i know this post arrives like a cough from an otherwise lifeless biochemical organic mass,i mean ,a body, that puts everyone who happen to notice it by chance or looking at it with pity into a sudden confusion whether the comotose state of it is a sure precursor to the heaven( or hell..depends upon the observer's moral framework of judgement) or may be its not so sure a sign.
well.i cant say anything about it because as i said, its a cough and i dont know its implications either. but wat i can do say is that, a cough, is involuntary and spotaneous.
Well, why i want to write this, i have no idea.
what i expect out of it, " (ditto)
but one reason is that wat i am gonna say here is related to words. so its just this inherent curiosity to see how this comes out.
I used to read comics till i was 10 or 12 i guess. ofcourse i still read comics. its just that till that turning point , i read ONLY comics.
i know, i am little slow. wasnt an avid reader when i was innocent.
Only wen the childish innocence abandoned me, i started reading books.
ofcourse, this is in retrospect. so pardon the overlaying of judgemental opinions about age, life, etc etc.
so one of the doubts ive got now is whether this metamorphosis from a child to an adult, from innocence to intelligence, is abetted by reading books.
(please note that the word intelligence was used with not fully a glorifying intent. and ya..note "abet" too)
now now. dont hit me yet, if u are a book lover. coz i love books too.that was not my argument to refrain u from hitting me. it was just the beginning of my reasoning. u can hit me at the end.
my first argument. Reading books, ive realised , enables one to exactly , accurately, describe THE emotions. And by describing i didnt mean describing to others. but describing to self. i mean, wudnt it be just nice not to understand ourselves sumtimes? i mean, ofcourse we dont understand ourselves ..but am speaking abt the other aspect of the cognitive process.
one reason is that being able to put words gives forms to unformed things. which i sumtimes think are best left unformed. but ofcourse, this can be attributed to many things. but i just thought il use my evil tendencies to put the whole blame on books.
And this is true.After the myriad of characters and emotions and everything we hav read about, its inevitable that we draw parallels and if possible perpendiculars and circles and hyperbolas too.
(and by books i refer to the words of the people who have written them)
my second argument:And hey, it IS really pissing off to read sumthing that reflects what I am thinking. am sure u would agree.And i would kindly request you to refrain from refuting me in case u dont agree.(because its no use really..i mean, am typinn this now, and the best u can do is write a comment, and i dont think itl be read coz this post being read itself is sumthing. and ofcourse. i can delete any comment. :) kidding..just kidding ) i mean, reading sumthing that reflects wat i am thinking is like adding salt to the wound or pepper to a burn or heat to a cut..ok ok...i was just emphasising the point..
i mean..il giv u an instance...say i like a serial or say a book series very much..say..harry potter...so am sad that it has ended...and so in that depressed suicidal mood, i think of raising my spirits by reading a poem...fair enuf? so i take this book of poems and think ..hmm...robert frost...a romantic poet...wat can be better than a poem abt nature and its beauty?..so i flip to robert frost..and i then i get this...
"Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay"
Oh come on.The depth and breadth and everyother dimension is all well appreciated. but seriously...what purpose did it serve me? it did wat i described above as adding pepper to a burn. and more than that. it gives form to the theme that underlied the sadness. i didnt want that did i? all i wanted that silly poem book was to give me sumthing to feel happy about.
my third argument: All works that depict sadness, that analyse and dissect and experiment with the reasons of miseries, are in my opinion, doesnt serve any useful purpose from the cosmic point of view ( i could have said " ..are in my opinion, evil works of satan"..but then, am not that aggresive a person and anyway i like euphemism). seriosly, what do we get out of such works? and the irony is, such works receive phenomenal success. I know, even i am tempted by works that claim deep characterisations etc etc (i, too have read ayn rand .hee hee). but wat is the point? shouldnt everything be just blindly narrowed upon happiness? i know that the human mind doesnt permit it. Thats the brilliance of it. We, as humans, want to perceive and face "reality". i mean, first of all, reality is an illusion ( as neo says "there is no spoon" ) and its surprising why we humans consider sadness to be directly related to reality. this is true, think about it. How many times have we heard the sentence either told to us or sumone "try and face the reality" when something has gone wrong or about to go wrong. this is probably , in my opinion, one of the reasons why sad, remorse,philosophical, deep ( see, i used the words philosophical and deep with sad and remorse..just in case u didint get my point til now) works become a succes is that, we humans feel that by reading them we are readying ourselves, making ourselves more mature, etc etc. and its also probably in my opinion, because of our inherent likeness to control. we want to control our future. we anyway like the concept of control (am not making this up...this is a well recorded psychological concept..infact one conclusion is that humans relate happiness to control..and since this is not a scientific journal..am not giving the bibliography..).
but the whoel point is, we can never truly control anything. we can never know whats reality. and so on and so forth. so the only things these "deep" books serve is to give us a goggles through which we assume to see "the truth" of things, which means, it only helps us to see in a more cynical and skeptical and futile way.oh ya. infact, we think that we ought to think like that. Afteral we have read "deep" books aint we?
my fourth argument: ya. there are a lot of stories that exude happiness. but there is a snag in this too. this gives us a goggles that makes everything rosy and beautiful and pretty and innocent. False hopes. Its worse than the above phenomenon aint it?
