The world outside of your control, Tears, Death of the Child; Paris, Helen and Power; Romeo’s Mistake

29.02.2024

Paris is the foreigner. Paris is difference. Helen loves difference in the myth. But what about Helen? Helen is the king’s property. She is a thing. She is beauty as a thing, a possession of power. Her rightful place is with the king – the beautiful face that goes with power. However, Paris is able to snatch her away from power. How? How does he do it? I will have to read the myth again.

Do you know what Romeo’s mistake was? He gave up. He saw her dead and then he left her for dead. He lost all hope. He was confronted with what was impossible and then he walked away. It only seems impossible. It is an appearance of impossibility. Because there is something. It might not be admitted. It might be hidden. But it is there. You can feel it. The question is whether it is going to come to life or not. Or whether it is going to stay held down.

Everyone talks to her. Why could she not take just one person not talking to her? Speculations.

Outside of your art, writing, diary, thoughts, there is a world that you can’t control. You can’t make people give you the opportunities and chances you deserve. You can’t get your worth. You can’t make someone be friends with you or love you. You can’t stop discrimination, hate or war. You can’t even stop stupidity, slacking or cheating. Other people, as Sartre wrote, are hell.

Mood is down. Interest is lacking. One and a half hours overtime in the morning. Eight hours work. Then four hours overtime in the evening. I’m writing the diary on the tube on my phone. Even looking at women is boring today. Libido is down.

I wonder what she really thinks about me. This diary isn’t a complete monologue. But it almost is. Sometimes I reply to what I see or hear from her. Perhaps I am an inconvenience for her. An irritation and obstacle. Maybe she pities me. Most likely, she is scared of me. But I have not done anything. That is the thing. Having thoughts in your mind is not a crime. If you love someone and say it in your diary, that is not a crime. I have followed all the rules. I did everything I could. I took all the risks. Even if I fail, there is nothing else I could do within the scope that was given to me and the conditions of having to protect my health.

What do I know about her? The point was to learn about her. The point was to listen. She didn’t give me the opportunity. All this endeavour has never borne any fruit. That is life. She knows things about me. I have intuitions about her. The whole relationship relies on an imbalance of knowing and an imbalance of power. Such is life.

For a long time, I avoided talking to people. They are not trustworthy. They prove it over and over again. I kept to myself. What have I got through going out of my way to talk to people in my new contexts? About three good friends who I enjoy being with the most. And with one, it is a very strange and complicated relationship. What I really wanted, I didn’t get.

It is tempting to give up. On everything. It is tempting to leave every context. It is tempting to just sit and read novels all day, watch films and TV all day, give up on women and love, just go swimming, make art and write. But then, what about Punjab? The legacy? What about my duty and my role in life? What about the future? What about being able to look in the mirror?

Yesterday, I almost cried in public. He told me that his baby had died. The pain I felt in him was unbearable. But the tears never fall. I blinked them away. When you have been through it, you know the effect that that kind of death is going to have. He is young. He thinks he has been through the worst of it. I hope he has. I hope the story for him isn’t going to get worse. Because if it does, you have to have a lot of strength, will and discipline to get through it. It is not wrong to fall down. It is wrong to stay down so the whole world can betray you and kick you in the stomach.

Dancing; Diary on the Fly; The Fellow Conspirator

28.02.24

I’m sitting writing on my phone while I’m sitting on the tube. In front of a young couple. I just finished an overtime shift which came up which ended at 11pm. After the eight hour day. Maybe tonight I will write and she will not read. Will she miss me? When we don’t meet minds in the night I am disappointed. I feel it is her. Perhaps it is not. In the old days, lovers would look upon the same moon and share looks. I have this diary. When will she stop reading? When will I stop writing? When will one person resign from the game we are playing? I tried to but could not. There was a shift in things.

When she is not there, I think of her more. And when she is there, you have to fight so that she doesn’t eclipse everything. The hold is a chokehold.

I am getting up at five tomorrow for an early morning overtime shift. Ambition demands. Passion demands. Luckily for the world, for art, education and culture, I am the Tiger. I have the fierceness, hunger and the energy. Once I conquer the bed in the morning, I never stop. I thought I could quit overtime. I can’t. I have mouths to feed soon. That is coming.

I was speaking Spanish to a woman. I said you can dance now because she had got her trainers. She grabbed my hand and did a pirouette beneath it as she lifted it over her head. Women are mysterious and unpredictable. Her, I have never touched. And she has never touched me. What a stranger can give on a first meeting is taboo.

