Invidia

Through your soul it shall burn,
In a sunny day, like a placid nocturne.
From the ashes the dearest shall rise,
A sweet melancholy you cannot despise.

Should it then crush, should you refrain
Should you not let the tyrant be slain,
And burn out your last lucky star
To realize, that wishes only go so far.

A brighter light shall darken the rebel,
Like the shadow of something invisible.
You shall fall with its rise.
Then, my dear, who will call you wise?

But, should the cynic ever sing along
This sine qua non, this dark song,
And wear this armor, thick, of stones,
A skull for a face; for arms, crossbones.

Upon the world shall the mayhem turn.
And when nothing’s left to yearn,
To only fall again, you shall rise.
Even then, my love, none will call you wise.

(I wanted to try something darker this time and so picked this.
'Invidia' is latin for envy, described as one of the seven deadly sins. And the above is about the two ways out of the basic state - to surrender and to fight it. And about how none in fact gets one out.)

The Story

Have we not all,
A story to tell?
Be it of angel’s ball,
Or of demons and hell.

Quite different this one is
With characters who lack verbs.
Of her and a few of his
Feelings short of words.

Of too many chances
And a few surprises.
Some unrealized fancies.
Some unclaimed prizes.

A few miracles and magic
And of just those few.
Of jokers so tragic,
The end, they already knew.

Of hopes too high,
And of fears higher.
Of burning ice in one eye,
Another with frozen fire.

Of worthless secrets,
Safe down the river bed,
Painted memories, regrets
In the colors they shed.

Of faces, so expressionless,
Could only look numb.
Of steps, so effortless,
Sounded dumb, dumb!

Of an empty space in between.
Of the pitter and the patter.
Everything that emerged within,
Of best things, just not better.

Of a few frenzied curses
Disappeared, as they fell
In a song of silent verses,
Unsung, for an undone spell.

Of fists opening limply,
Of fingers letting go
A story that lately
Its characters only know.

The cycles and circles, in spheres of chaos.

…Given a choice, every time, he would choose to choose, but would never make the final choice. This, you see, was inevitable. One of the million times he had to find out. The longer he paused, the heavier they got and eventually sunk in. What happens to the sunken choices! Well, they wait, and pop up again at the worst possible hour, when you’re in no state to decide the color of your hat (like you wear one!).

So, anyway! Now that all the cycles and circles, trapped in these spheres of chaos, are for once back at where they started, which as I said was inevitable, what does he do? Choose to choose again? Or just sit back this time? Wait… wait for the wind to change direction?

What would you do if you had this choice? What if every last piece of your experience and every last fraction of your conscience narrated the same story? What if every new beginning had taken you to one, same ending? And what if, today, on this particular day, you just stumbled on all of it altogether. Would it in anyway change your waking thoughts tomorrow? And what about those stifled whispers before you go to sleep, would they be any different tonight? Or would you be willing to choose, to try to break free, to try to find a corner in a circle?

Imagine this. You enter a diner every day. The owner gives a free fruit pie only if you pick the flavor one still left in bulk. But he gives you only one choice and you blow it every time. Or, he says, you can wait and have the piece that is still left over at the end of the day, which by the way will still be damn good! But you just can’t wait. Well, that’s just a billionth of the problems you actually face, right? How about an actual situation? Can you relate to one? I’m sure you can. Would you even consider the “offer” of starting again, when the highest odds are that you’ll be back… back here?

‘Coz in the end, it’s like this… what if all over that I burden you with a load of misguided conscience, with a firm but narrow sense of self-righteousness, with a deep but faint expression of emotional intellect? What if I make you the master of all trades and a jack of none? What if I tell you everything, and do not teach you to speak? What if I make you think that you think, but in fact never let you think?

Would you still make the apparently stupid choice of choosing? The answer supposedly is different for everyone, dependent on whether you derive your power from acceptance or from denial.

The Violet Snowflake - An Untouched Memory

…That is how it looks on the inside, a partially frozen river that flows through this heart with snowflakes, hovering, floating, and a few drenched. These are memories that chime between the rocks. Some are carried forward; some are held back for a while and then eventually carried forward. But none of them has been quite like me, not yet. I may be just another snowflake in this crazy blizzard, but I’m different, painted in a unique color, violet. I’m silent. The temperature of my skin is lower than any of my white friends. And to this heart, as I dive in, I’ll be a memory, colder, sharper and longer.

Me and water, we’re gonna have a fight. No matter who takes the last stand, the heart where this river flows will be the one to suffer. No matter if this river carries me forward, or if I hold it back, it won’t be transparent anymore, nor will I hold my color. No one will ever be able to see through it anymore. And I’m about to leave my mark, about to haunt this heart forever, no matter how far it flows.

