Times and Tales

Wedged somewhere between a state of exhilaration and a contrasting urge to bludgeon the countless faces harboring the eyes that stare my way, I find that the days are traversing by faster than I can remember. It’s odd though. When I consider each day, there are never enough hours to satisfy me. Such is the obvious hard truth when working full-time and hitting the gym everyday. A man’s gotta eat, but a man’s gotta pay for what goes on his plate. And when a man wants to stay healthy on top of all this, well, that day is pretty much a wrap. Time to hit the sack, dreaming of the ever elusive six-pack. When I consider the elapsed time spent overseas, I still ask myself where has the time gone? It is only when I consider the time remaining, the point from here to the end (and not from the start to where I am now), does time feel to me, a Goliath in my path. I conclude this skewed perception to be trickeries of the mind, and it’s something I fortunately dwell on only when the lights go off and I lay in bed. Occasionally, after I experience a particularly heavy and restful sleep, I wake up in my old room. This lasts for several seconds as my brain jumbles between reality and fantasy, sorting what actually occurred the night before and what I merely dreamt about. Then, my feet touch the cold, polished tiled floor and I return to the present. Minutes later dressed in a tailor-made shirt and pants sorely in need of dry cleaning, it’s off to sort algorithms, code functions, write test scripts, and intense LAN Counter-Strike play.

When I’m not playing basketball, traveling to new places, or working, I am finding myself more and more drawn to non-fiction via the old-fashioned book, while over-saturating my viewings of fictional tales through the medium of television (on the laptop). Written words no longer captivate my (dying?) imagination and impatient persona as they once had when I was a young boy. For me, they simply fall at least one step short of the visual acuities and emotional voice-acting that is demonstrated through some of the more entertaining television shows and movies released today. Call it lazy or a lack of imagination, but Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Office, and various anime episodes along with the occasional movie have thoroughly convinced me to be the more superior tools of story-telling. I just caught the sci-fi thriller Sunshine directed by Danny Boyle (who also directed 28 Days Later, one of my favorite horror movies), and I am a fan! The visuals in the film exhibit the powers and prowess of the sun with amazing clarity. It’s a must-watch for sci-fi junkies. And be cautioned, it holds a striking number of parallels to the older film, Event Horizon.

On the flip side, I have never been more drawn to non-fiction books, a section I hardly glanced at when strolling through the public library as a student (boy, all I did was abuse those free movie rentals). Especially completing books on jarring, new concepts to me or personal struggles that have been told through the first-person perspective, I feel as if I have gained another eye; not necessarily having to agree with all that is read, it is eye-opening nevertheless. A paperback has certainly proven its usefulness in overcoming the long waiting periods commonly present here in India. Additionally, as most of these writers are well beyond my age, it helps me to consider just how many more potential years I have left on Earth, and how much more living and experiencing I will do. So much to see, so little time, no? And I say ‘do’, not ‘try’, because as Yoda says, “Do… or do not. There is no try. Only do.”