Gift Wrapper

I think this story would deserve the title Airport Love - Part 2 but somewhere in the middle of its conceptualization the current title became more fitting.

Try listening to My Body Is A Cage by Peter Gabriel when you're reading this. A macabre mood does you good sometimes.

If you listened to me, then you're reading this at the airport as you wait for your flight.

Looking around at plastic smiles, plastic baggage, plastic cups and breathing recycled.
So I decided to have a conversation that Im certain I wouldn't have the guts to do face to face.

Something that is better left unsaid. But since when have I followed my own advice?

We've been together, what, 7 years?

Maybe there have been surprises here and there, small bouts of suspense. But overall, our relationship has been nothing but predictable.
Like walking into a Nolan film expecting to be awed.
Or expecting a Mani Ratnam movie to have a happy ending.
Life doesn't always have happy endings. Something I learnt from you.

But I remember vividly, the first night we spent together. Camping somewhere near Perth.
I remember waking up next to you. I remember wanting to wake up next to you, even if there was no dawn and no sunset.

I remember watching you wake.

I remember cooking for you. Serving wine to an already intoxicating person.
I still want to drive through northern French countryside with you.
But cruelly enough, I want to drive back alone.

The feelings I had, I will forever have for you. But I think my want for expressing them has been satisfied. It reminds me of something my mother used to do. Something that I never clearly understood until now.

She took more care in unwrapping the gift paper than she took joy in enjoying the gift.

I think our relationship has reached a point where anything more is certainly a gift.

A Wrapped Gift.
But I'm so much in awe of how perfectly our previous conversations have ended that I'm too scared to tear open the gift wrapper.

That somehow, crazily enough, I will enjoy our memories more than the process of making more.

So when you return from your trip; nothing will have vanished.
Except for me.

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I enjoyed writing this story. Dont hate, appreciate.

Now reading - The Return of Bruce Wayne - Grant Morrisson

Now Listening - We Swarm - The Glitch Mob

Now Feeling - Uh, Tired

Of All Things Lively

Hello.

Maybe its been too long since I wrote here. Maybe it hasn't.
But somehow, no matter how much I try, I can't write unless there's that sudden spark of inspiration.
I always imagine an artist can doodle something anytime. And a musician can always make a tune in progress.
Maybe writers pen short fiction and poems in these mid-spaces where inspiration is absent.
But somehow I can't.

Although I do have a pretty radical explanation to it.

What if what I perceive as inspiration isn't it? What if there's more? What if every moment until you realize you're inspired is in some way a small parcel of the overall inspiration?
Reading that sentence makes me shudder at how optimistic I am sometimes. I like being realistic. If you're gonna drown, you're gonna drown. Can't really tell you the water's nice and warm then, can I?
But maybe as humans we're programmed to believe in something? To always hope. To always look up and hope to see something that prolongs this eternal hope.
That line made me a little sad. But sadly enough, it is the truth. 

On unrelated notes, thanks to the unreliability in availability of an Internet connection in India, I've started maintaining a journal. Its probably something I should have done a long while back, but I guess something kept stopping me.

I hope  to find more meaning to life in the emptiness of the pages that will no doubt be filled.

And if you've been reading this all along and somehow within you a voice agrees, that maybe this dude has a point (most of the time), then Im being bold enough to ask you if agreeing with me has indeed affected you?
Its probably the most powerful thing someone can do. Inspire.
Especially unintentionally.
Imagine if someone shaped their lives based on something you once said. Or an action you once did.

But I said I was a realist. And that includes acknowledging the other side of the coin. Its an act of inspiration. Doesnt require that the person continue to be that way all the time. Or even that the particular quality you found interesting about someone is no longer there. That doesn't necessarily make them uninteresting or uninspiring but it sure as hell makes me wonder.

Why stories should have definite endings.
Because more often than not, its enough that we know of one incident and learn to move on from the experience and not let it rule us.
Like how in Asterios Polyp, they choose not to show anything beyond Asterios reuniting with his lover. Somehow its the best ending the book can leave you with. The knowledge that he has gained redemption, meaning and he's reunited with the woman who completes him, however abstract a concept that might be.

Maybe we too should choose the endings for certain moments in our lives. Save on the pain and spread some love, maybe.

Try reading this listening to Dawn at the Deuce and Sail on Soothsayer by Buckethead.

I shall end now, hoping that its adequate to say no more,

V

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Now Reading - Transmetropolitan

Now Listening - Sail on Soothsayer - Buckethead

                              Kaliyuga - Engine Earz Experiment

                              Khoya Khoya Chand - Kala Bazaar

Now Feeling  - Calm?