Bread Crumbs

I believe it has been three days since I was thrown.

By what exactly I am not yet sure, and I hope that I do not come across the information any time soon. There is a terse sort of plebeian mystique in not being able to recognise or identify my demons anymore. Several things happened but nothing really happened. I now find myself at an odd sort of paradox pinnacle, only it isn't a pinnacle its a plateau. Everything around me is stale, stable and serene but for the first time, the tidal wave of ideas in my head is threatening to shake me loose from something. I think that something is my complacency.

This scares me.

My corporeal complacency and I share a very deep bond and I have never considered severing it. There have been moments that have forced me to take stock of my laziness and momentarily move out of -what they all call- 'the Rut', but I like keeping the road leading back to Tartarus perpetually freckled with bread crumbs. I have recently been having nightmares. Nightmares where I find myself with a broom and tin pan in hand, wiping the smudged water colors clean. I see myself running around, attending meetings, heading ideas and waiting for paychecks.
I cannot bear the sight of myself like this...losing myself all over again.

Several things happened.

I read a column that brought me to tears sitting at my desk at work so that I found that I just HAD to email Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post. She talked about how life chokes poetry out of us. Of Koyaanisqatsi - a life out of balance. Of how the worlds greatest classical violinist Joshua Bell stood weaving magic at a subway Station in DC but no one stopped to listen, because magic lost the epic battle in time management ;

I met a soul mate, a sixty-something adolescent genius traipsing around the world in his bermuda shorts and safari hat photographing natural wonders and writing books. All the while smiling;

I met a man without a face, a congenital disorder had wiped it off his skull - there was a mouth and a bump where an eye-censor sat and a slit where a nostril used to be. All the while his mind worked and as he drooled into a pipe, leaking out mucus to a small bucket he mumbled and pointed and made scintillating conversation;

I stumbled across the discovery that I can translate photographs and picked up a camera again with the express purpose to finally write that column I've wanted to write for ages, regardless of whether it ever sees the light of day. To write phantom fables through traces of life in chaos;

My friend Tigger realized his calling as the next-gen Messiah who would single-handedly educate all the inhabitants of this country, cure Aids and introduce Democracy to our Land of the Pure...bouncing all the while;

I sent in my first attempt at Fulbright, confessing at length that I had no quantitative skills whatsoever but did they have room on board for a Hobo who wanted to sing 'Ring them Bells' perched atop the Eiffel Tower?;

I found that I may have missed my personal chance at seizing what an acquaintance calls 'Venomous Hope' and I may have misdirected my resentment at him for being right and forcing me to look the realization in the eye;

I went to Government College for the first time accompanied by a colleague and spent an entire afternoon in the music department listening to old tapes of student recordings on the tabla and harmonium- the air was musty, the afternoon hot and the atmosphere ecstatic;

I spent an evening with my driver Karamat and my maid Fauzia at Joy Land, which I visited after almost seven years, sat on an obnoxious ride that gave me a headache and scared the fading night-light out of me and had ice cream and pop-corn over conversation that centered around my procuring invitations to visit the villages of both next Sunday;

I downloaded loads and loads of Bob Geldof and Jefferson Airplane and stumbled across the discovery that songs like 'We Built this City' - though lacking in lyrical merit- are pretty damn awesome to hum in the shower;

I met writer friends for 'coffee' and had a coke, rather late. I managed to stay out till 10:30 and laughed for real;

I wrote a letter to the sky, saying everything and burned it.
Like I said…Nothing really happened.