The Soft Brown Earth

Alright, my last blog post said I'd be blogging about how ''A cheesecake made my day''. But even before I could revive my memory of cheesecakes and ecstasy, I happened to produce the random-est poem I have ever come up with - in five minutes. And here it is now, chilling on my blog.

Cheers ^_^

Pleasure Centered?

Yes, it’s been almost a year since I last posted on the blog. Reason? Well like I mentioned earlier, blogging is more like a way of relieving myself from mental stress. Having graduated from school and working nine to five doesn’t let me be in that situation any more. It feels numb rather than stressful. And this numbness apparently feels cured only with a bit of ‘entertainment’ on Sundays. The more entertainment one indulges in, the more bearable corporate numbness feels. Or so it was until I came across this paragraph in Stephen Covey’s book a moment ago that I am going to discuss below.
He speaks about factors that determine our life – wisdom, security, guidance and power. Covey explains how these life-support factors and the lives of people often revolve around certain centers. Some of the centers that most people let their wisdom, security, guidance and power depend on include spouses, families, money, work, possession and – it was rather surprising when I came across – pleasure.
The surprise was partly because pleasure centeredness is something that I feel guilty of being a victim of and that too unsuspectingly (which is even worse). So without further ado, I’ll share the paragraph that speaks of Pleasure Centeredness in Stephen Covey’s book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

‘Another common center, closely allied with possessions, is that of fun and pleasure. We live in a world when instant gratification is available and encouraged. Television and movies are major influences in increasing people’s expectations. They graphically portray what other people have and can do in living the life of ease and ‘’fun’’.
But while the glitter of pleasure-centered lifestyles is graphically portrayed, the natural result of such lifestyles – the impact on the inner person, on productivity, on relationships – is seldom accurately seen.
Innocent pleasures in moderation can provide relaxation for the body and mind and can foster family and other relationships. But pleasure, per se, offers no deep, lasting satisfaction or sense of fulfillment. The pleasure-centered person, too soon bored with each succeeding level of ‘’fun’’, constantly cries for more and more. So the next new pleasure has to be bigger and better, more exciting, with a bigger ‘’high’’.
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Malcolm Muggeridge writes ‘’ Twentieth-Century Testimony’’
When I look back on my life nowadays, which I sometimes do, what strikes me most forcibly about it is that what seemed at the time most significant and seductive, seems now most futile and absurd. For instance, success in all of its various guises; being known for and being praised; ostensible pleasures, like acquiring money or seducing women, or traveling, going to and fro in the world and up and down in it like Satan, explaining and experiencing whatever Vanity Fair has to offer.
In retrospect all these exercises in self-gratification seem pure fantasy, what Pascal called, ‘’licking the earth’’.’


Given my current state of affairs, I can’t agree with this excerpt more. May be instant gratification has become necessary for those trapped in money-churning lifestyles to prevent them from becoming robots, to let them remember that they are humans. Perhaps it is an extreme that has evolved to cure another. But is the cure permanent? I wonder if I will have thoughts at the end of my life similar to those of Malcolm Muggeridge.

Their Conspiracy Theories

I move around in very different parts of the society, two of which are relevant here; one in which adults and youngsters alike sit glued in front of the television, hypnotically depressed by the pessimism of conspiracy theorists who tell them how certain ‘secret groups’ consisting of the most influential individuals in the world control their lives directly or indirectly, and the other in which both adults and youngsters alike deny the very existence of these ‘secret groups’ and ridicule the extent to which the former group blames external factors for all that is going wrong in their lives.

Neither am I calling the Rothchilds, the Zionists or the Jews nor the Taliban, Al-Qaeda or any other particular group conspirers. I am only talking about the believers and the deniers here.

The believers think that their enemy has such supreme power that none is more powerful, influential and dominant than it is and that that they themselves can not do anything to save themselves from the fate their enemy has designed from them. They think that watching TV programmes about conspiracy theories and attributing their failures to different external factors is all that can be done.

On the other hand, the deniers not only disbelieve that their failures to some extent are a function of their enemies’ plans but also deny the very existences of such foes. They think that their being flawed as individual citizens and as a nation on the whole is nothing but a result of merely their own flaws.

Who are you?

The Story of Hee and Shee

This is the story of Hee and Shee or Shee and Hee (scared of feminists I am at times :P).

Well, when Hee was a kid he liked toy guns and dinky cars and dad used to bring one whole pack of dinkies so that he didn’t have to buy them over and over again after Hee disintegrated –one dinky each day –the parts to see what was inside. Also, Hee collected trash dad threw away in the garbage can to get ‘spare parts’ out of them and ‘invent’ things. Sadly even though the interior of all the dinkies was the same Hee would still disintegrate them and no matter how much ‘useful trash’ he discovered, he wanted more; it would never be enough for his fantasies.

And when Shee was a kid, she loved kitchen sets, empty cosmetic kits, and dolls and mom used to bring one doll on each of her birthdays and on special occasions. She kept them in a special shelf and collected all the cloth left over after mom’s sewing to make dresses for her dolls. She also loved collecting things labelled trash by mom to make temporary homes for her dolls for her play sessions. Sadly, no matter how many dolls, left over cloth and trash would be there in her shelf, she’d still collect more and more; it would never be enough for her fantasies.

When Hee grew up he got popular with his buddies and they loved going out at night playing night matches, falling asleep somewhere in their cars for a few hours and then getting up early to watch the sun rise by the seaside enjoying the blissfully silent company of each other. Hee also liked taking short trips to his virtual fantasy land – stuff like GTA and CounterStrike seemed so cool with those shiny cars and shiny guns and yeah off course shiny plastic girls too.

And when Shee grew up she got popular with her ‘fairy-club’-friends and they loved sleeping over at each others places. Shee and her friends would stay up late cosily cuddled in their blankets and go on about things such as how to make the tastiest pizza with the least carbs. Shee also liked reading the Twilight Saga and watching Pride and Prejudice (1995) over and over again hoping to miraculously run into a Darcy or Edward in real life.

Then there came a time when two fat aunties who met each other at a painting exhibition decided to get their kids married to each other. Yeah, you guessed it right they were Shee’s and Hee’s moms.

So Shee and Hee were made to see and meet each other. And apparently they found themselves in luuurve with each other after the very first. They thought they had found exactly what they had been searching for.

After a couple of years, they were like strangers. They had been wronged –by their own selves. They had married the wrong person –some one not at all according to their ‘dreams’.

Actually Hee was nothing like the heroes that Shee had dreamed of; he couldn’t be caring, loving, romantic or even tidy enough (the benchmark being Edward!). In fact, he wasn’t even an average husband, let alone a lover. (PS. Husbands are exponential times boring versions of lovers; so she thought)

On the other hand Hee found out marriage something wasn’t he wanted to commit himself in the first place, let alone the fact that his wife was no where near the ‘hot-babes’ he saw while playing his adrenaline-rush-inducing games such as Tomb Raider and Duke Nukem:Planet of the babes.

They lived not really happily ever after just as many husbands and wives had done in the past fantasizing about two worlds which were poles apart from each other. In fact they never believed that an ever after was even something they were looking forward too.