When I am Falling Down

Lately, I've had a bad time. I've realized it's partly because there is nobody and nothing in this world other than to hurt. I knocked on every door to see the open field of human kindness and goodness. But there isn't anyone—not for sure.Will you, my dear, also close the door for me? I ask you.

When I am falling down,
Are you the only one
Who will lift me up?

When others hurt me,
Are you the only hope
Who will cheer me?

Don't bring me down
Just because others are doing so.
Don't hurt me.
Don't discard me like a scrap.
Don't make me nothing.
Don't throw me away like a thing.

When everyone mars me,
You are the hope I live for.

You too—
When I am down,
There is nobody for me.
Stand by my side.
Console me.
Don't admonish me like that.

I have a human heart.
When I am of no use,
Don't call me useless.
Don't say, "You are unwanted."

When everyone ignores me,
Don't ignore me.
I have nobody but you.

It's only you.
And you will be the one to care for me.
Who else will?

You are my savior.

And if you fall,
I will lift you
And take you to a safe place.

Old Out, New In: New Year Resolutions

From google

Will 2013 Be A Snaky Year?

 

Every New Year, people make resolutions they almost never keep. Yesterday evening, I tried to think of mine. After a lot of pondering (and a little napping), I couldn't land on anything concrete. There are many ideas, but the moment I remember that 2013 is the Year of the Female Snake, I forget all my resolutions. The snake is one of the most dreadful animals I have ever seen. I simply hate the sound of it. I cannot imagine being reborn as a snake. If I were, I would faint—then die again from looking at my own body. That's two deaths. No thanks.

I am the kind of jumper who looks for a nice flat rock to land smoothly. (Everyone is, really.) I cannot stick to New Year's resolutions. Sometimes promises and pledges fail miserably and utterly—like my attempt to give up ara last year. That lasted until breakfast. Anyway, it's good to treat resolutions as a kind of frontage or reminder for the year. So below are mine, for better or worse (probably worse).

1) I will try to be honest and a kind of well-bred brat, like before.

No, honestly. I have all these good words in my mind this year: polite, respectful, modest, courteous, refined, decent, cordial, affable. I hope to implement some of these in my life in a better way. I will try not to tell a single lie to anyone this year. Last year was a mixture of a few lies—because of the situation, of course. I will try to be true to myself, even when the world falls apart. But I don't know where this snake year will drag me. May it not be a snaky year? I pray. (If I fail by January 3rd, please pretend you didn't notice.)

2) I will try to be an understanding person.

If you fail, or if I fail, I will understand. Not a big deal. The greater part of life is built on understanding each other. Understanding here doesn't mean enlightenment. It just means thinking about others' problems and situations before acting. I pledge to my family that I will become more generous and considerate this year—if they pledge to do the same for me. To my children: I will understand, even if you pass shit on my forehead. And I hope you won't mind too much if I do the same to you. 

3) I will try to forget this contentious concept that every action has a reaction.

This thinking has brought me—and others—so many sicknesses. Tit for tat, going against people, becoming unruly—all that has to be minimized this year. I will mind my own business. Eat my own share, not others'. I will become more patient. But truly, I am already impatient of this snake year. I think something will happen to me. Is it good? Is it bad? Something. I pray. (Preferably not something involving a snake.)

4) I will try to cultivate more love for my family, parents, children, and others.

What makes the world go around? Gravity? Money? Certainly not, as far as my recent understanding of life goes. It's love. Hatred stops the world completely. I will oil the wheels of life with a better outlook. I will fire my gun hard so everyone can hear the messages of love. Goodness will be in the air. But I fear love might be one-sided. One-sided love is always madness. And I wonder if I might not become mad this year with love. Then again, madness runs in my family—it practically jogs.

5) I will hook near the warm fireside like a cat at home.

Enough is enough—that's what a protest banner read in India about a raped girl. A girl was terribly raped in Delhi, had an iron rod inserted, and was thrown naked on the road by evil bus passengers. And a few days ago, two Bhutanese women were molested by a bus conductor and driver in Bangalore. Very sad news. India doesn't feel safe. This isn't a good thing to talk about at New Year's—it's time to enjoy—but I am terribly affected by this brutal incident. It was a very bad ending to 2012. If ever I meet those goondas, I will fight to the last fight. For now, home feels like the only secure place. I'm scared my two little egg-like balls might also get smashed by evil-minded people for no reason. So enough traveling. Enough being away from home. Home is where the heart is—and also where my snacks are. Oh my dear, I hope you won't mind or get bored, because I will be in hibernation for a long time. Wake me only for food.

6) And last, but not least, the big resolution is…

Let me leave this blank. This detestable snake may never let me fulfill whatever I have in my mind. I am afraid this big dream will bury my whole life. But it's not a day's task, or a week's, or a month's, or a year's. It's a lifetime achievement. And the lifetime achievement of writing nonsense goes to Mr. New Year himself.

I say: New Year is no new year. It's old. Every New Year, my age becomes older and older. The antithesis of old is new, and old was once new, and new will become old. A moment comes and goes. The moment is always in movement. Christmas has just become "ex-Christmas." Years come and go—2012, 2013, 2014—but one's life cannot come and go. It goes forever. I don't know where. But our bodies become worthless as ash. Sad indeed.

