Life Noir

At the stroke of the midnight hour, as the world sleeps, and some parts of India awakens to night-life and freedom from traffic, I’m awake too. Awake and staring. Staring into the absurd.

It’s absurd how in some places, people are forced to go back home even before the stroke of the midnight hour. Driven out, analysed, fined and sent homewards. I thought ours was the kingdom of the Midnight’s Children. Well the children are home now, unsatisfied and thirsty. While they reach for their chalices of nectar and pots of liberation, I’m awake. Awake and sober. Sober yet drinking.

Tis now the very witching time of night,

When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out

Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,

And do such bitter business as the day

Would quake to look on.

Yes, those were dark eventful times indeed. Now I drink hot coffee and do such mundane business as the day wouldn’t even care to look on. In the confines of my tower, staring into my bright shiny liquid crystal looking glass. Alone and yet in touch with the world. The looking glass is showing me images from the past. An island called Iwo Jima, where a great battle once took place. Where patriotic men were reduced to ants. What else does the looking glass show? Even the wisest cannot tell. For it shows many things: things that were, things that are and some things that have not come to pass. Apart from the great deal of things that never were, not are and shall never come to pass. And through all this I’m awake. Awake and listening. Listening to the voices within and without.

It is the hour of the wolf now, which according to Swedish legend is the time between the deepest night and dawn when wolves are heard howling outside. The hour when most people die, when sleep is the deepest, when nightmares are most real. It is the hour when the sleepless are haunted by their deepest fears and their most scathing regrets, and all they can hear is the sound of their own hearts. But this is India, there are no wolves howling outside the door. Just the myriad voices calling for prayer.

And then, while India turns to look at the brightest star in the heavens, I’m awake. Awake and yet asleep. Asleep, as through the window in the wall, comes streaming in on sunlight wings, a million bright ambassadors of morning. As the cogs of life start moving all around, I’m buried deeper and deeper into the dreamland of inaction. The dreamland where I made a tryst with destiny.

Obituary

The last true blog died 2 years ago on the 12th of January, 2007. 19,262 words adorned its pages, a symphony of wild theories, memorabilia, random wisdom and odd incidents. It is now a relic of an age which is widely reminisced and sorely missed. A time when blogs were discussed and discussions were blogged. When alter-egos and deep secrets had ornamented public existences. This particular blog was like a local theatre company in a small and obscure village, trying to put up pieces to entertain the locality. Drama, slapstick, facts and fiction, music, it had it all.

To the author it was a lot more than the sum of its parts. It still is. An entity capable of self-sustenance and forever intriguing. A window into his own self, displaced in space and time.

Signs of Life was always a quirky read and had a hoopy frood of an author. Hope that it lives on in the hearts and memories of all those who came across it.

Reboot? Restart? Read.

I blog, therefore I am? Almost but not entirely true. The 'Create Blog' button does not completely ensure the existence of a blog. What is needed is an Observer. The Observer Effect is fundamental to contemporary Quantum Theory, the potential explanation of the mechanics of the Universe. What it boldly proclaims is that there is no phenomenon until it is observed. Sad news for the embryonic blog. There is a probability that it might not exist in blog-space; leading a life of solitary confinement with the only observer it has, the author of course. That's the reason blogs have 'comment' sections and a 'follower' section listing the observers and possibly a counter. The more comments and/or hits a blog has the bigger the universe it inhabits. That's good news for the author.

If blogs were around in the 1930s, Schrodinger might have chosen them to be the protagonist in his famous paradox. You encounter a random blog and then forget about it for about a year. Now, the blog may be active or inactive at the present moment. But you will not know what state it is in until you make an observation. Hence, until you make that observation the blog is both active and inactive at the same time (called a superposition of states). The system stops being a superposition of states and becomes either one or the other only when an observation takes place.

Makes the observer feel very powerful indeed doesn't it? Nothing exists and/or is 'certain' until His Omnipotence lays his eyes on it. Not even the Universe. The Observer Effect is probably the most egoistic theory in history. Mankind has a strange way making his speck of an existence feel inflatedly important in the extraordinary infinity he inhabits.

There is a delicious irony in all of this. Contemporary western scientific theory postulates that the human consciousness is solely the result of the working of the physical brain. Yet if the Observer Effect is correct, the physical matter comprising the brain cannot come into existence until it is the subject of observation by some pre-existing consciousness.

Weaving theories is an art, weaving nonsense is the greater art.