The story of a dream untold.

She always found it sort of embarrassing to admit she had dreams. In college, most of her friends didn’t talk about dreams – they were too busy crafting blueprints, reading assignments, drinking beer, finding love and losing it. Sometimes though, four or five of them would get together in the tiny little room she rented  above the busy marketplace. It would be quiet then, because it was after midnight, and even the market area, usually so crammed with college students with Kants and Hegels and Juliets swirling in their heads, and young men and women who’d just stepped foot into the real world, and beggars who’d known the real world since they’d been little children lurking outside coffee shops, and shopkeepers who could tell just how torn a money note had to be before it was deemed totally unacceptable, even this area, so crowded and spilling over with all these lives and the accompanying sounds, sights, and smells – it was quiet then. A couple of dimly lit street lamps cast the obligatory harsh orange light on silent streets, a few dogs dutifully curled up near gutters along with shapeless bundles that during the day were something close to human beings.

Anyway, they’d meet, about four or five of them, and they’d have a few beers and they’d light a few joints, and in between talking about all the regular stuff, they’d also sometimes lower their guards down, just enough to speak some sort of truth about themselves, about what they thought, about what they wanted. One night was the same as the other really; they were almost seamless, the way they wove into one another, marvellously forgettable and infinitely timeless.

Seven years later, she’s standing at the corner of a pavement, waiting for the signal to turn green so she can cross, and she is filled with a deep joy that can only be explained slowly, in bits and pieces, and for some reason, with the sun shining on her, so bright that she has to wear sunglasses although she always feels a bit of a fool in them, and her sleek mobile phone clutched tight in her sweaty hand, she remembers one of those nights, and all of a sudden, it is very clear, a photographic memory, even though she’s not sure whether it’s the result of many similar photographs coming together, or a single, brief snapshot, catching her unawares, as yet another taxi sails past her, and the light continues to remain stubbornly scarlet.

She was twenty one years old then, and like most twenty one year olds, she had the world at her feet. They all did, and they knew it, and the thought exhilarated them and terrified them and for the most part, they tried to bury it away because to contemplate it was frightening: too much was at stake, too much was unknown, and it was all too much, sometimes.

“Do you remember when you were little and you used to play that What-I-Want-To-Be-When-I-Grow-Up game?” A said, and though she hasn’t seen A in six years, she can recall her face as if she’d seen her just yesterday. Big trusting eyes (are they still trusting?), a sharp little nose. Pretty, unremarkable, earnest.

“Oh gawd,” drawled M, leaning back on her elbows: a graceless position to be in, but nothing M did could ever be graceless, because M was one of those people who are born to movement.

“I remember,” said C, eyes flushed with cheap wine. “I wanted to marry our electrician.”

A shout of laughter.

“Why?” She’d asked curiously, stubbing out vague memories of the time she was six years old and wanted to marry a carpenter.

“I don’t know,” said C, uncomfortablv. “He was cute. And he always made the lights come on. I guess I just liked the idea of being with someone who could make darkness disappear.”

There was a pause that very briefly threatened to grow serious before she snorted with laughter and soon they were all rolling around the bed and the floor, shrieking with mirth, and that was why she loved them, that was why they were different from all her other friends.

“What do you want to do now?” said M, stubbing out her cigarette and lighting another. She watched M’s face, its angles thrown into sharp relief against the feeble flickering of the flame.

Fine bone structure, dear.

“After college? I want to go to Oxford,” said C dreamily. “I want to go and read a lot and then I want to find a niche and learn all about it and think my own thoughts about it and then I want to write realms and realms of useless papers on it, and teach ‘em all to students...and I want a garden of my own that grows really nice roses.”

She could see C doing that: leading a quiet academic life, revolving around libraries and gardens, and silver rimmed glasses that lay forgotten on polished wooden tables, and she felt a pang of envy.

“Mine never changed. I wanted to write about war and soldiers when I was little and I still do, I guess.” A shot a secret look at M, and she didn’t understand it then and she’s not sure if she understands it now while crossing the road – the light has finally turned green – but either way, she reckons it isn’t important.

That had been the first time she’d heard about A wanting to be a war correspondent  and it surprised her because though she could see M doing it, A was the sort of person who just...well, she just sort of floated along, and it sounded terrible to her then, and it still sounds terrible to her now, but that didn’t make it any less true.

“I am going to scram to one of the biggest cities in the world,” said M, not drawling for once, but she suppressed a smile anyway because the thought of M not wanting to live in one-of-the-biggest-cities-in-the-world would have been as ludicrous as the thought of A traipsing around in the middle east or wherever wars happened, dusty and earnest, with a forgotten pen tucked behind her ear and a state of the art laptop swinging from her side. “And once I’m there, I’m going to get a job publishing – or in fashion, I just can’t choose, damn it – and I’m going to make a lot of money and marry someone incredibly handsome and ambitious, and have the perfect family, and deep down all the while, I’m going to be incredibly miserable.”

