Hunches in Bunches, and Dreams

I am reminded of how a little over 7 years ago, just before the September 11th terrorist attacks - maybe a week or ten days prior to that - I had this ominous sense of doom. I still remember where I was sitting - on my bed, back in Calcutta, in my room - and I was looking out of the window. I don't even remember if the day was grey and overcast, but in in my head that's what I saw. A grey, overcast day and it was half-drizzling, visibility was low, and in my head I kept seeing the NYPD folk in their identifiable navy jackets walking around in a city where things had gone somewhat around the bend. I remember too that this cracked image was not a figment of my imagination as many things were/are (or else I later say they are even if I don't entirely believe in my self-confessed disbelief) for I was writing a letter to a very close friend of mine who was living in Boston at that point, and I told her about the unsettling images that I was seeing inside.

I can't say I felt any streak of ominous unsettledness last week when I put up my last blogpost. I was writing my responses to a book in the hope that I wouldn't forget everything about it a year from now - that's all. And I was thinking about violence and nationalism, and identity - that part is true enough. The news about the latest terrorist attacks (when I got to know about them) left me feeling a bit fazed and over the last couple of days I've been reading the news and some blogposts that are connected to the ones that I follow everyday.

This year has got to be one of the most muddled up years in some ways (personally speaking) and somehow I can't get rid of the feeling that it still hasn't shown all its cards. I'm reminded of a couple of blogs that I regularly visit. Early on this year, a friend (Pots) had expressed her sense of doom in a post titled "Two Obits". Being in the middle of a steady roller-coaster high at that point had still not made me completely immune to the creepy scratching fingers in the corner of my bone-head and then there was much more to come through the year, and the year is still not over.

I know sometimes we sense things and sometimes we don't - which is fine (I grunt). Sometimes things happen as we see them and sometimes they don't (which is not fine, I grunt!). I still remember the time that I visualised a blue feather (most people will remember Richard Bach's Illusions). I don't know why I went alongwith a blue feather instead of being a tad more imaginative - but that's what I went with. An intense image of an exceptionally bright blue feather and it had been floating around in my head. And then lo and behold, not a week later I found a real feather. A bright blue feather on the concrete pathway leading out of my parent's apartment complex in Calcutta.


I'm also reminded of dreams for some reason, and there are multiple reasons for this - and not all of them are entirely unpleasant. I'm reminded of a bright bit of an essay titled "Dreams and Daydreams". I'm also reminded of how sometimes, and in fact most of the times my dreams (that is, the "unconscious ones") are terribly mundane or just boring and repetitive. I don't any longer have the recurring nightmare that I used to have as a kid (a red car very much like a Maruti would drop me off at this humongous factory....that's how the nightmare would begin) but sometimes I have been known to have fallen asleep on the lawns dreaming about eating a salad at the school cafeteria. Believe it or not I have woken up and headed straight for the cafe and eaten a salad. Only while consuming the salad I realise with a sense of astonishment that that is exactly what I'd done five minutes ago in a ridiculously boring dream! Talk about deja vu....(chortle-chortle).

Every now and again though I go through a patch when I dream interesting dreams. The nightmares come and go. I don't really remember dreaming explicitly happy dreams. If I do dream happy dreams I don't remember them until later on in the day when something tickles my memory cells and I glint and say "oh, that was nice." (The "that" referring to the dream in question). Sometimes I wake up feeling less dense and heavy and ponderous - and so I assume that I had less stifling dreams. Just recently I had an interesting dream even though it was slightly strange because there were no people in it. But what was contained in the dream was so real and vivid that I woke up looking for it!

I must say that I'm not given to being pessimistic and gloomy - not all the time at any rate. But this year gives me the shivers for some reason, and I'm not so sure why. There are some good things that have happened surely - but it's not about good or bad. There's just something that is peculiar about this year. The whole year seems to be "not-real", strangely suspended in the middle of nowhere. It seems as though it can swing wildly and widely - this way or that. Or maybe that really is my imagination. I can't really see anything "great" coming of it - as long as there is no more negative excitement (as Pots put it...), I think I'd just sigh with relief. That's all.
End of post. Good luck to some who need it....