So many people are going. So many people go. You meet for just a moment. You are friends for just a moment. And then? Someone new comes. It is the festival of souls.

The diary post went wild last night with the amount of people reading. I’m being read so much nowadays. I am in so many contexts. So many people know me and follow my thoughts. Who knows what they are making of it? What they secretly think about me? Life is full of hidden judgements and hidden hearts. Such is life. This diary is completely open to anyone that reads.

I have only lied to her once about anything. And we both knew that I was lying and why. She is a fellow conspirator. When I first met her, a few weeks in, she told me that she wanted a relationship where someone was completely honest with her. What do you think this diary is? It is her wish. Here, I can say I love her. It is what I cannot say in real life. Here, I control things. Here, I am the god. The only limit is shame, sympathy, diplomacy, anonymity. The feelings – they can all be expressed. This diary is dangerous. It is trouble. But it is the diary of the risk taker. If you don’t take the risk, the reward is not possible. And what other way was there or is there. Even when everything is over, there is still hope. This writing is hope. Just watch and wait. It is the same in love as with the yearning for revolution and revenge. Just wait and watch. The four words of experience.

The Love Story of One of My Favourite Friends

27.02.2024

She is one of my favourite friends in museums and art galleries. She is a special person. She has helped me a lot. She promised that she would tell me this famous love story from her culture because she is as interested in psychology, people and relationships as I am. And now I have heard it. And I will share it, just like she shared it with me. Originally, her grandmother shared it with her, alongside many other folk tales.

Once, a man asked the woman that he loved how much she loved him. She answered that she loved him like the morning breeze on the flowing meadows in the mountains. He was angered. He thought himself rejected. Did she have a love for him that was like the wind, nothing, meaningless? Was he no matter at all to her? When he loved her so much? He struck her down. He killed her. It was an act of revenge for the rejection that she had given him. It was an act against the failure of reciprocity: she could not love him like he loved her. He had become ego: he thought that only he could love, that she was heartless, that only his love was important.

It happened after this – who knows how long after? – that he went up into the hills in the flowing meadows. The sun beat down on him. It punctured his skin, it vanquished his eyes, his whole body hurt from the heat. But then, like the kiss of a loving mother, the morning breeze washed over his body in a balmy embrace. And then, the tears sprung into his eyes. This. This is how she had loved him. This was the love that he could not understand. Her love for him was the love of solace, cure, repair, protection, shelter, caress, survival, everything that was needed, everything that was wanted. Her love for him was her life entire. There could be no love greater.

The ego of love was vanquished. What was his love for her compared to her love for him? Her who he had struck down and killed was the true lover. It was him that could not love in the right way. He had been a monster of delusion and insecurity. He had thought the wind had no weight, no form, no appearance, no reality. In fact, the wind was everything. It was the heart’s and the body’s greatest desires. His disbelief in the love was like the disbelief of the invisible God in the old days: he had been seduced by the devil and become an infidel, doomed to hell.

The man’s egotistical interpretation and its form of closure was a form of violence, a murder of the other. Of love and the lover.

When I was a child, my grandfather would tell me stories like these. Not about love. It was not the story of a grandmother to a beloved granddaughter. Tales of folk wisdom. From our culture. From cultures around the world. And then, when we had finished listening, he would ask us to tell him the moral to be found in each treasure. When we had interpreted the story, he would tell us the morals that were in it.

I watched my beautiful friend speaking, imagining her as a child listening to the woman that she loved so much, the storyteller. I loved my grandfather most for his stories, for teaching me. And when she finished, and I was still looking at her, we talked about what the story meant for us.

My initial thoughts were that the story was about the different languages of love that women and men speak. As someone who has had troubles himself, it seems that there are two different styles of expressing love. Some people – I am not saying they are exclusively women – express love in a veiled or concealed manner. They cannot say what they feel out loud in direct language. They think that would be too coarse, that it would expose their inner self too much. These people are scared. They are scared of love. These people – like the woman in the story – believe that their lover should be able to read their minds, know exactly what they are talking about and saying, feeling in their inner core. They imagine their lovers as the most gifted of communicators, as people able to interpret their every gesture, every tone in their voice. They forget about ambiguity which is structural to language, mistakes which are endemic, difficulties, lack of comprehension stemming from culture, background and socialisation, the gendering of people in every manner. These people feel that their lover is an extension of themselves and that communication doesn’t have to travel across a distance and a medium. For these people, the lover is an unquestionable expert in them: someone who cannot ever be wrong.

