Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.

Its was end of an era.

Well, maybe not the end, but an end, nevertheless.

There were so many things that had changed. So many people he had promised to keep in touch with, that had just slipped away, like dew on a crisp spring morning. So much knowledge that lay forgotten in the attics of his cavernous, disorganised mind. So many promises, so many expectations, so many regrets.

The wheel spins, and stops for no man. He looked up from where he had stopped last, to find himself in a different place altogether. A different time, he could have told himself, had he the luxury. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. At the end of all things, he stood, and looked around, for a forgotten familiarity, for a familiar comfort.

He didn't like endings. They were so often.. dissatisfying. This one particularly so, despite the fact that it managed to wrap things up rather neatly. Endings were a disconnect, a wrenching of the mind from the comforts and habits it was entrenched in, from the comfortable ruts of routine, that left you poised uncertainly on a precipice of possibilities that threatened to overwhelm the unwary or the ill prepared.

But all said and done, it was here, the time for turning back was long past, and he found himself walking on a road that seemed to stretch on forever. The sliver medallion was cool against his chest. Not cold, but pleasantly cool. His boots were good, solid fare, and the weather seemed like the pleasant spell was likely to continue for a while. New people, new experiences, a game of dice here, a pretty lass there. Maybe not the worst of the things he'd rather be doing, he thought. He whistled a tune, and fished in his pocket absently.

He took out the coin and fingered it thoughtfully, flipping it idly on his knuckles as he walked, whistling a familiar tune, till he came upon a fork. Two sides, two paths. And a third, he reminded himself.

With a grin, he tossed the coin into the air.

Writers' blok #2: The Turing Massacre

A recent find during a rather barren and desperate troll of the internet happened to catch my flickering interest by saying, and here I quote, 'All stories can be boiled down to the following: A wants B but can’t have it because of C. or, put simply: Character + Desire + Conflict = Story'.

I sat and stared at it for a while, dumbly, pondering the implications of what lay before me, either a stroke of pure genius, or [resists the urge to make a monkey on crack comment, those're getting too old] a colossally stupid generalisation.

But why was I so hung up on which one it was? Sure, it might be true. But is that all there was to a story? I mean, sure, a whole lot of tales fit that description. But did that mean that this was the turing machine of storytelling? Regardless of its accuracy, in this age of tinpot self-styled writers and two-bit blog-owners, [yes, i can see the irony of that statement] of wannabe hacks and camera-phone journalists, of bestsellers on self-help and sex for dummies, what happens when we simplify fiction to nothing more than a mix-and-match equation?

No, i'm not answering that.

Instead, let me present my argument in this manner. Writing's a lot of things to a lot of people.

For some, its an outlet. A way to express themselves, either publicly, in a blog, or the letters column of a newspaper, or by printing ten thousand copies of your rant, accompanied by a photocopy of your buttocks, and scattering it off the top of the tallest building in the neighbourhood, shouting 'suck it, bitches!', or privately, in the confines of a diary or, for the less speculative, a journal.

For others, its a means to an end. To tell a story, to make a hypothesis concrete, or to communicate a sentiment too complicated, cumbersome or tedious to do by speech, or a 160 character message.

But for writers, its more than that. Its muscle and bone. Its that precious motorcycle, that well worn pair of jeans, that scratchy fountain pen, that battered camera, and a whole lot of other things, that you can't help but love. It is something to use, to exercise, to hone, to repair and service, with sweat and blood and oil and polish, to patch and mend, to refill whenever it runs dry, to develop over time.

And when writers write stories, it could be to flesh out an idea, or to develop some characters. It could be just because they need to make money, or because they can find nothing better to do with their time. It can be because they are inspired by something they saw, or heard, or someone they held. It could be to prove a point, or illustrate a moral. It could be because they want to immortalise the beauty of their homeland, their culture, their language. It could be because they can make people smile and laugh, to give them hope, or because they like to thrill and seduce. It could be just because they want to use 'Smite thee, foul creature!',  'Return from the wretched pits from whence you came.' and 'Oooh, talking cat!' in the same conversation.

