Sleeplessness Blues

So, obviously, I am not sleepy. Dunno why. Not something that happens regularly for sure. Maybe I am too keyed up after watching the latest episode of Dexter, or maybe it is the Amritsari Chicken I had for dinner doing cartwheels in my intestines. Endlessly we can speculate, yet nary an answer would be forthcoming. Bottomline, here I am again pouring my words of wisdom out onto this blank canvas while the minutes tick down to another mundane day of earning my daily bread.

I wish I had some startling insight to share at this point. I really do. But most I can do right now is the predictable bickering and bitching about mundane existences and passionate dreams. I am no closer to achieving the latter than the nth-minus one post that mentioned the same. Bit-by-bit, brick-by-brick I hope to make some headway. No miracles happening in the near future at least though. There are more pressing matters of the career and personal life kind to joust with. No scope for day-dreaming at the moment and certainly no need for this random insomnia that is afflicting me now. But I am used to this also now, like I get used to pretty much anything fate throws my way. A gift that, a curse many times, but it is who I am. I accommodate. I adjust. I adapt.

Before I go off on yet another ego trip, I'd like to take a moment to talk about love. Love is a many-splendid thing that takes you to the heights of ecstasy and the depths of despair with the same breath. It is the opium that overrides my senses even when I try to resist it. It rends me apart, stitches me whole again and churns me inside out and round and round till there is nothing left but a quivering mass of jelly that has just enough backbone not to melt into a puddle. It is a crazy heady maddening drug that tints the most ordinary of days in a hazy rosy frame and leaves a smile every time I think about it. God knows why I am up at this time talking about love of all things, but then again maybe that is why I am up in the first place. Who knows! One glimpse of those bewitching eyes and I am always down for the count.  

I would now like to expound on money. A beautiful invention this and the most intricate bit of chicanery ever devised by man. Who knew little bits of metal, paper and plastic can make the world go around and drive men, women, children and geriatrics alike insane! Who knew I'd be devoting so much time, effort, energy and education to understanding the mechanics and hydraulics of the humongous machine that churns and re-churns these thingamajigs to which suited-booted acolytes pay their obeisances in every nook and cranny of the world! Races, castes, colours, creeds; all united in the single overpowering pursuit of more and more and more money. It is never enough. You want to step off the carousel and call it a day, but you can't, you never can. It is is the spider in the web, the puppeteer that pulls the strings of us marionettes. It is, always has and always will be not the means to the end but the end itself. I'm no stranger to its lure. I am not some hermit living in a cave who has the requisite self-control. The more of the stuff the better is what I say. If everyone is doing it then what's wrong with joining the bandwagon! Someday, one day, I will have just about enough to call it quits and cock a snook at everyone. That's the plan anyway, though plans have a nasty way of crumbling into nothingness at the slightest provocation. The carousel never loses its sparkle anyway; it just keeps shining brighter and brighter with every spin and entices you deeper and deeper into the vortex. 

Finally, since my eyelids are actually drooping a bit now, I want to talk about writing, about words and sentences and prose and poetry and letters and reports and presentations and everything else under the sun that requires me to put finger on key and type serpentine characters in a frenzy. Before I sat up in the middle of the night and decided to babble this was a pristine white page, something infinite in its possibility yet tragic in its emptiness. My heart soared and sobbed at the same time. I wanted to give it succor, to give it a purpose , a meaning even. At the same time I rejoiced at the multitude of paths that lay ahead of me. I could choose any one, hack through whichever thicket I wanted, ford streams and cross bridges whenever I fancied. I could create a sonnet of soaring beauty or a soliloquy of breathtaking melancholy. I could be a poet, a troubadour, a minstrel to the masses if you please; or a terse succinct commentator of the whims and fancies of life. It goes to my head this feeling, makes me fizz and crackle with electricity. My hand is but an extension of my mind now, nary a gap between genesis and imprint of thought. And as I look at what all I wrote at this ungodly hour I can't help but marvel at the beauty of this symbiotic relationship. It is like a window to my own soul. Every time I put the final punctuation with an exaggerated flourish I learn a little bit more about myself. It is something I should do more often instead of these sporadic late night trysts. I wish I had a nickel for every time I said that.

Any more beyond this point and workplace productivity will surely go for a toss. It is this toil after all that keeps the hearth warm and food on the table. I foresee a procession of tea cups in my near future though. Ah, the joys of adult life! The aquavit exchanged for the tea bag, the shot glass for a chipped ceramic mug. Travails I guess, but necessary nonetheless. For everything else, there are those bewitching eyes.