FORTY SIX

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death.  Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more.  It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

–Act 5, Scene 5, Lines 19-28: Macbeth to himself

 

So, like all of humanity in the time of despair Macbeth too frets about life, giving into a classic pessimistic view of life. He thinks aloud to himself, how the days stretched out. The days, each one the same as the one before, and they would continue to stretch out one in front of the other, tediously, until the end of history, until the end of time. To him thus, it seems that every day we have lived has been like a fool’s life finally ending. Life is like that, in fact to Macbeth completely wrapped up in his desolation, each day is more like a candle, lighted,  ultimately showing him the way to his death- bed. Why does he bother with this burdensome life, he wonders, whether it would be better to blow out the flickering candle before the end. Macbeth in his weakest moment throws upon life some more pessimistic images. One he sees it as no more than a walking shadow, two, he sees it as a poor actor. An actor who goes through all the emotions in one hour on the stage and then bows out. It seems truly life is like a three act tragedy – but unfortunately written to be told by idiot, full of noise and passion, and finally, meaningless.

The excruciating tone of pessimism of this quote from Macbeth has always attracted me for the wrong reasons of course. For reasons unknown to me, I have always felt this is by far the most “on the edge” moment in Macbeth’s life. This is the precipice he does not survive. Recently, I heard the unfortunate news about the demise of a friend – truth be told a Classmate – I cannot pretend to be a ‘friend’. The act of taking one’s own life, the reaching to the edge of the precipice and the nothingness thereafter brought back some bitter regrets.

Are we so alone in life that we can only say things to ourselves? Are we so away from a helping hand, a sympathetic shoulder? Are we in such despair and desolation that we are willing to let go of life?

And what does it say about us, who surround these individuals? Aren’t we the most lousy bunch of dumb witnesses?

 

 

THE END.

FORTY FIVE

Doctor Who is back on the TV screen and this time the 12th Doctor is played by Peter Capaldi, he is taking up the helms from Matt Smith. I started watching the series from its revival in 2005. Confused? Oh well, I should probably talk a little about the advent of Doctor Who – one of the top three Brtitish Television program that has gained popularity across the countries. This is a science fiction drama which started in 1963 and continues till date – there was a break from 1989 to 2005. Yes, that’s how long the lore of Doctor Who survived in the British Popular culture.

So who is this Doctor Who? In a gist he is a time travelling humanoid alien – his race is called the Time Lords- who travels in his TARDIS – a sentient ship which can travel through time and space- it looks like a Police Box of the British bygone era of the 60’s. So, the Doctor along with his various human companions moves across the fabric of time and space fighting foes of a variety of origins and saving civilizations, helping people and correcting the wrongs in the world.

Since the 2005 revival series there have been three regenerations of the Doctor. Umm what is a regeneration you ask? Well, a regeneration is something the Time Lords do, it is a biological phenomenon, in which an old or mortally wounded Time Lord can undergoes a transformation into a new physical form and with a somewhat different personality. As per the rules of Time Lord regeneration, a Time Lord can only re generate 11 times. The whole regeneration gambit was set up in order to introduce new actors as the main character – Doctor Who in the franchise. 

And now we come to Peter Capaldi, who became the Doctor after the regeneration fo the 11th Doctor played by Matt Smith. Here having exhausted all his regenerations there was a new trick introduced by the shows writers to give Doctor Who another new set of regenerative power. So, came Peter Capaldi and boy do I dislike him.

To me out of the 3 actors who played Doctor Who from 2005 to 2013 [ no there were not ‘that many episodes’, there were many breaks], I find David Tenant to be the best of the lot. He took over from Christopher Eccleston who just didn’t work and survived only one season, then it was David Tenant all the way from 2005 to 2010 and i think he was a favorite of many fans of the series.

