I am so fucking tired of waking up, I am writing this after I just woke up, with my head throbbing with all kinds of nightmares and not being able to sleep at night even though I have beaten the body beyond the edge of exhaustion till after 4 am, to parapharse Springsteen, I was bruised and battered and I was unrecognizable to myself. I saw this qoute yesterday, without music life would be a mistake, but there are moments, so many moments in these days that I think, life itself is a mistake. It makes me remember Kurt Cobain's sucide note:

"So much that it makes me feel too fucking sad. The sad little sensitive unappreciative pisces Jesus man! why don't you just enjoy it? I dont know! I have a of a wife who sweats ambition and empathy, and a daughter who reminds me to much of what I use to be, full of love and joy, every person she meets because everyone is good and will do her no harm, and that terrifies me to the point to where I can barely function. I cant stand the thought of Frances becoming the miserable self destructive, deathrocker I become. I have it good, very good, and I'm grateful, but since the age of seven, I've become hateful towards all humans in general. Only because it seems so easy for people to get along and have empathy, EMPATHY. Only because I love and feel for people too much I guess."

And when I sit before the typewriter, we found one in the attic, to write so that the music of the keys hitting paper may soothe me, I find myself writing poems of sadness and anger, that's not who I am but that's what now I have become, a crazy sad angry fuck. I don't want to write my own death warrant, die you motherfucker die, which is what has been happening, so I avoid bridges and building ledges lest that crazy fuck decide that pain is too much and jump off, so is it with knifes and blades. Fingers already hurt from the previous round, this time the fucker will kill me. The traid of good things have almost died within me: hope, faith and love. I don't hope for anything anymore, do I dare to have faith in anything? and love as I know it is a fucking joke that plays out on the April Fools Day. I could laugh at it, if wasn't so cruel and hurtful. Maybe I too am a sensitive unappreciative Piceses and should fucking die. I imagine all kinds of ways they may discover my body, I like the one of splaterred like an egg on the interstate the best, oops accidental roadkill, sorry I didn't mean to.

Goodbye.

After making myself sick last night, yes only we have that power for none else can disturb our peaceful frame of mind if we don't allow them to, I went home and called up a friend and talked all night. We usually talk to get reassurances about our own stands and to get "sympathy" about our own misery, thus making the whole thing more worse.

However a wonderful thing happened. Instead of paraphrasing the questions from my point of view, he started asking questions from the diamaterically opposite point of view. The most important question he asked was this, suppose you encounter a situation in which a person claims to love you but either you don't that person as much or you are simply in no position to love that person, will you give up your freedom and acquecise? This question made me realise the wrong angle from which I was asking questions: I was asking "WHY?" while I should have been asking "What if I was required to make such a choice?".

Viewing the situation from this viewpoint made me realise how silly I was most of all day yesterday, berating myself and reducing into an emotional wreck. I also enabled me to practice forgiveness for given the circumstances maybe I too would have acted or reacted in the same way.

We also talked a lot about the ideas that seem to hold relationships vs relationships in an arranged marriage social setting. One critial idea that became evident was when people marry, mostly through arranged marriages in India, what essentially happens along with the marriage is that families are in a way "marry" into one another. While arranged marriages may have their own drawbacks, the biggest plus is that families which still give a solid basis individually, by virtue of pseudo merging end up acting as the secondary glue to the marriage. Such a larger social net acts as a balance against the "I" and "myness" that seems to be to a major factor in the fragility of relationships here in the US. Besides sucessful relationships have always been about that, balance of individual wants and urges vs common goals, needs and aspirations i.e my good vs the greater common good.

The side effects of concentrating on "My good" or "My gain" or "My desires" lead to great discomfort when required to make compromises(invetiably however well matched or snychronized two people may be, there are compromises that have to be made), negative energy that comes from such a dissonance and lack of a deeper perspective on human nature.

We discussed this as one of his labmates was going through a divorce just after an year from his wife who was his girlfriend of 6+ years based on a percieved loss of freedom. While being an advocate of freedom and emphasising full rights in making our own choices, I think sometime we should pause and see if the choice we are making is really going to contribute to our long range happiness. Now what is the use of freedom when such a possibily false freedom will make us feel miserable anyway!!! I think good freedoms in the most fundamental sense are those that enable us to exercise our talents and enable us to better ourselves. And we should fight for these freedoms if any relationship endangers them and prevents us from developing our potentials.

However freedoms that simply involve jumping from a frying pan into a oven, in search of stuff usually some version of highly idealised romantic mumbo jumbo, are not freedoms at all but instead bondages for gratification of some(usually unrealistic and self centered) desires. While desires are good, afterall human life wouldn't have survived if there wasn't the desire for self preservation, we can be dangerously stuck in a Palavov's dog loop, wherein our minds become so conditioned by our desires that pressing a button causes us to salivate and switching off a button causes us to howl in pain. This is exactly what my desires did to me yesterday evening.

And then, atleast I have to admit to this, gratification of a desire necessarily doesn't mean our happiness level will increase by leaps and bounds for we still can be as miserable as we were before. This has happened to me and probably has happened to a lot of us. So the moral of the story is reduce the desires to a minimum and direct the thoughts towards happiness rather than allowing thoughts to drive us towards the good old Palavov's dog loop of desires, which both fullfilled and unfullfilled can leave us in the same miserable state as before!!

