Scars and Scarves

 Scars are lovely. They are a proof of many things. They are proof that you have lived. And Healed. That you have been in a battle, or at least an incident. And that you have fought and you have survived. I think that if you have scars it means that you are a brave, hardworking person. Who has endured wounds and pain and has kept on going anyway. I think that it is better to have scars than to have a smooth, untouched, unfettered surface of a skin... that endorses beauty products. If anything, scars enhance your beauty. Especially if you are a woman, in a battlefield of men.  Especially if you have earned it fighting a battle. And even if you have lost the battle, you still have your scar. You have won that scar. And you are still alive. It means that you still have another battle in you.
Scarves are lovely too. They prove nothing really, they do nothing, other than comfort you of course. Or caress you on a windy evening. Carry your tears and maybe snot. A scarf has beautified  your neck, and it has tied your hair. You are not just an accessory. In the grand scheme of things you are a memoir. A favourite colour. A gift. A symbol of strength and beauty. A scarf sometimes carries blood .. when used to to tie a wound. Sweat.. if it is tied around the forehead when working in the sun. A scarf around the wrist could mean loss and pain and vulnerability. Still, it is also a symbol of strength and solidarity. Because, maybe, that scarf is hiding a scar behind it. And maybe when that scarf flies off into the wind, the scar shines. It shines into the night that you will survive and the next morning, it will be the morning itself.   It will be the gift you have given yourself. Another day. Another flight. It could be another scar, or a scarf fragrant with your breath. And your breath will still linger in its folds when you decide, enough is enough.  And you pick up that scarf and tear it to tiny pieces... As many pieces as your heart broke into when he left. Or when they did not believe in you. Or when your hard work did not pay off.  And all those pieces will fly off into the breeze as ashes of your long lost love. You thank the love and you thank the ashes. Most of all you thank your scars. For they will always be the remainder and the reminder of what you have endured and what you can endure. You do not need to carry the ashes any more. The scar is enough. The scarf will take care of the rest.

The Slate is Blank

The slate is blank

Because it is ready

For you

It has held your face of ignorance

It has read your ambition

It knows restraint

It has waited before

And will wait again

It is the companion

You always have sought

It has already accepted

What you have thought

It has reflected nothing

Only suggested,

'You may carve yourself on me.

I will not eat your words,

If you don't eat yours.'

When i Read The Catcher in the Rye

A compilation of some CathcherInTheRye art

What I read most recently  isn't new at all. It is, in fact, a classic we are all too familiar with -- J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. It is a classic and a misfit at the same time. It has the quintessential spunk of an adolescent growing up in America. The narration is completely unpredictable and in first person. The protagonist, Caulfield is intense and reserved, yet he cannot help telling you his story. What I love and connect with, in the book, is the rustic feel of a rough emotional life that is consistent throughout. 

Why, Caulfield is your everyday loser. You wouldn't think twice about him, unless you really want to. He is certainly not one of the most impressive characters you would come across, in literature or otherwise. Yet when you finish the book, you know he has rubbed off a little bit of himself on you, with his intense cynicism, want of affection and search for someone who is not phoney. Looking back, I realize that the irony of this book/ Caulfield’s life is that the high point IS the low point and vice versa. At places, I found that the narration dragged on a bit but I was also aware that it is Caulfield’s natural state of mind. 

Some people find it surprising that Salinger, who was easily twice as old as Caulfield when he wrote the book, has managed to dole out a narrative that is entirely inward looking into his protagonist's mind. While I am amazed at his style too, I kind of also get where he is coming from. This book does not pretend to be anything but itself. It makes no promises and doesn't bother to make you hopeful or anything. It is just one long ramble from start to end. Like a really long phone conversation you'd have with an old friend. Like this e.g. When he's telling you about how he hates going to visit his brother's tomb in the cemetery, he'll say, 

' ...  All the visitors could get in their cars and turn on their radios and all and then go someplace nice for dinner—everybody except Allie (his brother). I couldn't stand it. I know it's only his body and all that's in the cemetery, and his soul's in Heaven and all that crap, but I couldn't stand it anyway. I just wished he wasn't there.'

or this, his simplistic solution to all his problems 
'I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes... Everybody'd think I was just a poor deaf-mute bastard and they'd leave me alone . . .'

There are so many instance like these, funny and sad at the same time. You want to laugh at his naive wise-cracks and you feel for how how lonesome this kid is. I think, I might just come back to Caulfield from time to time - perhaps when I find an overwhelming sense of emptiness taking over me and I need someone to relate to. Caulfield etches a definite frame in your mind, for himself. Especially when in the ends he says, 

'That's all I'm going to tell you about. I could probably tell you what I did after I went home, and how I got sick and all, ... but I don't feel like it, I really don't ...' 

The Half Door

Half a door's a shadow 

Half the door is mine

Half a thought means nothing

But you can keep what you find

There are stories untold

Half written

Half lost in time

Scuttling through the hours

And doors

And many matters in the grind

Need they be seized or held?

Or waited upon so that 

They alight on your shoulders and palms

And be etched in another rhyme

Ready to walk the line

Ready to keep the time

Yours and mine

Worth every penny and dime

And a Retort

And then, while looking for some related  writings online, I discovered an interesting retort to Bukowski's spirited 'Don't Do It' -  On Writing. A valid argument eh?