Like Peter Capaldi, David is a Scottish actor but he was younger when he became Doctor Who. All said and done he has been even voted the Best Doctor in 2006 by the fans of Doctor Who and some how this Peter Capaldi just doesn’t cut it. I was willing to tolerate Matt Smith’s over the top hamming as Doctor Who but a cold and very aloof Doctor Who is not my cup of tea, and that is what Mr. Capaldi is, very alien, very cold, very professional, lacking all the raw sensuality of David Tenant and his charismatic smile along with his grandeloquence. I am disappointed by the choice of the actor, it remains to be seen if I like the series at all. Mind you the new companion with all the crazy connections throughout Doctor Who’s timeline, Ms. Clara Oswald played by Jenna Coleman is a disappointing companion after the likes of Martha Jones, Donna Noble, even Rose and Amy Pond were more tolerable than Coleman. Her character is so artificial and lacks any depth plus has absolutely no emotional connection with the Doctor except for the forced bit made mandatory by the writers.

I cannot imagine watching this series with a disappointing Doctor as well as a boring companion!

 

THE END.

 

A new idea just cropped up in my head, I am a book worm and I have always loved reading books, having met with a dead end in terms of ‘writing ideas’ off late , I have hit upon the Book idea. Well, I don’t think I am a full fledged critic who can review a book but what I can do is write a little about what the book made me feel and that perhaps can add some more posts to this dying blog.

So here is yet another series – which I will try to make regular – on books that I have read. There is no separate Category for this, just plain old, Books  and  Review.

Hope the readers will join me in this.

 

FORTY FOUR

The problems with regular blogging is time and place. When an idea strikes it floods the mind, however, it may be just in the wee early hours of morning or just when one is about to fall asleep at night and these are not suitable times to get up and start writing about it. One can try to keep a night of the topic in a diary, which I tried doing,as a good collection of future blog post ideas but by the time I got around to them something more exciting had taken its place or I had completely forgotten about what to write.

I am yet to use the daily prompts available on the internet sites, but they never seem to have anything interesting about which i would like to write.

The other problem of writing down one’s thoughts like I am doing now is the cursed typing it all back, that chills my bones every time. To write in a journal and duplicate that for an online blog seems a tedious task. So there are a few topics lie scattered on pages of diary.

I have directly tried writing through the mobile application for blogging. Initially it seemed like a wonderful invention allowing me to blog from anywhere but soon its limitations became obvious. It may be good for a short post but there are too many limits on formatting and publishing features that goes hand in hand with it.At the most one can save a draft of the idea that has sprung to mind to be edited later and published from a laptop or PC, with a better formatting.

Of course at the very end of of writing all the above, I realize it is me who is trying to find the excuses for not writing daily but yes, there is always hope. May be next month I will take up one of the writing challenges, it just might boost my productivity on the blog.

Update: Having said that in the month of July, I did absolutely nothing in this month of August, and hence made zero contribution to the blog. And at the pace which I am going I am not sure I will make much contribution this month. But there is always hope for September.

There you go.

THE END.

FORTY THREE

In “Art of Touchiness” I wish to state that this is my way of venting the gall I feel against these so called friends I have gathered and regarding these posts I have no wish to explain or defend myself.The fact is that I did nothing to deserve the shit they shoveled on me and I am only writing about it. They can be thankful that I haven’t mentioned their sorry ass names on this post. But then that would defy the logic of the post.

My second touchy friend is a lady who has singularly bad taste in deciding which photos are appropriate for public viewing. She pretends to be oblivious to the fact that most people commenting on her photos are being sarcastic. And I have nothing against her silly album names like ‘Mee’ or even pictures she has downloaded off the Hotel website or for that matter copyrighted pictures [with the copyright visible] posted on her album to showcase her supposedly brilliant celebrity life spent in bars, at techno concerts, first class flight cabins and apartments in middle eastern countries.

But when there is a post cruelly [according to her] enumerates these sad trends on social media, she huffs and puffs [ about a month later] because her busy schedule doesn’t allow her time to troll the internet and she posts how her ‘middle class’ friend is only jealous of her life and achievements and thus finding faults with her pictures.

Oh well, Ms. Popular – at bars, let your middle class friend not shame you by divulging your true colors and your careless life that you live out of a one rented room, sleeping on a mattress on the floor, living out of suitcases and posting instagram selfies from your daily commute in an auto. Doesn’t get more middle class than this, does it?