Wednesday, August 22, 2012

The Boy Who Knew Death

Posted by A Great Liar


As the sun rose each morning, so did the lonely old man with it; a sad limping figure strolling across the front lawn with a cigar tucked in his mouth, lighting fresh candles here and there, perhaps on an imagined grave of some loved one long lost to the infirmity of time and age.

A young boy living across the street, with an unusual pastime for a rather simple minded 12 years old, watched the old man out at the porch each morning, raving and talking to himself or the ghosts surrounding him, with his eyes staring wide and in excitement against the narrow scope of a binocular.

At times, he saw the old man going down in a fit of wild cough, settling against the neatly layered grass and spiting what looked like blood from the distance. The boy would be disappointed each time it happened, since it almost invariably spelled an end to his little morning show.

But it was never the cough or the sight of blood that bothered the little boy, the idea that the old man might die one of these days; because in his heart of hearts the boy also had a secret about him, a secret he had sworn to protect till the end of time.


___________________________


And then one fine day, when the old man began to cough incessantly, fell down, and remained unmoved for minutes on end, the young boy threw the binoculars down, got hold of one of the little Stickman Sam dolls stolen from his younger brother and ran for the house across the street; knowing that time was the enemy to all the magic in this world.

Because our little boy knew how to cheat death, though the only thing bothering him was that he just hasn’t quite perfected the art yet.

Once there, he leaned down and was relieved to find the old man with his eyes wide open, echoing loud irregular breaths.

There is still time. The boy realized; his young heart now a lucent dream in the wake of this newly found hope.

And with his eyes closed a little too tight, the little boy pressed the Stickman Sam against the failing heart of a dying old man and made a wish.

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Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Every Writer’s Room

Posted by A Great Liar


1

Under the pretext of writing, every writer worth his salt has come to know himself through the greater pain that drove him, the ever blind literary godhead oblivious of the pain of the underdog at its disposal, all the while knowing little of it as the hammer does of the nail.

Zoom in to read if you may, and you would know that every writer but strives to write his own epitaph, the glorious finale that will outlive the skin and bones, because who knows it better than a writer that how much has been forgotten in the name of remembrance.

Memory that finds itself on the paper, however inaccurate, is infinitely superior to a truth unknown, an over settlement of grievances between a sterile truth and the blind propensity that drives to bleed on the sheet of paper.

All writers want a thousand pages that will tear this planet in half, more halves the merrier.


2 

Under the guise of writing, there is a cold calculating act of telling people who they really are, to make them choke on their convictions, dissolve the molecules fretting about in their brains.

Most writers think better in the sunniest hours of their every day life, because that’s when the show is on at its incredulous best. Every man caught on the mystery camera, a victim of his surrounding, wary dissatisfied soul in civility and in rage against the reason of his age.

Reflections against the window view of every writer’s room and nothing more, with every man on the street being a well known superstition in abundance, offering a higher form of poetry, more in motion than in verse.

Monday, May 7, 2012

Requiem for the Vertical Man

Posted by A Great Liar

To be dead is to escape accountability; no more squinting into fold-out maps to make a living, in apprehension and fear, for the errors and failings don't cling to you the way they did back home.

Good old days with life giving orders to the unshaped and the un-orderly, creating constellation within and around its many followers, with the entire mechanism of the host geared to accommodate the travelers adrift across continents and languages, floaters wrapped in the dull overbearing gaze of a sound thought.

A case of freedom boiling down to a pattern, a level and a norm; when to reach out to the man next to you, the buddy floater, was to violate the rules of the constellation within and without; and would he ever get to hear you, and in which language?

That is the mathematics of individuality wearing itself out, burning down to sheer multiplication of seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, decades; each withholding a broader freedom within a nutshell.

Take a picture along now if you will; bring it down with you if it serves anything at all. Make it vertical, clad in fabrics making waves, now mere ripples silhouetted in memory.

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Monday, August 8, 2011

A Case For Suicide

Posted by A Great Liar

“It’s nothing but a tale of the living and the dead, and the ones in between.” I watched the main street from the window of the apartment, thinking out aloud. “It’s funny that each man now walking across this street, is merely following the long lost trails of his ancestors who must have walked the same line, trudged on the same cobblestones and occasionally admired a fleeting beauty passing by, some whistling and rest in awe.”

Ammo replied. “Have you never no hope, Lev? You know you ought to say something nice tonight, it’s your birthday, for creeper’s sake”. A half burned cigarette dangling from her left hand, a thinly clad wrist with white hairless skin and bones strikingly jutting out. The many misnomers of drug abuse blended with hours spent in artistic torture.

