Winter Ghosts

He looked around at the small 6 by 6 room; cosy enough even with the high ceiling and all, courtesy of all the piles of clothes covering the cobble stoned floor. Inhabited by one of those people who tend to leave both their clothes and their emotions lying scattered around. He thought how there are things one gets to know by simply noticing apparently inconsequential details about somebody you have known long enough. There were striking differences between himself and this particular friend for example. He was the kind of person who always waited; for the sun to reach its full height, then for it to go down, for acquaintances to turn up for important meetings or otherwise; for sleep to come and take over. As an obvious result, he left everything unfinished; his life a pile of incomplete thoughts, and in his room a collection of half written journals. Despite the directionless-ness of his thoughts, his heart did not have the capacity for change, even as December and with it, winter approached.
As for his simple friend, winter was all but a dead body; Maybe a hopeful haunting at best. The hardest season, where everything lost warmth and color and the only thing left to do was breathe and survive. He tried to tell her that when it’s zero degrees outside, even cats and dogs snuggle. He tried to reinforce his belief that there were hearts that could not be conquered by the cold. Smiling, despite the frozen lips.  She continued to leave the clothes around, spilled her soul out and then worried about the mess she made. And he continued to spill out words of condolence that had made houses in his throat, living there contentedly. 

Windows open, curtains close, seasons pass, time churns.

Still, we reach through the decades and try to find something we learned as children,

sitting atop monkey bars


Balance

And don't you have those random moments 

when you stand in front of the mirror, brush in hand, pretending to be on stage 

wondering who your audience would be?

And because you have continued to be my audience, 

even when I sounded hoarse 

and worth throwing pennies at;

really you should know, I just came to say Hello :')

More ramblings and the cold November rain

A season that is cold and wet, never completely free of the dampness of the tears that are brought on by the world’s misery. Like sorrow to hang on your wall. You look out through the under-side of an umbrella, water dripping off the edges. A pair of faded jeans, always wet near the ankles. Standing in a puddle, perception tinted by the yellow light of the dim street light . The old grieving sky goes on calling to its sun again. And when darkness falls and thickens, I go to bed at midnight, after having penned down 20 solid lines about the dead squirrel on the road. The sign of a good day, a positive omen in life; the cause for nausea in death. Whoever said this was a rational world?

The musty smell of a closed room, unoccupied for a while now. I see again the feeble light at the end of the hall, the one that you were never able to fall asleep without. I have been living in grey and white, in half-tones and undertones. Like a calendar in one color. It seems to be one of those days that feel like a memory relived too many times, the chewed up toy of a dog, swelling up in your throat. Deliberately provoking that strange pleasure you call melancholy. How many times – having shut yourself away to weep in the dark, beside a stream, under the covers, to make yourself sadder. Hardwired to process emotion before cognition. You thought dreams were a false perspective. The territory of the scandalous, the absolutely ridiculous. An artificial stage filled with people dead and alive.

This morning, you awake to the small applause of rain, somewhere between dusk and dawn, and a dream that stays.

 

I had heard somewhere that nothing lasts forever, not even this cold November rain.

Out Of Time

What did Time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people. And if you wondered what Time sounded like, it sounded like water running in a dark cave and voices crying and dirt dropping down upon hollow box lids, and rain. And, going further, what did Time look like? Time looked like snow dropping silently into a black room or it looked like a silent film in an ancient theater, one hundred billion faces falling like those New Year balloons, down and down into nothing.
—Ray Bradbury

Days were gloomy, greyish, and her spirit always felt the same, what was left of it. A spirit that had run dry, that could not light up anything anymore. Everything she saw and experienced was through the interface of an LCD screen, a window to the outside, the existence of which she was unsure of. Her knowledge of the biggest problems in the world was derived from the blog wars she occasionally browsed through. A picture of a man shot down dead, a malnutrition-ed child who was only a black canvas stretched over bones. Work was indexing and terminals. Learning was you-tube tutorials. Honest communication was pixel strings of text messages sent describing the frivolous. Memories were pictures on Instagram, some GB of data on her cloud account. She was an expert at recognizing 'emoticons', but clueless when it came to the expressions on a three dimensional human face that could be touched. The only warmth she had ever felt was the heat from over used processors. Her hollow thoughts were like an abandoned dog that looked for food in the trash and could not find a smell or a track to follow. A child lost among the crowd on the night of the public fair. A sailing ship that was without wreck and without guide. She was first a little girl, robbed of her innocence, then an old lady, with matted eyes that kept inching closer to the screen, year after year, day after day. She took out her soul a long time ago and carefully zipped into an unseen folder for safe keeping. Her life was digital – a careful combination of zeros and ones, of eyes shut, and eyes open that let her optimize the output she was required to give. Time was a dimension-less quantity – a number on the screen.

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A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

—Robert Frost

I misunderstood silence for disapproval, temporary for permanent.

I see now it was only the unstrained sound of my rapidly beating heart that you were trying to hear. 

I stripped down and turned the heat up for the water but it was never hot enough to drive away the shivers the thought of you gave me. 

I am walking down the road, the strong wind in my hair and thinking of a happy poem about walking with you like knotted rope. 

I left my coat behind, I thought I'd see you somewhere along the way. 

I love stories, I go to a bookstore and see you sitting on a shelf. 

I can only pray that it is not the one I struggle to follow, but the one that gives me company in the small spot of sun in the park on a cold day.

Musings on a rainy day

There’s something about this that doesn't seem right. I walked out today and saw a naked boy shivering in the rain. He blended in so well with this city that reeks of the poverty of the rich. They made me believe that hypocrisy was not a desirable trait. Then what is it about these lofty ideas that are violated in private?

