Di Cieli E Giardini

The sky was a cocktail: a liquid purple intermixed with orange. The moon and stars waited patiently as the sun finished its torch-song and took its bows; the second act was to be theirs. Or was it to be a brand new play? Who's to say? And I? I was in my dorm room, getting ready for an evening out on the town. It was my first, my first evening as an adult, taking in the vespertine pleasures that were only afforded to those of une certain age and time to spare. I had dressed carefully to create a "Oh, this old thing?" kind of nonchalance. I hummed and half-sang of love, moons and first glances. It was a vain sort of a song, it painted me in a light of utter handsomeness. Hubris, some would say.

Giddy and laughing, I was with a very dear friend with whom I had only exchanged a total of two words before this, and that too in a microbial genetics symposium, so you can guess the level of that conversation! But that night, she was my best friend. We hugged, we laughed, we sang 'Only Girl' on top of our lungs and we flirted with bar-tenders. We haven't spoken since, but that is quite another story. My environs, at first, made me unhappy. It was semi-dark, crowded and people were boorish. But, my clothes were complimented and I met so many people I knew! Even strangers talked and talked and talked and flirted. I was warm and rubicund with the attention. Some of it was unwelcome, but, hey, it's a night on the town, right? Maybe that wasn't meant to be an ass-grab, maybe it was an accident, and accidents happen. Such thrilling ones are especially welcome! I have no qualms in admitting that I loved being one of the belles of the ball. It was heady and intoxicating, like so much else that evening.

I have now discovered that boisterousness/revelry are in inverse proportionality to qualms/inhibitions. Of course, this has been well postulated and documented, but I was certain that it wouldn't apply to me. Why should it? Level-headed and sensible that I am! Laugh with me, please, I urge you! It was around the time that my boisterousness had reached its upper-limit (following that my qualms were only constitutively present) that I met Morris Townsend: handsome, urbane, vain and witty. Just like the Morris Townsend of the novel. He stilled the air, and I felt like a child. The conversation was lively and flirtatious, and I felt his vanity seep into me. I was the chosen one! The one who Morris lavished with all his attention. I felt his vanity seep into me, and I felt handsome, urbane, vain and witty. The lightest of touches, the act of leaning against one's shoulder, the ticklish whispers, I found my rapacious flesh hungering for more. Then, it seemed alright. Natural, even.

Having traded the smoky seductiveness for a short walk in the snow followed by a cavernous carnality of an apartment/office, there was just a slight ripple in the illusory joys that the evening had afforded. Morris Townsend had picked a Catherine Sloper after all, and suddenly, I was abandoned out in the snow with nowhere to go, and my mind yearning for sleep and warmth. I hurriedly called Hamlet who rescued me, and took me home. I don't what would have become of me if Hamlet were not around. I still think with the warmest gratitude of his mock-anger and his, "Fuck, no. You're staying here." when I insisted on returning to the dorm.

But return, I did. In the previous night's clothes. My residents, who saw me, knew exactly what may have chanc'd....

I hate this post. I hate it so much. It's so overdone, with its imagery and nod to Henry James. I always do this! I always intellectualize-dramatize something that doesn't deserve to be so. Poor Gossip Guy and his growing pains! This and worse happens to guys my age, and yet they don't compose jeremiads about it. I hate this post, but I am going to publish it because I have already written so much. God knows, I haven't been inspired to write about anything in the past month. Maybe it's break and the silence it brings that has allowed me to reflect on this. It has festered long enough, and aerial and silly as it was, it was also important to me, as all rites of passage are. How did I want this story to culminate? With grace. All I ask for is grace. The grace that comes with calling someone a cab, or waiting with them till their friend shows up. It seems facile to complain that I wasn't being treated, well, like a human being. Tragically, every time one of us makes that comment, we are, actually, being treated in the same way that people treat one another.

 My two consciences: Hamlet and Verlaine will have very different takes on this. Hamlet has already stated and re-stated how unfair it was, and how I must be careful and not compromise my standards. Verlaine has told me to thicken my skin for the ingénue has a relatively low mortality in the world out there. My two consciences are right: I need to keep my eyes open and thicken my skin. In the meanwhile, I shall stay in. I am almost afraid to go out again. The incident, whatever it was, to me, has a damning beauty to it. It is not like the extended-release agony of Option B, it is a montage in black-and-white of a noire lust-story that ends in the snow. I am doing it again! But I need this! I need to elevate my joys and disappointments so that they may carry some worth to me when I look back. Futility, when swathed in voile and scented with a splash of jasmine and patchouli, has so much more grace.

Fatica d'amore, tristezza

Tu chiami una vita

Che dentro, profonda, ha nomi

Di cieli e giardini

E fosse mia carne

Che il dono di male transforma

Di cieli e giardini.

Until the next time,

GossipGuy. 

Commedia

"So, what is that strap about?"

"It's a Pride bracelet."

"Pride?"

"Gay Pride."

"Oh. So, not like Hubris or anything?" {laughter}

"No, more like Hamartia."

Everything is Illuminated

I am going to take a moment to breathe in my blog. It has been much too long. The Muses sang a delightful yet meaningful version of 'Wake Me Up When September Ends' all of last month, which was just as well, really. The  kind of mood that they and I were in, we would only have written posts of torpitude and turpitude: "Ah, woe is me! Here are my thoughts on casual sex and lush Bollywoodian romances." Fuck that, if you'll pardon my French which, really, isn't French after all. It's annoying to oneself when one realises that all he can write/talk about is the heart and the other multifarious appendages it pumps blood to. Have I ever told any of you about the research I am hoping to do this semester? Have I ever talked about my neverending love (And here we are again!) for the biological sciences and how I cheat on them (Stop!) with literary studies?

As you can probably tell, I cannot stray too far away from what has unwittingly become my dominion, so I shall speak again of romance, but a different one, an epistemological one. I have always been easy when it comes to tests. I never say, "No" and I always work hard to bring things to a successful culmination, sometimes I go on all night.  The red 'A' that I usually receive for my trouble (Praise God) is one to be worn with pride, however, and not shame. I shall be the first on my list of detractors: I have little to no faith in my ability to do anything. I suppose this vitriol is a fuel for it makes sure that I bear down and make it seem effortless. As this vitriol is synthesised in the deep recesses of my brain, it gives off noxious by-products- most notably, the constant remonstrations of "flunking like a bitch"! Oh, good times! Imagine my utter surprise, then, as I show up to the biochemistry GRE utterly ill-prepared. The reasons for this are whingey and sound like excuses, though they are all very tangible and identifiable. But, justifications are for the weak. Also, I am fairly sure that, at some juncture in this post, I am going to contradict myself on that point.

