Category: Musings

An attempt to understand who I am, my purpose, and my life.

Creation

Posted on by Aayam Basnet in Musings

Creation is a curious thing. It is the very thing that has had people scratching their heads for the past millennia or so. It is the higher order of inexplicability and the pinnacle of supreme beauty. It is the tower of order in the huge pit of chaos, it is the wonderful euphony amid the cacophony. And as such, I find creation to be a really curious thing; it is as Alice says, the more you explore creation, the curiouser it gets.

The problem (and the joy) of creation is this: it comes out from nowhere. It may be indirectly inspired, and we can try tracing it down to its origins, but then it vanishes. There has to be a starting point, a starting point whose origins are not known to any of us. It is like a tree with its roots hanging in the air: a baseless, probabilistically impossible occurrence.

Yet, humans play with creation as if it is just another cake; just another day of survival. Many don’t realize what a stupendous miracle creation is; we are growing trees in a vacuum. From the cold dead monotony of human existence, we create the bright fiery phoenix, the phoenix that rises above all of us and transcends us all. 

I am amazed by creation and its peculiarity and am even more flabbergasted when the humans who play so easily with it fail to realize its amazingness. It is all positively miraculous: we live such amazing lives, we are such unique creatures, we are so unreal, really: a relic of the distant past, and a part of the distant future at the same time; a study both controlled by and in control of the external factors; a group of ape-like things which are both proactive and reactive; a creation in itself so incredibly vivid and vibrant. It is a wonder, a wonder we all live and breathe in, and I hope one day people will realize what wonderful and otherworldly creatures they are.

Poetry

Posted on by Aayam Basnet in Musings

Now, words are amazing creations; no doubt about that particular thing. But they are so very hard to control. The speed of thought and the speed of articulation through words has a huge gap between them, and therefore they are out of phase in most instances; not in sync. Now, this poses a huge problem: how to properly articulate words as soon as the thought arises in your head. Looks like words needs some taming to be done.

But when you study words, you tame the very essence of words, they lose their wildness (pretty self-evident). But, within their wildness resides the essence of the beauty of words. Taming them makes that essence vanish, and what you are left with is a colourless hunk of disgusting stew: A tasteless ocean of monotony and gritty sand.

So I don’t. I just let my broken string of words be. I scribble as my thoughts scramble and eventually whatever formed resembles a poem. I do not pay attention to form, style, grammar, etc. as I don’t have the capacity to think so fast and so far. Hence I consider poetry to be that compromise between the gap I mentioned in the first paragraph.

Now, poetry for me began that way, but as every creation of human beings, it has become its own living creature. I wouldn’t presumptuous enough to try to define what poetry for me is: it is just too a huge a concept, a living breathing changing creature that lives in ambiguity, favours layered meanings, and is never really clear, even to the maker.

All I know is that poetry is one of the most sublime ways that I can articulate myself, and I think it is a part of my own identity. I am satisfied with that. I do not want to know the full truth of poetry; I want to discover it slowly, and experience that inexplicable feeling of anticipation and apprehensiveness while swimming in its mysterious depths.

Words

Posted on by Aayam Basnet in Musings

What are words? Merely strings of meaningless letters bridging together foreign ideas. But, that is only but a superficial view of the enormous power of words. These little pieces of abstract intangible things hold amazing power over the human psyche. One can compare and label words as anything: a weapon, an expression, an enemy, a friend, jewellery, power, or even nothing at all. But whatever you label it as, the insidious scope of words transcends the imagination of its creators. Words are a huge body of living, breathing things that exist in a plane of existence higher than ours. They are really, one of the most inexplicable things we humans have created, and therein is my interest in words.

This fascination of words didn’t really come to me in the beginning. I thought words to merely be tools, like a sickle or something like that. But, eventually, as I started reading books and started delving into that world of words, I realized these tools were much more. And that was basically why I started writing. But this begs the questions: 

Am I a writer; a person who uses words to his/her best ability to give out to the word? 

Am I a word-user; merely a person who uses words as a means of communication? 

Am I an opportunist; a person who uses words as a planner, to turn any situation to my advantage? 

Am I a fake; a person who convinces himself and the world that he likes words while he couldn’t care less?

What I would like to be categorized as; to be labelled as is a friend of words; someone who is with those little things at the best of times, and at the worst of times.

But is that really true? What am I?

Well, I am not sure, and I do not know how I can solve this conundrum. Learn another language, perhaps?

All I know is this: I appreciate the power words hold, and I also appreciate their intrinsic fragility and sublimity, and I feel tingles (I resonate if that makes more sense) while playing with words.

