tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74308236008128687342024-03-13T20:39:34.294+05:30Clocks and Crystal BallsJude Gerald Lopezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183714599402577683noreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7430823600812868734.post-24251059791023767662019-10-30T20:10:00.003+05:302019-10-30T20:10:48.428+05:30Making Sense of Chris Marker’s La Jetée and Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">To speak of the experience of La Jetée would be futile. For around fifty odd years, the flamboyant circles of cinephiles and critics have done just that. What leads me to speak of the infamous La Jetée is in part due to its semblance that I think I’ve witnessed to Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Chris Marker’s La Jetée and Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival are the products of different eras of time, yet they highlight a transgression of the physical and temporal divide. The ideas both texts try to articulate using the language of cinema are entwined. What is remarkable about the former is that it has created an arena of expression that paves way for filmmakers like Villeneuve. In other words, Chris Marker’s La Jetée and Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival are products of different variables that bring to the foreground of cinema a common debate i.e. the filmmaker’s understanding and portrayal of time.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In the early decades of the 20th century, Soviet filmmaker Lev Kuleshov, experimented with a rather simplistic method of editing. He alternated a shot of a rather sombre faced man with that of a bowl of soup, a girl in a coffin etc. Each time the audience saw these alternating shots, they had come to varying conclusions. The face of the man followed by the bowl of soup led viewers to believe that the scene and particularly the face of the man signified hunger. The same face followed by the girl in the coffin led people to believe that the face of the man signified sadness. This little experiment cemented Kuleshov’s belief that editing did play a vital part in the creation of meaning which was further influenced by the viewer’s own emotional inclinations. This phenomenon can never be considered a technique or an invention by the Russian filmmaker, just like how Newton gave gravity a vocabulary, so did Kuleshov.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">La Jetée and Arrival both exhibit the Kuleshov Effect right in the beginning of the narrative. Both films exhibit a compulsive tendency to create their own universes in the pursuit to further critique the reality of our daily lives and lived experiences and not just mirror our collective experience of reality. If most films under the science fiction genre look outward beyond star clusters and galaxies for meaning, La Jetée and Arrival have an eerie sense of looking inwards, into their own absurd selves to make sense of it all. The Kuleshov Effect for Marker and Villeneuve is not a way of justifying the narrative but a way of making sense of it. Hence the resultant effect is that in both films our understanding of time is subverted and for a brief while in our existence, we as an audience remain in awe of an experience of time that is non-linear and encompassing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The moment any work of art is put beneath the violent gaze of the critic it bares itself in defiant submission and we see the skeleton and soul of that work, the structure and its theme. For me, the thematic or the content should be a gentle reflection of the nuances of the structure or form (for if the reflection did not complement why would Nárkissos stay so long by the pool of water in which he met himself?)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In La Jetée and Arrival the presence of the Kuleshov Effect becomes the cementing force that merges the thematic with the structural. For instance if we were to look at the early scene in La Jetée in which the narrator states that; ‘This is the story of a man marked by an image from his childhood. The violent scene that upset him and whose meaning he was to grasp only years later…’ followed by the image of the man crumpling to the ground we are led to believe everything that happens after this scene is the linear progression of time.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The same can be told of the opening sequence of Villeneuve’s Arrival as well. The montage that shows us Louise Banks and the resulting tragedy of her daughter in film followed by Banks at her school on the day of the alien’s arrival and our deductive understanding of Bank’s emotions creates the Kuleshov Effect in Villeneuve’s Arrival. Evan Puschak at the Nerdwriter explains this scene and goes on to say that the resulting effect forces us, the audience, to infer meaning from the two scenes and posit the character’s indifference as despondency.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">For me the presence of death and the non-linear timeline that disrupts our conditioned understanding of cause and effect becomes a willing performance of the narrative in which narrative elements of the film amalgamate into the structural elements or the structural cohesion of the film.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">There is no escape neither from La Jetée nor Arrival once you hit play. Both Marker and Villeneuve are in conversation with each other. It is beside the point for one to argue whether or not this homage Villeneuve ultimately pays Marker is a conscious one or not. As a movie goer, for me it is important for cinema to converse and cut across the boundaries of space and time. The ability for a film to talk back to another separated by almost half a century and a millennia of technological difference mirrors how our own thoughts exist and find voice. Ideas are never independent, and when ideas are conveyed through images why should they remain isolated?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Thomas Sterne Eliot in Tradition and the Individual Talent says ‘No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must see him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead.” In an age of where there is an ‘Epidemic of Passable Movies’ it is reassuring to see Marker and Villeneuve walk past each other amongst a crowd of filmmakers, an avalanche of images, a sea of sound and gently nod at each other with an air of subtle reassurance.</span><br />
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Jude Gerald Lopezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183714599402577683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7430823600812868734.post-44084359445431028812015-06-23T13:35:00.000+05:302015-06-23T13:35:18.920+05:30Coil<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<b><br /></b>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>First Published in Efiction India Vol. 02 Issue 08</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKsgnSwYAfOSLdyaNVe6vV-cNtAP2SFLWMKhO_BZONTrR78yQSsIRa177-9bSso0dCJ3jjTypd7gbVqDZDmwgIe1yN_Av21JWOMU7RgTpjtSx3VV_CSdvouRRoZ1bBljILSNDljc5E84to/s1600/Cover9-300x400.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKsgnSwYAfOSLdyaNVe6vV-cNtAP2SFLWMKhO_BZONTrR78yQSsIRa177-9bSso0dCJ3jjTypd7gbVqDZDmwgIe1yN_Av21JWOMU7RgTpjtSx3VV_CSdvouRRoZ1bBljILSNDljc5E84to/s400/Cover9-300x400.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The air is still. The room is empty. The dim glow of the light bulb
still continues to illuminate that lonely corner. The falcon still
cannot hear the falconer. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In that empty room filled with stagnant air sheltered by the darkness
the light bulb so conveniently nurtures with its embers, sits an eerie figure,
glasses in hand. A hand that is infected with a deadly rash dangles in front
of you, in front of me.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are worms fat, round, thin, shy, hungry, greedy feeding on her.
The serpent consumes itself in the labyrinths of his mind, in the caverns
of silky soil. The ground beneath his feet is infected. They tell of a tale
only Samsa can hear, and Grendel and the whore of Babylon and the fallen
angel…</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A silhouette shifts, rises and falls to the ground. The scene acts itself
out in silence, over and over again. Some stories need retelling to live.
Some need to be told to be forgotten. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘There must be some kind of a way out of here’ the joker chants into
the fallen ears of the thief. The chanting grows violently strong, my ears
bleed, and the silhouette squirms like a worm. His body begins to coil.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Coils of memory unfold. The sea of stories surely gave birth to this
monster. The serpent struggles to consume itself.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In opposition to the shimmering slither of scales all around, a tender, plump arm is seen. It’s fair, untouched and sways in front of you, infected
with a rash of guilt, it seeks to haunt all of us. The silhouette grows feverishly
scared. His scales tell of a tale. A tale grotesquely different from that
of the severed nymph. Arms collide. The worm squirms. Guilt explodes.
A scene unfolds.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“It’s not mine.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“It can’t be.” </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Grotesque, disfigured, lump.” </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“It is your fucking fault. Whore. Demon. Sorceress.” </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The phallus rises, grows, towers above the entities in the room, consumes
them and annihilates them, extinguishing them in a sea of rushing
blood, flesh and filth. A babe is thrown into the world, guiltless, thrown
out of it, guiltless. The child hovers, the falcon hears the falconer. The
second coming is almost here. The child is carried off to the bird’s den,
to live among beings that harvest the quill, the land of ideas, the land of
the real, it beckons her. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some tales are told to be forgotten.
Blood rushes to its head as it falls.
The ground beneath her feet is cold. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">*** </span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The room is poorly lit, the silhouette rises, and moves around in frenzy.
The arm itches, the body burns, the eyes rot from within. Memory haunts. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Look who’s the grotesque, disfigured lump now. Tell me decipherer of
words has anyone forgotten laughter. No, no, no! The joker induces laughter
without laughing. The silhouette is caught up in the coils of memory. “Ahh! It hurts,” he screams.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The serpent devours itself. The whore sells herself. The fallen angel
explodes, there is light all around. The silhouette is obliterated. The guilt
remains, the shame remains. Its sole purpose is to haunt. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Darkness sets in once again. The stage is set for another protagonist.
