My own private Narnia

So, do you believe in magic?

There are places that exist. Maybe they were real once, maybe they only live in the memories I have of them, selected, curated, gaps filled in with imagination and dreams, but who's to say what makes them any less real or false than objective, empirical reality?

There is a place like that I'm especially feeling tonight. A place of dreams, of wild imagination that  became reality before the eyes of their dreamers, came out into the real world and took shape and form, grew and flourished far beyond what they had hoped, beyond what they could have dared to believe.

Silicon Valley is a fascinating story, a myth made flesh, a world of games, stories, vivid, crazy, reckless, explosive magic. A place and time that changed the world. I showed us that you can dare to dream, and make new realities the way you wanted.

And yes, it comes with it's share of corruption, of cancer in it's bones and blood slowly blackening the golden sunshine with darkness and sleaze, with greed and lust and envy, a place where a thousand dreams died for every that lived...

But I'm not talking about the semiconductor factories, the garage inventors, the gamers and hackers and cyberspace architects and explorers, even the coders of the dotcom era or the VCs of the last decade past.

For me, it's always going to be a proof of concept, a place even in it's hard, expensive, gentrified avatar, with it's rents and commutes and affectations and cut-throat capitalism, it's still going to be a place where despite itself it can be a place where magic can happen. Maybe not the big, grand magics of overnight millions and free information and universal connectivity and equality, but small ones. Little things that are so huge compared to the realities of other places. Air, water, food. Interests. A chance to explore, to try. Stories and struggles. Not the destinations reached and prizes won, but a place full of the magic of trying, of running, of the journey.

And when you come out of the wardrobe back into your world, even as the past fades like a dream you cannot talk about, and you get back to the grind, you come back changed. You come back touched by the magic, fey, a little different, marked by a sunshine few understand. And even if you can never return - physically, temporally - you will always remember it as your own experience of it, not so much for what it was, but in what you felt there, what it did to you, how it made you feel. How it changed you.

And that's what makes it a magic place. Something that's yours alone, something unexplainable, intangible, yet so, so real.

My own private Narnia. 

Things are never just things

Clearing out a storage space is hard.
If you've been used to moving around, you already have a filter that ruthlessly throws away anything that's not needed any more, unless it has some use or sentimental value.
Things that get used, get used, wear out, get replaced.
But the ones that have an emotional connect - it's hard to see them again, because they're not just things, are they?
A little memory, a little piece of a life that once was.
A little moment in time, inconsequential but for the dreams that rode on its shoulders in the sun, laughing in delight at a bright and happy future they saw coming.
Now the moment lies still in it's bed of dust, crumpled plastic and yellowing paper, fading photographs and retro single... and dreams lie dead, incinerated in the nuclear blast of change, the hurricane winds of time. So destroyed they aren't even a memory anymore, except from the impression they left on these things.
A torn note from the back of a class book.
A receipt, a train ticket, a boarding pass, a membership card.
Things used till they were tattered and lovingly repaired.
Things pristine, never used at all, but bought on the wings of hopes and dreams, waiting expectantly in their sealed plastic covers.

Tiny little inconsequential things that can break you...

memories

I have two phones - one that I use, and the older one that lies collecting dust except when used in emergencies.
Took it out today for the trip - don't want to risk damaging a slider - and was scrolling through the old SMS's.

You can't experience this if you delete all of them - but old SMS's are like photographs, like an old note passed to you in college now found buried deep inside some junk during a spring cleaning... years later, that one short message can evoke so many memories, faces, experiences. Emotions.
It's... bittersweet. Pain, hope, agony and ecstasy, anger, love, encouragement, frustration... each message is a bud, unopened, of a completely different life path that never blossomed. An experiential seed.

And I read them, and I remember the faces, the words, what I had dreamed of, what I had feared... and what still makes me cringe today... and what makes me proud.

It's a unique, fleeting, medium, transient as the proverbial snowflake in hell. What is the lifespan of an SMS? Days, at most. Finding these... a sudden rush of nostalgia.
You can't save them, or wait for them, or expect them. They were never planned.
They just happen.
Remember how transient life itself is. The most secure investment may disappear... and the most random, unexpected castoff can survive.
And bring a much larger benefit.

looking back

I was reading an Asterix yesterday, and was thinking that somehow the impact isn't the same anymore... I remember laughing out loud, ROTFLing, the works. I remembered the other comics, how they would have a larger-than-life, story playing visually in my head even as I curled up under the wooden stairs of the Hobby Corner at Janpath, browsing away, complete with backstories, sound effects, even smells and vibrations. The same used to happen with the books, the music, the movies.

But it's not the quality that's gone down. It's not my brain that's degrading, my sense of imagination and humour fading.

It's nostalgia.

The books I read today will be remembered as having the same impact, five years later.

Do you realize how rich every experience you have today is? Ask your future self. He'll remember.

Appreciate today! It's more fun than you thought it was.

Remembering Baazee

Sitting in the train on the way back home today... realized, after having worked in 3 companies, what a absolutely brilliant place to work my first company had been.

But then, you never know what you have till it's gone.
A set of all completely brilliant people, and all equally insane.
All scattered everywhere now... but still feels like family.

Wish I could turn back time.