Two Cans And A Quarter

When I first saw you

There were so many things

I wanted us to do

Then you told me

We too were three

That’s when I knew

I could never be free

Way things were then

I was an in-law out-law

And in and out the door

You went

Then she arrived

I thought she was heaven sent

CH:

Two cans and a quarter

I know I’ll never see my daughter

Her folks sure taught her

After he makes you

Don’t break the mould

Just kill the potter

Two cans and a quarter

My father-in-law is such a rotter

If you got someone you want to ...

Just [ insert name here ] and holler!

Why do I see red feet

All across this floor

Why do you don’t

Want me anymore

I thought love was

The reason I had

Now it’s just another reason

For going mad

For years I’ve waited for this moment. Since I loved you, I’ve been wanting to find ways to tell you that I love you. I couldn’t and do not want to ever loose you. Yes, I have been greedy, selfish, lacking in self control and financially and typically late.

But I'm dedicated and now I have proved that I know what I want and I know how to get it. It’s a plum job. My career is back on track and I will be earning more than ever before. I know I have reason to be proud but somehow when I do it for you it’s just duty. I love you and want the best for you (both). I just hope you can put your chin up in the knowledge that your husband is-

9th August 2010

8:45pm

Back from Gurgaon in busses for an interview with blisters on both my soles. Nothing new; I’ve been walking on pain since I used to roller skate on empty street roads as a kid back in Daman. I would keep going till I got blisters under my blisters. At times they bled, still I would go on for kilometers just because I did not want to come back home. That was when the parents fought a lot.

It’s not blisters but muscle cramps that are bothering me. Since the afternoon and after I am back now, I’ve been getting cramps in my hands and feet. Even as I write this, I am forced to throw down the pen and flex my hand before it jams. (Owwwgha!!!) Another round of this interview in the morning, Heck! I’ve been up last night and today morning in the bus reading up on instructional design to prepare for it.

‘Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience better.” – Siddartha , Herman Hesse.

IAMNOTPISSED

IAMDIS-EN-FRANCHISED!

When there’s no one else around

And I am quite alone, sad and broke

When everything I knew has changed

Why should I still be provoked?

Everything shakes when I think

How much longer must I live like this?

I can’t reach the ones I love

I must stay alive and wish

I thought love was the reason I had

Sometimes what you love can make you mad

Stuck between ghosts, memories and duties

I knew I had it coming to me

I don’t believe in tomorrows

The better I get the less I wonder

About the laws of life and nature

Life’s limits make me glad

Nothing and no one can last forever.

(Perhaps) Life Portrayed

27 July 2010

6:25pm

Quite alone, sad and broke; has to be one of the lowest times in my life. Today evening I shall meditate on God to keep my mind calm. I must not struggle. Everyone has been removed and I am on my own. Now to find work and keep myself alive for the rest of my life.

28^th

5:40pm

Things shake at times and I still go through my job hunting, food, washing chores. Money’s over. Gave some old rice to the maid. I’ve learned that I no longer have a background that I can depend on. All I can do is take which ever opportunity that comes and save myself. I’m not doing to good but at least there’s no cold sweat and fever like two nights ago. Had another bout of whatever it was in the afternoon today. Prayed and stared at plants till I could get moving and so I made some food for me and the dog after that.

29^th

10:00 am

I must stop these feelings of desperation and anxiety. I must slow my breathing and not gasp. I must remain calm. “It’s the same old fight, win or lose, it’s the same abuse.” As Radha said, I should only talk after getting a job. I’m scared that I am getting tired chasing bigger jobs instead. I’m not sure what I am saying will come about.

Everybody has been drilling so much of what I must do that I no longer know what I want. One thing is clear, I was not meant to live like this. All this while, I’ve been trying to perform my duties without being selfish about success. So now my duties are removed or as a failure, I can no longer perform my duties to myself. Everyday swings between boredom, fear, simple actions to keep me going and frequent tears. So I know that since I am alone, I won’t take a job that will make me less than what I am. I should also become a little harder on others in this foolish game we play called life. Right now I have to stop my wildly lurching mind and heart. I must not feel so bad about being alone. I must fight it. I will always be along. I will die along. Since I am a loner, most people cannot bear to see my tears. All the strife I’ve had is somehow an ideal learning battleground but definitely not the pasture I wish to own.

