Summer's Anatomy
The curtains and the drying clothes won't cease dancing to the tunes of summer air's acapella.
Do not stop, free us from our static stains, will you? Take me to the caves between parallel and perpendicular existence. The rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter go in circles holding secrets of contradicting epiphanies just like our mother's bangles. What is the human heart without its hypocrisy and obscurity? It's almost July, tender and kind are summer's anatomy.
Let it brew balms for unanswered love accounts for unfathomed accidents, cognitive conspiracies, displaced bindis or broken buildings. Embracing the impermanence and erasing the illusion of separateness, maybe, we might survive the shipwreck this season.
Memorypuram Mortgage - A phone call to the realtor
Do dead people rent a place in our dreams? Hope they're clean and the onions are not too expensive. Do they forget a few things like bangles or bindis until their next arrival or something? How would the temperature be around the mirages of the second cross memory lane? So, the contract for the place would last until my remembrance ruptures and decays? Fair deal.
Flickering bulbs must be frustrating. Probably the neuron's new wiring should fix them. The visions are arbitrary and abstract, like the leftovers of a watercolor pallet. I'm unable to document dreams or are they all intentional like those stupidly unsolvable portraits hanging by the hallway? Oh wait, can we paint the mailbox oodha color/violet? Of course, I know they're not bidirectional, receiver is working? That'll do, but just try to paint them oodha color bro. Where can they hang clocks and calendars? What do you mean they won't need it? At least a photo wall? Hello?
I’m a coastal city
I’m a coastal city, how am I supposed to keep quiet? Act straight? How can I not be lost, for I am vast and vulnerable. I wander, worry and write like a troubled artist. All wagons wait for the whimsy waves to wear clothes of promises and let humans hide behind the hive of hypocrisy. Surfing through the sounds of nostalgia, Summer smiled in spirit.
I live on the edge, brewing breeze,
With no possible understanding of how things are bound, I lay low and watch life happen, collapse, bridge and burn.
How should I feel when footprints and foam forget to caress the skin of beach sand?
I’m just a confused child conceived by chaos and mystery. I connect, create and crumble.
I watch waves pursue one another like teen lovers.
I let people leave maps to the labyrinth of lost languages
I breathe through kites threaded by kisses. How much longer can the mud memorize fissures of missing faces? But, how much can one recollect?
How many questions can I ask? Can I cling to the collars of comfort, for a little bit longer? Tell me, who will dance to the tunes of the looming lullaby of love and lies? What if the echoes stop? The giggles glare? How will I get over the fear of forgetting? How can I rearrange remembering? How many shapes should I savor to feel safe again?
I’m a coastal city, how should I not feel blue?
City's contact lens and consciousness
How much memory can a city hold? Does it limit to an era's foreseeable horizon or beyond? I'm just wondering, can the stains of spatial memory ever rust?
I think the constant feature of the city are its eyes, not the one placed along your roof. We're talking about the omnipresent phenomena of an optic.
With its people and their eyes, how far can a city's sight be? How much can a city fathom? How must it feel to be perpetually perplexed? With all the paradoxes, how much can a city perceive and parse?
Collecting cubical fragments of memory and light, there's no wonder when a city's dream lets surrealism take its throne.
Umm, what do we call those accidental epiphanies through the city's eyes?
I think they call it natural surveillance sometimes, to prevent crime, to make the place more happening, to make us feel safe. Honestly, sometimes I do.
But, are all the stationary gaze, surveillance of safety? At times it shadows contrasting purpose with marinated ideas of mischief and judgment. Maybe our streets need more than natural surveillance, a turbulence within human minds.
Of course, I want to see and be seen, but without the complexities of fear and cynical cognition of the viewers. My city's got pretty eyes, it views all things beautiful and butchered. The question is, how is it going to remember me?
Maybe the eyes of a city are both easy and electric, two sides of the same sword or something.
Anushri Muthusamy is a public policy professional with a keen interest in exploring the intersections of memory, urban landscapes, gender, and human-spatial dynamics.