Can't touch this.

Hello.

So many topics for this post have flitted through my mind in the last year and a half, so many witty opening lines, and that's the best I can do? Well, you gotta say hello. How've all of you been? Hope all's been well. I realize a blog that's updated once in a blue moon isn't really much of a blog, but that just makes you who read this even more worthy of my well-wishes, doesn't it?

For some reason, I can't stop grinning as I type this, and this worries me. My merriment is generally cause for worry among most of my friends, but this is a first. There's no obvious reason for me to be cheerful at the moment - work starts in about 6 hours, forced cheeriness shortly afterwards and sleep will once again be ignored in favour of snatches of stimuli. Tomorrow's just another day; that said, maybe I'll take a ride down the coast awhile. I think I've earned that! The right music can make anything sublime; some of the best moments I can remember have songs inevitably associated with them. Waterfall in the train back from Bangalore. Teardrop in the paddy fields. Music of the Night alone up in the hills. Sweetest Thing dancing like I knew how. Bittersweet Symphony riding in the rain. Hopefully, I'll have a few more this time tomorrow. Music + wind in face = silly grin to go with daft hairstyle. I like silly grins; they scare people. I have friends who use cheerfulness as a weapon to bludgeon unwary passerby (ie, me) into pretending that we have something in common and that we really share a bond; all to make the person with a manic grin go away. I'm still trying to get rid of most of them, though, so if any of you have a reliable method I can use, feel free to enlighten me. I don't use the manic grin quite like that; it's a resource to be hoarded, in my opinion. Throw it out there and you'll be pretty drained when someone slings something back. I'd rather be guardedly smirkish throughout a day than insanely happy for an hour and angry/paranoid/miserable/worried for 23. Which is partly to say I like my gender (he shoots, he scores, he gets maced in the face), but mostly to say I like me.

Thinking about it, though : I'm typing these words at the computer I dreamt of owning for years, sitting a few stories above the piece of land I spent my childhood on. Everyday I travel down a street full of windows that I've broken (with powerful yet elegant strokeplay, if you ask me; sadly, nobody ever did), and none of the watchmen give me dirty looks anymore! That's mostly because of the beard, but who cares! I've got a job, I do! Business cards, even! Wa hey, right? I'm alive, check; in possession of all my faculties, check; and by the most basic form of comparison, I'm better off than I was a year or two ago. See? That's evolution for you, boys and girls. Ol' Charlie was right! There's so much around me that just couldn't have been there earlier, or at the least, couldn't have been appreciated like I do now. I still have my appendix, and my tonsils! Sure, I hear what you say, but what if the appendix contains the only zombie-virus-antidote that actually works? Boy, are you gonna be pissed...well, probably not pissed. Slavering, more like. And me? Well, quick or dead, I suppose; and no need to start the betting, we all know how that's going to work. But still!

Even in the blackest moments of the last couple of years, there were brilliant little nuggets of comedy. Phili yelling 'It's all in your head! It's all in your head!' through the phone while I tried to convince him that the floor rising up to meet me was definitely not part of my imagination. My doctor, with the air of a man grasping at straws for some nugget of good news he could give me that would cheer me up, blurts out that I could still have 'sexual relations' if I wanted. Poor chap, he meant well; but given my rather debilitated condition at the moment, I think being able to walk would've been top of my priority list, never mind horizontal dancing. I did appreciate the vote of confidence though! (Now I know half of you are imagining me chasing some poor girl out of Zara's yelling 'But the doc said I could!', and I want you to stop right thi-...oh. Well. Let's just move on, shall we?)

I still shudder every time I see a strip of tablets, though. And I don't think I'll ever be able to drink Slice or Frooti again without feeling nauseous. Sigh, pity. I'll live.

I think I've reached that age, you know? That age where you become a Mr. and clothes suddenly qualify as presents. Don't mistake me, there's nothing wrong with them; they just personify the un-Kansasness of the times. A tie! I think I've only ever worn a tie once. I've a rare gift there, you could send me down Saville Row and I will still wander in for dinner looking like I've barely left my bed. I quite like this quality of mine...I don't think my mother does, though. Differences of opinion are what make the world go round, I say; and she generally insults me quite handily in Malayalam by way of response. But I've never been sheveled in my life, and I don't intend to start now, no matter how strange the world gets.

Maybe friendship is a lie most of the time? Maybe you just pretend and someday you find that the pretense has a structure, and foundations, and it's actually holding true. I don't know. All I know is, I wish the people who weren't here were here, because you've been around the block with me (in some cases, literally) and you've seen it all, or at least those portions held back from the regular clientele. I don't know what I'd do with you were you here, but that's another story. Plans never work out; I'm a compulsive planner, but even I can admit that easily enough. The only use of making plans is so that when everything goes belly-up, you have some sort of means by which you can calculate how far off course you've travelled. Travelling off-course is a good thing though...I quite like it, as evidenced by this lengthy diatribe with no apparent purpose, meaning, or indeed, conclusion. Fear not, hardy readers! I would hardly be so cruel as to strand you on an extended metaphor without an end in sight! This is that end - shit happens. Deal with it :)

On that topic, a fair amount of it seems to have happened since I last frequented this, my little corner of cyberspace. I suppose a partial explanation or two is necessary. Due to matters medical, I was, shall we say, under the weather for...bloody hell, it's only been a year and a half? I would've pegged it for an eon or two. I love that phrase, 'under the weather', incidentally; it can cover any multitude of ailments, from a hangover to bubonic plague. So yes, that did incapacitate me to such an extent that writing would have been more expenditure than I would've been capable of. I don't know how it is for other people, but I tend to put a lot of myself into my writing. That can occasionally leave me rather drained, which is usually okay. When the levels are low and the reserves are dry, though...I really couldn't afford it back then. There you go, honour has been satisfied with that, I think.

Back to my apparently-baseless grinning! I'm spinning around on my swivel chair while listening to Semi-Charmed Life. Wouldn't you be grinning? If not, you probably haven't heard that song; or indeed, sat on my chair. I assure you, the combination is quite hilarious. Consider this an invitation, peoples of the Internet, to come sit on my chair and listen to rather quirky music and make awkward conversation. What else is there to life?


You find happiness where you can make it. And people can make it in the strangest places. People are supposed to find that inspiring, that fact. I'm not people. But I'm all right. What's not to be happy about? I'm still writing, still wise-cracking, still giving dialogues-that-sound-deep-but-aren't-really and basically still here.

But, best of all, I'm still me.

You have no idea how good it feels to be able to say that.