Before we dive head-first into the drama, let me set-up the mis-en-scene. The testing centre was a different college: a compact campus with the sort of imposing architecture one would associate with a school of stature and tradition, or, perhaps a Midwestern version of 'Brideshead Revisited'. Dawn had just begun to break, but, if you didn't have a watch, you would be forgiven if you thought that it was dusking. The scenery was autumnal, as fragrant, variegated leaves with colours ranging from a pallid yellow to a wizened red flew about with delicacy. Amidst this stood I, clad in white, and looking down to Camelot! The bell in the bell-tower began to ring, and I knew it was time.

I was checked in by a kindly lady who found my pronouncements of doom and gloom most amusing; I think she would have laughed had I run around campus yelling, "Trojans! Fools! Listen! Can I persuade no-one of aught?!" Did I really want to? Oh, God yes! Such dramatic luxuries, however, are only afforded to one of one is taking the Literature-in-English GRE and not biochemistry. Ah, well. Now, where was I? Oh yes: having checked in, and assumed my seat in the hall, I broke the seal (this kind of drama, you don't create!) on my test and began reading. I wanted to burst into song. If there was ever a sunny Rodgers and Hammerstein moment in my life, it was this: I knew things. I hadn't prepared, but I knew things! The questions were all over the place: the expected (cell biology, classical biochemistry, molecular genetics), the unexpected (neuroscience, embryology), the elating (immunology, virology) and the seriously fucked up (molecular methods). That, however, is beside the point! I knew things, constant reader! No, I KNOW things! I am actually not a bad fit for my major. Why? Because I know things! And I know things because I know people who know things. That was crude, but what I am saying is that I owe all of this to that zany, eccentric, wicked clever, sagacious, quirky, erudite, devilish bunch known as my teachers! Do you know that vision you see when in a test you encounter a question and your mind's eye shows you that exact page in the textbook where the answer lies? Yeah, that didn't happen to me. What I saw was a harried Dr. O handing out Engaugements (clever to call them that, isn't she?) and charmingly elucidating the relationship between Arginine, the high-seas (look up the titration curve) and pirates; Dr. Transposon grinning puckishly as he disposed a nugget of viral (yep!) knowledge; IgTinaFey, pert and business-like, as she spoke of a scholarly article I may like and simply must check out; Dr. PowerBun mellisonantly guiding me along the trp operon; I heard a lilting Southern drawl sing to me rolling circle replications, a voice from high-school encouraging my explorations into embryology...God, God! I could feel a cry-fest bubble in my throat, but I ignored it in lieu of bubbling in answers.

The only snag was the questions about experimental methods in molecular biology, and, true to their nature, they helped prove something to me: I would have done the same thing had I studied like I usually do i.e. on hyperdrive, for this test. Those were ugly questions: some of the methods they asked about, I had only heard/read of in passing. Others made me exclaim, "This exists?!" I answered from my own basal level of knowledge and I took names, bitches. You guys! I know things! I actually, actually know things! Like most romances, it ended in tragedy, but that matters not at all. Of all my romances, dalliances, liaisons, this has probably been my most successful: my romance with a GossipGuy who knows things, and I think he's a keeper!

Until the next time,
GossipGuy!

Toast. It Would Choke Me.

It shall never cease to surprise me how quickly things unravel, how quickly the Helepolis finds a river it can be dunked into, how stupidly the bottom of the Trojan Horse collapses, and out comes a Greek smiling sheepishly while the ones inside execute an elegant facepalm. It also astounds me how people do not think twice before, even if it is in a jocose sort of way, attaching the epithet of 'whore' or 'slut' to someone's name. Ah, yes, it is all most amusing, but frightfully heedless as well.

Having chosen Option B, I found that I have chosen beneath me. Remember how I waxed eloquent about how 'restive and restful', how 'refreshingly casual' their world is? I was a fool. There is nothing refreshing about casual, especially not when it takes the rather casual, if circuitous, path of a casual inception to a casual proceeding to a casual denouement (as oxymoronic as that is), and finally, a casual finale.

I am laughing more this time around. I remember last time, I was lachrymose and all Eponinny, but this time I find it, ah, "how very amusing, but also inept." This should, on no account, take away from the fact that every time something like this happens, a sizeable chunk of my self-esteem is first fattened to a surfeit, and then served like foie gras, and to an undeserving palate, to boot. Bright, witty and scintillating on the surface does not necessarily translate as 'secure with self', and I am not. I never have been, and this is why every time something like this happens, I feel hideous.

As far as this melange is concerned, I had promised myself not to get too invested. But I did get invested, and almost unknowingly so: how slowly my defences were infiltrated, or perhaps it was MY flesh that was far too willing. What does one do when that knowledge, a conversation intime, of the dans la boudoir variety becomes public knowledge? Well, one takes a walk, and reflects on the lines of "how very amusing! But also inept."

My walking companion was the alter-ego of a dear friend, we shall call the alter ego Scarlet Woman. There we were: Scarlet Woman and the Dirty Mistress walking into the night, our conversation was acrid: we spoke of people who were quick to judge our choices, people who we thought understood what we were about. As one who has dealt in the currency and gambles of gossip and hearsay for as long as he can remember, I firmly believe that those who call out certain actions as "scandalous!" or "whoreish" do, on a very visceral level, wish that they'd had the courage to sin so beautifully. Scarlet Woman and I lay in the grass, and watched the stars; we wept as our laughter bubbled through because all of this was so "very amusing, but also inept", until finally my friend quipped: "I feel like toast. We should get toast. Why don't you come up to my room, and I'll make us toast?"
"You are sure about this?" I said saucily. "Another gentleman making his way to your room? Think of your reputation!"
"Think of yours!" she riposted as crisply as her promise of toast.

There is something to be said about a piece of toast slathered with butter (or rhubarb jam, as in her case). As far as comfort food goes, toast is not fuzzy and/or the harbinger of a saccharified coma. Toast is crisp, and the crispness refuses to allow complaisance. Toast needs to be held with poise, or else one gets their hands sticky, and so it demands that one remains in control. Toast is versatile, and deals with most common spreads, and so is not limited to a particular kind of conundrum. The crunch of toast will force you to get up and get going, be it breakfast or break-up. It was over toast that Scarlet Woman, and I whiled away a few good hours. It was over toast that we let our dominoes slip: the witty one wasn't required to sway passions with his prolixity, and the piquant, business-like one wasn't expected to magically have all the answers. Oh, toast.

I didn't cry too much this time, I laughed more. There are those who said that the embittered laughter was infinitely more frightening, but, really, after a while, it just becomes "so very amusing, but also inept". It is amusing because it is a burlesque, really, everyone saw it coming but the players involved. It is inept for the same reason. I have learnt that one should never seek love below one's station, the hurt that the loss of such potential inspires is quite debilitatingly uncalled for. Furthermore, one wouldn't want maggots to feast on such meet food as one's Dignity, would one? Time for toast, I reckon.

