sunshine (marshmallow tarts) in my bag...

Like an amputee who can sometimes feel a stinging, piercing pain in limb he no longer has, we often cling to a history that was never rooted in our existence. It is an intense feeling rooted in the mind, like the pain in amputee’s head.

It’s the most satisfying feeling to create an entire surreal utopia in our heads, however it becomes extremely difficult to pull yourself out of the macabre of the false world until we start to believe in it as an extension of our beings.

Over a cup of coffee yesterday, a friend casually referred to Freud’s theory on the structure of mind - ego, super-ego and the ‘id’. He further elaborated on the subject, which further digressed into a brief discussion on voyeurism. Within a few minutes intellectual view points were being tossed around, until it was sealed with one of us randomly claiming “My id is gone.” A few laughs and then everyone conveniently slipped back into common, banal conversation over a cup of black coffe and two frappes and the free choco-chip cookies…

However, Id stayed. Ego (which is our rational self) and Super –Ego (primarily our moral self subject to some amount of conditioning in a nut shell.) does’nt fascinate me so much. What interests me however is DA "ID” (Id is not pronounced as I.D (identification ID)..it's just id). The Id which is apparently buried way beyond even the deep sub-conscious is the state of our mind in the most primitive state, reflective of all our primal instincts. It’s stubborn, immature and irrational “I want it and I want it now”!! Id wants instant gratification. This is when a human’s voyeuristic instincts come to the forefront. However, Id IS primal, yes, but by primal I also mean impulsive; but i primarily believe that Id seems more substantial than just the savage instincts of man, i.e - hunger, rage and sex. Through imagination, it can be cultivated into something more intense and considerable than just primal.

Coming back to the amputee… what does an amputee’s id seek? He’s a human. He seeks the same gratification, as the rest of us. Only it becomes physically impossible for him to gratify himself. However, the faculty of the mind comes to his rescue. The power of the mind becomes his strongest sense. Imagination feeds and devours on him like a parasite. Imagination grows to be so intense and real, it could make his essential sense of being surrender to it. It’s liberating. It builds for him his alternate world. It is a ‘construct’ of his mind, nevertheless it offers him a release from the mundane reality of his existence.

If id can offer such surreal sense of space and self of being to an amputee who can feel the pain in his non-existent limbs; Id could lead you or me to my path of a surreal emancipation.

Id explores the repressed, unconscious state of being. If one was to explore this pandora’s box within us, by releasing our id not in the physical state of being but in the mental state of being, it would be a trance like paradise. A subordination of reason and rationale to the will; a space in the mind outside of the real world. No limitations, no boundaries, no fears, no inhibitions. A utopia. A self sufficient world. An alleviating headrush. And as Wordsworth (who I detest) once said “emotion recollected in tranquility.”

Assembling the memories from the personal unconscious and rendering a shape to them into a visionary illusion within the realm of mind. It’s the most beautiful place to be in – a liberation from the banal, the real. It never disappoints you. It’s a constant spring of happiness. Even the pain is alleviating, something you enjoy indulging in. It is an oxymoron – a living death, like Petrarch said. It’s your own inspired space of absolutes, it’s an anomaly alright; but it’s removed from any ambiguity. It gives you an opportunity to build your own illusion in your mind and experience it. Experience the tears, the mirth, the laughter, the tears, the decadence, and the perverse. It’s as real as it gets. Imagination can be overwhelming, and this is exactly how it feels. You feel overpowered by a feeling, an experience, a thought, an illusion you know is not real, but it feels like the absolute truth..similar to the amputee who feels the pain in his limbs that don’t exist. It might be a history that was never ours, it might be a relationship we were never in, it might be a book that was never written, it might be a person who you loved, but remained unrequited, it might be marshmallow tarts, it might be anything, absolutely anything under the sun in your mind ..it’s like sunshine in your bag ..heh :)
It’s fascinating, your surreal imagination, your utopia, with your people and your creations.

Some might brush it away as mere escape or criticize you for living in a fool’s paradise. They might jibe such dreamers for not comprehending the real or absconding it . However what falls beyond their comprehension is that you’ve transgressed those mundane conformists and their conditional trappings. You have managed to experience the abstract in an absolute experience. Who’s the fool thus? Us or Them?

However, the reality stings harder than before when you descend from this surreal elusive space back into your mundane grounded domain

Nevertheless, you know, that unlike others who lack the power of imagination or cannot tap into their emotion recollected in tranquility, you can always liberate yourselves from the trappings of the mundane and release your ‘id’. *subtle smirk*

P.S: A song that describes such abandoned state of mind n soul - Clint Eastwood by Gorillaz..heh

I ain't happy, I' m feelin glad
I got sunshine in a bag
I'm useless, but not for long the future is comin' on
- Gorillaz

her pantomime...

ACT II; SCENE V
[a dimly lit chamber]

[He stands across the wall; she enters]

play light
play shadow
a nexus of discrepancies

Two spoken
ambiguous words
Two souls
estranged and suspended on strings

Amidst
Union of light and shadow
words incoherent
actions persuasive

t'was a classic act
streaming ochre light
bounced off the glistening tear
shadow on the wall
held it's back to the light

[Aside] a mute mime
suffering passion
momentary lapse of compassion

Pause.

