These twilight walks
have no particular aim
the moon is a philosopher
and her light pleads with me
casting faint shadows
impossible questions
I watched you vanish
through that dreamy threshold
in a motionless flight
Are you now that
ominuous cloud
I am serenely lonely
a bulletless soldier
singing a lullaby to herself
“you are not alone
we are all fighting”
At home a book waits
a severance from
a world of severance
Yet upon my arrival
I could not undress
Nostalgia – it is going through music CDs burnt from as way back as six years ago. Unearthing music that I used to listen to is like returning home after having been long gone. The texture of the sound is familiar and evocative, yet, there is a distinct feeling of separateness.
It has been four years since I’ve left home. It is just beginning to sink in that this will be my home, again, from now on. Not to mention that this is coupled by the overwhelming realization of how I’ve endeavored, in the last four years, to stay as far away from here as possible.
Then I ask: where have I been all this time? And where had I been planning to go? Granting that I did get there, I never knew. All I know is that I am back home. There is an irony to what little I knew of my destination.
It is like I have lost track of how my story used to be written. So angry and resentful was I of how life was, I ripped off the pages of my diary from that period of great confusion.
And now, the pages that I had once ripped so violently, turned up on my lap like they have never been severed from the bind. It was all an illusion that I have conjured to fool no other than I. The past is reality.
So, I am the same person and the same story to this day. When nostalgia hits, it is a confrontation of this inevitable fact.
My heart is empty.
I have emptied my heart and have placed it in bags – too hastily, I must say. In its entirety, the mélange of things I have accumulated for more than a year has suddenly become difficult to locate. A stark contrast from knowing that there is a place to put each thing which I hold dear. And by knowing, I was found.
In its emptiness it has become unrecognizable.
The warmth and memory I have devoted in every corner of this place was funneled into a metaphysical jar. It is a souvenir that compacts its very essence; that which reminds me that I am no longer there.
As I linger, now I see that so much of what I have been is now stored away. And that the space that has been there all along has just been uncovered. In a way, I am reacquainted to the space. I remember the time that it was quite empty here, how light it was and how excited I used to be to fill it up and breathe life in to it.
There was a time my heart was full. It was a labyrinth of stuff. But it got to a point that I was choked with fullness. It had overcome me. I was crushed by the very weight which I have allowed. And so I had to put things in order, so that I would know where things were. And by knowing, I was found.
And just when I have touched the surface of my being, knowing where things were and finding myself in where I have put my things – I was told that I could no longer stay.
My heart is empty. I do not live there anymore. What are we then other than mere vessels? Carriers of various ways of living.
And as they say, your home is where your heart is. I understand fully why there is an insatiable thirst for a home for many of us. It is after all, a place to live. What a beautiful thing! – To know that you may live somewhere of your choosing and of your liking.
At least I can say that I once lived. There. Where I know I once was found.
These days I wake like a bird. In the morning there is much to do. But I am the kind of bird that greets the sun pensively, careful not to rush, and at times too settled to fly.
These days I long for a companion. Someone to eat with, someone to walk with, someone to sleep with, someone to whom I can share the banal things. And yet I will recoil at the thought of being known. For when they know you, they can hurt you.
I am afraid. I will meet you outside with all my warmth and sincerity. But I have kept my door closed and locked away, for now.
The walls of my room know me well, it goes without saying. I write my life history that way. And yet I must leave this room behind one day. Not a word shall be said of what happened here.
These days I manufacture thoughts to put me to sleep. I think of a touch or a smell or a voice. I let it linger in the ceilings of my mind, before it drifts away like the darkness creeping in to the morning. The transition is as seamless as the past, present and future.
In these days, we muster all the strength we have left to survive. There is barely any left to lend away. Now, I understand.
These days, I think that there are more days. Time seem as endless and as seamless as time.
Sexy Coltrane in the morning
before he turned free
My heart unwinds
Every layer
Removed
With a blow
on the woodwind
Cool Chet in the evening
before the dentures
Music undresses
leads me to
bed
shuddering in
sensual reminisce
For a moment
I remember why I loved
for “M”
I.
We are
Divergent tides
who met at the delta
coalesced in a delirious dervish dance
uncertain where to go but
round and round
until a break inspires
its eventual journey
onto the endless sea
II.
There is time
- years it take for
the rapids to
smoothen the rocks
that bravely greet it
‘Tis god’s way of
letting nature
sculpt the bones
of the earth
refining its shape
perfecting its form
III.
With some luck
secrets will hold out
with the ease and panache
of a crustacean expertly teetering
along mangrove roots
one deadly habitat, they say
But No, says this shrewd side-winding creature
there is no feat too bold
no crevice too threatening
so long as you
mind your own walk
albeit
sideways or straight
I don’t like to write when I’m sad. I end up writing very little. I end up being secretive. There is a part of me, after all, that I’d like to leave unread.
I do however listen to music in these times of little or no consolation. That is why I sometimes miss the loneliness of the booth, in the dead of night. Putting listeners to sleep, the radio blaring next to their bed. Music comforts me and I know that it can have the same effect on others.
On nights like these, I like to listen to Karen Carpenter or Chet Baker. Voices of melancholy. I think I am an old soul that way. If I had wine right now, I would be sipping glass after glass throughout the night. Sitting and thinking. After all, passive leisure is a legitimate style of life.
Sometimes though, I feel that there is so much to do but I fail to do what my mind can conceive. That is when sadness strikes, disarming me. I become unproductive; which is actually a conscious refusal to be productive. Emotions can be addictive and I linger on sadness if only to keep memories alive and feel that I had once lived in interesting times, in the company of even more interesting people.
What is strange is how one can smile at the thought of sad memories. Sad because they seem to be slipping from the possibility of ever happening again. If life was only happiness, then we live in these fleeting moments one after another. That of course is impossible. Happiness is intermitent and temporary. Most days and in moments within a day, we don’t realize what we are feeling. When we become aware, life seems to stop and time passes without us noticing.
Nights like this I stay a little longer with you, in my mind. You are hardly there anymore but at least I know where I can find you.
These closed eyes will lock the pain in, shove it back. Clench these porous hands that had once waved at the air for a touch of a ghost. Arms around the knees, concealing breasts and face. I compact myself. A return to the security of the womb. A love and life asleep. Pulsating, yet not quite alive.
***
I give you this apple, will you refuse it? I have taken it from the forbidden tree, defying the gods. It is a sweet fruit, indeed. Yet every sweet fruit has a bitter price. Will it dismay you to have tasted it at all?
It is written that we are only forbidden to take from the tree of knowledge. I have taken this apple from that tree. As a consequence of our partaking on this fruit, god had banished us from the garden and have hidden from our view the tree of life. What treasure the other tree holds we cannot know. Unless gods are defied and the garden shall be found again. What is the tree of life holding out from us? That remains a mystery.
It’s yours.
