Random Scribblings

Numbness of Life

noreply@blogger.com (Jyoti Mishra) — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 11:15:00 +0000

"I guess I should have reacted the way most of the other girls were, but I couldn't get myself to react. I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo."
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

How often we become so immune to the others sufferings and circumstances, in the hustle bustle of life, job and everything, we all at one point of time become so hardened.

Uncharted Waters

noreply@blogger.com (Jyoti Mishra) — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 16:48:00 +0000

“The one who falls and gets up is stronger than the one who never tried. Do not fear failure but rather fear not trying.”― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

Feelings

noreply@blogger.com (Jyoti Mishra) — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 16:31:00 +0000

It's often just enough to be with someone. I don't need to touch them. Not even talk. A feeling passes between you both. You're not alone.

~Marilyn Monroe

Slow, but Sweet

noreply@blogger.com (Jyoti Mishra) — Sat, 04 Feb 2023 07:26:00 +0000

Slow, soulful living is all about coming back to your truth, the only guidance you’ll ever need. When you rush, you have the tendency to follow others. When you bring in mindfulness, you have the power to align with yourself.

Kris Franken, The Call of Intuition

There lies sweetness in the slowness of being. That lazy morning on a weekend might be the best way to recharge our minds. With each passing day, a layer of complexity adds to out lives, one more day of interactions, experiences, wellness and trauma. All adds to this unending pot of memories. Some are happening and some are frustrating. Each day is that way, a fleeting fragments of memories that adds in our lives.

Slowing down occasionally is a sweet thing.

Yesteryears

noreply@blogger.com (Jyoti Mishra) — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 16:53:00 +0000

The past is a candle at great distance: too close to let you quit, too far to comfort you.

Amy Bloom, Away

Floating Clouds

noreply@blogger.com (Jyoti Mishra) — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 16:48:00 +0000

There was a star riding through clouds one night, & I said to the star, 'Consume me'.

Virginia Woolf, The Waves

Standing tall on a rooftop

noreply@blogger.com (Jyoti Mishra) — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 16:43:00 +0000

Nothing Ever Becomes Real 'Til It Is Experienced

noreply@blogger.com (Jyoti Mishra) — Thu, 05 Dec 2019 16:01:00 +0000

"Nothing ever becomes real 'til it is experienced."
― John Keats

So Often It Wanders

noreply@blogger.com (Jyoti Mishra) — Thu, 05 Dec 2019 15:56:00 +0000

We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us. Even while the earth sleeps we travel. We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered.

― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

How shall I judge what to do in such times?

noreply@blogger.com (Jyoti Mishra) — Wed, 27 Nov 2019 18:09:00 +0000

“It is hard to be sure of anything among so many marvels. The world is all grown strange...How shall a man judge what to do in such times?'

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

How shall I judge what to do in such times?

Floating clouds resembling things
Feeling of fragrance springs
Activating a dormant space
Like receiving a faint signal
I remember with love and ache
From a lost satellite
today

Peeping in to the yesteryears
A sudden throbbing I fear
Scores of things that gone by
On pinning down each evening
Carefree days beside you
Is all that I yen for
today

My hands grew so big
Yours shriveled down a bit
We both are aging apart
Pieces of old puzzle play
Unfolding slowly each day
But nothing makes sense
today

Many things to confirm
No reference for the same
Of all the roads I have gone
Each needs you by my side
Never admitting this aloud
As it may hurt our pride
today

What difference
I say yes or no
Bittersweet answer
'Yes' makes sense
'No' is better
Both are true
today

Circle of Choices

noreply@blogger.com (Jyoti Mishra) — Wed, 10 Apr 2019 16:52:00 +0000

If the past year were offered me again/and choice of good and ill before me set/would I accept the pleasure with the pain/or dare to wish that we had never met? ― Augusta Gregory offers an insight into the doubts we have to fight, choices that we have to make, every day in our daily lives. We keep on checking our decisions, our wrongdoing, actions, and reactions. We keep track of all, and continuously doubt ourselves in all waking hours. To err is such a common happenstance that it is quite natural to doubt our choices especially when such choices are made by rebelling against the world. "Why did I come here? I thought. Why is it always only a matter of choosing between something bad and something worse?" ― Charles Bukowski. Is choice an easy task? What a battle that goes in our heads when we are faced with tough choices. It rips our heads apart; constant fear and doubt eat our innards. Some say it's all fate, is it? If it's fate then what about the tussle that a person has to go through while raking the brain for something that's already decided. I find John Galsworthy's idea of life and fate "Life calls the tune, we dance" little contradictory.

