After fever dreams
a recount of June, July, August and a contemplation on the desire of knowing oneself
Factlist
The fact that I’ve been unable to string more than two sentences together for the past three and a half months without getting it looped into another string of thought (is April then truly the cruellest month, as Eliot said?), the fact that I know now where that reference is from that I’ve seen been circulated across social media with coming of April every year is because of another embarrassing rabbit hole I fell into after Harry’s House came out—long story short, hopping over all the embarrassing details, there’s a picture of Harry Styles holding The Waste Land and my obsession at the time didn’t let me miss a beat but to devour the poem, the fact that I finally found a way to cheat my writing block, listing of course, why couldn’t I come up with this idea before, the fact that in between this disheveled state of mind The Waves has quietly overtook To The Lighthouse of being my favorite Woolf novel which I referred back to naturally in the hope of finding some stimulation to write, instead with every opening of the book it has overflowed in me with hope to hold on to life’s beauty (what do I do with that if it doesn’t make me write?), the fact that quite surprisingly for the first time I wasnt hopeless as the words refused to come together, the fact that instead it showed me in contrast all the unbelonged spaces I grew up in—gender, sexuality, caste, race, patriarchy, and the several countless intersections forming when mapped under social norms, traditions, culture, rules of morality and justice—all that I survived and am surviving in due to the sub-space created by words—my own and borrowed, the fact that I chose to become a writer because one autumn day in 2011 a voice inside me screamed it, the fact that for the next four years I tried helplessly to find the words, like how Sylvia wrote in her journal: “I have a vision of the poems I would write, but do not. When will they come?”, the fact that death,on a long-term, is only a rearrangement to find new places to put those things that the person used to hold and a gateway to redefine them, the fact that at 9:21pm on 1st of August as I was reading through Inger Christensen’s Alphabet the fear of time-passing grew in me after a long time like the poems in the collection growing in Fibonacci sequence, the fact that we still don’t have gender neutral uniforms in schools, the fact that I changed the bedsheets, washed the blankets, to conjure the words, instead I got fever, doing nothing for the next one and a half week, then trying to get back on track, and now a month later, lying on the month old bedsheets, I’ve got fever again—how funny?—yesterday as I was watching Loving Vincent I could feel his temperature rising before he passed away—how funny?—fever dreams are back again, my back is burning, my head spinning, I’m craving, I’m craving, the fact that at that very moment my sister came to my room asking: “do you need anything? Ma is asking”, “feeling hungry”, I said, she pulled out a Dairy Milk Cadbury from her pocket, “it’s cold”, she says and leave it beside me, the fact that I’m sans desires whilst a dozen desires has come ashore inside me, the fact of wanting nothing absolute while wanting everything, insurmountable.
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On Desires
Several dualities were born inside me at the moment of realization that I can think. I was 10 years old and while my classmates were discovering having crushes, I was discovering that I have a mind of my own. That is when I started watching people, deciphering their actions and reactions, juxtaposing them to how I would have acted or reacted in those situations. My mind has been overcrowded since. This realization was stimulated by the friction caused by the gendered desires of my classmates—the gossip, the opinions, the secrets—all of which didn’t coincide with mine. After couple years of trying to go with their flow, I finally came to accept the fact that I lack certain desires, mostly that are gendered, which then pushed me find pleasure in androgynous pursuits. One of the first of such pursuits was born by my desire of being a writer. This desire had come to me as an epiphany within a year of my revelation of my imagination but it took me four more years to actualize it, meanwhile the desire has evolved to become something inevitable. Coming back to the notion of gendered desires, if you are a reader you’d know that most writing is in fact gendered, from the writing one can usually tell whether it is written by a man or not, as it is true for most forms of art. Many artists prefer their works to be androgynous, but I personally enjoy the presence of the artist’s identity in their art. The desire of being any kind of artist is however sans one’s identity. If we trace back any artist’s work, we can trace it back to a slice of their identity, but that slice of identity in itself couldn’t have created the artwork. Nothing in me from