Issue 11: Towards the inward
On mystical frenzy and turning 27 years old
I sit under the shrill blue light of an office facing the flyover, with 4 streams of vehicles honking in all direction, and I ache. I ache to be somewhere else. I have often found myself in places where I do not belong. The glaring reality hits in between silences, chatters, meetings, offices, and sometimes lonely rooms. You exit while you remain there. I am often absent from places I am present at.
I am going to attempt to theorise something here in the simplest language possible. If I succeed, I will validate myself as a writer, if not, then I am a poet. This letter is about experiencing a transcendental realm/state of frenzy when you create or consume art that uplifts you from your reality. This is alien to all other realms you inhabit- the familial, public, intimate, and others. I have come to believe that not everyone is equally gifted to transcend wilfully or monitor this experience. Musicians, poets, lunatics, and devotees are assumed to develop faculties that allow for such a level of dissociation. Then there are some others who mask it cunningly as they walk around. They learn various MIS, speak eloquent jargons, and conform. They/us are the hypocrites, true to nothing. Difficult to love, more difficult to be understood, crave connection, disdainfully reject connection, are performative, almost cruel, chaotic, often devastated, and mostly torn because of underutilisation of a gifted faculty—having the power to experience divinity in undivine and divine things. It is frenzy.
Sometimes, it is possible, however faintly, for two frenzies to intersect. Now, I am stepping into dangerous territory at the risk of sounding delusional. Intersection of frenzies may or may not be slave to time or space. To limit this to romance and modern dating will be abomination. When one experiences this power—it is here they meet God, it is here they crumble, or come alive once again, and it is here the meaning and sense of life dissolves or absorbs. I would go ahead of myself and even declare that cryptic communication is possible in this state. You develop a capacity to receive and offer correspondence. Not all of these divine encounters are meant to result in lasting companionship.
Most very powerful things are not sustainable.
The Double Life of Veronique (1991) is a film that is, to my knowledge, the closest nuanced representation of the intersection of frenzy—a third realm, one that leaves you alienated and haunts you. I have not watched a film like this, and the only Kieslowski I have watched. This film altered something in my head and I have been thinking about it sparingly for years.
Yesterday I turned 27 years old.
This is a slow drift away from chaos and calming retreat towards the inward. Less crowded, solitary, ripe. The raw melts and spreads. Yet, there is lingering tanginess of youth, with a warning that you aren’t ripe enough to not fall apart.
I have been writing to you, erratically but timely, for a year now. Throughout these issues, the ritual of curating a letter has been a stable source of joy that allowed me freedoms amid unfreedoms. I remember your kind words, DMs, texts and mail responses for longer than you intended.
I have some broken wisdom to share that I have reflected on
Being easy, at ease, choosing ease. Anything/anyone may come, stop, leave. All those years have been spent well building boundaries.
To nourish, maintain, and raise intuition, and always have the humility to forgive it.
Stretch when you feel like shit.
Religiously continue with tretinoin.
Choose rest/ allow rest/ enable rest. Rest is transformational.
You can identify violence, lovelessness, and abuse. You will not allow it, but if you do, forgive yourself again.
Gauge your capacity for social gatherings and do not overestimate yourself.
There is grace in learning how to take defeat.
Do not take yourself seriously, I live by it, you should too.
Abundance- create it.
Be a great hire but a lukewarm employee.
A Sunday-everything-shower should be adhered to like a prescription.
It is all right to outgrow people and it is all right if people outgrow you.
Be committed to the cause not the system.
Keep low-maintenance plants with many many green leaves always in sight.
Seek— just seek. Whatever you want.
I retire now.
See you again next month.