POETIC REFLECTIONS

POETIC REFLECTIONS:

She was reflecting about her life. Her reflections started taking the shape of poetry. 

She had also developed a penchant for playing with words and letters. She thought if one rearranges the alphabets of life we get “file’’, as if life is a collection of different files representing different phases and turning points which can be grouped into different folders. Within folders she could find the word “ roles’’, leaving out FD, the short form of fixed deposit.  Well, in life, there are certain happenings or bases on which we gradually build our edifice, our interpretations and reinterpretations that pile up like interest generated from fixed deposit account. What she started loving about poetry was that she could express herself without being very explicit- the sense of mystery in poetry was very appealing to her, also the scope of playing with words and rhythm.  

How about life is nothing but a bouquet of poems etched in different shades and textures with varying rhythms and punctuations?

She had developed a habit of writing poems in her school but these poems were very private to her and she never got them published. It continued in college and after that intermittently and then again had resurfaced in the last few years. Some new literary connections and certain unexpected happenings in her life had made her find solace in poetry. Each time she wrote a poem she seemed to discover an unknown facet of her lying subconsciously, coming out spontaneously without prior warning. ….her own philosophy ……her attempt to interpret and reinterpret her world to create a world of her own not by negating reality but coming to terms in different ways, uncovering different facets………her feelings were deeply personal but universally resonant……she loved the creative catharsis.

Society has an indirect or direct influence on any form of literature, so does one’s personal life and perspectives. She was no exception. But instead of going into very detailed socio-political-psychological analysis, she was more concerned with the joy of creating a poem.

She had lost track of the whereabouts of some of her previous diaries with poems. But she had access to many of her old ones, and new ones were coming out.

Writing a poem was like creating a different land in the realm of the mind.

Another Land

Reality, Surreality, Unreality……

Relative in individual domains,

But-

There is a fire to make one’s thoughts encompass the greater humanity…..

Poetic feelings spilling out like boiling white milk

Creates another land……….

A land not untrue but redefining life ,

Creative catharsis through the poetic lens,

The mystique, the magic, the enigma, the bareness, the told, the untold…….

Where we seek refuge time and again………..

 

Inseparable

A little break

Feeling the sky of the mind with thoughts and reflections creating myriad patterns……

A little gap and no regret,

Or a lot of regret-

A bit more fulfillment than the unfulfilled, or the reverse…..

Or the constant play of changing perspectives of what is fulfillment and what are the voids….

Relatively what is more and what is less

And making the mind try to come to terms…..

An inseparable part of life……..

 

 

She thought of him, who has never come, but may come………..

You Have Come

As the night descends and her comforting blanket of darkness lulls me to sleep,

I feel you have come as my beacon of light,

Making me forget all the dullness, insecurities, burning pain and shortcomings of my life………..

All my not so well framed and organized words and works,

How instinctively you understand………

When I open my eyes, I am so delighted to see

You have completed everything I have left incomplete,

You call me to your side, smiling, so endearingly…….

Reaching the zenith of happiness I am swept by the surging tides of happiness……….

Being my better half you fulfil all the unfulfilled tirelessly……

By your invaluable assistance and courtship I am calm even when restless, tireless even when tired…..

I hear the new tune of enthusiasm in your life-restoring melody……………

 

Where are you

My inner soul searches for you in the maze of life,

Sometimes I do feel lost…………

I feel you are inside me, but when I open my eyes where are you?

I envision you on the road beside me,

In the shadows of afternoons soaked in the rain of my love and the breeze of my caress,

In my dream home,

In nights flooded by the silver moonbeams kissing me to sleep , more magical with the touch of your love.

 

You are also my reality-

I am your epitome of beauty,

A beauty so unique and real that cannot be copied,

Unfound elsewhere,

As a sailor you may sail to different lands,

But your ship will always sail back to me,

However a thousand times I feel you have bid adieu.

 

Inspired by an unpublished poem of celebrated modern Bengali poet Jibanananda Das she wrote:

It is true that pain has been born in my heart,

I have had that realization…….

