Something I wrote two, three years ago. Now that I look at it it's wishy washy and could be improved. And priorities have changed. Still, it's a good index of my literary achievements (or lack thereof!)



The rain whistled through the gaps in the windows, dotting the clean white bedspread that lay over the tiny cot. Adrian watched with a tiny smile on his lips, as the drops appeared with increasing frequency on the sheet he had labored so hard to clean. Putting a hand out, he let it get wet. The sensation of the cold water trickling down his callused fingers calmed him.

He sighed and drew his hand back, wiping it briefly on his shirt before turning back to the scarred wood desk with its scattering of papers. Lowering himself onto the rickety chair, he pulled the nearest sheet towards himself and scanned it tiredly. A few small errors came to his notice; he corrected them with casual indifference. After all, this was only his hobby. It wasn’t like his life depended on it.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor in a corner of the room, the Muse smiled.

Adrian’s tired eyes stopped in their unenthusiastic perusal of the paper. What was this? Suddenly he felt re-energized, re-vitalized, refreshed. Creative energy, such as he had never felt before was coursing through his veins. He knew this was the inspiration he had been waiting for. He knew this was the right, no, the perfect moment to begin his masterpiece prize-winning novel.

Casting aside the half covered paper, Adrian hastily grasped a fresh sheet. He raised his pen over it and paused. Words, phrases, ideas, were all pounding away inside his head. Which one should he unleash first?

Over in her corner, the Muse played a game of dice. She waited as the cubes spun, her green eyes never leaving their whirling surfaces. Finally, they stopped. Her eyebrows rose slightly in surprise. Double sixes stared back at her.

His pen darted across the paper. Sweat beaded on his brow as he strove to get the words out as fast as he thought them. His hand muscles tensed and flexed, visibly knotting under his skin; he paid them no attention. All he was conscious of was the motion of the pen in his hand and the ideas and images rushing through his mind.

The rain continued to lash the window.

The Muse had closed her eyes. She appeared to be meditating. Her wrists rested on her knees, her hands hung loosely, palms facing downward. The black waves of her hair rippled slightly in the occasional breeze that gusted through the gaps in the window.

Adrian scribbled away, wholly absorbed in his work. In the course of three minutes, his untidy scrawl had filled a whole page. Once he looked up from his labors, only to glance at the clock ticking on the wall before him. After that time check, his eyes had not strayed from the manuscript again.

Lightning flashed outside.

The Muse opened her eyes. She gazed straight ahead at Adrian. Lifting one hand, she smoothed away a few stray strands of hair that had blown into her face.

The spell was broken, for the time being. He leant back in his chair, panting slightly, as though he had just walked a great distance with no water to hand. Which he had, in a way. His brain felt as though it had run a ten-mile race, and his hand was numb. With some difficulty, he pried his curling fingers from around the sweaty pen. He closed his eyes, gathering his thoughts for the next onslaught on the paper.

The Muse sat calmly, watching him, judging him. Was he ready? Ready to bear the burden of inspiration? Ready to sacrifice his time, his patience, his social life, and shut himself into the fulfillment of that inspiration? The test was yet to come.

Adrian opened his eyes. His gaze fell on the paper that lay before him, only half filled. The empty space seemed to beckon him; it longed to be covered, it longed to be clothed in his script. He sat there for a while, doing nothing but stare at the sheet. Then his hand reached, trembling, for the pen. To begin his second attack.

The green eyes of the Muse darted to the room door. Yes. It was time.

A knock sounded on the door, startling Adrian and making him drop the pen. He blinked in consternation for a few moments, then rose from his seat and crossed the space of empty flooring to the door. Reaching for the doorknob, he pulled it open.

His eyes widened when he saw who it was.

A young woman stood there, one hand still raised as if to knock. She was swathed neck downwards in a long brown coat; black leather gloves covered her hands. Her black hair was loose; it fell about her shoulders in a tousled way. Thick lashes shaded brown eyes, and two shapely eyebrows arched above them. Her lips curled upwards in a smile when she saw him.

“Adrian! Finally!” she threw her arms around him, almost knocking him off balance.

