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Sep 2012
My greatest fear is
that my mind will become languid
all these nerves that buzz and fill
will someday become a vegetable

somnolent times will set upon me
a spell from which I cannot recover
lazily and languorously I shall dwell
an intellect without vigour

too much comfort too much praise too much ease
shall push me off the cliff of complacency
and I shall fall without cognizance
a mental suicide, awareness in deep freeze

a hardened blank consciousness
that needs to be broken through
excavated from a  grave of self-righteousness
pushed beyond self-set limits
melted until the core is seen

I need to feel the pain and hurt
cry briny tears and experience grief
need to feel unsure undecided
obscure myself in anxiety
make sure the inner ocean stays unfrozen

- Vijayalakshmi Harish
        12.09.2012

Copyright © Vijayalakshmi Harish
From a letter by Franz Kafka to his schoolmate Oskar Pollak, 27 January 1904 (translated by Richard and Clara Winston): 'I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. That is my belief.'
Vijayalakshmi Harish
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