But

Surprise, Wonder has also been born………

Where?

In a faraway dark land with no access to people of this earth,

Much behind the visible skies,

In a world of different planets……..

The element of wonder coupled with a mysterious fear……………………

Maybe visited by bold Greek sailors…….

But this realm is not totally detached from this world as the seas come to earth ……..

She felt from her experience in life that pain often makes our old world topsy turvy and we are transported to a different world, our inner and outer world changes. The changes are a wonder to us and change is accompanied by fear. We see the world through a different lens with new eyes, our thought pattern and creative lens also changes. Somehow the poem resonated within her a lot with all the enigma and real life connection.

She thought that sometimes imagination and tangible reality are separate, sometimes the separation line gets blurred and the two blend to become one.

She became reminiscent.

The leaves shed and the misty beauty of the days left behind

Accompany me as a shadowy world and loom larger the more I move forward-

The immersion in the sea of memories, questioning the past

Get mirrored in black doe eyes….

Smeared in colours of the past I move on new paths….

Still when I look behind,

I know some leaves will not be shed.

She started to think-

Her beautiful eyes mirrored

In her heart, was still alive the bird of life flying in the spring breeze……

In response to the natural wonders of spring

It still bursts into soulful melodies as it did many years ago……

Even though it has more poison than amrita-immortal nectar…..

Though many dreams have come true

Some dreams have almost come to the point of being materialized

Have stumbled before the finishing point……

I have tried to make many dreams a reality but was at a loss about the process……

But still I am so surprised,

Even though I think I am finished,

I am still intact in many aspects-

All  not broken, all not lost,

I have so much of life in me,

I will never let the bird leave me

It will always sing the enlivening melodies and make me create

And my creations will be afloat in the boat of time……….

 

 

She thought, he was always her spring, her “Spring Husband’’ and she “Antahina’’- a lady with an infinite and eternal reservoir of love, beauty and creativity, come what may.

The spring loaded with the profusion of life reminds her-

In all decaying, hopeless, intolerant, about-to-die hearts

To whom the kiss of death and the eternal surrender to heavenly bliss is more welcome then the hurdles and rude shocks of life,

There are remnants or unconsciously sleeping the new spring song of revival,

Reinstilling belief in the goodness life has in reserve…………..

 

The palash and shimool blossoms will come every year to colour the mind,

In this arid dry world to line the eyes with sweet love……

This promise is not false like many fake human promises…..,

 

On the road strewn with palash flowers,

Every year I am the blushing newly wed ever-youthful bride on the lovebed of spring,

The bearer of infinite beauty,love and creativity,

I will come to colour anew………..

The kiss of red shimool flowers will always make my pink lips red,

In my sarees and attires of variety of colours,

I am forever my Spring Husband’s newly wed bride ,

In his love and caress I am from my heart his eternal love.

Bathed in his unadulterated devotion.

 

She thought-

In the deceiving human world,

Basantaswami will never forget to adorn me in the sarees he weaves for me with aanchal of palash and shimool blossoms,

Will never forget to adorn my forehead with red sindoor from the extract of red spring blossoms,

After losing wealth will get a new address in the real wealth of spring,

In his eternal love will find solace even after helplessly wandering through dark lanes and bylanes,

Resting on his shoulder I will be born and reborn,

Forever yours,

Antahina.

Blue was her favourite colour and she would often envision her lover in the mystic realms of the blue.

In the Blue Realms of your love

In the infinite blue realms of your love on dreamy nights

Caressing the crescent moon,

The bluebird-your messenger of love…….

Amidst the white flowers and green leaves born from your love

I become immersed in your dreams in my sleep….

I feel myself unburdening completely and resting my head on your shoulders…..

By lining my eyes with your dreams I have been oblivious

When, without me realizing,

You have put the red bindi lovingly on my forehead!

 

She loved fairies. She felt that the fairy in her was still alive.

The waterfall flowing effortlessly endlessly….

