Ah! The Nostalgia of Suffering
“There is a great desire in me.”
“To do what?”
“To disappear someday.”
“What?”
“How long can one carry out like this? How long could they go on? This world is a entrancing, but you know better that this is not enough. Infact, it is momentary, fleeting. There is this emptiness that wants to be known, wants to be seen and felt. Sometimes it is so vast that I am no more. But it is peaceful. I wonder if it would take me away someday. Truth be told, I want it to take me away someday to explore it. I want to travel the places it will take me to. One day, perhaps.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“I do not know. Somewhere.”
“I do not know how to react to you sometimes. Just when I think I am understanding you, there you go talking about disappearing. I do not know what to say to that when a friend just casually mentions their desire for disappearance.”
“Haha! Do not bother.”
“Really? This is your response? Ah! What would I do with you. You well know we are way past that stage where I would just run behind you. Be a little considerate of your old friend. What would I do without you!”
“You see these waves caressing the shore every now and then? Every wave is new, shore is not kissed by the same wave twice. They come, embrace it and then submerge/evanesce forever, no turning back. This annihilation is what I ask for. No turning back.”
“(A deep sigh with endearing eyes.) My dear friend, one day I will understand you but most certainly it is not today. It will be dark soon. Let us return home.”
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“Good afternoon!”
“Good afternoon. It’s been two days since we last met. How’s life treating you?”
“Same old, same old.”
“What does that mean?”
“Misery upon misery. I fake smile to garner the truth. I’m a pretentious maniac.”
“Now what’s it this time my friend?”
“It’s the same old same old. It’s the same story every where even the endings repeat. Nothing about our existence is new.”
“Well if there isn’t we can always create something new.”
“You would think! We would dig the same hole nicely and neatly, may be in a better shape than others. Then we will willing go in there and lie down with a smile. That smile is fake. It is for the world to see that oh! I had a great life and inside? They are rotten. You see, that’s nothing different. We are just deceiving ourselves. And don’t you even start about perspectives, they are all borrowed. People hypnotize themselves to believe this hell hole is the garden of Eden. They are always wearing lenses cause the view through the real eyes is rather terrifying.”
“But this is all we have. Sometimes a little deception helps to get us through.”
“It shouldn’t. Here or beyond, it shouldn’t.”
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“Why do you have keep to living with some people even when they are out there sucking your blood? I mean when you can, shouldn’t you part ways? Why the fact that they are your family or your friends should stop you from saving yourself? Save yourself, no one and I repeat, no one else will do it for you.”
“Okay. I will start by asking where is this coming from and why are you making my wine taste sour?”
“I am talking about him. His silent suffering is louder than these thunder claps. A wonderful man and oh the scars people have given him. How they go on living like that, it is beyond me.”
“Hmm. It hasn’t been easy for him. Everyone he loved left him. And I have seen no one love the way he loves. It saddens me to see him like that.”
“Here we are in these ochre meadows enjoying wine with the just the right amount of warmth and wind, and somewhere out there a ship must be sinking.”
“Rather poetic.”
“Don’t you feel as if there is something missing inside?”
“What do you mean?”
“A hollowness. Once you become aware of it, grows bigger and bigger but is strangely serene. It’s gravitating. It pulls you to look inside and see and know, that you are still not whole. It holds the real you, it wants you to search through it. It stands there holding its arms open waiting to hold you in its gentle possession. It craves for silence, a deep rest like death but not death.”
“Some people call it soul.”
“I don’t know why people call it that, they don’t even know if they have one and by the looks of it most certainly they don’t. Why would I call it something I myself can’t conform to? And what is this soul anyway? Most people we meet are surface people, like a swamp. It looks like water on the surface but once you step inside, it starts pulling you like a quicksand, there is no dearth to their shallowness, its deeper and deeper still. Why borrow words, why borrow meaning. Just say what your truth is, what you have felt.”
“Hah. My friend, you most certainly are in deep communion with your emotions. While we are on the subject, what do yo keep writing? Show it to me!”
“No.”
“What? So this is how it’s going to be? Alright then.”
“I will show it to you one day. It is not complete yet.”
“Alright. I shall wait.”
They clinked their glasses and drank silently to the sinking sun.
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“What is being enough for someone means to you?”
“I don’t think you can be enough for someone. I think you can just ‘be’ for someone. Everyday there is something more, something new about that person. Enough is very limited. It should be like a moonlight which you will never get tired of, including days of dark moon night where you yearn for it most ardently.”
“Wow! for once you are talking passionately. I didn’t know you too could be poetic.”
“Well I had been in wrong company for far too long. It has rubbed off quite nicely on me and now there seems to be no escape. Like a river I keep falling for the sea.”