Until the next time,
GossipGuy.

Overtures at Twilight, Or, Push the Button! Don't Push the Button!

Now that I am finally here, back in the Spitsbergen, I want to go home. By home, I mean The Eternal City. The sun would set in the Eternal City, there would be no web of intrigue and desire to disentangle, while ensuring that one's composure wouldn't unravel at the same time in the Eternal City. The only desire I felt there was for Ted Baker creations and macaroons...ah, well.I've barely been back a week, and my life is as tortuous as I had left it, albeit with a whole new cast of characters.  As Hamlet and I discussed, if our First Season was an exposition, the second was a denouement, the third promises to change tracks almost entirely, and present itself as a bedroom farce. Mismatched couples, like fickle water molecules, form momentary interactions with one another, only break off and move to a different cluster, as the sun sits low. 

There is a lot to be said about using one's personal charms, one's crust, if you will. If you are not classically handsome, then your persona needs to be potent enough to inspire a certain degree of, well, a je ne sais quois that may endear you to many. As a person who has skated by on slick wit for many months, I think my word can be taken on that point. So, imagine my surprise, and utter delight, when I found myself being courted. But as a Gemini, making choices hasn't been my strongest point. So now, I have to choose between Option A and Option B. One who courts, and one who smoulders in the distance. One who is all affection, and one who is dangerously vertiginous to be around. These cases shall be addressed separately, as follows:

Option B

Option B is someone whom I have known of, but not really known until this autumn, and there is an innocence about Option B that shatters my heart into a thousand sharp shards that poke me in inappropriate places to remind me that what I have on hand is someone who deserves to be cherished, and not used. Yet, what we have is a liaison: it is a good idea to keep things civilised, is it not? Even if one has entirely countermanded the tedious business of defining what exactly it is that one intends to hold so high in sophisticated high regard. But, as men of fashion, detached liaisons are, well, easy. As men of fashion, we are, well, easy. Do I want to pick Option B? Yes. Have I mapped out the attractions of Option B? D'accord! Option B is found in a group of twenty-somethings who have a roughened artlessness about them: they are restive and restful; they take each day as it comes, each hour, in fact. As a person who has always lived and loved amongst the high-strung, the charmingly neurotic, and the achievement-oriented, I find this insouciance most delicious. Could I ever adapt to this? Not a chance! I am much to set in my obsessive-compulsive ways to be able to. I could do it, if there were a process, but that does indeed defeat the purpose, does it not? Have I learnt anything about myself from Option B? Yes. When I revel, I REVEL and weep, and revel again. When my clavicle is nibbled upon, I gasp. Do I see a future? Perhaps. A future in which I pull a 'Brief Encounter' and almost throw my planned life away, but not really? Yes, I may reach that point. Next course of option? Who is to say...

Option A

Option A shouldn't even be an option, since we've barely even met. I was introduced to Option A by my dear friend Elinor Dashwood whose poise and equanimity I admire and envy. I never thought that one could swoon, but I found out that keeping one's feet on the ground when the only thing one wants to do is tip right over, sigh and lose consciousness, is a task of extreme Yogic proportions. I was terrified that the blush that had suffused its way up my neck would be visible to all, but my cappuccino colouring took care of that. I proceeded to make an absolute exhibition of myself, laughing gaily, and orienting myself in a way that can only be described as slatternly. But how can one resist the vellications of such a gaze? I remember hearing Elinor whisper "Remember, you're better off" to herself, and I very nearly winked at her. I walked home steeped in the mud of self-loathing...what was I thinking throwing myself at Option A's head in so brazen a manner. Oh, and weren't my affections otherwise engaged with Option B? Well, not exactly. Being enliased (neologism) does not equal being enfianced. You may think, constant reader, that I am morally reprehensible, and, yes, I concur. But even here, I am not in love, so to speak. I am never in love anymore, it is a nauseating business, and why deal with noisome things when more fragrant, vespertine pleasures are to be sampled? Do I want to pick Option A? Yes. Have I mapped out the attractions of Option A? Mais, oui! Option A is the very epitome of pulchritude and comeliness, and has a gaze that makes me deliquesce. What have I learnt about myself from Option A? That I speak in a Southern accent when I am, ah, "half agony and half hope". Do I see a future? Theoretically, yes. But even then, I have no illusions. If Option A were to work out, it would be a situation in which I would delight in the utter wretchedness of my existence: being with someone infinitely more beautiful than one only amplifies the self-doubt, and frankly, I may burn my nights away wondering why this happened, or how this happened, only and only if I get too invested. The key is not to get invested, certainly not in the fickle-minded, proper false. Next course of action? "A weekend in the country! Smelling jasmine! Watching little things grow..." Or perhaps even making them grow. The only trouble with such a weekend is that, after a while, the mosquito bites and the hickeys begin to look startlingly uniform...ah, well.

Concluding Thoughts

I had long believed in the the more entropic nature of love, and I have outgrown that now. I do not even believe that something as grandiloquent as Love (i.e. the marketed kind) even exists anymore. Perhaps, it has more to do with distillation and crystallisation of feelings rather than the sheer entropy of whatever is supposed to happen. This is not a perplexing thought for me at all, a saddening one, yes, but that too is fading. This is no different from the many classes I have taken: read extensively, and carry a big stick. I don't know which button I shall push: A or B, but the one thing I shan't allow is either one of them to push my buttons. I am young,  but too disillusioned in my illusions to want to want anything more than a calculable means to a palpable end. The burlesques that are to play out under this perpetually purple sky are another matter. We shall see. 

Until the next time,

GossipGuy. 

Senescence, Or Something Like It

I have found, of late, that I have a positive dearth of patience with the young. Or at least those who are younger than I am. Eighteen-year-olds are tolerable, I suppose, they have an idea of what is what. They don't realise it fully, but at least they have few illusions. I feel like I have superseded my illusions and I do not like it: this was one race I wasn't supposed to win.

I don't mean to sound old and embittered, God knows, I am not nearly aged enough to own that level of cantankerousness, but I recently had coffee with a friend who brought his protégé along. While my friend and I chattered away amicably, I think the protégé felt, oh, neglected perhaps. I lauded his valiant attempts at trying to join in the conversation, and smiled benignly at the "ten-dollar words", the contrivances whipped out in an attempt to hold his own. It was, as he would probably say, "Rather endearing"! How familiar this all seemed! 'I was such a little snot! Just like this one!' I recalled fondly. We played along, and it was adorable. Initially, at least.

