Self-indulgence

Oh, I want to learn such simple things
No politics, no history
Till what I want and what I need
Can finally be the same

                            - Conor Oberst

I woke up today wondering if my last words in the dream I'd just been shaken out of ('Oh my God!' if you're interested) had stayed completely inside my head or if I'd actually said them out loud. That's probably misleading, so just to clarify, last words not in the sense of dying or anything. It was an eerie dream, won't call it a nightmare, inspired by Gone Girl, the movie. I don't feel confident about getting into its details in a riveting fashion, so whatever. What's probably interesting though, is that the dream was mostly in Hindi-esque gibberish and the exclaim in English, neither of which is my mother tongue - says quite a bit about my life in the last five years or so.

Now, if I was you, I'd call bullshit. This does sound like something someone might makeup for the sake of an interesting read ('Today it seems'). But I'm not (you or making it up). And the words were so loud in my head, that I actually did wonder, before being fairly convinced that they stayed in my head. It would be impossible to walk you through how I was convinced 'cause for one, it was a series of feelings - not thoughts. And for another, I don't quite remember them anymore.

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Speaking of my life in the last five years, have you ever noticed your contempt towards certain kinds of behaviour you've grown out of yourself. 'Fucking n00b' you think. Or 'amateur', or 'immature', etc. depending on the kind of person you are now. It's understandable towards people who're being twelve - even if they are twelve. But twenty years old you wasn't too bad. That person could've, without too much of a stretch, passed for a real adult behaviourally. The world's full of bat-shit crazy m'fuckers, after all. But those in phases you grew out of are discriminated against in your head, aren't they? Makes you wonder what the odds are of future you being kind towards present you. Of course, that number twenty is not quite the same for us all, but you get the idea.

If you don't get what I'm talking about, revisit your past, maybe. Diary entries, facebook posts, anything else you may have written up a few years ago. Try to remember things that used to make you feel good about yourself. Things that frustrated you. And the good one - how you planned to deal with them. The bullshit logic and rationalization.
 

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I understand that not all of you will share this contempt I'm writing of. Speaking of, isn't it rather amazing that we can empathize with one another's feelings, though we can never be sure that feelings feel the same to different people. I'll try not to take this down the 'How do you explain the colour red in words?' drain - an exercise, I'm sure, generations and generations of wannabe deep thinkers, myself included, have indulged in and felt good about. But in some cases, it's more than just a philosophical exercise. With colours, I think it's fair to assume that most people experience them the same way. But with emotions... Not vague ones to begin with like 'like', but something seemingly solid like love. Emotions that people react to in different ways, that people go through in different degrees. You wonder if the difference is only in the degree.

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Time for a confession. This post has kind of been written just for the sake of writing something. I've been meaning to write for a while now, but was finding it hard to start. The movie review was a forced start. Since then, I've made a list of forms, themes and overall moods I'm interested in employing. If it's unclear what I mean by overall mood, the list currently comprises absurd, lighthearted and serious. I really wanted to do a short story today, but couldn't come up with a plot. And it wasn't like I tried hard and failed. It felt weird to even start thinking of a plot. So, just to break my block, decided to put you through an essay on something that happened to me today and things that I've thought about recently - hence the title. And I don't think I've done too bad a job of it. To those who disagree (and that includes you, future me), in the words of Hugh Jackman, as I'm sure many others', "Fuck you".

But a lighthearted and slightly absurd boy-meets-girl short story is not far away. And to those who liked this one - similar stuff will follow, in hopefully a much better thought out and organized manner.

You hear me talkin' hillbilly boy? I ain't through with you by a damn sight. I'mma get

pseudo-intellectual on yo ass.

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P.S.: Just to round this up, Gone Girl is a really good watch. In the course of writing this, I resisted a bad pun involving warm feelings and degrees. And I may have inadvertently lied in the beginning.

"Do you know what time it is? It's tomorrow."

- A black, female hotel receptionist to Gabriel Eglesias (with a 'I')