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The force of life hits me with full force, like a splash of pipe water while playing in a garden! 

I've been caught by this almost epileptic surge for artistic expression. The kind that makes you want to dance and get lost in the music, paint a canvas or just get lost in a museum. Made me pick up my phone and experience yet another first,which is to write an article from a smartphone.

Yeah, yeah, makes me feel a bit pathetic, but its all about creativity. It's about throwing all preconceived knowledge and cynicism in the trash and enthusiastically type on this tiny beautiful touch screen!

I want to lift the garbs and veils of pseudo-artsy-intellectual off of me, they get too heavy for my heart!

That constant chatter of the cynical brain, telling me my last sentence sounded like it's out of a perennial pop song. 

But I'm going to drown out this chatter with Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj and Ellie Goulding until it stops making me unhappy. (Read, until I have memorised the words to shake it off better than my ATM pin ;P ) (yes that was a smiley)

Yes, I fall for the sad music in movies they play specifically to make the audience feel bad and cry. Yes I boo boo talk with my boyfriend. And yeah! I also enjoy reading about politics and mystery novels and serious writing. 

But being someone who's taken seriously has made me taunt myself for every goofy thing I like! 

I can hear myself cringe at every exclamation mark. But I'm going to stop and enjoy and accept that there is nothing wrong with having so many aspects to ones personality. And as for the cringes, 

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Take that! Cynical voice of my brain)

But all of this isn't just bubble wrap and writing like Meg Cabot. No, I strongly feel it is moments like these, where one learns not to judge and hate, where creativity really comes to life.

I feel like dancing so soulfully, singing with a beautiful orchestra and choir, writing a novel, spattering drops of paint all over everywhere. 

And for all of this, I have only love to thank for. Sometimes we forget to love ourselves. We become nagging and negative. Hide our real self away, keeping it safe where noone can see it.

And its those around us that fill in the gaps by loving us so much that we never feel unloved, we just close our eyes and unclench our muscles. Pure love flowing through veins, flowing out of our palms, of our dancing feet, through our lips and hair ends and body and spirit to those who love us. 

And as for the connundrum of self and other. Whether we are really capable of love,

Or if it is just the chemical cocktail swirling high into our consciousness.

 

My answer?

Love has no boundaries and no self, it finds a way to creep into logic and as far as my experience goes, I couldn't put it in better words than Bob Dylan did, You can't be wise and in love at the same time.

I can drown in the deep blue sea with my laughter echoing in the skies holding his hand! (Almost have! Might I add)

I can stay up a million nights just to watch him sleep. And there is nothing I won't do, to protect him. 

And no matter how many bickers and snarky conversations, the scene of swimming Bangalore nightlights over his shoulder while we waltzed, ever so slow will always be printed on the back of my eyelids. 

I am thankful to God and every superpower that there may be out there in the universe for blessing me with all kinds of love. With a sister so loving, that every time I think of her I can suddenly smell rainwater on the dry road and dogs and aaloo tamatar. With a father who has managed to create an entire ecosystem with his gardening, single handedly feeding bees, birds, squirrels and dogs alike. And a mother who has accomplished the largest fan base this world has seen since Harry Potter. Every word out of her mouth could be in a gray covered quote book, every quip forever etched in my memory. All this love lets us be, even if there's cynicism and strife. It lets us cut loose threads of preconception and prejudice off our brilliant blue coat of gentle flowing love.

 

Possibly radioactive.

Shades.


Hue, value and chroma. Cameramen and home decor experts aren't the only ones who have managed to derive benefit from Munsell's system.


No, I think that our insides are coloured. Blue, yellow and browns. We meet people, shake hands, laugh at their jokes, they see through our barriers to our colour, we see theirs. We sing along while letting our windshield down, eat ice cream and french fries, hot chocolate and buttered toast. Work and complain, take care of them when they fall sick, go between various spectrums. Switch off the light when they want to sleep, squinting at the keyboard, content in the other's comfort. Cry when we're overwhelmed, giggle when we're comforted. Tuck ourselves in, letting the hue become constant.


