Satya Dash
The Geometry of Isolation
If I were asked to draw a house I would still
rely on hopeless fantasies smudged
on a first grade drawing book- impossible dreams in
brick and cement, triangles bonneting squares
in self-effacing geometry, a trapezoid red tiled roof
connecting whatever the folds couldn’t join.
These shapes of our abandoned minds to lie
amidst rumbling mountains or near a rueful sea
on the precipice of our epochal lives with a sun
overhead for daily consolation. But of course
in reality let’s say somehow I erect this monument,
a labour of my sinewy love. Then soon enough,
forgetting all this I would worry about the neighbour’s
pet, humidity, red ants, barking dogs and the coarse
garden soil. Which is why I need the security of an
evacuation procedure even before I start drawing.
Can someone read it please? Read it aloud. With
intonation and feelings. Much like a song whose
melody would swish and swirl – benevolent tornado
carrying me away from the roil of this churning world.
rely on hopeless fantasies smudged
on a first grade drawing book- impossible dreams in
brick and cement, triangles bonneting squares
in self-effacing geometry, a trapezoid red tiled roof
connecting whatever the folds couldn’t join.
These shapes of our abandoned minds to lie
amidst rumbling mountains or near a rueful sea
on the precipice of our epochal lives with a sun
overhead for daily consolation. But of course
in reality let’s say somehow I erect this monument,
a labour of my sinewy love. Then soon enough,
forgetting all this I would worry about the neighbour’s
pet, humidity, red ants, barking dogs and the coarse
garden soil. Which is why I need the security of an
evacuation procedure even before I start drawing.
Can someone read it please? Read it aloud. With
intonation and feelings. Much like a song whose
melody would swish and swirl – benevolent tornado
carrying me away from the roil of this churning world.
Commentary
Satya on "The Geometry of Isolation":
Deconstructing this poem leads me to arrive at two fundamental notions at strife with each other – a desire for solitude and the impossibility of being completely at ease with oneself. The poem was born somewhere in the middle of the hanging, swaying bridge between both these implacable pillars.
In the chaos of our unrealized fantasies, we often forget little things that have offered us quiet delight in the past – an uninterrupted listening to a favorite track, a sincere conversation with a friend, munching candy in the quaint part of town. At the end of certain pursuits even after reasonable success, you pine for circumstances when you had the ability to sip joy from them. This poem in some sense stemmed from the fear of this meaninglessness, a haunt of drudgery, of all things trundling towards travesty. During the time of writing, I remember wrestling with a purposelessness unsure where the motivation to wish, to feel, to even suffer springs from. Now looking back, it deposits itself in the bass of the somewhat doctrinal tone of the lines.
I was pulsing with a clutch of indifference, nauseous from peering too far ahead in life, a bleakness of vision as if staring down a dark well and asking myself how different really can you feel in ten year’s time in the same world. The poem began with invoking memories of childhood, a fondness of the familiar geometry in shapes and sceneries so comforting as a kid. But failing nostalgia, it soon started to mimic reality, taking a dark turn of its own. The end, of course seeking refuge in ignorance, a fire exit escape – an urgent evacuation, a prelude to the birth of any resettlement.
Stanley Kubrick in an interview for Playboy in 1968 remarks: However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light. The poem attempts my collapse in a noir of the vastness, a screen fading into black, painting a backdrop for the faintest possibility of light. I can attest now – it did arrive in shapes, then unknown to me.
Deconstructing this poem leads me to arrive at two fundamental notions at strife with each other – a desire for solitude and the impossibility of being completely at ease with oneself. The poem was born somewhere in the middle of the hanging, swaying bridge between both these implacable pillars.
In the chaos of our unrealized fantasies, we often forget little things that have offered us quiet delight in the past – an uninterrupted listening to a favorite track, a sincere conversation with a friend, munching candy in the quaint part of town. At the end of certain pursuits even after reasonable success, you pine for circumstances when you had the ability to sip joy from them. This poem in some sense stemmed from the fear of this meaninglessness, a haunt of drudgery, of all things trundling towards travesty. During the time of writing, I remember wrestling with a purposelessness unsure where the motivation to wish, to feel, to even suffer springs from. Now looking back, it deposits itself in the bass of the somewhat doctrinal tone of the lines.
I was pulsing with a clutch of indifference, nauseous from peering too far ahead in life, a bleakness of vision as if staring down a dark well and asking myself how different really can you feel in ten year’s time in the same world. The poem began with invoking memories of childhood, a fondness of the familiar geometry in shapes and sceneries so comforting as a kid. But failing nostalgia, it soon started to mimic reality, taking a dark turn of its own. The end, of course seeking refuge in ignorance, a fire exit escape – an urgent evacuation, a prelude to the birth of any resettlement.
Stanley Kubrick in an interview for Playboy in 1968 remarks: However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light. The poem attempts my collapse in a noir of the vastness, a screen fading into black, painting a backdrop for the faintest possibility of light. I can attest now – it did arrive in shapes, then unknown to me.
Biography
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Satya Dash's recent poems have been published or are forthcoming in Passages North, Prelude, The Florida Review, Porridge amongst others. He has dabbled with short fiction in the past and been a cricket commentator too. He spent his early years in Odisha, India and has a degree in electronics from BITS Goa. Now he lives in Bangalore and recites his poetry in the city's cafes. Twitter Handle - https://twitter.com/satya043
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