staying.cool

i lay my head back.. further, further.. and all at once, i feel the water soaking the back of my head. lower and lower, now it covers my ears. meanwhile, my legs move to get me afloat in the water; and before i know it i’m on my back floating down the swimming pool.

i stare at the blue ceiling passing overhead, my hands and legs moving lazily, slowly.. keeping me moving, keeping me floating. the world is mute, sounds do not percolate through the water to my ears. i vaguely note a swishing sounds.. some experimentation soon tells me that it is me.

my eyes peer through goggles, i continue to examine a nondescript ceiling, my body remains afloat as it has been trained for the last 18 years. my eyes glaze over as i continue to move down the pool. thoughts unbidden come to me. the first thought is that i should write about this feeling of calm that floating down the pool always gives me. the second is whether i’m gonna bang my head against the wall of the pool. i dare not change position, i don’t want to lose this tranquility. there are days when i crave it, the absolute silence, and the sheer contrast it usually has to the sounds of the swimming pool.

swimming is one of the few activities that i can enjoy physically, knowing that i am halfway decent at it. when i first hit the pool after a long time, i realized just how much i had missed it. and just how out of shape i had managed to get. i’m a long way from that day now, but i’m not regular enough for my own good.

sitting alone on the bed, listening to the first strings of ‘comfortably numb’ pass into consciousness (or beyond it)… staring at the walls that still retain that tinge of.. blue.

Hello?
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me.
Is there anyone home?

suddenly the feeling of ‘blue’ hits; a sinking despondency that seems to take hold and possess every fibre of the being, every nerve feels tranquilized, the mind seems to be deadening… sinking into an inky blackness. my eyes roam the room: the white starkness of the walls around seem to emphasize the blue that is not completely covered by whitewash; it is almost as if the blue is trying to grow out of the white it lies beneath and seep through every particle it touches. a meaningless terror takes hold, the blue will diffuse out of the wall and take hold of even me.
a pause, a crowd in that stadium thirty years ago applauds trailing notes.

a worrying tendency i’ve seen develop in myself over the last few months.. the lack of reaction. for some reason, anything that happens to me is met with an initis al lack of complete reaction; and once it sinks in; i’m still nowhere as close to enthused as i would expect to be.

i sometimes wonder whether something essential has died inside, i can feel the spontaniety; the kind of enthusiasm that used to make up so much of my work just drift away.

in some ways, every day is a waking dream. the time just seems to flow by, like the waters in a stream. it feels like there should be more; there should be a real motivation behind existence… a purpose to which we should be aspiring to. there isn’t, and that doesn’t bother me. that i can’t find one, doesn’t seem to bother me either.

i used to question, reason, explore the “mysteries” of life as i saw them. somewhere along this path, i’ve lost that. i philosophise, i rationalize what happens.. and i leave it there. should it be better ? maybe. is it good now ? yeah, i guess. the drive, the energy that i used to think makes life worth living is just not there. i could care less whether an explosion happened right now.. it would mean that i would have something to clear up.

this is not to say i do not feel. i feel terribly. some things happened last year; they hit hard. my grandfather passed away; that hit me hard too. some plans i’ve had haven’t worked out like they shoud; that was not very nice either. so many other things hit me hard; but i’m unable tos say a word.
and all this was internal.

that just feels wrong. somehow, they are all these explosions in my internal consciousness.. which seem to sort of whimper out by the time they appear on my face. in essence, the emotion is expressed internally, never externally.

even now, i sound like a pedantic professor examining a specimen. complete disassociation from the self.

i’m either en route to becoming a true scientist/psychologist.. or i’m a psychiatric basket-case.

sweet.

its amazing how you find someone when you need them.

there was a time when i used to feel that one finds the people one needs, only when one needs them. in essence, they can be thought to fill a void.
but there is the class of people who appear.. and enter one’s life. they may not provide any purpose or reason, but they show a way. the way that you might miss. the way that you need to realise.
the way that must be found by us.

and yet, in some ways, we are all drifting away from each other. i can see it happen with me. the lack of common grounds, the loss of a connection based on which i used to relate. i find it difficult to relate, much less talk, to many of the people i know. as close as they may have been, as much as “touch” as we might have maintained.. actual conversations get more and more difficult to carry on. there seem to be some stock questions that are asked.. and then the litany of ’so what else is new ?’ starts. it doesn’t feel like we are conversing, more like we are keeping up appearances.. so that we feel ‘normal’.

there is something we are losing.. and we are doing nothing about it. and every time we rebuild our relationships, they become weaker. we start with good intentions.. and eventually life takes us over; and we give up.
till we realise what we have lost.

you can lose it, and find it. and there are times when you wonder how many chances a relationship can survive before it falls apart.

this means eventually we’ll lose the ability to make connections with other people. social hermits.
or maybe that’ll just be me.

i remember telling someone that i am an introvert.. that i’m turning asocial in the sense that i prefer the company of society less and less. the feeling of being lonely seems almost normal at times.

now that is a scary thought.