Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage we never walked
Through the door we never opened
Into the rose garden
Down the passage we never walked
Through the door we never opened
Into the rose garden
T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton
You might have guessed, perhaps, that the name for this blog is inspired from these lines above. No, don't ask me what they mean - to say the truth, I don't even know! No, that's not entirely correct of course; I do have a vague inkling, just a vague inkling, mind, of what these lines mean, and this first post is exactly about that very inkling.
When I had put it into my head that I was going to start a blog, and had come to this site and tried to follow their "3 easy steps" (Don't mind the sarcasm, you'll be irritated too if you were on a slow internet connection wondering if the LAN cord is even plugged in), I got pretty frustrated by the fact that I just couldn't get a URL for myself. I mean, I had tried to write down everything, everything, mind, that was even remotely connected with me, and here it is in blithe, red letters, "Sorry that url is not available"! And the whole rummy thing about it is that the stupid thing even gives suggestions, and - what's more- suggestions that sound like those weird chimeras they create in biotech labs. Anyhow, here I was, with a blog in my head, and without a name, and suddenly, this quote flashed by. Like, swoosh. And yes, there it was, all that was me, all that I ever believed in, written in four brilliant verses by (well, everybody calls him that anyway) one of the best poets the world has ever seen.
But what do these lines mean anyway? What, in other words, do I stand for?
Look around you, and what do you see? You are sitting in front of a computer, probably, so you'll have a screen in front. A table, maybe, made of steel, or wood. A room around, with a window maybe, showing the city skyline, something that, like everything else you have seen for eons on end. It is what I see around myself too. But that isn't all there is, is it? Reality isn't all there is.
It is surprising how many of life's greatest experiences are not experiences at all. You undergo an accident, but you have fallen unconscious, so you don't know what happened. You have passed the JEE, yippee, there's your rank on the screen. You have screwed up your exam, great, now sit up in the summer. And yet, when you lie down and close your eyes, what do you see? You see the girl you love, or would have loved, and play out conversations with her that could never be. You see yourself standing and receiving a prize, but that's yet to happen. You hear the next song you might want to compose on your guitar. As the first waves of sleep lap over your soul, you move farther and farther away from the real. You move into that magical world of thought, of fantasy, where a flick of your brush and your deepest desires become true, a blink of your eyes and your greatest fears are in front of you. What matters, in the night, when you fall off to sleep, when you bring out all those life's experiences that you have kept stashed in your memory, is not life at all, but what you saw of it, what you wanted of it, what you dreamed of it. What resides, my friend, in the deepest recesses of your soul, in the coldest waters of your mind, in that unerring servant you call memory, is not reality, not truth, but your very own, personal dream.
And that dream, my friend, is what Eliot talks about. Did what happened happen? Does what comes into memory actually part of our past? And the answer, according to me, is simple. It does not matter. It matters not what is real or unreal. It matters not whether your dreams come true or not. If in the dead of the night you can sigh, and fall off contented, joyous, even a lie told to your heart is a truth. If in its treacherous deceit, memory takes you to the rose garden, would you let go of its hand?
When I had put it into my head that I was going to start a blog, and had come to this site and tried to follow their "3 easy steps" (Don't mind the sarcasm, you'll be irritated too if you were on a slow internet connection wondering if the LAN cord is even plugged in), I got pretty frustrated by the fact that I just couldn't get a URL for myself. I mean, I had tried to write down everything, everything, mind, that was even remotely connected with me, and here it is in blithe, red letters, "Sorry that url is not available"! And the whole rummy thing about it is that the stupid thing even gives suggestions, and - what's more- suggestions that sound like those weird chimeras they create in biotech labs. Anyhow, here I was, with a blog in my head, and without a name, and suddenly, this quote flashed by. Like, swoosh. And yes, there it was, all that was me, all that I ever believed in, written in four brilliant verses by (well, everybody calls him that anyway) one of the best poets the world has ever seen.
But what do these lines mean anyway? What, in other words, do I stand for?
Look around you, and what do you see? You are sitting in front of a computer, probably, so you'll have a screen in front. A table, maybe, made of steel, or wood. A room around, with a window maybe, showing the city skyline, something that, like everything else you have seen for eons on end. It is what I see around myself too. But that isn't all there is, is it? Reality isn't all there is.
It is surprising how many of life's greatest experiences are not experiences at all. You undergo an accident, but you have fallen unconscious, so you don't know what happened. You have passed the JEE, yippee, there's your rank on the screen. You have screwed up your exam, great, now sit up in the summer. And yet, when you lie down and close your eyes, what do you see? You see the girl you love, or would have loved, and play out conversations with her that could never be. You see yourself standing and receiving a prize, but that's yet to happen. You hear the next song you might want to compose on your guitar. As the first waves of sleep lap over your soul, you move farther and farther away from the real. You move into that magical world of thought, of fantasy, where a flick of your brush and your deepest desires become true, a blink of your eyes and your greatest fears are in front of you. What matters, in the night, when you fall off to sleep, when you bring out all those life's experiences that you have kept stashed in your memory, is not life at all, but what you saw of it, what you wanted of it, what you dreamed of it. What resides, my friend, in the deepest recesses of your soul, in the coldest waters of your mind, in that unerring servant you call memory, is not reality, not truth, but your very own, personal dream.
And that dream, my friend, is what Eliot talks about. Did what happened happen? Does what comes into memory actually part of our past? And the answer, according to me, is simple. It does not matter. It matters not what is real or unreal. It matters not whether your dreams come true or not. If in the dead of the night you can sigh, and fall off contented, joyous, even a lie told to your heart is a truth. If in its treacherous deceit, memory takes you to the rose garden, would you let go of its hand?
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