A Quietus

“Man’s redemption lies through & in love” - Victor Frankl.

It is not only that the absence of a prospective listener dampens the voice of a thinker. Something a lot sinister can be underway beneath the superficial act of everyday human persecution. I had witnessed the death of a thought, not in an absence of empathy but in a presence of indifference.

The four walls are not enough to desecrate one’s originality, to wane one’s ambition, or to bind oneself to one’s present predicament so inescapably that the past seems impossible, and the future, at best, improbable. It is not enough! But we are capable of more. I have seen the most ruthless impulse of the human mind; I have survived it. Indifference! If struck in the right amount, at the right time, at the right victim, it can accomplish the direst of all human sins – the killing of a soul.

I have witnessed a quietus – an outrageously silent suppression of voice – outrageous in its knowledge of the suppressed & silent in its ignorance of the suppressor. The killer doesn’t know that he’s killing, & the victim doesn’t realize that he’s dying until the deed is done. The victim remains a silent spectator of his own demise, a satisfied consumer of a slow & sweet poison, stuck in a bootloop, asking the same questions over & over again, overworking & overbearing his mind, eventually wearing it out till the point it begins to give up. 

Beginning to give up is to give up beginning. And here plays a melancholy, the kind that rhymes at humanly funerals, only sadder. A soul has died. This is what death looks like in the spirit world. The body oozes out of the soul, but the weight of the soul remains unchanged. The spirit world believes that the body would travel to the indifferent world in a failed search of redemption. 

But the body is also plagued with a similar indifference now, only graver. It’s doesn’t know that it had a soul once, it doesn’t care that the priced possession is now lost. Nothing matters but survival – one day at a time. Stuck between this world and the next, only partially alive, the body fails to associate with its fellow beings. It pretends to have a soul. There are millions of them, but they all persist in isolation, in their own pretentious soul bubbles. They don’t matter anymore, not even to themselves.

A funeral is staged in the spirit world, where the soul lies motionless, speechless, paralysed, but not careless. It is not cremated or buried, for it is already beyond death. 

You see, dying in body is not the same as dying in soul. The spirit world denies death. Every soul has a purpose; and the body is a means to the purpose. While the human world in its indifference strives to kill this purpose, the spirit world is obsessed with infusing meaning into everything they see. This is the war we are unknowingly engaged in – a constant perpetual war of means & meaning, between indifference & obsession.

So, the dead souls are resurrected; another body is put onto them. And they’re lunged back into the same indifferent world. This is the spirit-world’s revenge on our world. Nobody prays for the departed body. And for this the body may never rest in peace. The soulless body is just collateral.

You, my friend, whose soul died, may never rest in peace. But remember that you’re not only a victim, you’re also more than a persecutor – you are a persecution on to the spirit world. You are an evidence of an experiment gone insanely successful. You are the proof that human world has got what it takes to kill a spirit, to murder a soul, and not even flinch during or blink after the act.

But lately, there has been a glitch in this arcane system. Some of old and new possessors of the same soul have met. They have discovered a way out, out of this war, out of the suffering of the indifference of humans & obsession of the spirits. 

They have fused both the world and rejected both at once. This is a devout communion of meaning & indifference - an internal meaning, an external indifference! 

They understand that the world doesn’t have to mean anything, and they don’t necessarily need to have a purpose towards it. They understand that to find meaning in the other is enough. 

They also understand the reverse – they may not mean something to the indifferent world. It is enough to mean something to the other. 

It is terribly easy to reach this sense of simultaneous indifference & purpose. You can see it as I speak of it. The real quest is to not let your soul die, and if it does, to find the person who has it.

Disoriented.

With fraudulence I had bred contempt,

And thus with the most virtuous of all vice –

With hope, a remorseful liaison, a repent,

If I may – a metaphysical demise.

I had become someone else. This person, whom I could hardly recognize let alone understand, I feared. I feared him for me, and more so for himself. 

