I CAN!!

Again, I'm posting after nearly a month. Wonder if there's some internal clock ticking somewhere within the structure of my life which triggers blog-worthy stuff at a regular time interval. :D
Before I come to the real intention of the post however, let me just mention that I'm completely high on Joe Satriani's latest album
"Professor Satchafunkilus and the Musterion of Rock".
Trust Satch to come up with a name like that, which is cool, wicked, funny and mysterious, all at once! And don't even get me started on the music! Not only is the tonality which he gets from those custom Ibanez guitars mouthwatering, but his incredible chops on the Axe leave others in the dust and reaffirm what has been known for long. Satch is the guitar.
Satch has recently also come out with a new distortion pedal. Check it out!

Now I surely don't promote piracy, but I couldn't find the album in stores in Pune, so I downloaded it. Hehe..
But PLEASE, go out and buy the album when you can if you like it. I am gonna!!

Now to turn toward the monthly-trigger of the internal clock, I read a poem this morning and its so inspirational, that I simply can't resist putting it up for anyone who cares to read it.

Equipment

Figure it out for yourself, my lad,
You’ve all that the greatest of men have had,
Two arms, two hands, two legs, two eyes,
And a brain to use if you would be wise.
With this equipment they all began
So start for the top and say “I can.”

Look them over, the wise and great,
They take their food from a common plate.
And similar knives and forks they use,
With similar laces they tie their shoes,
The world considers them brave and smart,
But you’ve all they had when they made their start.

You can triumph and come to skill,
You can be great if you only will,
You’re well equipped for what fight you choose,
You have arms and legs and a brain to use,
And the man who has risen, great deeds to do,
Began his life with no more than you.

You are the handicap you must face,
You are the one who must choose your place,
You must say where you want to go.
How much you will study the truth to know,
God had equipped you for life, but He
Lets you decide what you want to be.

Courage must come from the soul within,
The man must furnish the will to win.
So figure it out for yourself, my lad,
You were born with all that the great have had,
With your equipment they all began.
Get hold of yourself and say “I can.”

-Edgar A. Guest

May you derive the inspiration that pushes you to reach the next level in your life.
I know I've found mine.

Luv-n-luck,
Av

Dont know what to name this one...

I have logged into my blog after over a month's time, after that last Valentine's Day Post, thanks to the loads of stuff I needed to finish at work. Infact I'm posting this at 3:45 AM from my office work-desk. :D
To follow up on the last post, I originally planned to write about another day that is celebrated on 14th of February. Its called the International Quirkyalone Day!!
You can find all that you need by following the link given below. Check it out!! http://quirkyalone.net/

And the reason I was going to write about it is because I thought that I fit pretty well in that quirkyalone description:
"A person who enjoys being single (but is not opposed to being in a relationship) and generally prefers to be alone rather than dating just for the sake of being in a couple."

I took the above to mean that a quirkyalone should not mind solitude, on both the short and long time scales, and I know myself to be of the off-beat kind who not only enjoy solitude, but even go looking for it.
(What a paradox.. looking for solitude. :D)
But the iconoclast that I am, I should have suspected the symptoms of getting so voluntarily classified into a category!! Hehe.. Because an experience I had on Sunday has changed it all. :D

You see, like a good teacher and friend, I left my guitar at one of my student's place on Friday evening, asking her to practice for the guitar class on Sunday, as we haven't been able to find a good guitar for her to buy yet. What I didn't realize is that for the next two nights, I would have to go to sleep without my customary 30 minute fretboard workout and the subsequent(addictive) pain in my hands..

And so it happened that I woke up on this Sunday morning with a weird feeling in my heart. I got through my morning chores feeling a bit low, and wondering why. Some unidentified gloom seemed to have settled on my existence even as I went about devouring a 250-page Ebook on my laptop. Apart from the insidious, under-the-surface sadness-like feeling, it had been a normal Sunday on every count. It was only hours later that I realized what it was. I was feeling the exact "withdrawal symptoms" generally associated with a break-up!! I was feeling all "bluesy" and sad inside, and I realized I was missing my guitar!!

