I sing of leaves

This is about ... I have no idea. But that has never stopped me from writing or posting a blog. Skipping the part where I would normally venerate about how long it has been since I posted my last entry, I shall go directly to the bee in my bonnet.

...

-Swat-
Pity the bee got killed. By a phone call. Now I don't remember what I was thinking about.
Anyways, I have taken up reading the Tarot. Perhaps I can write something about that. People are usually afraid of Tarots for some strange reasons, as if the Cards can actually cause harm, as if the Death card will bring death. Let me tell you straight away, they don't harm you; only that they tell you when harm comes your way. And the Death card does not cause death.

So, I did a reading for myself. Some cartomancers are of the belief that one cannot read one's own fortune. But I see through the eyes of the goddess; I hold no such beliefs.

Some notable Cards that came up was The Queen of Pentacles as the Source of my intellect, signifying clearly the burden of possessing the seeing eye as well as the sightless eye, and the loneliness that comes along with the two.

The last card was The Sun, inverted. It promises great things, yet I will accept only what is needed and will give away all that are in excess.

I had a long conversation with the cards, I am getting familiar with them, and they with me. I am sure we will get along really well.

Probably, I should open an occult consultancy firm. Will you be one of the first customer?

Enter Freely, and be unafraid...

My 1st time on MTV!

Well, today I had what can be called my 15 seconds of (un)fame, but when Cyrus Broacha asked me what is my ego, I blabbered, and said the first incoherent thing that came to my mind: "My ego is that I believe in myself, for my ego is me". What kind of an answer is that!

Cyrus: So, do you believe you are God?"

Me: Er.. No

Cyrus: Is God a part of you?

Me: Er.. no. I am a part of God"

Cyrus: Am I a part of you?

Me: -smiles- No

Cyrus: Thank god for that (whatever does he meant by that?)

I patted him in sympathy. He got bored with me and moved on to the next guy.

Yeah, that was my fifteen second.

There were so many things I should have said, "The goddess is my ego" or some sort of thing.

The thing I am trying to bring is, at the most unexpected times, the most unexpected questions come our way, and it is much too difficult to give an answer.

This short exchange happened when Cyrus Visited our Campus, but we were busy shooting the LIPDUB for IIMB, ( I will paste the link tomorrow, when it is uploaded on youtube ), but unfortunately, Leila, the one who made this all possible, fell down and hurt herself while filming, so she had to be rushed to the hospital.

There were all sorts of confusion after that: Who will take the shoot now? and What will happen to the LIPDUB now? Not heeding much to those, we all went where there were the most crowd. Cyrus was doing his show. So, like any other who have nothing better to do, I stood where everyone was standing. Then those questions came.

I was contemplating, what should have been the right approach to answer a question, instantly, on your feet. I suppose practice will help, but one generally do not practice such a thing unless it is presented to him by circumstances.

But then, I think it has nothing to do with thinking on the feet, the trick is not to answer the most acceptable one, but one that you believe in. It can be boring, strange, weird. But it is a part of one, a product of the self. And that is much more valuable then what is artificially produced by practicing some method to generate artificial answers.

The Torture Chamber

At the outset, I must declare that this is not a work of fiction but is reality, from viewpoint of a sterile mind.

How many days it has been since I was captured, I do not know. The torture sessions increased both in intensity and regularity. My body was bloody from numerous abuses it had withstood and the mind battered from the continuous interrogation sessions.

As I got ready for the next round of one such torture sessions, otherwise cleverly disguised as pre-placement talks, in this dungeon pit which is otherwise called a management institute, I saw that today it is going to be different. Today, my torturer was the notorious 2J. I turned in to my sightless eye, and in place of it, there was the all consuming flame. I fed all my emotions, feelings, hurt, pain, into the flame, and let it consume everything until in the end, there was only the flame. This is how I have been holding on to, even after such excruciating torments from the hands of my torturers.

It was my sentry duty that day, for inmates are given responsibility - but I was being detained in the torture chamber , C-11. An hour remains till the other inmates noticed that I have slacked from my duties. At this place, duty is heavier then mountain, death lighter than feather (WOT reference). Would they end this torture in time to serve my duties? Can I survive after this even to care about my duties?