The stage is set for another crime. The earth continues to dance around a
ball of fire. Guilt prepares to rise on the third day. Redemption is a myth,
salvation a bitter lie. The order of things are set. The worms are ready, fat,
round, thin, shy, hungry, greedy, they all gather. The curtain rises. The
lights search and find its prey. The show goes on.</span></div>
</div>
Jude Gerald Lopezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183714599402577683noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7430823600812868734.post-40111871533325026532015-06-19T14:47:00.001+05:302015-06-19T14:47:45.778+05:30The City of Lights<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
When night came, the city of Light shrouded by a canopy of darkness hid itself from the prying eyes of the world. Even I knew that when night came and the sun rested, each and every object in the city would have to succumb to the wishes of that familiar canopy of darkness. Tired from their uneventful routines of day, their lives that had turned into a mere habit demanded from them rest and rest in the warmth of darkness was what they got. As the dwellers of Light slept, twisting and turning in their beds caressed by darkness and stroked by slumber I sat plotting.<br />
<br />
It was not easy choosing between the two. I must say that I had put myself in a rather awkward position in which any decision made turned out to be a paradoxical and contradictory one.<br />
<br />
Rebecca lay there motionless as I whispered into her ear “Are you awake?”<br />
<br />
Silence answered. But I already knew the answer.<br />
<br />
“Are you cold?”<br />
<br />
The palms that had stroked my hair a million times were cold as ice.<br />
<br />
“I know you are tired, get some rest.”<br />
<br />
Indeed she did get some rest. Not a muscle moved and even her nostrils (thanks to my persuasion) welcomed inactivity.<br />
<br />
When I met the Other a few days back a few sparks flew. Sparks that sought to expose the barbarian within, even Anna who was just six could see the change that took place in Daddy’s eyes.<br />
<br />
Darkness entered the room bringing with it a kiss planted on my lips along with a wave of different scents that accompanied her. Anna was asleep and in stealth I decided to disappear, to get lost in the labyrinths of my guilt, accompanied by the Other and clothed by my sin. I stretched out my hand and found the arms of Darkness, she moved forward and I could feel her warm breath on my neck, it was ironic that not even the perfumes of Persia could hide the stench of its breath.<br />
<br />
When I left with Darkness by my side, I had ceased to notice the little details of that all too familiar room. Anna stood there concealed from my sight as a witness to the actions that had now caused quite a few sparks to fly around the room. The sparks with time grew as my Anna watched, turning more bolder and finally breaking free like a butterfly from a cocoon. The wood work were the first to accommodate the flames that were seldom seen in the city, the upholstery next, and slowly those white hot bastards called flames started to devour the entire room, as my love watched helplessly my un-awakened half.<br />
<br />
Apart from the homes that were consumed by flames, there were no broken homes in the city of Light. </div>
Jude Gerald Lopezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183714599402577683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7430823600812868734.post-45814559430832040912015-06-19T11:17:00.000+05:302015-06-19T11:17:24.234+05:30A Verse for Uncertainty <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
#1<br />
Our lives are mere tropes on paper panes<br />
Scattered and dog eared yellow<br />
Scribbled and licked by tips<br />
that spill age old tarnished ink without a name<br />
<br />
#2<br />
My grandfather signed very many papers<br />
His name below wriggly lines of indigo, smothered<br />
now he lies, grave unsigned, his skin soft<br />
Rotting below candles and wreaths<br />
The curse of the hungry wriggly lines deep inside</div>
Jude Gerald Lopezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183714599402577683noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7430823600812868734.post-79266871541580788512015-02-16T21:39:00.001+05:302015-02-16T22:17:30.268+05:30And in the End<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Disclaimer</span><br>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">This fan fiction piece of writing is based on <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;">John "Soap" MacTavish from</span> Activision's Call of Duty Series (video game)</span><br>
<br>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Time had almost come to an end. In a moment of haste
it had closed its eyes, clenched its fist and in one silent blow wiped out
almost all of humanity. The average king and queen of hypocrisy had no real
idea of how they were all made to walk tightropes by a select few as they
parked their cars, did their hair and crossed the streets. Some things were
meant never to be seen, heard or thought of but it was now all too late.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">The scars of battle were still fresh. The flesh on
his thighs had turned grotesque purple with each cell constantly in a battle to
sustain itself and heal the wound that remained open. His memory however was affected
in a way he didn’t fully understand. If the past consisted of images of gory
deaths his present worked hard to remind him of how decadently close and
similar a ‘non-warzone’ like the one he inhabited looked like. In the end it
was all death, the grey Irish sky reiterated that hymn of sadness. The towering
cathedral spire, that stood right outside the apartment he was offered after he
survived his duty to his nation along with a few discordant badges for bravery,
for planning a crucial charge down the flank and for persisting in a suicidal
mission, saving the world and restoring ‘order’, only reminded him of how high
and haughty we had become as a civilization and the plummet southwards looked
rather nasty and inevitable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">The room was rather modest. A bed to his right, a
study table near the window that faced St. Andrews Cathedral, a kitchen with a
sink to the left of the entrance door and a bathroom to the left, and mounted
on the wall in such a way that its screen was visible when one lay on the bed
was a quite curious looking television unit that was rarely switched on these
days. There was nothing ‘new’ that it could show him nor was there anything
that could possibly be on it that he would want to consume. The cycle felt
complete. The only thing on the four walls that had something to offer him
every time his eyes scaled the walls was the lone photograph taken a year or
two ago. Captain Price looked peculiarly young, the wars had still not gotten
the better of him but something felt different during those last years of
stagnation. Everything moved too quickly to comprehend now. It had to be slowed
down-- there was no other way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">At eight in the morning as the bells tolled from the
adjacent building and as a crowd dispersed, old Dolores would appear at his
door. Her minimal existence within the building for half a century as the
manager was something MacTavish looked forward to. Her wrinkles seemed to be
at ease no matter what erupted beyond the confines of her decaying castle of
concrete.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">“I’ve brought you some coffee” she said handing over
a yellowed mug with a saucer placed over it that hardly matched the former’s
ceramic style. Her transactions with her tenants were overpowered with a cold
impersonality that she had developed but Soap, as they called him, was someone
she knew right from the time he roamed around as a child with his family in her
husband’s estate hunting rabbits and roasting beef beside a warm fire place;
and so when the government requested that she open up her apartment to a war
veteran she was more than happy to have him. But things had changed now; the
past was no longer within reach for MacTavish. The image of his father was lost
among a catalogue of carcasses that resulted as a result of his tryst with his
call, his duty for obscure causes prompted and dictated by obscure men at
obscure costs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">When the doorbell rang the second time he was
surprised at how loud a tiny electric bell could be shattering his canopy of
stillness he donned every day. It was Dolores again.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">“Thought you would need something to kill time.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Death was all around. The barrel looked him right in
his mind’s eye. She handed a newspaper, a few magazines that lay around the
reception and a paperback.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">“Thanks” he said. His usual silence to anything and everything
surprised himself. “It would be nice if you could arrange for some cloth, for
the curtains, the windows are too loud.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: right 451.3pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Looking straight back at him, Dolores with the
dignity of her age asked him “Loud?” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">“I meant too many people, too many things happening
all at once without really knowing what exactly is happening to them or
anything… I meant too bright” he said saving himself the shame of flawed logic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">“Fine” she said as she went down the dimly lit
stairs. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">The paperback became his companion for a few days.
He sat still on his bed looking at the floor shifting his bloodshot eyes from
the cover of the paperback to the floor and back to his hands and the wounds
that ate his robust flesh. The grenades, the flashes that blinded his task
force, the sprays of red and its salty taste from the tender arteries of the men
that trained with him and shared bunkers, the bursts of gun fire from distant
corners, the soot that spread across the war torn skies they all came back with
vivid detail. He was an old man now though his body had not aged much; He
wanted the silence that Santiago and his still seas had to offer. He wanted the
freedom to glide through unexplored tracts of blue only the marlin could
afford. But the boundaries of his room were well defined. The boundaries of his
imagination were too well defined and that made all the difference.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">The coffee today tastes different he thought. It
felt overpowering and visuals of the black liquid filling his body flashed
before his eyes. The liquid came to a halt somewhere at the centre of his diaphragm.
Then black mixed with red and spilled out of his mouth turning his vision into
a haze of colours mixing and merging. As he fell from his bed to the cold floor
the gun fire grew loud, the grenades and shrapnel pounded his flesh from all
sides, the flanks gave in and raised white flags, masked men charged from
ambushes, flash bangs exploded turning the greys of reality into the absoluteness
of white. He was a traveller of both time and space. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br></span></div>
<br>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Words haunted him “It is good that we do not have to
try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea
and kill our true brothers.” Death failed to escape the fangs of guilt.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Jude Gerald Lopezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183714599402577683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7430823600812868734.post-63014882107663361622013-07-04T23:50:00.001+05:302015-06-23T17:09:23.877+05:30Another Publication!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; mso-outline-level: 6;">
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #333333;">My short story "</span><span style="color: red;">A Life's
Quest</span><span style="color: #333333;">" published in Decades Review issue VIII !<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; mso-outline-level: 6;">
<br /></div>
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<b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm5go0GR9ZqWdvDq29CSeCx3zH2rDm-WKHVgj1aFI9Gc0qU-JoP8vJuwg8f48xFYy-T-qIbkRAZB_7wY9bpZu08hcUmvF1sV4403hhFrqRDmnAS-bMRyd-uCxWpDs791_f2fx4G9Aa9iqt/s662/5248271_orig.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="534" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm5go0GR9ZqWdvDq29CSeCx3zH2rDm-WKHVgj1aFI9Gc0qU-JoP8vJuwg8f48xFYy-T-qIbkRAZB_7wY9bpZu08hcUmvF1sV4403hhFrqRDmnAS-bMRyd-uCxWpDs791_f2fx4G9Aa9iqt/s640/5248271_orig.jpg" width="640" /></a></b></div>
<b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
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Jude Gerald Lopezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183714599402577683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7430823600812868734.post-16520110528658289772013-05-16T10:52:00.000+05:302013-05-16T10:52:39.739+05:30My poem "An Eternal Battle" published in Efiction India May Issue!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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http://www.efictionmag.com/efiction-india/</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8-w6bEkHN302ylXy3V0HaD4nqKKSAUPlYcvEKpX2UeX660oNAdugpyz4LpHvE6m6QYyEAUQu2Omz-BHcgKZYnNgOLFXmm8gsbsStrdFGqJ-dGEjhT2w3NltTEihNbjzXKTfV-EH85ZB4F/s1600/71Ikmohi3hL._SL1500_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8-w6bEkHN302ylXy3V0HaD4nqKKSAUPlYcvEKpX2UeX660oNAdugpyz4LpHvE6m6QYyEAUQu2Omz-BHcgKZYnNgOLFXmm8gsbsStrdFGqJ-dGEjhT2w3NltTEihNbjzXKTfV-EH85ZB4F/s640/71Ikmohi3hL._SL1500_.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
Jude Gerald Lopezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183714599402577683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7430823600812868734.post-80331225571177882962013-04-06T18:14:00.001+05:302013-04-06T18:14:21.752+05:30My story "The Righteous" published in Efiction India April Issue! <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://www.efictionmag.com/efiction-india/">http://www.efictionmag.com/efiction-india/</a></div>
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Jude Gerald Lopezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183714599402577683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7430823600812868734.post-85411586476763443182013-02-04T19:57:00.000+05:302013-02-04T20:00:42.906+05:30My short fiction featured in Lakeview International Journal <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaXDaD1z138WxQbcPfdnhx8qhvgpQyVki55-eslSJSB-wnMhaKag8qCMPkW3SZ22-3T4k_aUjrrMQTE6-94LPsJLrXUg58C-n-CF9VES_UfOeyT2VTi-ZKXTx24ocXPNGBiR0QAUD-gUTX/s1600/793812_3711542366168_418668347_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaXDaD1z138WxQbcPfdnhx8qhvgpQyVki55-eslSJSB-wnMhaKag8qCMPkW3SZ22-3T4k_aUjrrMQTE6-94LPsJLrXUg58C-n-CF9VES_UfOeyT2VTi-ZKXTx24ocXPNGBiR0QAUD-gUTX/s400/793812_3711542366168_418668347_o.jpg" width="400" /></a>The Writers Forum of Sacred Heart College, Kochi (India) have brought out the first edition of Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts. Writers from almost 15 countries such as<br />
Hanif Kureishi , George Szirtes, Sudeep Sen, K Satchidanandan, Meena Alexander, Antonio Casella, Alan Summers, Michelle Cohen Corasanti etc have been featured in this edition along with 3 of my short stories (pg 98-105).<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">You can read them by clicking <a href="http://issuu.com/lijla/docs/feb2013">here</a>. Have fun!</span><br />
<br /></div>
Jude Gerald Lopezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183714599402577683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7430823600812868734.post-14601302943253314622012-08-18T11:48:00.003+05:302013-01-26T10:37:57.804+05:30A Drop of Liquid Hope<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
First published in <a href="http://heart-bytes.blogspot.in/">Heart-Bytes</a> for the Flash fiction competition.</h4>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNV_w_rte8S9sn0Ofm2ZJIxen4nkRZ32r1KkkmkCIHWdsnKeePyC1_12RS9ZDaScnKYigt4sv8NyWbRCtwML0OgKbnMGfNv8xCm-rRk6yGTrGe8SxVMNnvG2VtPVQAwozAvK3SpwblEDhe/s1600/water-drop-stock-photo-03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNV_w_rte8S9sn0Ofm2ZJIxen4nkRZ32r1KkkmkCIHWdsnKeePyC1_12RS9ZDaScnKYigt4sv8NyWbRCtwML0OgKbnMGfNv8xCm-rRk6yGTrGe8SxVMNnvG2VtPVQAwozAvK3SpwblEDhe/s400/water-drop-stock-photo-03.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
I sat in
silence. The wind grazed my hair and honoured my nostrils with the stench of
the seven seas. There were others too, who were seated unmoved in a spell of
inactivity sharing silence with me. The sky filled with dark smoke merged
easily with the stagnant liquid of the sea, indistinguishable in colour they
united and held their bond. An uneasy sight for others, but I begged to differ.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
Out of the two,
the one that sat away from me kept dropping rocks into the murky water. The object
hit the water, no ripples formed and sunk quietly into darkness. Life was
something similar, in the end all that awaited one was darkness. There was
nothing more to it, we inhabitants of light in our quest to find brighter
lights move into darkness. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
The stranger turned
her neck a few degrees bringing me into her field of vision. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
“Is it always
like this?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
“It gets
darker”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
I could tell my
reply was quick to bring in anguish to her heart. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
“It wasn’t
always like this!”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
“There were
better times?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
“Times where
one could sea through the water”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
“Just the like
in textbooks”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
“Something like
that”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
She shifted her
gaze and so did I. Her friend however did not bother to break the silence.