I will find work. I will struggle till things look up. I will find my self-respect. I will find my pride and joy. I will stop trusting new comers in my life. I must reach deep into the game and pocket the loot. I will find the maturity required to painfully build (or re-build) over a long time instead of the momentary pleasure of breaking them down.

MORE: BLACK MOON FROM JUNE

48 kilos of metal

18 (20kg) sacks of clothes

10 kilos of electronic circuitry

2 tvs

1 sewing maching

One bucket in the wake of the flood

WNEAIDETYEPCAEFCXIOM

Two Perspectives from the Same Night

I don’t believe in tomorrows. All my competence eliminates wonder. Lifes limits make me glad we live in a round world. Gods, ghosts, memories and duties; I’m not going to be of much help today. I am sick, tired, drunk, befuddled, disheartened and mortally afraid of how lightly words which will kill my daughter still float around to be fed and raised by others.

I wonder what Junior is dreaming? Does he dream of rabbits he’s never seen? Or does he dream of me, after all we’ve seen fourteen years together. Oh, he is my dog and I love him! While the breeze ruffles his tail fur just so. Where does this gush of love come from, o lord? Or is it just his impeding bath that motivates me so.

Every Man’s Wish

Somewhere there’s a place where I can stride or stroll freely at will. Where I can have absolute authority or complete humility towards my fellow man and before nature;  say sunsets?

Ignorance Wiss Blas!

30 June 2010 Wednesday

Yesterday was my baby’s first birthday. A momentous occasion for most fathers except me. I was absent. Walking gloom in search of a job, selling things I used to be proud of to maintain and dreading the noisy emptiness. One of those few situations when the castle walls shriek at the ghost within.

Never felt so bad before.

Glad to let the pain wake me to the world that I ignored. Ignorance wass bliss. Now I’m counting coins looking at old photographs of real people who broke down along the way and sold everything they could. Today evening’s call centre interview for debt consolidation tele-marketeers. Night shifts, five days a week. I hope I have money left to buy bread after printing out my bio.

One part of me is linked to the past and rends its clothers and wails while the other takes it firmly by the shoulders and says, ‘Look, small steps first. Trial interview, okay? Let’s see how it goes.’ Will her mother think I got over my initial stumbles or will she point out that I started on the wrong foot? How much of me is drifting in the winds of others opinion? How much should I discard on being told. I know this; one stage is over and I’m still clearing the just before the next.

reggae

Why would a ‘dangerous’ 26-year old get into reggae in spite of the fact that all previous orientation has been towards classic heavy metal and raw soft rock hippie song poetry? The answer is one mentor and a broken leg.

What’s so great about Bengali cinema anyway

What’s so great about Bengali cinema? Anyway. It’s all very copybook, studious and done with an inward grunt of intensity. Agreed, there are moments when the sense of borderline suggestiveness can drive you crazy enough given privacy and good breezy weather, but by then you are just as likely to wake up in a Merchant-Ivory production. Perfect for afternoons on clerical holidays and idle moments counting the number of thick black spectacle frames you can spot.

When you grow up

Will you remember how

From sunup to sundown

You made your mother frown

Do you see Lucy in the sky?

Do you remember the flowers?

In the garden, butterflies,

Prams and kitchens?

In the place where I live

Something’s just got to give

Way things are today

Doesn’t leave very much to say

Where

Burning dogs are fed to dead people

While you are too busy by yourself

Trying to bury the same steeple

You once stood on to reach the top shelf

For the things that you desire

That you just must add to the fire

Here’s a plug-in for the pain

That you must try

Here’s a brain that’s struggling’

That just won’t run dry

There’s somebody coming

Why won’t they come in?

Is it that day of the week,

Can you hear the babies grumbling?

Before they can even speak

Solomon’s desire song of a scream

Midnight extraction of your dream

Due to this typical technical failure

We interrupt your screen.

The wind in my face
Tells me again,
'this is my place'
Between what's left behind
On empty roads unwind
Race the fears on your mind

Till the wind dries my tears
And my skull dissolves as I bend
Around a blank curve, another turn
'This is it!' The urge that I yearn
Easing up a bit to give me time to learn

Yes; once we rode amid equals
But then life added some sequels
Change a cog, drop a sprog from a winter snog
Like your mother said, em cee square equals me
Since you ain't interested, my dreams are now free

Lift my foot off the pedal
Feel I deserve a medal
Another night, ride, anyway
All mine; Am my own hero
Running on empty if less than zero.

