A 15 lb Dumbbell Story

In the middle of nowhere in upstate New York lies a small city called Ithaca. Ithaca has a chronic shortage of 15 lb dumbbells.

In the middle of nowhere in upstate New York lies another small city called Big Flats. People from Ithaca travel there often to pick up their 15 lb dumbbells.

The transport of 15 lb dumbbells is the artery that has forged a deep connection between these two cities. This 15 lb dumbbell trade is beneficial to everyone. It is beneficial to the people of Big Flats who make and lift and package the 15 lb dumbbells. It is beneficial to the people of Ithaca who use the 15 lb dumbbells for exercise when they receive them. It is beneficial to the people who transport the 15 lb dumbbells and carry them. It is beneficial to the reader of this story who, after reading about two such mundane towns, will inevitably get an urge to lift 15 lb dumbbells in order to relieve their boredom.

As the 15 lb dumbbell trade goes on, the cities get defined more and more by these objects. The cities together have slowly taken the shape of a 15 lb dumbbell. Ithaca is one end, Big Flats is one end, and the road that carries the 15 lb dumbbells joins those ends. As time goes on, this shape together keeps losing weight, trying to reach its target of exactly 15 lbs. As time goes on, the only activity the people of Ithaca remain capable of is lifting 15 lb dumbbells. As time goes on, the only activity the people of Big Flats remain capable of is manufacturing and packaging 15 lb dumbbells. As time goes on, the only thing the road joining these cities remains capable of is being used as a handle so people may lift this 15 lb dumbbell that lies on the face of the earth.

Some Magical Realism

1. People have balloons attached to their heads. I can tell what they are thinking. Doing so requires me popping the balloon that’s on their head. Some people float, and some do not. Every person is at a different height depending on the contents of the balloons. In some balloons there is pure helium. Those people slowly fade as they float higher and higher up.

2. In arguments people heat up. They heat up and evaporate, and they float up like steam. They swirl around, much like a fluid, engaged in the play of the argument. They change colour based on their character, providing a rich visual side to the convection currents.

The Sky is a Book

Every night, words start appearing when you look up. Words are written in white, words that form sentences that may or may not mean something to the people looking at them. So, it is possible to catch a glimpse of them during the day too. The reason the sky is usually spoken of as a book during the nighttime is because these words are easier to read compared to the daytime, and seem infinitely more beautiful in the shimmer of the moonlight. 

Sometimes I wonder if this is the reason people have heads that are tilted backwards compared to their bodies. Did people have heads looking in their front or looking down at some point in history, and evolved to have heads looking up? Many people have tried to answer this question, but it remains a mystery. It is hard to untangle it since the origin of the words in the sky is also a mystery. Both mysteries go hand in hand. If we can tell when the words appeared, maybe we would be able to guess the timeline of evolution.

Human beings have been able to gain at least some knowledge about these words. In particular, one human being who I will call P for privacy reasons completely transformed this field. Nobody would have expected someone like P to solve part of these mysteries. P was heavily not curious, and heavily unmotivated. Maybe that is why when she read the words in the sky, she could tell the secret behind them. Overthinking can make life harder, especially when so much of your mind is saturated by the sentences spanning the sky.

What P did was just believe what she was told. For one minute one night the words said, “We like to watch birds hit poles”. So, what led P to uncover this information about the words in the sky was her indifference. That particular night she was lying down on a cloth on the grass, doing nothing, since she did not want to or need to. 

The very interesting fact P uncovered led to chaos. Why did the words enjoy watching birds hit poles? Was that because it was inherently hilarious, or inherently disturbing? Many people wondered if the words were malevolent or just had a good sense of humour. Many people tried to answer this question by building telescopes of various kinds, in case somewhere in some part of the sky a little word would reveal this secret. Some people attempted to build poles of various heights to prod the words, but could never quite reach them. In short, a period of rapid development ensued on earth as people tried to advance existing technology to make sense of what was so interesting to the words in the sky about birds hitting poles.