Content with the murky water he sat there. The clouds grew darker; the source
could be seen now. The colossal vessel that floated like the fishes that lost
interest in swimming now came into view. Leaving a trail of blacker black, it
ordered fishes to rise up and show respect. The fishes rose and the girl’s
heart sank. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
A few
silhouettes scrambled onboard. I remained still, while one shrieked and the
other dropped another rock. A rock added to the grave of blue, maybe it fell on
<st1:place w:st="on">Neptune</st1:place>’s tomb. I did not know, I didn’t want
to know. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
The beast
leaked black, sons and daughters of <st1:place w:st="on">Neptune</st1:place>
rose in awe. I still remained unmoved but the girl got up and stood for a
while. She motioned towards the edge that separated wet from dry and emptied her
bottle of water. The clear liquid vanished quickly unable to fight off the evil
that lurked in every corner of its new home.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
She turned towards me and said “May be that
will help”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
************</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</div>
Jude Gerald Lopezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183714599402577683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7430823600812868734.post-89455404407642522572012-07-29T14:35:00.001+05:302012-07-29T14:47:32.463+05:30Personal experience: phenomena far from argument<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
For Reason</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
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<br />
The case for god on the basis of
personal experience is not a credible argument yet for many centuries it has
served the purpose of creating the effect or illusion of an argument. Believers
around the globe have claimed to have felt, seen or heard the voice of god and
many a times they act on such divine providence. Is this acceptable? But more
importantly are their claims true? I hardly think so. For someone who is
conditioned to accept or believe forces far greater than them any random piece
of rubbish or any random event would in his/her perspective be interpreted
unreasonably as divine or supernatural.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
This attitude makes it quite easy
for someone to thank god (not the doctor or science or reason or technology…
the list goes on and on) after spending hours beneath the surgical knife. So
now I’m sure you must be thinking “Then why do they do it?” What makes people
not see the obvious but feel inclined (blinded by belief) to come up with
stories of virgins and infants, angels and saints, fiery chariots and divided
seas, cosmic forces of good and bad etc. This was something that troubled me
for quite for sometime and I hope that it troubles you too. For if it doesn’t I
promise you that the remaining words that I have poured onto paper are as
useful as cat litter to you. To understand why people try so desperately to
come up or create evidence for such fallacious oddities we must take into
account the stalking process of socialization and its firm grip on our psyche.
I must admit that the process of socialization has its share of let’s say
virtue, innate virtue but when used by the narrow minded pompous manipulative
god enforcers who take pride in their ignorance; this beautiful process becomes
altogether diabolical and tends to glorify the idea of pure unadulterated
belief and in worse cases belief in belief. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The inexistence of a god or for
that matter any other phantom is something reason cannot prove neither can
scientific enquiry, provided its objective. This is mainly because of the
paradoxical fallaciousness it employs. Bertrand Russell in his article that
went un-published for sometime “Is there a God?” wrote:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
Many orthodox people
speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas
rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I
were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot
revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to
disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too
small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go
on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable
presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be
thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot
were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and
instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its
existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the
attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an
earlier time.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Reason can never convince someone
obsessed with goblins and ghosts that they do not exist. This is because the
subject enjoys the company of belief and imagination but fails to understand
the necessity of reason and empirical evidence. Now we all agree that pixies
and goblins along with the whole colourful lot are just beings of fairy tales
but it is interesting to see the same “critical thinkers” (regarding pixies and
unicorns and leprechauns and fire breathing dragons… this list too goes on and
on) profess the reality of virgin births, resurrection, after life, eternal
damnation, intelligent designers, heaven hell, transubstantiation… (another
unending list). So why do we believe in some fairy tales and not others? The
most obvious answer is that we are told to believe by many socializing forces
to believe and hence we believe, living in constant fear to swim against the
tide, even when we make a complete fool of ourselves by not doing so. Even
though this is true and a common phenomena it does not answer why we try
substantiate such irrational and preposterous claims. Surely we all have great
amounts of doubt and skepticism in us to make it through the night? To
understand the “whys” I would like to introduce to you two influential factors,
something I like to call the diabolical duo-imitation and anticipation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The reason why we imitate and
anticipate is thanks to socialization. It conditions our psyche, keeping it
always on the look out to fit in, to go with the crowd, for the crowd is always
right and if they are wrong, well its safer and wiser to go along just as the
saying goes “if you can’t beat them, join them” This works well as far as
survival is concerned in most cases unfortunately this contradicts reason. In
modern day theocentric societies the presence of tele-evangelists and god men are
evidently felt. They tell you think that is soothing to hear, they make rules
to their comfort and change them when ever god asks them to, it is strange to
see that most times god dictates something, it works well to the advantage of
god enforcers. Lets just say it fattens their wallets to a certain point in
which it is quite hard not to let out a smile and profess the good news, and
this my friends is real bad news, not just for some individuals but to the
collective unconscious that forms and in time shapes the thought process of
generations to come. The healing presence of god, the love and the peace are
what these men in white sell. This induces a sense of personal relationship and
many a time comes to the rescue of theist when they try to debate with reason
and logic. Much of the popularity religion enjoys is due to the subtle process
of imitation. A child from the moment he is born is labeled in order to create
an identity for him and this unquenchable thirst to stick to the constraints of
this imposed identity is what makes one act in ways that are strange to reason.
In religion, this is exploited as it right from the start makes it clear that
its provisions are what are best suited for survival. And hence just to satisfy
one longing of being right and acceptable one feels inclined to imitate the
acts of others. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Popular tele-evangelist Benny
Hinn is known to amuse and create moments of awe using his cheap theatrics.
With a wave of the hand he showers his audience with mild doses of “the holy
spirit” the subjects feel inclined fall to the ground when he waves his hand, not
because their muscles fail to keep them standing but because they know deep
down that all good pure people fall when in contact with the Lord’s presence. They
do so in order to feel an unconscious innate sense of acceptance. At times this
preacher even brings down to the ground, his whole choir comprising of a few
hundreds of good souls. How does he do it? How can he fool so many people at
the same time and since he “fools” quite a large group shouldn’t it be true,
that he does have something in him, something extraordinary? No he doesn’t he
just makes people imitate others. You see these people are conditioned to think
that falling to the ground or bursting out in tears is acceptable and hence
right and so when the first knee bends, other around too involuntarily take
part in this mass delusion and therefore within seconds they find themselves
flat on the grounds and this to them is amazing and hence something
supernatural. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The second trick theists have up
their sleeves is anticipation. Imitation and anticipation overlap and coexist
in most instances of insanity and mass delusion. During ones stay on earth one
comes to learn many things, a lot of interesting things along with a bunch of
amusing things too. We see sci-fi movies, read bible stories and what not and
this shapes our understanding of reality. Even in our day there are many who
claim to speak with the dead, they are just exercising their belief in delusion
and should not be taken seriously. Consumerism has gone to such great heights
that it has even arranged for, thanks to public interest, our dialogue with the
dead. All you need is a board with letters and numbers, a candle and some empty
spooky space to add to the overall effect. You have all of these and in seconds,
voila, you have a spirit or a ghost of someone dead. Your hand is now guided by
this force and it reveals juicy information to you, name, age, cause of death
etc. supernatural isn’t it? No, plain rubbish, designed to fool the gullible.
