The Furnace -Calling all lost souls

The war within

2011-07-11T16:55:00.000+04:00

Sometimes, it's hard to believe how long you can hold on to your anger. You forget about it, go off and do other things, have happy days and happier days still. And then something brings it back, digs it out of the deep canyon it has slowly been carving into the back of your conscience and triggers it into active demolition mode again. You're angry. About that same old stupid thing. You're surprised at yourself for still not letting it go but at the same time, you're angry.

It's a different sort of anger. You've had it within you for so long, that you're tired now. It doesn't flow in your veins like liquid fire, making you rebel against injustices and want to right what is wrong. It's like a thick bubbling tar, drowning you, lulling you under the surface of consciousness. It's not a natural human reaction anymore, it's a parasite.

If like me, you have an embarrassingly tiny capacity for forgiveness, at some point of time you will have hated yourself for letting old grudges fester endlessly within you. I've wondered if I'll ever be free of them, breathe easy and know that the wound has healed and will not hurt anymore. It is the most horrible kind of prison, one that is not locked. You can choose to walk out at any minute, except that you don't. You can't.

It feels like an obstinate weed growing in your chest. You constantly grab at it, try to rip it out and toss it away but it doesn't work. It continues its sinuous creeping, all the time making it just a little bit harder to breathe.

I don't want to be angry any more but sometimes it seems as though there is no solution short of wiping my memory clean and basking in the eternal sunshine of a spotless mind. There has to be mid-way. There has to be a way.

In the fog...

2010-02-17T02:20:00.005+04:00

So, what is making me write again after all this while? I'm sure you want to know. But there is a more important question to be asked here. Why did I stop writing in the first place? In a word, disillusionment.
The world, society, parents, love, life, destiny, good, evil you name it and I have been disillusioned in that area. Don't misunderstand. Don't equate disillusionment with depression or depravity. I've been alive, well and as happy as possible. But one fine day, I suddenly didn't know what to say. Where earlier I wrote with confidence, my hands now typed out a few words, trembled and withdrew. I didn't think anything I wrote mattered because nothing seemed to be worth writing about anymore. So I stopped speaking. I felt foolish for preaching on about life because I didn't think that I was truly living mine the way I should. In my struggles against all man-made systems, I lost my voice or rather chose not to use it anymore. I didn't think anybody was listening.
So why do I write now? Because maybe, you've been disillusioned too. Maybe the pointless, gruelling cruelties of daily life have churned you up and spat you out too. Maybe you've been left as I was: without a worthy cause to believe in, to live for or to die for, forsaken by your God and the principles that you had founded for yourself. In that case, I'm sending out this message into the void. I don't know if it will reach anyone or if it will matter but I need to say this to you.
You will find your cause. Or at least, you will find the strength to keep looking for one. Your life will not have come to naught if you're still fighting as I am, fighting to not be overwhelmed by disillusionment, to accept that even if everything you've known since you were a child has turned out to be a badly crafted lie... you will find your own truth and it will make sense to you and that will be enough.
Keep searching, my friend because if you have a mind, your thoughts and your quest will never cease. If you have a mind, you are damned and there is no rest for the damned. But this is a damnation that I endure with pride for my mind is my weapon and I shall use it.

Heat it up to 360 degrees

2009-09-14T21:24:00.003+04:00

After lying cold for ever so long, today the furnace is being heated up again. I don't know whether it will ever reach full temperature again but I guess it doesn't matter all that much.
It's been an interesting summer to say the least. Figured a lot out and found even more that confuses me completely. Shall I sum it all up with a line from a song?

"Everybody's changing
And I don't feel the same" -Keane

It's not necessarily a bad thing. I know it sounds like a depressing sort of situation but it isn't. It's enlightening, almost to the point of being cheerful.
Shall I tell you why?

“We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started... and know the place for the first time.” -T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot hit the nail right on the head with that one boss! So, things change all the time and more often than not, we grumble and act like sunbathing crocodiles who get robbed of their sunlight. We search for comfort, happiness, fun, peace, love, success or sometimes just search without even knowing what we're looking for. But some day, we arrive back at an old and familiar situation and truly understand the mysterious ways of the world. Yeah, I realise this post won't make sense to the random reader but I'm sorry, I guess it isn't supposed to. This one's a personal sort of post. It's some stuff I had to say and it doesn't have to make sense. If it does, great! We're in this together.