Alexz Johnson crooned "I'm in love with my guitar!" to my brain as I struggled to look at the situation in the absolute perspective. It was seriously quite an effort to break out of the trance and reach a brain-space where I could shake my head and smile at my own predicament.

The little experience has stirred quite a few off-shoots of thought in my teeming brain. For starters, being fine without people around but missing a guitar can mean either of two things,

1) Finally, I am musically able enough to start taking repose within my own music and depend on it to take me away to somewhere I have never been before.

2) As expressed in a couple of posts earlier, I am so stone-hearted, practical-minded and selfish that all I need is a inanimate instrument rather than people to keep my sanity.

I know that second option is gonna raise a few hackles again, and more than one of my close friends shall surely threaten me with murder.. Hehe.. But then,

WHO CAN DECIDE WHAT THEY DREAM?
AND DREAM I DO...

Luv-n-Luck,
Av

CRUSH.. Part II

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!!

After I went home last night, my thoughts were more or less fixated on
it being the Valentine Day's eve and I was thinking of all the Valentine Days
in the years gone by. Also (probably because I love to dwell on the "irony" aspect of things in general these days),I was thinking of how my ranting and raving in the last post has probably left me looking like a completely hopeless UN-romantic.
In the time-honored tradition of true-blue Geminis, I hate to be categorized into so extreme a sect, so just to mix up things a bit, and because today's the day of love,I decided to post a mushy little poem/song that I had composed a few years back. Although I'm sure she'll not read this, but if she does, a certain female friend of mine would smile to reminisce of a particular Valentine's Day, the singular high-point of which was she screaming
"I love you, Av!!", in public, at the top of her lungs, because she thought I'd written it for her.
(Which I'd not, just to set the record straight!)
Life's crazy sometimes.. But anyway, here goes!


Tonight

Tonight as I watch
The lights across the skies,
Feels like I'm gazing
Deep into your eyes..

Reminds me of the days
When my life was just as bright,
As my heart burning for you, tonight..

Tonight as i walk
Down the streets of my heart,
Feels like the place
Is falling apart..

It's paining since the day you went
And it puts me in a plight,
To feel my heart aching for you, tonight..

Tonight as i dream
Of you in my sleep
I know you will return
You have promises to keep

I'll take you in my arms
And hold you close and tight
As both our hearts melt into one, tonight..



Damn!! I wish I hadn't posted this. I could have actually used it with some good effect today!! Hehe..
But after all is said and done, more is actually said than done!! So I guess posting this has been a good choice after all.. :D

Luv-n-Luck,
Av

CRUSH.. Part I

I suspect this is going to be the first post where I am gonna give away more than I would like to. Of course, poems offer a view into a person's inside like nothing else can, but thats not so obvious to most people. Anyway, here goes...

As one grows up, one's opinion of the world apparently grows less and less rosy, compared to the carefree thoughts of childhood. Ever since I can remember, I have been wondering about the beauty of the English language. However, it is hardly surprising that in recent times, I have been thinking more about the irony of it. Take the word CRUSH for instance; isn't it really ironic how it can mean two exactly opposite emotions? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines crush as

Crush [1,Verb]: to suppress or overwhelm as if by pressure or weight
Crush [2,Noun]: an intense and usually passing infatuation

Now to me, its really interesting how the failure of Crush(2) can sometimes lead to an experience of Crush(1) on one's heart!! What is really ironic to me is that I have not experienced EITHER of the two crushes. Never in my life ( and I am REALLY thankful for this part) have I experienced an intense instantaneous sadness that has been heavy enough to crush my heart. Also, never in my life ( this part, I'm not that thankful about.. :D) have I felt the sudden and sometimes momentary rush of feelings for a single special person that is generally associated with Crush(2).

This can mean two things.
1) I have been really fortunate to not experience any major tragedies, and I have been a bit unfortunate on the count that I have not yet run into anyone who really rubs me the right way cause she kind of fits my idea of a crush instantly.

