Of shoes and ships

“Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?” 

                                                                         Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

I always wondered about being able to articulate feelings to others and sought an answer to whether we could or we could not until I found this by Leo Tolstoy. He did not answer my question but expressed it perfectly, that it is now satisfying, in a satisfying way.

We often try to put our feelings forth in the best possible manner but they never come out quite the way we wanted, we felt. What ends up in the air is the diluted, garbled version of the intended content. 

I saw this movie 'One Day' and to be frank it bored me to death until I reached the end. The reason why I continued on was Anne Hathaway's beauty and the reason I was distracted were her poor acting skills. But the end so unexpected, so jolting that I reeled over and wept. I hated for having seen this movie which made me inexorably bored and yet made me feel such intense emotions. I hated how the actors spoiled a good script and I loved how they illuminated the screen. Contradictory. Confusing. 

And now I am watching this movie Liberal Arts which is holding my attention in parts. This one part has lead me to breakaway from it and write this. Not like I knew what I wanted to write about but the movie provoked a reaction . This movie is all about a college life that I wanted but did not quite get. My college put thousands of restrictions on my gender and then some more. Restrictions were not necessarily the problem but the reasons behind them were unsettling. That is why I find my growth into a fully functional vocal adult to be a bit stunted. When you chain the freedom the interaction, then seldom does creativity take birth. 

Ok I just took a break from writing this so I don't feel like what I was feeling when I started this. Total disconnect. My landlord came over and started talking about the Vietnam war and why America participated in it. He has some pretty different ideas about why the world is the way the world is. He says more people die by smoking cigarettes so why  there is so much hue and cry over a few people getting beheaded. He has a perspective that I understand thanks to liberalism in which I am brought up , but I  dont subscribe to his view point entirely. He does make a point though, doesn't he? Would we be lesser humans if we did not cry over every beheading or people dying because of wars and murders and rapes? Shouldn't we also cry over people dying by lung cancer and flu every day? Well he is a lively man in his 60s and I love having him over. No matter what his beliefs, the wealth of knowledge of the past he holds is enigmatic. I use the word enigmatic because he has lived through the second world war and the Korean war and the Vietnam war. I have not. History has its charm but not in the classrooms.

Wary that I would be trite and uninteresting, I started writing less and less. I am not sure if what I write is interesting  but I sure as hell get a lot of pleasure writing it. And hey, I realized how diverse my music taste has become. Am I developing taste or am I learning to eat everything on my plate? Remember when we were kids and we hated some bitter tasting vegetables and now we find those palatable. Likewise the taste in music has evolved. I can listen to things ranging from Opera to Kanye West. From beautiful symphonies to Bieberesque tunes. Who knows what is going on with my ears. All I know is I find everything nice and nothing nice.

To end this inconsequential lament, here is a quote from my favorite book - Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll,

“I'm afraid I can't explain myself, sir. Because I am not myself, you see?”