Sometimes choices are just thrusted upon us like a gust of storm. We aren't prepared for it. We may never be able to prepare for it. But at one point in time, such days come when you have to sit and decide, act and react to situations beyond your control. We make choices, but how far they are correct, who knows. In such circumstances, you are just struggling with all the noise "How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it and why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?" ― Søren Kierkegaard. It drives us mad. The possibilities and probabilities are numerous. To be able to think of all, and then there's a voice in your head that will keep telling you - "Make your choice, adventurous Stranger/Strike the bell and bide the danger/or wonder, till it drives you mad/what would have followed if you had." ― C.S. Lewis, the Magician's Nephew. Making choice against the wishes of the people we love is again a battle of the highest order. The valour and courage required in such instances are beyond any measure. There are factions in our head that will keep on juggling back and forth. Deep inside it is nothing but a simmering pothole of confusion and nonsense blabber that grows into a lake of fire. Sylvia Plath's struggle within seems so relevant –"choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between." It indeed is tough to make a choice, to assess all and arrive at a logical decision which is acceptable to ourselves. In the end, we have to live with our choices.

When everyday tripping like a battlefield

When you’re up against your own shield

Armour’s full of dust and holes

Turn into Achilles’ heel

Running in the dark from pole to pole

Devoid of life a dying soul

Sayings numb you around

Own clan is pushing you down

Folks keen on pulling you apart

Judging top and down from afar

All ears have gone deaf and eyes blind

Love in life leaves you in a bind

Screaming voice full of craze and sound

How fast does that heart pound

Home when turns into a battleground

You are bound to lose if you win

And the other way around.

Man got to tell himself he understand.

noreply@blogger.com (Jyoti Mishra) — Mon, 25 Mar 2019 16:39:00 +0000

In the world I am
Always a stranger
I do not understand its language
It does not understand my silence.
― Bei Dao

How difficult it is to understand others or yourself? Probably, it is not as easy as the question sounds. As we grow up it becomes rather hard and inconvenient to understand a point of view which differs from your own version. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in The Little Price rightly says “Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them”. This complex process of following someone else’s line of thought is sometimes tiring as well as frustrating. At times it is challenging as well. Different people will have different perspective of the same thing. Ernest Baker in The Denial of Death says “When we are young we are often puzzled by the fact that each person we admire seems to have a different version of what life ought to be, what a good man is, how to live, and so on. If we are especially sensitive it seems more than puzzling, it is disheartening”. It indeed is puzzling as well as disheartening. Our mind works in mysterious ways, how and why a thought will creep in, and what kind of shape it will take, isn’t an easy thing to understand.

As far as understanding flies

As deeper as it delves

Meandering as it moves

I sit on the rooftop
Reflecting

Trying incessantly

Wavering
Faltering
Succeeding

Failing
To
Understand.

As A Ponderer Ponders

noreply@blogger.com (Jyoti Mishra) — Sat, 22 Dec 2018 17:21:00 +0000

For I have always been a seeker, a dreamer, and a ponderer on seeking and dreaming...
― H.P. Lovecraft, Night Ocean et autres nouvelles

Standing tall on a rooftop
Observing city skyline
Sundown and birds flying by
Labyrinth of highways
Rush of wheeled machines
Everyone's on move
Running to somewhere
From someone, feeling
Like being in quicksand
Continuously reminding myself
Gazing at prospects
Of future to foresee
Brooding over past
and its perplexities
Where do these
Ever changing roads lead?
Forwards or backwards
Inwards or outwards
Promise and possibilities
Doubt and uncertainties
Standing tall on a rooftop
I ponder

Uncertainty of Humanity

noreply@blogger.com (Jyoti Mishra) — Fri, 22 Jun 2018 14:44:00 +0000

On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

― George Orwell

Humanity

Player of cruel jokes

For a while it ponders

All wrongs and favors

Deeply it seeps, intently

Many hearts is pokes

Then, it wanders

Across wide plains

Meandering along facts

Seeking attention.

Humanity

Often fizzles out

Sometimes, by choice

It just ignores

Everything.

An Instant Is Enough

noreply@blogger.com (Jyoti Mishra) — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 16:07:00 +0000

Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

They say an instant is enough
To act, commit, decide, express
Years in making
Memories of merged moments
Trickles down to a second
A tipping point
Things go either down or
Soars all the way up
Many such probable paths
Some crowded, some lonely
Ordinary instants
Endless possibilities
They say an instant is enough
To react, desist, defer, conceal
Years in making
Still, ordinarily
An instant is enough

How many people I've looked

noreply@blogger.com (Jyoti Mishra) — Thu, 22 Mar 2018 15:47:00 +0000

I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen.
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

Do I look up to you
Struggle for words
Frames and formations
Do I overlook everything else
None of me makes any sense
Nothing of you makes sense
Paucity of passions
Empty of emotions
I travel with so many
Many faces I've known
Nothing of them I know
Do you look up to me
and find words
Does a glance of me
Gives away any sense
or everything is lost upon
Remembrance

Has It Always Been Like this?

noreply@blogger.com (Jyoti Mishra) — Sun, 17 Sep 2017 05:19:00 +0000

“We're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Light That Failed

Has it always been like this?
Such silences seeped in between
Puzzled pause amidst breaths
Weaving of ways and means
What did you really say?
Layered hints seeped in between
Roaming in renewed realms
Chasing pleasures she said
Has it always been like this?
Absurd demands seeped in between
Memories look so different now
As if seen from another time
Why are you not getting this?
Pure intent seems lost in between.