If I wore a mood ring, it would turn red and then explode

2009-03-14T23:28:00.006+04:00

Patch Adams: [Patch addresses God while he stands on a cliff, contemplating suicide]

"So what now, huh? What do you want from me? Yea, I could do it. We both know you wouldn't stop me. So answer me, please. Tell me what you're doing. Okay, let's look at the logic. You create man. Man suffers enormous amounts of pain. Man dies. Maybe you should have had just a few more brainstorming sessions prior to creation. You rested on the seventh day, maybe you should have spent that day on compassion."

What do you do when you're simply boiling over with rage and you have no idea why? You're seeing RED and I mean ruby bloody red. But why? What pissed you off so much?

Hmm...let's see now... could it be because the world is a messed up place and romantic idiots that human beings are, we like it that way? We define our reality by the amount of pain in it and then feel oh so accomplished because life has "taught" us so much and given us so much to whine and bitch about.
Or could it be because your entire life increasingly seems more and more ridiculously meaningless. What you thought were your happiest memories now seem fake and hollow and make you want to throw up all over yourself.
Oh no wait, maybe it's just that you feel like a frikkin alien on this beautiful planet of ours. You have no idea how to connect with people and the things that matter to them. And you have no interest in 99% of all worldly matters.
Then again you might be pissed off because you're loosing your religion, your beliefs, the basic ideas about life that formed the backbone of everything you did and how you lived your life. Suddenly you're thinking that life might not be so full of hope and passion after all. Maybe it actually IS just one short, pointless stab of pain before its all over.
What do you do when you're so terribly angry that you feel like you'll never find peace? Ever.

Or maybe you're just angry because the truth is, you're not angry at all. You're not anything. You don't give a rat's ass about the world, its problems or its people. You can't get yourself to care about anything at all. You've been consumed by the worst of all diseases -indifference. And more than anything else, you're angry at yourself for that.

Yeah, I know, I have anger issues.

Bird Spy Project Report -Here's the dirt

2009-03-08T04:17:00.006+04:00

[For those of you who don't know what the Bird Spy project is, kindly refer to my previous post.]

Yeah, so the whole daily project report thing didn't happen. There just wasn't that much to write about. Twitter was painfully boring! If I thought that there was even the slightest chance that twitter would seduce me, I was so wrong. So, here is my first and final Bird Spy project report.

I joined twitter and started "following" about 72 people that twitter recommended I follow. By the end of Day 1, I had about 8 followers of my own. First of all, what is this following stuff all about? It seems as though twitter is the biggest endorser of stalking in the world. I follow you, you follow someone else, they follow me... we all go around in circles. What fun.

So anyway, my Twitter home page started to show me random rubbish from 72 different people. Taking my cue from them, I started to post random rubbish of my own. It was like a whole world of people talking to themselves. There was this class of the twitter elite who posted stuff almost every 5 minutes or so. Even for the sake of research, I could never get myself to join that particular class. I could barely update my profile every hour or so and even that was only because I was trying so hard.

What would you possible tweet about, if you spend so much of your time tweeting? Shouldn't you maybe get your butt away from the computer and actually do something worth tweeting about? Otherwise wouldn't your Twitter profile eventually end up looking something like this:

Birdbrain @ 9:30 pm Had a burger and fries for dinner

Birdbrain @ 9:32 pm Twittered about my dinner

Birdbrain @ 9:34 pm Twittered about twittering about my dinner

Birdbrain @ 9:36 pm Wondering what to twitter about next

Birdbrain @ 9:38 pm Twittered about wondering what to twitter

Birdbrain @ 9:40 pm Twitter rocks. Whoopie bloody doo.

It's madness. Pure unadulterated madness. These people need nirvana from the cycle of twittering and thinking about twittering. There really is more to life. Seriously!
So, on this happy note, I declare the Bird Spy Project closed.
In the end, joining Twitter is a personal choice. It just isn't for me or for people like me, that's all.
RIP Twitter

The BirdSpy Project

2009-02-27T12:27:00.007+04:00

So I don't know what it is that makes me hate twitter with such vengeance. Twitter and its twitterers, twitterheads, tweeters, birdbrains or whatever the hell they call themselves should be mashed and baked into cookies.
What is the meaning of posting every detail of every second of your life on the Net? What is this -The Matrix? It all just seems like some conspiracy to me. Somebody somewhere can keep track of everything that you and everybody else on twitter are doing. That somebody can access this insanely personal information that would otherwise cost him a fortune to collect. And the best part of it all is that the victims are parting with that information out of their own free will and with the greatest enthusiasm. What diabolic extent of brain-washing is this?