The man is like me. He wants a clear, unambiguous declaration of love that he can understand because he has difficulty understanding women. He hasn’t experienced the same world as women – the flowing meadows in the mountains and the wind there. He is not scared. He never fears. He is a man of violence, a fighter – he comes from the culture of fighters who act first and then think afterwards. That is why he speaks bluntly. He does not allude to things, he does not compare. He wants simplicity. And he does not understand people that are scared of their own love. He does not think it is coarse to share your feelings. They are what you are. They are what you experience. They are the way that you see other people and the world.

Then, while I write now, I see the story to be about the egotism of the man’s love. He cannot understand that the woman loves him in a different kind of way – the superior kind of way – and expresses this in a different kind of way. He feels he is not important to her because of this. He is insecure. He is wrong because ego has taken over. He is insecure because ego has taken over. How could he ask her how much she loved him in the first place? It is not a contest. He does not accept the love that she gives him by being with him. He has to question. Then, he makes it into a contest. For her, love truly is everything. She cannot say it out loud. It is a realisation that he has to come to later on in his life, in the solitude of the mountains, when he is close to heaven and the angels. For him, love is not everything. Because how can you lay a hand on the one that you love like that? How can you kill her? Even if she does not love you, that is her choice. Even if she loves you and for some reason, she cannot do anything about it, that is her choice. The man cannot respect a woman’s choice. He does not have respect for women. He does not understand women. When someone doesn’t love you and doesn’t return your feelings, you can’t kill your own love for them. No matter how hard you try. But that is what he tried to do by killing her – he tried to kill his own love for her.

And finally, the moral of the story is what love means to the lover. It is what only the lover understands. Love is everything. Love is the protection against this hard world and the suffering within it. Love is the greatest comfort that you can experience. Whatever happens in life, I have been protected by the love of my mother. No matter how difficult things have gotten in life or the serious problems. Other people have money to protect them. Or their race or status or class. What we have had to protect us is love. In this one area, we are the powerful. Because the love of an Indian mother from the village is the breeze in the mountains in the morning. It is the love that the Indian man looks for in a woman romantically. So he looks for kindness, comfort, release from suffering, release from the brutality and arbitrary despotism of this world and its weathers. The happiness of comfort. And the man in the story killed the one that gave him all that. It is a story about ingratitude, the privilege and complacency of the men that get that kind of love and can’t appreciate it, the men who have no value for how lucky they have been, how destiny has embraced them. The selfishness of their love, the smallness of their hearts and their minds. And also – the reality that, nonetheless, the women will be with them anyway and give them the most precious thing in the universe – their hearts and the comfort that comes with it.

Good News and Relief; The Magic of Sleep and Psychoanalysis; Time Disappears; Lack of Attraction

26.02.2024

What would she do if I took this diary away from her? If I stopped writing? I should. I love her. She does not love me. But I can’t. It has become a habit and a compulsion. This diary is a version of her. I tell her things. I write to her. The diary has her life in it. You have to remember that once we were good friends, whatever hurtful and humiliating thing she said about not knowing me later.

all that is left

is to look at her

and one day

even that will be gone

all that is left

is to think about her

even though she is not mine

all that is left

is to write about her

even though

the writing does nothing

is nothing

goes nowhere

produces nothing

nothing by a nothing

things that follow from

no and nothing

nothing and no

When so much happens in life, all the ones from before become imposed upon the one now. Everyone that went out of your life. It is like a cardboard cutting that you keep on pasting other cardboard cuttings over. Rationally, you realise that – somewhere in that pile of cuttings towered on top of each other – her outline is unique. But try to realise that in your heart. It is a pile of ‘no’s, excuses, misunderstandings, the accidents of fate, the circumstances of birth and culture. Because of the immense thickness of the cuttings placed on top of one another, the weight of the woman becomes terrible.

She knows what I am talking about. Some of the things she has said about me from before. Where did she get those impressions from? The most likely thing is that it is from someone before me. The ones before you ruin everything for everyone that comes afterwards. Because it is the one afterwards that has to pick up all the pieces that they broke and put them all together again. It is unfair. Everything about love is unfair. Everything about the world is unjust.

My friend’s operation was successful. She has cheated death again. She is strong. She is strong because she is full of love. Her heart plotted to fail her. The doctors foiled it. I have been calling every day to hear her voice again. It was only yesterday that she picked up. And because she has survived, I was able to sleep again, the sleep of peace. All the energy has come back.

