If there is one thing, I have recently learned about being human- it is to let people be. Yeah, to give everyone a private space of about 10 feet and everyone should follow it. Why? This is because I wanted to cry. 

Crying is involuntary and it pinches my nose before it begins. All sorts of things can make one cry and it is wonderful to wet a handkerchief or two at times. But recently, it has been a free coupon that I haven’t been able to redeem.

Like the afternoon in the Arctic Cathedral church. I was lucky to be there exactly when the church orchestra was practicing on a late Saturday afternoon.  Something about the soaring symphonies makes goosebumps ripple [ music does that to emotionally under-worked non-vegetarians sometimes ]. Maybe I was bit tired, maybe I was rocking on post-PMS blues, maybe I really did want to cry. I wanted to sit there and cry under the white triangular roofs with all my heart.

In anticipation, I was bracing myself for a wonderfully secret hysteria of giddy joy at being able to let music overwhelm the senses when an old Italian couple noisily started to pose and take photos right next to me. They made the whole experience slightly intrusive. I felt like a monkey whose banana had been snatched away by ababoon. I felt raped, almost. 

And then there were the seals in the Polaris. I am not an ardent animal lover. The most I can do is cuddle with kittens and pups for 5 minutes. But who knew an aquarium could be just as satisfying? Standing there, near by the pool after discreetly pushing small children to get ahead in the line, watching the bearded seals swim made my eyes water [ and this had nothing to do with animal lover/cruelty wagon]. There was something about being surrounded by children exclaiming or cameras clicking- yet being completely alone. I felt as misplaced as them animals in the water.

But before I had time to wipe any tears, I was suddenly asked to say ‘appelsin’ [ Norwegian equivalent of saying ‘cheese’].

So much for romanticized tear time!

People are generally gullible, which is not a bad thing. But some can spend enormous energy believing in things that are strictly made up for the benefit of amusement (of others), which is a bad thing. 

To combat these attacks on the fluttering ego’s weak defenses, cynicism is a sturdy intellectual muscle of the mind. Cynical bastards have mastered the art of separating the ego from logic. One common example is people turning into soft gullible pus in the matters of the opposite sex or body image.

So back to the general reality, people are gullible. Because cynicism is as elite an attribute to the human psyche as is the lack of ego. Only few have it mastered fully to the hilt.  

Thus, from now onwards I am not making any stupid suggestions to gullible people. One of them is doing a tango as a flamingo in my backyard…

My living arrangement for the past 3 years has been sharing the kitchen and bathroom with another human being. I have had 3 of them come and go. Everyone has been a bundle of joy.

Human no.1: Vegaard used to leave the toilet seat down and even piss all over it. He never once bought any toilet paper. But I valued him the most because he never complained no matter how vulgar I might have been during a normal school night when drunk and loud. And since he was a medicine student, I’d often go to him asking for remedies when stoned. I thought he was an ostentatious freak because he would often cross the street if he saw me coming (often at the risk of being run down by the approaching tram). Not surprisingly, he left without saying a note, without a note… We lived hearing each other have sex and fart in our castles called rooms for 2 years and he left without a proper goodbye. Well, I was away for a month still. But maybe it was a good thing. Because since he never locked his doors I kindly stopped by his room once and went through his porn collection. He was clearly a disturbed child. So maybe it was a good thing after all.

Human no.2: Victor. The fragile looking saxophonist who was so visibly gay that I thought it was appropriate to kiss his hand rather than shake it when I first met him. He used to cook after midnight and often scare me by making food that took days to finish cooking. The only problem with him was his clothes were always better than mine. Before I could spill anything on his clothes, he left. He said it was  tad bit expensive for him ( which is ridiculous). I think he just wanted to be next to his boyfriend, the uber campy Chinese guy that once took my umbrella and NEVER returned it. 

Human no.3: Pia, the mouse. She clearly is like a mouse, hardly makes any noise other than while cooking. And she turns off all the light, all the freaking time. In an impending desire to drink some water at night, I open my door and there is pitch black darkness ready to eat me right outside my door. And I have fallen in her save-energy-enthusiasm. I don’t know how to get rid of her. Since she is gone for couple of weeks to Rome, I am watering her plants. She has 18 of those. Maybe it will be a good thing to forget to water.. 

Evil is a profusion of creativity in the mind. It is hard to separate it from your super powers. So I have thought about it and rather than cracking any ethical bone in my body while I defenestrate these humans I share my living space with.. I have decided to possibly move into my own place this year so porn collections, good clothes and pet plants can live safely..

So be nice to others, live alone is the maxim for the year. 

The regularity of blunders giving birth to guilt is abundant in life. Most often than not, sex is one. Despite what the society preaches the young, sex was never born out of religious inspiration, neither is it an emotional libation. It is an evolutionary gift. But since we have moved out of the caves and moved into the infinitely ‘sophisticated’ facebook era, sex often transpires into a social accident for many of us ( I am not talking about ugly, promiscuous or horny bastards). The physical urgency, that masturbation can so quickly calm, often inclines towards becoming a towering monster. Drunk people are such. Drunk people are monsters who will often hump anything that moves or giggles. 

