64 crayons

<First written Aug 10, 2013>

That inscrutable point when the jazz is so smooth that my brain just isn’t thinking. The romantic idiocy ever challenged in me by every Sinatra number. How every reading of Brinkley Manor has me in splits. How Manhattan beckons everywhere I go, tall, sinuous, powerful — capturing me in its solemn, ever-ineffable allure. That first spicy splash when a pani puri breaks inside my mouth. The joy of witty banter, of dancing like no one’s watching. That creepy eerie feeling at Stonehenge. The smell of freshly baked bread. When I think in words, and I think about thinking in words. That one golden moment when the sun glistens off of the maple syrup on my pancakes. How it’s always purple when that freak tendril of loneliness hits. Chai and pakoras on gloomy Sundays. How all airports and railway stations are always the same, instantly welcoming, an oasis ever in chaos. When my fingers freeze and I’m wearing fleece when I’m cycling downhill — fast, fast, fast, over bumps and on the side of lanes until I have to stop. How the best of language is captured in these phrases that I remember and repeat, in the oddest of moments, like comfort blankets of the softest velvet. Le moment où je suis tombé dans amoureux d’une sorcière — who showed me the prettiest of bracelets that had a Ganesha on it and was the one who got away. All subways and how funny it was that a place the size of Cologne had a subway whose terminals I walked the length of overhead unwitting. About 2 tumblers and an in flagrante birthday. About this old tattered copy of Atlas Shrugged that I own. How I always close my eyes when I’m talking to people — and how it means that when my eyes are closed is actually when I’m being the most open. That scary feeling of stepping into nothingness, backwards, when I went rappelling off a 80 foot high ledge. This crazy untethered bridge in Langkawi that juts out of nowhere into nothing. My first planetarium visit, at 6, and all I wanted was the cotton candy. More cotton candy, in Anna Nagar, near that park, where so many moments were stolen, because they were so precious and though I want to, I can never give back. When I climbed that tree out of spite to prove a point at ten, and my cousin ran away, and I did not know how to get back down — how come I’m still not sitting there? How awesome it was to wake up in Goa and actually be on the warm winter beach, and suddenly the huts shimmered; disappeared and it was 1645, and there was adventure again in a stinking, heaving Portuguese schooner, and the cats were really the first aboard, but it was just a shimmer. What compels me to the corner of Parnell and Moore, a subliminal whisper, a visceral deja-vu. Why I always give in and end up buying Financiers at the Paris bakery on Moore. That evening on the Seine, mystical blue, rainy but ever magical — when the music welled up and wouldn’t let go. Je ne regrette rien from magical Edith Piaf. Why Danny is always champion of the world, and why I had to get my hands on a copy of that book about the Tesseract — it was a Wrinkle in Time. Why my memories of Zaire are stormy, cloudy and that lightning storm that almost flashed daylight into a darkened sky. One moonlit Christmas on top of Falaknuma hill, when anyone could be king. A 7 mile long bridge parted the waters under my Camry, and I drove on, drove on because everything was going to be alright. The hours when I bounced this succession of crazy balls on the floor and the books I must have filled to pointless tedium. A crazy cycle ride where I pretended to be a bus and kept stopping where the bus would not. That night I just couldn’t stop laughing, and everyone knew why and yet no one knew why and that’s the way it’s always been. Why it bugs me that I can’t remember the title of these three books I read as a kid — one about a brother and sister traveling the length of Canada, one about Quentin and all the money in the world, and one that introduced me to the word “apropos”. A turquoise blue school shirt, a deeper blue school house shirt, but most of the wardrobe’s green. How it feels every time an airplane lifts off and how it’s going to feel when I try and lift one of the ground on my own. What it will be like jumping into nothingness an activity called skydiving. When I’m going to be up there in a hot air balloon. When I’ll drive down Normandy and land up in Monte Carlo, custom-suited, maybe-shaken but definitely stirred. That night I’ll spend at the Danieli. That trip to Tuvalu with one week on the island, and please God, don’t add any more flights in. The fizz of every inspiring movie or book, that makes me not want to sit but pace. Laughing, laughing and more laughing. And how I can’t wait for all the new colours.