(goggles :(noun)Tight-fitting spectacles worn to protect the eyes. See. Its tightfitting. No scope for seeing from the sides or removing. This is a popular
psychological observation too.Once we have an experience, we are thereafter unable to see the world as we did before)
seriously. imagine reading..hmm..say a james herriot...he speaks about a loving and caring wife, smart children, brilliant and eccentric colleagues, a job involving cuddling dogs and cats...siiiiigghhhhhhh....i mean....u get the point right? what if i get sadists and psychopaths for colleagues? ( sorry..comparison refrained to the colleagues and work part only...) having read abt james herriot in this scenario is actually not exactly a fortunate things isnt it?
so wats my point?
READ COMICS. :)
i mean....i think, at this point, that reading comics and fantasy is the only thing worth reading.Because these create an alternate world where i can find only amusement and happiness. There is no scope of comparing or extrapolating it to the so called "reality".
What else do i need from a work of an author? pleasure.
no. pleasure with no side effects.
and the funny part, now after so much introspection and analysis, i have concluded that i like reading only comics and fantasy..oh..i missed the funny part..the funny part is, this is exactly wat i was doing wen i was 10 years old.
il tel u an example why i am right.
"when life gives u a lemon. Make a lemonade"
this is the typical, deep, philosophical, spiritual, "reality-promoting" sentence.
and calvin says " If life gives u a lemon,Fling it right back at it"
is it silly? is it impossible? Is it escapism? is it cowardice? is it unphilosophical? is it "unreal" ?
well...i wont argue with u. my simple point is,
i feel immensely,tremendously, truly happay and confident hearing what calvin said.
The first sentence? naahh..its pathetic.atleast relatively.
do u defer?
if shakespeare says "all the world is a stage".....
I,Sankar Deivanayagam, DEMAND AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE.
well.i cant say anything about it because as i said, its a cough and i dont know its implications either. but wat i can do say is that, a cough, is involuntary and spotaneous.
Well, why i want to write this, i have no idea.
what i expect out of it, " (ditto)
but one reason is that wat i am gonna say here is related to words. so its just this inherent curiosity to see how this comes out.
I used to read comics till i was 10 or 12 i guess. ofcourse i still read comics. its just that till that turning point , i read ONLY comics.
i know, i am little slow. wasnt an avid reader when i was innocent.
Only wen the childish innocence abandoned me, i started reading books.
ofcourse, this is in retrospect. so pardon the overlaying of judgemental opinions about age, life, etc etc.
so one of the doubts ive got now is whether this metamorphosis from a child to an adult, from innocence to intelligence, is abetted by reading books.
(please note that the word intelligence was used with not fully a glorifying intent. and ya..note "abet" too)
now now. dont hit me yet, if u are a book lover. coz i love books too.that was not my argument to refrain u from hitting me. it was just the beginning of my reasoning. u can hit me at the end.
my first argument. Reading books, ive realised , enables one to exactly , accurately, describe THE emotions. And by describing i didnt mean describing to others. but describing to self. i mean, wudnt it be just nice not to understand ourselves sumtimes? i mean, ofcourse we dont understand ourselves ..but am speaking abt the other aspect of the cognitive process.
one reason is that being able to put words gives forms to unformed things. which i sumtimes think are best left unformed. but ofcourse, this can be attributed to many things. but i just thought il use my evil tendencies to put the whole blame on books.
And this is true.After the myriad of characters and emotions and everything we hav read about, its inevitable that we draw parallels and if possible perpendiculars and circles and hyperbolas too.