But right now, I’m descending deep, barreling through this thunderous sky. With absolutely no trace of the beginning, I’ve been propelled up to this point. It’s not the rattle on the outside, but the silence inside that empowers me. Those around me are staring, frowning, and a few ranting. I’m indeed the strongest of them all. I didn’t choose to be. I’m, no doubt, different than them all, even different than what I could have been. I didn’t wanna be.

I’ll be the one to make a difference, the only memory to cause this heart to feel surprised, obviously in a wicked way. I can’t help it, THAT is what I’m to do. I wonder if I will be strong enough to freeze my dominion, just the way it is for eternity. Though I can see it beginning to grow aware of my arrival, the currents are sharper, the river, agitated. Honestly, I don’t wish to hold a higher ground. Even I want to fade away, dissolving, melting slowly, and leaving behind a trail, a memory of a memory. But that is not the way, it’s going to be. I can see now, I’m stronger than this panicked, frantic and… well, transparent river.

Right before the touchdown, I realize it’s not just me. The river, it’s different, changed not like ever before. I begin to think I caused it to change, even before touching it. It’s pride of victory, and a fear of the final war. But it’s not fighting. The river, engulfed in denial, has refused to even touch any of us. A warrior afraid of defeat and still more afraid of victory has fallen on his own sword. It can’t have me hold it back, nor can it afford to carry me. It’s too scared, too scared of the unfamiliar color.

As I’m about to touch the surface, it retreats, further and further more. The deeper I go, the deeper it gets, the higher the walls become. And after a while they close in, from the top. I didn’t know it could do that. I’m trapped in a bubble with transparent walls. With my strength, sealed in with me, I’m a memory that this heart will touch no time soon. I’m gonna have to wait, wait for this heart weaken, wait for the current to slow down, wait for the walls of this bubble of denial to fall. And I’ll strike again with all my strength. I’ll freeze this river, seal it with its own sorrow. And even if I melt away and dwell in, I’ll change it forever. I’ll drive every last perfectly transparent drop into imperfection, into translucency, into violet.

The Loudest Whisper

This year was pretty damn crazy, and probably, by far the best in my life. Now that said, it’s not because I got everything I wanted, ‘coz first thing, trust me I didn’t and second, it really doesn’t matter now, does it? It’s more about what changed, and still more about why it changed. 


…Too much has changed. Too many minutes have run anticlockwise, skipped seconds, and awaited hours on an incomprehensible clock. Too many things labeled ‘new’, which I would have swore never to crave or cling to, lie untainted in my secret closet. Too many places from “where I’ve been” were unknown, and are unfamiliar. Too many of verbs built up and broken, too many words fluttered half-spoken. Too many seasons shuffled themselves in a day; too many days splashed themselves in a single rain.

I defined, redefined, and re-redefined myself, and am still nowhere to be found in the dictionary. There were times when I made a conscious effort to get distracted from the empty depths of melancholy, and then beat myself up for an inadvertent arrival of an overfed shallow wave of sanguinity. I night-walked the same roads over and over again with friends, with acquaintances, and sometimes, alone. I still am uncertain of the reality behind images that I hold in my head. Do I remember them for what they were? Did I imagine them for what they were going to be? Were they in fact what they were?

There were times when I couldn’t wait to see the end, and then were those when I could have given anything to go back to the start. I made choices that I couldn’t live with, and I lived through choices that I thought I could never make. Well, I guess, that’s how it works, that’s what time does right? When you make a choice, it just inevitably makes another choice for you, the choice for you to live with your choice.

I was flying, and sometimes drowning. If you’d ask me, I’d swear to have never touched the ground until now. Shadow boxing with the curiosity of fate, I made discoveries. With long talks, in monologues, I stumbled upon creations. I probably answered the few imperative, the “may sound stupid” questions.

As I sashayed through, I read too much into some stuff, and the rest, apparently I didn’t glance at. I was, at times persuaded of being precisely where I should have been, and moments later, convinced of being lost. And the best thing, no one else knew about it. I was nowhere to be found.

The things that I missed, I found in the partial reflections on the other side of the mirrors. Only when they held something in the top left corner, something that I didn’t have in my top left corner, I was scared to look to the right. What if something was missing there too? What if everything I wanted was a mirage, a nuance of an unattainable desire, something that the person behind the mirror already possessed.

‘Coz in the end it’s like this, if you call darkness as the absence of light, it’s fair enough to define brightness as the absence of darkness. And THAT is indeed as it should be defined, ‘coz at last THAT is what we remember, the opposites of what things are, and rather what they could have been. And someday everything will be different, everything will then be remembered for what it is right now, not for what it’s going to be.

…Anything, anymore…

…And as I land my first step, as my left foot touches the very first grain of this red sand on this very ground, my mind is flooded with innumerous believable names for this place. But of course none of them stays too long. Each one fades into a more complex, and grows into a more erudite one.