And the other reason I could sleep? Because I know about psychoanalysis. As soon as I realise why the symptoms are happening the way they are, they go away. The unconscious only has control over you when you don’t know consciously what is happening.

Time has disappeared from my life. I look at the clock right now. It is 22.14. Where has all the time in my free time gone? I have done next to nothing. But the time has still gone. Why? One and a half hours overtime at work. Why? Pay conditions. Career aspirations. Having been expected to work hard all my life because that is what people from our culture and background do.

Since she said no, six Indian descent women have liked my profile on dating apps. They are all looking for a husband. They are all roughly the right age. They have top jobs, higher paying jobs and much higher status than the one that I do. I haven’t tried to match with them. Do you know what the problem is? I am not physically attracted to them. They are strangers to me. I haven’t been with them for a long period of time and developed feelings for them. I can’t go with someone I am not physically attracted to. It doesn’t matter how convenient it would be. What are they compared with Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world?

And before the reader – perhaps Helen herself – jumps to conclusions about how superficial men are, here’s a secret for you. When I first met her, Helen wasn’t my type. She has become the most beautiful woman in the world because of her personality, kindness to me and her confidence. It is because she reminded me of her kindness that I talked to her again. Otherwise, you are either in my life or you are not. I make a clean break and I don’t look back after that. I am completely brutal on myself like that, because it doesn’t matter how much you love someone and how much you are going to suffer without them if they can’t give you children and a family.

Her Goodbye; Separation; A New Person; Making the Public Laugh; Pierced Ears; Marks and Spencer’s and the Best Ever Trifle

25.02.2024

Unexpectedly, she turned to me and said goodbye. Her voice was full of sweetness. Everyone pronounces my name wrong – they are not Indian, they can’t pronounce it. But the way she says it is beautiful. That softness, that accent, that tone…

In the mythology, when they wanted the ultimate lure for men it was the sweetness of the voices of the sirens that they thought of. The voice makes you crazy. It is your end. You are finished when you hear it. All your self-control melts away. That voice, those eyes. They could charm God.

Separation can either make you realise who is far away from you and that you want near to you, for yourself. Or it can make you forget someone completely. You either get used to it, or you hate it. But this mind finds it very difficult to forget, this heart wants what it wants no matter how impossible it is, how far away it is. But, there is something else. In this diary I have tried to be as honest as possible. When I was a child, there was a song that I watched in a Hindi film: ‘My wife has gone to her side of the family (for a visit)’. The husband is supremely happy. He has a party. He hangs around many other women. He enjoys total freedom. Suddenly, you know that she is not going to be there. You think to yourself that now you can stop thinking about her, worrying about what is going to happen, all the plotting and planning can stop, all the strategies you have to adopt, all the roles you have to play. All the problems and stresses are delayed because she is not around you any more. The mind has a brief holiday. You can escape. When I was a child, I didn’t understand why the husband was enjoying total freedom, total abandon. How could you be happy if your wife was going away from you? The person that you love? You have to remember the flood of relief that you don’t have to deal with your problems any more for a while. You have a respite. But only for a brief moment. Even in the original song, the music video is a daydream. It is not real. Because then, you realise that she is gone and you won’t see her for a while. And then you are not happy any more and you are not free any more. The Buddha was right about one thing in life: attachment causes suffering.

I am tired. Really tired. I have been resting these past two days. Trying to recover. The problem is that my grandmother couldn’t sleep at nights because she was separated by death from her husband. And her, the other one, she can’t sleep at nights. So, because of that, whenever the idea of separation comes up, I can’t sleep either. I mirror the ones that are in pain because they mean something to me. This is what all of this is. The mirror. The man becomes the woman. In pain. You have to suffer the other’s pain.

80% on the last Art History Assignment. I need to work harder next time – I have become distracted and demotivated to perform. Nothing seems worth it any more that much. Thankfully, the mark wasn’t too bad.

There was a new person somewhere today. She seems nice. I have written before: I meet new people almost every day. There were another two new men there too. I am constantly meeting strangers in this life. And the ones you know? How much do you know them? How much do they know you? Sometimes, a good beginning turns sour quickly. Sometimes, a bad beginning turns into a friendship. You never know what is coming.

