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Today I went for the movie, '500 days of summer' with a friend. We saw it at the rooftop of the Season's hotel. There were crumb-fried mushrooms and a nice fresh lime soda. We had coffee and cake later at Peter Donuts and because I spotted a spare five hundred rupees in my purse, I tanked up and we went for a drive.

I like our conversations when we go for a drive. It's like the darkness of the quiet universe of the car melts the walls around our deepest fears and we talk about that. Old age, insanity, depression, the weird possibility that if something happens and we don't die but we live forever...what happens then. The burden of this anxiety doesn't ease, does it? How do you keep going? What do you do?

What I like about these drives and these talks is that they happen so naturally. There's no liquor or smoking or smoking up. Although I am not wholly opposed to drinking (I have enjoyed it in the past but give t up for good now), the smoking and ingestion of substance just...I don't know...it alienates me in a very critical way. To me, it really is like the person just put up a sign saying 'Counter Closed'...that whatever conversation we may have had, whatever truth we may have shared, now will be funneled into this alter of the wine or cigarette or marijuana. So what I will be left with are dregs of the truth that I'll need to piece together correctly or incorrectly.

Some of the people I have felt closest to have drunk or smoked or smoked up. But now I feel that I appreciate people who can share and be themselves in sobriety. That perhaps is when people are simple and communication, if painful, is also simple. And when you keep things simple, I feel, is when you truly give peace a chance. And isn't that the whole point?

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