Don't buy it. This is Charles Bukowski telling Charles Bukowski how to write like Charles Bukowski. He's guilty himself of all those sins he's admonishing you against as an aspiring writer. 

You might have a natural inborn talent as a writer - or, for that matter, as a plumber or a portrait painter - but that's not the way to bet. You can't rely on raw talent. It's nice to be a genius of course (did somebody else use that phrase?) but most people have to learn their trade or profession.

Thomas Gray spent a lifetime rewriting and polishing his poems. His "Elegy in a Country Churchyard" took him over 20 years. It is held by many to be the best poem in the language - not the most popular, a dubious honour held by Kipling's "If..." Anyway Gray's Elegy didn't just come bursting out of him: he ground it out over decades. He studied the poetry of the ancients, he wrote Horatian and Pindaric Odes, he learned his craft.

In fact, when you look at the lives of most poets closely, most of them learned their craft by studying other writers. There have been a few successful primitives, but most of their efforts are merely quaint. You can't just sit down and write, unless you're willing to judge what you've written harshly and compare your work with the work of others. 

Just as Science depends on the findings of previous scientists, on Newton and Faraday for instance, so poetry depends on the body of literature that has gone before it. You can't depart from the norm unless you understand thoroughly what the norm is. You can't be a rebel unless you know what you're rebelling against. 

Remember there is and was only one Charles Bukowki. Don't try to be him.

                                                                                                                         

The Stranger's Gift

The woman sat alone in the train. The tinkle of bells and high pitched screams of children clinging to colorful merry-go-round ponies nearby got on her nerves. She dug out a pair of ear-muffs from a soiled red fur bag, she had stolen last Christmas. Mumbling to herself, she put them on as she watched children hopping on to the pink toy train. Her grey dress was torn at many places and had a pattern of dirty yellow flowers on it. Her hair had shades of grey too, thick sticky tufts reaching a little below her ears.

The train was full of children chattering excitedly. Two scrawny boys and a tiny girl with ponytails sat in her bogie, on the seat opposite to hers. She stretched her legs on her otherwise empty seat and smiled as the train started with a ‘toot’. Scratching her mud caked cheek she turned back to peep out of a tiny window. The bespectacled boy, about eight years of age, poked her with a stick and quickly looked away. The woman turned to stare at the children and grinned revealing three white teeth, two brown ones and some black space.

‘Oye’ she poked a finger at the little girl.
‘Wat your name?’
The girl frowned.
‘Oye, my name Bread Pit. He he he he.’
The boy who had poked her did so again and said, looking very proud, ‘Haven’t you forgotten to use verbs Miss Bread Pit?’
Another boy sitting beside him nudged him lightly and both laughed. The woman joined in their laughter. Then shuffled out a colourful but broken toy truck and offered it to the bespectacled boy. The train came to a halt. The children scampered out of the train, one of them clutching the toy, and ran to the adults, who stood waiting for them at the exit point.

The boy who held the truck was talking to a young woman, perhaps in her late twenties, pointing to the woman in the train. She took the toy from the boy who looked unhappy about it. ‘She is not Santa.’ The young woman, probably his mother, was saying. ‘Plus, it’s broken! We’ll buy you a new one. Now c’mon stop sulking.’

The woman walked upto the woman in the train. The latter extended her hand for a handshake and smiled. The younger woman took a step back and reluctantly curled her lips into what seemed like a smile. She then bent down, placed the truck on the ground and began to walk back to where the boy stood. The old woman looked down at the truck lying on the ground then opened her red bag and began looking for something. She found what she wanted, held it out through the door and shouted, ‘Oy.’ The young woman was holding the boy’s hand and both were turning to go. The voice from the train came again, this time louder, ‘Oooyyy’. The woman and the boy stopped to look at her. The hag in the train was holding out a shiny blue brand new car. She stuck out her other hand from the window and made a ‘come here’ gesture. Just then the train said ‘toot’ again and began to move along the tracks.

The boy waved to her and smiled. His mother held his hand and took him away. The woman held out the blue car, till the boy was out of sight. The broken toy truck stood there, unnoticed, untouched, alone.

Corners

Corners of the heart
Quiet surprises
Unfolding knots
Of golden strings

New found delight of perhaps
And abstract musings
Evening song and the red sun
Of sinking possibilities

Children bouncing on
The trampoline of hope
Just below a building
Of tinted glass

Have you ever wondered
Why it is that the swing
Never took you high enough
To touch the sky

It’s a peculiar feeling this
Of wanting
To dissolve into the air
With the scent of a Jasmine

To walk without the walls
Of invisible cages
And fly into the arms
Of infinite horizons

‘Tis the greedy ears, they pine
For the symphony of notes
To drown the voices muffled
By the noises of chemical wonders

Were it not for the pining
Undiscovered would lie
The dusts of treasure
In trunks of wood and metal

Corners of the heart
See with open eyes
The wonders of a grain
That garners relish

From spirited incubation
In the womb of an idea
And innocuous sprouting
Of pulses of passion

Somewhere, a lantern
Whispers to the night
An aspiration to break
At the shore of his destiny


Nisha Joshi