For now, happy indeed to celebrate the New Year. So everyone, have a profuse year ahead. May your snake be friendly, your love be mutual, and your toilet singing be glorious.

Derrida and I

Jacques Derrida—I like this man. He says something like this: there is nothing meaningful as such. No logos, no center, no origin, no presence, no absence, no beginning, no end—and so on. Things exist in a buoyant state. The word "love" is not loved. It doesn't signify anything. It can mean hate, kill, dark, murder, etc. And the word "hate" could mean love—just as Gandhiji treated hate as love. There is no meaning as such. Everyone can deconstruct it. Free play is what I like.

This inquisitive Derrida says, "The center is not the center." Then where is the center? It is beyond—what he calls the "transcendental signified." Who knows if nothing lies beyond the hills? But something does lie there.

This seemingly crazy Frenchman was once asked in a philosophical discourse, "Where does authority lie?" His answer was a toddler's answer: "Authority always lies." Any talking baby could have answered that way. It's like asking him, "Where do baggy testicles lie?" You wouldn't be surprised to get the answer, "They always lie there." Not on your head, not on your cheeks—and you wouldn't like it if they lay there. So they always lie there. Warm and fit. Philosophy, at last, made comfortable.

But Derrida's metaphysical philosophy of absence and presence is not originally his own. Funnily enough, he admits that he created it himself. Yet it is there, and it is not there. Everything is nothing. Nothing is everything. I bluntly argue with Derrida and say he actually took it from my father. My father's philosophy of no logos, no eminent presence—same thing. The concept of no meaning, the transcendental, etc., was already there. My father's religious canons taught me, and my father got it from his father, my grandfather, and my grandfather got it from my great-grandparents, and so on back to time immemorial—no one knows exactly. If you want to know, you must go back to the origin of the world. But there's no question of going backward when we are living forward. So I will pass the same information—"the center is not the center"—without understanding much of it, to my son. And he will do the same to his son. That's what I call a tradition.

I like Derrida's free play, and I like free playing with words. Last time, I played with a girl after reading Derrida's "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences." "Big boobs," is what I said when she was crouching under a chair. She free-played the meaning and didn't talk to me for two days—just because of those two words. That almost killed me. Women always perform chemical analysis on what they hear. If you say "beautiful" to them, they think about "ugly." If you say "my god," they think they are goats. They are stupidly sensitive. They are the real Derridas. That is why I talk very little with women. They misunderstand and disrupt every golden droplet of a word and treat it as ironic.

Derrida's deconstructions have led me into many problems. A few days ago, I told an auto driver that the right is left and the left is right. "So where shall we go? To the center?" the driver asked. "No, there is no center. There is no right, no left, man," I joked. The auto driver looked at me curiously. "Are you kind of out of your senses?" "No, I'm saying, if there is no right, there is no left." That auto driver was blunt-headed. He shook his head, quite puzzled. "Even I am puzzled," I said to him at last. "Let's live simply," the good driver said. "Let's say it is right, and there is left. Why break your head over something without meaning?" "If you find the meaning, there is no meaning in it," I said. The good driver laughed and said, "What's that again? I think you need some medication very soon."

Hearing his remarks, a chilled feeling ran inside my heart. I lowered my head and ran toward my room, cursing Derrida under my breath. I was in a kind of aporia—unable to decide whether I was really mad or sane. I realized after two days of thinking that there was no reality in anything; it was all just construction. That auto driver would never be able to say whether I was sane or insane, because of the free play of meaning that I had taught him during our brief encounter. Or maybe he just went home, told his wife about the crazy passenger, and forgot me entirely. That meaning, too, is free to play.

What Is This Life With(out) Wife?

This is my slogan: Don’t beat your gf ‘hard’ please.

"You are the ugliest creature I have ever seen," she shouted.

"You look like the ugliest witch I have ever seen," he shouted.

"Go away. I don't want to see your face," she shouted again.

"Drop dead. I'm fed up with your face," he shouted.

And blah, blah, blah…

These are some of the words husbands and wives use while quarreling.

But wait… just wait one night. The next morning, everything turns opposite:

"You are the best creature I have ever seen," she hummed.

"You look like a princess to me," he hummed.

"Stay. I want to see your face every day," she hummed again.

"Live with me. I wish to see your face forever," he hummed.

And hum, hum, hum…

When you are young, you fight hard—both physically and verbally. But when you travel further and further down the road of marriage, your quarrels also move farther. (I haven't personally experienced that "further" or "farther," but I have seen plenty of it on my walk.) You look back at your life with your wife and develop a kind of hunchback. And strangely, you feel there was something right in all that hard fighting.

But now? There is no hatred. And there is no love either. It becomes like an overused battery. You have to put that battery in the hot sun for a while if you want to use it again. There is little to no energy left—not even enough to pull the loose trigger of a rusty gun. You become old wine. And then… there is life beyond just you and your wife: children. Very deep photocopies of father and mother. The parents become madder than they ever were before. That's when it's time to sit in the corner, pull your rosaries, and listen to bad remarks from those bad children.

Let me leave on a light note, my old guns.

A man asked his new girlfriend, "Am I the first man you have ever loved?"

"Of course," she answered. "Why do men always ask the same question?"

So you see, you are not the only victims of women. Women are victims of men too. Everyone knows some men like extra things to shine their guns.