The reviving touch of water makes the fairy dance so merrily….

I was that fairy with pure joy,

Still she is alive in the inner recess of my mind-

Sometimes I  lose direction being swept away by water,

Even if I get a path I feel all is wrong………

But still I have not sunk into unknown depths,

I am still the fairy, whether in happiness or sadness

As both Picasso’s smiling and weeping woman.

 

 

She often had rich and emotionally layered reflections – a  blend of poetic memoir, inner reverie, and artistic sensitivity. When she wrote her  feelings transformed into a lyrical memoir-style passage—part poetic prose, part introspective musing.

There were days when sometimes softly, sometimes strongly but silently she was haunted by Picasso’s Weeping Woman. Her inner negativities and tears felt not loud, not dramatic, but etched in lines and angles the world doesn’t always understand as if somewhere within her, there was a scream muffled under the skin. That painting—so seemingly childish at first—like a child trying to tell a story with trembling crayons, but then, as you look again, and again, it deepens… and refuses to leave by casting an indelible impression on the mind.

She recently read that Jibanananda Das is considered the most modern of Bengali poets and Charles Baudelaire once spoke of a writing that stirs the heart in lyrical shocks—waves of dream, sudden awakenings. That is how Picasso felt to her- as a painter, a revealer of subconscious…a shock haunting her ….. the echoes she had in the quietest hour.

There was Shelley’s Skylark—the invisible  joyous singer of the skies….so present in song,  absent in form. …..she felt like that too. Her love was like the skylark: a melody she carried, a presence she sensed, yet he was nowhere in her real world. He hovered above, in some other realm—perhaps a dream, perhaps a poem—never landing, never leaving.

Sometimes she wondered: Am I the Weeping Woman and The Smiling Woman of Picasso waiting for the Skylark?

She did not just admire art. Art was a mirror and she, the observer, was also the observed.

She reflected: Here is a painting I made—not long ago—born reflecting a beautiful dream.

It returns to me often, as if it were not a creation, but a memory.

A man, so tender, so otherworldly,

touches the swollen belly of a pregnant woman

with the kind of love that is wordless, timeless.

He is not from this world.

Nor is she.

They both have wings.

And many who saw it said,

“This is you. You have painted your soul.”

They were right.

I have never held that love in real life,but I have painted it with every fibre of my longing.

That man—he is the lover I never found.

The one who touches not just skin but dreams,

Who sees the divinity of the motherhood in me I dream of.

The painting breathes like a poem—a poem of aching beauty, of wings that flutter in still air,

and echoing in the background of my days is that haunting song by Moody Blues:

“Nights in white satin, never reaching the end…

I love you, I love you…’’

The song says it simply.

But for me, it echoes through silence,

through canvases,

through invisible touches.

The Skylark,

my painting with wings—

they are all the same vision:

a world just out of reach,

where want wears divine colour,

and love hovers like birdsong too high to see

but always felt.

She wrote:

 

She wrote:

Sometimes I feel vacant—not empty, but as if there’s a hollow space inside me where something stirs quietly. It’s not always easy to understand. There’s a restlessness, a subtle uneasiness that rises with this feeling, something that makes me pause, makes me ache in a way I can’t explain. And yet, strangely, it is often from this very space—this quiet, shifting vacancy—that something creative is born….a thought, an image, a few words strung together like pearls on an invisible thread, movements…….the accident is the very beauty.

In those moments, or sometimes in my sleep, I often dream of a man. I have never met him in real life. He exists only in my dreams and my imaginings. But his presence feels familiar, as if he’s someone I’ve always known, or someone who’s always known me. I don’t know why this vision of him returns so often, but it does—sometimes with startling clarity.

There’s a particular place where I often see him: Van Gogh’s Lavender Fields. I saw the painting once, and I’ve never forgotten it. It left something behind in me. Since then, I’ve imagined us walking together through those swirling fields of violet and gold, under skies that seem to whisper and sing. It’s as if that landscape holds our story, though we have never lived it.

