hijacking thoughts...

There exists a little used gaming/arcade room somewhere in the campus center. You know the type, with the perpetual sounds of bells and notes and gunshots and music(or muzak). Well, I happened to be walking past it the other day when i heard the music from "Lambada".. you know the late 80's Brazilian dance-style/song...

This one.. Lambada (click to play - player will open in a new window)..

So anyway, we used to listen to this quite a bit back in school. (no, we didn't dance to it, not that we didn't want to, or try to... we just didn't.)

But just hearing the song.. not even the song, just the music.. just hearing it brought back such a powerful rush of nostalgia and memories, so vivid that it was almost physically painful... for a moment i was transported to another time. I had to stop and collect myself. Was this how it feels like to walk through a portal, a time warp, into a parallel world?

I could close my eyes and visualize the cassette tapes, lovingly and painstakingly compiled and dubbed... so precious due to the lack of tapes and paucity of source materials. I could remember the feel of the tape spool's cogs digging into my fingers as I wound the tape manually... to tighten the reel or just to save battery power in the walkman maybe? Cleverer was how we would jam in an ordinary hexagonal pencil into the spool and spin the tape around it to rewind/forward the tape.

I could close my eyes and remember how it was.. the freshness of thoughts.. the anticipation of the next minute.. the clarity of the moment... the novelty of discovery.. of knowledge.. no jaded cynicism yet. just clean. innocent.

Nostalgia huh?
I'd always thought it was so cliched to talk about the lost innocence of youth or days gone by...

But at that moment I really thought about it.
Really. Thought. And...

Innocents we all were.
Before encountering real life.
real life with its pettiness..
its ugliness..
transience..
shallowness..
superficiality..

dog-eat-dog
man-eat-man
friend-USE-friend
every man for himself..
watch your own back..

before encountering real life with its angers... jealousies... temptations... dishonesty...addictions and afflictions... furtive like the unseen but not un-heard vermin under our streets.

No man is an island.
Wasn't that what they said?
I do beg to differ.
only, I guess I really do a better job of convincing others of that than I do of telling myself. I do beg to differ.

since those days, all we are are islands.
sometimes we clump together.. what's that called? an archipelago?
but we're mostly clods of mud drifting alone.
and the bells.. they do toll for thee... or for me.
not for you and me.

all coz of one tune
hijacking my thoughts.