Fractions and Factions
Are you alive or Are you waiting to die? Do you know yourself or Do you create the illusion that helps you survive? Is this the life you wanted or Is this you, fulfilling their fantasies? Did you make the choice to become what you are, what you shall be? Or did the choice make you what you are now and what you shall never be?
When i was young, no, younger, i often gazed at the night sky in wonderment. i was never very good at identifying constellations. i got mixed up drawing lines between the thousand little dots. So i gave up and just stared. Out of moving cars on highways. Out of windows in rooms. Out from the verandah-balcony. And sometimes, but not very often, out from the open terrace six floors high. i stared at the thousand blinking unblinking specks of white pinpoint holes in the all absorbing blackness of the cloak enveloping our nocturnal lives. And i wondered at the utter and complete insignificance of it all - of everything - our planet (which looked so small in the pictures of the solar system and far away galaxies in my books), our countries, our wars, our lives, our successes, our failures - everything. i never understood why people were so ....involved, so immersed, in what i guess i can know safely 'label' as "material excesses" when everyone should be thinking about the universe and the millions of stars and trillions of planets but most of all, the ways and means to realize the inevitable moment of contact with extraterrestrial, i.e., "alien" life. There was bound to be another Earth tucked away in some distant recess of the universe, my pint-sized astronomical education gleaned from pocket-sized treatises whispered in my ear confidently. i had resolved to dedicate my life in furthering the great cause of affecting that discovery, that moment of revelation....when life would lose irrelevance and be awarded with purpose. But then of course, i didnt.
What was the point in my telling you all of this? i dont know. And maybe thats just it. Maybe thats the point. When i read Tintin, i wanted to be a reporter. Not so long after that i wanted to be a writer, globe-trotter, space explorer, scientist (not the dorky type but the cool genius types), pilot, blue-chip billionaire, hermit, copywriter and musician. i was going to be everything of everything. But thats not how the world functions. Thats not how people live their lives. There comes a point when the childish dreams and juvenile fantasies have to be swept aside to be replaced with pragmatism, logic, hate, masquerades and ...well, the real world, really. You cant go on living out boyhood ideals. You Grow Up.
And, right then, just right at that very moment, a part of you ...dies. But is it possible to turn back time? To resurrect the dead? To somehow someway anyway breathe that little flame of freedom, of caring and uncaring, of relevancies and insignificances, back into life? If yes, then when do you know that the moment is upon you? Is this what was meant to be or Is this you trying to escape the real world? Are you truly what you make of yourself or Are you really what life makes of you? i dont know. But one can always hope to know and hope that its not too late to know and hope it wont be too late to know.
i have nothing left to say. i had nothing to say to begin with. i m troubled and i am at peace, with myself. i m not at the proverbial crossroads. i cannot see anything. i m being pulled, torn from all sides. i dont think i m moving in any direction at all. Its just this one thing i cant figure out and that keeps gnawing at my insides and bleeding out of my eyes.
Am i whats right or Am i whats left?