Sometimes we don’t relate to the environment around us. Sure, we recognise it – days, months or years of being in it makes everything look familiar, yet there are times when it instantly becomes alien. We tread through it, interact with it, transact with it even – almost subconsciously – zombie like as if some well-oiled gears somewhere have automatically been programmed to respond to the environmental stimulus. Somewhere beneath, however, the sense of it all being foreign nags persistently.
It is perhaps the overexposure of the environment and our implicit unconditional acceptance of it all. So much so that we tend to ignore small changes that happen in our environment – often tripping over them, nearly falling down, steadying ourselves, only half-noticing the small changes.
And it is these small changes happening over a period of time, over and over again, which we ignore as too trivial to be noticed, that one day completely change the complexion and make us wonder why we feel alienated in something that we know so well.
You enter a train and you know everything around you – the smell as soon as you enter the carriage, the hard cushions of the seats, the scenes out of the windows, the familiar sound of the wheels on the track.
You are the same too – except a few crinkly wrinkles that have become permanent after years of laughter – the only sign perhaps – of how much you laughed once upon a time. And all the small changes zip past you – like the angles of the roofs of homes – built as if out of a mould, devoid of any sense of identity.
All this while, your eyes fixate the coach number.
Brilliant work! Could relate to every single sentence in the post.
==Citric:
Thank you and I am glad – in that sense – I am not alone.
i’d never let that happen. and if it does, i’d move on.
==Dharma:
I’d agree – but it isn’t often in our hands
It’s the big change that takes up all our attention. And every big change causes a lot many changes, be they big or small. All the time and energy goes out in tackling with “these” changes. And when you stop to catch a breath and look back, you realise all the other (read small) changes have changed the landscape perhaps beyond recognition. That’s when nostalgia strikes you.
Good post. I notice that you’ve changed your pic!
==Explorer:
Thank you and well said @ big change. seems our “eye” are tuned to the big picture – even if we often somehow miss the ‘big picture’.
yes @ pic – small change
http://pressposts.com/Art/Coach-78519/
Submited post on PressPosts.com – “Coach 78519″
kya hua bhai? bizzy kya?
==Dharma:
Hmm…working on some other stuff – some kind of blog management
[...] something about being in a change that makes us unmindful to the change. There’s familiarity. Perhaps, if I was in the environment, experiencing, and even causing the change, it wouldn’t [...]
[...] “It’s like looking in a mirror. Only… not.” It is like the experience in Coach 78519: “You are the same too – except a few crinkly wrinkles that have become permanent after [...]