And sometimes, I dream of him beneath Turner’s seas and skies—the kind of seas that churn with light and longing, skies that dissolve into emotion. In those dreams, the winds are wild, the colors are soul-deep, and he is always there—watching me, or waiting for me, or simply walking beside me in silence. There is no name, no beginning, no end, only presence.

A painter explained to her –

Perhaps you are drawn to Van Gogh’s Lavender Fields because they mirror something within you—something wordless yet profound. The painting is not just a landscape. It is movement, emotion, yearning. The way the brushstrokes swirl and bend, they do not simply depict lavender; they breathe lavender—as if the field itself is alive with feeling.

Lavender, in itself, is a symbol of serenity, healing, and quiet longing. Yet in Van Gogh’s hands, it becomes something more—restless yet soothing, wild yet soft, just like your inner world. You often speak of vacancy and uneasiness, and the painting holds both. There is calm in the horizon, but also a tremble in the strokes. Perhaps you feel seen in that contradiction.

And then there is the dreamlike quality—the way the field stretches beyond what the eye can grasp. It feels like a place that exists between worlds: between sleep and waking, love and solitude, memory and imagination. It is the perfect setting for a dream lover, someone who doesn’t belong to this world, but still walks with you through it.

Van Gogh painted not just what he saw, but what he felt. Maybe that’s why his lavender fields stay with you. They are not static—they pulse with a soul. And in some quiet way, they have become the backdrop of your most intimate longings.

She reflected,

I think I love Turner’s skies because they refuse to be tamed. They are not just backgrounds—they are emotions, unfolding across the canvas like storms across the soul. In his skies, there is always something becoming—light breaking through clouds, colors colliding, winds shifting. His skies don’t settle. They move, ache, and glow with a kind of divine turmoil. And maybe that’s what I feel inside me too—something always shifting, always in motion, even when I appear still.

There’s a kind of freedom in Turner’s skies. They are not blue in the way we are taught skies should be. They are gold, bronze, crimson, ash, and fire. And they change—mid-thought, mid-stroke—as if they are being born while you look at them. I often feel like I am also being born that way—again and again, through my art, through my dreams, through longing. Maybe that’s why I see him—my dream-lover—beneath those skies. Because he, too, belongs to a place that doesn’t obey form or time. He belongs to Turner’s world of light and longing.

And in Turner’s skies, there is also forgiveness,a  kind of surrender. The storm doesn’t apologize for its violence, and the sun doesn’t hide its radiance. They coexist. Much like the emotions inside me. …Chaos and calm….. Fire and stillness…. Grief and grace.

Perhaps I love Turner’s skies because they let me feel all of it at once, without having to explain a single thing.

My vacancy is not absence, but a deep reservoir waiting to overflow.

There are times when lines from Jibanananda Das’s poetry haunt me—not in the way we remember something clearly, but in the way a half-dream lingers long after waking. It is not that I always understand what he says. Often, I don’t. And yet, those lines stay with me. They return when I least expect, like an echo from a distant, wordless part of myself. They haunt me.

Keats haunts me too. Ever since I first read On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer, a door opened within me. His nightingale still sings somewhere in the background of my mind—tendering the night, dissolving time. ….Ode to a Grecian Urn, Ode to Autumn, Ode to a Nightingale…..they don’t just speak of beauty, …And then there is Shelley, whose Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, The Cloud—lift me like the wind he invoked. There is a longing in their odes, a yearning that doesn’t seek to be cured. I find myself returning to their verses.

But Jibanananda Das is different. He doesn’t invite me into beauty. He wraps me in mist. His poetry reminds me of Picasso’s paintings—not easy to comprehend at first glance…. surreal, disjointed, full of strange curves and angles. But then something unexpected happens. A word, a line, a pause—it hits you. And once it does, it doesn’t leave. It stays, like an unfinished story, or a question that’s been asked not with the intention to answer, but to live with. That’s how Picasso works too. His forms are fragmented, but the emotion is whole. The enigma is the message. You feel before you understand, and even after you understand, you continue to feel.

