Light and Dark

I used to scan through your hints like one scans through a book with pretty pictures, without diving in first ... I did not understand. It sank in all of a sudden as I was staring blankly at the clouds beneath, flying back from the place in between the mountains where you were born and lived for one day. I had just closed the last page of Mandela’s biography, which took boredom out of the forever I spent in the airports. I was done hiding my tears from strangers, wiping them off the pages that struck me so deep. I looked into the thin stripe of blue light, the place of safety above the storm. My mind was wondering. I haven’t been thinking of you for weeks now, but somehow you have ways of intruding my head when I least expect it. "I am crazy," you whispered once, and "I am light and dark," you wrote another time using those little magnets on my fridge. Of course you didn’t mean the surface, the mere pictures in your book, the outside that sometimes fools us into walking in circles around the meaning that is so obvious. How blind was I to never dig deeper?

I dropped my bags in the doorway and rushed to my desk, frantically reading words and faces you put on the screen. There it was, sitting in the open, yelling at me for taking so long to hear. Forgive me my blindness. I would have strangled my pride in its cradle if I only knew how much of you I misunderstood.

One half.

I wish I could go back and touch your life, my dear friend, the way you touched mine. You woke me up like the rain wakes a leaf in a desert, helping it fight the draught for the right to grow again, washing its memory clean of the dry comfort of the sun, bringing back the time long forgotten, when it first tasted the storm and danced with the wind and bloomed so carelessly, when it wanted to live for the sake of the landscape around it, not the survival itself.

So does my mind.

Currently listening: Vuli Ndlela (Accept the Situation) by Brenda Fassie

The book mentioned in the post: Nelson Mandela: No Easy Walk to Freedom by Barry Denenberg

You look, I die

I can write a pile of sentences, reread them and don’t find myself. They are often not good enough. They lack the strength to dig deep, take it out and spill it on paper. Bleeding heart calls for writing in blood and all I see is black ink on a dull white paper. Nonsense. Friday was good and I even believed I was getting better. And then came Saturday. You looked. I died. Again.

I want to take you off
Like summer hat in fall
Throw off your arms like gloves
That wouldn’t keep me warm
No more
Shake drops of voice
Out of my ears
Soaked in the cold
Of ruthless storms
Your words
Wipe off that touch
Out of the creases
Of my palm
You stick to me
Cling to my thinking
Roll down the spine
With drops of sweat
Making me shiver
In aching dreams
Can’t loving die
So I can live
Instead
Wait not just yet
Resists the heart
In which small room
Is filled with charcoals
Blue and orange
And amber
Like your world
I throw them in the fire
Where your ice
Is melted
Your picture out of the corner
Looks into me
I read a smile
In picture’s eyes
Half-closed
Half-opened
Hate never came
Into this room
It never will
My eyes meet yours
Half-closed
Half-opened
Was ever love
Inside your look
Did I misread it
Did I
Just throw your picture in the fire
My shaking hands
Are burnt
But it won’t burn
I cover it with charcoals
They turn to flowers
You still look
Right back into me
Your eyes
Half-closed
Half-opened
Your soul
Half-naked
Half... I’ll never know
And of that look
I die.

The God of Loss

“He tried to hate her.
She’s one of them, he told himself. Just another one of them.
He couldn’t.
She had deep dimples when she smiled. Her eyes were always somewhere else.

“That afternoon, Ammu traveled upwards through a dream in which a cheerful man with one arm held her close by the light of an oil lamp. He had no other arm with which to fight the shadows that flickered around him on the floor.
Shadows that only he could see.
Ridges of muscle on his stomach rose under his skin like divisions on a slab of chocolate.
He held her close, by the light of an oil lamp, and he shone as if he had been polished with a high-wax body polish.
He could do only one thing at a time.
If he held her, he couldn’t kiss her. If he kissed her, he couldn’t see her. If he saw her, he couldn’t feel her.
She could have touched his body lightly with her fingers, and felt his smooth skin turn to gooseflesh. She could have let her fingers stray to the base of his flat stomach. Carelessly, over those burnished chocolate ridges. And left patterned trails of bumpy gooseflesh on his body, like flat chalk on a blackboard, like a swathe of breeze in a paddyfield, like jet streaks in a blue church-sky. She could have so easily done that, but she didn’t. He could have touched her too. But he didn’t, because in the gloom beyond the oil lamp, in the shadows, there were metal folding chairs arranged in a ring and on the chairs there were people, with slanting rhinestone sunglasses, watching. They all held polished violins under their chins, the bows poised at identical angles. They all had their legs crossed, left over right, and all their left legs were shivering.

