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.

She stood in the warm pool of sunlight; her battered suitcase piled on the side-walk again. She knew she had longer ways to go. Unaccustomed to such calmness, she wanted to delay the other worlds that were waiting.

It had been inconceivable to her that people could destroy each other, over and over again. She wished to offer comfort, to erase the damage. She didn't understand why people were not used to experiencing something without over-thinking the potential consequences it may have. It seemed absurd to her that people should have such skewed perceptions about the things that were most important to them.

She had observed that most people went through phases. Some-days they were the people they were supposed to be; both them and their silhouettes. They hoped that on the days they were only darkened lines, she was still willing to be near them. Even with this thought in mind, they would buy her drinks and then tell her lies. And when all other excuses had been exhausted, they blamed it on the days.

There were slow days and busy days and dull days and hateful days and the rare days – and they were both long and short at the same time. They ended up flowing into one another and lost their names. Those days were a blur, commutes forgotten over pixel-strings of texts sent describing nothing, days awash in emails containing famous quotes from famous books that were never read and authors whose names were mispronounced. And then those days turned into weeks, and months and years.

They thought she had lost her way but they didn't know that not all those who wander were lost. It comforted her, in a strange way, to travel from the hills to the desert and meet all these people who were all so alike and so different. They were all alone. They made futile attempts to be sincere. To be there for someone else. They made promises that the other person wouldn't be alone. This was friendship. This was love. This was humans at their best and worst.

Nothing was simple, little was whole. They were part technology, part broken family, part digital, part unknowable and in-capable of belief in mystery.
But then there were some people that made her reconsider.
They told her to not lose hope – that what she seeked would be found. They trusted ghosts. They trusted dreams. They trusted their heart, and they trusted their story. They were so blissfully unaware of the demons that they were still capable of finding joy in the smell of pages that had become brown with age.
So she picked up the suitcase again, and walked on. She had longer ways to go.

You came as always, like sunshine - lifting dragging spirits and bringing childlike anticipation. You made me feel eight again. Days and nights passed by in a blur when I was with you, I lost track of time.

I remember our lazy times together, the aimless conversations, the promise of leisure, take away food, and good music. You managed to induce this kind of trance like magic on me, where the biggest worry was being able to remember when I was awake and when I was not.

You worked your charm on everyone, but I always felt like we had this connection, you and I. I would plan for days before you came, but then just end up spending time doing the simplest things, without a care in the world, because I was with you.

You always took your leave too soon; slip away through my fingers before I was ready to let you go. Couldn't you linger a while?

I do love you Dear holidays, and I miss you already. Come back soon.

Dreamed of paradise

We come into this world with a whole lot of big dreams.
Somebody wants to be president. Just because it looks so cool to have thousands of people watching while you're on tv making a speech. Somebody wants to be a racer because you want to ride that fast. While some little girls want to princesses, find their prince charming and live happily ever after.
Me? I just wanted to be a mommy. Clearly because I adored my own. She seemed to be a mind reader. Every kid that age thinks his/her mommy/daddy know and understand his/her emotions better than himself/herself. Why? Well of course! Because mommy knows you're hungry before you do and she knows you have to pee before you pack up for a long drive while you realize right after she's told you four times and you've refused four times and the car has rolled on to the highway.
Well do you think they know you best now?
Haha big joke.
No those big guys don't get it apparently. Neither does that boy you love. Or his best friend. Nor your countless face book friends.

9999 out of every 10,000 kids are swiftly, inadvertently de-geniusized by grown ups. Ah well I could have been the next Einstein - but mom dad and all the uncles and aunties prevented it.

We used to get angry and upset because of loud noises or because we didn't get our food on time. Now we pull out our guns at the red light. We would spread our arms and think the world was at our feet at the highest point of the swing. Now we're afraid - all the time, that the swing might just bend and break under the pressure. We drown ourselves in the cacophony of the voices saying - 'no'
What happened to those big dreams?
Oh well they changed, altered by all the ifs and buts of the world.
Disillusionment set in. A little bit at least. Weird things started irritating you. People, most of all.
You think 'how could they!' You get disgusted, spend hours and days being a vegetable, in a gloom, brooding.
It does affect us, no matter how much we don't want it to. Show me a person who remains untouched by this and I'll worship him (Howard Roark you should have been real). Thing is you didn't think so, but shit happens. Everyone will tell you that. Keep a dog with you long enough and he'll tell you right at your feet. True story.

I have longed for people before, I have loved people before.
Not like this.
It was not this.

Give me a world, you have taken the world I was.

~ Anne Carson

What do you do about it? Some of us move on. Others spend their lives cleaning up everyone else's poop. We fall down, we get back up. We step on someone's back to get to the next step of the ladder. Yes we do. All of us. In weird twisted upside down ways, that at times even seem noble. Its the way of life. The nature of evolution. Darwin couldn't have been wrong now could he?
We fall down again and we get up again, just a little dirtier and moodier than before.
At some point after the falling down and looking around, you start to get a little bit tired. There's too much noise at times no? Your heart chugs to a tired halt. Reflection we call it.
And because we've always been taught to believe in happy endings, even the most pessimistic of us, we keep going. Because it's fun sometimes to look for the diamond in the haystack. Because even if you want to sleep forever, the sun will continue to blind you every single morning.

when she was just a girl, she expected the world
but it flew away from her reach
so she ran away in her sleep
and dreamed of
paradise

Do you look out over the sea at night?

Do you see the moon and stars reflected on the water?

Do you smell the salt air?
Does it feel like home?
Are you looking at the same patch of sky that I saw?
In that moment, do you feel what I felt?
Do the sirens whisper your name as they whispered mine?
Tell me,

does the siren song in the middle of the night sound like

the wind,

or the stars,

or the fallen angels?

Tell me.