I don’t have any formulas for avoiding the monster metamorphosis. However, to avoid waking up with a bigger guilt than a hangover can be had. The best one can do is become a chronic masturbator (who can hardly function or bother going out to grab couple of drinks), find a fuck buddy (an ethical way of staying a degree above that of a village-slut) or fall in love..

Alcohol is evil.

It is scarier than Chuck Norris’s super powers or ex-lover’s bootie calls. It induces an artificial sense of invisibility, while the reality is the very opposite of course. The tangible results of alcoholic indulgence is experienced the next day, when you are hung over and broke. Realizing dipsomaniac adventures evolved to a giddy relegation of personal crisis means you have another trophy for your wall of shame.

But everyone has been there.

In the beginning, the initial glasses will cause a social butterfly effect.  You immediately find any breathing human being within the vicinity of one meter to 5 meters – interesting and friendly. And sometimes, attractive too. You feel a brotherhood/sisterhood with everyone. Thanks to alcohol, you almost get a new vocabulary (I often get a British accent) or a face lift or a new twist in life. (note: most of the circus depends on the type or types of alcohol you consume)  The worst part of the whole alcohol business is when the preliminary tipsy tenure is bypassed by a stronger contender, the divine black-out hours. More glasses and bottles being emptied promises a night of multiple errors.

You might chuckle at the wrong person,
you might pee on the wrong street and be heckled by a gang of more drunk bastards,
you might grab the wrong glass or ass,
you might enter the wrong argument from the wrong side and end up undoing any you might right you socially worked for despite all wrongs,
you might kiss the wrong mouth,
you might go to the wrong bed,
you might throw up in your date’s new shoes and car simultaneously,
you might drop the phone you borrowed in the toilet,
you might spill red wine on white-silk-clad cow or pig,
you might lose the purse you were minding,
you might dance with the wrong butt,
you might swing a verbal clout or two,
you might point fingers and speak unholy words.

And. The greatest risk is that you might just be yourself when drunk… and talk.

Yeap.

Events certainly do take a new toll on your ability to translate tragedy to humor, you gain extra insight into your own programming, and you might improve your diplomatic skills after such a fiasco..  However, the discomfort others in your company feel is greater than your self-improvement strategies. 

So I’ve decided with my best friend not to attend any more new year’s eve parties in town. Instead we go hiking, drink around a fire. With no sound or opening for social errors.

I sleep better, for sure.

Verbal confrontations hurt my brain, my mouth, my ears, my chest and my sense of well-being. The person who is not getting your point and sliding down the opposite hill or climbing it to beat you with his point of view becomes a monster. I’ve had such beastly times years before when life was caught up with human lives. Such confrontations happen to all of us, every now and then. Even with strangers, no? But strangers, you can forget sometimes as soon as those moments pass by and mornings arrive. The worst confrontations are with people you have to meet and encounter often.

It is never about who is right or wrong. Because like I always say there is no truth. It is about having your balance crushed by a freight train, or an North American Kenworth truck, or even a Tata bus. People point fingers and turn into animals with no cerebral activity.

The worst confrontations happen over the phone, where you stare at the wall or the screen in front of you until your eyes are so numb because your ears hurt. You have to actually give the other person time to finish his sentence before going on an assault. And you don’t even have visual clues, but only audio tones to decipher the extent of frustration at the other end.

Anyways, I hate confrontations. Last night I went on my first post-it note path of communication with the fucking caretaker of my building.

Try to be nice and don’t leave them love messages when intoxicated.

What to do when having coffee with an acquaintance, whom you can only stand when intoxicated or for 3 minutes:

• Talk about the most immediate/superficial issues hovering in their life.
• Compliment them on things that they unwilling display want of reassurance.
• Motivate them to do exactly what they have been planning to but do not have the guts to actually finish off.
• Help them go to bed with a sense of renewed self-esteem (all this is almost like communal masturbation- where you jerk off each other’s sense of worth).

Be nice, try. Otherwise some whiskey in your coffee doesn’t hurt.

For many, anything can be an ordeal.

Anything.

Like getting up early, having dinner with parents, confronting flat mate about toilet seat or toilet paper, going to the post office, or even getting out of bed at all. The list is as endless as bollywood’s supply of overused movie formula. The greatest ordeal, however, has to be – being polite to strangers. Especially in the elevators. Do you allow yourself to breathe normally when your nose is whistling on its own?  (To spare fellow commuters the pain of nasal music.) And do you not hold your breath when there is absolute silence or to hear what the person at the other end of the phone might be telling a very unhappy looking elevator commuter? And do you not control the urge to bunning every other face that suddenly appears to be running towards you? And when your floor has arrived but there is a gigantic pool of old people stretched 100 meters long before you and the door, do you not adjust your intentions to get out on the way down?

Being polite is inflicting those elevator dilemmas on to yourself.

Well, I just can‘t be bothered to go through myriads of social inconveniences, so I take the stairs..