“Why would you want to be miserable?” asked C incredulously.

She saw the corners of M’s mouth turning up. A secret little smile. “Oh come on, you lot. Like I’d ever be happy if I couldn’t be miserable.”

Laughter filled the room – no stranger to it – once again.

“What about you? You’ve been surprisingly quiet, love.” C turned to her, drawing her in, which was a little odd – she can see it now, as she pauses briefly outside a clothing store to admire the red coat that warms the cold mannequin – because she was usually the sort of person who dove right into things. Or pretended to, anyway.

But they were talking about dreams.

They knew her well so she had to put up a good performance and the only way she could do that was by half convincing herself that she was about to tell the truth.

“I want...” she paused for a second, and took a deep drag of her cigarette. “I want to be a travel writer. I want to travel all over the world and I want to write about what I see – half funny, entirely forgettable stories that make people laugh, just then, when they’re reading it. And eventually, I want to meet the love of my life – maybe have children, maybe not – and keep travelling and exploring and...” she trailed away.

“That’s perfect for you,” said C enthusiastically, clapping her hands and forgetting she had a glass of cheap red wine in the left one. While they were all busy cleaning it up, and laughing hysterically at their own incompetence, M’s eyes met her own. M knew she was lying, and if ever eyes could talk, hers did then.

Pretend I’m telling the truth, don’t ever ask me, don’t ever probe, just play along.

M turned to look at A who was hiccupping uncharacteristically and her eyes crinkled with laughter. M, aggressive, untactful, full of curiosity, had somehow, incredibly, received her message. For a brief moment, she wondered if she’d been imagining it, but when M glanced her way again, she realised that she hadn’t, and felt a surge of overwhelming gratefulness.

And now it's seven years later and she's walking down the road in a city she's always wanted to live in - and now she is, she really is - and the sun is bright and the breeze is sharp enough to add colour to her colourless cheek, and her eyes are brighter than they have been in a very long time, her shoulders are mingling with other shoulders, her legs are becoming part of a world of legs, her future is being lost in other futures, and then she turns a corner - the light is dazzling - and she can't be seen anymore. 

On the stage.

The line between tragedy and comedy is a very thin one. It's easy to cross, it's just a matter of twisting perspective.

If in the realm of tragedy, don't stay there. Tragedy is all very well in literature - it has nobility, it has transformation, it has reflection, it has long cold nights under the stars where the world revolves around you, and only you, and the rest ceases to matter.

It is pointless.

We are all actors on our own stages, but we have no real audience. And why should we? Everyone has their own spotlight, they have no time to pause for someone else's except for a moment: a brief glance, a brief smile, a brief sigh.

So you're alone with your own life, your own problems, your own stage and with an audience that is truly made up of no one but yourself.

See the funny side of things, realise how unimportant the important is. Be dazzled, be bewildered, be surprised, astonished, and bemused at the way the script slowly unravels itself, the ink curving its way into sense only a drop at a time. Look back at the second that has passed and realise that you've survived it, you've lived to speak another line, and be grateful.

Oh yes, and laugh.

If you're on your own, you might as well hear the sound of your own laughter, and it is the easiest sound in the world to live with, for among other things, laughter can be silent too sometimes. 

Before December.

They cannot touch you in the sky,
Those things that made you cringe,
That you disliked. 


Shrill voices, suffocating smoke
coiling its way from crushed half cigarettes.
Poisoned words, cloaked.


Tottering girls on magic pills,
Blue inked poetry, smashed guitars asleep on pavements,
No, they never will.


No, their claws can't reach that high,
So I shall softly stroll a beach,
For neither can I.


Under the stars, suitably grieving,
Sand crunching underfoot, suitably dressed,
Suitably singing. 


Grey ash spewed out by a chlorined fountain,
Drowned in murky water. Or perhaps merely asleep,
On some immortal mountain.

I will never learn.

Why am I incapable of working systematically? Every year, I tell myself that this time it will be different, this time I will be prepared, and every year it's the same old story.


I tried, I really did. I've been bloody living in the library for the past month, so why haven't I done any work? What was I doing? 


I was howling about this to Friend, who, very puzzled, said, "I don't understand. I've been seeing you in the library everyday. I thought you were working." 


"I THOUGHT I WAS WORKING TOO." 


"But what were you doing?" 