Things began to go downhill when  my friend had to excuse himself to take a phone-call, and his protégé and I were left alone. We talked perfunctorily for a few minutes, and finally he asked me where I went to school. I told him, and his face...changed. I'll admit, mine is a charming State school, and yes, I remember my face 'changing' too when  I had filled out an application for this place. Oh, very well! It was my safety school, and, in the end, when it boiled down to pure economics, I realised that this was my best bet! I felt, for some unfathomable (t)reason to explain this to the protégé, and he smiled sweetly, indulgently: his face was my face from fifteen minutes ago. 

"Perhaps, economics isn't the only criterion, hmm?" he questioned with a cowing politesse, that made me feel like a poor cousin.

"No, not the only criterion, certainly," I responded. "But a vitally important one, wouldn't you agree?"

"Oh, quite. But, you will agree, that reputations are important as well. Imagine, people of our breeding associated with commonplace schools!" he laughed.

"You cannot deny, however, that paying for a reputation and a reputation alone is the worst kind of snobbery!" I trilled.

"I wonder, then, sir, about the Dior label on your shirt!" he exclaimed affably.

"Your Lacoste amphibian inspires similar wonderings, monsieur!" I countered charmingly.

"The point I am trying to make is that, surely, you cannot be satisfied in a farming community?" he asked.

"You do assume, sir, that it is a farming community. Not so. Also, I shan't lie, I really thought that I had settled for something below my station, only to learn that things like station are superficial things that must be indulged in as superficially as possible." I explained, a bit passionately.

"How noble." he responded. He didn't look like he believed me, in fact he went as far as to hum a ditty from 'Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi' (A Match Made in Heaven)- a Hindi film about a young, vivacious woman who marries a staid, older man only to live in connubial bliss. It made me mad.

"And where are you applying?"

He proceeded to rattle off the names of elite academies in India, and of course, the Imperial Eight; the Indian schools were his "Plan B". I didn't have the heart to say anything polite, but I did have the spleen.

"I wish you luck." 

"I will get in, I know I shall." 

"Such confidence is admirable."

I wanted to ask him what recourse he had if he didn't make it in. A Plan B-01 perhaps? I wanted to tell him that he was being a fool, and that, when the chips were down, for an international student, economics was the sole criterion, that one was beatifically fortunate if one found a school that was intellectually sound and didn't cost a King's Ransom, even if one's father was a King or a noble, that scholarships shouldn't be scorned at as 'charity'. 

Reading over that last section, I find that I do sound old and embittered. I hadn't failed, I had just chosen differently, followed an instinct, a call that influenced the tides in my blood vessels, and I had made good. I don't disapprove of the Imperial Eight, but of the questions of 'breeding' and 'station' that come with them. I have friends, dear friends, at these places, and they deserve to be there because they got in meritocratically, and not because of the fact that they were "raised a certain way". Perhaps, just perhaps, this is why I needed to placed in the Spitsbergen so that I could fully comprehend the nature of superficial things.

My friend had returned by then and sensed the tension in the air and managed to diffuse the tension by bringing up a compelling topic of conversation, it's a skill of his that I have long admired. If anything, they are probably very grateful and awe-struck by this skill of his at Princeton! The protégé and I parted cordially; we knew that our paths would probably cross only under the rarest of circumstances. Later, when my friend asked me what I thought of him, I gave him the usual platitudes, but my friend knew. His laugh at the end of my "perfectly delightful" told me that he knew that I hated that kid. Envy is what this is, and an envy that stems from an animated wistfulness that yearns to be that innocently reprehensible again, to be able to have those illusions, and water-tight plans that do not yield to any force. I miss it. I miss it so.

Until the next time,

GossipGuy!

King Lear

Have you noticed, sage,
Our gilded cage, sage,
That often doubles as a stage?
We often talk stage-rot.

I'd smooth those wrinkles with mine youthful hand,
Kiss away the cancer, steer us to land.
Away from a sea of seething plot.

You do speak, sage,
In decrepit adage.
Brandishing words-spells much like a mage.
My part, for my part, is to appear overwrought.

My serpent's tooth, thanks, is rather blessed.
Why ever not? I've learnt from the best.
We play each other, (but never really play each other)
And a denouement is begot.

I love this, our play, king,
It has it all-everything.
More so with a flaggon of beer king:
passion, Passion and fear, king.
Fear of Us, as you leer king.
Leer after day after leer, king.
The spotlight's yours- spew your curses.
My mind will think of curtains and patron's purses.
Notice, as the smoke disperses,
That there is applause- a whole lot.

My monologue's here! I must be glad.
Pray God, let me not be mad!
I'll sputter, I'll manage
To have as little of the carnage
That falls, rightfully, in your lot.

I know there are those who want to see
Us play out this savaging comedy.
I shall play distraught- I promise,
For as long as you need me.

Stage Rot

I fail to understand why "Drama Queen", "Drama Whore" and the like bear a negative connotation. Don't abominate theatricality; it takes a certain kind of person to pull it off well. There are those who do it vulgarly; they aren't serious about it. What they are is loud, cantankerous, and in it just for the money i.e. the attention. True theatrics are organic and meaningful, an interpretation of life, our lives.

Without invoking the rather bromidic, "All the world's a stage..." axiom, I shall state that while we are commissioned to play many parts as we make this production of ourselves, there are some parts that suit us better than most, and there are some parts that we play to absolute perfection. Yet, occasionally, when a play transfers to a different city, new cast members are added on. Sometimes, the signature actor does not play his signature role, instead he plays someone else. I went through a similar sensation, when I saw a particularly poignant, violent opera being staged again. This time, another young guy was playing this part that I had played a few months ago. It was a sweet, earnest performance, far less desperate (some would say lugubrious) as compared to mine, but...oh, it was a heart-rending. I had seen this play before. Why, I even knew the other actor, I knew how this would end. I wanted to rush up to this new actor, and tell him to pull out now, before the art imitated life to the extent that the lines between the two blurred, and a vile stage-rot set in. But, how could I? The script of this particular play doesn't feature a bail-out type of character. So, I watched it unfold, Hamlet at my side, "It's like watching the same tempest which washed away your home now circling another home whose owner is still ignorant of his unstable foundation. There's a point where you don't hate it, you just admire it's lure and destructive force." Said Hamlet with the foresight and wisdom I love him for. So no, I am not hating anyone now. Instead, what I am doing is far, far more disturbing.

The character that I have been cast to play is the one that no-one talks about, especially as far as this play is concerned. The director, the Man-in-the-Sky, seems to say, "Oh, you've played the ingénue once, now try your hand at a Brighella." I am playing a schemer, a spurned schemer who watches The Lovers' happiness from a distance, and yearns for the enterprise to fail. I have hated playing this character, because, I, as a rule, don't deal with unpleasantness. But I have come to realise that this Brighella is darker than most because he is not choleric. Instead, he smoulders slowly and smokelessly in the blue flame of his own dashed desires. I am not saying I still don't hate playing, I just have a better understanding of what I am doing on this stage now.

