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Jealousy Manifest

  A man is walking down a tree-lined street close to his flat – his third walk of the day. Wearing an elegant-looking trench coat completely unsuited for the cold, his hands shiver in his pockets. His mind, however, is elsewhere. The look of consternation of his face suggests that just like the two previous walks, little by way of relaxation has been achieved so far. He looks as if he is hurrying towards something. He is not. If anything, he might be trying to get away. From what exactly, we are not sure he could say. What is certain is that tension is palpable in the pacing. He stops. He stares at a duck. It is an unremarkable looking duck, ugly even. The man keeps looking at it. The duck, in turn, also stops to stare. Just as quickly as he stopped, the man continues walking, now making a left turn to begin circling back home. It is easy to guess that something is troubling the young man; he is almost wearing his feelings on his face. Nevertheless, the smile he gives to the litt...
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/srs

  I like deliberate obfuscation. It is rare that you mean everything you say – rarer still that you say everything you mean. Conversation (and maybe all forms of correspondence) seems to be as much about what is unsaid or incapable of being articulated. It is why we depend outside the text for meaning. If talking was sufficient, facial cues would not matter, the tone of voice would convey little. The glint in someone’s eyes as they report mischief would be inconsequential. I like to play around with these things. Deadpan delivery, for instance, makes it very difficult to gauge the exact amount of truth or sincerity in a statement. A sort of post-ironic no-man’s land where anything can be said because the recipient’s immediate concern is the veracity of your narration rather than its consequence. A mutilation of form to engineer more uncritical acceptance of content.   A similar thing I can think of is listening to babies tell you stories. They sometimes make things up to nar...
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Masculin Feminin

  I watched Godard’s Masculin Feminin today. Paul is not good at anything he tries to do. He is not a good militant, he hates his job, he is not a good boyfriend, not a good a philosopher, is disillusioned with everything, and does not seem to have good relationships with anyone. His predicament does not appear radically different from anyone else’s in the movie. Even the movies he goes to watch with Madeleine seem to be sorry iterations of what he had built up in his head. There is nothing to look forward to and no love to receive. And yet there is something to envy. His comrade envies the infatuation Catherine has for him. Catherine envies Madeline for the love – inadequate and insincere as it is – she receives from Paul. There is something to Paul in his immediate surrounding that the audience knows better than to love or respect. The purposelessness of his life is accentuated in some part by the absurdity of his death. Narrated with little emotion by Catherine, Paul seems to ...
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Journey to the Journey to the End of Islam

  I just finished reading Michael Muhammad Knight’s Journey to the Centre of Islam . It is not often that a book brings me to tears, especially one without a fictional narrative. Knight’s memoir is a journey seeking the end of Islam through several ‘Muslim’ countries. Beginning in South Asia, home to the largest Muslim population in the world, Knight experiences a religion practiced with all the indigenous eccentricities one might expect, with many practices predating the arrival of Islam to the subcontinent. His journey goes through Syria and Ethiopia before culminating in Hajj. There are several Islams and Muslims on display in the book. Their beliefs and practices are at times mutually unrecognisable as stemming from the same theology. Knight himself seems to believe (and decry) several Islams and be several Muslims. I have often wondered what it is like for a person whose entry to Islam was not through institutionalized instructions that begins before you acquire sentience. T...
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Last Slice

  What does it mean to say self-consciousness is an expression of desire? Does that mean to be acutely self-aware is incredibly narcissist? When there is one piece of cake left on the table, looking at it constitutes for me an expression of desire. I look around the room to see if such desire manifests amongst the rest. There is a point beyond which everyone’s collective reluctance to be the person who acts on that desire reaches critical mass and you just know it is going to sit there for the rest of the night. I do not know how everyone perceives this. I know I am weighing my desire to eat that cake against my desire to maintain an image of mine in the minds of those around me. I do not know the details of this image; I do not even think they would register me going for that slice, let alone draw conclusions from it. I would not. The only thing I know for sure is that a not dissimilar thought process goes through the minds of the rest of them. Of course, I am also weighing other ...
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Somebody Once Told Me

  Are stories narrated better in first or third person? In my brief time playing computer games, I could never stand first-person shooters. The only perspective that made sense to me was third-person. I had to be able to see the playable character as if he too were removed from my agency. I think in a story, first-person narration is more honest about the reliability of the person telling you the story. When you read something where the pronoun ‘I’ features a lot, you are conditioned to imagine the narrator might be wrong about a few things. A third-person narrators carries a veneer of objectivity that is not necessarily borne out in the way the story is read. The story is still told from the partisan view of the person deliberately choosing to share it. By externalizing their own person from it, they supply a level of ostensible disengagement that is supposed to make us trust them more. It is not unlike a news headline that clearly wants you to read it one way while not wanting to...
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When Does it End Robbie?

  I was reading an old journal entry recently. I describe myself as being a stranger to my own emotions. I think the idea is of an escapism inherent in observing your own life as if a you are not a participant. It manifests very clearly when I am uncomfortable. Every time I am talked about in the presence of people I do not want to reveal myself to, I default to an acquiescing smile. I might also interject with harmless quips that offer nothing. I can see myself from the outside; I am trying to appear palatable without leaving an impression. I am whatever they want to project on to me. Whatever values they feel most comfortable imputing. This deep-seated desire to avoid being known (or even perceived) goes back almost as long as I can remember. I have always wished for a measure of anonymity before feeling comfortable with the idea of being myself. It explains, to an extent, my proclivity for running away from excessive familiarity. Not so long ago, I found myself wondering if it...
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