Notes from a nap

I had such a strange dream. I went with you somewhere and that place had a lot of levels. We were on the top part where people sit on these giant beds, instead of tables and so I was like okay I'll take a nap. In a dream, I wanted another nap. I think I love naps. There were people on the bed adjoining ours also, but noone cared, they just did their own thing. It was like sitting at a table with really nice pillows. You got bored so you went away after I dozed off. I woke up a while later and felt the weight of guilt, so heavy omg, and went to look for you. 

As I was exiting, I noticed the weirdness of the fact that not a single person in this fine establishment seemed to mind my act of simply napping and leaving the premises. I hadn't even made a courtesy order. But nvm. I got up and spotted my friend A looming tall over at another table. We hadn't seen each other in years, I thought, and as I gazed at him, I figured a few more wouldn't hurt. He was with some super tall chick who looked like she was one of those well dressed folks that made you feel like they are frowning on your disheveled attire, so fuck her amirite? I exited from a side door, in the hopes of not catching him or being forced to say hello. Idk why, I must have been feeling dickish. It's interesting that I projected my dickery on to her and made it her fault somewhat. Rationalisations are bae.

Outside, the decor was comforting and vaguely marble like. I took the stairs and the stairs had these wooden handrails which were elaborate. I decided to hurry up and leave before A came out, and in my hurry I discovered that instead of running down the stairs, I could just float down. All I needed to do was push off from first step and then guide using railing. I think I sort of found my groove by the 4th iteration. I kept going down and finally hit what seemed like the ground floor. For some reason they had the toilets here, it was just a whole giant bathroom floor. Marble-ish, vaguely like Hogwarts. I met my friends N & P there. N looked despondent, and P just sort of glided in and out of view. I said hello, I've always liked N a lot. She was a bit distant at first. (Karma?), so I figured I'd just go out instead after the formalities were done. The outer room was now a kitchen and a maid was cooking beans, but the wrong kind. She told me she was about to throw them out. I was sad, what a waste. I told her I'd look for my mom and as her if its fine and could be salvaged. She said ok and I left to find my mom. I found her sitting with my cousin, who I ignored. ( dream me really is an asshat ). I asked mom if its fine that the maid cooked the wrong beans. My mom looked like she was about to start ranting so I hurriedly told her it's fine, I would go inform the maid otherwise. (Note: even my subconscious mind is scared of my mom's angry rants. BC) Went back to the kitchen and realised the maid was in the outhouse and she had left something roasting on the stove. At this point I think I just stopped caring and remembered you so I left to go outside. 

I met N & P again, and Idk I wanted to hang out with N. She looked morose even now so I asked her what's up. She told me that 'Taureans are not to be trusted ' and by this I gathered her bae had done something wrong. She lived not far off, so I offered to walk with them part of the way. We made our way to a crossroads and narrow, open lanes lined with red bricks. It looked a little bit like old world and rustic but I wasn't sure how we had this landscape in the city. Dream me just goes with the flow, so we went down the lane and another perpendicular one opened up, slanting upwards. N and I parted with P and went up the lane which opened out to a giant house on top. House is the wrong word, it was like a big colonial mansion, sprawling but somehow at a height. We went up these stone steps that slowly became steeper and steeper and N went up them while I kept sensing vertigo. The house was closed and N said we had to wait for someone to show up for it to be opened. I kept feeling wonky, perched on this weird step. The house porch looked like those old stone temple porches, dim, semi dusty, and cold. I tried conversing with N, but she was stubbornly silent-ish. She crouched down from the top step while I held on to a groove in the step. A person I didn't recognize glided past us. The house was open at last. We went inside, the rooms were large and silent and gloomy. Filled with old furniture, carpets and dimly lit. The scale of the house was at odds with the inner furnishings, which were basic and non elegant. I wondered how N has such a giant abode, like zomg it must cost a lot to keep up. ( note to self: why are you such a capitalist? : ( ) I was talking of benign things, I wanted her to be okay but she got all weepy again. I offered her a hug which she accepted but had some weird conditional response like I get to lean my head to the left. It had to be just so. Go figure. 

I started feeling uncomfortable, like I was in a place  with a forbidding air. Not forbidden exactly, more like an uninvited guest. N too wasn't overly enthusiastic, so I asked if I should leave. She said okay and saw me off till a small set of steps, which were a little way away from the house. I asked if I could take a picture of the house from the outside cuz I wanted to sketch it. She agreed and I took my camera out. 

The sun was at the perfect angle, orange sunlight kissing the tops of the Mansard style roof. It was framed on the side with tall pines that were swaying. It just looked so beautiful and cold and warm at the same time. Cold towards me, but warm af otherwise. I'm talking aura ( I guess?). I kept trying to capture a picture, but the camera simply wouldn't take it. Every time I tried, it came out distorted. It was almost as if the house didn't want to be photographed. I looked down from my vantage point and I realised that I was sort of hidden. The house and the grounds seemed to have forgotten that I was standing there. I tried again to take a clear picture. A dog pup and a wolf pup ambled up to me while I was trying to focus. They were very cuddly and adorable and definitely belonged to the house. 