I continued on, for a moment mindless of her incitements of hope. “And the ones before them, and before that, and so on. Hence the ironic cycle of life, and God’s great cast of actors and actress upon this planet.”

Ammo replied. “Don’t you think that it’s a blessing that most of them, including you hopefully, will live to see another year.”

“Yes, though I hardly consider it a cause of celebration.” I replied. “Living is but one of the strangest acts of suicide, Ammo.” My voice low enough to qualify as a whisper. “It’s an acknowledged descent into the abyss, self willed, but done with hope, with flair, and in high spirits. An act of self annihilation done in extremely good taste.”

She said. “Perhaps you need to live a little more, Lev. And need to see beyond the veil of your opinions.” Paused. “Perhaps you also need to take into account the very possibility that you and your cockamamie opinions about life and the rest of the haberdashers surrounding it could be wrong.”

Sunday, July 10, 2011

A Thousand Pig Heads On Sticks

Posted by A Great Liar

It’s a day to be quiet; spent in anger and disguise. Because it’s a kind of day that scares you, scares you deep, and scares you good, real good I mean. When you are afraid of nothing more around you, but only yourself.

Afraid of what you have become, if only for a day.

And so you take a day off, a day off from yourself. The trick is to just take a back seat and watch the world go, like a small tin can rolling down the slanted street.

And if you would watch it for too long, you would realize that it’s never rolling in, nor rolling out. Because it never grows too near nor too far, it just rolls.

So what do you do?

You just light the bloody cigarette and take a walk down that street. You simply roll with the can, and never take your eyes off it. You watched it dance, and follow suit. Watch it pull every god damn trick from the bag that is there to be had, and you watch. And ask no questions.

No questions ever. Because there are no answers to be had.

And once you have walked far enough, long enough, you realize you are not alone. No way near! There are people, and always more people. It’s a form of rejoice, a bloody festival out there. Like an ugly welcome, watching them grinning, or somber to the core.    

Walking down the street, filled with walking sticks, moral harelips and hunchbacks, people all around, it was like watching a thousand pig heads sticking out of thousand human torsos, made me feel like a captive walking down an Indian gauntlet, walking down to the scaffold. 

And continued on. Walkin’, and humming, trying not to finish my cigarette in a hurry. Trying to make every moment count. Knowing this is as close to fun as I am capable of being.

And then, from the corner from my eyes, I see a beggar approaching. A beggar with a shine. A physical matchstick of a man with perhaps only enough blood pumped each day to keep the chest heaving.

As the beggar neared, smiling, I spotted a set of healthy white teeth unveiled as his lips widened.

What a smile? I wondered. Now realizing where all the blood in his veins was spent. Like every fiber of his body and soul, the heart, the bones and the blood, committed for one jingle of glory; to keep the teeth shining.

And I moved on. Ignoring him as soon as I first noticed him.

Straight down my eye line, a mother is comforting a little punk ass of her son, a fat round spoiled brat who had just found out that the world isn’t something to be taken granted for. While mother cuddles him, telling him things that like most parents do, things that little punk ass kid like this one has no use for, nor the care.

I watch the kid sobbing, making economical use of his limited set of tears. Spending each with prolonged intermissions, while filling the gap with noise that, with their varying ebb and flow, perhaps represented more grief than there was a genuine case for.

And the woman with expensive embroidery around her hanging cowish motherly skin, the kind of skin that has given birth to hordes of such brats, one too many perhaps, and dark eye shades, kept telling him to trust her, and to have faith in God, though which of those statements she actually meant to be true, it was hard to guess.

Apparently the little kid has taken a fall, face first, into the hard concrete ground, chasing a wild puppy in the street, apparently meaning more harm than love to that innocent creature of God.

And his nose bled, and the bleeding wouldn’t stop, and each drop only brought him closer to death, closer to the unknown, or so the fat kid in big shorts thought. Knowing that he only meant harm to an innocent soul, to a puppy that was now nowhere to be seen, and there would be hell to pay if he dies now, without repentance.

And deservingly so. I mused and moved on. All men should burn for what they do. 5 years old or 85, what’s the difference?

Leaving them to their perils behind, I reached for the cell from my pocket, wishing to make a connection. Recalling an earlier conversation I had, or the lack of it for that matter. Because a phone call spent in silent misunderstanding is not conversation.

Make a connection. But with what? I fumbled in my thoughts. It’s hard to understand the man who woke up in my bed today, it’s hard to look him in the mirror and reach out.

I slipped the cell back in my pocket, wishing nothing no more. Afraid of the disappointment that might await me on the other end of the frequency. Because a hope of being loved, and of being understood, of expectations, bring along with them a hordes of fear and apprehensions.

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