What the fuck should I write about?

Yup, the profanity up there. That's a sign of the things to come. That's how it's gonna roll around here from now on. I've been thinking of things to write. Topics visit the empty brain-shell I call my head, sit there for a while and when they find that it is not a fertile ground for breeding, they take flight.

I've been seeing and observing things all around. Things keep happening, but are these things worth talking about? Would they matter in the next 100 years, if, by any chance, these words make it through that time and space? That's how long term I am thinking. Or at least trying to.

So, anyway, here's a bit of thought and wisdom or useless advice. (It all depends on where you're looking at it from.) 

Learn to say NO.

Yup, that's it. It's very easy in principle, but in action, it's tough as trying to eat an apple full of blades.

Someone will get cut, someone will bleed, someone will be put through discomfort when trying to say NO. And if you actually say NO, then the rewards might/might not be immediate, but as the saying goes, NO is easier to say, YES is difficult to do.

As with all pieces of advice, use your better judgment, use your discretion, use your fucking head to make sense of things.

That's almost fucking about it for now. 

cranky mood post

Every day that I don't update this blog, it's on the back of my mind. So the natural question that arises is that why I don't update this blog? The lack of thoughts is not a problem, the lack of time is not a problem anymore, the lack of will? Maybe.

It's a confused fudge state of thinking where nothing makes sense and the life around you is not moving at the same pace that you want to move and it's all a slow, burning, chaos.

I read about an experiment where they waited some 67+ years or something for a drop of pitch to drop into a beaker. The dude who was in charge of this experiment died in the meanwhile, without having seen the pitch actually drop.

I miss the old days of this blog every day. Maybe when this blog was younger and so was I. More than anything else, the tensions were less and the atmosphere was electric. Perfect for creativity. Now I do a "job" all day and that kinda just sucks the fun out of writing. Maybe I was never meant to be a writer.

But if so, then fuck it. I don't care. I set out to do certain things, I did them. Consequences and results be damned.

I've told many many stories on this blog. Hundreds of them and now I feel that the well has run dry.

Even writing that sentence feels like ashes in my mouth, but I am not going back to delete it. Fuck it, as I said above.

I am going to free this blog from its story writing chains and make it about anything and everything that comes to mind. If the stories come, they're more than welcome to be here, but till they don't, I'll shoot my mind off about whatever the fuck interests me.

Consider this a warning or whatever, because I am not a happy boy and I need to vent. 

Smoke Storm

Jenna's first memory of smoke is the grey curl rising from her father's pipe as they sat by the fire and he cradled her in his lap. She remembered feeling the smoke curl inside her nostrils, sneezing and her father laughing and putting away the pipe on the table. She kept looking at the curls of smoke that kept rising from that pipe on the table.

Her father told her a story that night. About bears and princesses and honey and truth and lies. 

When she slept that night, she dreamed of a bear with eyes made of fire and claws made of ice. The bear set fire to the things it touched and it roared and roared and how it roared!

In the fury and the fire, Jenna woke up and she saw that the bear was real. And in its furious dance of fire, it was on fire itself. She cried in her bed as the flames engulfed her and the bear came for her. She saw wisps of smoke curling from the bear's yellow pelt and as the bear came closer. Somewhere in there, in the heat and confusion, Jenna lost her consciousness. 

She woke up in her father's arms. His face was awash with tears and he kept repeating her name again and again. 

A group of firemen were still dousing their house with water to quench the flames. 

----

I just want the older times back when I could write without editing. 

This has been pending

I've serious doubts that anyone is still reading this blog. Maybe people are, maybe they're not. I won't push the link to this post on twitter or facebook or any other place. Let's take it back the basics. Whoever gets here by natural means, gets to read this. 

Fair? I don't know. And I don't care.

Now, let's not mint words here, I am telling this to me, as much as I am telling this to the invisible reader, the blog has been as good as dead. There were some flickers of life, but activity has been slow and very low, overall.

Why? Because I have something called a real life and crippling addiction to getting attention. And the blog doesn't scale up to the attention model like it used to in the earlier times. This is 2006-2007 years, when getting every comment on the blog was a small high, a rush, and back when I was a student, extremely stupid, and much less jaded. The only difference in 2013 is that I am not longer a student. 

There I go trying to sound smart. Hah. 

The deal here is that the day-job has become a weird kind of stone around my neck. I can get out, but the cost of getting out is tough. I am not able to figure out how to make everything come together and work in sync. Too many factors at play, but then that's real life for you. If I leave the job, my whole lifestyle gets disturbed to a major degree. 

But Pallav, you ask, what the fuck does that have to do with writing stories on the blog?

To which, I'd reply, every fucking thing.

Blogging takes some amount of planning in advance and some amount of mental energy and time. And when you come back home after dealing with bad text all day, the last thing you want to do is deal with more text, to polish it, to make it look good, to put out something that makes more sense than this blog post. 

So, yeah, that's a problem, but now that I've come clean with it (kinda) I'll try to fix it. 

Because what else is there to do? You identify problems and you solve them. 

You slog on in the face of life and spit in its eye, because giving up is not allowed for people like us. 

We bounce back, harder. 

I don't know what I am going to do with this blog next, and that shit excites and terrifies me at the same time. 

So it goes.

The Carnival Without Clowns

When the carnival danced into the town, Sheriff Cowen wasn't so sure about their intentions. 

For all that they were, the dancers, magicians and jugglers in the carnival looked normal, but something was amiss about them. There was a trick of light when you looked at them that didn't let your eye rest on them for a time longer than it took to take in their presence. 

But the winter had gone on for too long and now that sunny days were here, the town needed some entertainment. So the sheriff relented and let them all in. This was his last wrong decision as a sheriff, because he forgot to notice that the carnival didn't have even a single clown.

The carnival folk set up their shop in the open ground behind the town hall and when night fell, the lit up their torches and lamps that bathed their tents in a golden light. The townsfolk came to see the carnival like moths to the flame. 

The jugglers juggled things, the rope walkers walked the ropes and the few sorry animals with the carnival went through the motions of entertaining the crowds. 

And boy, were the crowds entertained. 

The children hooped and hollered and laughter, the adults clapped and the teenagers scuttled away in the dark corners to do the dark deeds that teenagers do. Still, there were no clowns!

When the program for the evening ended and a collection hat was passed around filled with coins and paper notes of all kinds, the people went to their homes. Entertained and satisfied, they slept unaware of the fact that they had refused to notice the un-existence of clowns.

When night fell and the town slept, Sheriff Cowen heard a noise that woke him up. He got out of his bed and went outside. The town was burning. A child ran past his house with his night dress on fire and two clowns chased him on pogo sticks. The flames that burned the houses kissed the night sky and more clowns pored from the fire to create mischief and mayhem. The clowns had come.

Sheriff Cowen went back in his house and tried to sleep. He was still awake when the flames reached him.