After extensive gratification on video games, finally I finished reading a book. There are piles of book on my roll-top desk which have not been completed after my recent sporadic take on books; fictional, developmental or otherwise. Having managed to pirate Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit’, I became adamant in finishing the little novel. Anyways, it took about a month to complete this wonderful book which in turn gave me a renewed passion to read incessantly, anything that my blurry eyes can see – from newspaper nonsense to epic one-liner’s on the back of a truck.  And now I have again managed to turn myself into a manic or one can politely say, a bookworm of some sort.

So the very next day, by chance, I managed to order a new book, City of Dreams. Now the thing is as soon as I laid my wily, Gollum hands on the book, I felt empowered. It’s not because of this particular book but it could have been any. Isn’t there something powerful in buying a book? Something reinvigorating, full of lust and a sense of fulfillment even though I don’t know if I am ever going to finish the damn book. The act of buying a book itself is empowering to oneself however the book might turn out to be. It’s like making love or masturbating for that matter. The idea that one is going to do it becomes more exciting than doing it or finishes doing it. In a sense, the process of desiring is more fulfilling than having the desires met. There was someone I knew, an acquaintance who asserted that he’d rather do nothing in life than read a book. ‘We are mere mortals and it is in our desire to be immortal, so, if you live a life reading all sorts of novels, poetries and biographies, then you end up living a thousand lives in one narcissistic, mortal life’ he said.

People desire power and through limitless assortment of emotions that we have by the virtue of being human, one can conjure up such powerful notions for our self. Hence, the subjective notion of power is quite stupid, for one can feel powerful over a mere mosquito but imagine that same tiny, unessential brat of an insect sullying us with this dreadful Zika. So, ‘power’ and ‘powerlessness’ have the same power over us. Just like being and nothingness.

Anyways, as my story goes, I am quite a Bilbo Baggins at heart and the realization that life is beautiful if you stay indoors (much to the complains of others) brings forth such immense joys yet some adventures in life doesn’t do much harm to my sense of empowerment.

“No!” said Thorin. There is more in you good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. But sad or merry, I must leave it now. Farewell!” (The Hobbit, Chapter XVIII: The Return Journey)