Lift the FOG...

Have you been and do you - Railroad and FOG.

"FOG", is a term coined by psychotherapist Susan Forward, Ph.D., and talks about controlling relationships and the theory that fear, obligation or guilt ("FOG") are the transactional dynamics at play between the controller and the person being controlled.

May also be called misusing the keys to your heart.

Ok, before drama queen makes a grand entrance let me get to the facts and technical details.

Wikipedia further subdivides FOG into the four mental manipulation styles identified by Forward and Frazier:

Type	Example
Punisher's threat	Eat the food I cooked for you or I'll hurt you.
Self-punisher's threat	Eat the food I cooked for you or I'll hurt myself.
Sufferer's threat	Eat the food I cooked for you. I was saving it for myself. I wonder what will happen now.
Tantalizer's threat	Eat the food I cooked for you and you just may get a really yummy dessert.

Sigh! I cringe at the familiarity. In some form or the other I'm guilty of this and let's be honest, it's a habit. We've grown up being victims, still are and mindlessly we dole out the same dross to ours.

The wonderful thing about maturity is that it allows you to clinically observe a common practice without adding emotion to it and deciding whether this makes sense or not and when the answer is in the negative, to have the courage to dump it in the trash.

Got to recognise that fact that, the oft repeated, "I'm doing this because I love you" is the biggest lie in the world.

Jaggi Sadguru has this to say about love:

When you talk about love, it has to be unconditional. There is really no such thing as conditional love and unconditional love. It is just that there are conditions and there is love. The moment there is a condition, it just amounts to a transaction. Maybe a convenient transaction, maybe a good arrangement – maybe many people made excellent arrangements in life – but that will not fulfill you; that will not transport you to another dimension. It is just convenient.

Good time for some soul searching and kicking off die hard habits which are more cancerous than the malady itself and far more damaging than nicotine and alcohol. Time to shrug off the fake cloak of "love" that is used to smother an individual's right to live a life of self respect and pride.

Here's a promise, I will try not to coerce you to lie like exanimate railway tracks in the wasteland, waiting for my egoistic train to pass.

Neither Railroad, nor FOG... time to lift the personal mist!

Keeda kaun...

I'm mean, like really... shut up Anjali.

So this morning I drive to buy diwali sweets and as I enter the roundabout I can see another car do the same. In my mind I have entered it before the other car and I'm sure he thought the same with the only difference being that he lost it! Like seriously. I could see him shake his fist and mouth the words MC...

That was it… I saw and felt the words and lost it too!

 I began laughing uncontrollably, the fit of giggles was so overwhelming that I had to double park by the kerb 'cos I was shaking so badly and the poor guy was apoplectic as he could obviously see me doubled up. So he slows down to hurl more abuse and bursts a few blood vessels while gesticulating wildly and by now I'm tearing up with all the mirth. If he could get off the car and cause physical damage, I'm pretty sure he would have but there were a few cars lined up behind him and he had to reluctantly drive ahead.

Once the laughter died down though I started feeling remorseful... I probably ruined his weekend and he would probably do the same for someone else.

Which brings me to the why? I mean why do I get cheap thrills at being petty and mean. Most often I'm the one sermonising about kindness and empathy and decency towards fellow human beings. I cannot handle meanness and it bothers me endlessly when I see victimisation and then I go and do this. 

Sigh!

Also brings some déjà vu, Anjali and me are serial offenders. There’s a pattern and a method to our madness, we’re quite famous for making faces at unsuspecting people behind the wheel and riling them up and egging them on to something stupid and the thrill! Oh man…. I remember one drive in particular where Anjali played zombie with dilated eyes and a deadpan expression on her face which was stuck to the window and I would slow down and she would stare into every passing vehicle like that. After about eight people almost drove off the road in shock we gave up counting!!!

TJ has a name for it. She says we have the keeda. So the next time you see Anjali and me on the road, remember… keeda kaun!

Doppelganger...

When fakery enervates and affectation wilts

Endorsement and her sanction wanes

When the yoke is paralyzing and the albatross crushing

The theatricals blasé and histrionics fossil

When the cloying ambience of the mise en scène palls

The curtain call subverts your selfdom

When innervation turns to apathy and conviction is sceptic

As phosphorescence achromatizes across the hinterland

Come lay on the dark side with me…

Gossamer strings :)

How many people have you met who use the expression, like gossamer strings... albeit to describe a body function. I confess I'm a snob when it comes to English language. You either speak it well or don't. Yes I know that language is a source of communication and what does it matter how it is pronounced or what words are used as long as the message is delivered and understood.

Can't accept that.

My credo demands that I use words that make you want to grab a dictionary, sorry Kuki! If I were to use mediocre language and everyday expressions, I believe I would be causing grievous injury to self and limiting the expanse of my thinking.

Got to do this.

Apparently the jargon I use is too complicated and who wants to comprehend its quintessence at the cost of opening a lexicon. What devil prompts this rapacious malady to create sentences that perplex the unsuspecting peruser.

Not apologizing.

And then there is the insidious vampire who weaves sinuously a magic so ethereal that you want to celebrate who you are with your infinite foibles even when you battle the conscripted milieu that decries the magic.

Gossamer strings...

Ode to my alter ego...

