Rizado - It has a meaning!

i'm feeling very languid. it has to do with the this really nice song i'm hearing, all sweet notes, that seem to smile inwardly, like they know something really happy. that and some other stuff. i love it when the weather has become pre-diwali muted, hushed and fragrant, as though trying to sneak in the winter without letting anyone know. i also love sitting against someone's blanketed legs, talking to a roomful of people while the weather does its thing, so that even after i've left, it stays with me, the simple perfection of that moment. i love falling quietly.

so anyway, i'm back. i always thought the emptiness was a function of my current circumstances, whenever i felt it. and i applied myself to fixing it for now while simultaneously distracting myself with thoughts of a fuller, meaningful and more joyous existence, sometime in the future. but the more i'm coming to live this future, i'm realising that the emptiness has followed me. a little bit. i'm also realising, at the same time, that i need to take it less seriously. cuz it feels like the more bandwidth i allow it, the more it haunts me.

i'm also noticing how important it is that someone bears witness to your existence. for many reasons, like, it's a great leveller, for one. it reminds you that you're not the only one having to deal with the mud-caked world outside, while everyone else apparently is living this party. for another, it allows for the black comedy rendering of circumstances which would otherwise just be incredibly depressing. and what is black comedy without an audience? is that escapism? my reluctance to just live it but ideally perform it for someone instead? i've done it all my life. as a child, whenever i got projects that i knew not head or tail off, i would channel my older cousins' demeanour as they went about their work looking all important and serious. and that is how i got the projects done, however badly. is my imaginary audience (as a child, not now, now i seek out the real deal) the same thing as kids having imaginary friends? ninja would get this.

so maybe the emptiness i'm talking about are the empty seats in my great imaginary amphitheatre where i perform my narrow little existence. no wonder nobody wants to see it. i need to start thinking TRP stuff. maybe a time leap?

this one is about me. this isn't about anyone else. it's mine. fuck off.

i feel like i'm living in a treacly liquid. i can't seem to separate myself from it.

i just got a massive electric shock. from this random point on my wall that looks like just a dot, you know, that you never cared to know more about. kind of like those disturbed people. not to trivialise or anything. so anyway, i'm kind of feeling breathless since i got back. like if i'm not careful, things will assume a pace of their own and i won't be able to do a thing about it. so i'm trying to be careful. and stay objective. and remind myself that nobody can make me do anything. and i'm also talking to friends. and seeing a glimpse of the people we are, that we will be. we're there. it's tomorrow. but it's too still. it's the kind of suburban sunny afternoon that always has you looking at tomorrow or another day because the moment itself is about waiting. the kind of days i long to inhabit in an out of body way when i see kids walking back from school, lugging a two ton schoolbag. but now, when i'm here, and there, it becomes about waiting again. but it's still not quite the same, you know. you can never really go back home, then, i guess.

i want to fly away. enter the houses i see here, in pictures, everywhere. figure out who i would be if i lived there. whether the quaint swing in the stamp-sized lawn would similarly miniaturise my life's context. whether i would be the kind to spend a lot of time at the kitchen table, milk carton and all. what it would be like to make tea there. how i would walk in a particular street. when i see a lot of shade and dried leaves on the ground, i always imagine that the pace of my life would fall away, that its context would narrow down to observing the play of sunlight and shade on walls, like i used to as a child. or put my feet on the sun-warmed window pane and toast my feet till it got painful.

i want to walk around a random tiny swiss village and watch while kids get ice cream fom those tiny shops. i want to sit on benches, smell the basic perfume vials they put outside perfumeries, like vanilla and lavender, i want to watch people live their suburban, streamlined lives and then imagine myself in those houses. pizza on anniversaries, bicycles on birthdays and everything. i want to enjoy the nip in the air while i read. i want to stand in a tiny balcony with a wrought iron fence and watch the world go by. or a terrace. that would make an entire patch of sky all my own. that thought mesmerises. it was one of the chief joys in the house where i grew up. i had my own patch of sky. i would lie on the grass and watch the kites in the sky and will one of them to fall in my lawn. i liked it best when the grass was thick and unmowed. like unstyled hair. lush and all over the place. mum made me walk barefoot on the dewy grass in the early morning, said it was good for my eyes. are our most sensitive nerve-endings in our feet?

i felt so alive.

the thought of leaving some people behind makes me want to hold them and cry. others i want to just ask why this didn't mean more. i don't want to hear random strains of music that bring back everything from how nights smelt here, loaded parries to seemingly cathartic conversations that created the illusion of zero-complexity. i feel strange when people express too much emotion about here. i did too, but i'm easy. also, it wasn't about any single thing, really. it was about a lot of things. i'm easy, things tug at my heart without even trying. but i'm still removed.
everyone seems in this mad rush to cram more stuff in before it's finally over. that has made kind of made these weeks surreal. and for once in my life, for once, i'm acting with most uncharacteristic restraint. for once, i'm not attempting any emotional science experiment. i'm just trying to duck my head till the next two weeks finally run their course. for some, the meaninglessness of whatever happens before it is very liberating. for me, the meaninglessness is the precise reason i'm holding back any further outlay. it doesn't matter.