Sunday, June 22, 2008

Cutting down medicines

I have cut down on many of my asthma medications like Montelukast and Deriphylin which I have been taking fairly regularly. I did this after I read that Montair ( thats Motelukast) a very important Asthma preventive can also aggravate depression and sucidal thoughts. I am also worried about my obesity which seems to have its roots in many of the medicines I have been taking over the years. Havent had any distressing symptoms ( touch wood) after cutting down my pills but I am keeping them at my side just in case.

My psychiatrist suggested lifestyle changes and shifts in priorites and I have more or less been able to implement them with better results. Learning how to swim and feeling good about it.Have made some noticable progress, that too without proper coaching inputs.

What about this past life business? Well for one, I havent been really able to follow it up regularly though I do think that there is something there which one has to find out and probe into further. Ashwini and I attented one free seminar on Self Hypnosis organized by Indian Council of Hypnotherapists and got some useful information regarding practicing hypnotherapists and doctors. I am going to give it a shot and try for myself. The doctors said that hypnotherapy helps asthmatic patients a great deal. One of them said that in adults asthma, psychological factors have a far greater role to play in comparision to childhood asthma, which is more about allergy.

Lets see where all these buffaloes lead me!!!!!

Who do you write for?


The question of who one is writing for is of great importance to almost all forms of writing, all genres,-except poetry. Now this I believe is a very controversial stance. I was reading the blog of Ram Gopan Varma and his discussion on ` Hits and Flops' and I remembered Marianne Moore's profound observation ( noted by Prof Harold Bloom in the Western Canon) that one only writes for oneself and for strangers. When you are writing a newspaper article you have a approximate image of the reader in your mind which comes close to the actual reader. But when you are writing poetry, its only you and the language, the most social of all social institutions. You never know who reads your works. Often it happens that only the poets read poetry and I am sure if your poetry is good they are NOT going to like it at all ( envy you see Sick) and if your work is really bad than you can end up with lots of praise from your poet friends) Wink. Your readers are never the people whom you know because 1) most of them give a damn for creative and serious poetry 2) and those who do feel that you are their rival because they are mostly other poets!! If a poet says that he is writing only for himself, he of course lying and if a poet says that he writes for others, probably he is a bad writer. Conclusion: One always writes for oneself and for strangers. No one could have put it better than Ms. Moore