There is a reason why some of us turn to drama to make sense of the convoluted circumstances of our lives: drama gives everything context, it elevates even the most sordid circumstances to something palatable, worth delving into and potentially exorcising. I take a lot of flak for my histrionics, my prolixity, and there are those who believe that my accent is a pro-Imperialist statement of some sort. Well, I shan't change myself. I have been a production twenty years in the making, and I can finally say, with some conviction, that this is who I am, drama and all. I have had great reviews, I have had ovations, and while I have also been boo'd, I know for a fact that no-one can play my role the way I do. There is a great deal of thought that goes into giving this superficiality the depth it deserves.

Until the next time,

GossipGuy.

Mansfield Park: A Review

Mansfield Park is a complicated novel, to put it succinctly. It is a Cinderella story stripped of all the sparkly affectations and magical sense of the fantastic, and dipped in the dark murkiness of topics like adultery, passivity, religion and morality. Here is a novel where Jane Austen steps outside her comfort zone of the bright and airy, and presents to us a Cinderella named Fanny Price who is moral yet passive, endearing yet not very likeable. Like Fanny’s female cousins in the novel, I didn’t have very much to say to her.

Impecunious Fanny leaves her home in Portsmouth to the palatial Mansfield Park, under the aegis of her rich uncle and aunt, Sir and Lady Bertram. It is an arrangement negotiated by her aunt Norris who is perhaps one of the nastiest literary creations ever, but is all the more astringent because she springs forth from the usually bright pen of Jane Austen. The Bertrams are not bad people, rather, they are rich people. Their attitude towards a young Fanny is one of, well, apathy would be too strong a word. Let it instead be said that Fanny fits into their world without disturbing a thing. Fanny Price, let the reader be aware, is no Elizabeth Bennett. She is, instead, possessed of a timorous disposition. As a child, she is quickly prone to tears, and as an adult, she is physically weak, though her initial timidity somewhat blossoms into an elegant taciturnity. Fanny’s cousins, Maria and Julia, do not play the conventional “ugly stepsisters”, rather, they ignore Fanny. This makes sense because Maria and Julia are vivacious, beautiful and poised for brilliant futures attained, of course, by marrying well. Though Fanny is indispensible to her enervated Aunt Bertram, she never really receives matronly affection from her. Her Aunt Norris, on the other hand, constantly reminds the girl of how inferior she is to her cousins, and how grateful she must be to them for their charity. In all of this, Fanny’s only true friend is her cousin Edmund who always takes up for her in instances where Fanny is wronged, or just plain ignored.

Things get increasingly complicated once this cast of characters grows up. Maria finds herself betrothed to the wealthy, socially relevant, but very boring Mr. Rushworth. Edmund has resolved to become a clergyman, (the hereditary title of ‘Sir’ being destined for the elder, pleasure-seeking, Tom) Julia dreams of a success similar to Maria’s, while Fanny reads. The patriarch of the family, Sir Thomas Bertram, leaves to tend to his slave-run estate in Antigua, and, in his absence, enters the witty, worldly, brother-sister pair of Mary and Henry Crawford. Worldly, urban, well-spoken and fashionable, the Crawfords arrive as a whirlwind that places the young aristocrats of Mansfield Park on a “very serpentine course” lined with temptation, lies and ulterior motives. I enjoyed how Austen uses the theatre to reveal the true tensions between the characters, as they rehearse a play called Lover’s Vows that they put on for a lark, exclusively amongst friends. The enamoured pair of Henry Crawford and Maria excessively rehearses their parts, while Maria’s conflicted, jealous fiancée stumbles over his lines, and is constantly bitched about, mainly pertaining to what a poor actor he is. Edmund and Mary, cast as lovers, give voice to their true passion for one another, but realize that theirs is a love that can never work because of Mary’s finely etched vision of the kind of life she hopes to lead. Despite the fact that, at this point, the novel is heavy with activity and full of brilliant if controversial conversations about issues ranging from men, women and love to the role of the clergy in society, it is the well-intentioned silences of one Miss Fanny Price that evoke the most intrigue. Fanny finds the business of staging a play scandalous and immoral, she finds Henry Crawford deplorable for his lothario act with her betrothed cousin, but, almost on a penitential instinct, she never really allows herself the luxury of voicing these opinions. This moral priggishness can be very annoying, but it is also very real: one does have opinions on what is morally wrong or right, but this impulse To Be Good i.e. to avoid unpleasantness is so strong within one that one’s silence essentially becomes a straitlaced kind of hypocrisy that one never really recognizes in one’s character.

I also enjoyed the use of letters as a device to convey the presentiment and the aftermath of major scandals. I understand that many Austen loyalists were hoping for high, eloquent drama, as far as the scandals were concerned, and, no doubt, Austen would have crafted those exquisitely, but the epistolary route is a far more judicious one. As Austen herself says in the novel: “Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.” Personally, as a product of an age where all I would have to do would be to glance at Maria Bertram’s status updates to map out her goings-on, I find that the letters, the perpetual anticipation between letters and reading between the lines and the biases of the writer, afforded me a rare, delicious pleasure.

All in all, Mansfield Park is complex, sophisticated, and morally effusive without being officious, but also problematic. I called it a Cinderella story because I got the sense that passivity is the ‘virtue’ being rewarded in this novel, that one is a better person for one’s privations in life. To me, Mansfield Park poses the following question: Is it morally right for one to sit by, holding one’s ethical convictions close to one’s heart, as the universe mold itself around you only to recompense you in the end, for Being Good?

Until the next time,

GossipGuy!

Fictional Vignette #1: Some Enchanted Evening

First long-suffering vignette in a series of three-to-four half-realised billets doux. Hope you guys like it! Please leave a comment or four!

Some Enchanted Evening.

“You were sweet to think of the theatre for me,” he whispered over the blaring horns of the overture.

“Oh, of course!” Alexander responded fondly. “I haven’t seen you in so long.”

“Oh, I know! I have been insanely busy! But then again, so have you!” he said more to himself than to Alexander.

The buxom woman sitting next him shushed him discreetly, and he frowned. The overture was still playing; it wasn’t as if they were missing anything.

Alexander leaned in to him and whispered, “It had to end, didn’t it? All those deadlines, and accompanying drama!”

He smiled in response. “And here we are! Free, if only momentarily…”

“I am still open to running away to Thessaloniki, you know…” Alexander proposed, with a hint of a grin in his whisper.

This time it was his turn to do the shushing: “Alex! The performance!”

