Sunday, January 21, 2018

Logical or illogical?


An adventure in the middle of the night
I was online with a student from U.K. and it was around 11.40 pm. It was then that I heard a woman scream and a man yell.
The class was over in five minutes, and I went to my door to listen. A woman was crying and screaming. A man's voice could be heard too.
Opened the door and it was from a door directly opposite to mine. That door had always remained closed and silent for all the 20 months that I have lived here. This was the first sign of any kind of violence, and this sounded mostly verbal. I didn't know more, but didn't want to disturb the usually normal neighbours either.

So I snuck out, rang the bell twice, and quickly ran back into my house. Everything fell silent. We soon heard the door open and heard somebody walk away.
Nothing happened afterwards. I guess.

This reminds me of a funny thing that happened in my early twenties. I was alone and very angry with a man, and had just picked a long wooden staff to hit him. He came close to me and pulled it off my hand. Just then an elderly gentleman entered the room. He stared at us in horror. Both of us snuck out. We let the senior think the man was the aggressor. The guy whom I wanted to attack also wanted to let him think that way. Aggression is unfortunately associated with manliness. The man with me had been truly manly, but he wanted the stamp of false macho on him. Go figure!


Thursday, January 18, 2018

There's this job website which keeps asking me to write about the freelancer experience.

Well, let me say how it works for me.
First of all, I spend a good chunk of time looking up all the fascinating jobs that keep popping up online. Unbelievable, new jobs like press release writer, writer for games, social writer and what not. Believe me, there are new job titles popping up all the time. And I apply sometimes.

Another interview tomorrow. This is for Academic Author on psychology and social sciences. If I had a regular job I would never be able to find out about the changes in the job market.

So How am I faring in my writing endeavors?
Problem 1: My vendors. Work is not regular. The whole of this week I didn't get work
Problem 2:  Me. I have an important project that is unfinished. Why the *&^%$ am I not doing it?
Problem 3: Night shift work I do part time is low paying and ruining my life.

So am I a total failure?

The poems I write are really making me feel good, making me feel I have a niche,
Also, other kinds of  writing is happening, even if its just magazine work
I have hopes of getting better

So what would happen if I do get a job?
I should find a way to make my fingers go tapping and  develop a distinct voice
Develop a distinct voice, I have  one already;  I should re discover my voice and channel it into creating sophisticated patterns on paper.

Monday, January 8, 2018

Was re-reading Wuthering Heights.

It was a time when obedience was considered the most important virtue, and elders with authority could do what they wanted in the name of instilling discipline and putting people in their place.
Joseph, a servant, boxes his little orphaned mistress' ears. (What does 'box someone's ears' mean?)
Catherine, the girl who is beaten runs away to play instead of suffering the punishment of sitting in a corner. Her diary expresses her anguish at the ill treatment meted out to her. Surprisingly, I can still relate to such a scene.
How could that be?
Today, psychology recommends a better parenting strategy, and parents are willingly permissive.
But Joseph is a bully, and the bullies are still around. Not just in schools but on the streets, in our buildings and particularly, in the work place.
They overtake our vehicles in rude and shocking ways, comment unnecessarily in public, form cliques and spread rumours. They yell at us, write misinforming reviews of our work. They want to put us in our place. They want us to lag behind so that they can zoom past, come up in life and appear good at the same time.

Such people never succeed in the long run. I am old enough to know that.

I just wish that I had smooth things to tell them, with a subtle hint of a smile on my face, like lawyers in soaps.