Was it an applause?
Was there going to be an epilogue?

At
the travesty of their distress
A painful parody of her feigned existence
Mockery had her last laugh

The strings snap
Silhouettes dissolve
words-obscure
actions-absent

shadows fade
ochre turns ginger
light extinguished

He stood soul-stripped. numb.

The curtain drops
She weeps silently

[exeunt]

height of quixotic-ism

Miles beside himself, miles below himself, Miles behind himself, am I inside myself ...

- Alice in chains

(You must have to be dead, to be this quixotic!!)

kafkascope on loss - lack??? duh!

…rather than memory loss, it was more a memory lack..

“there’s a big difference between loss and lack. I suppose it’s like – well, imagine a train steaming down a track. The freight’s disappeared from one of the cars. A car that’s empty inside – that’s loss. When the whole car has vanished –that’s lack.”
- Prof Tsukayama
(Kafka on the Shores by Haruki Murakami)

The lack vs loss debate is a little too convenient to swallow nonchalantly. In fact it’s not very agreeable or palatable. Mabbe the context in which Tsukayama explicitly explained the ‘loss’ as distinctly different from ‘lack’ is not rooted in the same context that I am applying to the incomprehensible reasoning unfolded by him.

According to the Prof, when the “whole” car is vanished - it’s LACK. When the car’s “empty” inside, it’s LOSS. Hmmm…When Moby sang “Why does my heart feel so bad” ..was he suffering from a lack or loss?? If my ‘context’ here is a ‘low-down empty soul-searching heart ’ – and if I were to apply Prof Tsukayama’s reasoning, an empty heart or heart searching for answers – it’s a loss! But if’ there is NO quest only – it’s a lack??? Something seems amiss here...

Sometime the quest of an empty heart is for something/ someone whose ‘absence’ in your life has a strong presence. And the inevitable denouement to that : revelation of feeling a certain, commonly known as “Lack”. Loss is something you experience after the presence of ‘lack’ is erased by physical and tangible presence of the object of affection in our lives and that person/thing makes a quick or prolonged exit from our lives. Only then can we comprehend and recognize "loss".

Lack and loss form a vicious circle. Like mentioned above, only once we recognize what’s lacking, and find the ‘absent factor’ and amend it with fruitful presence of a dear someone/something in our lives; do we recognize the loss that follows his/her exit from our lives. Simultaneously, sometimes invariably we get extremely comfortable with the 'presence of lack' in our lives that we don’t wish to trade it with the tangible presence of what we are actually lacking or subconsciously seeking. We refuse to accept the missing piece to complete the puzzle; the void becomes extremely comfortable. This intimacy with presence of lack in our lives becomes an extremely complacent and snug existence. The intrusion of a physical presence seems disturbing. And thus we remain cocooned...This translates into a loss – a loss of experience, a loss of hurting and hoping, a loss of experiencing sweet, nauseous, pleasurable pain. a loss of living belong illusion, a loss to challenge the real, a loss of knowing what real or literal destitution is all about.

A couple of days back, a high-brow, savvy acquaintance of mine sincerely remarked – Why does shit happen. How do you fix it? How do you struggle with emotional baggage, fears and hopes? And why do we feed the same bullcrap to someone who’s trying to reach us and end up alienating them?

This is exactly the kind of circumstance when we nurse ‘lack’ into ‘loss’.

You are so absorbed with your hurt, pain, fears and hopes and wishing for the lack of the presence of the object of your affection (obviously you think it’s a loss that he/she is no longer in your life.). He/ She has exited – it’s a loss. But over a period of time, if you’re still grieving - it’s a lack – your lack of comprehension, your lack of vision, and your lack to cope-up with a break up. And thus you begin to feed and nurse this “lack”. You begin to feel vulnerable without the pain and hurt. You find it comforting to nest in the confines of your ‘emotional baggage’ that comprises of stale mourning, decaying, fading memories, bitter agony, sense of betrayal, bruised egos, and great deal of excruciating pain and hurt. In such a situation, a certain someone from the world you’ve reclined; extends a helping hand to retrieve you from the swampy hole you’ve laid buried in since your last ‘loss’. And you are obviously oblivious to the opportunity that walked to your door to restore the ‘lack’ in your depressing existence. You continue to mull and brew cotton-candy illusions about your abandoned muse. This is when your lack again turns into a loss!!! A major loss...you just lost out on the one person who cared enough to pay attention to you in your sullen state and was willing to help you move on without your baggage, to help you struggle with your fears and to help you render concrete form to your hopes and you blew it away like sand in your face. You’re a fool…serious fool!

Anyways, I’ve digressed from where I started. I started with a distate for Prof Tsukayama’s rigid expression of lack and loss, but maybe the context in which he used the above, he needed to be a little stringent about it. However, in real life loss and lack have a twisted and devious – a cause and effect reaction and existence in our lives. One leads to another, almost sinisterly and sometimes pleasantly. They are ambiguous and normally believed to have a very inconsequential part to play in our lives. Not really.

“Someone live my life
I’ve got to know what dead men know
Someone to love”
- Moby
(dead men knew no lack or loss)

I can see
I can feel
Hate to see
Hate to feel
- AIC

inevitable- a mortal's dilemma..

You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll hurt.