Now, I leave this post inconclusive, and will update it later (probably after learning a new language)…

Universe

Posted on by Aayam Basnet in Musings

The universe is an enigmatic beauty. Her infinite wisdom and seductive personality have kept me in an altered high since as far back as I can remember. I have always been stunned by the sublime beauty she possesses, I have been flabbergasted by her eternal pulchritude. That is why I have made it my life’s dream to get to know her, figure out her intimate details, deduce her mysterious ways, and then sigh eternally, as I finally get to know her.

The universe is a singular wonder. A three-dimensional quantized space, riddled different other physical quantities, all connected by the abstract parameter time (that’s kind-of the debated consensus right now). I look out of the window in wonder and try to put the universe into perspective. Immediately, sweat breaks out all over my body, and goosebumps riddle my skin: the inexplicable peculiarity, the seemingly random occurrences, the constant constants, the perfect amount of space, the ever-elusive and ever-illusive hand of time. Then I get even more aroused by my ability to feel such way. I wonder how this came to happen: how I came to happen, how my ability to feel such inexplicability came to happen, and I feel inexorably tied to the universe. I, my thoughts, my mechanisms are as much a mystery as hers. Life is just this free-spirited dance between the enigmatic universe and the inexplicable human, and that is the starting point of everything: every poem written, every story crafted, every painting composed, every musical piece thought-out.

It’s all incredibly vast and connected, a spider web originating from every human and going off into the unknown reaches of human knowledge. Every web depends upon the person to whom the web develops. Some webs might just juggle around the same person, and find pleasure in that, some webs may be spread over a huge area like a fibrous root. And some, which I find the most enticing are those that grow away from the person into the vast unknown. They reach where the senses cannot, they probe the dark mysterious things that surround us, and bright pulses of light come off from those outreaches into the brain of the beholder, and their eyes roll back as an epiphany of the highest degree hits them like a thunderbolt.

Thinking of all this, it makes me feel like I’m at home, it makes me feel full, satisfied, and simply happy: a non-exorbitant, non-ostentatious, non-pretentious kind of happiness; a simple human joy. And that is the true beauty of the universe, I mean the pictures are great eye-candy, but the true beauty lies in the way the universe can make us feel. And that feeling: that high is everything. It is the answer to the “why” for exploration, it is the answer to the “why” for living. It is the crux of human existence, it is one of the primary reasons that humans have come so far.

And all of that brings me back to the first paragraph. And now I see that my attraction to this universe doesn’t have a concrete reason. It is merely an abstract idea, abstract reasons. But that doesn’t imply its non-existence, and thus I am happy. The universe and the exploration of each of its crevasse is a part of who I am. 

26th March, 2020

Explore

Posted on by Aayam Basnet in Musings

Knowledge is a wonderful thing: it is the lifeline of human existence and development, the use of which has separated us from any other species that we know of. But that doesn’t interest me. Knowledge is the holy grail, and it is fantastic, but it is for other more innovative people. For me, it is not the knowledge itself, but the pursuit of knowledge that is of the highest order: the exploration. I am, merely, an explorer.

The quest, the impossible dream of the explorer is thus: fly out to the great unknown and make it known. Then, fly out again to the greater unknown, and try to make sense of it all. This is quite aptly put down by Buzz Lightyear: “To Infinity and Beyond”. Infinity and then beyond it: what a beautiful, paradoxical assertion. In other words, explorers are those diseased with restlessness, those addicted to the beautiful satisfaction, the heavy delightful sigh after discovering something.

I think for the explorer, the ultimate contentment never exists; the mind and the body are never really at rest; each moment is a restless venture for more knowledge—an unquenchable thirst if you may, and that very fact makes the quest of the explorer a kind of melancholic beauty, there is so much to do, so much to know, so much to explore, but so little time. It is like there is a huge field out there, and something precious at one end of the field. The explorer starts at a random point in the field and runs around trying to find that precious thing (not really knowing what the thing is, but running all the same), but never really finds the precious. S/he maps all the places s/he’s been to, and makes deductions (logical or emotional) and tries to go on, and eventually, the body rots away, being another part of the ground, the work unfulfilled, the journey incomplete.

Quite the sad story. But, for the explorer, it is not quite a sad story. Sure, it is tinged with melancholy, a Beethoven-esque torture, but it is kind of a bittersweet kind of story, one that makes you fill up with contrasting emotions of frustration and happiness, primarily because the explorer takes the highest amount of joy in the journey. The destination may exist, it may not. For the explorer, until s/he can get down and measure that abstract destination, it is just another mirage. It is like the journey in a ship to the unexplored lands of the past: nobody knew the outcome; ah, but the adventures in the journey itself were the subject of legends.