I could see the path he was set on – it would yield nothing. Mine, at least, brought devastation. Nothing was worse than such devastation. Truly, the nothing he would become would be worse. The devil would proudly feast on me someday, and cast the angels to damnation. Even the devil shall not know to do with a soul so lost.

And although he remained convenient in his aura of nothingness, a certain hunger plagued his mind. He would seek out adventures and interactions, new and old alike. An alien impulse held him at his heart trying to purge him out of his desperation. And as often as he did expose himself to the ways and celebrations of the world, the trivialities troubled him most of all.

While others in desperation would ask ‘what did I do to deserve this’, he asked ‘what did they do to deserve this’. He chose to look for a solution, and yet the problem would persist in his face, unmoved and stubborn, convicted to trouble him just enough – just enough to stimulate his lifelessness, not enough to encourage death. Wrapped up in a surreal frenzy, he would curse his own mind, then his life, then himself and those around him, and at last me. I often asked ‘what did I do to deserve this’. He had no answer.

This path from desperation, anger, impulse, through confrontation and pain would mostly yield helplessness, and at times nothing at all. He would stare silent, not by choice but by a paralysis of thought, at the marginalities of life – marginalities not by purpose, but by reason, absolutely dumbfounded for they were no less than luxuries to him – luxuries not by grace, but by their unattainability.

Often a sudden strangeness would lure in my indulgence with these possibilities that others had. With a crushing emphasis it would bring about a confrontation with my own impossibilities. It worked like a malignant flame, a flame without light – the kind that knows only to burn but never yield any warmth.

I did not even sound like myself. My voice, I mean, appeared to originate at a distance. “Who are you?” I asked, hoping for a lost or no response at all. But I knew, he was me, and yet I wasn’t him.

Almost like a panicked firework shot into the sky, out of an old bottle, suddenly, I would become a man of the past and the future. The present disappeared. As some are only consciously in the present and sub-consciously roam in the realm of memories and dreams - in past and in the future. For me, this arrangement of mental divulsion was quite erroneous, and wicked by all means.

I would be consciously lost, and this awareness was what killed me, and made me this person, unrecognizable. This strange stranger both angry and timid, enraged and wounded, most powerful and helpless, indestructible and tired, most loved and yet alienated, condemned and redeemed too,  was everything and nothing at once. This confusion was his sole possession. Or was it? He really was confused.

I could not stand this creature, this being false by nature, and the greatest truth I had ever known – his existence. More so, I could not stand the wretchedness of the world, the decadence of people who forced him to be what he was, in essence, nothing. I also admired them, for the same mockery of world and the people in it. To be honest, I was quite amused how the process of becoming and unbecoming, of being and non-being be so sadly indistinguishable.

I could not stand, and so I ran. As I started, I knew I would run until my feet would bleed, and then run some more until the road ended, or perhaps I dissolved to become something beyond nothing. I belonged nowhere. I had never belonged anywhere. In deep introspection and in experiments with thought, came a realization that I truly was lost. Because nowhere was home, home was everywhere.

And though my will lacked tenacity, it resolved nonetheless and dissolved just the same. It the resolved again. So you know, I was not in darkness, I was the darkness. 

Then would come the occasional calm, the reassurance of a possible adaptation. For I belonged nowhere, everywhere was my home. And with all that I had left in me, I would wish that someone would touch this weary soul, like a spark that set fire to the first star, and inspire me or murder me.

But I had to be careful. I never knew what would trigger him again, and push me back into dormancy.

The Fire Within

There is no reclamation

Until all is lost,

No reincarnation

Until the end of life

To be born is to be alive

To be alive is to wait for death

To wait for death is to die

To die is to be born again

The world must see someday

Life is same as death

And must be suffered

If only it is worth the trouble

But neither is death, then

Worth a chance

If it is to be born again

To sit here and wonder

“To be, or not to be:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles”

Feed the hungry man, I say

Covered in dirt and shit

Lift his soul off its sorrow

Burn him then. Burn him tomorrow

Wish them luck, the lovers

Romanticizing their future

Wish them grandeur and might.

