Long ago

Long, long ago I used to spend numerous, uncountable evenings up on top of the leaky water tank on the roof of my hostel all alone watching flocks of green parakeets fly by against the backdrop of the blue waters of the lake and the expanse of trees, with the distant hum of homebound traffic. Hours would go by as the sun gradually set and the darkness crept in. The question remains -- what was running through my head? This was a question people used to ask me all the time -- Was I thinking profound thoughts? Was I was pining for somebody [nudge, nudge, wink, wink]? Was I contemplating the world's problems? Was I worrying about something? etc., etc. But it was never any of this and the answer was always truthfully "nothing".

Reading this little passage (Jon Elster quoting Georges Perec) puts it in perspective: The visions blurred, became jumbles; they could retain only a few vague and muddled bits, tenuous, persistent, brainless, impoverished wisps...They thought it was happiness they were inventing in their dreams. They thought their imagination was unshackled, splendid and, with each successive wave, permeated the whole world. They thought that all they had to do was to walk for their stride to be a felicity. But what they thought they were, when it came down to it, was alone, stationary and a bit hollow: A grey and icy flatland, infertile tundra.

That's it -- the bleak tundra of daydreams lacking any constraint which would descend into a numb blankness where my brain was simply processing stimuli without registering neither emotion nor thought or anything else for that matter including creating memories. This may be a complete and accurate summary of my life -- existence as an excuse to drift into the blankness of dreamy muddleness.



.