I don't know what I was bloody doing, when I think back to the hours spent in the library, my recollection is fragmented: reading books that had nothing to do with college work, reading the occasional tutorial assignment, writing out long emails to far away friends and never finishing them, playing Phish and - I have A.O. to thank (blame?) for this -Johnny Flynn, over and over and over again. 


Alright. Maybe that's why my assignments are still unwritten. 


But that's not it. The past four days, I've put everything on hold. Just to work. AND I HAVEN'T WORKED. I start working on Heart of Darkness as a modernist text, I don't know how to go about it, so I switch to Nature being the ostensible protagonist in Wordsworth's poetry, and that just bores the hell out of me, so I switch back to Heart of Darkness again, and I don't actually do anything because I am a useless fool. And Mawii's no help either. She's been sitting at her desk diligently everyday, but every time I look across the room, her head is in her arms and she is asleep. 


It's all Mawii's fault. If I was living with Naomi or Supurna this would not have happened. On the other hand, if I was living with Naomi or Supurna I would have drowned myself by now from sheer agony at my own ineptitude. Back to Mawii. She should be inspiring me to work. Watching her sleep is not inspiring. It just reassures me that there is someone out there, very close by, who faffs as much as I do, and having someone else faff validates my own faffing. 


Oh good. I feel a meltdown on its way. 


So I will do what I always do when I'm having a meltdown: sleep. 

Kings.

A makeshift circle. Cards, new and crisp. Beer. Wine. The same old, same old, same old, same old.

An attempt to disconnect, an attempt to view it all dispassionately but then someone draws a Queen and it's a waterfall and the wine slips so effortlessly down your throat, and your vision gets that much hazier, and your laughter gets that much easier. 

And it is genuine, you can't deny that. 

"Never have I ever done hard drugs." 

No one swigs their drink which is quite strange, because everyone is twenty at the very least and everyone smokes up - some more than others - and everyone drinks (hello, you're playing Kings after all) and some of them are what the people who speak the same language long dead critics do when they're sitting in the ugly cafe and looking disapprovingly at the length of your hemline would call, if this was twenty years ago, fast. 

Later, someone comes up to you and wonders in a vague, uninterested, just to pass the moment kind of way whether you're going to record this and you are, you knew you were going to even as it was all happening, but what is the point really? 

One evening is pretty much the same as another, they flow seamlessly: the same faces, the same jokes, the same music, but the truth is it doesn't make them any less fun, it doesn't make them any less welcome. Mindless moments of laughter are not to be dismissed, not to be allowed to grow old. Precious, useless, timeless. 

They don't make men like this anymore. To quote Jason, not always the most articulate of people, "He was class, man."

Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway.

Turner is generally considered to have deplored the Industrial Revolution. The absence of men, and of man made objects (apart from ships being ripped apart by seas) from his paintings, suggest the dominance, the arrogance, the victory of a Nature more sublime, more divine, than any person could comprehend.

Looking at his paintings makes me feel small. The dazzling light, with even shadows being aglow with crimson and gold, the suggestion of space stretching beyond fences set by eternity, the brush strokes that veil a sharp, clear scene in a hazy mist of light, elements of the awesome, the titanic: a sort of gentle rebuke that the world is, always has been, and always will be, greater than we can possibly imagine.

This particular picture disturbs those fragments slightly. The eye is instantly drawn to the black train, the solid bridge, away from the sky in its gently coloured turbulence. The train is not still: it is moving, and moving fast, so fast it should be a blur, and it is a blur, but at the same time, concrete and arrogant, master of the painting.

I can't separate the painting from the artist. What was he thinking? What was he trying to say? If you look at the Romantic artist as a prophet like figure - is this the prophecy Turner was making? Did he, with shimmering oil paints in lieu of a crystal ball, look out of his window one morning, towards the end of his life, and feel, with a sharp, short stab, that the future was one of rain, steam, speed? Goodbye seas that play merrily with history's ships, goodbye endless skies that throw Icaruses down, let's all get into a train and move as fast as we can, try and run over Time itself, and see where it takes us?

And what of the hare towards the bottom right corner? Nature runs too. But can it beat the flashing black steamlined monster that is beautiful in its way: human hands are capable of creating beauty, even the sounds of harsh screeching metal and spitting steam cannot deny that.

And as the old man set his brushes aside and gazed at it, in his studio perhaps, with polished wooden floors and a wind scented sunrise pouring through the windows, did he think to himself that he'd created a promise, or a warning, or perhaps a bit of both? Or did he simply smile ruefully, knowing that all the black steam engines in the world wouldn't be able to strip the sun that he'd spent a lifetime worshipping of its splendour, though vainglorious attempts would try.