Untitled

5 Paintings of Me

2 months back I did five odd paintings as self-prescribed art therapy.
It was getting difficult for me to think in words, since I was back writing storyboards at work and after work, my thoughts had the same old things going round and round in my head. Needless to say, I was trying to deal with being left in lurch limbo by my wife, who took my baby girl away as well.

this was the first, while my wife was still around and is my tribute to Santana's cover of Arabaxas, the actual painting is called the Black Madonna.

did this next, needless to say i was missing the wife and kid and

Third, needed to work it out within myself.

grew a little tired of too much and tried to be minimal and differently colored

fifth made me realize that what i like best about my work is that I can stare at it for hours and still see things

in this, the last one, i pulled out all stops. in a sense it is also my current position in life

Way I am now

Its been six months since i saw my baby girl. By now she must have started talking and would be taking her first steps.

It didn't take much more than me not having a job for four months and a fight where she was abusing my dead mother and in retaliation I lied that I was gathering just such evidence. Her mother's voice in the background told her, 'Enough, now stop.' And that was the last I saw of them. Poor things, living at my father-in-laws house with all amenities and me not having any source of income must have really stressed them out. Still I love them and miss them through the daylong and waking nights.

Since then, I have tried calling, mailing, posting and even visiting the apartments where they live only to be told by the guard at the gate that they did not want to meet me, or they had no time, etc. I went there on Independence day when I got a job and later on Diwali. Now I will be too broke through Christmas and New Year to think about any moves. I still need three more weeks to get completely out of debt and pay off the back rent to my landlord that is pending from the jobless months. 

Not that I managed much, my first job was with an HR contractor as 3rd party labor which sucked, but now I am well ensconced in a huge organization and directly on the payroll. I got rid of over 100 kilos of stuff in the house, ranging from books, metal, dishes, electronics, extra tv sets, and now I plan to cut down from my pre-marital number of bikes from four to two. I have managed to get both hands on the job, survived these months against massive isolation (true, my mom who passed away in Feb this year had a lot to do with my current predicament. As I got used to living with people around and having someone there in the house to talk to whenever.) and am no longer sandbagged by the sight of couples with kids, small babies and things which remind me of what I love, miss, mistook and learned I should have hung on to without opening my mouth. Where I have learned to open my mouth and ask for help was with friends, who literally kept me and my dog alive through those initial, bewildered months on my own.

Now I know that she's been away too long to be able to face me directly without finding some noisy higher ground and I try and imagine not saying anything because what's been done is beyond my feelings and talking about it. Nor do I want to create a scene, like when spurned at the gate. I have seen enough of that and for a while, my mother and I were mistaken that we could be like my wife and her family who just love shouting matches. Probably living with my father in law who is a former cricketer (and current-day sweet shop partner in old Delhi)  has something to do with their natural tendency and tolerance to noisy fights.

Way it seems to me, since I have nothing left to loose, I shall stick to the truth as it makes it clear who's right and wronged. Won't have to change a thing that way and be truthful, which I swore to be in life since I survived my few near-death escapades. They have everything, including my daughter who is very much a reason for my existence, my wife who has run out of rebellion and strength to go against dear old dad and thanks to a little social engineering, have managed to keep me away from her. That besides the fact that I have absolutely no intentions of doing anything unlawful or force anyone. I have always kept the door open for my wife, which she used on couple of occasions after fights. I didn't complain or resist when her dad called the cops and I did not pay off anyone to get off the police hook. I got booked for disturbing the peace and paid a fine and did my six months of probation even while the wife had come back to me after the big fight and mom had died (against her father's wishes, who said something to the effect that she had also stabbed him in the back). Then I got laid off at work.

No wonder I listen to reggae more than rock.