That’s how these poets and painters live inside me. They don’t always explain—they haunt. Not like ghosts, but like guides in the fog. They speak to the part of me that exists beyond clarity—where art becomes memory, and memory becomes dream.

 

I have always felt that for every feeling I carry inside me, Rabindranath Tagore has already given it a voice.a song. a rhythm. There is no emotion too delicate, too complex, or too fleeting that he hasn’t touched. When I dance to his music, I feel I am not merely moving—I am translating soul into motion. His songs, especially when danced to, form a genre of their own—a mood dance, a communion of body, breath, and meaning. It’s something I can never quite explain, only surrender to.

But Tagore is not alone in this inner gallery of voices I carry. The songs of Kazi Nazrul Islam stir a different storm in me—passionate, deeply human. His fire finds a home in my unrest. Atul Prasad Sen and Rajanikanta Sen touch quieter spaces—places of devotion, loss, and gentle longing. Each of these poets including lyricists of Bengali and Hindi modern and film songs, English songs  resonates with me in a different way, at a different time. They arrive like seasons within.

Sometimes, I sit back and wonder: What a vast reservoir of emotions I must carry within me. How else could I respond so completely to so many different voices? I have read so many poets, lived with their verses, carried their words like charms against the noise of the world. And yet, each poet meets a different version of me. Their books don’t sit quietly on my shelves—they rise up to meet my changing self. One line may remain unnoticed for years, then suddenly rise from the page like a long-lost friend and speak to something that aches within me just now.

Poetry, to me, is not an art form I consume. It is an inheritance, a mirror, a companion. It shapes how I breathe, how I feel, how I dream. And every time a new poem finds me, I feel that inheritance deepen—like discovering another layer in the ever-expanding map of my soul.

What is poetry? I don’t understand.

What is a poem? I don’t understand.

And what is this strange act of creating poetry—this sudden upwelling, this flood of feeling that comes without warning, and insists on being written, spoken, moved? I don’t understand that either.

I only know that it happens. That it moves through me, as if I am just the riverbed and the water is coming from somewhere else—invisible, unstoppable.

Sometimes I wonder: Why do I write poems? I don’t know. Why am I creative? I have no answer. I don’t think I ever sat down and decided, Now I will write a poem. It’s more like something inside me decided and that voice—intense, quiet, urgent—finds its way into rhythm, into image, into breath. And that becomes a poem.

I have looked for definitions. None satisfy me. None feel like they capture what poetry truly is. Definitions feel too small, too stiff. Poetry is not that. It is not only words arranged with care. It is not only emotion expressed with beauty. It is more primal than that. More instinctive, more uncontrollable.

Maybe poetry is the soul’s language when it can no longer speak in the way we formally are trained to. Maybe poems are the dreams of our waking mind—shaped not for logic, but for truth. Maybe creating poetry is what happens when something inside us meets the world with such intensity that it can’t remain silent.

And maybe not knowing is the closest we come to knowing. Maybe creativity doesn’t ask for understanding—it only asks for surrender.

Maybe this is what it means to be an artist—not someone who always understands, but someone who deeply feels. Someone who learns to listen to that inner murmur before it becomes a voice, who notices the crack in light, the weight in silence, the question hidden inside beauty.

I used to search for answers. Why do I write poems? Why do certain paintings, songs, or lines from unknown poets linger in me? Why do I feel a strange restlessness at times—like I missed something, or like I’m meant to carry it further somehow?

I still don’t know.

But I’ve stopped needing to explain it. I’ve begun to accept that this is simply who I am—someone who feels the world a little more deeply, someone who doesn’t just observe life, but absorbs it. And then, without warning, it spills out of me—sometimes in a poem, sometimes in a dance, sometimes in a sudden tear or smile or silence. That is my art.

