The Weather and I

The first few days of summer are here. Today’s winds blew in from the south-east bringing in warmth and change. I write this with mixed emotions. Praise, some rage, a little self-appreciation and a whole lot of independence overcomes me as I bring my trusty old keyboard out and plug it to the back of the laptop. Typing on the keyboard should minimize the loss of gumption in this long-forgotten venture of mine.

I moved in to a new apartment two months back. This gives a lot more time to think about the things that are really important in life: life itself than ponder over spiral dreams of horsepower, women and logistics. I moved in alone. Well, Laya is with me, the only witness to my evolution. I trust Darwin’s ‘evolution’ and Gita’s ‘change’. I trust it to happen, even if ever so slowly and all I can do is to try to push in the right direction.

I have been questioning everything only to see that people are either too lazy to think and already have made decisions or they take a debate as downright confrontation. Maybe I need to surround myself with better people but what’s better? Where do I find better? Is anybody better in an honest debate than myself? If I take a stand, shouldn’t I be responsible to prove it? Then am I my best critic?

You see a lot of questions thrown around in the paragraph above. ‘Why’ is probably the most devastating of all. Why leads to observation and observation takes you out of the environment. Just like a photographer is always outside the scenery and the third umpire is never in the field. With observation comes responsibility, with responsibility comes seclusion and with seclusion comes the responsibility to not go insane.

A few weeks have passed and the winds have changed since I started writing this. I feel a responsibility to not be lonely too. I was one of James’s groom’s men at his wedding yesterday and being among a ton of family members of the bride and groom makes me feel a little lonely today. So what do I do about it? Join a club and meet more people. I have some options and will be exploring them. More than feeling lonely is the want to do something. Something that has minimal or no ‘me’ in it. It is easy to get a little self centered when in seclusion and lonely.

The changing winds have put me back into the scenery too, if only for a little while. From being behind the lens, I managed to creep in front of it. Literally. I have been photographing weddings and yesterday, I got the opportunity to be photographed. Not that I am portraying narcissism by saying that I like being photographed but it was a soothing change. The maid-of-honor also mentioned that I have a photogenic face but it was probably the zinfandel talking!

Tomorrow, I slip back behind the lens. Literally and figuratively. Tomorrow, I start reading, learning, thinking, judging, critiquing, questioning, prodding, analyzing and inferring.