(and by books i refer to the words of the people who have written them)
my second argument:And hey, it IS really pissing off to read sumthing that reflects what I am thinking. am sure u would agree.And i would kindly request you to refrain from refuting me in case u dont agree.(because its no use really..i mean, am typinn this now, and the best u can do is write a comment, and i dont think itl be read coz this post being read itself is sumthing. and ofcourse. i can delete any comment. :) kidding..just kidding ) i mean, reading sumthing that reflects wat i am thinking is like adding salt to the wound or pepper to a burn or heat to a cut..ok ok...i was just emphasising the point..
i mean..il giv u an instance...say i like a serial or say a book series very much..say..harry potter...so am sad that it has ended...and so in that depressed suicidal mood, i think of raising my spirits by reading a poem...fair enuf? so i take this book of poems and think ..hmm...robert frost...a romantic poet...wat can be better than a poem abt nature and its beauty?..so i flip to robert frost..and i then i get this...
"Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay"
Oh come on.The depth and breadth and everyother dimension is all well appreciated. but seriously...what purpose did it serve me? it did wat i described above as adding pepper to a burn. and more than that. it gives form to the theme that underlied the sadness. i didnt want that did i? all i wanted that silly poem book was to give me sumthing to feel happy about.
my third argument: All works that depict sadness, that analyse and dissect and experiment with the reasons of miseries, are in my opinion, doesnt serve any useful purpose from the cosmic point of view ( i could have said " ..are in my opinion, evil works of satan"..but then, am not that aggresive a person and anyway i like euphemism). seriosly, what do we get out of such works? and the irony is, such works receive phenomenal success. I know, even i am tempted by works that claim deep characterisations etc etc (i, too have read ayn rand .hee hee). but wat is the point? shouldnt everything be just blindly narrowed upon happiness? i know that the human mind doesnt permit it. Thats the brilliance of it. We, as humans, want to perceive and face "reality". i mean, first of all, reality is an illusion ( as neo says "there is no spoon" ) and its surprising why we humans consider sadness to be directly related to reality. this is true, think about it. How many times have we heard the sentence either told to us or sumone "try and face the reality" when something has gone wrong or about to go wrong. this is probably , in my opinion, one of the reasons why sad, remorse,philosophical, deep ( see, i used the words philosophical and deep with sad and remorse..just in case u didint get my point til now) works become a succes is that, we humans feel that by reading them we are readying ourselves, making ourselves more mature, etc etc. and its also probably in my opinion, because of our inherent likeness to control. we want to control our future. we anyway like the concept of control (am not making this up...this is a well recorded psychological concept..infact one conclusion is that humans relate happiness to control..and since this is not a scientific journal..am not giving the bibliography..).
but the whoel point is, we can never truly control anything. we can never know whats reality. and so on and so forth. so the only things these "deep" books serve is to give us a goggles through which we assume to see "the truth" of things, which means, it only helps us to see in a more cynical and skeptical and futile way.oh ya. infact, we think that we ought to think like that. Afteral we have read "deep" books aint we?
my fourth argument: ya. there are a lot of stories that exude happiness. but there is a snag in this too. this gives us a goggles that makes everything rosy and beautiful and pretty and innocent. False hopes. Its worse than the above phenomenon aint it?
(goggles :(noun)Tight-fitting spectacles worn to protect the eyes. See. Its tightfitting. No scope for seeing from the sides or removing. This is a popular
psychological observation too.Once we have an experience, we are thereafter unable to see the world as we did before)
seriously. imagine reading..hmm..say a james herriot...he speaks about a loving and caring wife, smart children, brilliant and eccentric colleagues, a job involving cuddling dogs and cats...siiiiigghhhhhhh....i mean....u get the point right? what if i get sadists and psychopaths for colleagues? ( sorry..comparison refrained to the colleagues and work part only...) having read abt james herriot in this scenario is actually not exactly a fortunate things isnt it?
so wats my point?
READ COMICS. :)
i mean....i think, at this point, that reading comics and fantasy is the only thing worth reading.Because these create an alternate world where i can find only amusement and happiness. There is no scope of comparing or extrapolating it to the so called "reality".
What else do i need from a work of an author? pleasure.
no. pleasure with no side effects.
and the funny part, now after so much introspection and analysis, i have concluded that i like reading only comics and fantasy..oh..i missed the funny part..the funny part is, this is exactly wat i was doing wen i was 10 years old.
il tel u an example why i am right.
"when life gives u a lemon. Make a lemonade"
this is the typical, deep, philosophical, spiritual, "reality-promoting" sentence.
and calvin says " If life gives u a lemon,Fling it right back at it"
is it silly? is it impossible? Is it escapism? is it cowardice? is it unphilosophical? is it "unreal" ?
well...i wont argue with u. my simple point is,
i feel immensely,tremendously, truly happay and confident hearing what calvin said.
The first sentence? naahh..its pathetic.atleast relatively.
do u defer?
if shakespeare says "all the world is a stage".....
I,Sankar Deivanayagam, DEMAND AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE.