N popped up on our side, searching for them. She looked at me questioningly. I had the weird feeling throughout of trespassing on this house, and the people in it. Like even my friend somehow wasn't comfortable with me around even though I wasn't a threat but she would have preferred that I leave from that place. And I told her... You know, I've come to your place 3 times in the past but I never remember which turn to take from the main road to come find you. Isn't it odd? She didn't reply. She wasn't impolite, but I could tell she wasn't thrilled. I said bye once again and the little pups started accompanying me while I was leaving. I tried taking another pic but camera still wouldn't focus. Once again, in the midst of these rocky paths, I had a vague sense that I will forget this place the minute I walked out and be unable to locate it. I would only make it as far as the main road, but not spot this house. The whole scene seemed to politely be waiting for me to leave so it could go back to it's slumber. I also felt like I could get lost there, even though the main road looked to be close by. I think I walked around wondering wtf was this weirdness all about and the next thing I know, I'm awake, frantically trying to ensure I write all this down before I forget.

In conclusion, our brains make DMT and even Freud can't interpreted this so fuck him.

The Myth of Adulthood

... it was such a lie bc.

When I was a kid, the adults were like mythical beasts, the All Powerful. To be Obeyed and indulged but never crossed. They knew everything and could dictate everything. Challenging their all encompassing reign was simply the stuff of legends. A mere mortal like me couldn't dream of doing more than sulking privately. The only ones who dared poke the dragon were the wild ones, running away from home for hours, hours!, and not just the few allotted time slots where I pretend did. I distinctly remember promising fealty to the authority, and never questioning it. It never occurred to me to think of the status quo as cyclic.

I spent 21 years in awe of it, and then started shrugging it off slowly. But never once did I relate or see myself as one of them. I kept looking for signs of them among my peers. It was a surreal journey to be honest. A couple of friends got married when we hit 24 and I thought, okay maybe this is it! These are the mighty among us, ones who can conceptualize of a duality. My largest concerns around that time were how to locate and secure stuff or wine or both. Clearly not worthy aims when you think about these creatures who wanted to embrace a life long hood of sorts. I tip toed around them, trying to understand it and unveil some form of profoundness in their existence that I could learn from. There was a distinct feeling of being an outsider back then. It always intensified when I witnessed decision making that went with the accepted norm. I simultaneously hated and loved the fact that I could never do it.  I'd never been good at pretending to feel differently than I do internally. The problem was... how I felt internally just never seemed to overlap with what the crowd wanted. There was no bucket I could safely slot myself into, and have the comfort of numbers. I didn't fully relate to the corporate jugglers who were out to make you marvel at their tricks. Neither could I relate completely to the creators who were so immersed in their craft that they allowed the craft to craft them. I wasn't a skank, but I also didn't look at guys and see babies.  I guess it was hard for me to give myself up easily to anything. Existing within this dichotomy was interesting. 

A couple years passed by, life came in with its own demands. Careers went on as usual. 'I build a product, I started this venture, I owned the PnL, I got the best valuation, blah blah blah.' It started sinking in that we were slowly nearing that point where the authority in us should rise. Maybe social media was delaying it. The folks who got married early were jaded, the ones who were trying to make a serious commitment also had reservations or obligations. We all kept up pretenses ofcourse, but this wasn't how I'd imagined it to be. People were still making the same choices they had been making. They just looked a bit older while they did it, and rationalized it better. Shouldn't we just know by now? The OG authority was also cracking, I could see the flaws in them and their life. It was heartbreaking, and nothing really made sense. That was the final frontier for the illusion to just come crashing down. 

And today I read a bunch of musings from other people. Both younger and older.  It was the kind of writing that made you sense the writer's need for privacy and underlined their distaste for the limelight.
And if you were careful, and you read between the lines, you could tell that they nurtured a giant hard on for themselves. It wasn't lewd, nor was it tame. It wasn't even very conspicuous, to be fair to everyone. But it did exist. I see the same literary boners in mine. All of them had some core themes in common: Life, love, ambition, nostalgia, anger and a magnetic pull for the past. Like coins from the same mint, same design but just slightly different production years. These are the themes that bind us, whether we acknowledge it or not. The biggest thing they reveal to me is that everyone is just stuck in the limbo of life. People who seem sorted at first glance can often be people who don't spare too many thoughts for the why of their existence. 

I think I've finally identified a unifying thought that made sense. Everything is fucking arbitrary, we just pretend like it isn't.

I remember this old quote by Jobs: 'When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.'

People keep saying he was one smart cookie, so I am going to assume this is true.

Arpeggio

I just found out what that means

Linking to an old fav!