A small pain crept up the mind... The flame flickered. The flame needs fuel to sustain it, and as such I faltered a moment and let the fuels supply waver. I threw in everything into the flame. There was nothing but the flame. The flame and I was one.

For how many hours it continued thus, I do not know, but it was long. Even as I was one with the flame, 2J used the dreaded Credo upon me. In answer my body convulsed in reaction, my mind reacted sharply and the flame flickered. It was a mistake, the Credo nearly overpowered me but the flame was not yet out. I ignored the pain and threw it into the flame - but to my ruin, it didn't burn - the pain was nonflammable. It flickered once more before it finally died, unable to sustain without any fuel. With it the oneness was lost; reigniting would be futile as there no longer remained any fuel to sustain it. All the previous inflictions of the torture tided over me, my screams were muted by the intensity of the Credo. I could not hold on anymore - my strength was fading. Alas! all my efforts will be for naught, if I fail now. Suddenly there was a bright flash of light but the next moment, darkness took over me.

As I opened my eyes, I was surprised to find myself alive. It seems I was out only for a few moments but within those few moments many things must have happened. The torture had stopped and the torturers gone. My rescuer was nowhere to be seen. With tired legs, I dragged myself to the sentry position, thinking what must have happened when I was blacked out.

[This was written during one the pre-placement talks as it continued to drag on and on]

Attention...Span

I never seem to write anything here, these days. Have I got nothing to vent about? Or have I become too complacent with my faults that I no longer care about them anymore? Maybe it has something to do with my decreasing attention span. There was a time when I can do a thing for a long time, without my attention wavering towards another. But that was then, now I can hardly have my mind at one thing for more than a few seconds. Perhaps this has something to do with how I have been living my life, always on the edge, not knowing what is going to happen the next second, always ready to jump to the vantage point at any instance ... etc. Etc. is such a nice word, one can use it whenever one runs out of ideas. But I digress. Oh, yes, attention span.

A mail notification! I must shift my mind on that and come back here after that...wait, there is a instant message too, asking for help in one of the online games I play. This won't take long, will come back to continue this writing.

Ah, that was quick; the mail was quite uninformative and tediously long, and I helped in one of the deathrune seige of one of my gaming friend in that facebook game. And now I am finally able to return to my writi...ng. Is that someone knocking on my door or is it the neighbour's? Who might it be, so late in the night?

It was my neighbour knocking on my door. Someone dropped him a book and asked him to gave it to me. Is that my phone vibrating. Ah... give me a moment...
It is only a message. Nothing important.

Now is it my fault that I could not write this piece of blog in one go? That I could not give my whole attention to write a piece of my mind because my attention span is as much as that of a goldfish?

What book it is that is on the table? I have this terrible urge to read it. I must fight back the instinct to jump on it...
...
It is hard to tear my eyes away from that temptation of the devil and now here again... must writing this.

Will these never cease? Another temptation runs through my head, should I write this later and watch that new episode of "Accidentally on purpose"? Ah, choices, choices and choices. At this moment I want to pray, "Oh Lord, lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil." But I won't.

Is it just me, or is my headache getting more serious. Perhaps my eyes are getting tired with staring at this screen for the past... uncountable number of hours. Maybe I should write this later on, maybe tomorrow morning.

Oh, but wait, I have not checked orkut today! So I must rush there to check the messages and stuffs.
That was fun, I replied to a few messages, and I am back here again. But wait, an invitation to read a new blog, how nice... give me two minutes...

...
That was much more than two minutes. Perhaps I should not have written the comment, but how could I have resisted when it was so blatantly wrong! And it was not a good thing that all while I was getting distracted by million other things as well!

Ah, before I could be interrupted again, I shall end my internal monologue here. Now... should I read that book or should I watch that episode. Choices, choices, choices.

The Quest for the Doomed Hammer - I

Thunder rolled weakly and disintegrates into deadened silence, as if afraid that it might wake up something unwanted.

Another lightning flashed from afar and illuminated the whole crypt, but the accompanying thunder was muted out by the silence.

I slowly passed through the graveyard, my summoned shadow master, an exact magical replica of myself, perhaps more stronger in strength, followed without making a noise. Darius, the ice-mage mercenary I hired from Ureh was nowhere to be seen.

