Red & Blue

This one has been due a very long time. This is about red and blue, and all the reds and blues that make up the universe, the being and the non-being, everything we can possibly conceive.

You look at a red flower. And you tell me that it’s red. I, of course, understand. I know what red is, I have seen it elsewhere. Let me show you. Here, a red ladybug. You nod. It is red.

What if I see blue where you see red? What if the red I see is the blue that you see? What if, to me, a red rose is the same colour that the blue sky is to you? Of course I will never say that both are the same colour. The sky, to me, is not the same colour as a rose. But you have your frame of reference, and I have mine. And we cannot compare these two frames independent of a third. True, neither the sky nor this rose is the same colour as that tree. The tree is green. And in your mind, my green is called purple.

We will never know. I will compare the blue sky with a blue flower and a red rose with a ladybug. But we will never know. If you and I see the same thing. If you and I even mean the same thing when we agree so completely on something. And perhaps, we will never know, if you and I actually see and feel and mean the same thing when we disagree completely.

My red could be your blue. And we will never know.

Sky

I love the sky. I love cloudy skies, starry skies, blue skies, orange skies… Anything except a dull white sky.

Every culture has this concept of a sky... The absolute zenith. And what is it after all? A roof made of nothingness. Point of exit to space.

Quarterly Review

I was born two weeks later than expected. Just enough to make people wonder, but nothing to worry the doctor. I say, those nine months were the best days of my life. I knew it wasn’t worth it, the world outside. Perhaps babies are indeed wiser than adults. So I prolonged my “vacation” as long as I could before I finally gave in. Couldn’t risk being born on April Fool’s Day after all.

Writing

I write best when I am desperate, frustrated, messed up and almost dying. Which is a good thing. It’s a very basic sort of paradox if something of substance can come out of such a mess. Not quite recycling, no.. This is some sort of bizarre catalysis. Do writers, poets and artists live in misery of their own making to foster their creativity or do their circumstances make them writers, poets and artists in the first place? Now that’s very pedestrian. If it were, in fact, so simple, then most of the world’s people are in reality brilliant writers, poets and artists just waiting to explode and exude talent. Why is it that the world never gets to be dazzled by their brilliance? Because not everyone lets off steam in the same way. So is that all that it is, after all? Letting off steam. And when the fog clears it leaves behind some sort of wondrous thought provoking creation which suggests extraordinary ability on the part of the creator. Is that the way it is, then?

The quality of writing is perhaps best measured by the effect it produces on the reader. No, not just the magnitude of effect, but the nature of the influence it can have. The slightest hint of a change in thought process is far more powerful than merely provoking disgust, revulsion or anger. Something that can make a person go “Hmmm” and stays in his or her mind, surfacing time and again, realigning the way he or she thinks about something or the other. That’s the power of writing. That’s where writing can result in more than just entertainment, and be more than just words.

More Ramblings on The Night

OK. I have been planning to do some sort of verbal purge, some sort of induced vomiting of the brain, so that I can start thinking clearly, start writing again. Quiet indeed. Great, this is going to be much worse than I ever thought. So do I pick a random topic and start writing? It might just work. Perhaps make way for a few Freudian slips. Which would end up being misconstrued as intentionally casual nuggets of brilliance.

The Night. Wow. That isn’t even new. I already have a blog post on that.

But that doesn’t mean anything. Because what The Night means to me is far more than can ever be expressed in words. To me The Night is… near perfect. The closest to the “right” way of being. Strange, how darkness has always been associated with negativity. Just because you cannot see what lies beyond the darkness, it doesn’t mean that it’s all evil. That all that you cannot understand is negative. But that seems to be the way the world has taken things for granted.

The Night protects. The Night covers. The Night holds. The Night filters out the irrelevant humdrum and incessant drone that accompany The Day. The Night is an exercise in blankness. Emptiness. A healthier state of being than the cluttered pandemonium of The Day. Light and sound are clearer at Night. The Day is an explosion of both light and sound. Light. And Sound. That’s how we perceive almost everything. The more jarring of the five senses. The sixth sense is what you feel in your heart. That’s the quietest of all. But that’s another story.

The Night is also when the sky comes alive. Specks of salt against an inky blue tablecloth. It is when the stars talk to us. Light travels faster than sound. Perhaps that’s why we never get to hear what they say. One can only lip read the way they glimmer. I suppose we are not very good at that. And by the time the sound reaches us, it’s too late. It gets lost in the commotion of the next Day. Lost forever.