And then it strikes me, that even though a story's essence may be decomposed into something a third grader can bluff his way through [you wouldn't believe how smart some third graders are these days] it takes something more to make an epic an epic. [cheesy as this may sound] It needs a soul. Not in the whispering-fairies and santa-is-real manner, but rather in a i-don't-know-what-but-i-refuse-to-believe-just-anyone-can-become-a-writer-so-i-make-a-requirement-that-can-not-be-seen-or-measured-or-quantified sort of way. But the more i think about it, the better it fits. Some writers use dry humour. Some create entire worlds and languages. Some use suspense to race the plot, others use the morbid fascination of  horror, yet others use an overactive imagination aided by science, or magic, or well, dragons that shoot laser beams from their eyes. And like blends of coffee, each one has its own taste.

So, tough as it may be to digest, the Turing machine does work, in principle. In practice, well, go on and write your story. I'll just grin and set fire to your manuscript, fill your pen with invisible ink, format your hard drive and fill it with porn involving nothing but flies, smash your keyboard with a baseball bat, scatter your notes across multiple space-time dimensions, feed your ideas to the pigeons and watch them suffocate on their own smugness, and toss your shiny new typewriter out of the window and finally, take the one remaining copy of your story and read it to your target audience, who will, doubtlessly, then join me in the extremely enjoyable activity of laughing at you.

Just awesome, ainnit?

Oh, bollocks.

'I want a conversation.', he said. 'Nothing else.'

She didn't reply immediately. She didn't flee either, though truth be said, she looked like she wanted to. She looked at him, too many expressions fighting for precedence in her eyes for him to single out any one of them. Then she gave a shrug, not the shrug of someone giving up, but of someone resigning themselves for a drawn out fight.
'Fine.'

He sighed, and plopped down on the grass, stiff and itchy. Nevermind. He wasn't particularly in the mood for this either. But he'd asked for it. He sat and looked at a line of ants on the pavement carrying a bit of a leaf back to their queen mother, linked, as they were in comics, by the hive mind. Everybody knew everything. Boy, that would be so great. These situations would never come up. He looked back at her. She was staring into the middle distance, playing with her hair, looking supremely uncomfortable.

'What d'you want to talk about?'

Awkward silence I.

'Anything, I guess. Did you know that ants communicate by... wait, you didn't seriously expect me to sit and complete that, did you? You would've let me waste this conversation too, like all the others before it?'

'I would actually like a conversation like before. When you were happy, and we would talk about all kinds of random stuff, and laugh and i would listen to you ramble on about things that i understood neither head nor tail of.'

'Like an indulgent parent towards a particularly dense child who's just managed to memorise a nursery rhyme? How considerately condescending of you.'

The fact that he had taunted her sunk in only when he noticed the change of expression on her face. He wasn't a cheery soul, but he hadn't meant to be sarcastic. Well, not so early on, anyway. Ah, well.

'Look, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that. I was just...'

'Whatever. Its okay.'

Awkward silence II.

'All right. Enough with the mushy pseudoemotional balderdash. I can indulge my endless need for self loathing and take it out on you, but i'm bored of that. We could try to thresh out our feelings, possibly fight over inconsequential differences, and feel that we've put it behind us, but that's not going to happen, and the endless cycle of disagreement, contained resentment and subsequent release is going to lead us back to this juncture at some point anyway. So lets try something different. Think about it, tell me what's going on in that mind of yours, and we'll take it from there.'

'....'

'I take it from your blank expression that you didn't really get any of what i just said, did you?'

'No, not really.'

She was smiling now. Good. At least his rant had served the intended purpose. He meant all that he had said, though he hadn't expected her to follow any of it. Reasoning, logic and other rational arguments apparently had very little to do with conversation, and it had taken him a while to understand that, and even longer to actually put it into practice. Earlier, he would've gotten frustrated and repeated the entire thing. Now, he just made a face and smiled back, and said,

'Well, crap.'

Awkward silence III.

He got up. Stretched, and then hopped around for a while flapping his arms and saying, 'Aaaaaaaaaaargh! Fuck. Fuck! Fuck!!', before banging into a lamp post and falling to the ground, twitching spasmodically.

'What are you doing?'

'I dunno. It helps.'

'Should I give it a try?'

'Sure, why not?'

And she did the same.

'You're not getting the flapping bit quite right...'

'Oh, bollocks.'

'Okay. I'll just shut up then.'

Awkward silence IV.

They sat together, huddled against each other, and watched the sun set. It was exactly like a thousand sunsets before, and a thousand sunsets after. That didn't stop it in any way from being spectacularly beautiful, though, as a giant ball of molten gases performed perspective tricks before vanishing across the horizon for the period of half a diurnal cycle. He felt something small and warm slip into his hand, further inspection of which confirmed it to be her anatomical counterpart.