I dream my painting and I paint my dream.

noreply@blogger.com (Jyoti Mishra) — Sun, 16 Jul 2017 06:59:00 +0000

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.

― Sylvia Plath

Am I chasing dreams in circles?
One ends another starts
Beginning after the end
I fancy many faces
Each peculiar than other
To live so many lives
Each different than another
Can I swim in all the oceans?
Not all at once, but
Maybe one at a time.

Yes I crave all of it
Lights sounds visuals and touches
No strings of times and spaces
Across the length and breadth
Height thickness contrast and bright
All of it runs in circles
Concentric and conjoined
Can I mill around them all?
Not all at once, but
Maybe one at a time.

Who Designed It?

noreply@blogger.com (Jyoti Mishra) — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 13:06:00 +0000

“What kind of idea are you? Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accomodates itself to society, aims to find a niche, to survive; or are you the cussed, bloody-minded, ramrod-backed type of damnfool notion that would rather break than sway with the breeze? – The kind that will almost certainly, ninety-nine times out of hundred, be smashed to bits; but, the hundredth time, will change the world.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

Does really,
really this world conspires
against all your gut
against all that you hold dear

may be
sometimes

who designed it ?
where it came from ?
was it designed that way ?
or it became over the time
to coerce all in to
patterns and standards
from where it came?
all the diktats
all the rules and rates

can we really forget
what is dear to us
follow another being's path?
or we make a niche.

In Search Of Reasons

noreply@blogger.com (Jyoti Mishra) — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 13:31:00 +0000

Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to was never there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place... Nothing outside you can give you any place... In yourself right now is all the place you've got.
― Flannery O'Connor

One strange bearded priest
stared from far corner east
why get so lost in past ?
he seemed to ask, if only
to drink and forget at last
Stack all priorities up
one on another on top

Where's everyone off to ?

Priest turned to ask again
if everyone indeed in pain
where all these paths lead ?
he seemed to ask, think and see
each road if differently bleeds
can multiple faces be of help
layers on layers if are draped

Is this place a circus?
An enormous merry go round

After centuries of screening
Priest is still there staring
are those red sandstone eyes ?
As if it is trying,to say I've
seen it all, heard it all
still it stops and pries humanity
can it be saved
salvaged from depravity

Questions posed for answers
search is for reasons instead
For all the posed questions
Answers.

If Only One Could See

noreply@blogger.com (Jyoti Mishra) — Tue, 07 Feb 2017 06:42:00 +0000

I fear it is my lot, to bide my days in hunchbacked thought, to find what I forgot.

~Roman Payne

So many lives one can see
Standing lone in some balcony
Each hole teeming with
lights, many lives of
varying intensity
something's amiss
If only one could see

We Stuck, Nor Breath Nor Motion

noreply@blogger.com (Jyoti Mishra) — Sun, 10 Jul 2016 14:22:00 +0000

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge,

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Stuck in a comfortable place

No guess what happens next

With a clear view of jam ahead

So much, much to do instead

Still sucked at the same spot

To stay put or to honk horns

One after another, another

Another one day goes by

Moves with zero sound

Midst music all around

Direction signs all day long

To move dead straight ahead

It seems like moving, or

Moving got stuck in a place.

Eternal Sunset, Empty Eyeballs

noreply@blogger.com (Jyoti Mishra) — Wed, 13 Apr 2016 17:28:00 +0000

The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.”
― Fernando Pessoa

So empty these eyeballs I see

Dry of imaginations mysteries

Do they feel what I feel?

Plain truth lives deceits

Audience do they seek in me

To witness some silent speech

Far off can they heave?

Into vastness of eternities

Empty eyeballs

Eyeballs emptied

Life Evolves, Memories Not

noreply@blogger.com (Jyoti Mishra) — Sun, 11 Oct 2015 16:11:00 +0000

The past beats inside me like a second heart.

― John Banville, The Sea

Good times, when they are gone

Leave a sweet taste behind

Alive still, still in my heart

Like a story in rewind

Collapsed bridge long back

Gone days never come back

Little of me still attached

Those voices and sounds

Little of me still cares

If things are still around

Fossilized memories

Unwashed imprints

They remain, always

A good kind of pain

World is in flux

Always changing

Life evolves

Memories not.

Why Drown This Wilderness ?

noreply@blogger.com (Jyoti Mishra) — Sun, 13 Sep 2015 14:47:00 +0000

In my errant life I roamed to learn the secrets of women and men, of gods and dreams. I lived in wealth and poverty, in fame and calamity. I saw every country of our world, I lived a thousand lives. Many lives I spent, other lives I squandered, for in my life I never traveled, all I did was wander.
― Roman Payne

Why drown?

this wilderness

lives inside

so patiently

this emptiness

yearning

savagery

Why let go ?

of all these

What connection so strong?

Why let go?

Why walk?

on this highland

all of inside

runs constantly

this eagerness

curiosity

innovatory

Why not hold on ?

to all these

There's so much to see

Why stop and rest and be not free?