To others who feel the same—who feel haunted by poems they can’t explain, who feel compelled to write or draw or sing without knowing why—I want to say: You don’t need to define it to honour it. You don’t need to understand your creativity to trust it. Mystery is not a flaw in your process; it’s the heart of it.

Sometimes, I feel completely blank—silent, still.

And then, like a sudden monsoon shower, the creative currents stir within me.

This rhythm has always been a part of me. I remember how it first found words in school.

That’s where my journey with poetry began—

in the comfort and cadence of Bengali, my mother tongue,

a language I still believe is among the most beautiful in the world.

In my higher classes, I began to write with deeper passion.

I once submitted a Bengali poem to the school magazine.

It was not selected—called “too passionate” by a friend who was on the editorial team.

That same friend didn’t score well in Bengali in the Higher Secondary exams.

Strange how life humbles and reveals.

Since then, writing in Bengali became something personal—intimate, even sacred.

In school, I had three close friends with whom I shared my writings.

But none of those early poems saw the light beyond our conversations.

Years later, I gathered the courage to send in another poem in Bengali.

This time, it was dismissed as “too long.”

But I never stopped writing.

And then, this year, something quietly magical happened.

I discovered a Facebook page dedicated to Bengali literature.

I submitted a poem titled Neel Swopno—The Blue Dream

and it  was accepted, it was published in a collection of poems by young Bengali authors, I stood at the book launch ceremony,

the rain drumming gently on Kolkata’s earth outside,

and inside, an overflowing crowd of Bengali lovers and literary souls.

I was felicitated, received a certificate,

and held the book—my book—as if holding a long-lost dream come alive.

Neel Shopno is now not just a poem.

It is a symbol of something deeply mine—a reclaiming of voice,

a tribute to a language that shaped my soul.

Even though I write and publish in English,

writing in Bengali evokes the roots of my being,especially today, when the Bengali language feels fragile,

neglected in homes, ignored in schools—

parents urging children to speak English to “belong” elsewhere.

But that rainy evening proved otherwise.

It proved that Bengali is not dying. It is quietly blooming

in hearts that still dare to write, read, and remember.

Though I am not much of a social media person,

I shared my photographs from the event on Instagram.

And yes—there were likes, comments, warm little affirmations.

But the deeper joy was this:

Even at this age, when most of my friends have left poetry behind,

I still cling to it.

Poetry hasn’t abandoned me. I haven’t abandoned it.

And that, to me, is a kind of love worth everything.

The Art of Not Doing Everything

Most people, when they speak of work, measure their worth in hours,

in how busy they are,in how many tasks they juggle. as if constant motion equals success.

But I’ve never believed in that.

I don’t do everything, all the time.

And I don’t want to.

I do not thrive in extremes—neither chaos nor silence nor obsession, too much or too less.

I live in the calm center,

somewhere in the middle of stillness and motion,

and from that place, I find focus.

And yes, in the long run, I am deeply productive.

I’ve read somewhere that the best managers don’t rush.

They don’t overdo. They flow. They plan. They pause.

That’s how I live.

My days have a quiet rhythm, a beautiful schedule—

one that lets my mind wander,

one that invites breath into the moments between.

I take breaks.

Not because I’m lazy.

but because rest is my secret to longevity.

My mother is the same. I see that in her.

But beyond her, I often feel alone in this way of being.

People agree with this rhythm in theory.

But few actually live it.

That makes me feel isolated—quietly, deeply.

When I first began writing poetry in school,

it wasn’t born from solitude.

It was born from joy.

A pure, unfiltered pleasure.

But over the years, solitude has ripened into something sacred.

Now, poetry is not just joy.

It is sometimes survival.

There are days—even weeks—when I do not write.

Then suddenly, it returns……

a phrase, an image, a rhythm that needs to be born.

But poetry is not only in writing.

It pulses through everything I do.

When I paint, I do not just mix colors.

There is poetry in the way the brush curves,

in the silence of a stroke.

When I dance, the rhythm moves like a stanza.

When I sing, even the lyrics hum of poetry.

