The Idea-smithy

My own place!

One full year (and some) later, I have my own domain. Read the further travails of my mind at the new Idea-smithy at http://www.theideasmithy.com.

My new address

The workshop has a new address.

Drop into the new Idea-smithy. My other blogs are also at their same addresses.wordpress.com.

See you there!

Allergies

Bad telephone connections make for funny situations. Bad hearing and worse imagination leads to….umm, I’ll leave it to you to judge…with this conversation between two of my friend-bloggers.

Selma: I’ll tell you a secret about IdeaSmith
Brad: Tell!
Selma: She’s allergic to KON….
Brad: Allergic to condoms? That must be inconvenient…
Selma: No, stupid….allergic to …..ON
Brad: Porn? She doesn’t sound like a prude to me.
Selma: Knucklehead! I said she’s allergic to CORN!!!!

And seeing how I’m the butt of this joke, I shouldn’t be posting it but I desperately need to up the fun quotient of this blog….seems like I’m getting too weepy even for my own taste. My allergy isn’t all that bad after all.

Q.E.D.

He: Are you attracted to me?
She: Do you want me to say that I am?
He: Actually I know you are. I just want to hear it from you.
She: I am only attracted to arrogant bullies who treat me badly. Do you want to change your statement?
He: No.
She: Exactly.

A 'what-if' moment

Sometimes you look back at a particular time in your life
Some key desicion pondered over and taken
Some vital thought that changed the course of your life, only you didn't realise it then
Maybe one face appears in your memories of that time

And you wonder
That undefinable something...
Yet unmistakable...smells like romance, feels like mystery, sounds like sentiment
All you can call it is a 'what-if' moment

If we knew that every single thing we had done was right, there'd be no hope left.
And nothing interesting to live for.

Mind-readers

Maybe I can read your mind
Maybe you are thinking what I want you to
Maybe I'm saying what you want me to

Its a game nevertheless
Just don't know who's playing who
Me and you?
Or life with itself
With us, two pawns
Figments of each other's imagination

You know and I know
Its always good to talk to you
And hear you speak my thoughts before I think them

Familiar stranger

As the snow flies
On a cold and gray Chicago morning
A poor little baby child is born in the ghetto

And his mama cries
cause if theres one thing that she dont need
Its another hungry mouth to feed in the ghetto

People, dont you understand
The child needs a helping hand
Or he'll grow to be an angry young man some day

Take a look at you and me
Are we too blind to see
Do we simply turn our heads and look the other way

Well the world turns
And a hungry little boy with a runny nose plays in the street
As the cold wind blows in the ghetto

And his hunger burns
So he starts to roam the streets at night
And he learns how to steal and he learns how to fight in the ghetto

Then one night in desperation
A young man breaks away
He buys a gun, steals a car, tries to run, but he dont get far

And his mama cries
As a crowd gathers round an angry young man
Face down on the street with a gun in his hand in the ghetto

As her young man dies,
On a cold and gray chicago morning,
Another little baby child is born in the ghetto

-- "In the ghetto" by Elvis Presley

And nothing has changed. Some of us have seen hunger only through the windows of air-conditioned cars. But we see terrorism and crime up close and personal when someone snatches our wallets, when our mobile phones get picked, when a bomb explodes and someone we know dies. And then we turn around and point to the culprit.

How do we know him? Oh, he isn't a stranger. We've seen him beg for a coin while he gives us a smile for free, we've snarled at him as he wiped a grimy cloth across the car windshield, occasionally we saw him smile painfully in the corner of a postcard that our socialite friend mailed us for her birthday and assuaged her conscience with. Its been a while since we saw him last....and he's changed a bit. But he's the same guy alright...and he's no stranger to us.

You and me? We created him.

Disconnect

She said, "I miss sitting next to you."
He said, "I miss sleeping next to you."

She turned away, thinking "That's all it ever was to him. All those conversations, all those memories, he never was listening or even being himself with me."

He stood there, staring into thin air as always, thinking "She never really understood, did she? I said sleeping next to, not sleeping with."

Staggering

Some days I'm so weary with the constant struggles.
Fight for a seat, run to be on time, fight to inch forward, fight for your rights.
Fight for time, fight for space, fight for your reason to be.
Fight to be yourself.