The only reason your hand moves is because you anticipate it to move, because
otherwise your brain deep down knows that this phantom would not be able to
covey what he/she wants. In short it is safe to say that in this case it to your
imagination that you are speaking to. Your deliberate yet unconscious
imagination is what speaks to you and same is the case with people who claim to
have been visited by their respective gods or by the spokespersons of these
busy deities(whom we now call saints). This also accounts for why UFOs most
times are described as flying saucers that hover through the air at the speed
of light, it is thanks to the very many hours we spend listening or/and
watching sci-fi fiction. There is a good deal of imitation in the process of
anticipation and a lot of anticipation in the process of imitation. What we see
from this is not evidence to assert the existence of the super natural but the
internal conflict we all face, a conflict which subsides in order to quench our
thirst of acceptance. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The existence of objects, be it
gods or ghouls on the basis of personal experience is fallacious as it can
never be proved. What we can say about such claims is that it is a mere
manifestation of our socialization, of the environment we grow in. To think
that such unsubstantiated claims are worthy of attention is truly a fault. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
****************************</div>
</div>Jude Gerald Lopezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183714599402577683noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7430823600812868734.post-31501902010152183062012-07-07T12:00:00.000+05:302012-07-07T12:00:31.745+05:30Misfit<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTMU4OyOKwnkj3_3XVgXQ52aKrYJ6CiYggvAiyuTabLmqTcXf69mvs2pxwWrPAH1t6HMjSyApfwHGVtrzryyp6S4ztSnUtgzZyVSeFUOwQOr1lo9v-I1Jim6weW-O1u9n8pkdOawaFlyEl/s1600/depression.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="312" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTMU4OyOKwnkj3_3XVgXQ52aKrYJ6CiYggvAiyuTabLmqTcXf69mvs2pxwWrPAH1t6HMjSyApfwHGVtrzryyp6S4ztSnUtgzZyVSeFUOwQOr1lo9v-I1Jim6weW-O1u9n8pkdOawaFlyEl/s400/depression.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
In a world with<br />
masks and mirrors,<br />
sky scrapers and scars,<br />
babies and barbers,<br />
trees and thugs,<br />
philosophers and priests,<br />
romancers and rapists,<br />
saints and swindlers,<br />
I stand,<br />
Dumbstruck.<br />
Fragmented.<br />
Disillusioned and Confused.<br />
Not knowing,<br />
to which<br />
I am considered-<br />
misfit. </div>Jude Gerald Lopezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183714599402577683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7430823600812868734.post-50072717462646381842012-06-01T08:21:00.000+05:302012-06-01T08:21:47.800+05:30When I was Born<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixvhTspFhmMNhHJmHD3dzUyHYHNJFuXMQ1QbuBjai9yhQy8sMZXfhMObBn8pjjMyLIkTbmZol2WbrmeJ77m8BP5tNBcoWNv9fDlK-0tFgLhf95KzsL3JrF4v26Wx0uWlOWJn0mEAGbgq0R/s1600/walking-shadow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixvhTspFhmMNhHJmHD3dzUyHYHNJFuXMQ1QbuBjai9yhQy8sMZXfhMObBn8pjjMyLIkTbmZol2WbrmeJ77m8BP5tNBcoWNv9fDlK-0tFgLhf95KzsL3JrF4v26Wx0uWlOWJn0mEAGbgq0R/s400/walking-shadow.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
When I was born, I was taught
that eventually I would die and in this death I would also experience a birth,
a kind of confusing yet equally disturbing birth into the hands of the creator
who had paradoxically given me life just so that he could have the pleasure of
controlling it and in the end taking it. How wonderful these notions seem to be,
but now they seem too wonderful, too surreal and too absurd. The only
satisfaction I have got out of all this is the unsatisfactory satisfaction of
questioning and of being puzzled. Self righteous Shepards have cursed me in
hushed tones so that their daring decibels go unheard, drowned by their
obsession with beads and chants. “God is way past your comprehension” “Man can
never understand God” they say, and for me this is just plain old escapism. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
When I was born what I and the
rest of the others who celebrated my first coming did not know was that in the
very room there took place another birth, the birth of my <i>the other. </i>As I screamed and twisted, kicking back my legs, squinting-not
wanting another drop of light to disrupt my past year of bliss I failed to
notice on the wall, clothed with <i>not
light </i>there lay peacefully cradled in the arms of a much bigger figure my
very own demon. The demon or <i>the other </i>as
I like to call it, (as it was relative to my own existence) stayed there on the
scaling walls, mimicking my every movement, bathing in our combined experience
of all things that surrounded me and hence it. They named me Uh so I named my <i>the other </i>Oh and as I grew my demon
shadow grew too, it was surreal but it was never lonely. During night time we
used to have quite conversations but his tone was filled a deep sense of
urgency and mine had in it a calm composed passiveness. His oblivion seemed
inevitable at dawn; my long lasting existence seemed invincible. But at the age
of twelve when a friend of mine visited the temple he decided to stay there, I
decided to return and didn’t here from him (my friend X) for 21 years and 33
days, which gave me quite some time, too much time now I realize to spend with
Oh. My skin grew darker and his stayed the same, I now saw a fairy land on
those scaling walls, tasted the plaster and felt ecstasy and began to paint my
self on those lively walls in which Oh resided with un-holy tones of red that
flowed from my body. At the end of the wait Oh whispered “It is time” and now I
could feel my demon Oh and myself Uh unite. It was an inevitable moment I
knew-UhOh and then darkness was what was all around. Uh and Oh were one, yes we
were one and in that state of madness I could sense the nothingness into which
I was dragged grow around us. It was time to hush! Uhoh!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
When I was born I never expected
that I would have to go through such a physiological purgatory-this state of
limbo. From such a sleep I hoped to rise but now such hope failed to reassure
me. It was then that another residing phantom of my thoughts (they were my only
friends now, being in a coma and all) said to me “You should hope that your
friend wakes you up.” “Why would he?” “He’s a good man. A bit mad but what the
hell anyone can tolerate a little eccentricity as long as he’s a good fellow” And
as I lay along with Oh in a state of nothingness in which there was nothing of
anything and this was the everything and the sole thing and at the same time the
nothing, I began to hope for my messiah. He would come for the second time in
my life, maybe a bit drunk, maybe a bit tipsy but would see the hieroglyphs on
the wall, immediately understand the implications, race into the void that I
made and wake me up. I would see him coming, clothed in contrast to all that
surrounds me and take me back up or down or wherever is it that I had come
from. This would be the perfect end or the perfect beginning.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
When I was born nobody told me
that I would be <i>born again</i> into this
pompous world. But when this event actually took place, after hours or days I
am not sure in which I hoped and prayed that I be taken back into the world and
given a second chance, I found the whole process of coming back rather tiring.
The bright skies were still there, so was my scaly wall, the birds were also
there, just the same as the plaster that gathered below my four walls.
Everything was the same, but the people had changed. There were no more demons.
All the Oh’s had disappeared and the Uh’s, they were in a frenzy, my people
were panicky without their <i>the others. </i> Why? I asked myself till I understood that
there was no real answer. They were panicky because they were not composed. But
all this drama seemed too familiar and then it struck me. I had spread the
disease of hope. Yes, hope was a disease when hope was left loose it fornicated
with faith just the way it had in my state of oblivion. These people around me
now believed that they were going through everything that I went through. I had
carried their destruction on my back and had saved them but they still felt
lost and began to hope that some one would redeem them. The world with it
colours seemed grim to these souls, everything began to crumble. “Save us! We
are righteous” was all I could hear them say. It was too disturbing, that
question and so I decided to remain silent. And as a few more years went by I
saw grey headed clowns doing cheap magic tricks but this time in a comically
pious manner. They began persuading people to look up at the sky, promising
them that there was a better world up there and the sheep looked up but I the
lamb continued to keep by glance at the ground beneath my feet. These people
began to spread rumours of what was to come and these tales were narrated at
public gatherings in which all of them kept staring at the skies in devotion
(event though half of them had turned blind)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
When I was born I was told that
God had a plan and nothing goes against this plan. But what I found out was that
the blind considered all possibilities and all conclusions as part of that <i>fool-</i>proof plan, instead of admitting
that the future was something that they really had no idea about.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>Jude Gerald Lopezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183714599402577683noreply@blogger.com0Kerala, India10.8505159 76.27108338.8548724 73.7442278 12.8461594 78.7979388tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7430823600812868734.post-38839373310045510302012-05-19T12:27:00.000+05:302012-05-19T12:27:03.855+05:30New Blog<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Hey check out my new photo blog <a href="http://technicolourtales.blogspot.in/">'Technicolour Tales' </a></div>Jude Gerald Lopezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183714599402577683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7430823600812868734.post-56434617081314276532012-03-01T09:33:00.002+05:302012-03-01T09:38:40.793+05:30You are now…<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn1e0Bx6qYoly7kra4KNTplYlMMkzTfniXZGcO9FufJ5kSO1NhY2jep-fsjHtmAW0FirvDFD2DZ3BK93F2vHfXKwAE_5rdN2G9yqo-GM8cJYe90aL7kI_BrsCjGijaPnWFk3H1X9GuhkbL/s1600/dankert-sleepless.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn1e0Bx6qYoly7kra4KNTplYlMMkzTfniXZGcO9FufJ5kSO1NhY2jep-fsjHtmAW0FirvDFD2DZ3BK93F2vHfXKwAE_5rdN2G9yqo-GM8cJYe90aL7kI_BrsCjGijaPnWFk3H1X9GuhkbL/s320/dankert-sleepless.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="text-align: justify;">You have been trying to sleep for
quite sometime now. Your eyes, they have turned bloodshot letting you know how
they crave rest. Your mind is tired and still slumber shies away, maintaining
an unholy distance. Adding to the intrinsic turmoil your neighbour’s cat is
determined to get right one of Bach’s freakishly high notes, devoting and
spending endless hours of your sleep. Yes not hard work nor patience but the
feline instinct makes it smart enough to make it spend your precious pennies.
How loathsome. A thing or two you should learn from the fur ball.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
After a long wait you decide to
get out of bed. ‘Finally’, ‘At last’ are a few adverbs that whoosh past the
labyrinths of your crooked mind. But realization now comes as a shock, right
when you utter the final syllables you realize that no matter how many times
you perform that redeeming action of getting up you will always find yourself
succumbing to the desires of your master laziness, for you are asleep and your
actions count for nothing. It feels good to hide yourself beneath layers of
warm blankets.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
The time has come for you to try
again. Just like the spider that has been re-making its web in children’s books
for a long time. How long was it? 200 years I think but you are free to assume anything,
for not a line of truth, have you encountered so far. Getting up sure seems
challenging don’t you think? And your desire to get lost in time is not
helping. Get up, now.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
You are not alone. You are in the
presence of a ghost. Some one three hundred years older than you is staring you
right in the face and you lie there like a corpse, respect less. She looks a
lot like many women from creepy old pictures that you used to find at your
grand parents villa. You remember one person now. The eyes your memory digs out
and put in front of your eyes are hazel in colour, but the one that you now
stare back at is just a light shade of grey. Your memory is in contradiction
for you quite well remember those peculiar set of eye balls. These look
lifeless, like the ones at Madame Tussauds, not just lifeless but also they
seem to you as resonating lie. You are troubled for her rosy cheeks are missing
too. Where have they gone? Where have they gone? Do you know? No you don’t. So
if you do let me know too. You don’t know.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
That photograph, it deceived you.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
A liar.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
All that time has left behind as
a shameless residue is an array of light and dark black.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
You are unable to take it all in
and so you raise your arm bringing it into your field of vision. You start an
unending fit of comparison, the blood and colour filled flesh versus the pale
miserable fragment of memory and imagination.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
The comparison continues.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
Life and death.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
The real and the un-real.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
The ghost smiles.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
You stare back with dilated
pupils.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
Her lips stir in motion. You can
see that. Her facial muscles they too are now in action. You fail to see that.