It happened at night

when i first met your mother
i was just another poet, biker, lover
until the day things happened at night
Yeah, that's how you were born all right

we never knew what to do
but we knew for sure
when it came to marriage, i gave my word
that it was a fight to keep you
alive and all right, early bird

you came home in the third month
but your mom still pulled a matrimonial stunt
I knew right then things would change
my life started to re-arrange
until te day things happened at night
my mother, her mother and your mother started to fight

i tried but we were all so uptight
her father even put me in jail for a night
by the next morning, friends had me sprung
but it was the begening of the end of fun

i loved her but it wasn't enough
me mum died swearing I'd be tough
she came back but things went rough
and her father took you both away
just when he learnt i'd lost my job

since i had no money, he thought it right
to rob a father of his daughter and his rights
now a father the grandfather of his daughter can curse
Still i don't need to know i came out worse

It just happened one night
I learned never, never again to fight
now the moon's her and you are the evening star
If you want to, you can always be my daughter
You will always be and if you are my daughter
I know you will understand.

It happened at night
It happened at night

Outside My Window

Outside my window is a street
There you used to be when we used to meet

You called a friend and said what
First left from the gate then left again
knock on the first window on the right
Not too hard a house to spot

All those evenings I came home
You didn't wait for the engine to stop
Right at the gate, right at the door
Holding my baby who could ask for more

[Br.]
Then there were dark days
When clouds came into our room
Until I had to ask if the tears
Don't stop, could I drown?


In the valley of cold wind now..
[Ch.]
Outside my window is a street
There you used to be when we used to meet

its getting colder in delhi and I am getting more into work. doing everything from recording scratch voice overs to storyboards, reviews and now i have to firm out a few processes. i got to survive till next month, when i can pay back some remaining debts and even get a little bike action going. meanwhile, have been junking stuff from the house to lighten my load for when i move houses in spring. also need to save money to pay back those who spent on my daughter's hospital bills. start sending some money to the spouse as well, estranged it may seem but i still love that woman. just managed to get my mind in check and no longer get emotionally mugged by sights of family life and baby girls. still every day i mist them. years of having people around has given me a habit of wanting to talk to someone. i thought i was a home boy. now am a home alone man. thank god for the dog. strangely in these times, it was easy to get laid off work, fall off the mountain, see the wife walk off with baby and not want to know me now, fight fire with fire and generally do inadvertent damage. It is harder to climb back on the career ladder, i finished my HR vendor contract and have found happiness as a permanent employee with a huge major. i like being an instruction designer again and have a spiritualist for a boss. now i need to get out of debt and save up. shift home and finish what was for years my life living with my mother. must remember to be the change i want to experience in the world (as the Mahatma said). that's what all positivism boils down to. amen.

http://www.matrimonialbank.com/jokes.html

e-will

‘Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.’ And right now it would happen if you thought there was a thing called a father, and a thing called a mother, and a thing called a daughter, and a thing called a cottage, and told yourself that if you put them all together; you have a thing called a happy family.

You can make Agreements that:

Protect your rights only     or     Respect your spouse's rights too

Are only good for you     or     Are good for everyone

Give your spouse less     or     Give your spouse what is rightfully theirs

Do not inconvenience you     or     Work well for everyone

Need frequent court hearings to enforce     or     Need no court hearings to enforce

No Matter What!

once

once we were young and took things easily. Now i hate being alone and am overwrought by my thoughts of my daughter. Must become a workaholic at this rate since my job is the best thing that has happened to me in years. Maybe i should look at my work as my wife and my ever present laptop computer as my baby. No jokes, i need the dislocation or transference to keep me going. All day I hear and see kids and try and keep my mind blank so that i dont fall down right there and break into pieces. I know i am strong because i have survived so much already. I just don't know how strong and don't respect strength that comes from surviving. Its a skill that i needed to learn to keep me alive as a kid but i always believed my strength should come from what i can create in life or change for the better in this world. some of us have made the grade and others have stared at a hard life in the face. truly none is greater or lesser than the other. life's randomness must make playthings out of us for our gods amusement. yesterday was half washing machine and half whiskey bottle. today was spent in a fell swoon sleeping through last week. slowly i push various rocks up the mountain in an aesthetic and snobbish fashion. to explain survival skills: since i stopped insisting i was right when i knew i was wrong people have been getting the best of me. literally getting the best of my behavior and abusing me. it happens because i love the buggers and won't be drawn into the temptation of being as bad. i refuse to live as an animal and will survive as a man. until Stoicism ensures my mobile face never makes a call.

pratchett

Personal Job Shakedown Strategies

Everyone finds their work life boring. They wake up, go to work and come home. Work used to be exciting when there was more ahead than behind you. Questions regarding what you are going to do with the rest of your life run through your head and you find your self having to come to terms with the fact that work is going to be just like this forever. Time is right for a shakedown. Given these tough economic times we are going through, maybe it would be best if you take things in your own hands and give yourself a job shakedown before the (now-inevitable) company shakedown!