They turned their attention to the stage where their entrancingly beautiful friend sang in her clear voice of days and lovers gone by, and how she wished she had paid more attention to what was before her all along.

“She’s ravishing!” he whispered to Alexander, and his disapproving neighbor shuffled purposefully.

“Vanessa’s always been the master of the Shock and Awe,” Alexander noted with the air of a critic. “Look! She has even made you forget how much you hate this song!”

“Why would anyone waste their breath hitting high notes to whine about velleities?” he said stuffily.

“Snob.” Alexander surmised with inherent charm.

He elbowed Alexander in the shoulder, as he stifled his laughter.

He now began to concentrate on the performance. The play was a musical: a grand spectacle about the frivolities of egotistical people paired with the wrong partners, but too arrogant to admit their respective errors. It was only in their staged solitude that they allowed themselves the luxury of remorse and of regret and that too in song. He looked at Alexander who seemed to be above the elegant foolishness taking place on stage. At this point, he was humming along with one of the songs. It was a well-known number in which the singer, a distinguished gentleman, extolled the virtues of his rather juvenile child-wife to a sophisticated old flame whose face bore the grief of knowing too much of the world. He felt the same world-weariness and calculated confusion of that actress reach out to him in the form of a pearlescent vapour, and pour itself into his pores. His heart stirred, and he leaned back and touched Alexander’s shoulder. Alexander leaned forward, questioning concern on his face.

“Quit humming, I can barely hear the song!” he hissed, perhaps a little more vituperatively than he had planned.

An imperturbable ripple of hurt flashed across Alexander’s face, only visible to the very experienced.

“Sorry,” he said shortly, and his friend, slowly dissolving into guilt, nodded.

As the impending intermission began to coax the flighty proceedings to a more equilibrated phase, the two gentlemen decided to pay their friend Vanessa a back-stage visit.

“Do you have the back-stage pass?” he asked with an edge of panic in his voice.

“Yes, I do!” Alexander replied in an attempt to soothe his irrational anxiety. “Don’t worry, there will be no ugly scene involving security!”

He beamed, “You know me so well!”

“Always!” Alexander beamed back.

The bustle of back-stage was overwhelming with wigs and props that seemed to fly around, and people yelled for a myriad things at once.

“Has anyone seen the fake baby?!”

“Marissa is allergic to the green wig! Did you know this?”

“Coffee! Paul needs his coffee before his big aria, and don’t overdo the cognac like last time!”

“Oh my God! This show is a flop!”

It astounded him how people seemed to navigate around them fluidly, as if they knew that he and Alexander didn’t truly belong there.

“Text Vanessa, won’t you?” he said edgily.

But, before Alexander could pull out his phone, a squealing Vanessa managed to locate them.

“Oh my God, you guys, you made it!” she cried as a greeting.

She took one look at Alexander, launched herself into his arms, and kissed him full on the lips.

“What did you think, darling?” she asked him gingerly, throatily, privately.

“I am loving it.” He answered laconically, but his words held within them worlds of dormant desire.

He received a warm, but decidedly platonic hug, and was asked the same question, but sweetly.

He launched into a paean of excessive praise for her high-notes, and he could feel Alexander’s charmed, head-shaking derision pat him on the back, and similarly praise his performance.

After a few more minutes of phatic, all-inclusive chatter, she ushered them in the direction of their seats, and reminded them to keep their “ears peeled” for her high F in the second act.

“She is fantastic!” he said genuinely, for he truly was very fond of Alexander’s somewhat frivolous, but altogether delightful girlfriend.

“You know who else is fantastic?” he questioned rhetorically. “You are! Seriously, you are not allowed to leave my life! And we shall definitely do Thessaloniki! Just the two of us!”

They stood in the narrow gilt-edged corridor of the theatre, a rare two-some not holding cocktails.

“You mustn’t say such things, Alex,” he enunciated carefully, trying fully not to sound embittered or enraged. “I fear…”

“Fear what?” Alexander asked, confusion alighted on his handsome face.

“I fear…” he couldn’t suppress the bitterness now. “I fear that I may fall in love with you.”

Mangez!, or The Gourmand's Tale

I have returned to my Eternal City, and I did it kicking and screaming. I really didn't want to, I wanted to work this summer- intern at a lab, and perhaps, be present when an anti-tumour vaccine was unsheathed. But Fate had other plans, and these, as I have now discovered, were meant for my betterment.

My last three weeks at university were excruciating: deadlines had to be met, finals had to be met (in combat), it was every-RA-on-deck as the residence halls made their last bustle before settling into canicular lassitude, and I was sick! This made a world of sense, as Hamlet said, since I was leading a eating/sleeping-optional type of lifestyle. The end result was that, while I met my paper deadlines alright, my exams were written hopped up on pain-killers and other drugs. I remember being very happy bubbling things into a scantron, thanks to the drugs, and that is all I do remember. For once, my grades have been a complete surprise, but a pleasant one, thankfully.

Battered, broken, and in need of home, I first went to Hamlet's. I love going to Hamlet's, and every time that I do, I wonder why I don't do so more often. It is such a welcoming, invigorating space! His charming parents, his clever, precocious sister, and Hamlet himself so serene! Plus, there's always the imperious Badi Begum! Oh, that was such an adventure! But that is yet a story for another time...Suffice it to say, my time at Hamlet's was needed to break me into vacation mode, and ease my transfer over to schedule-less days of luxurious, luxurious lounging.

My return to the Eternal City felt right the moment I stepped on to the airport, and was greeted by a dreamy looking Marion Cotillard doing her Lady Dior thing. Exuberant, exciting, decadent and delighting: I was home. My mother had a slight fit when she saw me: "Haven't you been eating?! You're so skinny!" I was somewhat heartbroken; I had expected my family to join me in my joy of finally having a waist again. But, not just them, a lot of people are of the opinion that I needed to "get healthy". This is a constant knell to my ears because I am paranoid. Being skinny has served me well, romantically speaking. God, God, I cannot go back to my fat-Elphaba days of yearning to wear certain things, and wondering why everyone wanted to be my friend and no-one wanted to fuck me. So far, I have been very politically correct about and around food: refusing things, or taking small portions, or sharing (rather generously) with my brother, much to his astonishment and my parents' disgruntlement.

My father, however, decided to reintroduce me to the aerial pleasures of fine dining. This was something I revelled in once, in what seems like an altogether different lifetime- an easy thing to do in a city that boasted of some of the finest restaurants in the world.

How I smiled and I glowed as my goblet was refilled- remember?

How I oohed, aahed over and debated the menu- remember?

How easily I was engaged in conversations with managers and chefs out on a visit- remember?

How I had nearly mastered the art of catching the waiter's eye- remember?