who I was could have ever imagined to articulate these thoughts if not for the desire in me to perpetuate the changes in me to become who I am now. Desire is a funny feeling that erupts without caution and changes the climate of one’s identity forever. I have been revealing myself to me in parts carving with this tool of desire. The part of me that remains still largely unidentified are the gendered desires, its scarcity in me has made it less of a common knowledge to acquire. Until recently I’ve been oblivious to what relationship I held with my own gender and in relation to the social concept of how gender is viewed. I knew from my surroundings what I was not, but couldn’t reach what I was. Then a couple months back on a day in June, while I was down the YouTube rabbit role, I found my first glimpse of gender-reveal in the statement from a video essay—I want to be feminine in the way a man is. This made sense to me as to why all my celebrity favorites were male who were in a way feminine or female icons. I didn’t want to have them in any sort of way, which explains why the idea of meeting them never appealed to me, I wanted to be them, the most prominent of them being an Indian was Shahrukh Khan, then subsequently Ethan Hawke, Timothée Chalamet, Harry Styles. The idea of being feminine the way a man is not to try to be like a man in the sense of the world where the power resides, instead it is about finding the way to express one’s femininity from a place of androgyny. The two female actors who for me express this fluently are Cate Blanchett and Konkona Sen Sharma. On the other hand, Florence Welch is feminine in an obvious sort of way, yet her femininity to me seems to ooze from an androgyny, like a cosmic enigma. And I am yet to Orlando by Virginia Woolf, but Vita Sackville West to whom the book is dedicated and inspired by has also been described by Virginia having this particular trait. It is nothing of a compliment or a complaint, rather simply a description like having straight or curly hair.
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Moving on from my personal gendered desires, to the general desire of knowing oneself, it is always balmy getting to know how the greatest creative minds have dealt with it.
Life is, soberly and accurately, the oddest affair; has in it the essence of reality. I used to feel this as a child—couldn't step across a puddle once, I remember, for thinking how strange—what am I?
Thursday, September 30th, 1926
A Writer's Diary by Virginia Woolf
After a lot of thought I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t know myself at all. I’m like a living piano, with lots of wires and mechanical bits inside me in the dark; I never know who comes and plays it, and it is difficult to completely comprehend why as well, I can only know what is playing—whether it’s happiness or sorrow, soft note or sharp, in rhythm or not—just that much. And I know how far up or down my octave will extend. No, do I even know that much? I’m not even sure if I’m a sympathetic grand piano or a cottage piano.
Patishar, Wednesday, 28 March 1894
Letters From a Young Poet by Rabindranath Tagore
The unknownness of my needs frightens me. I do not know how big they are, or how high they are, I only know that they are not being met. If you want to find out the circumference of an oil drop, you can use lycopodium powder. That’s what I’ll find. A tub of lycopodium powder, and I will sprinkle it on to my needs and find out how large they are. Then when I meet someone I can write up the experiment and show them what they have to take on. Except they might have a growth rate 1 can’t measure, or they might mutate, or even disappear.
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeannette Winterson
“Why is the sky blue?”—A fair enough question, and one I have learned the answer to several times. Yet every time I try to explain it to someone or remember it to myself, it eludes me. Now I like to remember the question alone, as it reminds me that my mind is essentially a sieve, that I am mortal.
Bluets by Maggie Nelson
We are not written for one instrument alone; I am not, neither are you.
Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman
[...]try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, like books written in a foreign tongue. Do not now strive to uncover answers: they cannot be given to you because you have not been able to live them. And what matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now.
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
It feels reliving to able to put together a newsletter finally after so long. I’ll be changing the format of the newsletter from now on, as it is getting difficult for me to jot down a personal account sitting at home. I’ll be sending out weekly collection of excerpts, art, film stills, photos etc. that I have consumed throughout the week as newsletters, there will be a through line nonetheless so that it’s not all scattered.
Until next time,
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