable. I have pictures in my mind of my childhood, and I'm not certain if they really happened.
I have always found it rather strange that I remember very little of my childhood. The little that I recall is again a hazy gray, but they were definitely not the best years of my life. The human mind functions in the most complex ways. It does exactly as you want without you giving it a conscious command. The mind chooses to throw out the ugly and the bad and automatically blocks bad memories; it works as an automatic defense mechanism. This is all very well and I'm glad the mind works the way it does but I'm still left with a couple of nagging questions as to what's real and what's not.
Blue as hell
"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before." Edgar Allan Poe
Today, I feel like a blob of cold blue jelly splattered on the kitchen floor.
Today, I feel like a blob of cold blue jelly splattered on the kitchen floor.
Friday, September 3, 2010
The animal kingdom
Living in Bangalore is challenging like in most other cities. You run out of things to do on weekends and on those rare, hard-to-come-by holidays. Bangalore, as they call it, is the city of pubs. (And thank God for that!) The idea of spending your weekend in a pub, getting drunk with your buddies and unwinding after a hectic week at work is appealing to most of us. After all, what’s better than a couple of good drinks to bust your stress? This, unfortunately, doesn’t work every weekend. We crave variety. Human nature is such. (And there is no guessing why so many marriages end up in a divorce!) So, looking for a change of scene, a couple of friends and I set out on our much delayed trip to the Bannerghatta National Park. The idea wasn’t, at first, at all enticing, but I gave in for the sake of a change in routine.
The Park is about 20km from the city. So we booked a cab and got out early in the morning. Once there, we chose to go on the much-hyped safari tour, which promised a whole lot of tigers, lions, bears, et al roaming freely in the splendor of the jungle.
The safari tour was fun, I would say, at least for a first-timer like me. What played spoilt sport was the vehicle we were bundled into like a herd of sheep. It was a small van with dusty, unclear glass windows. Our view was further obstructed by the grills encased around the vehicle for the purpose of protection.
Of the animals I saw on the tour, the lioness with her cubs left me with the greatest sense of awe. She exuded beauty, pride, splendor, and magnificence. The bears were the funniest of the lot. There looked the laziest and the dirtiest --- kind of resembled the disheveled black pigs that are so often seen in a village. A group of them spread themselves on the road and would not budge in spite of the approaching vehicle. I also got to take a close look at the black bucks, and they sure are beautiful. They’ve splendid horns!
The emus, the Australian Love Birds, the really huge elephants, and the white tigers were among the best in the zoo. Never imagined I would enjoy animals so much, but I did. Not a bad experience at all.
The Park is about 20km from the city. So we booked a cab and got out early in the morning. Once there, we chose to go on the much-hyped safari tour, which promised a whole lot of tigers, lions, bears, et al roaming freely in the splendor of the jungle.
The safari tour was fun, I would say, at least for a first-timer like me. What played spoilt sport was the vehicle we were bundled into like a herd of sheep. It was a small van with dusty, unclear glass windows. Our view was further obstructed by the grills encased around the vehicle for the purpose of protection.
Of the animals I saw on the tour, the lioness with her cubs left me with the greatest sense of awe. She exuded beauty, pride, splendor, and magnificence. The bears were the funniest of the lot. There looked the laziest and the dirtiest --- kind of resembled the disheveled black pigs that are so often seen in a village. A group of them spread themselves on the road and would not budge in spite of the approaching vehicle. I also got to take a close look at the black bucks, and they sure are beautiful. They’ve splendid horns!
The emus, the Australian Love Birds, the really huge elephants, and the white tigers were among the best in the zoo. Never imagined I would enjoy animals so much, but I did. Not a bad experience at all.
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