India Q and the Temple of Gloom

In a candle lit room with the perfume of peppermint wafting thru the air, strains of music can be heard as three priestesses sing lustily along with all the fervour that a prayer demands.

They are lying on the floor, eyes wide open, staring beyond the room walls, silent but for the words to the songs, “yeah.. you bleed just to know you’re alive” and then others go “sometimes I feel like I don’t have a problem” and then again “Just remember when a dream appears”..

There’s no one like a young girl to make a God of something she knows and doesn’t understand.

Alanis, Paris and I have worshipped at the Altar of Gloom for the longest time. Like any other God he can be benign and angry, tease our senses with a happy gloominess, a knowledge that we can feel.

And like all the great Gods, sometimes there is no reason for His presence. We can wallow in it just for the heck of wallowing in something that can be reached and believed. And if music has forever been used in temples, ancient and shiny, to sharpen the worshipper’s mindless devotion, then we three have been High Priestesses for the longest time.

After college, the temple lay bereft for a while, the High Priestesses flown to try the world. But they met again and found that the God had lived.

For anyone who has ever understood a blue song or got a peculiar joy from lyrics you’ve not written, or sat looking at truck lights passing away on a distant highway with some kind of scratching in your inside; wanted the clouds to rip away from you as you plunge through their depths, string less; for anyone who’s ever wanted to burn and live;
For where there is youth and a desire for life and love, the Gods shall bless us in all their bounty and there shall always be the Temple of Gloom.

And like different Gods bind different people into one force for good or ill, here we are...
Still bound.

Coz I know that you feel me somehow
Fly the ocean in a silver plane…
Lonely as I am together we cry.

Between Heel and High Water

Once in a while I go through my closet and I find that I have more clothes than I did the last time. I'm a hoarder – good stuff, bad stuff.. I can make myself throw away nothing. So my room is the cleanest place of stashed away memorabilia.

Shirts that went out ofstyle years ago, papers and diaries that have nothing more interesting written on them than the lyrics of songs or list of appointments of a year gone by, every gift ever given to me – ugly ones in drawers ready to be put on display when required.. incapable of parting with anything that means something.

Paris and I shifted house. Since the job of packing annoys me as it can only annoy someone with too much of unwanted luggage – I decided to trash without thought. And I did. Two suitcases filled with things that hadn't seen daylight in more than a year.

And then I came to my silver heels.
These heels had been my soul (terrible pun) for a long time – stilettos of the sexiest kind, they were a standard of the woman who cannot be expected to stay, a woman who will dance when she feels like and slide them off and chatter in a moment. This stiletto-shod girl could make men drool and girls envy. Though they had pinched my feet for some time now, I resolutely refused to throw them away. That day I stopped amidst the dust and mounds of cartons and stared at them.

My bandana slipping off my forehead, and shorts looking morosely ill fitting I put on the footwear again. Sigh. Oh the joy of it. I stand four inches taller and distinctly start looking sexy. I know if I keep them on a little longer or walk around in them, it'll start to hurt.. but really is that reason enough to throw them out?!

These were the heels in which I had enticed my first love, these were the heels in which I had gone for my graduation, these were the heels that had been borrowed by my closest friends for the most illicit purposes. These were good stuff. Why throw them?

But I did. Sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is to throw the good old stuff and create space for new. Sometimes the best thing you can do is forget even the good with the bad. Sometimes the best you can do is go buy the newest pair of white calf length stiletto boots and realize that you've outgrown them silver heels.

WHITE

As promised.. Here's a poem written by Alanis while The Four were in college. Found it in a letter written from India to Shade...
"That damn Lupin, he's such an overbearing ass, i have no clue why u like his philo class so much. He's attempting to get Alanis to change some lines and punctuation before White is published in the college mag. Not surprisingly, she held firm. It was her poem and her meaning. The punctuations fell where she willed them and to change them (ostensibly for the better) would reduce meaning. As a wannabe poet, i whole heartedly agree."

“Brown” is what the farmer says, the color of earth is.
Blue to a scuba diver or Neil Armstrong.
Pink to six year old’s, Aerosmith.
Green to a gardener.
Red to a Cardiologist.
Black to the blind.
Yellow to the sun.
Orange to the birds that fly past it.
Purple to Govinda.
Grey to my grandmother.
Gold to Goldilocks, blonds, the God’s.
Silver to the optimist.
White for the snow and the clouds above to Tenzing or the Icelanders.
White to any European during the imperialist regime.
White to all the browns, blacks and yellows that represent one universe, at that time.
It never boiled down to skin, bones and blood.
It’s about what the eye meets.
What lay on the surface.
White the coral beneath the ocean.
White the cleanest sand.
White the sky when it chooses to be.
White the color of our smile.
White the palm’s of our hands.
White the bones beneath any skin.
Red when you open the white skin.
Red when you open up any skin.
Yet we do not live in harmony with our surfaces.
We toy with the color’s we have.
Slay the green.
Rot the grey.
Spill the red.
Blue for background.
Black and brown as base.
Yellow for finishing touch’s.
White left behind.
We have a perfect world.
With differences.
Colorful.