He turned towards her, and saw twin suns setting in her eyes, and resisted running away, or jumping off the terrace, or picking his nose, or any of a hundred different ways to screw up the perfect moment that a hundred insistent voices whispered to him, coyly and enticingly. He turned a deaf ear to them all and drew her closer to him.

He finally understood. They didn't need words. Or actions. Or thought. They didn't need to spend time with each other, or demonstrate their feelings in socially accepted, and commercially encouraged ways. Permanence was overrated, forever was a very long time. They were what they were, at least, for the moment. Change happened, and could either be dealt with, or not. Tomorrow might bring very different reactions to the same sunset, though the sun didn't really care about that. What happened, happened, and indulging in counterfactuals and regrets just wasted the time they had now. All this, in the span of a few minutes, at the end of which he noticed she was staring at him in a rather amused fashion. 'Wajjap?', she asked. A smile played on the corners of her lips.

'I think a fly just went up my nose', he said. And sneezed.

Staccato.

The sun. Now orange. Now red. Blazing. Iridescent. Portentous. Humbling. Setting.

Its reflection. His eyes. His face. Stubble. A tear. Salty to taste. The sea. The waves. Little boat on the horizon. Bobbing.

The breeze. The smell of fish. The taste of salt. Of memories. Bygones. Possibilities.

The seagulls. Fly. Glide. Circle. Fish. Dip. Miss. Dip. Catch. Eat.

Rocks. Vein-encrusted. Tidebreakers. Sturdy. Stolid. Weathered. Worn.

Clouds. Contrast. Shapes. Of wishes. Of dreams. Drift away.

'I want to...'

Thoughts. Fragmented. Splintered. Incoherent. Looking. Searching. Lost trains.

Life. Meaning. None. Journey. Pointless. Goal. Unattainable. Game. Whose? Mine. Yours. His? Whose? Somebody. Nobody.

Beautiful? No.

Interesting? Yes.

Spectacles. Opaque. Coulombic. Not inverse. Mundane. Nontrivial. Together. Simple. Lies. Random. Words. Strung. Together. A theory. An explanation. A fact. Contrast. A rationalization. Expectations. Reality.

He sat and thought. For a way to put his thoughts into words. Of any form, in any language. Words. Powerful. Meaningless. Powerless. Wise. Such...., such that it allowed his wandering, traipsing mind to express all kinds of eloquent trivialities, but fell short when he wanted to speak of what mattered.

But what mattered? Initiate cycle. Success? Meaningless. Company? Temporary. Love? No, not that. Freedom? Self imposed. Self declared. Semantics. Life? Not being dead? Achievments? Individual. Meaningless. History? Stories. Depend on the storyteller. Peace? Wishful thinking. Happiness? Too hard. Satisfaction? To whom. Self. How? Success? Full circle. No answers.

He sat and watched the sun set, a reflected fire burning in his hollowed eyes as the incandescent ball ducked below the skyline with deceptive quickness, the lights in his eyes flickering with the stormy sea before they, too, went out altogether, leaving the burnt out husk of what once had possibly been a great man. Softly, he sang to the wind, as they carried the quiet words away,

'Don't take away my shine, my shine is all i have...'

Viewpoint.

In the morning, they both didn't feel like writing the exam. 
She thought, 'I'm set. I don't need to write this.' 
He thought, 'I'm screwed anyway. What's the use?'

Meaning

The search is endless.
The path fruitless.
The goal uncertain.
And yet we look.

An incomplete theorem.
An unfinished painting.
An abandoned building.
You stare at them.
They stare back.
And yet we look.

We search for the one.
In crowds so big.
Not knowing, not believing.
Not accepting. Nor stopping.
Life goes by, and I grow old.
And yet we look.

The wisdom of the ancients,
Know thyself, it says.
'What's the point?' we ask.
Ignorance is bliss.
And yet we look.

The universe builds on singularities,
Asymmetric, warped, like desire.
Like will, like logic, like love or pain,
We know not the solution,
Or even if it can be solved.
Unprovable, axiomatic, it lies,
The fruit, in itself, the seed.
And yet we look.

Love, loss, wisdom, pain.
Zero sum, zero gain.
Sometimes a bit high, then low.
From dust to dust, we come, we go.
And yet, we look.
For meaning.