Twitching and expanding and contracting they paint a silent picture, a picture
of contrast. No sounds uttered still nothing bothers you because you feel an
urge to pay close attention.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
Yes, you pay attention, but not
to her speech. You are still occupied with the HD image of yourself and the
soulless image of you friend.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
She is gone, never to return.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
You are still in bed. It is dark
and hence you are aware that a lamp is burning behind your head. The warm covers
have lost its warmth. Something is dripping from your feet. The culprit that
has caused the loss of warmth has finally been found. Why is water dripping
from your feet? You are eager to find out. You wiggle your way out of the damp
covers. Is it blood? You feel panicky but that sensation settles soon. It is
neither blood nor water, it is paint. The lamp has been of good use.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
Now if you were to compare like
you did earlier you would be confused. Your legs are dripping away the
difference. A pool of <i>difference</i>
forms beneath your humble abode, your bed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
Without colour your legs are
lifeless. The feet that took you places far and wide are now a liability for
you. How sad.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
You might want to chop them off!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
No you shouldn’t.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
They might never wake up, then
what?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
Let them rest.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
Rebecca now enters the room. What
is a Rebecca? For some odd reason you felt like saying it and so you have. You
realize this too and so you begin customizing her.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
She now has a rather tanned look.
It is because you remember her to be pale.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
You are now tempted.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
She moves closer and you notice
an all too vague yet familiar look of innocence even in her most ridiculous
look.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
She stares at the pool of colour beneath
you bed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
This time you hear a voice. You
are quick to recognize the voice as hers. Why? She does not speak! She does not
even to try to paint a silent picture, then why? You want to hear her, that’s
why.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
What is she saying?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
Promises.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
Are you sure?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
Regrets.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
Yes you are sure.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
Words resonate and ricochet.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
You are caught right in eye with
a <i>Darling</i>. It has gone right through
you like a bullet. You feel no pain. But it pains to know that you are not
worthy of pain.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
You are now awake.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
You are now awake. You awaken
once more and once again you wake. Then again and again and again till you fall
asleep.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
*****</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
</div>Jude Gerald Lopezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183714599402577683noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7430823600812868734.post-5584560101075367782012-01-07T13:55:00.000+05:302012-01-07T14:01:36.599+05:30The City of Lights<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="text-align: left;"> </span><span style="text-align: left;"> Click here to view the post on </span><a href="http://heart-bytes.blogspot.com/2012/01/writers-forum-flash-fiction-contest.html" style="text-align: left;">Heart-Bytes</a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdSBY7auqUNbnV3DF1S3PWiqGaUKSm7IlHnWIEfd-9mBd2v3YWUw0rpzBzlG0WPyBGalGe6Ips-jgKCvP-EcfvSEbizZisrChCVt55U_9Shyphenhyphenh5jsx6pOhLwE2Z67gYSsL3ooxqk-c9RLBg/s1600/270834_1925522459054_1271919233_31899861_1169473_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdSBY7auqUNbnV3DF1S3PWiqGaUKSm7IlHnWIEfd-9mBd2v3YWUw0rpzBzlG0WPyBGalGe6Ips-jgKCvP-EcfvSEbizZisrChCVt55U_9Shyphenhyphenh5jsx6pOhLwE2Z67gYSsL3ooxqk-c9RLBg/s320/270834_1925522459054_1271919233_31899861_1169473_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
</div>Jude Gerald Lopezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183714599402577683noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7430823600812868734.post-67581088862803069212011-12-19T20:23:00.000+05:302012-01-07T14:03:40.382+05:30My novel excerpt featured on Heart-Bytes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi533wFFdYSlJ4Uvqes8UuZTCrvnSE9kVQGiEarSldcl2Ta8Pjf4sUdtt1geeTlMd46REpaNX_kOP5PxmD4O742s0BJ97eadU8Ik0eRp8PoXjYJouH3SAwx_QYmr1lRPFXhg9FB3rJHpasU/s1600/The+Man+on+the+Balcony.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi533wFFdYSlJ4Uvqes8UuZTCrvnSE9kVQGiEarSldcl2Ta8Pjf4sUdtt1geeTlMd46REpaNX_kOP5PxmD4O742s0BJ97eadU8Ik0eRp8PoXjYJouH3SAwx_QYmr1lRPFXhg9FB3rJHpasU/s320/The+Man+on+the+Balcony.jpg" width="244" /></a></div>
A month and a few weeks have passed since the day I jotted
down the basic plot for my novel. The name is yet to be decided and the ending
needs to be poured down onto paper and once these two things are done, I guess I
can finally call myself a novelist. And since the end of this enriching task is fast
approaching I find this time ideal to publish an excerpt from the novel that
has taken pretty much all November. The excerpt has been featured on Heart-Bytes,
The Sacred Heart College Blog and here is the blog’s link <a href="http://heart-bytes.blogspot.com/2011/12/excerpt-from-novel-yet-to-end.html">Heart-Bytes</a></div>
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Now a word or two about Heart-Bytes which since its
inception a few months back has received good readership from across the world. Heart-Bytes has also hosted a few creative writing competitions (online)
on an international level . That means that all you people who love to write
should definitely check out the monthly competitions. </div>
</div>Jude Gerald Lopezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183714599402577683noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7430823600812868734.post-88614089652735090122011-12-11T18:42:00.001+05:302012-01-07T14:04:36.647+05:30Order Less-Part 1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7MlTaW4M8zPD7uxdvhFRFzyulw8d284ct2TgnqGD7HMzNPLTkn24uYLakXmyEILGbgypo3W69Axnp2O1YNFU6I3wvDEMCm71dZADwvmeTGqFUNOZ27d9glumoiAj5dI-_Trn5BoEYnCx7/s1600/paradox.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7MlTaW4M8zPD7uxdvhFRFzyulw8d284ct2TgnqGD7HMzNPLTkn24uYLakXmyEILGbgypo3W69Axnp2O1YNFU6I3wvDEMCm71dZADwvmeTGqFUNOZ27d9glumoiAj5dI-_Trn5BoEYnCx7/s320/paradox.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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The sky turned red, the clouds yellow, crows white and
clouds black. The green grass no longer green as it was the water that took up
that soothing colour. So was the world and everything we call real turning
un-real? No, that wasn’t it. </div>
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Would it be better this way, would it mean that Satan now
wore a white garment? Would it mean that a slithering snake was now the
international sign of peace? This morning did all these absurdities and
oddities turn less odd and absurd? May be this was the long awaited paradigm
shift everyone talked about, the long awaited shift which we all knew but could
hardly describe. From Theo-centric to Anthropocentric to Eco-centric and now to
the absurd-centric. A time when symbols were no longer symbols, cats still
meowed but today, no it bowed. The crows they cawed but today what I heard was
the voice of nightingales </div>
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I sat on my chair watching the splendour of this order less
world. Today if some animal decided to re-work the Genesis I bet Eve would be
more respected. She wouldn’t have had to come from a rib for I see no justice
when one comes from a bone and ends up just like the ones that come from dust. Today
she wouldn’t have been tricked by the evil one with a fruit, in a garden filled
with a million other fruits. Today I think those primitive creatures would have
struck up a conversation with the beast, turning it a friend and less of a foe.
Eliminating evil once and for all to the dismay of good, who was rather jobless
and un-needed if his enemy were to be annihilated. I think malice lies not just
in the hearts of the wicked but also in the hearts of the righteous in far
larger sums. Was Good worth being good in the absence of bad?</div>
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Deep down I knew that this was a day of revelations. Not the
kind where the tale gets extensively abused by supernatural whores and
many-headed dragons. There were no towers of <st1:city w:st="on">Babylon</st1:city>
nor where there going to be any temples of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Jerusalem</st1:place></st1:city> in my revelation. What I saw before
my eyes when my love wore no make up was not her wrinkle laden skin nor was it
her ugliness that complemented her age, but the fact that she was free; I was
free, from the clutches of signs and standards that were to dictate ones
existence. Right then, in the haste of the moment I realized the baselessness
of good and bad. If such terms did exist I suggest it to be the material for a
fairy tale. What existed was something plain, something simple, something so
simple that we tend to make it un-naturally complex: Action. Yes there wasn’t
anything more to it there were just actions, if it was considered good then may
those naive souls remain naïve and if bad well then I remain un-affected as my
un-belief has reached un-imaginable heights.</div>
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A little girl, I saw playing in the fields. She was happy;
yes there was happiness in the absence of good and evil. It was now that I felt
truly happy. How loathsome were the ones that for centuries professed about
being rewarded with happiness for a lifetime of virtue. If one was to
experience happiness I think it should be experienced within this realm. Or
else it would be like trying to savour a steaming cup of coffee in a desert. She
ran quite as fast as the wind that was grazing my hair, in her hand I saw a
truck, not just any trucks but the ones with riffles sticking out of it on all
four sides. Where is your doll? I asked. For I had seen her play on all
weekends with a worn out doll with blond curly hair which looked rather scary
and disturbing to me, but for her I guess that was what her mommy wanted her to
play with, dolls for girls, guns for boys-the perfect formula.</div>
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I sat there sipping my glass of water. For me I found it
amusing yes the change in colours, but the fact was that I couldn’t really
digest this long unknowingly awaited shift. I wondered why such changes failed
to affect my soul. Was I really that hopeless? Or was it that all hope (if
there was any such thing) rested on my hunched time trampled shoulders? </div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">May be I was someone special; my randomness was the
one quality that outshined the rest. I felt a feeling I imagine very few feel,
like Christ and Buddha. My realizations may be they were to be noted down as
proof of my enlightenment. Nobody would find any worth in it, for they believed
that the world had not changed a bit, for them the skies were always red, the
clouds yellow, crows white and clouds black. I held the key that disguised
itself as a revelation to the future of mankind no humankind. I felt empowered.</span></div>Jude Gerald Lopezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183714599402577683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7430823600812868734.post-43237584290758040452011-12-03T14:03:00.001+05:302011-12-19T20:44:49.547+05:30Greener beyond comprehension<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirPhus79lggy68xn8RdM4QUFGUVL1Z3IM-nMSWDBA5n69uqSF2TocHB3gaucO2YoexctNC0QUc7L1wYOe-60ght_pRGQVlqalcS_eXvY_B9A7xa8UOFLObSHcn31pwZVyjus6khiJUXgmj/s1600/photo-05-03-09-15-54-33.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirPhus79lggy68xn8RdM4QUFGUVL1Z3IM-nMSWDBA5n69uqSF2TocHB3gaucO2YoexctNC0QUc7L1wYOe-60ght_pRGQVlqalcS_eXvY_B9A7xa8UOFLObSHcn31pwZVyjus6khiJUXgmj/s320/photo-05-03-09-15-54-33.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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Beneath a cloudless sky a man in grey walked, his feet
trying desperately to adapt to the sandy path that stretched for miles and
miles merging with the distant horizon. He looked as old as the ruins, a
wrinkly gaze. His olive green eyes looked eager to tell a tale, maybe ones of
kings and queens, conquests and failures, unfortunately his audience were all
dead and gone, their only memories lay in the brick walls that time sought to
destroy. </div>
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I saw him approach, the road lay empty and so paying no heed
to the left or right, he crossed. I stood there, my glass of tea in one hand
and the other kept wiping my temples clean of the sweat that formed instantly
thanks to the unforgiving heat of the desert. “Are you a seeker?” he asked,
undecipherable at first, but on his second attempt I sensed a slight
Europeanized accent.</div>
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I maintained silence, not knowing what he meant.</div>
