Absolute evil (if that exists), bloodsucking creatures, with not a care. You’d imagine Dracula, perhaps. Lestat, the chap from Slayer, and most of Rice’s - thought of whom - curdle your blood.

But apart from Dracula, the first vampire to get to me was Andre LeBrel. Young looking, neat as a pin, warm, and a good guy. Bless Lackey, for since I have not been able to think of vampires as all-evil. There’s Otto Chriek, and the Black Ribboners on Discworld; no Pratchett fan can forget Carpe Jugulum. Then came Digital Knight. I believe Stephanie Meyer’s vampires abstain from human blood.

So after someone asked me a question - I’m wondering. What do you think of them?

Five words you can use to describe vampires? or which you associate with them?

It’s been a year since I had a brand new notebook. You see, I’ve been brought up to the creed “do not waste” and so, of course, I use other people’s left over, part-used notebooks (ripping them apart with great satisfaction). Perhaps it’s noble (recycling, environment etc).

It’s also sad. A little pathetic even.

I want a fresh, new notebook.
All mine, Mine, MINE.

And its endess possibilities.

A little less time, or a little more and I could have stayed. Who can dig thier toes into the sand at the fringe of land, with bubbles and foam around your ankles and stay unmoved?

It was the moon.

It shone, and washed away the bright painful colours of the day, lending a soft glow and patient hope to temptation. It made morality, education and society’s rules which were dinned into your mind since childhood seem as slender as the webs of a spider - to be swept away.

It made you forget that the spider’s silk is stronger than steel. There on that beach with crabs that broke out of thier coccoons and turtules going extinct, things were possible. Impossible vistas would open, and it would take just one more step, just one more.

To follow that wave that returned into the heart of the ocean, cold foam, warm water. The shelf is short along the coast of the Deccan. Adam’s/Ram’s bridge lies about the depth of the Bay of Bengal. It is hungry, and people no longer notice when it finds another sacrifice - one willing to simply step forward and give in to the tide.

I am the moon’s daughter. What else could I do? I was swept away.

Do you ask for faith only to betray it?

Once, a long while back, I got very angsty about a review I received (Many more negative - and worse - reviews I’ve handled much better than this). Now I’m more or less C’est La Vie-ish about it, but back then, I’m sorry to say, I wrote this. Then I hid it.

Please don’t pull just any paper from the literature and shove it at us to read. Either read our manuscript and figure out what it is about, or say that the manuscript is not clear about the focus of the work.

Take a hint from the title. We *want* to address a specific area. That is, by definition, a limited study. We’ve even spent a page on why.

As for the papers you have asked us to reference:
buddy, the first paper has nothing to do with our work. Just because the model used a term which we use frequently in the manuscript… Two paragraphs on the generalised item, which we have emphasised we are not working on, do not have any connection, or, for that matter, any relevance to the comprehensive survey we have carried out.

For the others, did we mention yet? We have a specific study, with specific results, and a general paper does not substitute for that. You can extrapolate, but we have proof. Surely you recognise the value of that? Let me spell it out: if we were to extrapolate instead of prove everything a) science would be extinct b) you’d be out of a job.

Grow up. Don’t side with the nay-sayer just because it is politically expedient. Read the damn manuscript before you decide what you’re going to do.

So we were long winded. But you never read anything but the abstract and conclusions, or you would know we have covered all the ‘concerns’ you have. End of vent.

I wish I could say you can take your journal and stuff it up yours. But — the problem was that my Abstract and my Conclusion did not convince you: I was a bad communicator. So I won’t send you this, and will fix the manuscript. Because it really is good work and really will be of some use in this confused field.

Yours sincerely,

Arrogance and tactlessness have a price.

Your friends.

I’m a bit lost, a bit adrift
Straying along the galaxy
Sleep deprived a little
Working overtime. Yes.

Wondering about loss and pain
and what they mean, really.

How very unfair it is that

some few can drive daggers into hearts &
some have and some lose, but all hurt

What does it matter anyhow?

Nothing is to stay, and maybe just maybe neruda was too full of pain and bitterness to see:
He had her once. He’ll never forget. And for those moments she was only his. You can’t control or be sure of what will happen. Or what happened before. And if ownership is a concept real, then to have had is to have, because you’ll never lose your past unless you choose to.

Or you forget.

Somewhere beneath Period Three Implies Chaos
In the whirlwind

of strange, unexplained, half-forgotten phenomena
of dirty mugs, empty bottles, open pens;

Between the dog-eared copies of Slowness and the Prophet

and half-corrected fourth grade notebooks
with strawberry stains smeared generously on top

Lies a cream envelope she’s looking for:
Love
Buried beneath mountains of duty and paper.

Modified from the original on the LotrPlaza.

I feel like an onion.
Every time I turn around, I see a new bit of me, and I am not sure the peeling is comfortable.

Why is every little thing a surprise these days?
(Don’t tell me I’m growing. )

Three years of this blog (and the older one - but it’s like just the one blog to me) have gone past. I’ve blog addiction to no blogging, to a post every other day. I’ve been reading a whole lot more than I’ve been writing. And I had two epiphanies today.

1. I don’t know what to do with this web-log. I mean, I’m not really into journals. I’m not very open, and I don’t think I can deal with spilling my guts - even about, say a neat eat-place I found (Tadka, Jayanagar 4th block). So not journal-blog. The poetry has been leaving me feeling a bit exposed and a bit vulnerable. I can’t put up - just can not - the latest I’ve written. The descriptive snapshots are no longer fulfilling. I’m not writing that stuff anymore.The basic problem seems to be that I don’t know what I want to do, except write something. (I’ve joined ScriptFrenzy, btw. I have no doubt it’ll go the NaNoWriMo way - halfway to the finish line and ka-splat!)
2. Camphor-the-reader is an illusion. I’ve been re-reading this past month or two, and I realise that my willingness to read stuff has taken a sharpish dip. Familiar territory, here I come. And that scares me. For as long back as I can remember (4th standard, but I don’t remember much before that except school and rain and throwing salt on leeches in Gauwhati) books have been there. Why am I going off my most reliable addiction?

I’m not sure why this is here. Like I said, the journal makes no sense to me. But I think the ultra-organised logical phase is about to hit me again, which means the traditional blogroll may go back up; and the writing will dry up.

Oh well.

EDIT: #2 is no longer valid. I went and started the Amulet of Smarkand, and segued into the Anasi Boys and StarDust and now am reading O! Jerusalem again. And I am writing too much. Mom always said I did things by extremes. Looks like I’m doing too much rather than too little again.  And then will come the burn-out phase.