I woke up really early this morning and I absent-mindedly looked at my watch. The warm yellow LED read 3:45 am and I began to think, that’s weird, the previous morning I woke up and my watch read 1:23 a.m. So, as I tried to go back to sleep, I’m thinking, if indeed there is a certain pattern coming out of this, would it mean that in two days, I will wake up at 6:07 a.m., my regular time to start my usual breakfast preparations?
In a related sense, like some odd ritual, I always make it a point to drop more than thirteen dirty clothes in the washing machine each time I laundry. Sometimes, I put in lesser clothes, but never thirteen. A funnier thing is, while I am at it, I’m also conscious in thinking, there’s really no logic as to why I avoid and dread this number thirteen, and yet, at each time, at the very last minute, I fall back on the ritual.
If you think, that’s the extent of it all, it sadly doesn’t end there. For instance, I always take three deliberate ball bounces before each serve, I jog for two lampposts and then walk for three, before repeating the whole routine again. In music, there’s always two stanzas before an ad-lib and the ad-libs are limited to two passes before proceeding to a third stanza.
A musician-friend notes, oh no, another one with obsessive-compulsive-behavior, OCD! In my mind, I’m thinking, aren’t all musicians wired that way? Then I go, this must be a disorder then because, I seem to find numbers in everything, even in sleep. Through it all, there’s a Simon and Garfunkel song, Patterns, which I find relatable: “From the moment of my birth, to the instant of my death, there are patterns I must follow, just as I must breathe each breath.” Like juicing out some form of solace from that song, I like to believe despite all, I’m really among normal people.
Then one day, I realize (or like to believe) it’s not all about numbers. It’s just that, like everyone, a part of me doesn’t like spontaneity. While the Pisces part says, Jam, the other says, count. Which one belongs to the dark side force, I do not know yet. So, for the moment, I am at a compromise: for some situations, it’s jam and go with the flow. For the rest, it’s count and paint by numbers, like everything depended on it.
