What is so intriguing about you

What is it about you
That can intrigue me so blue
Just when I thought I knew
I’m again left without a clue

Of all the puzzles I have ever unraveled
This one has me the most befuddled
Why do I have to feel so riddled
When life was smooth without being fiddled

Is it the glint in your sparkling eye
Is it the affection of your sweet smile
Is it the gleam of your silky hair
Is it the tender touch of your hand
Is it the whiff of your perfume
Is it the tone of your soft voice

I know not why
And I know not how
But I know somehow
That deep beneath your pretty brow

Lies a conundrum that’s hard to tell
What is it about you belle
That can create such a spell
And make one’s heart swell
And my mind constantly dwell

Sometimes I think it’s your personality
And sometimes it may be your originality
And yet sometimes your creativity
Mingled along with your mentality
That creates such an enigma of proclivity

It’s still a mystery
Waiting to be unraveled
Just like someone poring over the annals of history
Treads along the road of time traveled
To uncover so remarkable a story
That can hardly be ever paralleled

Rip Van Wrinkle awakens from his slumber!

Finally the time has arrived for the death knell of my hibernation. Of course it’s not twenty years as in the classic but almost 20 months. And the world is still the same. I still recognize my surroundings and ambience. I don’t have a wife yet, but my friends are still alive thankfully. I still wonder what was it that deterred me to write anything in my blog since so long. I do remember giving a start at some unfinished blogs here and there and they have somehow got lost in time. And yet I hardly have time to sleep. I’m a traveler of time and have miles to go before I sleep.

As for the culprit, I’d blame it on sheer laziness and sloth. What a sheer waste of talent and skill if I cannot put my pen to some good use. But I still do wonder what it is with sloth that can deter men to wastefulness and laziness. History is replete with examples of countless talented men being reduced to oblivion thanks to sloth, one of the deadliest sins, the seven deadly ones? While I don’t have any special love for this number I always wonder why there are only seven deadly sins, not 6 and not 8.

Imagine slumber taking control of one’s life to such an absolute degree that when one wakes up from slumber the world has turned around topsy turvy. The wheels of time travel so fast that we can barely fathom their reality. The earth travels so fast in space actually that even the fastest man made rocket would barely be able to match its speed. And as residents of the earth, we are all bound by that speed and we rarely feel it. But the fact is the earth is quite slow when it comes to speed. And the irony is it would have to be much faster to match time travel lest even beat it. And going by Einstein’s theory of relativity I would have to be traveling at the speed of light to accomplish something of the likes of Rip Van Wrinkle. For that I would probably have to be an atom sized moth with an infinite weight traveling at the speed of light and I might as well have been a black hole. And when it comes to the black hole, all physics turns dark, they have defied physicists since ages and continue to intrigue them even more. So then how do I beat time like RVW?

And yet why do I choose this character Rip Van Wrinkle? It’s a classic tale by Irving that has intrigued me since ages, just like that of the classic poem of the Albatross by Coleridge albeit in a completely different context and different manner.

What is it about this character that seems so enchanting is how he managed to beat time or shall we say cheat death? Managed to stay alive despite his dead wife, and got to become the envy of all henpecked husbands. Come to think of it, can we really beat time or cheat death? Has anyone ever done that? How did they do that? Has our modern science evolved to such an extent that we would ever be able to perform this feat? If laziness were an answer to that question, the world would be replete with copious amounts of sleeping beauties. We’d still have to figure someway of keeping the prices alive so that they can kiss them awake from their slumber. J It somehow reminds me of the movies I’ve seen long before on time and space travel

But then we have mythology at the other end suggesting that people may have actually done it before in the past. The veracity of this is however quite questionable. But then has modern science and physics evolved to such an extent that we may be able to create our own laboratory version of the modern Rip Van Wrinkle. Freeze a creature at an extremely low temperature and figure out a way of preserving him safely and lo, years or maybe even centuries later they bring back the creature to life. Modern science still has a long way to go, especially if they have to reconstruct and bring back a frozen creature to life. Imagine if it were a human being who underwent this process and woke up after at least a century. How would he react to the change in society, advancements, technology, culture, people, etc? How many would be able to survive that shock. Just think if someone like Abraham Lincoln were preserved somehow like this and woke up today to find George Bush Jr in his chair. What would his reaction be? Would he be overwhelmed at cheating death and surviving through multiple centuries or would he grieve at the utter shock of seeing someone like George Bush at the helm of the US Democracy and the loss of his friends and family.

While this may me an extreme scenario, not everyone may have to face this kind of a shock and the fact is no one knows how harsh the shock would actually be.

Much ado about Rip Van Wrinkle, and not about writing? I’m glad I have somehow unshackled myself from the clutches of lethargy and returned to one of my favorite hobbies. I do hope my resilience will persist and be strong enough to desist me from doing another Rip Van Wrinkle. There’s something so intriguing, so enchanting and yet so subtle about writing. The charm of imagination, the power of dreams, the whiff of a scandal, the scent of a character (I’d prefer a woman), the trail of a story, the edge of a suspense, the fragrance of a wish, the clash of ideas, the smoothness of a conclusion, there are so many things that writing can do and yet there are some that it cannot. And that’s why a picture is worth a thousand words. But the freedom to write to imagine and to play with the character through writing is unparalleled compared to any other mode. And that my friend is the root of my love for writing.