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I guess now I had turned into his much awaited lone
audience.</div>
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“They say the grass is greener beyond the mountains.” He
pointed east.</div>
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“Its war ridden area you point towards wouldn’t say there is
any grass there at all.”</div>
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“Are you calling The Great a liar?”</div>
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Yes a delusional, no just any delusional one that was
starved to eccentricity.</div>
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“I’ve seen him look over the mountains, his horses where the
size of elephants and for him beyond the mountains laid the land of
redemption.”</div>
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“Are you going there?”</div>
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“Yes. The grass is greener. He feared that His horses would
turn into asses with so much luxury, the green grass.”</div>
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“Oh”</div>
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“So where do you come from?”</div>
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I pointed.</div>
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Our jeep was now fixed. I heard the engine roar back to life
and so I decided to go take a look. The old man however remained under the
merciless sun, drawing on the sand with his fingers that looked like twigs that
were about to snap. I asked him if he needed a ride, but his focus remained
un-wavered from the sand. During the remaining two hundred miles that was
covered that day I hardly broke the silence. I couldn’t help but wonder what
that old man wanted in life. He sure had a good accent, a bit un-original but
good enough to pass off at any airport. Was redemption that important? For me
such concepts were as real as the carrot that dangled in front of the donkey
from the masters stick who sat on top of the poor animal. May be he would get
shot down, or one of those missiles that poured down like rain would blow him
into a million pieces. He was blinded by faith, I guess. I too felt blind but
didn’t know what blinded me. May be he knew just as I knew his secret. </div>
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I would ask him if I ever got another chance, not in this
life time surely. No, to find the answer I would have to swim in an ocean of
sand, six feet under, losing a piece of myself in each motion to arrive at the
truth spoken from the lips of a delusional.</div>
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**********</div>
</div>Jude Gerald Lopezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183714599402577683noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7430823600812868734.post-78959560792763908542011-12-01T15:01:00.001+05:302011-12-19T20:45:22.118+05:30Suitably Warm<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-mWvDFaYChb5ZW21li3MapzwZ-C_Fp779x6pjzuuMvt9EW4-wyRioWJ-sQ-pr-OuUejGtzf66IHBBtceJse8I6rr78Pj2zklzh3hruDOJ3F2EmVXNr4Hxawp2gCavj8Z081P7WaHd7NgF/s1600/220px-Fire.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-mWvDFaYChb5ZW21li3MapzwZ-C_Fp779x6pjzuuMvt9EW4-wyRioWJ-sQ-pr-OuUejGtzf66IHBBtceJse8I6rr78Pj2zklzh3hruDOJ3F2EmVXNr4Hxawp2gCavj8Z081P7WaHd7NgF/s320/220px-Fire.JPG" width="214" /></a>The day outside was perfect, inside however the
imperfections surfaced. Bright blue skies with crisp clouds loomed over the
ones outside begging to be noticed-they went unnoticed as the inhabitants were
the perfect mixture of arrogance and ignorance. I stood, digesting the
stillness of the air that had occupied the room-my room. Did I invite it over? Or
did it shove its way inside, unable to resist all the other elements of gloom
in my box of a room.</div>
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My liberator’s odour kept getting stronger and stronger,
muskier and muskier. It was time to bid adieu to the wonderful world that I
found too wonderful for me. If there was a god I would beg him to come show me
the splendour of his work which I had failed to notice. No he wouldn’t come,
maybe because my liberator was in the vicinity or maybe he wasn’t capable of
coming. I think he was lost in an un-ending game of hide and seek, where he was
to hide and seek He had hidden himself so well that the hider now forgot where he
was, and the seeker, well he was just too naïve. </div>
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I patted the emptiness that surrounded me, first on the
back, then on the cheek. It smiled, I smiled back. </div>
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“Take me” </div>
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It continued to smile.</div>
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Out in the corridor I could hear agitated footsteps that
grew louder and louder in perfect synchronization with the odour. A rap on the
door, I turned with no intention of even answering. A more desperate knock
which I think was more of knock down the door knock and not a let you know I am
waiting knock. A dozen of <i>Is anyone in
there’s </i>followed, then the <i>open up’s </i>came
and a few moments later I could hear my land lady’s all to familiar curses that
always ended with <i>you lunatic</i>. </div>
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The one I waited for had now slipped into my room amidst all
the confusion outside. I was glad to be in its presence. Its eyes showed greed
behind a veil of darkness and void. Its voice was silence and its fragrance intoxicated
me. I was now ready. I took out a cigarette (the last one) that was on the
dresser and placed it between my lips. It felt good, rejuvenating almost.</div>
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“There is a fucking gas leak you lunatic.” </div>
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I really don’t know when the stillness of the air was
disrupted. Was it when I lit the match or was it when I lit the cigarette? The
air around me, impatient to resist any further scorched the skin that clothed
me. An inferno broke lose eager to caress me. It was a warm summer’s day
outside, but inside-yes it was suitably warm.</div>
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</div>Jude Gerald Lopezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183714599402577683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7430823600812868734.post-53705115573681757902011-12-01T14:45:00.001+05:302012-01-07T14:05:06.373+05:30Preface of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR66aVCEQCob9EGDhti6BE9ch41dmUpCni1FgA7xL538BhUGnX32VFNDwPw2DUXSzFxcmyxITDUhrrwMtOOqdp0EKUUqfBkDId-ioxtfgg99Rjg5GuwCYOGZfHLqpWzApaqJ_0erJr8KwW/s1600/oscar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR66aVCEQCob9EGDhti6BE9ch41dmUpCni1FgA7xL538BhUGnX32VFNDwPw2DUXSzFxcmyxITDUhrrwMtOOqdp0EKUUqfBkDId-ioxtfgg99Rjg5GuwCYOGZfHLqpWzApaqJ_0erJr8KwW/s320/oscar.jpg" width="212" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Oscar Wilde</td></tr>
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Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is one of those very few books that I find hard not to re-read. The beauty of the text that comprises the novel is stunning right from the preface till the very last page. And hence I have decided to make this piece of writing my 11th post for Clocks and Crystal Balls. Enjoy!<br />
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<i>Preface</i></div>
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<i><br />The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.</i></div>
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<i>The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.<br /><br />Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.</i></div>
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<i>There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.<br /><br />The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.<br /><br />The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything. Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.<br /><br />All art is quite useless.<br /><br />OSCAR WILDE</i></div>
</div>Jude Gerald Lopezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183714599402577683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7430823600812868734.post-3746698209635121772011-08-27T12:49:00.000+05:302012-01-07T14:05:27.752+05:30Fragments<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Seated in the dim glow of the lone bulb, that had exhausted itself after years of service, his life seemed splendid. In darkness light reveals itself and in fear courage. A blunt courage that had made him act earlier eased its grip; he felt a familiar sense of belonging rise up from within. In an instant the bulb went off, leaving behind darkness to wrap around him.</div>
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Twelve years ago in darkness had he lost his only friend, years seemed to fly by. It was a rainy night, thunder and lightning continued their routine disputes. Thunder lost its rage and ripped opened the sky with sound, as lightning cautiously retorted with insults of silence. Fred who happened to be the oldest was not home yet, on his way home he realized he wouldn’t get back to that familiar plot of land. He was dead, a victim of a fight he had nothing to do with. A fight no man could control, with flashes of white and bursts of sound the fight continued. They knew of the incident the next day. Robert had lost his only friend, someone he would never hesitate to talk to. This was in a way the beginning of silence as well as fear in his life. For the next twelve years he stayed out of two things, conversations and darkness. </div>
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But this time something had changed, fear ceased its control over him. He felt perfectly safe in the warmth of the night. Time passed, the night grew old and withered away making way to a new dawn. As the sun rose sprinkling drops of light onto everything around it, those eye lids that had rested now opened to see the pleasant light of day. Blurred entities began to take shape slowly. He recognized his room but failed to remember anything else, fragments from his past lingered in his mind. He moved around like a ghost, searched for his wallet, nothing was found. His thoughts he spoke aloud in monologue, hoping for something to come out of it. He was truly a ghost, a kind of ghost that was alive but could be killed.</div>
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He felt freedom for the first time in his life. The reset button had been hit; he had the chance to turn the wrongs of his life to right. He was one of those lucky men who won not lotteries but a life itself.</div>
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In haste had he gone out to discover a forgotten world, but he failed to discover anything new. As each second passed and as his eyes moved from object to object from person to person somewhere in his mind those images struck a note. His freedom or the strangeness and distance he felt from all that surrounded him seemed to disappear. The world of his past came back to him. The street vendors, the busy college goers, the old, the young, faces and voices began to rush through his mind in frenzy. </div>
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“Robert…aye Robert..why no Times?” a voice called out.</div>
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Realizing that it was his name, he turned back to find the source of that deep odd voice. It was a man holding up a news paper. Forcing a smile on his face he moved towards him.</div>
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“So what made you think you could miss out on a day’s action?” the man said “not once have you forgotten to buy the Times”</div>
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Robert still sporting a smile moved close and said “Has the world changed so much. I thought it could wait”</div>
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“Ahh….that’s clever..but you ought to be informed, don’t you?”</div>
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“Fine let me have it”</div>
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The news paper seemed to be same, as he skimmed through the pages while waiting for a cup of coffee. Homicides, suicide, scandals, and occasionally award announcements were reported along side pages that contained the list of all those fortunate people who never had the burden of waking from their fruitless slumber. The restaurant was a dust covered building; the grey walls had literally turned black due to the dust. The coffee came shortly, so did the bill. </div>
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Once back on the streets he tried even harder to figure out the ambiguities of his life. How did he lose his life’s memory, the most dreaded yet valued possession he had. That was a question that made his brain overheat and produce a migraine.</div>
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Seated at a bus stop was an old gentleman who had the air of a government servant, taking quick glances at his watch every two seconds. </div>
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“Do you know the way to the medical shop?” Robert asked as gently as possible</div>
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The old man drew a quick glance, motioned his head in the forward direction and let out a short undistinguishable murmur.</div>
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Getting the hint Robert began in the direction towards the shop, with an irritated mind and an aching head. A few meters and strange faces later he reached a brand new shop with neon lights and huge banners that read “Alpha Medicals” in three different languages.</div>
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The drug was handed out quick, in an instant it vanished and the so called relief process began. </div>