Years may pass you by, at any time if you feel something is, due to lack of any better word, un-matched, you look around confused for a second. But then you remember how cozy you felt and it disappears as so many things do, when you think of them as "Just in my head". I tend to lose my point while writing, but I'll stagger right back to it after a few more paragraphs. Anyhow it goes on, you feel a subsurface wave of disconnectedness every now and then. Life's tensions pile up, and you go through each of them hoping to emerge through somehow, but keeping your chin up everyday takes its toll. As you crumble, the shoulder beneath your head shape shifts. you watch it fly and morph into a finger asking you to quiet down and move on. You find it a comforting and gentle reminder you needed, to get up. So you do, wash your face and hold the finger that was once a shoulder. Is this starting to get all sci fi mutant yet? Well, blame my eccentric imagination. This is why Bloomsbury would never publish me.


As much as you appreciated the prod to get up, to improve- you miss the cuddly shoulder. So you set on and decide to rebuild it. Cups of tea, music, a feel good book, some more music, dancing by yourself for hours, oh how it rejuvenates you! You're convinced you've found the answer, it all seems to work out so well. Life's bad times finally pass, you're looking forward, ready to go home to the those you love.


Eagerly waiting to meet them, you subconsciously travel back in time. The ice creams, giggles, tears and hugs race through your mind, you return to your constant. Your hue.


As you radiate your colour brighter and brighter, you realize the un-matchedness gain a momentum so loud, its almost as if someone is telling you "Are you always that one hue?"

Oh wait, they are.

Waiting for an answer to pop into your head, you panic and peep inside, still seeing the offending hue shining through your skin in horror and you ask for some time to mix it up and see what other hues you can find in you. After all, we're infinite. Aren't we?


And so you try pink and yellow and green and mauve. A shoe size too big may describe how you feel, but you must try. Try all that the palate has to offer.


And then one day, you want your hue back. And the cuddly shoulder too. And so you do everything in your capacity, even if it makes you a gluey addition to someone's life, to get everything back. But of course you can't. And no longer do the cups of tea and music wafting through your ears make a difference. Nothing does. You've lost the capability to be your own cuddly shoulder. And the one that you thought you'll always have to lean on, its got to be on its own for a while or maybe you cant force your head onto someone's shoulder because there's always this tensed bicep thats waiting to get out the moment you fall asleep.


Maybe you can change your hue, maybe you can't. It might feel like its the wrong one. Yet its yours. And as much as you'd like to make it better, sometimes you like your hue, whatever it may signify. So what do you do?
Do you make it better, or do you keep your hue?

It doesn't matter. Because love is all encompassing. And it doesn't care about hues and value and chroma and formulas. So forget the shoulder and get out of the house, grab your love by the arm and dance to John Legend. Forget the end and the beginning. Let whatever wants to come out of you radiate through with no barriers. And the finger shoulder mutant will lead you on, into the light.

Ripping tides of self. This thixotropic mind, with its own Mandark of a master.

In it lies a laboratory of thought, of what could be, what couldn't and whatnot.

How should we go on, when there is so much to fix? How must we carry on, knowing full well there are things behind that aren't taken care of. That will never be taken care of.

Partial control is lethal. All or none is how I want it. Doubt is the universal truth, the home of logic and science.

Sometimes I revere it, but other times, I wish it were either one way or another. Gullible thought, that one. Doesn't mean it doesn't occur every now and then.

So much easier to not think. If only i could. Just for a while. Brain burst. Sometimes I think my brain might burst.
Red goo splayed across the walls and floor and door.
"Hey what happened here?"
"Oh, I think her brain burst"
......


"Oh well. Look it's lunch time."


I, just I.

Alone.


Standing far away. Away. So far away. To breathe, to not call, to not know, to not smile. To forget, to erase.

Standing far away. It may accomplish all my goals for me.

At least it gives me a chance at it. A chance at not getting glued to a mesh and maze, waiting for the mouse trap to close. And then it never does.
I might be sad if it does close on me. Initially. But I'll adapt.
I'd rather they get me than live under the fear that they might, any time at all. Or I would rather escape completely.


It won't let me do either. It'll come, ticking it's fancy watch, life will. Like a one sided affair, constantly following footstep after footstep of mine.
At least until I learn to fly.