Flat Spot-Rut Paradigm
Flat spots occur in every automobile’s acceleration curve, where the engine hesitates. The feeling of not going anywhere in life is like the proverbial plateau or glass ceiling that has started to limit your vertical, as well as horizontal horizon of possibilities and (here’s the bad news) abilities. The same old routine has an uncanny ability to simultaneously be your limitation. Welcome to your own well-worn rut.

If you do not know how, or are afraid to break out of it, then you must come to accept the end of your growth. For many of us, what is at stake here is the basis of our very identity and existence. Work gives us a sense of identity. Just ask anyone to tell you a little bit about themselves and invariably they tell you what they do for a living. Our sense of achievement (both past and future) and self-esteem is connected to it.

Unfortunately, mastery at work also brings tedium, ennui and a rising tide of dissatisfaction in life that eventually does start to spill over into our daily outlook. Even promotions die out, if they do not punish you first by leaving you removed from the actual action in a senior administrative/managerial post. 

“The tendency to economise task performance leads to an inappropriate reduction of effort, thus causing errors.”

When things you thought
That were built to last
Become a thing of the past
That’s when you ought
To ask yourself how much
Do you still feel the need
And if you’re still the same.

Memories remain and a name
That requires you to explain
Those gone cannot complain
When you learn better than before.

The pain stays but you can be more
On your own in a silent space.
So how can you be sure or unsure
Till you stop looking at the door
Never knowing, never feeling enough
Too busy in your own life dying
While the rest of the world remains sore.

we collide like stars

we collide and crash like stars
knowing that we just gave birth
to an engine of re-creation
While the rest of our issues
struggle for justification
we know the things we push
away today will return tomorrow
to miss and haunt us as we go.

It's true; some days are diamonds
the rest is also true while you
are lying in the gutter your mind
can clear out some of the clutter
that you find in the back of behind.

Ever wonder why you react the way
you do and reasons for what you say

Circumstance just pushing or fading away?


The gleam of my regret shines under
the doorway while my regret wont let
me forget what I did. I could feel more
than I could ever begaet, it's true
If I cannot let go of my anger and what
makes me more than my insurrect brain.

She cried when she could not understand
what makes a woman more paitent than a man.
I thought you would realise the pain
that kids go throujh just to feel the main
thought that recourses through your refrain
that you've bugged me enough, so shut your brain.

Ten fingers and ten tiny toes
Cannot tell me where your milk goes
Still I must waint and measure
What the future can only promise

Naked you are my third hand
while our baby looks at the future.
I wonder what sin this wroght
But I am sorry, I just forgot
that I was writing and leaned back
to bump my haead and forget all thought.

To morrow, while in repose or the onslaught
of a workday morning, I should remember what
I could not do and should be done in the light
of what into the wold I broght
Another sorry pun, but I regret to say
I shall live to type another day

Everything shaking 1

Not letting me see baby is not fair according to me.

Either you can't do anything or you do not want to do anything about it.

I'm no saint and you don't exactly smell of roses either.

If you agree with the screams in the background that you are better off, let me know.

Families really don't have much choice of emotion, action or reason but you and I do.

Everything shaking 2

Everything is shaking. I guess it just breaks my heart to hear the venom in yours. Seems like we were two different people when we met and fell in love. Back then you were fantastic at handling my house, I was proud of my little home and I had never even visited your house. My mother could not stop bitching but I could not kick her out. At the same time I cannot bear to think about the truth in my face that things will never be the same again. After having seen your anger at my mother, how can I believe that you can evolve?  Especially since she’s now dead.

Here I am, surrounded by angry people and I just don’t know how to stop it. I have taken blame for things no one even knows about. I took in mom and junior because they were only things that seemed worth hanging on to. Not because they were not grouchy and mean tempered, but because I could not leave them behind. Over the years I have stuck by them and they have stuck by me in some pretty impossible situations. Not that anyone of us improved, we just stayed together because we knew no one really wanted us. Just as today, I cannot leave you. In my heart, I really believed in this marriage. I hung on to thinking everyone will get along simply because I believed that thinking positive will somehow cause things to turn better.

