Memoirs of an Ardent Particularist: August 2008

About Me

Suffice it to say that I am an ardent particularist. What this means is that I like to look at the particulars (Duh!). So for example, I like the deep furrows on a withered tree trunk, the jet black curly hair of a woman walking past me, the swing of a very short skirt on the behind of a girl in front of me, the sunflower like irises in my husband's blue pupils, the soft and gentle curves of his body, the shape of a pebble that skirts off the tyres of a truck at a construction site, the toc-toc-toc of the table tennis ball on the table, the feel of a full mango fruit in the palm of your hand, a bowl of translucent, red, pomegranate seeds, the speckled sunlight on a patch of grass under a tree, the deep yearning for someone you care about and love, the deep sense of grief when you have to forget someone you love, the mixture of white steamed rice and pink oleander petals strewn on the cold dark stone tile of the temple, the smell of a decaying banana leaf, the pungent smell of a raw mango just fallen from the tree, the clang of utensils and the clamour of sundry voices and stray dogs infused with the smell of boiling tea as India wakes to life every morning, and so on...

Sunday, August 24, 2008

On wathching TV

I like watching TV. Its the only place where I can watch people talking, conversing, discussing, connecting. I lie on the couch and they let me watch them. I can talk to them in my mind. They are more human than the beings around me - beings carrying a facade of being human, who talk to one another from the skin, look at each other with hollow, empty eyes, who pass each other and painfully crease their lips afraid to actually break in a smile. And then we go home, and plop down in front of the TV, where live our fictive family and friends - to be switched on and off at our pleasure.

On "melodiously exploding"....

I recently came across a phrase in one of Borges' parables ("Everyone and no one" In Labyrinths: pg 249): "....as so many lovers who converge, diverge, and then melodiously explode". The phrase "melodiously explode" grasped my attention. I thought it was the most beautiful and the most succinct way to describe the cornucopia of literature and music and films and theatre and all other forms of art that is now the wealth of the human race. It is not in falling in love or in falling out of it that originality and creativity of thought and sentiment is born. It is in the moments afterwards when that self of ours withers from the sorrow and then "melodiously explodes" that all of this is born, while the self dies.

It follows therefore that to keep living the creative life, and to not be dead before the mortal death, one must keep falling in love over and over again and create new selves to do so that will then die and explode brilliantly while doing so. Fall in love with people, nature, ideas, colours, textures, tastes, work, and all of the things that surround us.

Hm! "Melodiously explode"... what a beautiful and brilliant phrase!

PS: The sentence is actually "For twenty years he persisted in that controlled hallucination, but one morning he was suddenly gripped by the tedium and the terror of being so many kings who die by the sword and so many suffering lovers who converge, diverge, and melodiously expire." So the phrase is "melodiously expire", not "melodiously explode". Which is unfortunate, because the latter is much more dramatic and eloquent. I guess I own the phrase now :-)