I had two tours today and made everyone laugh like I always do. I watched them laugh with no emotion inside. It was an outsider looking at the happiness of other people. How could they laugh so easily in this world? How can they be so happy all the time for no reason? But my role is to amuse, to persuade, to educate, to spread the happiness of knowledge, culture and history. And for that, I make them laugh. Because in this world, at least someone somewhere should be able to escape from suffering for just a moment and you should be able to do that for them if you can.

I talked to one of my friends about piercing my ears. My grandfather had his ears pierced when he was a baby. I was thinking of getting two diamond studs in both ears like Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portugese footballer. I was thinking about changing my appearance, making a small homage to my grandfather. My friend told me that that look wouldn’t suit my face or my jawline or hair. She told me that everything was working good like it was already and I didn’t need to make any changes. I listened to her. She is a woman and she is my friend. She wouldn’t give me bad advice about something like that. She knows more about jewellery than I do. So I won’t get the earrings. She told me to get a bracelet instead because summer was coming up because that would suit me.

Dessert today was a Mark’s and Spencer’s Best Ever Trifle which was on the reduced section. I have never eaten it before. It was pretty good. I enjoyed it. It makes a difference from gorging on chocolate all the time.

The poem I wrote the other day when I went to the Victoria and Albert Late with my friend from work:

23.02.2024

leaking audaciously from
the rickshaw of coloured lights
an unfamiliar music
saturating the streets
on which moved the two
middle aged women
who wove and danced in
ecstasy
as though the angels were
playing the harps in the
heavens
they performed for us
the audience of strangers
no ballast of shame
just the buoyancy of
happiness

Absolutely Shattered; Nice Letter; Friend Troubles

24.02.2024

Someone went on holiday and she bought me back a little present. She is a very sweet person and everyone likes her.

Languages spoken at work today: English (obviously), French, Spanish, Punjabi. Other days, also Hindi. Every day I speak several languages. I have changed my brain and learnt how to do it. It is just a matter of effort and confidence – you don’t have to be perfect. In life, I have never aimed to be perfect at anything. There is no such thing. That’s why I’m able to do so many things. I’m a generalist. Specialism is boring. And a massive waste of time. There is that other language still. Her one. I need to get back into it. The memory of the journey.

I couldn’t sleep all last night. Consequently, I am completely shattered today. One of the other Indian men at work actually told me that my health didn’t look too good. I can see it around my eyes myself in the mirror. Because I’ve been running around so much this week, I haven’t even managed to have a shave yet.

Other than that, it was a pretty good day at work. Most of the time, I appreciate what a good job I have in terms of the enjoyment and the interaction with people.

When I wanted to be a professor, I wanted people to engage with my writing. That is a dream. People don’t say anything. Whatever they think. But the email I sent out to the university professor along with my book as a PDF? She wrote back to me and thanked me several times. It made an impression on her. It’s nice to be able to give out your book – I would let the whole world read it for free if it was up to me. It is a gift to the world. But the world doesn’t work like that. We live in the world. Such is life.

I get the strong feeling that some of my women friends are not happy with me. What can you do about it? I am busy – I can’t be messaging people all the time. In particular, I am feeling anger from someone every time I’m around them. What for? All my life, all I’ve been doing is just what women want. And are they happy about it? No.

Maybe these women are reading my diary and they think I am naughty and are judging me. You can’t control what someone is thinking in their heads. No one is forcing anyone to read this diary. I don’t even share links with anyone any more. No one is forcing themselves on any women. And I will stop looking at other women and focus on someone when they give me the signs and the green signal.

Suneel’s Holiday: The Gardens; A Good Lunch and a Good Dinner; The V & A Late; Feeling Love for the Musician

23.02.2024

She just checked if I had written. She has gotten used to reading my thoughts late at night. She expects it. Is she going to sleep tonight without my words? As in the quote by James Joyce, she is the ideal reader with the ideal insomnia. I have gotten used to talking to her late at night. It is a habit of maybe four months. If that is her reading – there is always the doubt. And yet, if that is her, she cannot admit to herself or to me that she likes me or is interested in me. But what is there really to say nowadays? I never see her. When I do, we are never together. If we happen to be in the same place at the same time, there are always others around. Then, after what she has said, it is not right to approach her. It was impossible before, it is impossible now.

Holiday day today. I am going to start taking more of them. What is the point of working all the time when the people I am doing it for are not coming into my life? What is the point when the reason I am working is not taking shape in reality? She will see me less in that context. Does she care? She does not care if I am with someone else. So why would she care about that?

