The room that I am spending most of time reminded me of Wittgenstein. Did you know Wittgenstein lived in a single room for most of his life? It was a fairly spacious room with low windows and a bed, a desk, a wash basin in the far corner and a stand with a tea pot . There were two – or perhaps even more additional chairs to receive visitors. Wittgenstein worked mostly using the desk and preserved his works in shoe boxes that were stacked one above another.

As I am lying in the bed, weak and with an inflamed throat, gazing at the walls of this room, I can’t help but agree with Wittgenstein – really that is all a man needs. And when I say, man, I exclude the child and the woman, who both , in my view, fall beyond the basic need.

Of course Wittgenstein’s room is more than fifty years back. I am tempted to add a computer with an Internet connection, but frankly am not sure yet. While I think of the future, it seems quite basic, while I think of the past I feel it is a luxury. So I am still undecided about that.

Then I’ll have all my time to devote of three things – 1. First of course is nature of the things in the universe and since all metaphysics is subject to the knowledge ( epistemology ) of that point in time, contemporary up-to-date knowledge is vital. Hence the argument for the laptop and the access to Internet. Should we have no laptop and access, then I would prefer contact with a friend, a well adjusted person, with a day time job and who is socially mobile across classes without effort, an astute observer and reporter without a great compulsion to change the observed. Last but not the least, the said person should have no sexual desire towards to me. Though I would prefer to receive the person from time to time, I would not encourage it too often , just to emphasise the meetings value. I would be very happy with a long meeting once a fortnight and regular contact by means of letters.

Then I’ll have the space – to the second question – the old Socratic one – how best a man can choose to lead his life ? Whilst it is an question of conduct and therefore ethics, it is perhaps less absolute in relation to the first question.

Finally, since I have a bound ego as identity It would be impossible to eliminate all forms of desire. So I will channelise all my fragmented wants into the third thing – a desire that has two components A. How best can I reach a state ( for the lack of better word ) where I do not have a preceding influence to dictate my choices and a consequent impact upon others? And B. What is the means or practice to attain a peaceful, calm death?

Anything more than this for a being endowed with human consciousness is surplus.

I’m fine with anything these days, I can’t be touched – I’m the Buddha in the suburbia.

He says – I haven’t been to holidays for a few years.   But why? It’s my wife. She’s not well.

Oh dear.  I think  to myself – Don’t tell me they’ve found a suspicious looking lump or a dense shadow. I’ve had too many of such stories over the last week – colleagues, acquaintances, If it is, I know I can’t bear to dig up any emotion within, and even if I do, I can’t do it without thinking to myself that I’m somewhat repeating myself again. It is as though I can’t differentiate between one person’s suffering from another’s.  As though they are all the same -  as if suffering is impersonal, not intimate at all, which I know is  not true.  Thankfully it’s just a migraine. And she suffers from phobia. She can’t face crowds. She can’t go out to Benidorm or Tenerife. Crowds. People. Holidays. Capitalism is like insomniac’s dream – you have have and have but never be content -as Chuck said – everything’s a copy of a copy of a copy. [1]

The lady on the radio is updating traffic – she struggles with a name -  cavande…cavande ….Kevin…  it just doesn’t roll out – and finally ….Cavendish road.  She’s not being uneducated, it’s just one of those things that happens to all of us – the words get stuck at the back of the throat and morph into something else.  And by the time she actually managed the Cavendish, as though she could hear us – we – me and the cabbie – had , almost reflexly, uttered Cavendish in unison. Sympathy may be.  Of being there, of knowing that feeling. Her co-presenter teases her a bit.

Cavendish.

Memory is a weird thing – the fragments- the layering –the storage – the retrieval. And to go back all uncounted these years, never remembered, never thought back, but  suddenly  found stored in a neuronal connection somewhere in the recesses and retrieved back in an instant, wow. Once brought back, it  has to assert itself.

So I do  – to this hapless cabbie – Do you know about Cavendish ?  Henry Cavendish. [2]  No. well, he was the guy who discovered hydrogen.  He was a rich man but unusually shy of women.  May be even phobic. Like your wife. It’s an illness you know.

Clever. You know all this. He says.

I think in my own prisonhouse of consciousness – how unnecessary it was. How helpless I am.

I can’t help it. No one can.

We drive in silence.

+++

( A friend’s excited email about David Foster Wallace made me go remember Brief Interviews with hideous men. And the postmodern prisonhouse that is the human consciousness in the 21st century )

[1] Chuck is Chuck Palanhniuk,  the work quoted is Fight Club.
[2] Henry Cavendish possibly suffered from Social Phobia.

Ought to change other habits – to leave a good time gap between a draft and the edit. Right now, in my excited enthusiasm I just think and type furiously and post it right away. Instead, need to read over a tea in a different consciousness frame. So starting up again with something I had left behind – writing during early hours when the mind is fresh and reading in the evening. Work might conveniently fill in between. Let’s see how it goes.

Now Playing: Beloved, Anushka Shankar
Moody : Tired but keen.

God! How traveling changes everything, like a big river you enter as someone but come out a different person.
Oh! How I so needed to reminded of that.