You know those days when the calmly cycling wheels processing life's routine in your head come to a grinding halt, and suddenly everything around you seems meaningless? Well, today was one of those. The past few weeks have been a blur of virtually nothing I can recall, the only events standing out being watching RDB and wondering what happened to the poor director when he was making the last part of the movie, Insomnia's performance at Infy on V-day and a lovely dinner. The early morning gd/pi classes have stopped too; there is no motivation left. I realized that all I had to show for days and days was data from each day's newspaper, which is by far the only constructive thing I do in the day. And tons of movies under my belt. About those, later. So I felt myself sinking, sinking.. and I asked for help. Help came in the form of the wonderful suggestion that A and K bring out their dusty guitars, and play. So we played, tried hard to recollect forgotten songs, taught each other one new song each.. gave the entire nocturnal junta of the college a glimpse of what fourth years ought to be doing. :)
Afa the movies go, Pride and Prejudice I thought was a very good adaptation, I really like Kiera Knightly in her typical bright-eyed, sharp-talking roles. Plus she has the added advantage of having a name that sounds rather like mine. Oops! :D I must've watched like 20 movies and don't remember a single one. Read Sophie's Choice. Heart-rending. Want to watch the movie now. I'm very, very unhappy with who I am right now. All this stupid newspaper and magazine reading has killed the love for the abstract in me. I was horrified when today, while reading a book I normally would've enjoyed dissecting a few years back, I had to struggle to understand. I couldn't fathom the metaphor, the long-winded sentences, the vagueness, the multiple interpretations and reflections of the character's psyche like I once could. I am heart-broken. I don't want all this information clogged into my brain, I want the ability to understand the world with very little data to understand it by. I want to be able to know people and situations intuitively, recapture and nurture the ability to see everything as multiple images, pregnant with potential meaning. I want to have long, loaded conversations which open new doors, concretize perceptions, make way for new perceptions.. that help me actually notice at the people and things around me, each one unique.
After many episodes of dilly-dallying that saw me end up watching a movie one the computer, I finally went to the library today. Leafing through the beautifully laminated pages of a National Geographic magazine, I greedily took in the images of the magnificent Grand Canyon that they had featured this month. There was a lynx too, and her babies. Oh, it was like being transported to another time in my life, when something as little as a picture of a lone stream in the hills would spur the desperate want to see every beautiful place in the world, experience ever. To do something that would touch a million lives, to be remembered and loved beyond my time. The vague apprehensions about this time of this year are becoming more concrete. There's very little time and so much to do, so much to take in. A lot of my friends have been going through college-leaving and gf/bf-leaving blues. A lot of relationship raffia welling up, but I shall resolutely quell it, and leave my thoughts on long-distance relationships, possible heartache, possible liberation etc. for a later date.
While on relationships, one of the movies I watched, the highly forgettable 'Shall we dance' except for well, the dances, managed to gently shake up my thoughts on marriage. Richard Gere says in the movie, and I paraphrase, that the purpose of marriage.. what everyone means when they harp about lifelong commitment.. is probably that in a marriage, you are assured of a witness to your life.. that there will always be at least one person who will know every moment of your life, your every hope, dream, sadness, joy, your achievements and failures.. one person whose memories you will stay in after you're gone till they are. The need for that kind of security is probably the thin line between a relationship with a high-degree of commitment, and a marriage. I thought that was a rather astute observation. Well I would, I believe, Spinoza style, that every action we take is in some way dictated by self-interest. Our will is driven by the need to be happy. You could want to get married to make the other person happy, but only because you know they could make you happy in return. It is the ultimate state of symbiosis, and which creature in the universe has ever shunned mutual advantage :P? Happiness could subsume making other people happy, feeling loved, making life easier for someone else.. a marriage is no more unselfish than is a business contract. Only, the currency of trade is
different. Well, in most, at least. ;)
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