The Circle of Familiarity - On Lexington and Me.

What story do I tell you,
When bits and pieces clutter anew,
My whimsy, my muse, my confused mind,
Tell me my story, do be so kind!

Thus I ask my mind, to clean out old words, heard but not forgotten; to clear out the cobwebs of unwanted memories; to weave from the few threads that border on sanity, to discern hidden among my nascent thoughts - silly and serious, a story sane enough for me to recount here...

Guilty as charged - I am sleepy and muddled and have no idea why I am writing something that is careening pretty much towards barely understandable trails of thought, but look carefully and perhaps you will notice hints of sanity hidden amidst this hazy cloud of incoherence. Perhaps not.

And so today's story is about our sleepy little town, Lexington. Five years of going to UK (University of Kentucky), spending sleepless nights on assignments, graduating, getting a job here, getting married, making friends and it's hard for me to say that I am not "attached" to the place. I wonder how I will handle the day when I have to leave Lexington for good, it seems such a distant possibility. But sometimes life springs a surprise on us when we least expect it and we are left mulling over possible courses of action that we had not even dreamed about a few moments back...but I ramble, I write this post not because I am leaving Lexington but because people around me are leaving this place, leaving behind little pockets of voids...some hard to fill, some just making me uncomfortable for reasons I am still trying to understand.

We don't often think about all the people who constitute our so-called community, some just exist in it's circumference for us, filling it in to give it shape - a kind of completeness. We feel comfortable knowing the circle is complete, living, breathing in and out to let in more people, happy with more participants, willingly joining hands with new comers. We sometimes notice the addition, the change, sometimes we don't. It's when they leave that we take a note and something fleeting grips us suddenly and gives life to unspoken fears - fear that the circle that we exist in for the past so many years is dwindling away slowly, fear that a familiar face and a welcoming smile is being taken away from us...and then the feeling passes and the circle re-arranges itself and we exist in a new state of equilibrium, interacting - sometimes, superficially and sometimes, seriously with the people around us...

But how long will this circle last if the points that constitute it slowly fade away, one by one? Will it still be as it is - dynamic and alive? Perhaps just existing without anchoring oneself to the circle will help us disengage from it when the need arises? But then what about now when I wish to be at it's core? Will I not miss out on life if I hold back now to be secure in the future?

Confusing. Agreed. Insane? You tell me.

Anyway, here's hoping, more familiar faces and to-be familiar faces join us in the circle here in Lexington...and here's also hoping that Dinesh, Prabhu, Deepa, Trix and Ashok form their own circle of familiarity wherever they are :)

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