Hiding behind a looming gargoyle, I heard the crushing of a fallen leaf beneath a light footfall. Someone was coming... I quickly cast a fade spell to make myself invisible to unfriendly watchers.

Slowly, the silent footsteps came closer towards the gargoyle...

It began as a soft tremor, then suddenly the ground seemed to tremble under a great weight; without warning, a skeletal hand broke open the ground; pulled it's whole skeletal body up and looked around its as if looking for someone to blame for its condition. Many more have emerged by then. Someone or something already knew I would be here, and they have awaken the dead to stop me.

At that moment, the fool a mercenary I hired form Ureh came running shouting some nonsensical things which I could not understand.

When he saw the undeads, he stood frozen. He might have wet his pants but I could not see clearly in the dark. The Sightless eye grants me visions but it is not particularly helpful to pick out particulars in normal vision.

One of the death sentries I placed around the crypt exploded. They are contraptions that shoots lightning charges to anyone in range. Many more followed, each explosion killing, if killing is what you call when you destroy and undead' many of the skeletons but many more were emerging from the ground.

My shadow Master went off in a burst of speed and silently started attacking those that are newly emerging from the ground.

The fool of a mercenary regained his senses and now held his long weapon proding one of the fallen skeletons.

"Oi, don't play around and help me dispose of these undeads" I shouted in anger and exasperation
He immediately activated his magical aura, for which I hired him, that rushes towards me and filled me with renewed energy and heightened my power and senses.

We battled hard, after a while the skeletons stopped emerging... but of the horrors that came next, I could not have even imagined...

tbc~

A day in our lives

It would be wrong to say the phone rang; there was no sound whatever that morning. But someone was calling me on the phone. The phone shows an unknown number; I stared at it for a while. Lei was still asleep. Of course I could not have picked it up. Not this early in the morning.

The cell phone rang 18 times more, from three different numbers. Who would want to reach me this desperately? When Lei woke up I told him about the calls. He threw me a look that clearly said his annoyance, "Why didn't you wake me up, you moron?". He was quite worried; something bad might have happened and someone was trying to get the news across. He tried calling back the numbers. The first one didn't picked up. The third one didn't either. But the second didn't picked up. This perplexes Lei for a while. I told him not to worry, it must be nothing important

All of us were awake by then. Cloud was rubbing his eyes, looking still sleepy, Lei took wind for his breakfast. While there, the phone rang suddenly ( but silently). It was the second number. Lei picked it up: the call was just to let us know that our mother has reached City A and going to City B. Which I already knew as I talked with her only yesterday night.

Wind managed to spill food on his shirt. Again. Lei is telling him off to be more careful. Ice is talking how irresponsible the whole of us is and some of us needs more growing up. The day was otherwise uneventful. Lei promptly took up his huge book he has been reading these days. Wind is watching Naruto/Bleach/One Piece; I don't know which. Ice was doing laundry, Cloud is on the phone. He hogs the phone all day long. I don't know how he can stand that offending contraption.

We all have classes today, some of us have the same ones and others different. The first class, as soon as I entered the classroom, I felt the air stale, the air conditioner circulating the same stale air repeatedly. And all the doors and windows were closed. I felt claustrophobic but Cloud calmed me down, that nothing is wrong with doors and windows being closed, and that I was just being paranoid. And here I am, not listening to the prof, but writing this post. Oh, wait, the prof just ended the class early. Got to go :)

I am the Wind!

Then I was Cloud. Floating, wandering, thundering.

But that was then.

Now, I am the Wind. Ever blowing, moving, storming.

Never staying, always moving.

Then why do I feel lonely sometimes. I don't mind being alone. I like being alone, doing things on my own, never asking someone, doing things as I would like, being unrestricted by someone. I am happy being alone. But then, sometimes I feel lonely. After being in the vast expanse, after blowing over every corner of the sky, sometimes it feels like it is too big for me alone. And that is when these lapse into loneliness comes to me.

But they must go away quickly, for there are clouds to carry, leaves to rustle and land to cover.

Because I am the Wind, I must be alone in my freedom.