And that, I guess, is the biggest part of me: the will to explore.

Scratch that: And that, I guess, is the biggest part of what I believe to be me: the (self-sustaining) will to explore.

26th March, 2020

Muted Beauty

Posted on by Aayam Basnet in Musings

Tameness and monotony have seized humans like they never have. The society is a mass of unthinking brutes that blumber around in a way that can be modelled by simple random walks.  We don’t even seem to realize all the space the third dimension offers. We merely bump around in a two-dimensional world through simple predictable formulae. What has become of us?

Where are all the nuances and intonations that come with what constitutes a life? People have gotten so scared of heartbreak, tiredness, sorrow and other emotions normally related to pain that they have forgotten and are impervious to any emotions, even the ones relating to joy and growth and life.

A beautiful life is one where there is everything: sorrow, sadness, hunger, joy, success, failure and euphoria. Without these alternating periods of pain and pleasure; disgust and wonder; ugliness and beauty, life has no meaning. Why exist to merely survive? Why exist if you do not want to live?

A fall constitutes a rise, a shattering failure results in a stupendous success, and that’s life. When you fall, as you undoubtedly will, just remember that the fruit of the future will taste more wonderful, more golden, more juicy because of the hole you are in today. The sun will shine brighter, and the laughter of nature will be music just because of the “tests” you have gone through.

So live. Live to your fullest and go and explore everything. Do not be afraid to let go and experience things. Go through the terrifying realms of human connections and experience heartbreak; through the lands and stories of war and torture and experience raw terror and sorrow; through the beautiful lands of paradise and experience joy. Just remember that life is a blank canvas. To make it the masterpiece it should be, imbue it with terrifying yet soothing paints, dangerous yet euphoric adventures, bitter yet sweet memories, painful yet mutedly wonderful story arcs.

Scratches on the Paper

Posted on by Aayam Basnet in Musings

The great amount of effort people put into little unnecessary things is quite astonishing. I’m at a loss, seeing the amount of energy and power drained for insignificant moments. Humans are truly a bunch of impressive creatures, and carefree as well. Unproductivity is ever-present, knowingly or unknowingly.

But, who am I to judge? Am I not a product of the same society? Aren’t everything that others do inside me, just waiting to be burst out?

Quite honestly, sometimes I think I’m just a bag of muscles with thin fingers, messy hair and sunken, dark eyes who points those creepy little claws-like finger at anything that passes by. I guess I’ve got to be a little more out there.

Thoughts

Posted on by Aayam Basnet in Musings

You don’t realize what a stunning miracle you are. Painstakingly you have come to this place. Have you ever sat down and thought of what you actually are? You are a passing phase of the existence of something so improbable that it is impossible. You are merely a stepping stone for something impossible, you know how that sounds? Billions of years full of pain and suffering, sorrow and torture, tenacity and survival, joy and happiness lead to this moment. The words I am writing and you are reading are the result of so many small and improbable incidents. If 5000 years ago, a messenger from a kingdom to another had gotten sick and failed to deliver a message, these words wouldn’t have been written today. Hell, if something as simple as a butterfly fluttering its wings had a degree of change I or you may not have existed today. You, my friend, are simply, a resplendent wonder.

Not only you. Everyone and everything in this world deserves to exist. They all have bet incredible odds to be here today. Every blade of grass, every bloom of even the most pungent flower, every ugly crow, every irritating cricket deserves to live. None of them are too lowly or too humble. The delicate beauty of the marigold and the brushy charm of the cycad, both are there, millions of hardships under them, yet blooming and smiling all along. The universe has existed from its conception till now for you to have this moment. This honour of having existed at the same as the majestic tigers, regal eagles, righteous rhinos and wise elephants; living alongside pretty roses, happy lilies, festive hyacinths and friendly daffodils is one of the rarest honours. It is so rare that no one other than you and the people you live with on the earth can and have witnessed it. 

And thereby is a question, why don’t you savour and consume every waking moment? Why are you so withdrawn and why don’t you give yourself up to the world? Why do you bottle up your emotions, make your body weak and shriveled? Why do you treat with contempt nature’s many creations? You have become no more than a big hunk of protoplasm shuffling around trying to destroy the perfect world you live in. I am of your kind, and understand your tendencies. I understand your lethargy, your gluttony, your greed, your wrath, your envy, your lust and your pride. What I cannot understand is why you don’t transcend them. Why do you let yourself be limited by the constraints they possess? You call yourself the most superior species in the planet. Shown your tendencies of easily falling into emotions controlled by your hormones instead of pure natural emotions, I would beg to differ. You do not deserve to be the most superior if you cannot channel your emotions into appreciation and peace instead of aggression and conflict.