2) I am too practical-headed and stone-hearted, too disconnected and aloof, to experience any emotion in an extreme state.

Both these possibilities shall probably be pondered upon aloud in the subsequent posts, but I'd like to close this one with a interesting observation..

"DONT TRUST REALITY; AFTER ALL, ITS ONLY A COLLECTIVE HUNCH.."

Luv-n-Luck,
Av

Dedication..

Today's post shall be blank, as an expression of respect towards
Gaana Saraswati Smt. Kishori Amonkar. It is also an expression of disgust at and protest against the humiliation that she had to bear at the Vasantotsav last night.
I am near-certain that this post would not reach her, but I do not know another better way of telling her that I cried my heart out for twenty minutes after reaching home last night and that I found myself absolutely incapable of ingesting anything that could remotely be called my dinner. This is my way of observing "two minutes of silence" in cyberspace.













































Explanations in the next post. (Optional.)

Av

Strange flavour to this one...

The poem in this post is one of the earliest poems I've written, that you can categorize under "poems" at all... Hehehe.. I wrote it while sitting in the back of a sanskrit class in my class 12... The poem follows the thought that "a terrorist doesn't necessarily take up terrorism as a career" and is sometimes pushed into it due to various reasons. Since I had just begun to write poems, the flow and the meter of the poem is a bit stiff. Try not to take my case over it. Hehehe...

After all these years though, I have no recollection of why I chose to write a poem about a gun. The AK-47, as we know, was invented in 1947 by a man called Mikhail Kalashnikov, and hence it is sometimes referred to as

THE KALASHNIKOV

Born In The Vale Of Heaven On The Earth
Youngest In My Family, Dearest Since Birth
Born In The Refugee Camp, Hidden Even From The Sun
Unknowingly Hearing The Kalashnikov, The Life-Saving Gun.

I Grew Up Under The Flying Bullets, Zooming Right Above My Head
I Didn’t Know Why It Was Then, But The Ground Was Wet And Red
One Day All My Toys Shattered, And I Was Made To Run
Away From The Kalashnikov, The Life-Threatening Gun.

When I Was Ten, My Father Was Shot Right Before My Eyes
I Saw Death Face-To-Face; I Saw How A Human Dies
And Then I Knew, The Sounds Which I, Till Now Had Thought Were Fun,
Came From The Kalashnikov, The Life-Ending Gun.

At Fourteen, I Saw My Brothers Die, Shot At Just Like Dad
And Then I Saw The Killers, A Sight Which Drove Me Mad
Determined To Take Revenge, All Caution Did I Abandon
And Picked Up The Kalashnikov, My Life-Taking Gun.

Its finally a welcome change to post something that pertains to an emotion other than love, but I dont know if the poem really addresses other emotions in a way which really conveys them. Tell me what you think.

Love-n-Luck,
Av

Third Bottle of Wine..

Like my friends know very well, I am a true Gemini, a man of extremes.. Hence, after that blatant mushiness in the last post, comes another dose of anguish, called..

ALONE

With you i share my joys
And sadness i bear alone
Cause you can’t feel my heart
Beneath my flesh and bone..

You say we have been friends
Right from the start
Then why can’t you feel
The ache inside my heart?

You never tried to explore
The side of me you’ve never seen
You never ever gave a thought
To the friends we could have been..

You never thought about me as
A person on the whole
Then how could you have ever felt
The void inside my soul?

I’ve reached a point in my life
Where i can clearly see
The one thing you could never do
Was to believe in me..

Now i talk to myself
Cause it makes me believe
That i’ve got atleast one friend
Who would never leave..

You left me alone
Every time my heart was blue..

You left me alone
Every time i needed you..

You left me alone
Crying in the rain..

You left me alone
In my hours of pain..

You left me alone..


This is another song that I'd written at a time when I couldn't play it. Not even the verse chords I mean, leave along the heavy power-chords in the chorus. All the same, its a testimonial that music composition and technique with an instrument are more or less independant entities, both ways.

Post your thoughts!

Luv-n-Luck
Av