There’s snow on the leafless trees, trapped within crystals of ice, but none on the ground. The sun is just over the horizon shimmering like a fireball, refusing to go down. Something real paranormal seems to be holding them off the ground; something or someone, probably that silhouette that I’ve been pretending not to have seen, since I got here. What else would explain its motion precisely symmetric and conflicting to mine, fastened hard to the sun, which sure does look like a halo behind it?

I remember being told that whoever steps in here, steps in a world of his own, invulnerable and impenetrable to anyone else from the outside. So I continue to ignore that figure, I walk on in search of what I came for. But how long did you think I could go on? It’s a glass wall, a freakishly tall glass wall, extending endlessly. As I touch it, I realize that its ice, weirdly dry and transparent leaf of ice. And after all this, the figure, the silhouette didn’t stop this time, it continued to walk on with me stuck behind the wall.

Well, what else was I to do; I locate something bulky and strong enough to consume the wall. I bolt it up against the wall, and no different than my expectation, it fractures, but holds up straight. Everything on the far side appears to be broken; it’s like looking out to the world through a shattered windscreen. But the figure holds on, and walks back to where it should have been, had it not kept moving forward. Well, the wall, it crumbles into splinters of ice, which once again do not touch the ground are blown away indefinitely by the wind. I stop to wonder if I could call it snow, but no longer could the thought keep me from noticing that everything on the far side still holds its cracks embedded. Everything, including the figure is still fractured.

The figure leans back against a grey brick wall. Does it expect me to follow? Yes, I do hesitate, I do try to betray my own instinct, seems easy for a while. There’s a war raging within me, a battle between the two longstanding rivals for prudence, my instinctive nudge and my experienced, incorrigible self. Another time, another overflow of thoughts, another overspill of feelings; does the figure see my world as fractured too? Why is it still waiting? What is it waiting for? Does it want to fix it? Do I appear broken too? Is it just me or someone else really there? And a few million more like those… I stay, I wait to wonder, and then contemplate the irony of the wonderment. Is it too late now, too late to walk, too late to talk? I feel jammed for some reason, unable to think clearly and with no desire to let go, unable to leave, and not wanting to stay.

The figure starts there, and I take my first step for the second time. I start to feel cold for the first time, but somehow manage not to care, not now! It has started to snow again. The pure white flakes touch the ground to turn red, and then melt away. This place confides in me for the first time, it beheld white sand all along, tainted by the blood of everyone who had ever been here. But I ain’t gonna bleed, not now! I brush against one of the trees in rush and find it not cracked anymore. Everyplace I go, everything I touch is not just unbroken but also tells me that even if, on any level, it’s a dream, I am not to wake up yet.

The dissonance, with a flicker, with a touch dies away to dwell into a deep silence instead. I remember having heard that inspiration always comes cloaked, and tantalizing like this, but I don’t remember being here before. This is different. I’m not looking for anything anymore, but something, I hope, is looking for me.

The Masquerade - A scene from 'Miracles'

[Don't wanna reveal names yet. Bear with me please.]

She was cold, choked in the pungent air that filled the miasma. A feeling that had silently perpetuated over the past year deep inside her subconscious was all geared up to surface any moment. She was trying too hard, too hard to shove back the mere thought of losing control. If only she could figure out the precise moment that led her there. Though she had walked down her blurred memory lane, driven through M’s glib and vivid dreams and glided up the myriad of possible futures, the present or anything tangible for that matter seemed to have left her with nothing but uncertainty.

J had caught a glimpse of this saturnine look on E’s face, the last time, right before she vanished into thin air, leaving behind a musty bubble of air.

“Don’t you think this party is a little too low profile to admire your paranormal performance of disappearing? Or going invisible… what was that again?” He said, as he sashayed up to her.

She was always annoyed by these subtle sarcastic comments that J instinctively made. But right then she could use some reconciliation. Her demeanor, by then, had grown too mercurial to pull off a consummate pretence.

“That certainly is disappearing, going invisible would cause people bump and crash into me. It’s a party, your party, remember? And anyway, nothing is further from mind as of now.” She grew defensive and stood on her toes as she spoke.

“Wearing masks as a theme doesn’t seem such a bad idea now. Does it?”

“Not bad, just stupid enough. I don’t understand why you would want to wear masks in a party. Isn’t the entire concept about celebrating, and getting to know people?”

“It indeed is. And I’ve given my guests just that, an opportunity to be themselves and get to know people as they are, not as they would have been. By making them secure of their identities, I’ve given them a chance to leave behind their mundane expectations and apprehensions.”

“That’s not true….”

“…Not everyone can read minds, remember?” J interrupted.

“I wonder if a mask would have taken my mind off M’s untimed visits.”

“I’m sure, you’ll grow habitual. After all, it’s a perpetual masquerade, you see, the kind where everyone is the architect of his own disguise and even the genius of his own malaise. It’s Life.”

[I'm gonna leave you at that.]