There are four tabs open on my laptop screen, music blaring through my earphones and a smartphone in my hands while my mother makes dinner in the kitchen. I think I know nothing of nothing. I want to make friends with the dog that stands motionless on the main road until an auto driver almost runs it over. That is when it decides to jump away. I think that is a talent I am required to have.
It is raining outside. But so what? It always is. I try to feign this bitterness over how things work; the ones who read me know I’m only just pretending. And it is not one that is rooted in moral dilemmas or a childhood gone wrong. I see you worry for me, ask me questions about how I feel but my mind is a blank slate. Pick up a chalk and whatever you write I will try to emulate. It gets late; I toss and turn until my mind registers that it needs to shut down.  

This is not a rant. The answer to everything these days is I don’t know.  This is only my hands trying to create some shape out of the mold in front of me. But then again I don’t know anything for sure anymore. I don’t think anyone does. Notice is a lie; the deception of a cleverly designed brain that dictates the eyes. My heart does not feel; it only pumps blood waiting for the day for the day it will be given a leave.

But maybe you are different. From me. From them. They must have told you, where ever you try to bring light, darkness will have reached first.  It is a race you cannot win. It is beautiful to watch you try.

Trying

My dear, I don't know what to do or say today. Won't you help me decide? Should I tell you what I have been meaning to?I have been trying, really trying. But if that does not work, because it has not so far, should I cut and open my heart out on blank pages of paper instead? Would you listen then, would you understand? You remember our secret place, don't you? I am convinced that even after you forget and I forget, that place will not forget us. It will remember every word we said, even the echoes of the thoughts that we did not utter.. I am sorry if that frightens you, but you should have been wiser. In my defense, I did warn you.

 On the way to the place I tried to tell you and on the way from the place I tried to tell you. I tried to tell you as soon as we got there and I tried to tell you when it was almost time to leave. I tried to tell you in the dark-light. Once, I came close to telling you, but I was rudely interrupted by the dog that started to whimper. You see, don't you, how hard I tried?

I find myself at a crossroad now. Should I sit here and do nothing? Nobody is asking anything of me after-all. Should I stare back at the empty sky and try desperately to grab from it some sense of self, some reason to fill the void I have created? Or should I keep walking, half-asleep, only half-aware, only half-looking at this house of broken glass and mirrors that we call life? Now it is too late to tell you. Now I will just suppose that by some miracle you know, that you had a moment of epiphany or that the trees in that place told you what I could not. 

So long. As always.

You don't always

You don't always understand what you hear. Sometimes, the words are hollow but there is a lot being said in the gaping voids in between. Have you not seen the homeless and the dogs sleep in big hollow pipes to stay warm? You don't always recognize love, because people love in different ways. Fire only knows how to burn; would you try to save a drowning man by lighting him? But when you come to his funeral and look at his ashes, you will know what released him.  You don't always believe in magic, in god, in poetry, or in lies. If you didn't see the spider's intricate web, would you still understand simplicity as well? Have you ever peeled an onion? People cast layers to protect everything they love as well. You don't always like running. The sun is caught sleeping on the job too. You don't always like what you see. Sunshine means smiles for you, but when you open the curtains too abruptly on a summer’s day, you raise your hand to shield your eyes.  You don't always bring yourself to say the things you want to. Mumbled goodbyes are in fact harder than long speeches. You don’t always think much of the curious air of hyper reality. Ask a child; he’ll tell you that a pond is a lake, a breeze is a storm, a handful of dust is a desert and a monster lives under the bed.

Get Away

Sitting here on the cold, cemented floor, shoe-less, I watch the sky turn from black to all shades of blue, to white and then tinted by the yellow of the sun, which is dying now. 

At this point of the three-quarters concluded day, it is a brilliant mix of pink and purple, the color of my mind. 

There is a half-read book, lying face down at some distance, with the old boarding pass that had been pressed between its pages at the start of this journey peeking out, as if reminding me of how long I had put it off; ignored and forgotten. 

There is a storm on the horizon, and I can feel it coming, an air raid. At this distance, the world is a water color painting, a blurred image.

I had an image, and I have been waiting to talk to you.

Lets go away to some place, rent an open car, and explore. Perch on some comfortable spot on one of the cliffs that line the road, sip some wine and watch the sunset, and remember that sensory experience forever. Let us for a while, steer clear of crowds and escape the traffic of busy cities, head to a strange and breathtaking corner, and unwind. Blue skies, volcanic soil, azure waters, and golden beaches punctuated with small mystical huts, that have thatched roofs await. Let us go find hidden villages, sleepy bars, and stunning landscapes. I know they are just around the next, that treasure trove of my lush haven.

Won't you find time in this tiny tiny world? Until you do, I guess I will just stick my tongue out and taste the cool salt summer air, and kiss the starry night sky.

Just another day

Long, amusing Saturday nights, serenading into something beautiful, followed by lazy Sunday afternoons, the mind zoned out to an alternate universe, trying to create and recreate the ghost of a long forgotten dream, refusing to wake up – I guess thats how I would describe most of my weekends. 

After deliberating for a long time, in a semi-conscious state, I would rise to the sound of life on high alert, and not care, waiting for something supernatural to happen. 

It was always possible to trip on level ground, because life was always on high alert. You wouldn't know when one threat turned into another, and multiplied a thousand times over. So I had decided to stop giving it anymore thought than

those brief,occasional moments of panic, when the child in my head would try to resurface and assert that it knew best.

I tried not to be guilty of the same old thing, talking more about less and less, and remembered that I could not make homes out of human beings. The world was only a senseless story with little dolls with plastic faces, that were toxic when burned.