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Friday, December 3, 2010

Double Meaning

So first of all, this comes straight after reading a post on the subject on a blog, I now regularly follow. It's strange how Life Itself sums up so many of my thoughts in the most abstract, most random and hence so most comforting way. Now that the credit et all has been given, let me get on with the subject.

It is not less than often, that it feels like that I am having more than one conversation with the same person. There's always that which is unsaid, yet so loudly heard. I don't know if it's all a part of the bigger phenomenon called 'aura'. Quite frankly, I don't know enough on that topic to be able to decipher a sound connection with what am trying to write about here. But, yes, 'vibes' can be a funny thing. We all sense them all the time, at the most basic level of our interaction with people. Just that, more than often we choose to ignore them. We like to mix the vibes we sense or our instincts with what our mind necessarily likes to believe, irrespective of the truth behind it, just so we can add those shades of grey and pull a cover around our precarious, pathetic selves. But enough on this, already.

There are times when I can  be engaged in seemingly the most frivolous conversation with a person, but somehow it just feels like they really aren't listening to the fact that I need to go shopping or my perennial love and hate relation with my birth city. Somehow, I just know that they are listening to what I am really saying to them- what I really should be saying out aloud, what I can't stop thinking about in the present (and will continue to in my future, when this will all be just  the past and nothing else; it will lurk in the dark corners of my mind and help grow my sense of distrust towards people). The strange thing is, it's what I am feeling, right? It's what I can't help feeling, in fact. It's what I'd really like to tell you and it's what I sense you really are hearing. But not a bloody word spoken out loud. So the room is stilled filled with polite laughter, make-believe whining and the sound of what could seem to be the most meaningless conversation to any degree.

It works both ways, now does it not? Because, I see you right then, tripping on the ridiculous stories of my misfortune that I share with you in such explicit detail to avoid going anywhere near what I really want to talk about, but the funny thing is, I don't hear you. I can see you are talking, but just why can't you meet my eye, just why can't I hear those words you are saying? Frivolity, it seems is usually hiding greater substance. Substance, that we may or may not appreciate, may or may not avoid, but substance that remains and very much exists. You don't mean a single word of that, you really don't want to crack those jokes right now and those jokes are definitely not the reason u can't meet my eye. You can hear what I really want to say and you can't face it. That look on your face, is telling me all. Actually, I am certain I can reach that conclusion even without looking at you. Sometimes, its just right there and I don't know to explain what I sense. But this works well doesn't it? This pretense, this avoidance- you see technically I never said it and technically you never heard it, implying technically you could not not face the truth. But if nothing ever was said, why this surreal, tense, heated, awkward air between us? Why this shooting pain inside me? Why do I know that something about this morning, something about the look in your eye is going to stay with me for a long long time and slowly erode whatever trust I had left in you? And just why, may I ask will the memory be erased of any of these jokes or frivolity that we seem to be enjoying to the umpteenth degree?

It happens all the time,with different people for different reasons. The secrecy could come from either of persons involved in the dialogue. It could happen because I am hiding something or it could come because you don't have the courage to say what you really want to. It could happen because there is something unsettled, something hanging in the thin air that separates are past and present. The double meaning could bt nothing but fear or the future, nonacceptance of the past or just downright avoidance of the present.

Sometimes, I really do reflect on it again and again and question as to whether these are just figments of my imagination run wild. Are these just assumptions I make because I seem to have learnt to like to hurt myself? But I can't be doing that so often I can't. And if all this really was the consequence of my overactive thought process, it wouldn't always be proved true now would it? If it really was just me, then you'd look me in eye.

~

3 comments:

Zoya Brar said...

See that's the problem. You feel like you are having another conversation but if you listen really hard, there are no words. So it's impossible to say whether it's only in your head or it's something concrete.

For me, these conversations usually happen when I am trying to hide something from someone. Perhaps one of these days I'll confront my fears and actually talk aloud, maybe then I can ask him if he was hearing all that I wasn't saying...?

In any case, thanks for the post.

Zoya Brar said...

Btw, he wasnt hearing all the things I thought we were having a conversation about... so perhaps, these conversations are my own way of running from reality!

Unknown said...

There's always some amount of truth in every figment of our imagination. Always :) So maybe, part of those conversations really did happen. How do you know its not his way of running away?