In the morning I went down to the gardens to work on the volunteering stuff. I spent the morning in the three art galleries that they have at the moment. The Marianne North Gallery, The Shirley Sherwood Gallery, and then the International Garden Photographer of the Year Award. They are all amazing, each in their own way. I talked to some of the visitors about some of the things in the exhibits. They had a drawing of Soma, the divine fruit of the gods in Hindu mythology. It was supposed to impart the power of the deity into the individual drinking. But, for me, I don’t need the plant for that. I have the power of a deity in me almost all of the time. It hurts to keep it all inside, to contain it. It needs to come out.

Lunch: Chicken Harissa with honey roasted butternut squash and wholegrain rice.
Dinner: My first time in Honest Burger with a friend from work. An Honest Burger with rings and wings and a Karma Cola. The food was amazing. I will have to go there again. I really enjoyed myself.

I went with the friend to the V & A Late. We saw a Jazz performance with ‘Tomorrow’s Warriors’ – a jazz group put together to promote diverse talents in the art form. As Emily, the Asian woman said, most people think that she is a classical pianist when they meet her, not a jazz musician. She had a beautiful voice. I fall in love with these women when they perform. Making music makes a woman her most beautiful, her beautiful voice makes her beautiful. When I have my children, they will have singing lessons and music lessons. It is the way to bring beauty into the world.

We went to the Diva exhibition in the V & A to start off the evening. We talked about music, especially about Madonna. She is beautiful, highly personable, stylish. I didn’t like her when I was young, but I have grown to appreciate her talents when I compare her to what the singers are like nowadays. She didn’t have the best voice, but her songs were still okay to listen to.

One of my favourite singers in the current period is Arianna Grande. My favourite tracks by her are ‘God is a Woman’ and ‘Side to Side’, but I like most of her songs. I need to download the albums. I love her voice, her looks, her style. The lyrics are not always to my taste. But you can’t have everything. One of my favourite videos of her is ‘Side to Side’ – there is something about a woman on a bicycle. I saw someone today at the gardens that I knew on one today – in the sun she looked amazing.

I saw something at the V & A that I would rather have not seen. I know too many people nowadays. But you can’t unsee what you see and unremember what you remember. That is life. I didn’t let it spoil my evening. What do you expect from these people?

Brain Health; What to Watch; Flowers Thrown Away; A Walk in the Cold with a Friend – 32174 Steps Today

22.02.2024

Whoever reads, I imagine it is her. Or another woman.

A lot of things I do are to ensure that I have a healthy brain. The diet. The exercise. The sleep. Meditation. Making and looking at art. Learning languages. Reading. Writing. Being in Nature. Even socialising. So today I was reading up about brain health on my library app at lunchtime. There was a study that they did that said educated people’s brains were better resistant to the stresses that lead to Alzheimer’s Disease. I kind of feel that the educated brain is better resistant to the blind stupidity of the world and how you have to suffer because of it.

I flicked through BBC IPlayer quickly to see what I am missing since I have stopped watching TV for the past two years. I am missing ‘Green Planet’ about the plants and I am also missing ‘Interior Design Challenge’. I like to see how people create their worlds in the buildings which make up our life. I like to see creative people being creative. I like to judge which is the most beautiful design. Design shapes our lives, our worlds, our interactions. It is an area worth knowing about, being aware about. The spaces we reside in make us what we are. The intention behind those spaces and the planning is important and you get to see it in that programme. I will try and make some time to watch it at some point. There is no rush.

I went on a walk with my friend and then to the pub afterwards after work. I managed to clock 32174 steps today. I meet up with this friend every week. We have a deep level of intimacy and know each other very well. It makes a change from the conversations with everyone else, where everyone has their walls up.

As we walked, I saw some flowers thrown across the road in front of the local police station. I wondered what the story was behind them? A lover’s quarrel? An accident? A gesture? The flowers were bruised and crushed. Poor flowers. Poor eye that had to see them spoilt. Poor world where the flowers are spoilt. Poor life that has such bruised flowers in it. Poor fate in which the flowers have to fade away.

A poem for practice:

the distance that she wanted I give her
the no that she said I make real
I measure it out
I build it
I shape my world according to her desire
I have nothing of what I want
I am not happy
and still she is not satisfied with me

The Irritation of Repetition; The Way of the Fool on the Street; The Life of Passion; Seeing My Name in Art; Matches; The Grieving Period

21.02.2024

The phrase I keep on thinking about is ‘All who wander are not lost’. It is a phrase by Tolkien in a poem. I wander. I am lost. But how lost am I? And why is the wandering of others not seen as being lost? I wander because I have a direction. But yet, I am still lost in this world. I lose myself. I lose others. There is confusion everywhere, the intoxication of the senses. How can anyone find themselves in this world? How can you find yourself when you cannot find love?

