a comment on 'half a confession'
from the interacts in Half a Confession here is a very interesting perspective by zina
TO BE DEAD AND STILL IN LOVE!
St Martens hospital! It is a hospital in Canterbury for the mentally ill. I spent 2 weeks there as a student (part of our rotation;)....a period where the line separating sanity from the other side became as thin as a hair. And I honestly do not know what is more painful to see, a body in pain or a mind insane? Touched with fire, was a title of a book about how artists tend to have psychiatric issues. I began reading it about that time and felt just as this passion for knowledge and creativity is in me, I have been touched with fire too…and if there is no check…I would spiral into myself and loose touch with reality.
At first glance the patients there do not 'look' sick. A 70 year old woman looked like an average 70 yr old woman but the difference surfaces- she was convinced she was pregnant and completely refused to take her medication because "it will kill the baby".
I remember meeting this girl…beautiful, tall with a face like the moon…convinced
that she was a saint…and as she sat there speaking in riddles, oblivious of her schizophrenic truth, her mother breaks down because you can not stop loving your daughter, even though she frightens the hell out of you. The mad are human...but how they leaves us so disconcerted and uneasy. A tough two weeks. A reality far from the dreams of rainbows and butterflies.
So I was more comfortable in a medical hospital. Although some days watching death and pain up-front was too disturbing to put in words, one learned to focus. I worked on an oncology ward. Patients would vomit as they approached the hospital for chemo. Even before the drugs were swimming in their blood, and burning their veins, the memory of it all was enough to make them vomit. How their world falls apart as their body becomes its own enemy, starves itself. I learned to appreciate every moment I can stand and breath without pain.
Every patient was unique. Some wanted to fight, to live, to go home and ride their horse, to smile and I was able to talk about how shalwar kameez is not a sari as I browsed through their charts...medical histories, divorced mother of 2, occupation Doctor! The glares of irony as she watches her life trade places.
Others had given up, or were still in denial...they didn't even see me as I worked, tears streamed down their faces….Possibly a British thing, be reserved about the pain…stone faced...silently swallow the tears because 'we do not want to attract attention'. I was silent with them, soft with them and listened more.
Pyari was a kind I've never met…yet I know she rages in many of those dying women. In all of us. Reading Half confessions has illustrated how well you can get into the mind of another... its an art and here is my take on the story.
Some Memories never fade. And even on ones death bed, those people come, every single one. Temporal, one does not need a photographic memory to experience a rush of the past.
'You said my photographic memory was an unfair aid for those scholastic skirmishes? I vividly recall every moment I shared with Kid.' Pyari, if you hear me it is not only the curse of those with photographic memories, I assure you.
"Why do you want me to lose self respect, vegetate and whither away? This will never happen. Your resolve not to be my Kevorkian oddly gives me strength." I wonder why that is? May be to know one still lives and has a choice to live well despite not possessing and being possessed by their true love. That the world doesn't stop…and survival of self is beyond any external control.
When your companions are hallucinations and machines, chemicals making you sick in the stomach, sick in the brain, the unimaginably hollow are the days.
Unbearably long.
"...the night passes by somehow -- but the day drags on interminably." Mind you, I do not feel sorry that she was sick. I feel pity for her that after all the people she brought close, no one was there beside her...and even he...the shit, did not have the courtesy to be there. He clears his conscience with just a few letters. Could he not hear what she was saying?…her anger, her submission to him, ultimately the wishes of a dying woman? To come clean. But then again I forget 'E' yes that complicated constant in his life. But all he gave back were words…and even I can be called blasphemous for saying words mean nothing. They are merely foam on the surface of a stream. BUBBLES BURSTING INTO NOTHINGNESS...
"…and I feel so close to the Ultimate Force" to know it is time…and look back at life brings "God" in the picture big time!!!!then the spiritual pyari, the peaceful pyari, the saved pyari, the pyari who has forgiven emerges out of her anger. "but I still do believe in goodness -- your new world order be good -- no prophets, no rituals, no dogmas -- just individual's conscience as the guide." I hope you are right pyari.
