To Be or Not To Be

A little kingdom I possess,
Where thoughts and feelings dwell;
And very hard the task I find
Of governing it well.
~ Louisa May Alcott

...that more or less describes my situation!

~A Wise Man Said~

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
~ Aristotle
Wednesday, May 27, 2020
 
I did promise to say something more on the topic of the post before the previous one… but something happened to take my mind in a different direction. What I had to say is best said after sharing the following excerpt; it happens that I have shared this excerpt before on this blog but I focused on a very different aspect then…so it seems quite apt to share it again.

"I was cleaning a room and, meandering about, approached the divan and couldn't remember whether or not I had dusted it. Since these movements are habitual and unconscious, I could not remember and felt that it was impossible to remember - so that if I had dusted it and forgot - that is, had acted unconsciously, then it was the same as if I had not. If some conscious person had been watching, then the fact could be established. If, however, no one was looking, or looking on unconsciously, if the whole complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been.”

~ Leo Tolstoy's Diary, 1897, excerpt from Victor Shklovsky’s ‘Art as Technique'

It seems to me that if moments that are lived unconsciously are as if they had never been, then moments that have never been but are made conscious in the mind would be as if they actually were. These would be our contemplative worlds or worlds of imagination buoyed up on literature or philosophy or any of the arts… they give us the sensation of intense living even when our physical lives may be routine or fairly unconscious. Such lives I would say are not as if they had never been… because they are very much lived consciously though on a different plane. What defines living then does not relate to material reality but to consciousness… as Tolstoy himself hints.

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 5:00 am 0 comments
Thursday, May 21, 2020
 

I have been here before
This exact moment
This moment of asking
Not begging or pleading
But feeling
Like reaching out
Come to my aid
Be there for me
I need you
In this dark hour
Just a nudge
On my back
Or a reassuring
Pat 

It will be okay
We will get through this
Together
You will say
Count on me
I have seen you
Toil and worry
Put your blood and sweat
All you've got
In your labours
I will stand by you
See you through
Take no heed
Of the mountain ahead
You have it in you 

But these words never come
Nothing even close
I have been here
Disillusioned
Disappointed
Familiar territory
Not even empty words
Or superficial gestures
Instead
Just a laugh
Or snigger 

You know what
You are on your own
How presumptuous
You are
To expect more
Have you not learnt
Anything
From those moments
Gone before
Gather yourself
Stand up
Don't ask. Don't beg
Don't make a case
It's all on you 

I have been here, yes
I will get through
All on my own
Because
I always do...

~Me

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 1:37 am 0 comments
Tuesday, May 19, 2020
 
Does it happen to you that you forget to do a routine activity and then some time later, suddenly, out of nowhere, the fact that you haven’t done it enters into your consciousness… and then when you go and check… yes, indeed, you have actually not done it! I am referring to something as routine as for instance: I tend to soak a few almonds in water before finally retiring to bed to have them first thing in the morning (why I do it is a separate matter…). This is such an everyday activity now that it comes quite naturally to me to do it but there are rare days when I might be distracted and I might not do it. When I start to fall asleep or in other words my mind starts going a bit blank, almost out of nowhere, I get the intuition that I did not soak the almonds! I am saying “intuition” rather than that I remember because I feel to remember I need to have consciously thought of it but this is just a vague sense that jumps to the surface of my consciousness as if some helpful person is telling me that, you know, you forgot to do this. I have another instance: In the morning, soon as I wake up, I tend to switch on the gas to put the water to a boil and frying pan to warm while I go brush my teeth. There are also other rituals that I perform during this process, so sometimes, though very rarely, I miss switching on the gas. Then when I am brushing my teeth something in my mind will snap into awareness of the fact that I did not switch on the gas. Again, I am baffled by this. It is such a small routine step that I don’t think I can consciously “remember” that I didn’t switch the gas on and if I had to remember consciously I’d have to “think about it” I guess. I am not sure where this sudden awareness of the fact that I didn’t do this routine action comes from! And every time I get this awareness, it turns out to be right, so it is not a false memory or a trick played by my mind either. One time I actually got myself out of bed because I had an awareness that I had put the almonds into the little glass vessel but forgot to pour water in it to soak… and when I checked (because I had to…), it was true.

What seems obvious is that if you do something every day and it becomes a well-orchestrated routine, you just do it so mechanically that you’re not conscious of having done it. But what boggles me really is that that being so, how does the fact of not having done it become conscious in the mind? It has something to do with the transfer of message between the subconscious and conscious, I would think; the activity is so routine that it doesn’t really require one to be conscious of it so if one misses it one assumes it is the subconscious that is in some way aware of something amiss but the conscious mind isn’t… which is why when you suddenly become aware or conscious of the fact of not having done it you really do not understand where this intuition or awareness is coming from because you are not conscious of “not having done the activity” nor do you have any conscious recollection of it till this awareness sort of pops up out of nowhere. And then when you are forced to think of it you feel that there is something to it...

I have something more to say on this matter but I think I will keep it for my next post…

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 7:17 pm 0 comments
Saturday, May 16, 2020
 
Suck it up, buttercup!

That’s what I said to myself today. After a few terribly busy weeks I finally decided to take a break today but as usually happens with me… my empty mind became the devil’s workshop. I started thinking about how my prospects looked pretty bleak with the virus making all this mayhem, then I thought about how everything I had planned for this year was only going to get harder and harder to achieve, then I worried about how I was going to get through the challenges without any support…then I started thinking about why God had to wreak all this havoc now of all times… why is it that just when I feel like I am about to find my footing the ground beneath my feet is shaken…Why, God?!

