Filling the vaccuum

After an exhausting installation ceremony of a toastmasters club, the Port Town Toastmasters Club, I was sitting along with two other fellow toastmasters,  exchanging pleasantries, when, as they concentrated on their fruit cake and jelabi's, I fell silent, eyes open staring into space.  Another fellow toastmaster, walked up to me and said, what are you doing? You look like you are in the labor waiting room and you've just got the news that your wife has delivered triplets!  I was shocked and for a minute I actually believed her. For I was far away from the venue where the function was held, literally in a blank funk!

I am a dreamer, but not of dreams. I tend to drift into space, not on a rocket, but on a cycle, pedaling away in a vacuum. There is no road, nothing on either side and no light at the end of the tunnel. My expression is vacant - I am there and yet I am not. I know it, and yet I find it difficult to restrain myself from doing that. For something to hold me in the here and now, would require me to be in a dangerous situation of life and death, and then too I am not sure whether I would be in the Netherlands! Amsterdam is a nice place I find!

My wife and kids constantly tease me about my condition as they call it. I don’t notice when they have a haircut, or what clothes they wear, so long as they wear them, and often they talk about me when I am in the room, confident that I will not register what they are saying. But the condition is not so bad. One ear does pick up my name, though I often feign ignorance - fueling the myth of my condition! For my own reasons.  It’s called selective hearing. One often develops this condition a few years into marriage perhaps, but I guess I had what these insurance advisors call a preexisting condition.

At a birthday party of a friend - I must have been in College then -, we were seated in circle, on sofas or chairs.  I was sitting at the edge of one of the sofas and next to me was a teapoy on which I had kept my glass. I picked it up for a sip and kept holding it for a moment thereafter, oblivious of my surroundings.  A little while later, I kept my glass down on the teapoy. But the teapoy was no longer there as it had been taken away. The glass shattered. They say there's no harm in day dreaming, but there is.

But I wonder why I do it. Why do I have ‘the condition’ as I call it? Daydreaming allows me to play out scenarios where I miraculously save the day. I play out scenarios in my head that are kind of crazy, and then I personally, heroically resolve them. Instead of being ordinary Brian Fernandez, attending to my daily routine, I am faraway on a star trek, a hero to someone somewhere, but remain a guy here on earth who looks like he had triplets.  Now both are pleasurable I am sure, though I haven’t experienced the latter and it may be too late for it.

Visualization is daydreaming with a purpose says Bo Bennett and I reassure myself that I am on the right track, but I am jolted from the reality when I try to start my bike with the car keys or wear my T shirt inside out. But what takes the cake is applying toothpaste instead of shaving cream.