residual travel fever - part I

Quotes open. Enter obscure quote by famous author/feminist/poet/quirky film-maker on travel. dot.dot.dot. Quotes closed.

I realized I love to travel. In the middle of the Red Light District in Amsterdam, surrounded by gorgeous women peddling their stuff in neon-blue bikinis;inebriated Scot fans yelling "Amsterdam, Amsterdam! YAAAAY" and me, neatly stepping over dog poo, I had this brilliant moment of clarity. The kind that only strikes alcoholics.
I REALIZED.

with the smoke of dutch grass burning my urban angst...
In a coffee shop which was so freakingly sterotypical that I almost laughed! Faded graffiti on peeling yellow walls. Thick sweet fumes. Loud Russians, and Clapton coughing on an asthamatic telly.
First drag. A resounding disaster!!! Let no one fool you into thinking otherwise...Smoking is a science! People don't smoke because they are worried about their lungs, they don't because they don't know how to!
The owner of the coffee-shop...Sheeba...if i remember the name of the place correctly, smiled at us indulgently, teaching me to suck in the air the right way. Awww, he looked like such a proud papa when I took a successful drag!

S said it looked like I was making love to the joint, puffing it so languidly with my feet perched on the table and my head thrown back. Clapton wheezed on. It did feel like love...

Toothpaste hates math

X-files

ZeeCafe has introduced a lovely concept called Old School Classics. This is where I get to see all my childhood favourites like Different Strokes, Who's the Boss et al.
One incredible find has been the X-files. See, when it used to air on Star World, I was just a kid and was just intrigued by the weird things that kept happening on the show and thinking Agent Scully had such pretty hair! But now as I re-watch the episodes, I'm blown away by the awesomeness!!
Chris Carter, the show's creator, instead of tying each episode with a neat little bow in the end, deliberately left things unexplained. That there is no answer to alien abductions, that conspiracy theorists may not be wacked on weed, that maybe there is some truth behind all these lovely monster stories. It's like your mother telling you the Boogey man will come if you are naughty, you are scared...yet you almost want to see the boogeyman....a sense of disbelief mingled with a tiny voice telling you 'What If?'
And the show's writers played with those 'What Ifs?'
They did not deny that there needs to be a semblance of logic to explain something like Tooms - the mutant cannibal, but in the words of Mulder...the show encourages you to believe!! just open your mind to impossibilities....

I also love the use of symbolism in the show. Whenever you look up in the sky and you saw black helicopters, it's the government..hiding things, covering up the facts. Black oil on the ground...there is an alien nearby, probably bleeding and you are about to be infected with a deadly alien virus. I mean who thinks of such stuff!!! This is bloody brilliant!

....and Amen to that!

Sometimes you just have to stop.

Jaded

Foul foul mood.
I have a friend who gets a kick out of misunderstanding everything I say. Sometimes I think it's one of the high points of her day, for I don't see her do this to anyone else. It's not that she is unaware of what the opinions of the other friend is about her. Yet for some inexplicable reason she is perfectly fine wth the other one. And after reading this...ayyo! Now I know what witch-hunting must have felt like.

I have an incredibly complex thing going on which is not good. At all. For me. In fact I should ideally stay far far away from me. But the pull, the feel is irresistible. My mind tells me I'd been burned before but that memory seems too far smudged. Like a charcoal vignette rubbed off by my palm when I am sketching. I can't see the lines anymore.

for some reason this really cracks me up...