the door ajar... year 2008

It was just so beautifully simple to walk in and be around the familiar place again; it felt surreal. It felt unreal to feel belonged and yet not belong there. It was so peaceful to focus and think and not run a marathon in my head. It felt liberating to not chase for direction. It was so easy to slip back in time. It was so comforting to imagine familiar faces and feel their presence in their absence. Each little space took you back in time. Each walking step reminded me of something that made you smile. There were lots of smiles.

It’s stunning how a place can make you want to sink in and never let go. And if you do let go of it and come back; it embraces you all over again. It‘s the most gratifying feeling I’ve ever felt.

This trip back to MICA wasn’t wild like our days on campus. It wasn’t intense. It wasn’t three days of getting wasted beyond comprehension. No dunking. No assignments. No conflicts. No ambiguity. No rendezvous. No work. Given the halt in time we were going after; it felt like déjà-vu. You knew you were there before but the time lapse of two years just vanished. You could feel the presence of people around you. The memories were just so fresh, as if being screened.

All of us who went back relived the good ol times with each other…the madness, the cuckooness, the taboo sessions et al…but what was most worthy of it’s time were solitary peaceful moments on the campus. That place has such a sense of belonging about it .. that it instantly cheers you up. There is a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. No restraint.

I know I’m going to fail miserably trying to put it in words…but I want to try so that I can keep coming back to it and reliving it…what Wordsworth called emotion recollected in tranquility.

A gush of stomach hitting nostalgia at the gate…
It swells you up.
A familiar route unfolds before you.
You know the twists and turns.
You head feels light….another drag
Each tree, each brick smells and looks the same.
It looks just the way you left it.
Dust might have invaded my room… but the door welcomed me and the walls smiled back…and it brushed off the dust from the oblivious memories of the entire year I spent there. My mind played games. The music played in my head. The blue lamp lit itself up. The posters on the wall perked up in acknowledgement of my presence.
I sat down and sank in the drag and the moment.
I walked down the door to through the passage and halted. I looked up. The same bright light hit my eyes.
The lights have a huge halo of expanding and contracting lights… another drag
The door ajar. Hendrix poster with spent joint was gone.
Walking down the brick and green lane, any moment I expected familiar faces to pop-up.
The door ajar. It was still the same. It seemed stuck in a moment. And so was I.

I walked ahead around the bend of amaltas. A barely lit brick road, a few drags and a few minutes walk to the open amphitheatre.

The lights were dim. A shadow play on the stairs. A circular seating. I climbed to the top stair.
It was half-spent. I re-lit it. I looked up and released the column of smoke into the wide spread of glitter twinkles above me. I stared too long and too hard. They changed shapes. They disappeared in clusters and appeared again. The smoke blurred their intensity and painted added to their form. So there was smoke shapes and twinkle shapes.
They were staring back at me. A mute conversation and david gray's freedom on loop. Blown!
They spun a web as I exhaled another passive drag…
It didn’t just feel surreal.. it was like living your present anonymously without any outside irritants.
A fantastic play of light and shadow on the stairs.
A tree that silhouettes itself against a lamp.
A sky on fire.

And every memory worthy of the place and my stay there; chronicled itself in a stream of consciousness narration.

I felt like I was within a movie and all the moments just clipped in frenzy editing played themselves against the vast screen displayed above me; the twinkles in the sky adding to their aesthetics. It was the most exquisite immortal experience. The closest I might have got to celestial awakening *chuckles*

Would I go back again?
I don’t know. I want to.

But a fear holds me back – fear of too much expectation. I might expect a similar experience and it might fail me.
But I’m still stupefied about how a place becomes primary and people or other familiar things become secondary.

MICA is one such place for me. It is ethereal in it’s embrace.