With the continuing growth of twitter, nothing and nobody is safe. Twitteroos are everywhere and they're clicking photos of you, observing your actions and everybody else's, and naturally dumping all that info on their mothership. Not only are they bent on violating their own privacy in the most anal way but they won't let anyone else maintain theirs either. Big Brother is watching us all now.

Here's a universal question going out to all twittermonkeys. Why is it such a big deal if you have a trillion gazillion followers on twitter? Does it makes you feel special that a bunch of random people with lives as equally insignificant as yours claim to be interested in what you do with your damn self every day? Does it fill your little heart with joy when some celebrity adds himself to your followers list after you beg and plead with him to do just that?

Open your eyes and look around for crying out loud. The people who post updates on twitter every 5 minutes cannot possibly have real lives because obviously they spend too much time thinking of stuff to put on twitter or actually doing the putting.

And don't even bother contradicting me by bringing to my attention the glowing advantages of twitter because I don't care. Don't tell me how twitter helps you stay connected with your hoards of pseudo friends. Don't tell me that twitter is the physical embodiment of the theoretical collective conscience. I'll laugh in your face. If I want your opinion, I'll ask for it. If you want to give it anyway because then you'll feel like an important person with something to say...take my advice, join twitter bitch!

I'm sure twitter has it's good points but the evil in it completely outweighs the good, I say.

Oh, more than once have I faced peer pressure to join twitter myself. I have strongly resisted such attacks every time. But now, laying aside all caution, I have decided to venture into enemy territory in order to better understand and so better fight my nemesis.

I hereby launch *drum rolls* ... "The BirdSpy Project"!

I am going to join twitter. For 5 whole days, I will devote myself to the world of twitter. I will be the twitterest twitterer in all of Birdland. I will take careful notes of everything I see, good or bad. Once and for all, the question of "to tweet or not to tweet" shall be answered.

Pray for me, folks. And stick around for my daily project reports!

I do this at the risk of fatal danger to myself. I might be brain-washed too. They might get me. But if they do, I urge those of you who care to carry on this war without me. Never give up on the cause. Down with Twitter! Let the games begin.

Thought for the day

2009-02-09T00:17:00.006+04:00

Myth: we have to save the earth. Frankly, the earth doesn't need to be saved. Nature doesn't give a hoot if human beings are here or not. The planet has survived cataclysmic and catastrophic changes for millions upon millions of years. Over that time, it is widely believed, 99 percent of all species have come and gone while the planet has remained. Saving the environment is really about saving our environment - making it safe for ourselves, our children, and the world as we know it. If more people saw the issue as one of saving themselves, we would probably see increased motivation and commitment to actually do so.

-Robert M. Lilienfeld, management consultant and author (b. 1953) and William L. Rathje, archaeologist and author (b. 1945)

Brilliantly put, no?

This one's real deep...

2009-01-28T01:17:00.005+04:00

Lists lists lists!
I love lists. There's something so crisp, airy and endearingly pompous about them.
Every time I attempt to cram my prancing, meandering thoughts into the segregated straight-jackets of points, I feel a sense of purpose. Like I've joined the army or something.
I'm sorry, am I coming off as surreptitiously sarcastic? Oh, don't get me wrong then. I love them lists. To-do list, book list, movie list, stationary list, checklist, blog list... they're as diverse as the insects in the Amazon (forest, not river or website obviously).
Making lists can almost be like decorating your room or garnishing a salad. So many ways to organise them! Say with me! Alphabetical! Random! Subject-wise! CHRONOLOGICAL!!
Almost sounds like a war cry doesn't it? In a way, my dears, it is.
I love how lists so conveniently cut through the crap and get right to the heart of all the tomfoolery.
For example, if you're still wondering why I bothered writing this particular post, let's seek our solution through that most noble of tools -the list.