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Stepping out again into the dust and heat he once again began the lesson of familiarizing taught to him by nature. Almost all of his past had returned to him but one, his job. But that was not to be for very long. </div>
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“Hey…where have you been…a lot of people are worried!” said a fair young man who unlike every one else was dressed in a three piece suit on an extremely hot day. </div>
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“Hey” he let out a single syllable not knowing what to say.</div>
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“So how come you decide to take a walk when the company has decided to throw you a party?” he asked with a hint of dissatisfaction.</div>
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“I was sick.” </div>
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“That’s sad. After years of reporting you get a promotion to stay indoors and voila you’re sick” an air of arrogance was now rising.</div>
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Minutes past, a few more ‘voilas’ too and some more arrogance came along with some chit chat about this and that of the office. Once all that was out, he moved past Robert with haste and a friendly nod. </div>
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He was apparently a journalist, he was the one who defined the views of people on a lot of matters and issues, and however he was the only one that wrote about all ages not knowing his own life in totality, still trying to piece together fragments of his past. These fragments however over time guaranteed him that if time was allowed they would fix themselves. Such knowing brought him relief.</div>
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The next morning, fixing his tie, he prepared himself to come face to face with all those less fortunate souls that had woken this morning, rehearsing each line he would speak to them, each nod, each gesture, ensuring not a millisecond robbed him of that air of familiarity he intended to display. </div>
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He had been reset, how he didn’t know, that was the incident that had gotten him over his fear of conversations and darkness. Now in front of mirror stood a new man, Robert last name unknown, journalist, unafraid of darkness and conversations. How these changes were brought out in him, he failed to see. The passing of each second made him less and less concerned. In an hours time he would continue in his share of misfortune, his life.</div>
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The clock struck nine, a man in a purple tie, hands free, walked out of that apartment with a new found attitude. His face glowed as a result of some unknown victory. </div>
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Reaching the corner of that busy street, Robert stopped, let of a sigh and moved towards the newspaper vendor and said “The Times..I ought to stay informed!”</div>
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“Yes…it costs dearly to live in the past” sounded the deep odd voice of a man.</div>
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With a smile he parted, with not many memories to his possession but with hope that he could make some more, for the plainness of his existence alarmed and frightened him.</div>
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He followed his path, as he was guided by the address on the newspaper. And there it was a three storied building with a board as big as a truck which read</div>
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“THE TIMES</div>
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Where the past recreates and the present unfolds”</div>
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Reaching the third floor, after being greeted with strange yet familiar faces, his typical day began or so he assumed. It had taken him years to earn a chair and table, however today his freshness never ceased. For on that eventless day, a day which was same as day that had passed for many, he felt new and ready to recreate his past. For it was the first time in history that a man could change not his future but his own past.</div>
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The day progressed just the way he thought it would, eventless. </div>
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In a day there lies so much to be conquered, so much to be lost and so much to be forgotten as well as remembered. The arms of the clock moved at different speeds for different people, for some it lagged and yet for some it rushed. For a man with a new found identity the arms rushed, they moved so swiftly that Robert cared for nothing but to savor every passing second even as he considered his life as something less fortunate. He envied the dead, the ones that had found peace in an everlasting undisturbed slumber. </div>
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Packing his bag, he moved towards the exit, completing the first day of work after his re- birth. The elevator helped him descend, in a couple of moments he found himself standing at an cold empty corner of a nameless street, still not knowing why he stood motionless.</div>
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He felt peace.</div>
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He stood undisturbed, until a dark silhouette of a woman appeared a few meters away from him.</div>
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Time stopped.</div>
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Moving towards the last piece of the puzzle, he knew not what to expect. Her dark brown eyes made him move swiftly.</div>
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Out of nothingness suddenly appeared a mob of unfortunate souls, busy and in a hurry to get where they were supposed to go. The crowd swallowed them both; Robert couldn’t distinguish one from another. Moving with the crowd he was lost. In a city of millions this was common, if only he could remember that.</div>
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Turning a corner, crossing the road, he went into uncharted territory. A little neighborhood which seemed to exist a few decades back, still unchanged with an atmosphere that felt stagnant and unchangeable by its greatest enemy, time. </div>
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Dark clouds gathered, cutting off the sun from its usual habit of savoring its last moments before it had to set. Flashes of lightning and eruption of thunder made its presence known. Rain hesitated to wash away the weariness that lay after a hard days work. Thunder and lightning grew louder and brighter. A few windows closed, and the sound of silence was heard except at moments of dispute. With each flash of lightning a scene recreated itself, breaking almost all laws of time and space that made clocks frown, a scene of tragic consequences unfolded. </div>
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A young man of twenty, moved forward, running out of breath, in sheer desperation, a young man that had familiarity written all over his face, a face that revealed itself in flashes. He resembled a good deal of Robert’s past, moving forward in panic, reaching no where but his end. </div>
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Robert moved to help him yet distance grew between them, time had revealed a lot but time had no second thoughts in stopping him from changing it. The young man motioned forward yet reached no where. </div>
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Robert halted, looked up to the sky as the rain had begun pouring down; the young man however faced downwards lying on the ground motionless. He kept his gaze steady at the heavens, the moment in history that had shaped his life had just unfolded before him, he was finally at peace with darkness and conversations, and this was the last piece of the puzzle that had reset his life. </div>
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Now at peace with his past, the fragments that had hidden themselves from him began to resurface. In a strange land witnessing the strangest encounter of his life he was no longer lost. He knew perfectly well how to get back. </div>
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</div>Jude Gerald Lopezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183714599402577683noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7430823600812868734.post-5776557906226918152011-08-12T16:48:00.000+05:302012-01-07T14:05:36.685+05:30The Eclipse of Fantasy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7cOMcCy61WVK4Utf1JD_XJa-UAzOZCdBs8axnHWuIc5eQFs9LMPl6zZ4Ghve9-1NpvyvfdKyM5QmfwUy_cPpcJG5ZXxLJTiuQ6_B16uLDiLddYojFG1Wa4hUQjzkyBDJE7uEAncRJrAe0/s1600/eclipse.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7cOMcCy61WVK4Utf1JD_XJa-UAzOZCdBs8axnHWuIc5eQFs9LMPl6zZ4Ghve9-1NpvyvfdKyM5QmfwUy_cPpcJG5ZXxLJTiuQ6_B16uLDiLddYojFG1Wa4hUQjzkyBDJE7uEAncRJrAe0/s320/eclipse.png" width="225" /></a></div>
In an ever changing world with people decked up with a million identities and faces there was a man who was not the least different. A man with so many similarities that all his life he went unnoticed, not daring to go against the tides, the average teen, later the average guy in a less than average world with a million other guys. His similarities acted as a camouflage as it did for everyone else. Now looking back to those long lost unused stagnant days of his youth he felt a sense of regret. The strands of hair that remained unmoved by the tests of time now grayed, this was what he regretted. He had forgotten to dye his few surviving strands to say the least hair. Too late to act, he moved nervously to the cubicle he was assigned in his office.</div>
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Cubicle No: 11223</div>
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Name: Victor J </div>
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Employee Id: sA183Zi </div>
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The little piece of paper greeted him every morning reminding him of his name, a name that was given to him that had exactly nothing to do with who he was or where he was from, then what was it for he asked himself a million times including today, still not finding an answer. Papers filled his desk, cost cutting schemes had to be thanked for that, or else these papers covered with dust would lie not on his desk but on his desktop with their constant need to be corrected and rearranged so that their reader, another average guy could get the best of the best when it came to what a celebrity had for lunch. That sad profession was his, he was supposedly a journalist. A journalist that shaped the view of the world regarding matters of great importance and prominence such as what cars Mr. S drove, who he dated, what he had for lunch, how he managed to smoke without turning his teeth yellow etc. etc. That was his sad life.</div>
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Going through the latest happenings in the local La La Land, not knowing why he was doing this for a living Victor went through each and every piece of paper that lay at his desk in such mechanical movements that showed his experience better than in his portfolio. </div>
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Why he did this was a question he had neither an answer nor an alternative. In simple terms he was a hungry man at least thrice a day everyday and journalism put bread on his table and his bed at times.</div>
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The world he lived in was the product of his imagination and experience. His imagination was not imaginative and his experiences in life were just the monotonous days he had lived so far and the days yet to come which also seemed less promising and monotonous. Hence his world was the living definition of boredom and routine. Life presented itself before him as a habit. And he was the last person who would think that life was enjoyable.</div>
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Waiting in line for a cup of coffee that tasted like a mix of warm water and bitterness(if that’s a flavor) ideas of quitting sprang up in his mind, even though it was customary to think of such risky thoughts and eventually discard them with ease. But this time it was different, he didn’t trouble himself to think. He walked out of that office, walked out like a hero walking into the sunset with pride and courage, walking out into a happy ending. He was finally out after paying no heed to </div>
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“Sir, you’re leaving? Is everything ok?”</div>
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“Hey you this ain’t your daddy s house to go for a walk when you feel like!”</div>
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and the strange glances he got from the clerks and people who he had not known all his life. He was now out and the 11 am sun that was seldom seen greeted him out into the open with its scorching heat. The city welcomed him with its dust and noise. The best welcome he got was from within, that congratulated him. </div>
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He said to himself in a whisper “Well done” </div>
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But such whispers were short lived, naïve and were the outcome of thoughtless deeds. Thoughts of going back soon started to siege his mind from all directions. </div>
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Around the corner, by the side of a gray building for almost a kilo meter or more the street was filled with artists, painters of all kind, unrecognized for they failed to gift the world with Mona Lisa’s and David’s but had given less beautiful descriptions of their minds. It was a frenzy of people getting their portraits done, bargaining prices for something that would look “perfect for the living room” stood buyers and sellers. Making his way towards something that had caught his eye, a woman with her large brown eyes looking directly at him Victor pushed forward not realizing a new emerged confidence that had risen silently.</div>