“If he touched her he couldn’t talk to her, if he loved her he couldn’t leave, if he spoke he couldn’t listen, if he fought he couldn’t win.

“The God of Loss.
The God of Small Things.
He left no footprints in sand, no ripples in water, no image in mirrors.”

- from The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

It’s ironic that you lent THIS book to me. It’s ironic that YOU lent this book to me.

It’s a great book. Life is ironic.

Not only good dreams come true, you know. I had so many nightmares about you and they all became a reality. This book of yours brought out a feeling of sad satisfaction in me. Sad, but satisfying.

The part above is so deep in its tragedy yet so beautiful. I reread it many times, receiving a bit of a gentle relief each time. It reminds me of one of those soothing melodies I listen to when riding my bike late in the evening. They blend with the freshness of wind pushing against my face and give me that tickling sensation of a flight above all the insignificant things in the world. They only matter if we choose for them to matter.

The part below is more earthly, but still captivating. It made me think a lot, but not about you any more. It made me look into me. I think it’s better this way, to finally think about me for once.

“In the year she knew him, before they were married, she discovered a little magic in herself, and for a while felt like a blithe genie released from her lamp. She was perhaps too young to realize that what she assumed was her love for Chacko was actually a tentative, timorous acceptance of herself.”

Despite all the pain I felt, I won’t deny that you played a significant part in my life, a role in my world that made me stop abruptly. To think. Although you’ll never know it, you helped me find the sides of me that I haven’t yet discovered. You helped me realized new truths and dig out the truths long forgotten, the ones that were covered with dust somewhere in the deep corner of my conscience, behind the shelves of doubts and stacks of fears. That corner was so dark it took the light out of my dreams. It made me want to postpone them until better times. Until when I’m strong enough. Until later. Lay Ter. But there is now, there’s today and I want to live it to the fullest.

You didn’t politely pat me on the shoulder, asking me whether by any chance I took a wrong route. This isn’t your way. You kicked me hard, pushed me against the wall and slapped me in the face, calling me a fool for not noticing a one-way sign for so long, jumping out of our time, onto your street, slamming my door, never to travel with me again.

I cried as you left, but then I smiled. I started accepting myself more and more each day and I liked it.

You reminded me who I really am and then you set me free. Always look for the positive side of things. They will only matter if we choose for them to matter.

I matter now.

Don't look back

I slowly peel the label off a beer bottle. Alone in the dark, my beer bottle and I, and added to our company are now the hair-thin pieces of paper. I asked you that last night, when you were still around, not to do so. Why did it matter? I don’t know why.

I walk around the patio philosophically holding my cigarette, just like you did, pretending to be a smoker. I take off my shoes and walk across the lawn barefoot. I taught you that one and you liked it. We both leaned to the ground and I told you the grass on that lawn was fake. You agreed. Did we really have so little in common? I made mistakes and you might not ever give me a chance to correct them. I was tired and unsure, but did I really take so many wrong steps as to deserve the ice-cold bucket of harsh words you poured on me that Sunday morning? The world gets wet and salty every time I think that you might have gone from loving to hating. I am so angry I’d jump at you and beat you up the moment I saw you for what you did to my heart, and I’d beat you even more for doing it intentionally. I’d beat you till you bleed just as I have been all these days. Yet I am so scared to even think I might never see you again.

As I send a little smoke puff up into the sky, I notice a trillion stars up there. I find the brightest one and wish, almost beg the fate, the sky, the summer wind and anyone or anything in this world that might listen, I beg them all to make you look at it too. I don’t know why.

I walk back into the room and leave the patio door open. My heart falls down each time the wind touches the blinds, sounding just like you coming back from one of your short smoke breaks… The loud music wakes me up from this conscious dream and sadly, it’s your music. My eyes make a frantic attempt to run away from your shoes in the corner, but like a helpless child in the dark they stumble upon your book on the coffee table instead. There's too much of you in this place, reminding me constantly of the friendship we didn't treasure... the love that wasn't ours to keep.

Unable to tolerate the loneliness of the room and the wind’s foul play with my senses, I take off into the night. I don’t put the seatbelt on. I used to get angry at you for not doing so. Why did it matter? Wait, I know the answer to this one. Because I didn’t want you to leave any time soon.

Here’s what I want to say…

Why would I wanna see you now?
To fix it up, make it up somehow.
Baby I'll try again, try again,
Baby I die every night, every time.

