Sunday, December 31, 2006

December 31, 2006.

December 31 - a day to ring out the old and what a day it is turning out to be. I have been awake all 10 hours of the Gregorian day and I am yet to see any sign of the sun. The sky is a dull aluminum gray and it has been raining almost continuously though not heavily all morning. A good sign of the year that has been in my life: I mean fitting sign, of course. The windowpanes are clearing up in the water but there is none of the romantic pittle-pattle that one always reads of in novels. Only a dull sound every now and then signifying nothing. Still it is soothing, this depressing gray scene with the desolate trees, leafless and birdless. I hear a faint sound of twittering - maybe some birds have come back from their winter homes, knowing there will be no snow this year. It must be a pretty hard time for the birds, I imagine; what with all the trouble of migrating thousands of miles, there has been no real snow and now, a week after Christmas, the only sign of the gloomy winter is the sunless sky; it has not even been too cold, just a late fall kind of finger-freezing, nose-reddening, but essentially bearable, cold. People are getting along fine though. It will be much easier for them to stand 6 hours in Times Square waiting for the ball to fall. Closer home, there is not much life in my place, the university grounds are deserted for the holidays and the town has never been too lively anyway. The McDonald's opposite my window has been doing steady business all day. Cars of all hues and shapes, waiting patiently by the red sign to order, and collecting their bags, at the counter, like Oliver Twist and co. getting their miserable lunches; only these Macs will be eaten with relish. I have been alone the last few days in my big house, locked in actually and haven't stepped an inch outside the last couple of days. Food has been the grub I cooked 2 days back, rationed slowly, and I think it will last me 3-4 days more. It must seem obvious that I sleep a lot but there has been very little sleep surprisingly. To add to my nocturnalist woes, I have now become an insomniac. The time, though, I have spent fruitfully. A couple of movies and a few games were inevitable but I have been reading and writing quite a bit. Academic work mostly but have also spent time on Orhan Pamuk and Ellman's Joyce. Pamuk is quite pedestrian in The White Castle but more about him when I am done with his complete oeuvre. Ellman's Joyce has been totally good, however. As a general rule, I do not like biographies but Joyce is special and I wanted to understand his life so I could appreciate his art better. Pure gold this biography though I suspect it might not be the best written, even among those about Joyce. I have also been spending some time on puzzles to stimulate my sleeping brain cells. Wonderful these things but I dont know how long I can keep up that activity. I wonder what the waste management guy must be thinking of me: lights on at 5am and working at my desk. Surely someone in the world will have charitable thoughts about me. Or maybe he knows too that it is just one of those nerdy losers who cannot get out of their rooms for f***'s sake. Forgive the vituperation but sometimes loneliness gets to me. Solitude I do not mind though as it has been a strangely placid few days, the last ones that I have been alone. Unaccountably the rain has stopped now and I will too but is it not better sometimes if there were no stops? The rest is tomorrow.

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