My unabridged self : cont.......

It has been ages since I opened word document and sat down to write something. And how I missed it. Fifteen minute later I was still looking at the black page – am I just out of touch or did I have my first writer’s block? I sat reading some of my earlier posts hoping to get a head start. A year ago I had written My unabridged self. And now I decided to continue with it again, hoping, perhaps this will lift the curfew in my brain.
I have been soul searching lately. Not an easy thing to do mind you. It is like driving through thick mist at night trying to look at the traffic signals. High beam doesn’t help coz more often its blinding.
So what emerged out the precious time that I spent introspecting, (when I could have worked, instead), I’d say that the process was more rewarding than the result. The result was irrelevant. Afterall, I am what I am. Taking a tour of my own self is like an infinite regress through the neurons of my brain. It is as if I am attempting to solve a problem which re-introduced the same problem in the proposed solution. If one continues along the same lines, the initial problem will recur infinitely and will never be solved.
If I suddenly discover today that I am maniac or a neurotic, there is no ways I could alter it. I could take a few drugs, yes, go into therapy/yoga/meditation or whatever people do under such circumstances, but I’d still remain what I was/ am.
So that got me thinking, why do we want to change? I cant we accept what we are? If we are constantly trying to mould and cast ourselves according to our environment then aren’t we loosing a bit of ourselves every time? Self improvement is a good thing is but provided you don’t lose yourself. And yet again, if we remain what we are, refuse to change we become rigid. Evolutionary scientists call it walking on edge of chaos. Our gene and behavior respond and mutate with the environmental change, but if we alter too much we are in for trouble, too little we become extinct.
As the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland said: "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep yourself in the same place". And so it is with coevolution. Evolutionary changes are required to stay in the same place. Cessation of change may result in extinction. I couldn’t have agreed better.
I am the former kind. I love to change. Versatility is in my bones. In fact I am obsessed with novelty and change so much that I feel inadequate if change does not occur at regular intervals. Monotony is appalling. Mundane existence puts me off and turns me into a rock – cold and depressed. Anxiety attacks set it when things don’t change, and when they do I am over excited.
I am the chameleon that is disturbed and confused if its environment changes too often.

I have a fleeting interest in any and everything, a superficial knowledge about all, I love flitting from project to project as apparently purposelessly as a butterfly dancing from flower to flower. Life is a game which must always be full of fresh moves and continuous entertainment, free of labor and routine. Changing horses in the middle of the stream is another small quirk in the bigger scheme of things. Depths frighten me, but heights makes me elated, which why I love the mountains more than the sea. The sea reminds me of the bottom of the ocean, the endless abyss, which can suck me in like a centrifuge and I might never get out of the whirlpool. I embrace the open inviting arms of the mountains, the mystery, the fortitude, the resilient force, a forbidden territory that my must traverse. So also, I eagerly sink my teeth into any new information, a little later move on to the next table.
How I love the little oddities of this world – the creased abnormalities and anomalies that peaks and wans on the surface of this convoluted tapestry. String theory is believable only when there are no strings attached, - only if you choose to believe in the initial assumption and hypothesis that the universe that we live in nothing more than a hologram. There is always a duality of either/ or and neither/ nor that intrigues me.
Only if we choose to understand that perfection is an exception not a rule – things are supposed to be screwed up and eschewed, like the scientist who designed the best android on earth realized that he has forgotten to put the switch to turn it on.
As I grow older, I feel more and more frequently that like Lewis Carroll's Alice, I've gone some kind of rabbit hole and emerged into some bizarre universe that makes me wonder if I am hallucinating. No, alas, there's no one to blame for my warped perceptions than myself, coz the world is the same old smug ball of wool. It’s just that I see it differently. I see the world has an unexplored alien spacecraft that has landed into my backyard by mistake. I am a wide-eyed wandered. My world is as dramatic as psychedelic lights in a discotheque. It's hard to tell where reality ends and illusion begins. They blend-then they separate.
The gypsy woman knows that she is capable of premonition only through a crystal ball, and I know that I am nothing without my mindscape. If every person speaks a volume if you care to listen. Without my mind, I am a caterpillar without its cocoon, a totally vulnerable and insecure green wobbly grub.
I believe, my mind is a giant octopus that engulfs itself. The gnarly tentacles that germinates within the two hemispheres and threatens to conquer the world................it starts here, from one atom, one molecule that nourishes like a virus on a living organism and then takes the shape of a troll.
I have that nasty habit of reading the last page first. No, don’t roll your eyes at that, what’s there in knowing the end, when the journey is more important. No one gets out of it alive, so why take life seriously? There is no suspense, no melodrama, only a karmic connections, a series of events – a cause and effect relationship. So what if I know the effect first and the cause later.
So what if I am a quicksilver character, cool and willful at one moment, utterly fragile the next, isn’t it what everyone wants – masquerade for every occasion, a personality makeover for every season? The one word to describe myself would be “ambiguous” I am made of two halves that are at constant fiction with each other. Fighting for space, time and dominance, like two twins in a womb. Until one takes over the other - like phases of the moon and the tide they rise and fall, wax and wane.
One fine day, you might find me benevolent, congenial, chirpy, vivacious and full of talks with energy that fairly snaps, crackles and pops in the air. Other days I am just as gloomy as the winter weather, hibernating in the deeper sub-strata of my mercurial mind. Be sure, it is the “to be or not to be” dilemma.
The conservative stick-in-the-muds put me off. I am all for novelty and variety. And I am a traveler not a tourist. Some days I wander off into the uncharted territories of space, the other days I submerge deep into the darkness of ocean. My horizon is made of elastic – it stretches far and beyond the visible ranges. In the ranges of maxima and minima. At first there were squares and circles and now there is tesseract. What’s next on the menu? You wouldn’t even guess!
The grass always looks greener just across the road. The sky is bluer across other ocean. The sun shines brighter in a different place. What do I seeks? Perhaps some hidden, undiscovered, parallel universe within myself. I am a mental explorer. My mind is my Magnum Opus. It is my lethal half. It is my salvation. It is my doom. It is the megapolis of ideas - of what I perceive of this pale onion world.
It lives coz I let it live. And in doing so, I tear myself away from profound happiness and contentment. If that’s the price I pay for being able to see both sides of coin then so be it. There is no one answer to my questions. There is no right or wrong, simply a collection of realizations.
If you knew the address of Neverland, you would decide not to grow up. Its Peter pan syndrome – growing old but not growing up. Youth never dies, only humans do. That’s my mojo.
A well-known scientist once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the Earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.
At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise."
The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?"
"You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"
Who needs proof when the story is so good?
It rings true like a good china vase.
Both truth and reality are illusions you see.