I didn’t ask you for you even in my darkest hour

The length of my days and the rhythm of its nights

Stayed static and still like a never ending adagio

The symphony though nocturne was an uncomplicated andante

Everything I am and have done seems now gauche and desperate

The words I’ve written were empty barges

Looking for a secure shore to drop anchor

While all this while it’s been the grapnel that skimmed and kissed the quicksand

Maybe you’re a figment of my overactive imagination

That seems more desperate than the vulture at a banquet

Is hungrier than can be sated

And wants to devour till it’s depleted

I am so many people

And yet I am no one

I’m the white horse you ride surfboards on

I’m the Dead Sea you hover desultorily over

I didn’t ask for you even in my bleakest hours

Even those spent wandering aimlessly in the barrenness of my soul

Or the darkness of the stalactite caverns of the mind

Waiting for that icicle to skiver eyes that have no right to behold

Yet here you are, blight on my peace

Nemesis of the fiendish kind

Spurring the beast to surpass the superlative

To rise above the sinuous ellipse

It's akin to a bloodied war, it's spoils cheated of a decent interment

No time to mourn the grim scrimmage 

A cleansing after the ashes settle

As I seek to prove my unyielding mettle

The rites of celebration play rampant in the spirit

My wolf call loud and unabashedly brash

I'm the hunter and the hunted, the tormentor and her delight

I didn't ask for you and you came, so stay... until I annihilate myself

Ode to my alter ego...

I didn’t ask you for you even in my darkest hour

The length of my days and the rhythm of its nights

Stayed static and still like a never ending adagio

The symphony though nocturne was an uncomplicated andante

Everything I am and have done seems now gauche and desperate

The words I’ve written were empty barges

Looking for a secure shore to drop anchor

While all this while it’s been the grapnel that skimmed and kissed the quicksand

Maybe you’re a figment of my overactive imagination

That seems more desperate than the vulture at a banquet

Is hungrier than can be sated

And wants to devour till it’s depleted

I am so many people

And yet I am no one

I’m the white horse you ride surfboards on

I’m the Dead Sea you hover desultorily over

I didn’t ask for you even in my bleakest hours

Even those spent wandering aimlessly in the barrenness of my soul

Or the darkness of the stalactite caverns of the mind

Waiting for that icicle to skiver eyes that have no right to behold

Yet here you are, blight on my peace

Nemesis of the fiendish kind

Spurring the beast to surpass the superlative

To rise above the sinuous ellipse

It's akin to a bloodied war, it's spoils cheated of a decent interment

No time to mourn the grim scrimmage 

A cleansing after the ashes settle

As I seek to prove my unyielding mettle

The rites of celebration play rampant in the spirit

My wolf call loud and unabashedly brash

I'm the hunter and the hunted, the tormentor and his delight

I didn't ask for you and you came, so stay... until I annihilate myself

Me... idiocracy

Mediocrity seems to be a recurring theme today, from a conversation this morning to, Monsters University; a movie I'm watching as I type this.
Pride prevents me from thinking I am a run of the mill pedestrian type, you see I don't want to admit that since I believe that I'm special and above the ordinary.
Besides, I have a secret disdain for this undistinguished quality and have trained myself to dither from what I thought was an unappealing trait, especially for my own self.
One does need reality check whether it comes as an experience or even a blight on your peace alter ego who can steer your reflections toward an au courant angle.
So I was told that most people are mediocre and it's fine really, nothing out of the ordinary in that... but to be happy in that knowledge and not wanting to trans-mutate, now that is a crime.
Complacency is a deep rooted malady and needs a vigorous discipline to shake off.
Let's face it then, most of us are wannabe's but let's not stay that way. What's life without a challenge and what is growth if it isn't of one's own intellect and competence.
Learning has to be a credo, a faith and compulsion and yes, hanker for more and then some.
Whatever it may take, an academic course, a practical instruction, an instrument you've been hankering to learn to play, carpentry, tailoring, or even learning to be a handy man, Nike!
As always... this blog is a place I spit and spew, interestingly I'm learning to swallow.
Me idiocracy... for now.

Me... idiocracy

Mediocrity seems to be a recurring theme today, from a conversation this morning to, Monsters University; a movie I'm watching as I type this.
Pride prevents me from thinking I am a run of the mill pedestrian type, you see I don't want to admit that since I believe that I'm special and above the ordinary.
Besides, I have a secret disdain for this undistinguished quality and have trained myself to dither from what I thought was an unappealing quality, especially for my own self.
One does need reality check whether it comes as an experience or even a blight on your peace alter ego who can steer your reflections toward an au courant angle.
So I was told that most people are mediocre and it's fine really, nothing out of the ordinary in that... but to be happy in that knowledge and not wanting to trans-mutate, now that is a crime.
Complacency is a deep rooted malady and needs a vigorous discipline to shake off.
Let's face it then, most of us are wannabe's but let's not stay that way. What's life without a challenge and what is growth if it isn't of one's own intellect and competence.
Learning has to be a credo, a faith and compulsion and yes, hanker for more and then some.
Whatever it may take, an academic course, a practical instruction, an instrument you've been hankering to learn to play, carpentry, tailoring, or even learning to be a handy man, Nike!
As always... this blog is a place I spit and spew, interestingly I'm learning to swallow.
Me idiocracy... for now.