How coldly I'd send things back if they weren't done up to the perfection promised- remember?

Remember, I did, as we entered the restaurant done up in burnished sepia. The flutter of the napkin, the tinkling of the crystal, the dishes- aromatic, artful and arresting, daddy's booming laughter, my brother's insistence that a certain creation NEEDED to be ordered, the waiter extolling the virtues of tarragon and mango-powder...oh, it was as if I had been jolted back into place. My airs were back! To many, this would hardly seem celebratory, but I worry. I worry about how much I have changed, I worry about who I am becoming. As trite as this may seem, it is an important check-point that tells me that I can be two different people in what may as well be two different worlds. I checked myself as I found myself worrying about the prices, and then smiled inwardly: I never used to do this before! It was always, "Ah, let daddy handle it!", but this was something new!The food was magnificent, as was expected, and true to form, I found myself becoming the gourmand I was always was, and what does a gourmand do but gormandize?

As I sit before my computer now, typing out this blog-post, and finishing the sumptuous Haagen Dazs creation, I realise that I can do this. I can get used to nights that come alive at eleven rather than crooning a nocturne. I also realise that I shall recognise said nocturne's grey beauty when it plays for me again in three months' time. So, as I stand on the verge of embarking onto a Grand Romance of fire-opal evenings in the Eternal City, I thank my Spitsbergen for tempering me well.

Until the next time,

GossipGuy.

Coming Soon: Long-suffering fictional vignettes!

A Poem of Manners

To the Boys who Behave.
You have to love these boys who behave,
Their engines run on Self-loathing and Guilt.
Their rooms are sparse, blasé little caves
Where prurience is held in gilt.

Tragedies are lapped up in tea-cups,
Or coffee-mugs, for those who are Good.
Runny scandals handled on plates
With modal sides of seasoned shoulds.

"How could you do it?
"I would never do that!"
(I am lying, I must!)
(I must appear a prat.)

It's pretty to see them held in thrall,
For their lives are infinitely tougher,
These new-age tenants of Wildfell Hall,
(With deadlines, and sedative withdrawls)
Their souls, their French-how bravely they suffer!

You'll see them in classes of comparitive lit.
Where pedantically shall they opine
That Wharton is wonderful, and Austen should quit,
For one's old bottle fits their new whine.

Their shirts are too matched, and their accents too trying,
Their verses are pithy, and quick to take wing.
As quick as they are to laughter and crying,
Yet, one feels, they hardly ever feel a thing.

You have to love these boys who behave,
They write themselves into such clever scripts,
Bitterly comic, but altogether grave,
And delivered in tones so haughtily clipped.

Such good boys! They can always be trusted,
Since their limits are rigidly set in stone.
But that structure can always be adjusted,
For there's always some way to atone.

You have to love these boys who behave,
Their breaths are blank, and their hickeys are hidden.
Their days are full, so hard do they slave!
Their nights are paeans to their forbidden.

Benefits

As I tried to catch my breath between the many woes of Lily Bart and the excruciatingly tight heterochromatin that had wound itself around me, I found myself playing host to a rather perturbed Janice. A Janice who was wringing her hands, and pacing the floor of my room furiously. She'd open her mouth as if to say something, but then stop, and pace some more. After a while, I began to imagine the slender Janice as a sort of pendulum vacillating between a 'yes' and a 'no', and like an overeager 'Jeopardy' contestant, I wanted to know the question! After a while of pacing and fretting, and providing me only half-answers, Janice finally came up with the truth. When the answer given to you is, "Yes, um, NO! Um...yeah...", the question is usually, "Will you have sex with me?" That was what Janice was asked too, as was revealed through a series of 'tasteful' yet plain text messages, by a rather personable gentleman. It's odd, really, constant reader, how nonchalant that conversation was. There was no thunder, no lightning, no whimpering animals, no baleful moon signalling the portentous rape of Virtue! It was all very casual. As I pondered upon Janice's question, I made a rather startling discovery of my own: sex didn't frighten me anymore. I was surprisingly okay with it. I remember how severely I had judged myself at first, I had called myself a number of things from a Perverse Hedonist to a Whore, and then imagined myself as some sort of a failed Samuel Richardson character, someone whose Virtue had just not been Rewarded. Of course, rewards were to be reaped, but these were hardly the spiritual kind! Yet, we are hardly living in a conduct novel from the 1700s!
When I dove into it, I was basically looking for love in the gutter. I still am looking for love, not in the gutter though. I have a fairly good idea about what is sold there anyway! Yes, love would be wonderful! But a person needs to be 'taken care of' as well. Is that really so wrong? Personally, I do not condone casual sex i.e. the promiscuous kind, the kind when you become the human equivalent of a fondue pot. The moralistic issues that come with it are things I am not going to touch upon. Primarily, because morals are techy, touchy things, and you don't flash your morals in public: that is simply impolite! The only thing that concerns me about Fondue Variety Casual Sex is that one exposes oneself to so many risk factors of disease! Imagine yourself emerging from a fairly sheltered cocoon into an STD Clinic where you await results, and wonder what became of your life, and how far away you've strayed from the plan! It's debilitating!
What I am proposing, and it's not completely unheard of, is the presence of a friend. You can do homework together, and even 'take care of one another'. Gone is the furtive embarrassment of fumbling for a name in your head, as you finally achieve your culmination. There is no need of lying next to someone in the semi-darkness, gazing upon their supine form and trying to wonder what kind of a person they truly are and whether you things would have been different if the two of you would have done coffee and taken in a movie. Like a, you know, date? What about the hurried dressing, the shower of shame that follows when you return home, the emptiness of how meaningless it was, and, not to mention, the awkwardness of running into them in a public place, once again searching for a name in your head, and turning red in the face, out of embarrassment this time,not ecstasy? Gone! Having a 'solicitous' friend takes care of all these minor problems. The whole affair can be so civilised that it hurts! Class in the morning, and barely any in the evening!
The advice I finally gave Janice was a little jolting, even to me. I said, "Do whatever YOU want, as long as YOU want to do it. Don't do it because he wants to, and whatever you decide to do, I shan't judge you for it." We all judge, it's a fundamental fact, and I am not going to deny this. The inverted snobs have their own form of judgment called meta-judgment wherein they judge those who judge. Hell, I judge too, but there are people whose motives and actions I do not question, and Janice is one of them. She texted me last night, informing me of her decision. I wrote back telling her to let me know in case she needed anything else. I put my phone aside, shut the gargantuan biochemistry volume, poured myself a cup of milk, and walked over to my window. Outside, a milky night sky was spread taut against the canopy of The Great Beyond, and no stars twinkled. The roads were empty, desolate, while a few windows of the surrounding rooms still had their lights on. There, in the deep of the night, I tried to imagine what was going on in those rooms. Would me saying that one, at least one, of those rooms contained people who were entwined in each other, be such an unfair guess? To me, these moments when I walk over to the window and look outside are transcendental in that it's almost like taking a step back from a messy, insensate blur only to discover that what you are looking at is Pollock's No. 5. This time, as I stepped back, I looked at our lives, the likes of Janice and me and Hamlet. Our lives had subtle differences, but fundamental truths like high-octane majors, demanding work schedules, calendars with entries scribbled in in personalised, space-saving short-hand, and jobs that took a lot out of us despite it not seeming so, were all common threads. These are our lives, and to add the tedium of coquetry to this? By heaven! While I will always pray that Something Meaningful makes its presence known soon, the interim period, you will admit, is a disconsolate one. These are our lives; is it so wrong to just want to be held? Even if it is a simulacrum of love?