There are times I'm so tired, so bone-weary, so exhausted that I am suspended, zombie-like in time and space. I can see myself moving but I can't feel my feet touch the ground. I can hear that familiar voice cranking out tired and overused phrases but the mind that manufactures them seems to have gone missing.

This very instant, I'm reeling under the after-effects of adrenalin overdose. Fatigue makes me sleepless, stress makes me depressed. Is it worth it? Is anyone worth this? Is anything worth it at all?

Ideas, ideals....those don't keep you happy. Happiness is like those fleeting moments...hardly worth chasing after even. And peace? That's what seperates the haves from the have-nots in my world. In every other way priveleged and accomplished I may be, but I'll stay a beggar inside my world.

Phoenix city

We live

We awaken

We run

We work

We worry

We laugh

We frown

We jostle

We cram

We breathe...just about

We hear

We gape

We jump

We run

We carry

We drip....blood, sweat and tears

We walk

We sleep

We awaken

We survive

...................

We awaken

We run

Judgement call

She thinks I'm some kind of a tramp for having had more than one boyfriend. She's willing to let a 22-year-old friendship go to hell over it. She's judging me. And I'm falling woefully short of her exacting standards.

Well, she falls short of mine too. Her lack of ambition, lack of desire to do something more with her life than be Mrs.Housewife, closed-minded perceptions about religion and no-discussion-about-it values appall me. Well, she's 'not good enough' in my book either. That's revenge. But really, if she hadn't judged me before, would I have judged her too? Yes, I think I would.

Like I've judged all the people in my world. I have friends, acquaintances, loves, family. Everyone has passed my acid test and I've passed theirs. Suddenly I realize that everyone who is close to me has a strong opinion, a job or a desire to do something constructive with their life and a willingness to listen to other points of view. It isn't just things I like in other people. These are traits that I demand in people for them to have access to my world. And I have the gate pass to the lives of several other people, whose criterion I fulfil.

Where does insecurity stem from? I'm afraid I'll lose the people I love. I'm afraid they'll stop loving me. I'm afraid they'll see that I'm not as smart or witty or accomplished or nice or fun or loyal as they think. I'm also afraid that I'll find out that they are not as much of what I think they are.

Mother Teresa said, "When we start judging, we stop loving." And who would know more about loving than she did?

Maybe I never have loved anyone before. Or been loved.

Sawadasee Thailand!

I am in Thailand this week. I don't think I know any bloggers here, but if I'm wrong, please feel free to correct me and get in touch! Do I sound unusually clipped and formal? Perhaps its because I'm spending this entire week away from my safe world of family and friends and only in the company of the people I work with.

There are masks all of us wear and juggle. I'm wearing my 'office' face till next Sunday. It isn't necessarily bad.

Right now I'm sitting at the comp alone and typing this out, while most of my colleagues are out on a break. Some have put up their feet for a rest, someone is smoking outside in the lobby, someone is reading and one of them is missing her husband. Or perhaps I'm wrong. After all, none of them know what I'm doing right now. Or that I'm thinking about each of them and what he or she is doing.

This is going to be a week of plenty of new experiences. I am in a country I've never visited before, in a professional and personal setting that I am not familiar with. New food, new language, new culture but also new ideas, new people, new etiquettes. And in the midst of it all, the thoughts. I'm on a watch-only, think-later mode. So I'll try to blog as often as possible, not with well-thought out posts but just things that rattle around in my head all day.

Whew...it feels good to spit all that out.

Seeing stars

Where we are similar, we are nearly identical
We can tell what the other is going to say, beforehand
and yet, monotony seems light-years away
Because where we are different,
We are poles apart

Love was once like a gigantic wave of mercury sweeping over me
And painting me silver so all I was, was a reflection
Now it brushes by me, so breezily, unnoticed almost,
Like tiny star-studded light-pricks
And leaves behind a near invisible film of silver dust.

I can't grasp it
I can't even define it
Or see it well enough to point it out
I just know it exists somewhere, because I see these occasional glimmers
A flash, and they're gone.

Maybe it never was love
But we were and still could be lovers
Starry-eyed and star-crossed ones, at that.