A pink LP, a blue mood and thoughts on entrapment

Yesterday we received in the mail the double pink LP of one of my favorite bands of all times. I never particularly enjoyed pink as a color, but lots of things change as I grow older. The thing is, this particular pink is not just any pink. It is the pink that the age of 12 would have, if it had a color. The pink of a light blush of the cheeks when a girl smiles at you and you are not even sure why you are blushing.

This particular record and the band that produced it, Kore.Ydro., I have loved for almost 5 years already. I was introduced to them by a significant someone, who had told me that this band reminded him of me. The first time I listened to them I was far from pleased. They sounded to me too melodramatic, too melancholic and too vocal about the misery that goes hand in hand with being in love. My first thought was "well, is that how I come across to others?". Quite displeased, I was. Little did I know that very soon I would not only adore them, but also concur with their lyrics.

Fast forward, 4 and a half years later, yesterday, here I was, sitting at the kitchen table of my home, which is our home, listening to the record and trying -quite unsuccessfully- to withhold  the wave of emotions that was about to drown me. Songs and melodies, not unlike smells, can stir memories that you thought you had dealt with long ago. And then they slap you in the face and make it clear that "IT is still here"; which is wonderful, in the case that this "IT" is a joyous memory; but it quite sucks if it is a sad memory.

To be completely honest, I am not sure which one of the two disturbs me more. I mean, when a happy memory revives, I feel nostalgic and a tiny bit desperate that I am not going to live this thing again. Never the same way. On the other hand, sad memories will make you sad, no matter what. As a matter of fact, now that I write about it, it becomes more clear -it usually does- and I think I just figured it out. I am happier to remember bad moments, because I am relieved that they are a thing of the past. But I am terrified of remembering sublime moments because, well, "sublime" stuff does not take place every day. And certain things can only happen at a certain age.

***

Today another thing arrived at the mail. It was a playpen for Noah, our Holland lop rabbit. Noah is a very active little guy, with a thing for cables. And as he is young and his teeth are razor-sharp, he can kill a laptop charger within seconds, if left unattended. He also likes to chew walls and floors. This has led us to keep him in his cage and we felt really guilty about it. Even though he has the largest cage size for rabbits and he can run around in there and even do binkies, we could not ignore the fact that he could use a bit more space. So we ordered the playpen.

I installed it and he immediately explored around, passed through his grass tube a few times, chewed a paper ball, chewed the blanket that I put as a floor cover, jumped, hopped and the like. And after 15 minutes, he looked at me -I was sitting at my desk, 2 meters away- and he started biting on the wires of the playpen and trying to figure out how to come to me. Loneliness is loneliness and captivity is captivity, no matter how large the cage.

Thankfully, Noah soon realized that I would keep working and he went back to his toys. Unfortunately, I realized that the space he has is more than the space we have in our house, taking into account the scale difference. And I wondered how the hell do we manage ?! I mean, virtual worlds surely help to get your mind away a bit, but it starts becoming the only option to explore the world. Sure, traveling helps and we do that as much as we can. And taking walks helps too. But at this moment, the whole city feels to me like the playpen feels for Noah (I assume). Its better than staying in the cage the whole day, but its still a sad and mediocre compromise.

So what would I like to do, you ask. I surely cannot imagine that it would be possible to roam freely in the fields wearing nothing by my hair, right? It's winter after all. I would freeze. Well, what I dream of right now would be to have zero obligations that tie me at one specific place and be able to just live all over Europe. Travel, write my articles in cafes and cheap motels and all the cliches that go hand-in-hand with a proper case of Wanderlust. And as if that is not improbable enough to happen, I would like my partner to be able to join me. 

I guess that it is normal for people to get this sort of need to escape when they realize for the first time how much of their effort and their income goes into things like rent and bills, that are not enjoyable at all, but necessary.  Ok, maybe the rent of one month would only sustain us for half a month in a hostel in Paris, but then we could live for two months in a Balkan country, that would be cheaper. It is highly likely though, that if we pursued this way of life, within 6 months I would crave a stable home to go back to. We shall never know.

***

I realized the other day that most of the people that I follow in different social media are teenagers; or from Australia; or belong to the LGBT community; or they are unemployed hippies surviving by doing woofing. Some times, they are a combination of the above. This causes me similar emotions with the happy memories: I feel really inspired and happy by the passion of these people and the intensity with which they fight for their dreams. And then I feel jealous that I am not living their lives and I never will, because they are mostly 10 years younger than me and back then I was too busy being a good student. That is not to say that I did not enjoy my years at the University, but now I see how many more things I could do, instead of drinking, dancing, writing and pulling all-nighters for the design studios. And even though I realize that "this is what everyone did there and then. How could you know?", my insatiable appetite for life makes me crave all the youths I did not live. 

I guess this is the definition of greed.