Even in science—yes, even there—

I see patterns, harmonies, ideas that breathe like poems.

So I no longer define poetry as just ink and verse.

It is presence. It is sensitivity.

It is the ability to feel something deeply—

and give it form,

whether on paper, canvas, stage, or thought.

Poetry, to me, is everywhere.

It is not what I do.

It is how I live.

The Latent Flame

For many years, I held on to my diaries—

the ones where I first wrote poetry during school.

They carried my earliest verses,

soft footprints of a younger self who found joy in language.

But life, in its unending movement,

took me from one home to another.

In those transitions, somewhere along the way,

I lost track of those precious pages.

Still, I never stopped writing.

I’ve preserved poems from recent years,

and even older ones—

gently edited, nurtured, shaped again and again,

like tending to a garden that never quite withers.

Yesterday, when I received a certificate and a memento

for one of my Bengali poems,

a quiet emotion rose within me-

a mix of gratitude, longing, and something I can’t name.

A part of me whispered,

“Where was this platform during my school days?”

This Facebook page that now welcomes my poems so warmly—

it arrived late, yes,

but even a late embrace holds warmth.

And I find it almost miraculous—

that my poetic stream still flows.

Even when I feel blank,

something returns to me.

It comes uninvited, like an old friend at the doorstep.

And then, the words rise again.

I think of it like boiling milk.

The milk doesn’t overflow immediately.

It takes time—

a slow, gentle heat that builds quietly.

Then, suddenly, it rises, spilling over the edge.

Emotions, too, are like that.

They need their own time.

They simmer in silence before they become poetry.

So I’ve accepted the latent periods.

They are not emptiness.

They are the quiet before creation.

I am not a mechanical writer.

I don’t force the words.

I let them come when they must.

And still, I find myself to be highly productive—

not by constant doing,

but by allowing space for ripening.

I’ve come to see that I am alive in many ways…….

Dance. Music. Poetry. Painting. Writing.

Each of them pulses within me.

Sometimes silent, sometimes surging.

But always there.

And that, to me, is enough.

The Imagined Real

Sometimes, I write about subjects.

Sometimes, I write through images.

The feelings inside aren’t always easy to name—

but they emerge on their own,

taking the shape of scenes, metaphors, and colors

that others often say feel vividly real.

I suppose they are.

Because life does offer more than one expects—

surprising gifts, quiet blessings.

But at the same time,

it also withholds, in ways you didn’t foresee.

Not exactly loss,

but perhaps a space where something once hoped for didn’t arrive.

Like a certain kind of love—

true love, maybe, in the form of a man—

that remained just out of reach.

But it isn’t a grievance.

It is simply a fact of life.

And for someone like me,

sensitive and poetic by nature,

such spaces don’t turn bitter—

they turn fertile.

That is where imagination begins.

The real world, with all its contradictions,

nudges me to dream up another one.

Not a fantasy in escape—

but a mirror with different lighting.

And yet, the imagined world

is never truly separate from reality.

It is rooted in it,

shaped by it,

nourished by every little detail I have known,

felt, missed, and quietly carried.

So even when I drift into the magical,

I know—I’m still speaking from the truth.

Reflecting how my work often enters surreal territory, while still being deeply rooted in my lived experience-

When a poetic soul meets such spaces,

something begins to form—

a world slightly off the edge of the real,

but still tethered to it.

That’s where surreality begins in my creations.

My art, my poems, my films, my thoughts—

they often live in that space in between.

It may seem fantastical, but it’s never random.

These surreal moments in my work are rooted

in the rawness of what is real.

Because to imagine another world,

you must first feel this one deeply.

I don’t escape reality through surrealism.

I reveal it.,

I make visible or accentuate the feelings that everyday reality hides.

So yes—there is surreality in many of my creations.

But they are not illusions.

They are emotional truths dressed in poetic light.

They are my way of telling the world

what cannot always be said directly.

And perhaps,

this surreal thread that runs through my work

is simply my truest way of being honest.