Catharsis

A day with yawning periods of joblessness usually devolves into a introvertive inspection. But that wasn't the case today. It may have been the small amount of hours of peaceful sleep yesterday, or the lack of caffeine, my mind dulled and wandered through the day, and sought no action. A book once started can usually captivate me. Even if the story flow rambles or follows no direction, i would want to find out just how it ends. Or it might be a hopeful hope that if this writer actually got his work published, there's got to be something of value, intellectually or rhetorically, in the pages yet to be read. This may just be a symptom of not having read any piss-poor books. Maybe i should, but that's a train of thought for another post.

Entertainment media today, as it often does, has sparked a wee bit of introspection. I watched "Noone killed Jessica", and Jon Stewart's commentary on the Arizona Shottings of 8/11. Both pieces were politically charged, seeking to inform/catharsize/dramatize/remark its audience. And i found myself standing on no base to even have an opinion. I've numbed to events in the news, and facepalmed it as "just more bad news". I fear i may falling into the stereotype of the news not really reaching me,unless its dramatic, sexual, or something that's easy to have an opinion on, or wordplay material. It is imperative to not view news as isolated events, and they seldom are isolated. With few exceptions, every event is a lot like something before it, that should've had some learnings, and so should this event. There should be progress. That being one point of concern, the other being, is it a good thing if i collect tidbits of world happenings, as capsules of information, so that i may not scoffed at an intellectual conversation. Trivia for the trivial. It may be that i don't care. Empathy is definitely an integral part of an event mattering to people. Or may even be a symptom of laziness, since i started out late discovering reality.

A car-bomb in Jeddah is a tablet of news. No connection to me. But it is a result rhetoric/actions. It will spawn consequences. Without context, it is a haze that is easily forgotten.

I mostly boils down to reading more to inform myself, and form my own trail of breadcrumbs for every issue, and a mark that train of thought for later evaluation. That sounds like a lot of work.

I need to get a lot more sleep.

And maybe start a coffee regiment.

Dubai, Home.

The city I grew up changes every passing second.

There is always this electricity in city.

For me, because of the way my family was, there was always a cultural atmosphere around life. The tamil community never stagnated, socially. I guess my parents were young then. Young in a vibrant town, you do things right? Culture here had much more meaning than in India. I mean, no huge intricately sculpted temples, or 18 century palaces. But tamilians would get together and sing bhajans. They would have trips around the Emirates, and laugh and sing songs they heard on AIR. The Indian community will never die of boredom. Too much to celebrate.

My memories of youthful exuberance was in the backyard of the building i lived in. Vast expanses of nothing but sand. Grounds that called to be played in. There was a rock there that we found. Big rock. It had no earthly reason to be there. It stood out, like a piece of hair in your food. We called it pride rock. Us kids used to hold daily meetings there. Our own little parliament.

What a world. A dreamscape of memories, that building.

When you think back to happy childhood memories, it always feels like an eternity of time. There were so many things, that you fail to remember now, that gives it the fabric of stretching for ages.

As I grew, the city grew with me. Well, I like to think so.

Skyscrapers popped up like pimples on a teenagers cheek. I mean, if you slept for a week, and then wandered out, you wouldn't recognize your surroundings.

When I went to college and came back in my first year, I was in awe. It felt like the city had jet-propelled itself in a direction it didn't really understand. 7 star hotels in the middle of the ocean. Malls that stretched until the horizon. Metro-trains moving along with the clouds. Roads that followed curvature of the earth, that greeted the sun in the morning and bid him good night in the evening.

It's so easy to get lost here, just from the sheer exhaustive lavishness. This is, of course, the city of opulence. The City of lakshmi.

After coming here after the peak recession, it felt like the city had the wind knocked out of it. Like the electricity that used to surge through here is now trickling into a fading lightbulb.

Friends here who used to spend like sheikhs, now curtailed themselves. Only the cheap whiskey for me, please.

The city hasn't changed since I was here 6 months ago. It seems like an outrageous expectation, but really, it's not. I half-expected it to become an aquatic city, or people moving in suction tubes, or anti-gravity hotels that float in the sky. But, nothing has changed. Like a bright, questioning, creative kid who got sent to engineering college. In Trichy. Not really maturity. Just, lack of ideas.

I'm not even sure this city will be here for much longer. I'm not sure how much the world needs fancy address for their head office anymore. It's a disappointment.But I'm sure the city wont go down without a fight. I expect that much. I hope it does. For the sake of my memories.

Cue,Thomas Newman-Any Other name.