Let's make a list of words that best bring out the essence of this deeply symbolic post:
- utter
- bloody
- rubbish

See what I mean? They're invaluable. The above list clearly indicates the following conclusions:
- the writer of this blog is an eccentric oddity
- who had a lot of useless time on her hands
- simultaneously, there was nothing good on TV

I sure do love them lists. Oh yes sir, I do.

Caught in the rye

2009-01-12T20:46:00.004+04:00

Incredibly interesting monologue here by Will Smith from the movie, 'Six degrees of separation'.

Ever since I saw this little snippet on TV, I was pretty much twisting arms and wringing ears in a desperate attempt to try and get hold of the book, 'Catcher in the rye' by J D Salinger. I just had to read it, and now I am :)

Iron Maiden

2009-01-12T01:59:00.009+04:00

Yay! Time for my random observation of the times that we live in. Tonight's subject, folks, is one helluva character. Read on:

So, here's a little something I learned this week. You know how all of us are forever trying to create this very cool, suave image for ourselves?

We are the shit. We don't care about nothing! We follow our own rules. We are indifferent to everything. We are mysterious. We are a world in ourselves. We are feared.

know

fear

(shifting to singular now; makes life easier) People will say nasty things behind your back even though they would never dare to in person. They will make all sorts of assumptions about you but of course they will not be able to muster the guts to question you about any of them. They will keep guessing as to who you are or more like, what is the phenomenon that is you. Most of the time, they will guess wrong.

Yeah yeah... sounds pretty darn hot but here's the catch. Once you get to this oh-so-revered position in life, you're stuck. You cannot waver, not for an instant. Once you've made people gape in awe at the sheer strength of your will, you can never again allow yourself even a moment of weakness. They won't let you. How dare you deny them the pleasure of unravelling your seemingly unchinked armour in their minds?

At the end of the day, that is how they are used to seeing you. That is how you've forced them to see you and they will never accept you in any other form ever again. You've turned yourself into a mythical unicorn my friend.

Like so much in life, it is a gift and it is a curse.
Because of course, you are now a fearsome creature. How then, can you ever show any signs of being human? You can never break, you can never have any moments of confusion. You are always that unicorn. Perhaps pedestal would be going too far, but you have definitely been placed in high heels. Show a little of your human wobbliness and the world turns into that scene from Alice in Wonderland: the pack of soldier cards rise in uproar and engulf you in their pandemonium.

You've locked yourself in an Iron Maiden, my friend. (No! Not the band for crying out loud) For those who don't know what that is check here.
You're rock solid from the outside whereas on the inside, you might be suffocating or bleeding to death for all you know.

Basically, there are times when you can be too invincible for your own good.

You better forget the very name of fear if you want to be what you have created -a robot.

Keep your fire extinguishers to yourself

2009-01-07T18:21:00.003+04:00

Well whaddya know? I'm still here :D
I once read this article about how the number of bloggers in the world would double or quadruple over the next 10 years or sumfin like that. This article was written in the gravest of tones and with much gloomy shaking of the head I'm sure. Apparently having so many bloggers on the Net is a bigass problem since you know, global warming and terrorism have already been taken care of right? *burns a hole in her own tongue due to the acrid sarcasm*
Then of course towards the end of the article one wise soul gave his opinion on the matter. Since I don't remember his name, let's call him Mr. Snooty Pretentious Jackass. So Mr. SNJ said, "such heavy blogging traffic certainly raises some concerns about quality control on the Net. However, in a few years, the riffraff will naturally quit the blogosphere and leave behind only the blogging elite so to speak."
Well, I'm sure ol' Snoots has a point somewhere but the reason I related this whole random stuff is because despite everything, my blog somehow survives. I don't write for months and then I consider deleting the damn thing altogether but it so is that the furnce refuses to be swept out with the riffraff. So, I'm still here I guess. I still have something to say. Not quite enough time to say it but nontheless, I suppose I ain't quitting anytime soon.
So you see Mr. SNJ, my derriere is freely available for your smooching pleasure.