“M-Maria?” What was she doing there? It been two whole years- no, wait! - Three whole years since they had parted in hatred, each vowing to never speak to the other again. He had often thought about her, missed her even, and regretted nearly every day the many harsh words they had exchanged. But for the past few days he had been fairly successful in pushing away those painful memories. Why had she suddenly decided to come again?

The Muse folded her arms. She was prepared to wait for the results, no matter how long they took in the coming.

Maria stepped back from him and peered intently into his eyes. But she said nothing.

He decided it was up to him to speak. “What brings you here?”

She smiled, a trifle sadly. “I came because…because…” she stopped, and seemed unable to go on.

“Because?”

Drawing a deep breath, she closed her eyes and continued. “Because I realised I still have feelings for you. I decided I wanted to work things out. Truth is, I’ve missed you Adrian.” She opened her eyes now, and looked straight into his. “Please, if it’s possible, let’s work things out?”

She hadn’t said it, but he understood that she meant the time was now or never, that unless he seized this chance, they could never again contemplate the idea of restarting their relationship.

Lifting a hand, the Muse pointed a slender finger at Adrian.

Ideas burst in his head like fireworks, the desire to write them down, to record them on paper, to further his begun novel bubbled like molten lava through his veins. It was a stroke of inspiration crueler than the first one. His eyes were torn from Maria to the abandoned pen and paper lying on his untidy desk. Almost before he knew it, he was halfway to it, his hand already outstretched for the pen.

“Adrian?”

Maria’s voice halted him. His hand fell to his side; his raised foot was lowered. He stood between them- desk and door, woman and pen, Fame and a Second Chance. Which should he choose? He knew intuitively that if he chose one he would lose the other forever. Maria, or the novel? He knew that unless he utilized the inspiration racing through him immediately, he would never produce his dream novel. He knew that unless he walked away from that desk with her, would lose all chances of working things out. Which should he choose?

The Muse rattled the dice in her cupped hands. Closing her eyes, she cast them onto the floor. They spun, whirled, the numbers flashed before her green eyes. Thunder rumbled outside. Finally, they settled. Two ones stared silently up at her.

Adrian decided.


Seven years later…

The Muse stood on the wide windowsill, looking down at the middle-aged man who sat at the desk before her. He had changed little with the years, perhaps his hair showed a few gray strands and his forehead a few faint lines, but that was all. He was bent over a sheaf of papers, reading them with a curious expression of loss on his face.

The door opened, and a smiling woman entered. She too, had barely changed; maybe she was a little plumper. She stole across to the man and tapped his back. He turned, and seeing whom it was, smiled.

“So you’re finally back. How was school?”

The woman laughed. “According to your daughter, wonderful. Apparently the class was treated to cookies today.”

“Oh?” the man laughed too, and stood up from his desk. “And where is my little cookie monster?”

“Here Daddy!” a small, lithe figure dressed in a pinafore came bounding into the room, her small bag still dangling from her shoulders. With a huge smile, she jumped into her father’s waiting arms.

“I thought you were supposed to remove the bag when you come home?” the woman asked with a slight frown.

“Now, now Maria. Let’s forget it for now, shall we? It’s not harming her is it?”

Maria shrugged, and then smiled abruptly. “Oh well, you’re right. But I just hope she remembers next time, we have to have some more discipline in this house.” The man just rolled his eyes. Maria laughed at his expression. “All right, all right, no lectures for now.” She walked to the door, and then turned back to him. “Come down. There’s cookies and milk for everyone!”

“More cookies!” the little girl squeaked. “Let’s go Daddy!”

Laughing, Maria walked out.

The man took slow steps, and once he reached the doorway, turned around to face his desk once more. There sat his stack of papers, the fine beginning of his novel. For a moment, the old desire to write, to win fame, came over him again. Almost he forgot the little girl in his arms. Almost he thought he could see a slender figure silhouetted against the light curtains, watching him.

“Come on Daddy, let’s go!”

He blinked. Then smiled. He had almost lost himself in a dream! Chuckling, he turned away from the desk and carefully shut the door.

The Muse turned from the empty room. With a little sigh she sprang from the sill, into the open air. As she drifted from the house, letting the wind take her to her next visit, only one thought ran through her head.

Adrian had chosen well.

The other take on the brasen world

I want to visit Copenhagen.

