Rock Bottom

The other day I rode to the Harbor island with Rasia. It is a stretch of road along the SD harbor, lined with stones to keep the water at bay (there, water, I return your metaphor back.) There, sitting on the rampart lining the manicured ocean, looking at the naval botches on the fluid raiment, I became aware of one of my deepest sorrows. Staring intently at the horizon I said,

A: Dude, you know what disappoints me the most?

R: hmph (No.)

A: See all those huge stones, those heavy rocks?

R: hmph (Yes.)

A: One of my biggest disappointments in life is that I cannot pick most of them.

R: eh (?.)

He was looking at me sideways, waiting for me to realize that that's not a valid reason to be sad about and smiling in that incongruous, patronising manner which suggests that it' time you get your shit together and start making sense. I, on the other hand, was genuinely surprised that the sheer number of things-rocks and cars and trees and elephants- that are unpickable in this universe is not enough to make someone sad. Those huge things just sit there unblinking and unmoving, insulting your ego, challenging your resolve, smug in their cognizance of the fact that try as hard as you might, you won't have any displacement to show for your decreased energy. You walk in this world with a merry gait and a jolly hop, confident of the path, sure of the destiny, until you come across a rock, trip, and fall down. You look back and see one of their ilk-those vain little brats which won't move. That one single speck of niggling pig-headedness serves, unflichingly, as the very physical reminder of all that is massively bigger, heavier, taller, deeper, hotter, faster, stronger, sharper, and better than anything that you can personally deal with in nature. No wonder then, sitting on that harbor that day with so many of such rocks surrounding me in their immobile derision, I felt small.

I tried to pick a small one up but had massively underestimated its density. I tried to push it but it won't budge, and I thought-friction. There is a reason why friction was taught so late in our mechanics courses. Because it screws up an ideal world. That ideal world in which Newton dreamed of things which moved continuously until they were stopped and things which sat there until they were moved. Friction came along surreptitiously one day-and some of the things stopped budging. And a lot of them were rocks which looked at me with scorn as my toes dug deep in the ground. And the garden of eden of waltzing trees and pirouetting mountains and shimmying elephants coagulated into an inflexible mass of rigid proportions.

Am I being too pessimistic? Not really. I'm actually optimistic. I'm optimistic about the number of such unpickable things. I'm hugely optimistic. I'm deliriously optimistic. But then, language is such a whore... These chains of thoughts. I need to get some sleep.