I wrote this email and gifted someone my book today:

I’m just writing in a whimsical gesture of generosity and, I’m afraid to say, egotism. Particularly because I have been out of the academic game for a number of years now when it used to be an obsession. Academia.edu sent me a message saying you were looking at my book. So please find attached the PDF copy of the published work in case of interest. I hope you enjoy reading if you get around to it.

Take care and keep on enjoying the critical adventure of the study of legality.

Best,

Dr. SM

For some reason, nobody was listening to anything I was saying today. I had to keep on repeating the same basic information over and over again. It wasn’t just me. I noticed other people had the same problem. Was it the weather? In fact, I have been doing this my whole life. You can’t rely on the intelligence and understanding of other people. Or their memory. Or their communication skills. It is irritating, but what can you do? People are busy, stressed out, preoccupied with a million problems.

As I walked down the moving stairs at the tube station quickly, to ensure that I got home as quickly as possible, the same thing happened that always happened. As soon as the fool on the street senses that you are trying to walk past them – they might have been standing still for the last two minutes – they step into your way suddenly. The fool on the street can’t ever allow you to walk past them. They always impose themselves on you and stand in your way. In life, hardly anyone ever eases your way. But they can stand in your way. You’re probably thinking that what I’m saying is ridiculous. How could they have sensed me coming? Of course they did. They can hear. The unconscious can pick up a thousand cues. They can see out of the corners of their eyes. Their unconscious response is just to get in the way. That fool on the moving stairs stood there for about two minutes before he sensed me coming, absolutely stock still. As soon as I was literally just right next to him, that’s when he felt he had to move. It is always the same story. Shows you what human nature really is.

People say they are passionate. They work for passion. They are in a field that they feel passionate about. They say they are into art. They read no books about art after their degrees. They demonstrate no passion in the artwork around them. You ask them about exhibitions and galleries – they do not go. The life of passion appears to finish with the end of a degree. But for me, passion is everything. When you are passionate about something, you follow it through. You keep on discovering. You have an insatiable curiosity to know and think about your passions. When will I find someone with the strength and stubbornness of passion that I have? I am an intense person – when will I find someone with the same intensity as myself? Is it possible?

After work, I made a few applications. I have to go where the people that are like me are. I am still looking. Then, I read some newspapers and poetry in Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu. Because reading in the Indian languages I know makes me feel good about myself, because I taught myself those scripts and how to read them in my mid-thirties with no help from anyone, just books. It is the biggest personal achievement I have. I read some quotations – they have been amongst my favourite reading since sixth form, when I used to sit in the library at lunchtimes and read them. Because I have always wanted to be a writer and to turn a fine phrase, to play with language. What was the conversation of the other students compared to that? Then, finally, I looked at artwork by Erté in the artbook I purchased last year. There was one image with a lady with a gown made out of lettering – it had the initials I use for myself on it: SM (my real initials are SSM). It was nice to see my name through his eyes, on the gown of this woman. It is nice to see yourself in art.

When is the grieving period going to be over? This separation has been the mourning of death. In this period, I had to re-mourn the loss of my grandmother who I lived with in a quasi-marriage. Because of the incidental detail that the last one smoked and my grandmother died of lung cancer (should have been a deal-breaker – unfortunately, I was too tempted by all the other stuff and I thought I would be able to make her stop and save her health, save her life. It was a chance of redemption – because I was living with my grandmother as her protector because she couldn’t sleep in the nights without a man in the house). And then, the other one and the no. And now, there is the risky operation of my friend. Whenever you make friends with a woman and your friendship gets more involved, you are always risking the entry into the world of the dead and of hell, the hell on earth that is your lot.

In dating news, I have started matching with women much more since I have joined other dating apps about two days ago. These women actually look real. Tinder is full of glamorous women – the type I am most attracted to. But it isn’t proving to be particularly successful. Those other apps – where the women don’t know how to pose for a good photograph and take a good photograph – those women are more into me. Maybe I am not glamorous enough for these glamorous women. Even though professional photographers have told me that I am photogenic.

I was thinking about going out to meet women. Then I remembered that – when I am talking – I don’t like loud noise, seeing people drinking themselves silly and I don’t like other people interrupting my conversation with someone.

