Venus, planet of love

To all the unfinished drafts and stories.

An anthology of the unwritten thoughts.

⛓

May 7, 2022

Scorching heat in the afternoon and storms at dusk, at  nightfall, the winds have calmed but still go on, incessantly. My name smudged incomprehensibly, mixes with the light of day. Thorny thickets and mazes of madness, the mildly malevolent wraith of the mildew valley. Dancing around in the crooked forest. “You shall love your crooked neighbor with your crooked heart.” 

⛓

April 15, 2022

I'm nihilistic with a touch of poetry. Optimism does not wander in these environs.

⛓

March 30, 2022

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a high school student in possession of literature is worryingly prone to emotional rollercoasters on a regular basis. From the jovial juvenilia in January to the phantoms of fear in February, I have no choice but to accept that I make the list.

March, however, retains the spectre of the God of War, its wrath and its destruction intact. The month-long war between the former-KGB-spy-who-must-not-be-named and the rest of the world still rages on.

Keeping up with the theme of rapidly altering states of perception, we present before you, Questionable Quandaries (named misleadingly). An honorary mention of the subjects that I keep putting off for later, when I'm in the mood:

• A symbolic reading of the myth of Icarus

• A synopsis of Jane Eyre in view of symbolism and the mystical in literature

• The absurd in literature: Murakami & More

• Historically fantastical: Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie & Gabriel Garcia Marquez

• A history of the fall of Rome, in free verse

• Eulogy to True Love, and other such sweet lies

• A day in the life of a professor, in excruciating detail and with ✨drama✨

• A remembrance of my hometown

⛓

February 23, 2022

Winter was at its most delicate, holding on with freezing fingers still, but never fully in grasp of change. The cold had begun to thaw, giving life to what was lifeless.

Tiny buds began to form on the barren boughs. Some trees regained their green canopies before winter truly left its kingdom.

Soon enough, Groundhog's day and Basant Panchami showed themselves at my unyielding threshold, politely reminding my drowsy self to leave the comforts of the blanket, and step out into the daylight.

The months of hibernation were over!

Spring had taken back its crown.

Even in the pleasant embrace of spring, winter soon showed evidence of its deceptive nature. Some days, the wind chilled novel blossoms to their core, seething in vengeful envy.

On one such day, I wandered out of my place of rest, into the gradual darkening of day.

A peculiar stillness had taken hold of the familiar, marring it into unfamiliarity.

It was windier than usual, and my loosely done braid felt the assault immediately.

Stray locks of hair waved like sentient pirate sails.

Turning a corner, I felt the wind expand and grow stronger in the newfound emptiness.

It was the hour between delayed dusk and nightfall. There was no moon. Tapering streetlights with their heads bent in shame regarded my approach with unsheathed dread.

⛓

January 5, 2022

Isn't it strange

How we have marriages around an altar

And we light the funeral pyre when someone dies

Fire is involved in both

One is for the cementing of vows

Other is for breaking all worldly ties

Strange

In both marriage and death

There is a completion of the rites of passage

In theory, marriage is the completion of your quest for co-dependency.

Death too, is the completion of your time on earth

Fire gives us that finality

A source of permanent completion

Chemical change, irreplaceable

Now you can argue that

All marriages don't complete your quest, some are catastrophic

Or that some people die early without completing their story arcs

But that is where inevitability comes to play

Nothing is permanent

So we elude the fact with fire

We give finality and completion to a human endeavor

By warmth and smoke and embers

We associate warmth with comfort

A comfortable completion of our rite of passage

And that's why logs must burn when the knot is tied; and ties must burn when the man has died

Instant rhyme

Author's Note

Half a year is already gone, and it feels like a montage of fragmented moments. Through the snippets of memories from the past two years, getting way too ambitious in March and what seems to be an equivalent to shower thoughts, I felt too weighed down by the individual fragments to actually grasp the entirety of the flow of time. The little notes that died unspoken in google docs and notepads have now been put to rest hereafter. As for the collages and title images, I have no idea why I made them.

PS: The title comes from the Mitski song 'Nobody'.

Till the actual post for June is out, au revoir!