Elbow Room

the hair on her arm rise up like on an angry cat's tail
if she had claws, the nails would come out screeching
carving uneven lines on some smooth surface
so hard its sure to bleed
she wants no hot milk
neither any bells or balls of yarn
nor a fish tank to stare at...
far less a hand to stroke her cold fur.

“There is no such thing as duty. If you know a thing is right, you want to do it. If you don’t want to do it—it isn’t right. If it’s right and you don’t want to do it—you don’t know what right is—and you’re not a man.”



"...you see, if we had souls, which we haven't, and if our souls met - yours and mine — they'd fight to death. But after they had torn each other to pieces, to the very bottom, they'd see that they had the same root..."


Kira: "Haven't you ever wanted a thing for no reason save one: that you wanted it?"
Andrei: "Certainly. That's always been my only reason. I've never wanted things unless they could help my cause. For, you see, it is my cause."

"And your cause is to deny yourself for the sake of millions?"

"No. To bring the millions up to where I want them--for my sake."

"And when you think you're right, you do it at any price?"

"I know what you're going to say. You're going to say, as so many of our enemies do, that you admire our ideals, but loathe our methods."

"I loathe your ideals."

"Why?"

"For one reason, mainly, chiefly, and eternally, no matter how much your Party promises to accomplish, no matter what paradise it plans to bring mankind. Whatever your other claims may be, there's one you can't avoid, one that will turn your paradise into the most unspeakable hell: your claim that man must live for the state."

"What better purpose can he live for?"

"Don't you know," her voice trembled suddenly in a passionate plea she could not hide," don't you know that there are things, in the best of us, which no outside hand should dare touch? Things sacred because, and only because, one can say: 'This is mine'? Don't you know that we live only for ourselves, the best of us do, those who are worthy of it? Don't you know that there is something in us which must not be touched by any state, by any collective, by any number of millions?"

He answered: "No."

"Comrade Taganov," she whispered, "how much you have to learn!"

He looked down at her with his quiet shadow of a smile and patted her hand like a child's. "Don't you know," he asked, "that we can't sacrifice millions for the sake of the few?"

"Can you sacrifice the few? When those few are the best? Deny the best its right to the top--and you have no best left. What are your masses but millions of dull, shrivelled, stagnant souls that have no thoughts of their own, no dreams of their own, no will of their own, who eat and sleep and chew helplessly the words others put into their brains? And for those you would sacrifice the few who know life, who are life? I loathe your ideals because I know no worse injustice than the giving of the undeserved. Because men are not equal in ability and one can't treat them as if they were. And because I loathe most of them."

"I'm glad. So do I."

"But then...."

"Only I don't enjoy the luxury of loathing. I'd rather try to make them worth looking at, to bring them up to my level. And you'd make a great little fighter--on our side."

"I think you know that I could never do that."

"I think I do. But why don't you fight against us, then?"

"Because I have less in common with you than the enemies who fight you, have. I don't want to fight for the people, I don't want to fight against the people, I don't want to hear of the people. I want to be left alone--to live."

She laughs like its her last time. Pouncing on every opportunity. Sometimes a little too hard. A little too gayly. Hugging it tight like a favourite cousin you're afraid you wont see for a long time.

She just surrenders, as if doped. Careless, mindless, free. As if she owes no one nothing and no one owes her nothing. Her playlist has undergone a drastic change. She likes the head-banging rock music suddenly or at least it likes her. It has the same numbing effect like a hot water bath, the excess in this case not being really hot water but really loud noise.

It doesnt mean she is never sad. You could have a sense of humour, take yourself less seriously, eat a lot of chocolates and still be sad. It seems like she is unwittingly sad most of the time. You would think it was better than being consciously sad, but it isn't really. Its like you've hurt you're knee but you don't know it. You keep limping, confused but indifferent for it doesn't hurt. And in the backdrop, that invisible wound, like termite is gnawing at your knee making it hollow from within—till the day you cant walk anymore.


She wakes up in the morning with another strange dream. She sees she is living by the sea in a shack like one you may imagine painted on a cover of a children's novel. The sea a deep azure blue, coiling tides at the shore, a little girl with torn clothes and a dark complexion, sitting with her hand around her dog on the beach, watching the waves come and go. She dreams she is that girl. And a wave as huge as a Tsunami rises like a monster, asleep for a hundred years, from the bottom of the sea, and destroys her little hut and everything in it. As the tide rises like a massive wall in front of her, she rushes back to her shack, and watches frozen with fear from a round tear in a curtain. Her eye round and animated from the whole, like a cartoon character's with curved lashes, that makes a magical sound as it blinks.

And what does she see?? All the aquatic life and fishes and sea animals, in the this fantastic wonderwall rising along with the water. But what she sees most clearly is an octopus. Suddenly she is on a log of wood floating on the sea and the octopus is hazily around somewhere. She is afraid of the huge octopus with its many tentacles more than the water itself. It has a face, that octopus. She could clearly see it. Like King Triton; yes, Little Mermaid's father with the trident in hand! But evil and angry!



And as is customary in dreams, she is suddenly eddied into another place totally unconnected. She is in her bathroom now! With...him! Saying her last goodbyes, hurriedly, for the sense of urgency and danger created by the Tsunami hasn't altered with the change of scenes. She hugs him, cries, kisses him, and there's somebody at the half-open door, knocking...Probably its her brother...

And then, it dwindles from memory. A mass of fog. Thats all she remembers.

Sitting in office, intrigued no end by her strange strange dreams, she searches what her dream means, if anything, because you know, not every dream has to mean anything. What she finds is this:

To see an octopus in your dream, means that you are entangled in some difficult matter. Your judgment is being clouded. Alternatively, the octopus indicates that you are overly possessive and maybe too clingy in a relationship.

To dream that you are in the bathroom, relates to your instinctual urges. You may be experiencing some burdens/feelings and need to "relieve yourself". Alternatively, a bathroom symbolizes purification and self-renewal. You need to cleanse yourself, both emotionally and psychologically.

She finds it funny,and useless. A Dream Bathroom to "relieve yourself" of psychological burdens? Merlin's Beard!

Immediately after she wakes up from this dream, she is still somewhat dotty. Still in bed with her head in her hands, she sits with her mobile in her lap. A few messages blink on the screen from last night. She doesn't open them just yet. She still hasn't completely stopped sleeping. Odds are she is still dreaming a little. With one foot in her dream, and the other in reality, she tries to take a stance. She is unsure where she wants NOT to be. Its 8 am, she has a faint clue that she is late for work. In such a precarious situation, her phone beeps a new message. And its him. She knows she would rather go back to sleep.

Confused, sleepy and disoriented she staggers to the bathroom. About to close the door of her room behind her, her hand comes between the door as it closes. Aaaaaaaaaaah. She totters to the dressing room. After about thirty seconds, her finger bursts with pain like an atom bomb. And right there, she begins to cry. Her brother and parents are fast asleep in adjoining rooms. And she begins to cry. Cry, as if everything in her life is wrong because she caught her finger in the door. There goes her sense of humour and everything happy or funny or right in her life! Because she caught her finger in the goddamned door!

Only she felt like in crying about the finger, she was really crying for the hurt knee which hadn't really begin to hurt yet.