it is all about choice

There is something very solemn and edifying about choosing the moment of one's death. It is the ultimate affirmation of life.

people i know

One of my college professors had a peculiar way of clipping his sentences while lecturing. His statements remained partly unsaid, to be completed in the listeners' minds. It was annoying in a sense, but it also made the act of listening more participatory. One had to pay attention to be able to fill in the blanks.

the tangibility of space

I spent most of yesterday afternoon working at my desk, in my room on the roof. I do have a room on the roof, no kidding. The desk sits right beneath a big window. The first time I raised my head to stare at the sky it opens on to, it was a glorious blue. The next time I looked up, it was a dull opaque grey. The difference was so striking - as if somebody had taken a brush and applied a thick coat of grey paint across the heavenly wall.

When I first learnt that words laden with tangibility - fabric, wall, and so on - can be applied to space, it was hard to conceive. But over the years, over countless moments of staring at the sky or the distances that separate us, it does not seem so inconceivable any more. Space is indeed so tangible.

thinking of home

Where I grew up, relationships are intense, overwhelming. We are enmeshed in a thousand bonds of love, obligation, gratitude, deference, duty, thrown like a smothering net over our existence. The air within the walls of home is thick. Thick, and, often, foul. Love is vitiated with recriminations and reproaches. The debts of gratitude are too overwhelming to ever offer the possibility of repayment in equal measure. Someone ends up feeling cheated, of having given more than one got back.

tonight

Strange ambitions
The heart fancies tonight.
To fly through the night
With winged dreams.
To recover a memory,
Near forgotten,
Whose scent wafts through
The shimmering dark.
To taste again
A nectar tasted long ago,
That burnt the heart,
Parched the lips,
And left a trail of absence
In its wake.

why some refuse to talk

Dialogue is the affirmation of life. Hence, there can be no possibility of dialogue between those who find the meaning of their existence in death, either in inflicting it, or embracing it, or both. Yet, these are the sort who must be made to talk, for the rest of the world suffers the agony of their deafness and muteness. This is the great conundrum of our times.

on meaning

There are several ways in which we create meaning. For instance, we do so by making distinctions. As Nicole Kidman's character tells Sean Penn's in The Interpreter, "if 'dead' and 'gone' meant the same thing I would be out of a job." The job of a political theorist is also to create (or identify) meanings, to accurately represent the complexity of the human world. For those who don't care for fine layers of meaning, the job of a theorist might often seem to be mere hair-splitting. There's no doubt that danger is always lurking round the corner for a theorist. But I'm excited by the challenge of walking the fine line between producing reams and reams of linguistic masturbation, and generating truly meaningful insights.

remains of the day

I've often stood upon this porch
As the day breathes its last,
And watched a bird fly home,
And a leaf fall.
And felt burden'd as the fall'ng leaf,
Heavy with emptiness,
As the ghostly train of years gone by,
Snatches away yet one more day.
In a twilight corner of my heart
Time is mourned constantly.

fighting love

Your gaze fell upon me
Like the first ray of morn
That washes away the inky night
And gladdens the forlorn.

Not me.

Forlorn I am, accustomed to be,
Night my trusted friend.
The face of Day once seared my heart
With pain beyond amend.

I wish you'd not looked my way,
Not returned to me
The light that took me years to lose.
Leave me and darkness be.

was nietzsche a political thinker?

It is frequently asked whether Nietzsche can be characterized as a political thinker. Brian Leiter states that although he liked to have an opinion on everything under the sun, his views do not add up to a systematic political philosophy. However, in my opinion this is not saying much. Nietzsche might not meet the definitional standards of a political philosopher, but the lack of a philosophical system does not diminish the political intent and content of his writings.

by way of introduction

My first attempt at blogging ...

I guess I've succumbed to the same impulse that drove others quite a while ago to paint their lives on cave walls. Some trend those people started.

I hope this grows into something good.