Airegin

Airegin.

You think it’s a word. Like airgun or something. Or a sort of gin. Thinking this while listening to the Wes Montgomery song – you guessed it. Google and find out it’s a jazz standard. Huh, shouldn’t have been surprised. But what is the deeper meaning?! We must venture further into the rabbit hole (Aside:  rabbits have something to do with fertility, or eating them anyway – just a tidbit I picked up from Ulysses). 

Okay, so venture deeper into the capricious mirkwoods of Google. And…apparently it’s a jazz standard and nothing but. Not a word. Hokay, then.

By the way, it’s not like I have anything to compare it to, but the Wes Montgomery version is really good. From “The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery / 1960” if anyone’s keeping tabs. Ah, oldfashioned-album-naming, I’ve not really missed thee.

Holy hell, just saw this on Wikipedia – it’s actually Nigeria spelled backwards. Mind not blown, kinda disappointing, 4/10.

So, airegins aside, airguns are apparently banned in India. That is to say, the toy ones with the yellow-ochre bullets. After traipsing over half the country looking for the very thing, a kind shopkeeper in Port Blair informed me that the “Guvmint” has done away with them for the sake of the poor kiddies. Black day, indeed. Black as night, black as day, ladida. Back in my day, kids had the sense to not injure folks (remove the odd eye, etc) with them. And I’m pretty sure they still do, so hm, it’s the good ol’ 20^th century construct of the Guvmint that’s got it going wrong. Hm. Okay, not 20^th century, but primitive as fuck. Jeez, should not digress.

Of course, mentioning this to my anonymous roommate, R.V., who shall remain anonymous, (except for the fact that he has a goddamn mountain named after him!) I gathered that it was standard practice in Ahmedabad for kids to mortally wound each other. The cherub that I was, I only shot at tyres on the highway. Point being, the characteristic lawlessness of Lavale has deep culturally-embedded roots and I’m setting up a special committee to look into the matter. Maybe the Guvmint was onto something after all.

See, RV, this is why we can’t have nice things.

Oh yeah, and the current is out in certain sections of G-Block (The One and Only), Lavale, the wastelands, the universe. Black as night, black as day. And while people are stripped of their reason and I await impending, retributive doom at the end of this darkling misery, my album grows cold, and I raise my hat to thee. Good evening, and till the next time.

The Window on the West: Part 5 - At the End of the Fray

At the End of the Fray

The enemy cannot lose. And neither can I. Who will be the shadow on the wall. Or is this the end of eternity. The closing of the curtain. Gentle smile curled up.

Do you fight for salvation?

The Sword of Dreams, the Blade of Smiles! Lend me truth beyond illusion! Slay the veiled villain!

For glory!

Oh, all the people! All those I’ve known on this beautiful sojourn. All those I’ve glimpsed into for a momentary fraction of eternity. All those I’ve passed by on the road, a nudge, perhaps a careless glance, like a bloom on the breeze. 

Or the highest of ideals? But you’ll never truly see, will you? Just like the rest of them, you fear the Nameless, you are blind to the Faceless, and the truth of it all eludes you. Ah, what sweet illusion! Now!

No…not Fate! Never the nightmare. Aaaaaaaaaaaah!

Oh, Humanity! The searing pain. It is your eyes I look into as I kill. My mind is no more. Not mine. Split, gone, vanquished. As I break, stab and end. To die like a dog. To die, die, die, die, die, death, death, DEATH! No more. Why, O nameless adversary! Wherefore is this your face? I will not kill thee. No! Yes! In the greying river will I submit. To always yield. 

Yes. Feel the power of the Faceless. Feel it now. Feel it ripple through. Feel it cast aside the unworthy. Feel it purge. Feel it now!

Oh, ere I go, for the Window on the West! Ah, momentous sorrow of lost friendship!

The Veiled Adversary fears you not! All that you have so pitifully wrought, I am here to unmake.

Dark star, take me. I fain would lie down. Now. Fain would lie down…drift away.

The hum almost takes me…

And softly spoke the hero.

There is neither good nor bad, only the Zeitgeist.

Light beyond compare! Flash of it all!

Such radiance! Ohohoho, such radiance! Laugh, can’t help it. Oh, laugh like I’ve never laughed before! Can’t see anything, the blinding light. The binding light. It blinds me. Binder of destiny. Turner of it all. Keeps getting brighter. Dazzling, dazing, reviving, illusory, now and forever. To see this day! The Whiteness! The beginning has come, or is it the end. Hahaha! I don’t need to see anymore.