Yesterday, as I was attempting to read Sidney's 'Defense of Poesy', a phrase gnawed its way in and found a little nest for itself in my head- the 'golden world'. Sir Sidney propounds that Poets are different from all other men, and even get one upon Nature because they have the ability to create or present things better than they really are, and so inspire others to realise those images. While nature's world is 'brasen', that of the poets is golden. Herein lies the beauty and use of poetry- its chief aim is to delight and instruct.

I'm not sure how this is related to any desires to go globe-trotting, but those are the wishes it sparked off. I was suddenly reminded of the Little Mermaid (I mean the character from Hans Christian Anderson's tragic story, not the happy, singing Disney one, though I do love her in all her red haired glory), and her not-so-happy stint on Earth. Why was she inspired to come up, to rise through the waves and visit the never-never land of the shore? She heard the stories, she saw the princes. She felt the undeniable call of love. And for that, she was ready to sell her most prized possession, her voice.

What the Little Mermaid fell prey to is readily gauged- the golden world of stories, of poetry. Did she find what she sought? For a brief period, yes. The brasen world soon asserted itself however, and she was left with two rather terrible choices (va! Greek tragedy indeed!): either kill the Prince and his bride, or kill herself. Unsurprisingly (being a fairy tale heroine and all) she chose the latter. And, paradoxically, gained immortality that way.

It's funny to imagine a story book character falling in love with the world of stories. I don't hold 'human' characters in the same regard, but someone so TOTALLY make believe dying to actually meet reality, it's a strange concept. Hans Christian Anderson had a beautiful idea, and it's the tribute to that idea that I wish to view. We never think of longing from the other side, do we?

For a lonely Iliad-toting musician

The violin plays softly, notes falling from its cat gut strings like drops of dew from the razored edges of a leaf. They plink and plonk about him, washing about his knees for now, but soon (an hour, perhaps) they will submerge him completely, encapsulating him within a cocoon of music. Cut off, unmoored from his surroundings he will float, rudderless on the bosom of an ocean of sound.

Fitting that he be transported so. The great poet John Keats has flown on the viewless wings of poesy, his boarding pass being handed him by a singing nightingale. He was getting one up on Keats, producing the song of transportation himself.

Musing on Keats was always soothing, and served to lull him further into his melodious trance. Nothing suited the Romantics more, he thought, than a glass of sparkling wine on a summer’s day or a nocturnal serenade from a lonely violin. This was, therefore, both his tribute to them as well as a gift he received from the Masters in return for his homage. Shelley, Wordsworth, Blake, Byron and Keats- they sang to him, he played for them; they were all trapped in the same sublime reverie.

Only, more often than not, his part of the shared space seemed more like a nightmare than a poetry inducing flight of fancy. When the images and memories flooded his inward eye, he tried to shut them out, drowning himself instead in the wordless beauty of a tune.

I wandered lonely as a cloud.

There he had been- a lonely young man stranded in an unknown land amidst a sea of strangers. There were times when he had wondered how he’d gotten where he was, in a little university town in the bowels of Arizona. A B.Sc in Zoology certainly hadn’t seemed like it was leading up to this.

There were moments when to be young had been very heaven, he could see that now, peering down that fog laden road of memory. The books, the coffee, and the women- it had all come in a surge. There was a different woman by his side every month, a different face across the table when he wanted to talk ‘literature’. The exotic exterior and (almost) laughable accent had fascinated them, and he never found himself in want of a social life.

At times though, it got trying, and he realized it wasn’t all it had been cracked up to be. His large circle of acquaintances remained just that- acquaintances. The women came and the women went, and none left more than a lipstick smudge on his pillow cases or a stray powder puff in the bathroom. He often forgot how the latest affair had started, or even what her name was until she left him a letter on his desk, coldly informing him that she’d decided she needed more than just sex and poetry. He never felt hurt at these departures, more often than not, it was an odd sense of relief that flooded his being. Cruel and terrible as it may have been, the women just didn’t hold his complete attention. He turned to them more out of a desire to emulate the Poets (Byron at least) than any genuine desire of his own.

Until she walked in and changed everything.