Until the next time,
GossipGuy.

The Dreams of Bright Things

Wisps of moonlight, strands of desire, a pinch of stardust, a sprig of laughter, a dash of conversation, a tear or two (depending on how strong you like it), must all be placed within the crucible of a perfect day and whipped until peaks are seen, garnish these peaks with hope (but not too much) and you have yourself a dream. They are difficult things to make, dreams. The recipe, like the product, is duplicitous. It's hardly a stir-and-serve type of affair! The crucible must be carefully chosen, some dreams disintegrate in the wrong day. One must add to and stir one's dream with a firm hand, evenly mixing in the ingredients. An extra tear will make your dream too runny, too much hope will poison you. But most of all, your dream must be protected from contamination. Dreams decay fast; and the stench of decaying dreams kills everything it wafts over.

Foolish Mortals.

We met by moonlight, the two of us, dreamers, fools. By moonlight did we meet, and come sunlight we parted. The crucible was perfect: slightly warm with clear skies by day, and little silver slipper of a moon by night. The meeting itself was precious: where one was delicate, the other was steely, where one blew hot, the other blew cold, where one had already decided, the other didn't know what was what. There was a dance that night, a high-school style prom for college students with bad memories. Sirens like Lady Gaga sang portentously of bad romances as we grinded lasciviously on the dance floor. It turns out that I have the boundaries of a whore on tequila. Minus the tequila. And then there was goofy, ever-smiling Janice. She went alone, the fifth wheel to two couples, and, personable as she is, fell into the a group of dancers. Finally her attentions scoped out a certain semi-attached someone, and as she managed to sever him away from his commitment, the word 'home-wrecker' was whispered with a malicious sibilance. No malice was meant, for the heart wants what the heart wants.
My dream was maturing, the dance led to the solitude of my room, and I...I couldn't do it. I tweaked out, because I wasn't ready. Big brown eyes full of everlasting affection, Holy God, if only I could vanish. It's so gut-wrenching, this business of breaking hearts! It doesn't help that I went into 'hyper-RA' mode to make sure that the damage wasn't too extensive. But I had to run away! I had to! I couldn't do it, and I didn't want to abandon a relationship in the middle of the road....
But what a beautiful night it was: dancing pairs, unknown things, and so much given to remember. It was all there: the passion, the desire, the laughter, the hope...what a beautiful dream it was! But I had to run away, because it was just like a dream! As the sun rose, the foul dust that flew from rumpled sheets stuck to our dream, and a rot set in. I had to run away, I couldn't do it. I am damned either way, however. I shall be demonized for what I did, not only externally, but internally too. Such is the price I shall pay for honesty. I blame no-one, I do not protest the outrage, because it is just. I was bad, very bad, in fact, so it makes sense that I be punished for it. Such is the way things are with decaying dreams, when bright things come to folly, so shall my name live in infamy. At least, for a while.

Pretty Farce/ No Caddy, not that Blackguard!

The past fortnight has delivered the following upon my hands: an unabashedly giggling Janice, revelling in and revealing the many sweet nothings and piquant somethings that her far-flung beloved whispers and texts, and the consequences of my own heart-break related actions. Janice astounds me! My friendship with Janice astounds me too. For here I am, recounting the most recent spate of the passive-aggressive viciousness that I exchange with a paramour of a dream deliquesced, and she! She will suddenly tremble with laughter, and reveal a juicy tidbit with the air of one hiding a lump of jaggery in the folds of her skirt. In her excitement, my problem disappears momentarily, and I partake of the sweetness she offers. Then, as Janice prepares to return, she gives me a hug that leaves behind an emollient coolness on my skin, and, for a while, I am calm.
The last conversation I had with my blameless friend whose world I trampled, was not as passive-aggressive. For one, frightening verbs like 'lie' were bandied about, and I took this as calmly as I could. Secondly, the name of a yesterday was thrown about rather casually as well, and this left me trembling. The first time that that name was said was a dagger in me, and every consequent time was that dagger being twisted. Gasping for air, I realised that I still held a piece of that poisonous decaying dream on hand: I still dreamed that the past would return. Oh what a fool to have fallen for the pretty farces of someone who never cared! Debasing myself in search of alarming answers...and I still held a low, intensely burning torch for a dead dream that can never be! Lord, what fools these mortals be! Messy and damaged, I tapped into a rather potent resource: my cousin Caddy. Over a long, tearful, trans-Atlantic phone call, I blabbed my story to her, and she rewarded me with a very similar story of her own! You'd think we synchronised it! If Janice and I are on opposite sides of a turning wheel, Caddy and I might just be sharing a position on the selfsame. We are to be each other's strength now : I will protect her from That Blackguard, and she will protect me from mine.
With the tides of time and consequence playing fast and loose with my own biochemistry, I ended up tanking a biochemistry exam. How salvageable this situation is , I do not know. I am still in shock and alexithymia, and haven't really thought of damage control yet. I did have a bit of an episode in the professor's office, humiliating is a word that comes to mind. God, I had promised myself that I would never be one of those kids whose emotional lives cast their umbra upon their professional lives, and an unpleasant eclipse of intellect transpires. The Uterus, I could work with, but this is suddenly getting way too much. I lost a promotion, I believe, because of this too. My paranoia is so bad, that I am convinced that the internships that I have lost have been because of the researchers peering through a telescope into the mayhem that is my life and selecting against me, in favour of someone more well-adjusted and capable of separating the two seemingly immiscible parts of his life. Even now, the far-away song of a promising text seems to liquefy the wax that is now my resolve.

What am I do with myself? What am I to do with all these dreams that I am distilling? Perhaps, I shall bottle them, seal them with Janice's laughing breath, and place them in a crisp winter sun so that they can age from Dream to Memory. Because there are dreams that disintegrate, and so cannot be. No matter how cogent our minds may be, the heart wants what the heart wants.

To the next time,
GossipGuy.