My favourite bit!!!!!!"you really think I would ask you to intercede? Hah -- I have to pay my dues -- we all do -- inescapable --and you know very well that I have never deliberately hurt anyone -- only myself -- and of course my loved ones -- we all have a right to do so -- I have a right to do so..."
Really paayaari? Or have you justified this to feel lighter and somewhat relinquish the apologies you owe?
Pyari loved to love and leave...even in the end she did the same...because that is all she experienced in the past...being loved and being left! "I was lulled by love induced stupor -- classic euphoric blindness -- and when I returned to reality he was gone" We can be so stupid at times, and till now we romanticize this swept away emotion, we wait for the serotonins to kick in and then fly with holl"o"wood imaginings of what being in love is. Blindly accepting, "falling" into a self induced hypnosis…a cancer of the heart...attacking itself…then swimming into the ocean in delirium, when the opium wears off... when the aching limbs go limp you find your self miles away from the shore, miles away from the horizon...in the
deep. No return.
Love conquers all. That is what i see in the story. As Pyari completed her suicide notes in instalments she came to terms with her first love being her eternal love...and all the twists and turns she took her on her journey away from him brought her right back to him. With him is where she eventually reached. Why did she still love him when he left her to become what she became...incomplete, bitter, disillusioned, vulnerable, poisonous?
Why did she still love him so intensely, that her last words ever, were to him? Because love conquers all, even pain of betrayal and the ache of rejection. Imagine temporal, the words she wrote, the swearing, the cussing, was part of a long last exhale, uninhibited, honest yet ending with love...
'put me next to the Ghalib books on your shelf, promise...'
Even dead she wanted to remain close to him…the important word to not above is not Ghalib…it is YOUR! She was not a bitch, she was just still in love with him.
Dead and still in love.
What I am confused about is do I like pyari...or not. I don't know, let me wait to find an urn next to some Ghalib books on a shelf and make that decision.
Fascinating...To be dead and still in love...
TO BE DEAD AND STILL IN LOVE!
St Martens hospital! It is a hospital in Canterbury for the mentally ill. I spent 2 weeks there as a student (part of our rotation;)....a period where the line separating sanity from the other side became as thin as a hair. And I honestly do not know what is more painful to see, a body in pain or a mind insane? Touched with fire, was a title of a book about how artists tend to have psychiatric issues. I began reading it about that time and felt just as this passion for knowledge and creativity is in me, I have been touched with fire too…and if there is no check…I would spiral into myself and loose touch with reality.
At first glance the patients there do not 'look' sick. A 70 year old woman looked like an average 70 yr old woman but the difference surfaces- she was convinced she was pregnant and completely refused to take her medication because "it will kill the baby".
I remember meeting this girl…beautiful, tall with a face like the moon…convinced
that she was a saint…and as she sat there speaking in riddles, oblivious of her schizophrenic truth, her mother breaks down because you can not stop loving your daughter, even though she frightens the hell out of you. The mad are human...but how they leaves us so disconcerted and uneasy. A tough two weeks. A reality far from the dreams of rainbows and butterflies.
So I was more comfortable in a medical hospital. Although some days watching death and pain up-front was too disturbing to put in words, one learned to focus. I worked on an oncology ward. Patients would vomit as they approached the hospital for chemo. Even before the drugs were swimming in their blood, and burning their veins, the memory of it all was enough to make them vomit. How their world falls apart as their body becomes its own enemy, starves itself. I learned to appreciate every moment I can stand and breath without pain.
Every patient was unique. Some wanted to fight, to live, to go home and ride their horse, to smile and I was able to talk about how shalwar kameez is not a sari as I browsed through their charts...medical histories, divorced mother of 2, occupation Doctor! The glares of irony as she watches her life trade places.
Others had given up, or were still in denial...they didn't even see me as I worked, tears streamed down their faces….Possibly a British thing, be reserved about the pain…stone faced...silently swallow the tears because 'we do not want to attract attention'. I was silent with them, soft with them and listened more.