She walks in beauty like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies

He’d seen her at a get-together, one of those regular excuses to get drunk and delay the submission of papers to supervisors. She hadn’t grabbed his attention at first; it had been her brown-haired friend who’d had that honor. He was already slightly spiffed by the alcohol, and fumbled up his introductory flirtatious statements, putting the friend off. She’d stalked off in a huff, insulted by the inappropriate advances from the vague Romantics thesis writer (she herself had been pursuing a PhD in mathematics if he recalled correctly). Poor Savita had been left to deal with the awkward situation and lie on her behalf.

‘I’m really sorry; my friend’s had a rough week.’

Blinking, he tried to focus on the speaker. She was smaller, plainer, and altogether less impressive than the one who’d swept away. However, she would do for flirt material at a pinch. Besides, she was of Indian origin, or looked it.

‘That’s okay.’ His smile was a trifle bleary, but thankfully did not scream ‘I’m drunk!’ to an unfamiliar viewer. ‘At least she left you behind to make up for it.’
She looked like she didn’t know whether to be amused or not.

‘So where are you from? And can I put a name to you?’

‘I’m Savita. I’m an assistant teacher with the History department.’

‘Ah. Savita.’ Pretty name, and the more he looked at her, the more he liked her face. There was something comforting about it. Familiar and steady- she looked like what Annabella Milbanke, or better yet, Augusta Gordon Leigh must have appeared to Byron.

‘Could I take you out for a coffee sometime, Savita? When I’m less inebriated and have a book of poetry about me?’

A hesitant smile twitched the corners of her mouth. ‘Sure. But why would we need the poetry?’

‘I find it’s a great conversation starter.’

‘But Andrea just proved you wrong on that, didn’t she?’

‘Who’s to say? It got me talking to you didn’t it?’

At that she’d laughed, and he’d known he’d won for the night.

They had married three years later. Her parents were delighted that she’d found a nice Indian boy in the ‘States, his mother was just content that he was finally settling down. They’d both finished their dissertations by then, they’d both added the wonderful hard-earned prefixes of ‘Dr’ to their names. Settled (or attempting to) in the suburban recesses of Virginia, they were a happy couple, to whom marriage was just another game to be played with life.

Silly little fools.

Violent music swirled around him, it rammed itself in its ears, climbed atop his head and sat there, pulling and pulling at the memories of discord. They floated up to the surface, dim and unwilling. He wanted to yell at them Go! Hide! Don’t let the notes fool you! They seemed to understand, but the notes proved too powerful. Soon enough, they were parading before him, shone up and dazzling, blinding him with their power.

The game had turned sour soon enough. Once they both realized that they didn’t want the same things. How clichéd, he thought, sawing away at the strings, that they had been torn apart by the mundane and worldly reason that nearly all couples were. Didn’t want the same things- it sounded so goddamn prosaic. If they’d had to end up divorced, couldn’t it have been caused by something slightly more exciting- adultery perhaps? It sounded so much more adventurous, like they’d actually tried to live. Not wanting the same things, on the other hand, painted for the listener a picture of a crotchety couple who couldn’t come to a compromise about which TV channel to watch.

‘You get home too late.’ ‘I have a job too!’ ‘I just don’t have time!’ ‘There isn’t any food in the kitchen, why can’t you come home once in a while to cook?’ ‘You’d rather read about some old dead men than talk to me!’ ‘Fine, go and have dinner with Dr. Carson, he knows what the tribals of Zuzouland ate for breakfast fifteen hundred years ago.’ ‘Why don’t you just stop and listen to me sometimes?’

And finally:

‘I can’t take this anymore.’

Which one of them had said it first? He couldn’t remember, he didn’t want to remember. What would memory serve to do anyway? The bare fact that it had been thrown out like that, hurled from one mouth to the other’s ear, hitting like a bullet, a shock dart. After that, life just hadn’t been the same, no matter how much they tried to talk it out. He didn’t believe in all the newfangled conceptions of marriage therapy, and neither did she, so a marriage counselor had never been dragged in. He honestly didn’t think one would have made much of a difference anyway. Those things only worked in the movies.

He waited, almost eagerly, for the divorce to come through. It had seemed an eternity; he couldn’t have left the university in the middle of the semester, and he didn’t want to look as though he was running from the final consequence of his actions. She was allowed to retain the house; he lodged himself in the faculty quarters on the campus. Then he left and found a job somewhere new, far away from anything or anyone he’d ever known.

