Only Self Talk

More of a self-remembrance

Pretheesh Presannan
2 min readSep 6, 2022

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Photo by Tristan Gevaux on Unsplash

riding in the bus
the only, one and only, self-talk
he had to have
which is more of a reminder
or an order
to the machine
the thought machine
was:
I do not want you
to put me to sleep now
I ain’t sleeping now
thank you
.
then immediately
the machine rebelled:
then what else am I to do
if not to put you to sleep

he said:
I do not know
I ain’t sleeping now
the machine came again
with its torture chatter:
how am I to do that
how am I to not
put you to sleep
and then he realized
there was no use
convincing a mechanical program
and simply stayed awake
ready to spontaneously
eat up the life within
and around him
as the bus moved.

Look at the tree in front of you. Are you actually looking at the tree or is thought looking at it? Hear the crow cawing. Are you listening to it, or are you identifying the sound with the bird? Can you look at somebody without the image that you have about that someone? Looking at something static is fairly simple. But it is difficult to look at a thing in movement, an endless flow which is not time-binding. When you look at a tree, your mind is already active: ‘It’s an oak tree; I like it; it’s old, it’s young,’ and so on — so you are not looking at all. Can you…

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Pretheesh Presannan

Panic Attack Survivor. Just writing. Plays cricket. Design&Develop. You can find short stories, poems, etc, here. For any work mail to : pretheeshgp@gmail.com