Oh…! I feel it! Though my eyes be unseeing and my heart all a-flutter, I know that welcoming warmth. In this world and the next.

The Window on the West!

You will never prevail! You cannot. All that has been wrought since the spread of Time has decided this. It is written onto the Rock of Eternity.

And…gone! 

Like the drifting scent of water on a sunny afternoon. 

Life-giving Window, I shall question thee not.

And this? What…what is this? Is this freedom? Oh my friend, oh my love! Oh…! That face comes to me now, passing through the ironworks of Time. The first face. Freedom! Truth or illusion, freedom under the windswept plains, I bow to thee!

Freedom! Peace!  Life!

A rumbling laugh that echoes through the seas of Time, through bounds unknown. Through the greying fray.

I am Randomosity! The everlasting, undying hearse! The controller of it all, unyielding all the way down! Master of the consciousness, now and forever! To have cast the waterfalls of infinity before Time itself. To know truth from illusion! To rend, to annihilate – to the last shall I find my peace. For it is only I who am real!

Come! Face the darkness of eternal despair, it awaits thee! Here do I show thee the Spear of Spears, the Ender of Time, the Bringer of Infinity! Let us together end it for the last time!

And so turned the hero.

To face him one last time. Or was it merely the second. Or perhaps he faces him yet. Looming figure, unseeing and unbidden in the darkness. To look upon the face of the nemesis, squarely, till the last.

 

“There is no truth. Only the zeitgeist.”

I smiled.

And raised my hands leisurely. Time was a friend from before the beyond now. I could feel it in me! The fray, the Window! All that I have wrought.

The universal consciousness stirs. The Beast of Ages. How long has it waited for the Hero’s return.

Darkness and Light alike fill me, pass by me, as I pass by them. Instants rush by, photographed by the all-consuming. To seek!

Ah, the ties that bind! The chains of the universe! 

I am everything.

And I am free!

Ere the end have I become the master of this universe! The Zeitgeist. The blade that forms itself. The momentary master of eternity. Ah!

I raise the Zeitgeist. Harness it all. Unbridled power. Consciousness beyond compare! 

Dash of crimson, flight of soul. It cannot be…

The Window! The Window! My friend! The Window on the West! At last I have found thee.

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

To live.

And then all was blue oblivion.

[End transmission.]

The Window on the West - Part 4: Battle in the Shadow of the Leery One

[Part four. The mountains at last. Should I terstay or should I tergo.]

Battle in the Shadow of the Leery One

The wasteland rises and falls on either side of me. No more can I bear the torments of the good folk. The pleas and the memories. Perhaps I have lost myself in this labyrinth, but I shall never know. It would be tragic to never have known myself. Or would it. The fate worse than them all though…no! Not ere the end.

Days pass as I scale the unforeseen. And finally at the rich deepening of twilight, I arrive at the last mountain. The ranges of madness, where the Leery One casts his shadows the darkest. There’s no escaping him now, he watches over us – always whirring, always vigilant. The unscalable mountains shrink as the shadows of the One force them down. A grotesque vision. Twist of mind. Home.

Albatross of gold. Catharsis! All I desire is catharsis at the end of the fray.

“Come,” cried the hero. “Let us match our blades. Let us pit our spirits. The draw of the Game nears.”

A rolling rumble from beyond the clouds over Tardeo, from beyond the Aegean. And then I was one! At last! Raaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

The world vanishes in bloodshot hues as night time turns to day. It is a strange world where we find ourselves in, ever shifting, ever pressing on. The pulsing hum of everything wafted about as the May breeze.

Neither good nor bad.

And the enemy looked upon the hero. Oversensory cataclysm! Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

The enemy thrust the Spear of Fate, the Lance of Worlds, the weapon of Them, the veiled adversary, thrust it with freeing finality. But it passes by me as the idle wind, arms outspread, idyllic siesta, song for the road, searching for only what I seek.

Who are you? And wherefore have you wrought the War to End All Wars? 

It was my reflection again, the unyielding other-self, but his words brushed by me too. With the electric jangling of the only life I’ve ever known, I flew. Like the west wind at the edge of the sea! To fight, to strike, to answer the call! The Hero of Ages. Flash of blade and silver of moonshine. I struck the Faceless with my mind, parrying and reeling all the way down. We were joined, two selves in a farcical Romance, embroiled in travail and joy alike. The battled raged on, through time, darkness and the edges of the universe. Through memories of a child and the death of consciousness. Through worlds where I am still alive and worlds where I will live ere the end. The Leery One smiled benignly on us, the pieces of his eternal arena.