Well, you get the drift of my thoughts… and before it got wilder, I had to pull myself up short and say to myself… don’t wallow, don’t let anxiety overwhelm you, don’t beat yourself up, don’t think that the world is coming to an end, don’t give up on your dreams, on yourself… accept it as a challenge, accept it as one more steep bend on the mountain, accept it as one more test from God… It is funny that when I find myself in the middle of this sort of thought whirlpool I take the existence of God as a given… God is also a synonym for destiny, for fate…. a belief in destiny or fate is not that different from a belief or faith in God because both suggest that we are not random things… both are beyond human comprehension… both equally belong to the realm of ideas and idealistic thinking…

Now that we are on the subject, I have to admit, if it hasn’t been apparent to my sharp readers, that I am not a thoroughgoing rationalistic person… by that I mean I am not one who thinks that nothing but what I can see, hear, smell etc. exists… I do believe in the possibilities beyond that which my human senses can decipher…and I find myself contemplating about them…  accessing my intuition to hear what it might have to say… but I don’t let these tendencies run away with me in a practical sense…the best analogy I can think of is that even if I allow my head to waft among the clouds I try to keep my feet firmly planted on the ground ;)… not because I wouldn’t love to go live among the clouds but because the needs of practical life in the current world force you to come back to earth…

Looks like I digressed quite a bit from my original topic! …I didn’t have anything much to say in any case except capture this vague uncomfortable feeling I have been having since I went into this downward negative spiral in the morning… I guess the idea of destiny/fate comes up because it gives me some sort of reassurance which I feel like I need right now… when I look back on my life, even though at various points events or things didn’t make sense, in retrospect they do...they come together in a meaningful way even if not in a way I had anticipated or a way I would have expressly wanted…what I like about that though is that if the past or the events in the past have come to make sense in the overall scheme of my life, then the present or the events in the present which seem rather scattered or stupid or unintelligible or unfair right now…might also make sense when I look back on them some day? What sense they would make I don’t know but what I do know deep down is that for it to make sense it is important that I do not lay down my guns or quit… if it has to be a story that presents some meaning to me in the future then at least that much is a given… whether I win or not I must fight on… against the odds… so guess it’s quite correct if I say to myself…suck it up, buttercup… there’s work to be done! ;)

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 2:32 am 0 comments
Sunday, May 10, 2020
 
For an introverted person, one would think this lockdown should be water down a duck’s back for me. It is in some ways. I am a homebody…I love being at home… I work well in my home spaces…I do not get bored easily…I have umpteen ways to entertain myself…Just sitting and staring out of the window is something I enjoy…I love my own company in general…

But still, I long for this lockdown to end. What is it that I am missing? I used to enjoy my sporadic jaunts outside the home …I enjoyed my weekend shopping, be it getting the grocery or pottering around the city centre or browsing through charity shops or listening to the street music or treating myself to new outfits or takeaway food… I also loved going to the university a few times a week to catch up with some friends there, have conversations, maybe attend a seminar on some interesting topic…I also loved the randomness of things, chance events or happenings…and I loved the in-personness of meetings with my close collaborators, the connecting spark of ideas would lit my brain for weeks to come…

I guess what I miss really is the freedom… to stay at home, to go out, to be by myself, to meet people if I want to meet them… I guess what I miss also is the taken-for-grantedness of life… my own and my loved ones’ …I did not have to worry that any misstep could take us to death’s door… I guess what I miss is the certainties and routines… this summer does not feel like any of the three summers I have had here… and the coming winter looms large… as if it will not be like any I had before… no looking forward to or complaining about the same things… the onset of a new academic year, with new crop of students, familiar rituals, but nothing might be the same… the seasons are here but the cosy familiarity of them is gone… my summer clothes still lie in the suitcase…

I long for it to be not-lockdown soon to be honest…to go back to the familiar world whose joys seem alien now… I long for home to feel like home…

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 1:02 am 0 comments
Wednesday, May 06, 2020
 
For a rational person, I am curiously superstitious at times. I find it funny when I think about it but I can’t help myself. For example, I am superstitious about the space I work in. I start believing that my creativity or productivity must have something to do with the space rather than myself. It could be positive energy or vibe or inspiration or whatever one calls it. I am extremely resistant to changing my “lucky” space for this reason because I am afraid that I won’t be able to replicate the same quality of work elsewhere. It’s a bit like losing a muse that you think sits in that space and fills your brain with ideas ;)

The fact is that my current “space” has been very bad for my back. I sit in a very lazy reclining position on the couch or the sofa rather than on a chair/table. I keep my laptop on my lap and work on it in this lazy position. This was fine when I also juggled this space with other spaces in the pre-COVID world such as my workspace at the university but now that I am pretty much confined at home, sitting in this one space seems to be badly affecting my back.
I do have a proper study area in my room but I have never used it. I always preferred to sit on the sofa in the kitchen-cum-lounge which is a more expansive sort of area than my room and also has a larger view from the French window. My room feels a little stuffy and cramped compared to this. But more than anything else, what bothers me is the superstition that I won’t be able to produce the kind of work I have been producing in the past few months in a different space. It does seem silly to credit the work to the space especially when it’s anything but comfortable but it’s an idea that my brain can’t seem to let go of in spite of myself…
Well, good sense had to rule in the end. If I lose my back I guess I won’t be able to do any work or focus on any work anyway… so between potential bad work and no work I had to go with bad work. The funny thing is that I am finding the work area in my room pretty comfortable… in fact, I also seem to be pretty productive (will take some time to see about creativity). In my sofa position I was always trying to shift the laptop on my lap because it gave me leg cramps or shift my back position because I would keep slumping into the sofa… here I tend to focus more on the work rather than getting distracted by the discomfort, I feel.
Looks like my superstition was just that… a superstition… though I doubt I’m going to be able to break out of this sort of thinking anytime soon :)

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 5:41 am 0 comments
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