Message in a hypothetical bottle

2008-11-03T08:31:00.003+04:00

So, here's the thing. A common dilemma seems to be plaguing a majority of the people of my generation. I call it the "Insignificance trauma". After much research and study, I list my observations.
It feels like being in the middle of some twisted camera trick Alfred Hitchcock might have used in Vertigo. The world seems to sprout like a mushroom and rise up all around you. The world gets bigger and you get smaller. The cockiness that comes out of having complete faith in your own abilities is gone. You're not so sure that there is a place for you in the big wide world after all.
To put it more bluntly, you've lost your mojo (not just sexually, you perverts).
Suddenly, you seem to be disintegrating into a shadow of your former self. You can't write as well as you used to. You can't sing or dance or play basketball as well as you could once. You seem to have lost that irresistible charm that you once had over the opposite sex. Your symptoms can be any, all and more of these. But whatever different things you're going through, at the end of the day, it's the same damn feeling.
You're getting smaller and the world is getting bigger.
When this condition worsens, the feeling becomes more severe. You feel like you're disappearing, a little bit everyday. And of course, nobody seems to be noticing except you. Sometimes, you nearly yell out to the un-noticing void.
Can't you not see me vanishing in front of your very eyes, you blind idiots? @#&$*%
Nothing changes on the outside, you continue going to college or work or wherever. All the turbulence brewing underneath does not even stir the surface. Parents don't see it. Teachers don't see it. Sometimes, friends don't either. You just walk around all day with this sensation of emptiness, that's all.
I don't know why we're all going through this but it can't be the first time that a whole bunch of young people have doubted their lives, right? Other folks must have been through this before us and they clearly survived, didn't they?
What can I say? If this is happening to you, then please know that it's happening to all of us.
This too shall pass.

Going...going...gone!

2008-10-05T00:31:00.004+04:00

So, hasn't there been a time in everybody's life when they've wanted to run away from home? Just grab a backpack, get on the next train, plane, car whatever and jet set the hell away?
It seems so beautiful, so brilliant! The very genius of the idea takes your breath away. Don't we all have that one place that seems to call to us? The mountains, the sea, the big city...and we seem so ready to answer the call. This is it!!

And then...we think.

Money.
Parents.
Society.
Education.
Job
Family.
Fear.
Reality.
Crash.
Burn.
Poof!

The moment's gone. Back to working on that assignment or completing that project or cooking that dinner. Back to the things we 'have' to do because apprently they are the safest, time-tested roads to happiness. The mountains are far far away now, standing tall in silent mockery of our choices in life. It's all over now...
*black*

Hmm...didn't we all secretly want to become painters or poets or skateboarders? Where's that old paintbrush? What an absolutely fantastic idea! This is it!....

Sigh
True to the human condition, here we go again... :D

Got some change?

2008-09-21T20:29:00.003+04:00

It was that time of the month again. I felt the need to turn everything upside down, throw things away and start everything all over again. So I tore my room apart looking for old junk I didn't want anymore. I went and bought myself a whole bunch of new clothes *somersaults* I took some decisions about issues that had been gathering dust in my imaginary inbox for a long time.
I momentarily considered doing a G.I. Jane and shaving all my hair off but thankfully, even in my most impulsive moments, a ray of reason sometimes shines through. Little mercies...

So how could my blog be left out, right? At first, I planned to transfer all the posts from my old blog onto this one. Now, tranferring 2 years worth of content is no mean feat but I started out on the process anyway. College has made me such an expert at the art of copy pasting that I wouldn't be surprised if one night, I woke up screaming : "Control C!!! Control V!!!"
But after about an hour of consistent post tranferring, I paused to make some use of my grey cells. If the whole point of this blog is to start afresh, why in the world was I copy-pasting my past all over it?
So, another impulsive decision was made and I spent the next 15 minutes deleting everything left, right and center.
Let's do a little 'looking back on things' here: I've been blogging since 2006. Or was it 2005? My first blog was called 'The Boulevard'. It was a highly personal, anonymous (yes yes the irony does not escape me. Highly personal and anonymous..I get it) In 2006, the above was revamped, edited and reintroduced as 'The Furnace'. That blog continued to bear the brunt of my written words till earlier this month (September, 2008). And today, we see the innauguration of what should technically be called 'The Furnace Part II' but in my opinion, that's a horrible name to christen a blog with. So, here it is finally -the end product.
Now that the customary speeches have been made and the required history touched upon, down to business...
The new Furnace is officially ready for public viewing.

*cuts ribbon*
*hold up a sign labelled "Applause"*

Image from www.scissors.us

Thank you! Thank you very much!

NOTE: The old blog is still intact. So, for all my old posts, please visit http://www.diamond-fire.blogspot.com/