Sunday, September 13, 2009

An Idle Mind...

Often the mind is simply – well , Bored - and it finds the need to do something, lest it be overrun by ungainly thoughts and the sharp methodical slicing of fear, concerning events that, in most probability, may never occur.

Such is the case now, and here I sit, trying almost whole heartedly, to make some meaningful use of this blessed time of peace.

Surrounded by a chattering set of non-gifted people, who raise voices in a crass mockery of power, one often wonders why, just why?

Why do people tend to have an over-glorified sense of their selves?

Why do people take what doesn’t belong to them?

And why are they inclined to appear stupid, with each passing attempt to assuage others of their own intelligence?

I can produce no answers to such questions, and I vaguely hear my own mind mocking me in the Voice of God.

“Do not ask such questions of me, for even Miracles cannot bring you what you seek here.”

I can do little more than sigh and grace myself with a sardonic smile.

Truer words have never been spoken.

It is in such an environment, I suddenly find that for a very brief moment, my mind is thinking of nothing. Absolutely nothing; not even deigning to decipher the cacophony outside the window.

Simply hearing, not processing. Seeing and not looking.

And it is peace, and chaos in one.

Peace because for that moment, I am one with the immobile furniture, the walls, and the very ground; of course making the arrogant assumption that they process nothing more than nothing.

Chaos because it is a state that the mind, neither the body is accustomed to being, and panic briefly ensues once the moment has passed.

I believe the panic another brief moment when the mind asks itself first, “Am I still alive?”

Pointless as this essay seems, I have to agree that something born of pointlessness is probably, just that.

Albeit, it has given good exercise in rehashing vocabulary and the opportunity to sound even vaguely philosophical; not entirely pointless, in essence.

Perhaps it is time to close this digression and attempt finding more interesting things to do, but sadly, I find that in my eyes, writing this is rather more interesting than most other things expected of me.

It often feels like employment is but a way to smother unrequited desires in choice of the same, as long as possible, to avoid the torturous resurfacing of all that “could have been.”

Indeed, it feels that way.

A storm brewing within, that can be suppressed in as much as the daytime. Nothing is guaranteed to remain repressed while the mind is otherwise unoccupied, leading to such dreams as to leave the soul thirsting, or nightmares that leave the mind unwilling to let itself drift.

In our dreams, we are never free, and I once again arrogantly assume that in that brief moment, we are as close to death as the alive can hope, without truly getting there. In our death, I think we will be free; if not of anything, of our mortal obligations, insufficiencies and things equally vile.

Therefore, in that brief moment, before the mind has to ascertain that it is still alive, we are free. It is that taste of freedom, barely at the tip of our tongues, so to speak, that leave us longing for the day we die, consciously, or unconsciously, repeatedly or sparsely, longingly or reluctantly.

We all long for death. It is only a matter of time that it will be handed to us. But in the meanwhile, we can hope to attain such peace, in elongated moments till the occasion, where can join the gratefully, living dead.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Red Wine Heart : The Fate of the Romantic




It does a romantic no good to read a wonderfully written French romance in the company of Italian Opera.

What does it take, to feel that spark to write a true romance? Of the many things, love is the one topic that no author can ever produce with merely ink and no experience.

It does a romantic no good to read a wonderfully written French romance that she has never felt, in the company of Italian Opera that she doesn’t quite understand.

For it is in the nature of Romance to cause yearning, and Opera to cause anguish, especially when one doesn’t understand either.

A longing for something unfamiliar has a strange form, a hazy shape, one that dances only inches from your fingers, so close and yet too far. It makes your chest constrict, and a burn rise in your eyes that you do not want to acknowledge.

It does a romantic no good to read a wonderfully written French Romance that she has found but lost too early, in the company of Italian opera she doesn’t understand the words as much as she does the depth of feeling accompanying the mellifluous lyric.

It makes the air colder, and the room too small and the world outside too large, with something within her that wants to perish; if only it didn’t cause her to perish with it.

It is in the nature of those who have loved and lost, to hate with a passion the age old saying, and any person who dares say it to them.

No, it is not better to have loved and lost.

Because when it is gone, you realise that it has left you incomplete, and no other piece in the world fits in just as perfectly.

It is better to have not loved at all.

It does the romantic no good to hope that they may never love; it is folly, and the knowledge of the inevitable it is far worse a torture than a broken heart itself.

With the hopelessness than drifts through the misshapen pieces than make the romantic, like sunlight through the dormers of abandoned churches, comes the unfailing need to forever wander in search of completeness; made worse by the unflinching truth that it can never be.

The strands of heart warming and cruelly beautiful music will drive one to sin while the passionate and timelessly engraved words may drive one to desperation before.

No, it does no good for a romantic to watch a freshly patched heart be torn apart by memories or longing or loss; and it causes more pain to wrap them up in the gossamer layers of fantastical and yet wanton thoughts.

For it is a role of the romantic to be lost in an eternal loop of destruction and reconstruction, till perhaps there is nothing left to destroy, and lesser still to rebuild.

Till death do us part.