Thursday, November 6, 2008

Blonde about the future.....

I wish there could be tangibility or quantity associated with the abstract. If there were a definition point of absolute degeneration, I would have now assumed its shape. Nothing interests me. Nothing. At work I am just vegetating and want to do nothing more. (Just make a note of the number of times I am using the letter “n”). Never taking any initiative, not even taxing my brain a wee bit, never voicing any opinion, never contributing anything save for justifying the presence of the chair on which I sit and the keyboard on which I bang. So comfortable have I become with the mundane, that I have begun to consider it my oxymoronic haven. 10 hours of every day of my life are spent existing between breakfast, lunch and coffee breaks. Another four hours are spent in anticipation of or getting ready for or contemplating about these ten hours.

“What do I want from life????”. I would ambitiously want to assume that this thought tortures billions with every sunrise and sunset. In the comfort of the fact that I am just a small insignificant part of this mass paranoia, it still sometimes pinches that I don’t have a goal, I have not given a thought to the future, five years down the lane, I wouldn’t even know whether I am alive, paralyzed, brain dead or deceased: leave alone seeing myself establishing a strong forte in my current occupational field.

I see others around me studying for, aiming for, wanting something. I see a hazy outline of a man, a dog, a home and books. However, I do not have a freakin clue as to how in the freakin world am I supposed to freakin make them real.
Do I want to study? Yes. Study Poetry, Virginia Woolf and her idiosyncratic fantasies about a world made real by her vivid imagination, study history, a dissertation on the break out in Sarajevo 94 years ago, go traveling, thirsting for people, cultures and beauty, Vineyards in Boudreaux or Baramati . I yearn so much for these that the thought of not having them kills me and yet again the thought of actually exerting myself to have that, vexes me. Is it a mirage that I am chasing? Wanting only that which I cant have or to be more appropriate, dont have?

You will always want what you don’t have. When you do have what you did want, the possession becomes alien and wretched, as now there is really no want for it. So you start wanting something else again. Right now the want of not wanting to be here at this workstation, among these people is so acute that it is agonizing to even consider anything else except for running away.

Metamorphosis….. into….into… air, touching omnipresence and yet never associating.

2 comments:

Amrutaa said...

In today's world, being without a goal is fatal. We, the not so ambitious,do not have the privilege to pursue nothing.
Yet, you make joblessness and absolute aimlessness sound so cool with your words! Thats where you have an advantage, you bloody writers!!
In plain words, ur just another loser like me! :P

GuNs said...

"go traveling, thirsting for people, cultures and beauty, Vineyards in Boudreaux or Baramati"
...or the narrow streets in Florence, the poor man playing the accordion and asking for donations in Alicante, a trek to Montserrat near Barcelona, looking down the ski slope on Mount Titlis, sleeping overnight on the beach in Goa amidst ten thousand other new year party people. All this while loving it yet so desperately hoping I wasn't alone.

If you haven't travelled alone yet, I'd definitely recommend it. Other than the obvious advantages of complete flexibility and freedom of where to go, how to go, when to eat, what (not to) see, whom to meet etc., there is also the part where you can think about yourself. You are the only judge of every step that you take in the absence of people known to you. Your REAL reactions to certain events or situations can never be known when you are with people you know. A pressure to 'conform' to acceptable behaviour or to your 'confirmed' identity is overpowering when there are people around you that know you.

It only helps you appreciate friends more. It helps you appreciate every meal that you have with your friends or family when you sit down in a foreign land to have your meal alone and away from prying eyes.

Through my travels, I noticed that the best way to travel is either single or in groups of two. Anything more is an overkill and a lot more time is spent strategising/complaining/arguing/voting/criticising/bitching than enjoying. Most non-Indian tourists that I saw in Europe (and even in India) travel in groups of two.

I can safely say that a perfectly im.promp.tu trip is impossible for a group of more than two. The Motorcycle Diaries, KIM, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are two of my all time favourites and both describe the journeys of mainly two people. In fact, some other books that I liked recently like The Kite Runner, Life of Pi, The Niagara Falls All Over Again etc. describe the life and journeys of two main characters.

Maybe you can take that symbolic motorcycle of yours and go on to write your own Motorcycle Diaries.

As for me, I'm still looking for that one person who would be willing and able to do a couple-of-weeks (at least) around-India random trip where nothing is planned. No hotel bookings, no roadmaps, no directions and most importantly - no destinations. More realistically though, a one or two week trip to Nepal with either one or two friends seems to be on the cards around new year's eve.

-PeAcE
--WiTh
---GuNs