The Madcap... smokes...

First of all, this has nothing to do with Syd Barrett . Only that I was fascinated by the idea of a schizophrenic trying to record songs that would be inextricably linked with the state of his mind, and would thus almost be a first person narrative of schizophrenia. Not that it is implausible, or unthinkable, but that doesnt make it a bit unphanatsmagorical (note the deliberate introduction of that word . Browse through the blog, and if you are indeed inclined to indulge yourself in the utterly useless activity of finding a pin in a haystack, you may indeed come to the conclusion that i have a weakness for long fancy abstruse words, "phantasmagoria" being one of my favourites).

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I have started discovering windows now (that sounded obtuse didnt it?) . Windows of perception which I never even noticed before, leave alone their affording me whole new vistas into a reality that is as deliberately surreal as all other facets of human existence. The fact that all aforemontioned facets of human existence are indeed surreal, is also something that I saw from one of these windows. I have started discovering that a couple of Gudang Garams can afford a miniaturised version of what Calliope showed Homer ( Oh , you honestly dont think he did that all by himself without a muse??) . So what if Calliope really was a gigantic , perpetually lighted cigar?? A contestable hypothesis, but not one I would rule out completely. Symbolicism rules.

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The best part is arguably the flashes. You smoke one. Your whole body is gripped in unfelt tremors. Yours ears ring with unseen whispers, unheard apparitions floating in front of yours eyes. As with pornography though, Smoke in small quantities is a stimulant, not a depressant. The unnamed feelings give rise to an urge to feel them. So the subsequent Kreteks follow.By the time you have smoked three (three levels...not literally three....it takes three for me, it might take ten for a hardcore addict) , you alight to another world of tangible infirmity.

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All that seemed impalpable before seems to be the very things that make sense. Screams of forsaken delight, cascades of ideas, maddening flashes, the world alighting on yours shoulders, and then the only irony seems to be in the fact that you are still part of it.The magnified extrapolations of thoughts, where you seem to be able to think what you are going to think about what you were thinking yesterday, when you overheard somebody thinking aloud. And you are transformed into a child alone in a cathedral of a thousand painted windows, the sun shining bright outside, and the myriads of dream shadows coloring the floor, each shadow a dream, each dream a shadow. You start noticing each speck of dust flying about in the air , think what an atom is thinking, you are everything, and everything is you, And all of a sudden, you feel the pain of the grass when the careless schoolkid inadvertently kicked out a tuft out of the ground with his new pair of boots that his father bought him with a firm warning instructing him not to partake in such activities which would make it obligatory for him to buy a new pair within six months.You feel the pain , or what is better described by the urdu term "dard".You feel the pain because that is the only thing that is non transitional in an otherwise transitory existence. Everything dies, the pain lives on. Look at Darwin's theory, summed up beautifully in seven syllables , "Survival of the fittest". Look deeper.It talks of pain. Pain inflicted continuously by one aspect of this world on another, a sort of slow self decomposition, which in a way is necessary, as argued by philosophers, when the resources are limited. But the crux is pain.Feel it.

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Alas I stray too much. I am not numb anymore. I can feel each pin prick me, a thousand pins pricking me, thousand combing into one, tearing me apart. The sun sets on the world's intellect, even in this nocturnal world , the existence of which I am vaguely aware of, and which is vaguely aware of the fact that I am. In fact, so vaguely, that I being part of it, have doubts whether I am.Could it not be that i am a dream, a pipe dream, arising from the ashes in some antiquated ashtray in that old abandoned house with pink walls in that forgotten by lane in the city that Time built within my brain, waiting to be swept away by that slightest gust of the cold westwind that promises much but nevers arrives? Till then, I will recline on this easy chair, while watching the moon set over the amazonian jungles, mosquitoes biting me to death and injecting into my blood the residues of uranium from Chernobyl. Let the world think I am schizophrenic. I dont care, because I know that the world lies. Because I know that I no longer exist, And that I exist in everything, spread like marmalade over all of Life. I am in the lizard on the wall, in the molecules of Oxygen and nitrogen that strike against the calender fluttering against the wall, and In the red ink marking the state holidays on it. I am existence, Omnipotent, Ubiquitos.

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I think I will try out cocaine next. Heard lots about it.