[or, when Nothing threatens to become Something]

How time flies.

How time stands still.

Afternoon now. The 9th of July 2023. The mind in vacuous vacuum state, that so typically follows days of intense work.

I just did what I usually do…browse through a folder titled ‘Random Space’ in which I place all manner of scrawls on a continuing basis. This browsing activity acts on me like grazing on grass acts on cattle: it relaxes the fevered brain, especially when I delete utter rubbish that I come across (as happens quite frequently). 

Lest you don’t believe me, here’s something I found, written in February…in strangely similar mood. Strangely enough, it too dwells on grass grazed upon long ago…well, a refined form of grass anyway:  

[Verbatim…]

Feb 15^th 2023:

Afternoon now.  After desultory work, editing news clippings after two days’ intense design and review of newsletter. What better time than to relapse into reminisce, to sink effortlessly through the decades to the dreamscape that was 1973–77…

Hawkwind plays, now, selected for me by that monstrous yet lovable Spotify algorithm. An album called, simply, Hawkwind. And now on the screen the calibri-11 and arial-9 exactly 17-point spaced mishmash of text melts and rearranges itself at dizzying speed, briefly I see shadowed faces in it, of friends of eons ago, Shankar and Raju, Kalyan and Raghu, Hocky and Sojan and Buddha and Rohan and Bhaiyya and Sen and Ronnie and Geeta and Meera and Shanks and so many others, appearing and dissolving in the cerebral grey-brown smoke that was so characteristic of Asharam’s hash (it came with golden seals on it, Farsi script too, all the way from Afghanistan, like chocolate bars but so much headier…12 rupees a tola.

A time when my monthly allowance—meant among other things for mess fees of 200-something rupees and for survival on the rest – was 300 rupees; at a time when dad’s salary back in Shillong was – what? About Rs 900 take-home?

Ah yes, I went through that 300 as smoothly as an otter through water, as Asharam’s hash went down the throat and lungs into the blood and brain. At least twice I ‘forgot’ the mess fees and asked dad for more; what were my excuses, I remember not.

And now, the lyrics from ‘Mirror of illusion’ caress the mind, draw me down, down the Great Chasm of Contemplation and hurl me over the raging, eternal,  Cataracts of Cerebral Chaos…

In the cold gray mask of morning I cry out
But no one feels the sound that I shout

And you don’t hear me through the tears you’ve shed
In the dreamworld that you’ve found
Will one day drag you down
The mirror of illusion reflects the smile

The world from your back door seems so wide
The house, so tiny it is from inside
A box that you’re still living in
I cannot see for why
You think you’ve found Perception’s doors
They open to a lie

Briefly, I emerge from the maelstrom at the shout of a remembered quote, echoing off the canyon walls:

One of the most important rules to follow on the Path to Contentment is to erase, on ongoing basis, any and all memories that evoke strong emotions:  good or bad. Especially the bad, which tend to burrow deeper and create far many more encrypted-password copies of themselves in different regions of the cerebellum.

[Alambusa IV: “Recombinant AI and other neuroquantal speculations”: Rakshasa Press, 2144 CE]

I try and follow this principle by efforts to keep up with what is being researched – and sometimes, discovered – in science. Usually, within minutes of reading something I achieve that utterly blissful amoeba-like state of complete blankness that restores equanimity with the blessed knowledge that with each passing second I understand even less than I did before, and that the end is in sight…but I’m never quite there (or I wouldn’t be writing this, would I?)

Consider this gem of an insight into the nature of ‘quantum entanglement’, from a most wonderful article dated 22 February 2023 in the Quanta Magazine  titled ‘Physicists Use Quantum Mechanics to Pull Energy out of Nothing’ [read it here]:

“The trouble arises from the bizarre nature of the quantum vacuum, which is a peculiar type of nothing that comes dangerously close to resembling a something. The uncertainty principle forbids any quantum system from settling down into a perfectly quiet state of exactly zero energy. As a result, even the vacuum must always crackle with fluctuations in the quantum fields that fill it. These never-ending fluctuations imbue every field with some minimum amount of energy, known as the zero-point energy. Physicists say that a system with this minimal energy is in the ground state. A system in its ground state is a bit like a car parked on the streets of Denver. Even though it’s well above sea level, it can’t go any lower…”

I just love this idea of a ‘peculiar type of nothing that comes dangerously close to resembling a something.’

It reminds me of the description of the One in every religious book I’ve read.

It also reminds me of exactly how I felt when I first heard Rahul Gandhi explain, at length, his vision for India’s socio-economic development.

[Mercifully, this 5-month-old reminisce on nothing, tantamount to nothing, ended here…indeed, I’d forgotten all about it till today. ]

How time flies.

How time stands still.

Quick! Hit the delete button!