Wuthering Heights; Am I Autistic or a Narcissist?; The Poetry of Rumi; Trying to say what the Average Person in the UK is Interested in

20.02.2024

Numbness has returned today. As I said before, everything is impossible. The stars have to align for your destiny. They are not aligned. You stare impossibility in the face. What can you do about it? Nothing. You are powerless. Your hands have been tied by the rules and the laws. It is the desire of the other that rules you. Not your own desire. Now, you can only watch the desire of the other. And even that, you do not want to watch. Because the desire is not for you.

In ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Brontë, one of the most famous English novels ever written, hugely influential, there is the story about me and all of us ethnic minority men. The white heroine of the novel loves Heathcliff, someone that comes from either an Indian or a gypsy background. He is the same as her, he is the same soul as her. Because ethnic minority men are less powerful like women in this culture. But who does she marry? She marries the white man. Who has power. Actually, when I remembered the novel today, I thought about the theme of India in the other Brontë novel, Jayne Eyre. Another very famous novel. I should really do some research into what India meant for Emily Brontë and expose how she was immensely attracted to the country but also equally repelled by it (Jayne Eyre almost goes there as a missionary as another missionary’s wife but then decides against it – her desire is to go there but it is thwarted). Because this is the reality of the racist white woman: at one level, which she realises herself and has intensely to guard herself against, she is immensely attracted to difference. And on the other hand, she cannot bring herself to get into that relationship. She is the victim of her own racism and what other people would think about her if she got into a relationship with an ethnic minority man. Why do I say this? Because I have published an academic article about it from the film ‘Annihilation’ starring Natalie Portman. I did my duty. I shared the knowledge. I worked, thought and published. I know exactly what I am talking about.

I have started thinking that I am on the autism spectrum. I read up about it today. People tell me that I can’t express emotions in my face or in my voice. I can’t read the visual cues in women and I know for a fact that I scored extremely low on an emotional intelligence IQ test. If a woman changes her appearance, while I can sometimes recognise her (if I know for a fact already it is her because she is in the same context), if I don’t know already, I can’t recognise them. I mean, I’m not going to do anything about it. What does it actually matter? You can’t cure autism. Is the autism real though? Maybe I just can’t recognise things in western women and because I spent so long doing a PhD by myself at my desk at home and then Covid afterwards, maybe my social skills have suffered. Maybe women have a poker face around me – that is always the possibility – because they are on their guard against me.

The more problematic idea is that I am a narcissist. Because everyone thinks that is bad. Here is the list, with comments:

Sense of self-importance – I believe I am important because of my mind and my background, my genes and blood.
Preoccupation with power, beauty, or success – Obsession with beauty.
Entitled – I feel I deserve better and special attention. Maybe that would be classed as ‘entitled’.
Can only be around people who are important or special – I can be around everyone, but I can only date someone who I think is important or special.
Interpersonally exploitative for their own gain – Not this one. As far as I know.
Arrogant – Some people think I am arrogant. I boast a lot.
Lack empathy – Not this one. I hope.
Must be admired – I try to be admired and make my best efforts to get admiration.
Envious of others or believe that others are envious of them – I envy others for having a family and kids without having had to do anything much for it. And I don’t think other people deserve to get more than me in life because I have achieved more than them, have worked harder and have more natural talents. In my opinion, it is because of their likeability factor and their race or their imitation of the majority. You could say that is envy. However, read ‘Othello’ – maybe this envy is because I am, like Othello, an ethnic minority man.

(list from https://www.dukehealth.org/blog/9-signs-of-narcissistic-personality-disorder )

I was telling someone about my plan to go to Pineapple Dance Studios. To meet people. They said it was a bad idea. But doesn’t everyone tell you to go to stuff to try and meet people? Everyone gives you conflicting advice about all these things. I decided not to go. I’m not that interested in learning how to dance. And what are the chances I am actually going to meet someone that I like that likes me back and it isn’t a massive waste of time?

In my opinion, the average person in the UK – most likely to be working class – does not care about art, culture and reading. That’s what I see in the people around me that aren’t from the middle class background. I might be wrong, but that is what I see. The people into all that stuff are supposed to be about 30% of the people in the country – and out of that percentage, not even all of them are actually into that stuff or have the time for it. It is just an opinion. But I feel it is the right one.

I read some quotations from the poetry of Rumi today. He appears to be a good philosopher about love. But he is far too optimistic for me. He doesn’t live in the present. When love for us is impossible.