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*****</div>
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Waking up to the same old sound whose duty was to interrupt the dreams that came as a relief were not frowned upon by him, but was just a sad routine that had dictated his life, his day and himself for almost thirty eight years. The buzzing noise of the people who were in a hurry to do all sorts of things and the noise of the traffic which happened to be the regional tune which all inhabitants in one way or the other hummed in the course of a lifetime there. </div>
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He was now awake and was facing her, her eyes cold yet unmoved stared at him with hostility, the kind of hostility which over the years he had grown accustomed to. Those large brown eyes were the only ones he knew of that could see deep into himself with frightening clarity, into the depths of his soul, if he had one that is. Neither had enough courage to break the silence, neither knowing what to say let silence do the talking, the accusing, the justifying, the laughing and the weeping, silence took over.</div>
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He was late. But with every passing moment he grew less concerned of missing the bus, being late, running through the streets, still not managing to find favor with the arms of the clock, still late, tired and eventually fired.</div>
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Neither of them had moved, not one muscle dared twitch. Silence had now finished the dialogue which both of them longed for. Without uttering a syllable they knew of what the other had in mind.</div>
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He apologized, she refused apology, he justified, she demanded an apology, with his head hanging low he gave up, now she smiled. Silence transformed itself into something warm, less hostile. He felt comforted in her presence. He felt the warmth of the air that was all around him, an air that was such a stranger to him as well as the remaining 3 million people that occupied the stretch of land by the side of one of the nation’s filthy rivers. Warmth was all that his life looked for, in a blizzard not just of snow what else could one hope for?</div>
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Time had passed; the longer arm of the clock had moved so much that it got back to where it had started. An hour had passed, twelve minutes and twenty three seconds to be exact. He got up and moved towards the sink, splashed cold water onto his sleep ridden face, inhaled a deep breath, not looking back put on his coat for the warmth that pampered him earlier had now turned cold, and left the building.</div>
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Now on an empty street, empty just because he failed to recognize all of those faces that moved in unison with him, empty because the others had not seen him, empty because he was a stranger in a strange land even though the strange land was the only place he had known all his life. In fact the place was the not the least empty, it was crowded and claustrophobia was a household name and disease. </div>
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Turning the corner, steeping over a sleeping dog, he saw it. There it was, there it had always been but there it wouldn’t always be, the lake. It was so old that it had to be named all over again, mainly because the old name made no sense, no meaning, so out of sheer necessity it was named The Lake. He tried desperately why he hadn’t visited it more often. </div>
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A glance was not enough, neither were two. He stood there looked at it, felt sorry for it, sort out solutions it needed in his head, cursed all that made it like this and left. That was all he could do and that was all he did. </div>
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Returning back to the apartment he left not turning his back he was once again welcomed with those cold eyes. It was true the walls in his apartment did have eyes and ears. But that was not reality; the walls and the sound of silence were just parts of him that were created by him in fantasy. Not reality. The sites he saw and sounds he heard outside his nest and his cubicle were the definition of real, not his job nor the cold eyes and sharp ears that existed within an 8”X11” piece of canvas bordered off from the real world with a fake wooden frame. </div>
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These were the last moments of their relationship he decided, she would go off into the world of dragons and ponies and he would enter the land of real, a world that couldn’t be defined at the moment, he would go into the world with neither dragons nor ponies. This were their last seconds of mutual existence, this was the end.</div>
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Looking at the clock he knew a day was almost over, time true to its word waited for no man. The portrait was taken down. His mind began to rise up. The dictator of his life seemed lifeless. He began to live. Not in a cubicle nor did he live in a canvas with a stranger, but in a world that with every passing second disappeared, in a world were lakes and rivers were dirty, in a world outside the grasp of imagination, in the world of the real.</div>
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THE END </div>
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</div>Jude Gerald Lopezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183714599402577683noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7430823600812868734.post-347795764910073202011-07-02T08:10:00.000+05:302012-01-07T14:06:08.954+05:30Into the void<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvU_R07eegN-mqdXjjUjj90CMRWU3r0BXs_lJ1Aek1OFIXAjTiloYd_iHc6Kt7B3ZyJ7QNETMATVEfbsmAhT2GoaqmeC2Szs4nZDE4c7tvmJsekWkoeaKf-iNPfRVRjmArVDTyyIvLtdj9/s1600/INTO+THE+VOID.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvU_R07eegN-mqdXjjUjj90CMRWU3r0BXs_lJ1Aek1OFIXAjTiloYd_iHc6Kt7B3ZyJ7QNETMATVEfbsmAhT2GoaqmeC2Szs4nZDE4c7tvmJsekWkoeaKf-iNPfRVRjmArVDTyyIvLtdj9/s320/INTO+THE+VOID.jpg" width="225" /></a></div>
Darkness around started too slowly but steadily envelope him, as he laid twisting and turning in that box like room, windowless and dark, he felt the insides of him burning and his outside felt the freezing winds from all four directions. His mind was not his anymore the very last of his possessions had been taken away from, taken away from a man who needed it most, from a man whose existence depended on it. But it was not his anymore. The hole in him grew too big, he was naked but his nakedness was not seen. It was clothed with darkness and layers and layers of personalities. Layers that had to be peeled off him like an onion in order for someone to get the slightest chance of knowing him. He was hidden now, hidden far too deep in the jungles of his actions and characters, far too deep far too well, this had worked out for him but now there was a hitch. He had forgotten where he had over the years knowingly and unknowingly hid himself. He genius had deceived himself. He was well hid, well protected from the arrows and blades of reality, he was well too hid.</div>
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Time seemed to be his biggest enemy. Time had a nasty way of playing with people and their minds, such games were too expensive for him, he didn’t have much of his mind to spare. </div>
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A master was he from childhood at the game of hide and seek, too smart, too unpredictably too fast. The secret was to hide fast, hide close to the seeker and hide in some obvious place, a place so obvious that he wouldn’t be found. That was something he had done with his life too. He hid fast from the rising blades that surrounded him, he hid close but distanced himself, and he hid himself with the most obvious choices. Hiding as a grown up made his life momentarily easier. Every time he felt depressed, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">gulp</i>. When lonely, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">gulp</i>. Tired same thing,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> gulp.</i> It was his perfect and foolproof solution. What he did not know was that hide and seek the game he played left a hole in him, a hole that now controlled him. He hid thinking after all it was a dog eat dog world out there.</div>
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All his attempts of filling the hole in him ended with defeat. He knew that the hole in him would never ever let him feel whole again. That was the day he began losing something he had possessed all his life. Something that was his life, something that was his being, something that gave his being a meaning, a meaning and a purpose, he was now turning into a vegetable.</div>
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The night he lay down burning inside while freezing outside in that dark box shaped room watched over by phantoms that surrounded and overwhelmed him, he knew that dawn was something that was too expensive for him. As each second went by on that dark night as the arms of the clock kept rushing steadily forward the hole in him grew, darkness grew in him, he was being emptied, he was turning into something, something that was just void. His eyes opened, but his memory didn’t. The hole which he formed in him kept growing; he as a person kept shrinking, diminishing. All he could do was embrace his fate.</div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">As he kept disappearing into the night, in some strange place, a stranger, miles away saw love personify. She held her baby in her hand, eyes sparkling, caressing the tender skin of her infant and smiled. Miles back in that dark box like room he saw something come to life from within, death. He caressed the griping hands of his emptiness that came to empty what was left of him and stared aimlessly into the void. Eyes not sparkling, but rather empty.</span></div>Jude Gerald Lopezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183714599402577683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7430823600812868734.post-42306284570559381262011-06-21T21:31:00.000+05:302012-01-07T14:06:16.195+05:30Tick Tock<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiXUFv8Fy5qCQVawbr7BW4pIOAZnlXUHnJZoPOD9rZNGSfLrabO7XRduFPhmOfIDfSUZUOsRFgXQTRgwclvNNPtoe3faXd486LxE2LrFtr1_l3gfO3Z8J-xjRUAoXsAxD5DvcvZFQuGBKF/s1600/TICK+TOCK.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiXUFv8Fy5qCQVawbr7BW4pIOAZnlXUHnJZoPOD9rZNGSfLrabO7XRduFPhmOfIDfSUZUOsRFgXQTRgwclvNNPtoe3faXd486LxE2LrFtr1_l3gfO3Z8J-xjRUAoXsAxD5DvcvZFQuGBKF/s320/TICK+TOCK.jpg" width="225" /></a><br />
Looking out the window, the pouring rain seemed to be a dream for him. He wasn’t sure whether he was dreaming or not, but was quite sure about one thing; that his name was Robert or something beginning with the letter ‘r’. He was also sure about something he possessed, something not many in the world could ever dream of. No it isn’t a roof above his head nor was it loving parents or good friends, it wasn’t anything of that sort actually. He could time travel, he couldn’t leap from century to century but he could time travel, in a small way, in a convenient way. He was not a slave but master of the clocks; he was the master of himself. Clocks on his command would tick then tock and at times skip the tock and go back to tick. At times they ticked and ticked and tocked with great intensity and swiftness, it was an easy life for him; it was an easy three days.</div>
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Only a few moments had seemed to pass thanks to him and still without a movement he gazed at the pouring rain. Little droplets raced down to the end of his glass window, this made him think about the times when he was a still a child. A water droplet was something that fascinated him now and then. As a child he would wet his little palms and watch which one of those droplets that rolled down his arm would reach his elbow first. But that was now a very long tome ago. He was not that quite old but he felt wear and tear of someone twice his age. Maybe all that games he played with arms of the clock had taken its toll after all. </div>
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It was two days ago that he first saw her. He couldn’t remember where, but it was definitely once of those over crowded places that is quite common nowadays. There were a million other people there, a million other people like him, a million other people like her. It was just a couple seconds, his mind tried with all its might to make the clocks stay on the same tick forever but in the end he failed. He managed to delay the tock for some time but his mind failed eventually. Something told him that he would meet her again and that her name was She. That raised his spirits, he and She still had the chance to become a We. That his heart told him, his heart consoled him.</div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Now it was time to decide. He trusted his heart, he distrusted himself. He had a couple more minutes to spare. H</span>e knew she was out there . Anxiety grew, he tried to speed up the ticks and tocks and maybe even make them skip a couple. It had taken its toll and he felt tired, he had to do this just once more, just this once. He turned off the lights, closed his eyes, lay facing the wall, and began to time travel. He began to speed the hands of the clocks; he began to move through it. He began to sleep.</div>Jude Gerald Lopezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09183714599402577683noreply@blogger.com0