He was even moderately happy here, if a trifle lonely.

Never mind, the music was always around. Waiting to spring up and keep him company.

The violin’s pitch was low and sad. The strings quivered as he laced his bow delicately over them, coaxing out a quavering melody. The notes stole into the air and glided about him, running delicate limbs over his closed eyes. The memories were receding into darkness again, retreating, sheltering within the gloomy caves of no-visitors, and rearranging the cobwebs over themselves. The notes were the pacifiers and the lullaby singers; they tucked the blankets around them and turned their attention to the producer, stroking the care and worry from his broad face, replacing it with a benign and nearly transcendent expression of utter calm.

My mind is a whirling gulf of phantasy and flame

The smoldering ruins of a flame, for now. The inferno was past. It didn’t usually leave him feeling so blank though. Often he would feel tears trickling down his cheeks when those images had finished playing their little reel. He still didn’t understand why that was. Did he feel regret, perhaps?

Oh well, it didn’t matter. Not really. She had moved on. Last he had heard (and that had been from his sister), she was dating someone. An Andrew Barnaby, or something equally unexciting.

Good for her.

He’d tried it too, briefly. There had been someone named Ajita (was it Ajita? It may have been Lalita) his sister had attempted to ‘hook him up’ with.

‘Go ahead! Call her; I think you’ll really like her.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Don’t you trust me?’

The call had been made, more to placate his sister than for any other reason. Ajita (or Lalita, possibly) had sounded a little tired, a little apprehensive, but she’d at least agreed to meet him. His sister had orchestrated the whole event wonderfully, now that he thought about it. She’d managed to coax a fairly orthodox seeming Indian woman, in an Indian setting, to ‘go out’ with a man who was not her son, nephew, grandson, father, brother or husband.

They’d met at a coffee place, one of those numerous outlets of the grand chain ‘Indian Coffee House’. They talked, they laughed, but he was secretly glad to get away, and he thought she felt the same. There was too much pressure and expectancy (from themselves, from the outside) for anything to materialize.

A few coffees, dinners and emails later they had politely parted ways, both deciding that romance was not something that was going to blossom between them. She had been a charming woman- graceful, tactful, intelligent, and not too hard on the eyes. If only he hadn’t felt so damned drained and uninterested, things might have turned out differently. He might have changed her ideas and his. If only... but hypothetical situations were not good ones to examine. Especially when irretrievable.

What is writ is writ

It wasn’t like he had nothing going for him. He was a well paid professor at a prestigious institution, he was helping to shape some of the brightest minds in the country (sometimes he had a hard time believing that), he was well respected and (in the case of a few pupils) even liked. In fact, he had a niggling suspicion that one student at least had more than just a healthy share of respect for him. He’d surprised some funny turns of expression in her big eyes upon occasion.
‘Um, sir, could I talk to you?’

He’d stopped, more than a trifle taken aback that this student would actually dare to assail him outside the classroom. Girls really were getting bolder these days.

‘Sure! Something wrong?’ he thought her eyes looked strangely red.

‘No, nothing specific. I’m just…bored.’

So he was her recourse during hours of boredom, was he? He shifted the water bottle from one hand to another as he thought; the feelings and words darting through his brain at lightning speed. Then again, it wasn’t like he wasn’t a trifle dull himself. Perhaps a change of company (from the empty space that usually surrounded him) would be good. Besides, she was smart enough to provide intelligent conversation.

‘Sure, let me just put this darned bottle inside. I’ll meet you here?’

She nodded, and the pact was sealed.

Conversation had followed conversation, and he was pretty sure his charm hadn’t waned over her. He wouldn’t mind admitting to egging her on with book-lends and encouraging speeches. After all, a little ego boost never harmed anyone. And it certainly seemed to be working wonders with her, academically. He was just doing his job.

After all, there was no way he could really allow her to touch him. She was young enough to be his daughter. She could have been the product of a stable marriage with Savita, she even looked a bit like her.

But that was, again, not a path he wanted to go down, not a hypothetical situation he wanted to explore.