Of course, this entire time, the words just existed in the sky, showing themselves in full glory in the dark. What were they thinking? Are they even capable of thinking anything other than birds and poles?

Resilient Hope

Everyone is latching on to empty hope. Hope is what matters, regardless of whether it is realistic or not. Hope is what keeps everyone going and not give up. Hope is what adds wrinkles of dreams to our minds. “This is how life will be afterwards,” everyone says. Everyone thinks it’ll all be over in a month. A month passes. A year. A year passes. Ten years. Ten years pass. It is still the same, but hope still remains. Why does hope still remain? Why is hope so resilient? People break, their resilience breaks, but hope stays. The world has changed irreparably, things will never be the same. But hope… hope does not care. It keeps going, and it keeps people going. 

What happens when hope breaks? When hope gives up? What happens then? Will we ever see that happen? I am curious about the nature of hope. I wonder why, despite little pockets of despair everywhere around the world, the sum total gives rise to hope. What makes up collective hope? Why, when we feel like the world is ending, why do we see it stay alive? 

The Curtain Rod

The curtain rod at our place keeps falling out of place. One of my greatest fears is accidentally stepping on a curtain or yanking it and hearing a crash on the top of my head with a jumble of curtains around my head clouding my vision and making me confused and disoriented. This has been a problem in every house I have lived in, for some reason. The sockets for the rods just aren’t stable—they refuse to stick with the wall.

Every time I look at the drawing room curtains at the two edges of a long rod kept in place over the glass doors, my mind starts spinning as it visualises a spinning curtain rod. The rod transforms into a see-saw, and the curtains at its two edges are engaged in a sort of two-dimensional tug of war as they both try to get to the floor.

The Earth is Flat

Joe is a man who lives at the top of a large mountain. Life is simple and harsh on the top of a mountain. It is about survival. Joe buys vegetables and meat and milk and beer from a shop down the street. Joe is also the public transport system of the top of the mountain. He gets his money from carting people around the top of the mountain. 

What gives Joe a reason to live? Talking to the people he carts around, asking them what makes them happy. They say talking to Joe makes them happy. Happiness is a circle on the top of the mountain. It is not flat. 

When Joe looks down and into the distance, Joe sees a mountain sloping down, and then clouds. Joe thinks the Earth is a mountain all the way down, down below the clouds. That is what he sees, and so that must be true. 

Sometimes the top of the mountain receives visitors from below the clouds. They say they come from a place that is all flat and then all you can see is water till infinity. They call that place a beach. Joe does not believe them. If they show him a picture, Joe says the picture is fake. The Earth is a mountain for Joe, so it must be a mountain for everyone. The Earth is a mountain floating in space. 

Why does Joe believe in the existence of “space”, if he has never left the top of the mountain? Why does Joe believe the meat comes from animals who grew up below the clouds, if he has never seen them? One day I will ask Joe. One day I will ask him why all you can see below the clouds isn't a pile of meat.  

Blue and White Echoes

I look at simple things and write about them. Where is my mind? Walking through a Hindi song, trying to grasp home. But my words want to run in front of me, past what I see. What do I see? I’m trying to focus on a cup in front of me. A cup, blue and white. The handle is white, and the bottom is white, but what makes it distinguishable is the recurring pattern in blue. It seems more like a pattern in white over a blue background. It could very well be a blue pattern, though. Why does my mind feel this way? What makes some shapes stand out from others?

Backgrounds are rectangular. They are bigger than all else. Sounds a little counterintuitive, considering backgrounds often lie in the background, ignored. But they are the biggest thing that we see, that we perceive. 

Anyway, white cup, blue background, white pattern with recurring circles. If you go approach the circles so that you are near enough and the circle is all you see, the white circle becomes the background. Finite blue background to infinite white background. And then there are patterns in blue on that circle. One big blue cross, and then echoes of that cross. The cross echoes in all four directions, so that it looks like one blue echo is eating the next white echo and so on and so on. After all, all echoes feed on each other. each first echo eats the next, and each next echo is born from the first.