And as I read through this I realise I have done nothing but very directly understand Buddha's Four Noble Truths:

1. THE EXISTENCE OF IMPERMANENCE Nothing lasts forever. Understand this and be not attached to what you are experiencing, otherwise you will experience suffering. When you experience happiness know that it is a reaction to circumstance and it is not a permanent state. Conversely, when you are suffering know that it shall not be eternal.

2. THE ARISING OF SUFFERING BECAUSE OF CRAVING Craving sensory stimulation, craving existence, and craving non-existence give rise to the continuity of being, and with it its attendant suffering. Attaining a state of non-craving should be part of your daily effort.

3. THE CESSATION OF SUFFERING One can end eternal suffering by ending the craving that leads to the continuation of suffering

4. THE MIDDLE WAY, or THE NOBLE EIGHTFOLD PATH Ending the craving that leads to the continuation of suffering is brought about through living by the ideals of the Noble Eightfold Path. It delineates a plan of self-discipline regarding ethical conduct, mental discipline, and wisdom. The Path avoids two extremes--the pursuit of complete and ultimate sensory pleasure, or the pursuit of utter self-denial

Thank you MJC for your sleep time. Our conversation helped me to instantly become sane and in the long run perhaps a little better person that who I was.

Love and joy to all.

1) The first condition for love is forgiveness. I can't love if I am incapable of forgiving.

2. The second condition for love is trust. I have to earn trust. It's not a given.

3. Love is not a need or a demand that has to be met or filled. It's something that comes but rarely like unexpected rain on a burning summer day.

4. I will never fear the loss of love for love is what the soul is made of and I will have my soul as long as I am alive and even after.

5. I will to love others unconditionally first. Only then will I receive love unconditionally for the greater the conditions that have to be met, the harder is to go to a loving state. Love doesn't like fences.

6. I will never be shy or afraid of expressing my love. I will say, "I Love You" often and joyously.

7. Love and control are opposites. Love is expansion and control is something that stops this expansion. I will not mix up these two.

8. As much as love enables us to see the world in with a startling clarity I will try to look at love as clearly for a lot of other emotions that usually masquerade as love fool us.

9. There can't be total love unless there is love in all aspects of the living, in what I do, in what I think, I what I write, in what I say and in what I express. If there is a lack of love even in a single aspect of life, that will drain away love for the other aspects. A boat with a hole can't stay afloat for long.

10. I will show love concisously towards each and every person I meet, no matter who that person is.

11. I will not judge as I don't want to be judged. The instant I judge I know that I am setting into motion a process in which I shall be judged likewise eventually. What goes around comes around is true.

12. I have realised that I will even get those things that I don't want. Such is the power of thought.

13. Love is a monotonically increasing function of time. Lasting love becomes lasting only becasue it has lasted in time. Love is not instant chicken soup for the soul.

14. I will be deeply emotional towards everything and everyone I love and strongly analytical about the actions I perfrom to manifest this love. This will prevent mistakes and bludners that happen when the emotions are on lukewarm and the action sloppy.

15. Love is a gas, even a little love occupies all available space. So I will be greatful for all the love I already have in my life, for no love is little.

16. Love that comes from an angle of lack is not durable for I can't give what I lack. But love that comes from an abundance is something that will never go away. So I will love with an attitude of abundance rather than one of lack.

17. I will take frequent stock of my love garden. I will check if there are parts of it that are not getting enough nutrients: communication, laughter, spirit or if parts of it are being attacked by pests: fear, anger, jealously. I will take action without delay for love is highly sensitive.

18. Love is like clay. To shape into a beautiful form takes malleable hands. I will strive to be flexible and skillful.

19. I will never criticize or doubt love for it goes away the moment doubt or criticisim come in.

20. I hold this to be a self evident truth: Love is the greatest thing.

2002:08:09 23:30 Atlanta

I wrote this last night after I sat down and analyzed what I have learned from all my experiences in receiving or giving love. The above statements may not be wholly true forever but I belive that they are totally true at this point of time.

I end this with something I read in the New Testament that pharaprases the manifesto the best:

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a tinkling symbol.

And if I have prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And if I dole out all my goods, and if I deliver my body that I may boast but have not love, nothing I am profited.

Love is long suffering, love is kind, it is not jealous, love does not boast, it is not inflated. It is not discourteous, it is not selfish, it is not irritable, it does not enumerate the evil.It does not rejoice over the wrong, but rejoices in the truth. It covers all things, it has faith for all things, it hopes in all things, it endures in all things.

Love never falls in ruins; but whether prophecies, they will be abolished; or tongues, they will cease; or knowledge, it will be superseded. For we know in part and we prophecy in part. But when the perfect comes, the imperfect will be superseded.

When I was an infant, I spoke as an infant, I reckoned as an infant; when I became [an adult], I abolished the things of the infant. For now we see through a mirror in an enigma, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know as also I was fully known.

But now remains faith, hope, love, these three;but the greatest of these is love.