Pyari was a kind I've never met…yet I know she rages in many of those dying women. In all of us. Reading Half confessions has illustrated how well you can get into the mind of another... its an art and here is my take on the story.
Some Memories never fade. And even on ones death bed, those people come, every single one. Temporal, one does not need a photographic memory to experience a rush of the past.
'You said my photographic memory was an unfair aid for those scholastic skirmishes? I vividly recall every moment I shared with Kid.' Pyari, if you hear me it is not only the curse of those with photographic memories, I assure you.
"Why do you want me to lose self respect, vegetate and whither away? This will never happen. Your resolve not to be my Kevorkian oddly gives me strength." I wonder why that is? May be to know one still lives and has a choice to live well despite not possessing and being possessed by their true love. That the world doesn't stop…and survival of self is beyond any external control.
When your companions are hallucinations and machines, chemicals making you sick in the stomach, sick in the brain, the unimaginably hollow are the days.
Unbearably long.
"...the night passes by somehow -- but the day drags on interminably." Mind you, I do not feel sorry that she was sick. I feel pity for her that after all the people she brought close, no one was there beside her...and even he...the shit, did not have the courtesy to be there. He clears his conscience with just a few letters. Could he not hear what she was saying?…her anger, her submission to him, ultimately the wishes of a dying woman? To come clean. But then again I forget 'E' yes that complicated constant in his life. But all he gave back were words…and even I can be called blasphemous for saying words mean nothing. They are merely foam on the surface of a stream. BUBBLES BURSTING INTO NOTHINGNESS...
"…and I feel so close to the Ultimate Force" to know it is time…and look back at life brings "God" in the picture big time!!!!then the spiritual pyari, the peaceful pyari, the saved pyari, the pyari who has forgiven emerges out of her anger. "but I still do believe in goodness -- your new world order be good -- no prophets, no rituals, no dogmas -- just individual's conscience as the guide." I hope you are right pyari.
My favourite bit!!!!!!"you really think I would ask you to intercede? Hah -- I have to pay my dues -- we all do -- inescapable --and you know very well that I have never deliberately hurt anyone -- only myself -- and of course my loved ones -- we all have a right to do so -- I have a right to do so..."
Really paayaari? Or have you justified this to feel lighter and somewhat relinquish the apologies you owe?
Pyari loved to love and leave...even in the end she did the same...because that is all she experienced in the past...being loved and being left! "I was lulled by love induced stupor -- classic euphoric blindness -- and when I returned to reality he was gone" We can be so stupid at times, and till now we romanticize this swept away emotion, we wait for the serotonins to kick in and then fly with holl"o"wood imaginings of what being in love is. Blindly accepting, "falling" into a self induced hypnosis…a cancer of the heart...attacking itself…then swimming into the ocean in delirium, when the opium wears off... when the aching limbs go limp you find your self miles away from the shore, miles away from the horizon...in the
deep. No return.
Love conquers all. That is what i see in the story. As Pyari completed her suicide notes in instalments she came to terms with her first love being her eternal love...and all the twists and turns she took her on her journey away from him brought her right back to him. With him is where she eventually reached. Why did she still love him when he left her to become what she became...incomplete, bitter, disillusioned, vulnerable, poisonous?
Why did she still love him so intensely, that her last words ever, were to him? Because love conquers all, even pain of betrayal and the ache of rejection. Imagine temporal, the words she wrote, the swearing, the cussing, was part of a long last exhale, uninhibited, honest yet ending with love...
'put me next to the Ghalib books on your shelf, promise...'
Even dead she wanted to remain close to him…the important word to not above is not Ghalib…it is YOUR! She was not a bitch, she was just still in love with him.
Dead and still in love.
What I am confused about is do I like pyari...or not. I don't know, let me wait to find an urn next to some Ghalib books on a shelf and make that decision.
Fascinating...To be dead and still in love...
posted by temporal at 10/31/2005
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