Yet Untitled 115 - Prose blossoms
A short holiday dispatch made of photos and paragraphs
Dearest Yet Untitler,
I walked down the gangway for a flight observing someone in an Iron Man t-shirt walking in front of me. Suddenly, it was as if I was inside a novel that I was writing, narrating a paragraph to myself because this sighting had sparked a blossom of prose in my head.
It went something like this:
The man walked with a T-shirt that read “House Party Protocol”. Under it was a picture of the superhero Iron Man with all his technological bells and whistles surrounding him. I did not know what ‘house party protocol’ was but having known Marvel movies I figured that it’s likely an utterance that triggers a 15-minute action sequence that leads to a global geek orgasm lit by the simultaneous explosions across a few million screens. But right now, it was just a t-shirt floating in front of me on the body of a large, well-built man with a slightly laboured tread, the soles of his Nike Dunks pressed down by his considerable mass. My mention of his weight is not a judgment; just an observation, one that also finds the total explosive potential packaged in him and his t-shirt simultaneously awesome and simultaneously mundane.
My spidey-sense suspected that this had the beginnings of a YU instalment, but I beat my head against the idea for a few days to no avail; only to realise that it was the potential stand-aloneness of the paragraph that appealed to me.
So here a a few standalone paragraphs - bouquets of words that string together one or more poignancies (to me) arising in my head between margaritas while on a short holiday.
As always, they string a few (mostly recent) images along with them.
I looked at the moon through a window in the trees and wanted to photograph it. I haven’t looked through my Leica for some months now because the last time I had it with me was a joyless, painful time. Ever since then, I’ve been reminded of that testing time when thinking about my camera. The testing times have since passed, so, Vasant - pick up the damn camera again!
When you have young kids, long weekends become like prized vintage automobiles parked in garages - you feel guilty when you don’t use them. But here we are, riding this long weekend like it’s Tornado and we’re Zorro. Well done, Nath family. Bonus points!
Photographing you makes me think many things. Before the first thoughts can register, my mind has already raced ahead and has started thinking thoughts about people I knew long ago and asking myself “how did so-and-so ever have time for me?”
Then my mind races even further ahead to ask “how come so-and-so DIDN’T have any time for me?”
Suddenly, my first thoughts become clear. Whichever direction the yes’s and no’s sent us, they led us to each other. All other thoughts and questions cease from here on, but I do think of all the so-and-sos with a sincere wish for them to be happy, whether we had time for each other or not.
Food. Tell me how to think about you! I enjoy you, so I could never regard you as merely an article of sustenance. I’m wary of losing myself in you, because allowing that always leads to disappointment, or - in the worst case - despair. I want to continue to enjoy you but I wish for an equal relationship where neither of us exert the greater power over the other.
Can we do that? Can we try?
I have been called strange for staring at trees but the thing is that it’s the trees who are staring at us.
How can I not meet their eyes, full of so many questions for me and my kind?
Is it possible to raise these two without strictness? You do it with ease, taking the chaos that follows all on yourself.
You are the braver one between the two of us.
I realise it now.
Thanks for listening to these partial but deeply-felt thoughts.
Lots of love
V
How about sharing a ‘prose blossom’ of yours with me. Share, please. I want to read it. Backbencher YUers who meet me and tell me “I always read but don’t react” - I’m talking to you!
