Fully Alive

I want to write about today because it was one of those rare ones when I felt fully alive and engaged with this thing called life.

Nothing too out of the ordinary. Woke up after a night attending a variety show in the city. I had wanted to go because I felt it would jog me out of my constant state of numbness (not a bad numbness...just numbness). It was a whole mess of people in good clothes, stuffed into a really tiny, humid space, where the AC didn't work. There was samba music, stand up acts, some sketches, French troubadours and 2 strangely delightful desi Opera singers. It was ok. It did nothing to move me.

So, as I was saying, I woke up after all of that, got dressed, ate breakfast and headed out for what I believed would be a very dull meeting with a very NGO client. The kind of thing I hadn't done in months. But the minute I walked in, I felt like I was stepping into the now, like I haven't in the longest time. I felt electric. I knew this space, I enjoyed this space. We would be talking about what kind of film needed to be made. We would bullshit a little but mostly talk sense. I would get a chance to sound really intelligent. Because I am. I was Baryshnikov in the boardroom.

And then I caught the eye of the guy across the table and it was one of those rare, rare moments when you feel a connection beyond logic. Those delicious nanoseconds when there is much more than a meeting of the minds. It was an absolute understanding of each other that lasted for an infinitesimal flash. But it was wonderful.

Came home. Slept like the dead. Woke up to find a film called 'Local Color' playing on tv. True story about the relationship between an art student and a famous Russian painter. I don't want to go into a long winded spiel about the film...but in a sea of crap churned out as 'art', this simple, no nonsense film reached into my gut and made me feel, well, fully alive.

It was an important day in my experiment to find what makes me feel more me. What makes my DNA tingle and heart beat faster. What makes me shut off the running commentary in my head and just be. The answers are delightfully surprising. Delightfully simple.