Dangerous prosthetic.

I'm winning prizes. I'm going places. Yet, I long to whisper to him that I don't need him. All I can manage to do is whimper. His eyes are unforgiving. His brilliance scares me.

Consummation of grief, heal thyself.

When the clock strikes twelve, I will be a voracious litterateur slash theatre-dabbler slash art aficionado slash moral philanderer slash academic achiever slash Post-War dreamer slash whatever.

'Rhetoric',he screams. My electronic identity is taking a hit with each post, and I have lost count of the metaphors I last used to describe my wilfulness. There's no reason that my ego should be receiving these hits with alacrity. I play with the Styrofoam coffee-cup, inspecting the brown dregs with disinterest.I observe sullenly that I'm not quite my usual testy self. Which would mean that the caffeine is calming me, soothing my nerves, kissing my palpitations goodbye. I am reading in the airport lounge today. A paperback edition of An Equal Music (Vikram Seth) rests snugly on my lap. I am shifty, because the announcer has very formally informed us of the flights delay by an hour. I hang around in the Bookshop and then walk the length of the Duty-free shop without really giving the items so much as a glance. Then,I walk into the Jet Executive Lounge and begin reading. I had read the book a year ago, so I am quite aware of the predicament Michael was in. I stow the book away in my backpack. I lean on the handrail and look around casually, my eyes roving the terminal for an out-of-place sight, an unnoticed sound. A little here,a little there.

A little way off from the place where the bored policemen are frisking the passengers, I see a girl maneuvering expertly through the long file of commuters. About my age, wheatish, black-haired, her hair tied back into a ponytail. She is dressed demurely in a salwar-kameez, but the way she carries herself tells me that she knew more about Coco Chanel and Manolo Blahnik than any number of the garishly dressed females here. Her handbag is slung rakishly on one shoulder. I spy a book in her hand. I squint my eyes narrowly to catch a glimpse of the title. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. Good God. I look at her hands. They are slender and beautiful, and the fingernails are carefully manicured. Yet,there is a restless urgency about her, it shows through her sense of security and it makes her look vulnerable. And beautiful. These fleeting moments. Where the other person is so inaccessible, yet so tangible in every other way that sexuality is heightened, and perception, as we know it, glues itself to individual opinion.
Then, without warning, she catches my eye. Something stirs in the brown irises. There is a hasty tidying up of misplaced recognition,and she looks away,blushing a furious crimson. Then, she turns her head and looks at me again. Her lips purse and the hand clutching the handbag turns white. I walk away, humming to myself. Better to let these moments be.

My affair with the Goras.

I think something in my pants just exploded. My masculinity is straining itself to yank at the headstrings of Iggy Pop and Holden Caulfield. Whoever heard of growing up in The Times of Cool?

Say what?

Conversation is futile. You can't reason with free will. Should have guessed that.

Pro-seminary.

This one is for the ladies. What you give to your dildo, life gives you back.

Who? Them.

Today, I stumbled across this progressive metal band called Tool. Headed by frontman Maynard James Keenan, who is as subversive as he is obtuse, the L.A.-based band is not one of those usual Johnny-whine-lately acts full of self-directed adolescent rage because their life is snapping at the heels of some populist tabloid. I listened in fascination as Danny Carey (drummer) beat steady,reflective beats on his percussive fantasies and Justin Chancellor (bassist) plucked away earnestly. It's strange. I wanted my music to be meaningful and honest, and I got this. For lack of musical tact, I have not come across bands showing a similar solidarity in their perception of rhythm and lyrics, except perhaps Animal Collective, Rush, King Crimson and Pink Floyd.

Here is an except from an interview Keenan gave to Moon Unit.

Q: Do you hide patterns of thought in your lyrics?
A: There's nothing being hidden. I think it gives a person more, giving them less is giving them more. They can experience it for themselves. There's certain images that I think come up for people if they don't have everything spelled out for them. Eventually, they'll have two different songs, they'll have what they heard and I'll give them a new one that might take them farther, might not have taken them as far as they went. If it takes them farther, that's great, but I'd much rather like the idea of them having gone farther than the song went. I'd rather take that risk that they're gonna be mad at me for not seeing the lyrics.

Q: What's the motivation behind the lyrics?
A: Its usually motivated by the music, you know? 'Cause music itself
has a kind of mood to it. The lyrics are usually coming out of the
mood of the song. We always write the music then the lyrics come
after.

Q: Did you ever have a romantic evening?
A: I had one the other night. Standing in my backyard while the entire
fucking earth was shaking; shit's breaking all over the place, and my
dogs come running up to me in my backyard completely scared about what's
going on, but after a while we forgot there was even an earthquake going
on. We were just sitting there together.


Q: Some people say you are a musical genius. Comment.
A: You don't need to be a super genius to do some things. What is smart? I think everybody has that genius seed in them for something. All genius is to me is somebody who has latched on to something and taken it as far out as they could take it. Ask Einstein his phone number, he couldn't tell you, he had to look it up. That's not where he's at. If you were to ask him about Led Zeppelin, he probably wouldn't have any fucking idea what you were talking about. So being a genius doesn't have anything to do with being a completely social functioning being completely understanding of everything. It has more to do with finding something, a voice in yourself, and taking it as far as you can take it. Hopefully, it takes you down a road where you understand you don't need to hurt people to get to wherever it is
you're looking for.