Added 'I live for stories' and updated some descriptions

_posts/2022-05-26-Strangling lull.md

@@ -2,11 +2,11 @@
 layout: post
 title:  Strangling lull
 date:   2022-05-26 17:30:00
-description: TBA
+description:
 tags: poetry
 giscus_comments: true
 related_posts: true
 ---
 
 <div class="poem">
-<b>Strangling lull</b><br><br><br>I feel a lull, serenity, drowsiness,<br>Dull, strangling me, hurts to rest,<br>Jaded, foggy my mind, the stress<br>Of failure pulses beneath my chest.<br><br>Where is the tempest?<br>The rush, the feeling<br>Of wind, of hurtling<br>Through waves, through burdens,<br>It weighed, but purpose, I had,<br>Now aimless, I pray for a map,<br>The fuel tank is leaking, I peer through the cracks,<br>The sun should be bright, but foggy the tracks<br>The air weighs me down, and nought pushes back.<br><br>My dreams still glimmer, but drifting away,<br>The strings they pull me with thin and decay<br>I see an oasis in trusting today,<br>It turns out a mirage and shimmers away.<br>My hope shimmers away.<br><br><br><br>I fumble for lanterns and lights in the dark<br>I clutch on to flint stones, I just need a spark<br>I feel a faint tug, a string becomes taught<br>I push myself up and I begin to walk</div>
+<b>Strangling lull</b><br><br><br>I feel a lull, serenity, drowsiness,<br>Dull, strangling me, hurts to rest,<br>Jaded, foggy my mind, the stress<br>Of failure pulses beneath my chest.<br><br>Where is the tempest?<br>The rush, the feeling<br>Of wind, of hurtling<br>Through waves, through burdens,<br>It weighed, but purpose, I had,<br>Now aimless, I pray for a map,<br>The fuel tank is leaking, I peer through the cracks,<br>The sun should be bright, but foggy the tracks<br>The air weighs me down, and nought pushes back.<br><br>My dreams still glimmer, but drifting away,<br>The strings they pull me with thin and decay<br>I see an oasis in trusting today,<br>It turns out a mirage and shimmers away.<br>My hope shimmers away.<br><br><br><br>I fumble for lanterns and lights in the dark<br>I clutch on to flint stones, I just need a spark<br>I feel a faint tug, a string becomes taught<br>I push myself up and I begin to walk</div>

_posts/2022-09-18-About writing poems on spit.md

@@ -2,11 +2,11 @@
 layout: post
 title:  About writing poems on spit
 date:   2022-09-18 17:30:00
-description: TBA
+description: Why do we write? Who do you write for?
 tags: poetry
 giscus_comments: true
 related_posts: true
 ---
 
 <div class="poem">
-<b>About writing poems on spit</b><br><br>Shall we write a poem together<br>About spit, or something else?<br>It would shake someone up<br>Or make people laugh<br><br>It’s better than writing poetry which makes people sad<br>And worried<br>And they say, "Are you alright?"<br>Poems are not written to seek or show reassurances<br><br>Why do you write poems?<br>You say you don’t<br>I find poetry<br>In your steps, in your hair,<br>In the flourish with which you end your signature when the bank won’t be scanning it<br>In the contact names which are so telling, and telling when they are decidedly not<br>You are poetry<br>And I would like to read a part of you<br><br>It is sunset<br>The clouds don’t let me know for sure<br>My phone buzzes<br>You have written down a part of you<br>And despite what I preach<br>I want to ask you<br>Are you alright?<br>And hear something more than the Yes I know will be a lie<br><br>Perhaps<br>We should have written the poem on spit after all<br></div>
+<b>About writing poems on spit</b><br><br>Shall we write a poem together<br>About spit, or something else?<br>It would shake someone up<br>Or make people laugh<br><br>It’s better than writing poetry which makes people sad<br>And worried<br>And they say, "Are you alright?"<br>Poems are not written to seek or show reassurances<br><br>Why do you write poems?<br>You say you don’t<br>I find poetry<br>In your steps, in your hair,<br>In the flourish with which you end your signature when the bank won’t be scanning it<br>In the contact names which are so telling, and telling when they are decidedly not<br>You are poetry<br>And I would like to read a part of you<br><br>It is sunset<br>The clouds don’t let me know for sure<br>My phone buzzes<br>You have written down a part of you<br>And despite what I preach<br>I want to ask you<br>Are you alright?<br>And hear something more than the Yes I know will be a lie<br><br>Perhaps<br>We should have written the poem on spit after all<br></div>

_posts/2024-02-11-I live for stories - prose version.md

@@ -0,0 +1,18 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title:  I live for stories
+date:   2024-07-17 17:30:00
+description: A homage to my many reasons to love life
+tags: poetry, prose
+giscus_comments: true
+related_posts: true
+---
+
+<div class="tba">
+(Warning, this is more of a prose piece.)
+</div>
+
+Self-identity is always a nebulous concept, and one I've struggled with a fair bit. But occasionally I will write a piece that crystalises many of my broodings about my idea of self. This is one of them.
+
+<div class="poem">
+<b>I live for stories</b><br><br>Bidding goodnight to the table, I swung my bag onto my back and hopped off the raised platform of the roadside Chaayos and begun the walk back to my room. But as I put on my spectacles, an unusual figure came into focus - my course professor, with whom I’d had an enlightening discussion on tangent spaces in manifolds that very morning. He looked at the table I had just left, laughing uproariously in the dead of night, and back at me. “Is this how you live? How absurd.” He said, judgingly. “Are you surprised, because you thought I was a dedicated student?” “Or else you would be napping in the backbenches in my class, if you were gallivanting with this crowd all night.” I shook my head. “Maybe you’re guessing based on certain people you’ve seen, who live for the fun, the ruckus and the parties. Maybe you thought I live for my work, and the ambitions that drive me. I live for neither of those.” “Then what do you live for?”<br>The poetry I told him then, I’ll tell you word for word.<br>“I live for stories. The ones you raise glasses to, or whisper furtively. The ones told at nighttime with eyes bleary, the gossip you save for afternoon tea, the dinnertime tall tales and the anecdotes exchanged over coffee.<br>I live for stories, so I read like possessed (and occasionally, watch movies). I visit worlds galore and return exhilarated or teary, and I keep wanting more. Maybe I’ll write one myself, we’ll see.<br>I live for stories. In Physics I find the stories of the world I’m exploring, and in Maths the stories my kind write to make sense of things, and when I find the sense too much to make sense of, I turn to writing out the nonsense in my head into poetry.<br>I live for stories, and people are not so much characters, but rather bundles of stories. So I keep all my kin, and I listen with intent, because everyone has tales to tell, places they’ve been and things they’ve felt. I judge a wardrobe by its tshirts, not the dress shirts that bay for glory.<br>I live to tell stories - be a storyteller - turns out there’s a performer in me. When I hold the stone I’ll spin tall tales to leave you amazed and dumbstruck and mortified (sorry). And so in everything in my life I seek stories, and every day of mine I could make a story, and when there’s a choice so bold it’d make a story worth being told, then I make it, and it’s risky, but I’ve got the devil’s luck with me.<br>I live for stories. And secretly, I dream of being a story - living a life worth talking about, a legacy worth posterity. Therein lies my drive, the ambition that pushes me. And there’s decades to go and many false starts to forgo, but one day I’ll be a story - one others dream to be, or one they read themselves to sleep.”<br></div>