Looking at the vast pulchritude of the cosmos, I feel small, insignificant, yet there is another feeling too. That feeling of being extremely spent. I feel the adrenaline coursing through my body as I look at the faraway stars. I feel my limbs going limp, yet strong. I feel my resolve crumbling, “We can never hope of knowing the great things out there.” Existential crisis threatens to seize me, but it doesn’t. For the curiosity inside me isn’t afraid of time and space. It will always remain timeless. And I will do all that it takes to find out all I can of this wondrous cosmic ocean we live in. Contentment fills me as I realize we are part of this huge totality. I thank the universe for lending some of its infinite wonders and beauty in this small rock we call earth. I thank the universe for the small ticklish blades of grass beneath me, for the stars twinkling in the distance, for the mysterious blank enigmatic face of the moon illuminating us.

Money

Posted on by Aayam Basnet in Musings

What?! You need to pay for this?

It disheartens me, the label that has been marked into each and every little thing and big thing.

The human society has gotten really money-oriented. Everything has a monetary value now, from the simple eatables to the human body itself.

Religion is the secret money vacuum, sucking up billions of dollars. Now, who knew that? God is all-knowing, all-powerful, can do anything, but needs money!

Anyone may ask, what’s the problem with money? Although not quite visible in the global scale, it is logically obvious that money and its use is pushing us away from the achievable utopian society.

How? Well, money is a root of evil. Most types of crimes, excluding the ones done by senseless psychotic. You can see that the motive of any crime turns out to be either money, or love. Politics falls under power, which is again controlled by money. Money is the single biggest motivator of anything: good or bad, since its very beginning. And, the high amount of advantages has never, and in my opinion, will never outweigh the similar, if not more amount of disadvantages. For the sake of humanity, I hope I’m wrong.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Sir John Dalberg-Acton

But, then there doesn’t seem to be any other alternative to money. The society has gotten highly untrusting, paranoid, suspicious and cynical.

The human civilization is in a disarray. It is something that has been developed in an unnatural speed, which has left little time for maturity of the collective society, and the biased system we have made is making the future of the civilization positively hopeless.

Life is a stage in a grand arena, untill it suddenly is not, and I see our civilization racing towards utter destruction and apocalypse. Not the normal kind with death caused by strands of glowing red surreal bombs, other explosions and the solar death, but the destruction that is worse, and is caused by people being so paranoid, they become delusional and start hating each other with contempt.

Each man for himself, will prevail, as I, the lone idealist and romantic watch civilization crumbling under my eyes, the same eyes, that once, were of hope, that are now empty and soulless, without like or dislike. Gone.

As an optimist, I hope for a better world and society.

But, being an idealist, I hope I die comfortably before the apocalypse actually starts.

*longs for the simple world that existed before*

I hope we can steer away the wheel which we are in, to a brighter and a better future, with limited number of people, who can co-exist happily, simply, yet with a degree of proper sophistication, that can make us sufficiently comfortable, living in this planet.

Happy existing!

Humans

Posted on by Aayam Basnet in Musings

Humans have evolved in a speed that is doubtlessly increasing geometrically. The rate has inflated so much that the present generation and the generation before it are different apparently and substantially.

This speed in evolution has not developed all aspects of the human being equally, meaning that the external development of tangible structures is higher in relation to the intangible psychological, social and abstract structures and processes.

This may not seem like a problem in the normally viewed society, but in the grand scheme of things, it is a killer of the grand design we are trying to obtain.

Add the cheesy book and movie plots that are full of exaggerated emotions teaching us what is underlined by the word bullshit. So, psychologically, we’ve been caught in a torrent of hopeless optimism that is quite far from the reach from realism and does nothing more than stimulate our brains and provide us with temporary entertainment sacrificing the long-term comfort we could alternatively achieve.

Cynically speaking, the general average Joe of the world is doing nothing in hopes that someone else will do it. S/he is staying on his/her bed basking in the tameness s/he’s become. So, I ask you: are you still in your bed, doing nothing, or are you standing up, like a beacon of light in the dark sea, shining like a star, spreading light, and inspiring others to join in with you?

Well, decide yourself. Humans, in the current state of the world have a choice. Either sit down like all the others and just watch, as life goes away wasted, or stand up and fight the metaphorical fight.

Good luck!

 

May 12, 2018