A very long overture was now moving steadily towards the crescendo. Tilting his head back he let his hands work away at the instrument, almost blindly. Note after note soared into being, swirled around his hair and then leapt gracefully above, winging its way towards the open window. Note after note, carrying with it the thoughts, the heavy, clod-like thoughts that clung inside him. They vanished into the starlit night. He was in raptures, he was being charioted away, he was actually flying as the poets had, as Keats had, he had escaped…

A last hum, a final vibration. He was poised, listening, awaiting an echo that refused to arrive. He lowered the bow and opened his eyes, reluctantly aiding the dispersal of the magic.

The night was young. The books were open, their pages rifling in the light breeze that whispered through the window. The violin lay cold and still, now dead, in his hand.

He was still alone.

I had dinner out today, at a fancy restaurant on the banks of a celebrated lake, which reminded us constantly of its presence by wafting fumes of an intoxicatingly rotten hue. There was a wooden plank flooring (do you call it that when it's outdoors, without a roof over it?), pretty little yellow lights suspended over dignified tables, and a laden surface before us at all times. In short, the works.

Of course, nothing comes that easy and problem-free. The company proved that.

Meeting family after a long time is no easy task. First off, there's this uncomfortable gap that no one wants to acknowledge. With friends it's easier, cause you know that if this doesn't work out, you can both gracefully exit each other's lives and move on. With relatives , you can't do that. You're SUPPOSED to stay connected, to continue to care about each other no matter how little you see of each other.

That's where the magic lies.

Well, anyway, I met these people after YEARS apart. And unsurprisinly, I had nothing much to say. I'm not one of those who spews and spills the dil on the not first but first in a long while meeting. So after some forced questions (I think I might have pushed it further, but since my sister-who's about as communicative as an avocado- was sitting in between, all words kind of met her and died) I relapsed into a polite and watchful silence, the kind where you are listening intently to all the other conversations that are taking place around the table, and you leap in from time to time, attempting to convice your mother that you are NOT an antisocial rude snob. Of course, that conversation usually shuts out the others that were originally paired with you. So you ARE being rude, but no one will recognise it.

And then there's the problem of how much to eat, and at what pace. If you eat too fast, everyone (people above 40 that is) exclaim about how starved you are, and more food is brought to the table at once (even if you are stuffed to just about bursting and can't cram in another bite). If you eat too slow, they exclaim anyway about how much weight you've lost and how you shouldn't be doing this to yourself. Shaking of heads, muttering of 'Kids these days.'

But you cannot, simply cannot, point out that at 19, you're hardly a kid. There's nothing like a family get-together to drill into you that you are just a little snot nosed preteen (if even that!). Time has just passed you by, in the minds of everyone else. Immortal forever.

Unfortunately it always HAS to be at an age where presents aren't expected, but obediance and sweetness is. Damn it.

These dinners teach one so much.

A turn, and now, a re-turn

'Every life ought to have a turn and a re-turn.'
-E.M Forster, 'A Passage to India'

Today, I return. Go back to the home I left behind for these five magical, whirlwind months, re-immerse myself in its forested lanes. Today, I turn back to the vales of Haridvanam, and my old haunts in the Valley School. Finally, all that nostalgia finds relief!

At the same time, I wonder. I know things are going to be different. For the first time, I go back as an 'ex student' (gah, ghastly idea!). What does that entail? It means I can sit in on classes and act all 'ah! I sooo know this!' (with a chic wave of the hand and flick of the hair). On the other hand, it means I'll be an outsider in the busy busy schoolday. I'm walking in on these people's normal routines. I'm not PART of their everyday, as I once was.

And there are some people living in the very room I once lived in, who have no idea of who I am. And they're not likely to care. I never did about the seniors who'd left way before I inhabited their old rooms.

It's very strange to find yourself in that position. I remember how we used to look at old students and go 'why have they come back? why do they have to barge in and act all senti and strange? doesn't college life engage them enough?' It's only when you leave that you realise how harsh and judgmental you'd been about 'them'. But, wait a second, isn't that the case with all realizations?

Well, all I can say is, I wonder. I wonder what awaits me in those forested haunts. I wonder how different the people I left behind have become. I wonder how different they'll find me.

It's all so strange.

But, as Forster said, there should always be a re-turn. And that's what I'm embarking on now.

