hm...

is there any easy way of knowing that you're in love? i mean, how do you realize that you have fallen so hopelessly for someone that you are willing to overlook every fault in him just so you get to see the best things? is it when every thing that you do seems to be linked inexorably to him? is it when you really can't think of a situation where he's not there? what is it? well, when you come to think of it, there's no one answer, is there? all the things which seemed so corny before suddenly becomes not that bad after all. evening walks, endless talks about...well...nothing, seeing that awesomely cute blush appear at a private joke. when lo behold! you can write love poetry! sounds familiar? cliched even. yes, but then what is it that brings a smile every single time you think of singularly common moments? maybe the question i really should be asking is that how do such all-too-publicly discussed emotions suddenly become so private and individual? and you know what? the funny thing you'll notice about lovers is that they're a horribly superstitious lot. this that or the other and they get freaked out thinking some catastrophe is on their way. touchwood.
well anyhow i've drifted far and wide from my original query. in all liklihood, there's no straight answer to these questions. like every other bugging question, i guess. but nonetheless its fun to think about it, whatever be the outcome. or the lack of it! happy thinking!

just a simple story

have you ever wondered how most of the stories we love are the simplest ones? ones we have heard so many times, yet every time we hear it again it just feels as though it were the first time? i guess a lot of people have thought about it, judging from the never-ending stream of narrative throeries. but somehow i think great stories are what they are because they can make you feel so comfortable--like the smell of newly washed linen, like the all-too-familiar bus ride to college, like the long-lost photo which has amazing time-machine like properties. you know them. yet you want to know more.
just today i heard such a story, which i'm sure will sound banal and inane and, frankly speaking, cliched in any other time or place. my mum told me and my brother this story of a little adventurous kitten and ball of wool. been-there-done-that you say? i thought the same thing. but somehow, as my mother went on with her tale of a little girl watching a kitten unravel a nearly-knit sweater, i could see my mother's curly haired 11 year old self fascinated by so "story-book"-like an act. i could see my grandmother and her friend chat incessantly, unaware of this minor wool-tragedy unfolding before their very eyes and the little girl gleefully sharing the kitten's sense of adventure. the house, the room, my grandmother's friend--i have never seen them. the cat has died its nine deaths, possibly in all the proverbial 14 generations. but yet, there's something that i know so intimately about the story. a recreation of a memory, a borrowed memory. a story which became a part of my mother's memory and then became mine. that's a really good story. that's a classic.