But what comes out instead is…

You're leaving so soon,
Never had a chance to bloom,
But you were so quick
To change your tune.
Don't look back
If I'm a weight around your neck,
Cause if you don't need me
I don't need you.

Thanks, Keane, for the words that give meaning to my pain.

Broken

Sometimes words hide from me when I need them the most. Sometimes I wish I could speak in tears, in looks, in songs… in silence. If you ever listened to my silence, I mean really listened, you’d hear the beat of the loneliest heart in the world. You knew I was vulnerable but you chose to hurt me nevertheless. I get up and I fall again. I lean on walls. The world is spinning. I hear your voice, again and again. In songs...

I wake up, it’s a bad dream,
No one on my side,
I was fighting
But I just feel too tired
to be fighting,
guess I’m not the fighting kind.
Wouldn’t mind it
if you were by my side
But you’re long gone,
yeah you’re long gone now.

It’s Your world, isn’t it. It’s Your freedom, Your fight, Your thirst for Your life. What about My pain? "You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed," said Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's fox in the Little Prince. You ran thousands of miles away from responsibility, you ran toward your freedom. I only wish my heart, too, could be free again. I wish it could be untamed.

I need a place
That’s hidden in the deep,
Where lonely angels sing you to your sleep.
The modern world is broken.
I need a place
Where I can make my bed,
A lover’s lap where I can lay my head,
Cos’ now the room is spinning,
The day’s beginning.

I don’t want to live, I don’t want to wake up into this new day. I don’t want to die either, I just want to slowly cease to exist, fade away like your feeling to me, turn into a fox and run. I think you might respect me more as a fox. I won’t have to worry about money as a fox, because that’s what I worry about, right? I probably won’t feel love, because that’s what I’m pushing away, right? In a simple world of foxes I won’t feel lonely any more. I will feel at ease, because I’m sure foxes are so much more human than many-many humans in this world.

I hope you fly free, if that’s what your freedom is all about. I hope you win your other battles, those you actually believe are worth fighting.

Why do I have to fly
over every town up and down the line?
I'll die in the clouds above
and you that I defend, I do not love.

Friends who were

I think sometimes we are too scared to renew old bonds. For one reason or another we lose connection with people whose company we actually used to enjoy some time back then. We lose a common place or institution — a school, a job, a neighborhood or a city… We lose common friends or a hobby. Sometimes we lose people without even getting a chance to know them better, thinking regretfully that we might have actually become friends, if we had just taken a little more time to find a common thread… before we lost each other.

We are so used to losing we don’t give much meaning to it anymore. There is no time in our lives for writing letters or attending reunions. We are too busy seeking for the new in this world to remember and appreciate the old.

The soccer game this weekend is my major attempt to reconnect with those old friends whose company I used to enjoy, but whom I lost to moving, time, work and other excuses — just go through the list of what you say when you don’t keep in touch for too long and you will know exactly what I am talking about.

It wasn’t easy to invite them, it’s never easy to make that first step to reconnect, but now that I did, I am eager to see what comes out of this.

One art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

— Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

~ Elizabeth Bishop

Our ways part here

There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another. This should be made clear to all who contemplate such a union. The avoidance of this pain is the beginning of wisdom, for it is strong enough to contaminate the rest of our lives. - Cyril Connolly

I wish I could take a permanent marker and cross the last couple of days out of my life, leaving only the good memories of us. I wish I could take a highlighter and make the two weeks before that stand out, overshadowing the mistakes you made in the end.

You left for good this morning and I think it’s for better, too. My heart is screaming right now, begging for my absolute attention. It tells me that now is the time to be hurting and feeling sorry for myself. I would much rather listen to my mind though, which tells me it is time to grow stronger. I bury myself in work and I put my heart to sleep.

I won’t be mad at you or judge you in any way, although you did cause me a lot of pain the last two nights. I think you have a potential of becoming a good man, but for now your actions still reveal your youth too much. Don’t apologize to me, I knew what I was signing up for from the very beginning and I saw all your little irresponsible and immature moments along the way but I would let them slide. I did not want to concentrate on anything negative because there were many good things about you to counteract that, and I had my mind set on having two wonderful carefree weeks together.

You have been kind, open-minded and adventurous. You never hid your emotions and you made me feel special in many ways. I wish you organized your life however, and set your priorities straight. I wish you stopped trying to be a crowd-pleaser and thought about what truly makes you happy, acting upon things which you wouldn’t regret an hour later. Maybe then you’d start making the right decisions the first time around.

I had a great time with you, my sweet California boy.
Stop saying sorry and simply remember me instead.