At the same time I have been a realist enough to know that there are points of no return. I don’t know if you will still want me but I know I will get a job pretty soon. Maybe a bigger house, even a divided house, but not one built on serial desertion and vehement farewells. Eventually I even get grudging acknowledgement from those who hate my guts. I have also lost it as of today.

Until I can have my marriage and home and family all together, the way it was for about a week when everyone was happy we were together, regardless of what words have been said and what they did to the ones they were said to, I shall not be the first one to actually commit a heinous deed such as turn my mother out.

I know neither of you will be easy but I won’t be ridden by either of you. When the situation is in my control, I shall ask you to return but at the same time I shall also wish to know if you love me enough to choose your memories.

I don't believe in tomorrows. All my competence eliminates wonder. Life's limits make me glad we live in a round world. Gods, ghosts, memories and duties; I'm not going to be of much help today. Sick, tired, drunk, befuddled, disheartened and mortally afraid of how lightly words which will kill my daughter in the future still float around, fed and raised by others.

no one can last forever

When there's no one else around
and i'm quite alone, sad and broke
when everything i knew has changed
why should i still be provoked

Everything shakes when i think
how much longer must i live like this
i cant reach the ones i love
all i can is simply stay alive and wish

I thought love was the reason i had
sometimes what you love makes you mad
stuck between ghosts, memories and duties
i knew i had it coming to me

I don't believe in tomorrows
the better i get, the less i wonder
about the laws of life and nature
life's limits made me glad
nothing and no one can last forever

I know my needs
they are few and frequent
especially the last one baby
you know how it went

It's been a while
since i spun my wheels
i know i'm going
into a sunset of deals

Yeah, i'm going to do my best
and leave all the rest
to the good lord and kindness

I don't believe in tomorrows
the better i get, the less i wonder
about the laws of life and nature
life's limits made me glad
nothing and no one can last forever

If you should choose
i would never regret
living this life again
but with a better budget
but with a better budget

i wonder what Junior is dreaming. Does my dog dream of rabbits he's never chased? Or does he dream of me; after all we've seen fourteen years together. Oh, he is my dog and i love watching the breeze ruffle his tail fur just so. Where does this gush of love come from? Is it just his impending bath that motivates my feelings?

What is so great about Bengali cinema anyway?

What is so great about Bengali cinema anyway? It's all very copy-book, studious and done with an inward grunt of intensity. Agreed; there are moments when the sense of borderline suggestiveness can drive you crazy enough, given privacy and good breezy weather but you are just as likely to wake up in a Merchant-Ivory production. Perfect for afternoons on clerical holidays and idle moments committing the number of thick black spectacles that you can spot in the theater. At worst, banal autel porn. Hey! that goes for 36 Ch... as well. So quit grousing, which you never will. 

 home once again after a full day of story-boarding at work. walk dog, wonder aloud and no longer feel. rebuild my life void of rabid hounds of hell since I have been taken too far. it’s the same world, I am on my own and pretty clear on how people can get or be. I gotta get a routine, liquidity and build layers around my core of peace. at least I’ve set off and left another shore. It’s strange, from rebel without a cause to rebel without a spouse. Still I have other things to do like managing life as a HR vendor employee hired out to corporates. This current one is a four month contract and I am mortally worried about the paperwork between me and the HR firm that has hired me out as my documentation is not yet done. I still have to get a copy of my bloody college degree and for that I have to go to college and for that I need the time. Currently Saturdays are spent catching up on sleep and cooking and Sundays are spent hanging around the washing machine. It’s a slow, agonizing journey back to the light I volunteered away when my father died and now have chosen to go back to since my mother recently passed away. Two strange gateposts through which the rest of my life passed. Somewhere in the middle I had my own family too. Now it’s far from done but at least my assumptions about myself and what I am worth have been right. All that remains is to polish the skills I grew tired of. I have literally been through and forgotten so many things that it succeeded in allowing me to have four lifetimes in one. If I had collected all I learned, I would have an encyclopedic law book. Instead I make do with a handy booklet of principles and an absolutely reflective attitude to the rules of the game. Still I know the outlines of my personality and no longer wish to let it distend by circumstance and causative irk. My expanding funnel of work is my only disconnect from the jawbone of being. So much so that the two hours it takes to get to work are spent peacefully in the company of ‘allo allo’ and Lucky Luke.