Burn them, then. Light up the night.

Torch the ground, I say

Flay the sky

Burn everything

Then burn the ashes.

Burn the world

Until all is smoke

You can’t burn smoke

Then burn yourself.

And be born again.

And burn again.

A biker’s week

To trace this trail as does a biker’s heart,

the end must be seen just as the start.

In some lost thought

and in a forgotten feeling ,

a few good memories,

and a faint moon

in the corner of the eye,

when the sky is painted

in blue and black.

trust that you’ll get there,

no matter what.

A reason, then

To perhaps, smile

At a passing stranger,

Share a story with another

Who listens,

A drifter, perhaps.

Then gather a few

stories of your own

divulge in the road,

in the cracks

and the street lights,

disappearing at a distance,

both of them.

And when the sun appears

After too long a night,

We shall never sleep again

The day shall be

Longer than ever.

The day that was never

Then maybe a hint of shade

When the heat

Gets too much to bear.

A place to keep,

Maybe someone

To lend your warm skin.

And when the evening falls again,

A place to rest your body,

A mate to rest your head,

And a heart to rest your soul,

And lay awake

Beneath the new born stars

Then beneath the glinting moon

Ride just the same

Let your thoughts be tidal

And rise

And fall

In someone’s gravity

In the calm, gather

Your strength and courage.

But in your heart, keep

A few good memories

The end and the start

Just the same.

And then keep

The same old belief -

That you’ll get there

No matter what

There’s nothing else you need

And no one else you desire.

Vacuum Trail – A War for Survival

A gun was fired. The shot swivelled about its axis immersed completely in the quiet surroundings. It pierced thorough the air with no one around, straight towards the target. The entry was docile, yet insidious. The exit would, however was explicitly frivolous. It left a void at the end, a profound burst – a vacuum to be filled by nothing.

I was standing here, waiting impatiently at this end, ready to embrace the inevitable – to pay my one debt to the creator – my life back to him.

But in this unreasonable moment the bullet fell to its fate. Upon the creation of this void, and the burst, it fell to the ground right in front of me. So I didn’t die. I’m very much alive. But in this vacuum, I cannot breathe, and breathless, I cannot survive. 

This is not a war for victory. This is a lost battlefield, a massacre in itself. We do not need warriors. We need survivors.

You know what happens in the final moments of a warrior’s self obligated deliverance.  The survival instinct kicks in, and distorts everything.

I understand that the vacuum, this void, this nothing – this no thing can be transformed into something.

What we need to do is pull the trigger once again – fire once again into the void – now in the opposite direction.

The turbulence shall strike again. The bullet, pulling the air behind and pushing into the void, must close it. The void may succumb and collapse on itself, or it may widen and leave still less space and air to breathe.

This is a risk you must take – the choice between an immortal life and a lifeless death. Go, fire, I say. 

All the wars that we’ve won, and all that we lost were fought for someone else, like a mercenary who knows only his fidelity to the king. But this is no ordinary war. This is a war for survival. This is war for yourself, and no one other than you can defeat you.  This does not need a warrior. This needs a survivor.

Decelerate – Prelude to War

The fluid in his ears accelerated. He stumbled and his balance shifted forward. And suddenly, he was aware that he was about to fall, and that he was standing on the edge only emphasized the sensation.

The world stood on the tip of a pin, on one decision – to step off the ledge, for which there was no reason good enough, or to let himself fall. Fate could have decided this for him, or perhaps chance would have taken play. For he had chosen not to decide, he had made a decision to leave it to a greater power than himself. 

But for some unreasonable reason, like an unforeseen and yet serendipitous shift in the stars, called out his saviour. 

This call shrivelled through the empty space faster than the speed of sound. And in this moment, that this call strikes a sharper wave in the ear fluids, the fall still remains, but the sensation in no more.

It is easier to make choices with an unafraid mind. Step back. Now!