 

The Window on the West - Part 3: Ode to the Window

[The third part of it all, I am forever beholden to thee.]

Ode to the Window

Ah, the sea of dreams. 

A young boy stood on the edge of Time, and gazed out wonderingly.

It’s been so long since I’ve these silent breakers roar. Gazed into the multifarious undulations of mystery that roll along this colourless hearse.

Pink and blue, with leaf green whiskers and snatches of despondent grey, danced where there should have been waves. The boy tried to find the sky, but it was all too beautiful. Too fleeting to try. He felt himself forgetting.

Is this it. Or has every journey been doomed since the Beginning.

A beast of a whale broke through in the distance, the gulls scattered, and the golden albatross shrieked, flying higher. Away, and away, and away.

Such sweet music.

The skylight open above me

The ship ready for its captain

I mourn the death of beauty, of Art and illusion

And miss the last train home.

Feels neither long nor short at the end

The fray’s the thing

Misunderstood Art, from now to eternity’s draw

The fray! The fray! All that I desire is with thee.

Can you give life where there is none. Can ya, punk? Plod through autumnal woods like nobody’s business. The quicksilver flight of the heart when my fickle fancies be met. People. People all around, and just them. To seek, and never to yield. The fray, how can you seek me?! I am a child of the Window. Yet, there is no life without Death, no art without Death, and nothing without the Window.

Yet you beckon me, you all-encompassing fray. To your open fields and sunburnt earth and placid grey and dearth of memory and windowless sky will I go. Ere the end, you will have me yet.

Thou Window, thou beauteous Window

How long have I gazed upon thee

Waited for the sun to light up behind your wispy veils

Waited for the next when there was no now

Waited for the truth to strike me

For revelation, salvation and being

Yet waited in vain.

From the long limbs of fatigue to days of unbridled youth

I have waited, and sought thee

From ages my simple mind could never have imagined

To people who linger not forevermore.

From fields that cried for me when Ague’s ghastly grasp had me in her stride

To the turning of the Zeitgeist, as I gazed and left well alone

To sights and sounds that my mind will know later in the day

And to the West, where I must go!

The boy wanted to go on. But there was fear meddling up the wonder. Was he not master of his own heart? His own mind? To seek?

The gentle winds of time have rubbed me a-right

Through even the tears have I persevered,

Through red foliage of autumn and days of the winter moth,

Through the rain that gently smiles,

And the stark cold that show no mercy.

Through the drabness of summer,

And the innocence of storm,

Through times I have been one with the Consciousness and more!

From now to way back when,

Ah, for the Window on the West! How long have I yearned for thee!

How long have I waited to cast mine eyes on thee!

Thou accursed, lovely window, I’ll look through thee yet!

The boy turned as I turn now. To pursue the basest and noblest of desires, if there be such things. Maybe tomorrow, said the boy, and ere today, say I!

The Window on the West - Part 2: The Universal Consciousness

[The second part.]

The Universal Consciousness

Turn away.

It is such a well-crafted bit of furniture, mister. Fit for the kings. That’s what you think, as you curl up on the regal cot, itself lying demurely in the corner of the veranda. Or rather, that’s what you ought to. But you do not subscribe, and thus, you gaze out peacefully into the face of Freedom. A school catches your eye; the students, as a body, babbling away in some foreign tongue. An open driveway that swirls and swirls and disappears into roseate memory. You will sob like the rebel who has realised his place in the universe one day, but you don’t know it yet. Oh, for a moment back then! You see the neighbour’s cook doing ye olde clanging and the intriguing smell of fish and smoke wafts to you. There are cards on the table and antique coins dating back to the Chain-Born Era. You’ve lost interest though. The sky is as lush a colour as you can imagine. All the warm anticipation of a freshwater morning at a picnic and a nostalgic whiff of the swallows flying south. Wow, there glimmers the pond between the buildings; there watches a fellow soul from his happy cell. Now, you confuse yourself with what truly was. You don’t know that, of course. You’re almost on the verge. Truth…and...nothi… It was like that though. Perhaps. You dash your car along the tiles unconcernedly. 

Later in the day, someone asks you whether all perception is an illusion and you cease to exist.  Meld now into the background hum of the universe, lost forever, forever to linger. You have broken through.

The chained Beast is chained no more.

Turn back.