heartbreak isn’t in the heart.
it isn’t a stab wound that haunts you, or leaves scars,
and it isn’t a pain, even.
heartbreak is a hole,
taken out of your stomach
that you feel
that time can’t easily heal
heartbreak is a part of you lost
even if you didn’t know you had it.
(Source: youngbadmangone)
i’m about to start to dream.
in a sense, dreaming is the best form of escape from reality, because you get to escape the societal shutters on your mind, closeting the freedom of thought and expression of ideas to - in a frightening turn of events - yourself, and you still get to call your mind your own. the story you tell yourself is that the dream is natural, though it’s among the most peculiar things conceivable, and apart from its thoroughly organic root there is no good reason to ever consider intense and complex hallucinatory sequences your mind throws up in your sleep as a component of normalcy. the set up is eerily similar to a brain occupation or inception of some variety in a product of Hollywood, except you’re occupying your own mind. nevertheless, the strangeness, the discomfort, the technicolor quality should inspire more unease in people, for that is nothing but a manifestation of themselves, and there really is no good reason to not try and reconcile ones true self with what one thinks one is.
even what you dream about is inherently affected by societal pressures and constricts, and you are hence inherently a product of your society and your own reactionism to it. i mean, think about the complete lack of logic that our aspirations, on a more tangible level, represent without the constricts of society. happiness, a concept that is often identified as the true aim individuals in a society seek is defined in marvellously concrete terms, with the pathway clearly marked out. the happiness of a person is measured in income, job stability, the standard of living of their family members, the number of trips they took to Disneyland as a kid, the trimming of the hedges in ones garden to the perfect height every morning, in African children eating food, discovery of the self, in the amount of time between landing and disembarking you save by flying first class, and any other number of markers that society tells you to be happy because of. If society hadn’t told you that this was a happy occasion, would you even be happy because of it? and then how much of your activity do you conduct because of, inevitably, happiness as the driving force?
in this sense, then what are we without society? there is no good way to substitute your heritage, your culture or origin and social context in it, the situation you grew up, because your way of thinking is governed just by that. without your experiences and the choices you made under a set of circumstances, you are not the same entity or even definable as a human. without society, you are something else entirely.
but in this context of a self, where do dreams come in? where do flights of fancy of the unbridled subconscious that take you soaring over the impossible and the non-envisionable fit in our conceptualizations of ourselves? what role do your secrets play; your most horrible, twisted fantasy that you are sure will land you straight in the insane asylum if you were to ever share them - or even your most surreptitious pleasure that has hid itself for too long, and now needs to burst free of the constricts imposed by the structure in your mind.
there are many you’s, but which you is you?
So this is my primary blog on these parts, but there’s been a bit of a creative dry spell of late. On the other hand, I’ve been a lot more active on the other blog I run. Moreover, a lot of you followed this cause I sent over an ask, or something. But forreal, you ALL bear similar content (and would learn more about me?) from me other blog. So go forth? Stab the Night.
Another thing you should check out is meghachhayein.tumblr.com, which is about South Asia.
Never mind me, I just want this to be the first thing you see here.
(Source: mycolorbook, via castehindusstolemybhagwaans)
the Brown Woman bears the burden of her past.
she bears the heart and soul of the land she comes from
the dusty, hallowed ideal
of Culture, and goodwill, and happiness
forming an impression in her head of romantic perfection
not forgetting the struggles of her mother, her grandmother,
Sisters
her Sisters in Womanhood
not forgetting the torrents of hate that pushed them to the ground
sacrificing better sense for subjugation
forcing ideas to be swept away
forcing promise to be forgotten
forcing family to be not a joy, an oppression
and yet, she is meant to love her Culture
she is meant to uphold the traditional values
be a guardian of parampara
to dance, to sing, and still succeed,
to be a Woman, both of the past and of the future.she bears the burden of a White World
and the horrors of still being ruled by it
in her mind
she bears a burden every time she looks in the mirror
every time she puts on her bindi, her sari, her salvar, her jasmine in her hair
and also when she doesn’t
for this burden is not one she can swiftly divulge
it is with her to haunt her
when she buys her foundation
sees tubs of whitening cream
does her hair, her eyes
trying both to not look like her mother did
and to look, perversely, Brown like her mother
the burden of the Brown Woman lies in the mirrorshe bears the burden of expectations
the belief that today, she must fight harder to be a Woman
and also to be a Person
as though they are two separate fights
she bears the expectation of work
of hard labor, of house work
of being the support system of a family
for it can only be her, nobody else
she bears the burden of balance
and the expectation of balance
and the expectation of a superior ability to balance
she bears the expectation of perfection
with any diversion or anomaly
feared
hidden
suppressed
forgotten
the Brown Woman bears the burden of her own mindtoday, she bears the brunt of Sisterhood,
of the excitement of Universal Women
Females for Everyoneand she bears the burden of being Brown
and the lack of any other identity
but being forced into a nameless, shapeless figure
of Women of the Country!
as though the label of Woman is enough
while forgetting the role of race, caste, sexuality
while forgetting that some Women aren’t ‘women’
and some ‘women’ don’t wish to be Women
she bears the brunt of ignorance
for it is her responsibility to show
she is more than a Brown Woman
that there is anything more than that to her
she bears the burden of building that worth to her
she bears the burden of the pressure to be phenomenalshe bears the burden of a label
that is ignored
for she is meant to rise above it
Do you want to know what really gets to me?
It’s when people have potential. Potential to be excellent, to be really outstanding at something. When someone is a legitimate genius. When people are at such a level where grades, work all mean nothing, because their efforts transcend all of that. When a person has worth that is unparalleled, indescribable in regular terms because the leagues on earth just don’t make any sense as a measure of greatness.
But it’s not their potential that upsets me - it’s when they turn their back on the things that make them realize their potential and take the easy way out. It’s when they make decisions that make this potential sizzle and fly straight out the window. There isn’t a rationality to this, I don’t know why it should matter that other people excel. But I care.
It’s just, I live my life by the following line. It’s hard for me to comprehend that anybody would think in any other way.
Talent is its own expectation, Jim: you either live up to it or it waves a hankie, receding forever. Use it or lose it, he say over the newspaper. I’m…I’m just afraid of having a tombstone that says HERE LIES A PROMISING OLD MAN. Potential maybe worse than none, Jim.