Fairy Tales and Monsters

I've never really thought about WHY I have a tendency to delve into the past and cling on to memories of certain people and the places associated with them. Over the years the places and the people who occupy my thoughts more often have changed of course, but the feeling's the same- that bittersweet 'I want to think about them but not' kind of attitude.
Call it winter blues if you will (that's what I name it myself), but there's something about early sunsets and wan evenings that really gets you down. A certain hostility- that's what it is, in that early darkness, something waiting to pounce on you as soon as the Sun retires to his chamber for the night. That something is nostalgia.
Loneliness- that's what it is. There are little demons hiding in the dark waiting to pounce on you and suck away at all your fortitude and scrap that appearance of togetherness that you wear. The 'face' that you so carefully wear dissolves in the face of their insidious onslaught. You're pining for company when you have none, and when some arrives, you wish for nothing but its departure. It's an ugly situation indeed.
But sometimes there's one particular person you long for, and they don't show up. Or worse, they turn up and rush away too soon, displaying none of that longing you hoped they would feel for your company- the long you felt for their's. No, it's not 'love' or anything- it's a matter of connection, or someone being there for you at a particular time when no one else was, catching you when you fell to set you back up on your feet, only you don't want to stand alone- you want to run after them and hold on tight to them. Why? You tell yourself it's a way of expressing gratitude, but deep inside, you know better.
You think that person is the only one who can fight away those winter demons when no one else can, precisely because he did so before. Or you think he did so.
What DO you do in times like this? Blabber away to a blank screen is one excellent recourse- it displays exactly the reaction you want, that of a sympathetic, silent listener. You could also find a human ear, but that's a bit more difficult.
Plus, it tires much more easily than a moniter does.
There is consolation of course- in all the stories, monsters are eventually defeated in the end. Unless all the fairy tales are lies and the heroes never existed, you have some hope. The monsters will die in the end.
There's just that horrible period of struggle in between that you have to live through.
But look at it this way- that's always the most interesting part of the book to read. Now maybe you'll feel some sympathy for those poor protagonists as they struggled through their Quests. Now maybe you'll nod in understanding as Harry tramps all over England searching for Horcruxes, not chafe at the interminable wait before he kills Voldemort and brings about the happy ending.
The body is in the struggle, not the victory.
How I have rambled in this entry. It's amazing.

'You're not here for a course in creative writing. You're here for a course in critical writing. It doesn't matter what you have to say, what matters is how you use what others have said before you.'

That's it. My world crashed- academic world that is. Okay, what HAD I expected English honors to be? Certainly not a course in which I would be drilled into using the words of some long dead writers to say something about a text that I wanted to view in a certain way. Certainly not a course in which I'd never be able to look at the material directly, only look at its reflection in the words of some 'critic' and weave my answers from that reflection. I never counted on being a Lady of Shalott.

I hoped for a course that gave me free rein; gave me something to read and then let me go ahead and say whatever the hell it was I wanted to say about it. Let me express whatever thoughts ran through my head- regardless of format and the extent to which I used the opinions of people I'd never met and probably never would meet. I mean, in the end, how would it matter what Mary Pouvey said about 'Pride and Prejudice'? What's going to stick with me is what I thought the first time I read it, how I reacted to it. So why can't my essays on that infernal book showcase MY opinion and not that of a woman who's already been published and finished saying whatever the hell she had to say about fifty (if not more) years ago??

The answer comes back laden with smugness- cause I haven't read enough.

Again, how does that matter? It's my opinion on the BOOK that's wanted, my opinion on the CHARACTERS. Not my opinion on Austen's use of tax laws in her work. How does it matter whether I know the stuff about Chartism and all, if I can't tell you in a reader friendly language what I honestly think of Elizabeth Bennet (which is that she's a bloody annoying coot)? How does knowledge of Austen's economic situation help me formulate an opinion on the Jane and Bingley romance? Why would I want some long dead people dictating what I think of these characters?

If you're referring to critics, why not just watch the movie?

This may be completely biased and all...but seriously. I refuse to be a Lady of Shalott. I want to look at a work directly, unbiased. And the quality of work does not depend upon the number of critics you quote, in my humble opinion, it's the originality of your opinion and how well you put it forward the counts.

I rest my case.