“Who are you today and where have you locked up my friend? This is a weather I had never seen before.”
“Well, there is first time for everything and its my uprising finally. Behold!”
“So I taught you well?”
“You most certainly did Master.”
A melodious laughter echoed.
“Why you keep giving me a strange feeling?”
“Like what?”
“I cannot put words to it but it makes my heart heavy. It saddens me. And you are writing again.”
“Do not put so much stress on yourself. You know me. If anything, you are the first person I will tell it to.”
“Hmm. I am a little comforted. That is good to hear.”
“I should get going. I have to meet him.”
“Are you sure? Will you be okay?”
“Yeah of course. Why wouldn’t I be? And anyway, his time can now be clenched under our fists. It is only fair to meet him now.”
“Have a nice time.”
“Hello? You home?”
“Hello! Hello! You came! I thought you too will cancel out on me. I haven’t had a visitor in over a week. People are so kind.”
“I know right! Even now they won’t stop spreading joy.”
“Tell me about it! They scare me sometimes. Coffee?”
“Yes please. Thank you. Yes they are terrible creatures. While we are on the topic, what are you most afraid of?”
“To be forgotten.”
“Why? You would be dead, what would you know?”
“Really? This is how you counter it?”
“I am just saying. Anyway, isn’t it important to be remembered while you are still breathing?”
“Yeah sure. But the most important thing is to love and be loved. To love someone so much they mention their name and see them in your eyes. A love so deep it just keeps giving . If someone takes a bucket of water out of the ocean, it shouldn’t matter at all. It won’t make any difference to the ocean. It can just go on giving. I thought of assuring myself, but gave up on the idea. It all is a pointless forage now, soon it be all over. ”
“What’s the problem? What is stopping you?”
“Nothing.”
“Hmmm. Care to explain much?”
“You know the most hurtful thing in the world?”
“What?”
“Not being loved by the person you loved.”
“You know what’s even sadder?”
“What?”
“Not being loved by anyone at all. No one whom you can call your home, no one to turn to when you are sad, no one to hug when you are happy. What a pathetic life that is. A life without love, ah, it is as good as being dead.”
“But you said you are afraid to be forgotten.”
“Yeah. I don’t want to be forgotten by the ones I love. That is the most pathetic death.”
“You have loved someone?”
“(He let out a slight laugh.) It doesn’t matter now does it? My abyss awaits at the bay. Soon I have to visit it and journey to the unknown trenches sprawling all the way without a trace. This is the fate of most, to live like they never existed and to cease like the silence of a burnt out flame. No one did know and no one will know.”
“Do yo know something that I don’t know?”
“Do you even have to ask this? Haha. I know a great deal more than you will ever know. I am an undiscovered library.”
“No no. I read you everyday since the day I have known you. You are one of my favourite books, beautifully depressing, mysteriously thrilling, sadly enchanting.”
“Well, thank you. I am pleased. Infact, you should know a great deal more than I ever did. I know what lies in your heart and I think you should do it. You lack nothing my friend and your passion, the world doesn’t know what they are missing out on. Enough, for your sake, of what you have been doing. You owe it to no one, but to yourself and only to yourself. Think about it. I don’t say it often, but you need to hurry.”
“I will think about it, I will.”
“Your eyes never lie. They have known no lies. If you want to remain hidden, do not look at anyone with these beautiful clear eyes of yours. They scream things you can never put words to. I only wish you best my friend. You being yourself have done most than many people can do in a lifetime. Cheers!”
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My Dearest Friend,
It is time for me to begin my journey, away, towards that emptiness. I bequeath the arduousness this callous world has bestowed upon me. I would rather treasure my shadow than this uncouth and wretched attitude towards my free and lonely ‘soul’, yes I used the dreaded word. This is the last of me to you. I will never forgive myself for not bidding you a final goodbye because you well know you wouldn’t have let me go, or worse, had accompanied me. The world despises a vagabond like me who refuses to be chained in their saccharine thorns. But oh dear friend I do not want you to face this torment with me, you are too kind for this world and it would eat you up alive piece by piece.
Don’t conceal your madness but don’t reveal your madness ‘cause when a beautiful bird dances, silk cages are wrapped around it. It would feel soft around the skin, loved, appreciated, caressed but its every thread will slowly choke the life out of it. People are not forgiving to subtle rebellions.
This is the very last of me to you, if you can, remember me. And if you must, forget me. For all these years I only had one home, you. You are right that one cannot be enough for a person, there is always more. For all these years what kept me looking forward to a crimson sunrise, lonely starlights was the smile in your eyes every time I have met you. It gave me a reason to go on a little more, this greed kept me tethered to you a little more. My dear friend, no one loves the way you love as well, for this troubled heart of mine would never have found a haven. This drifted being of mine found peace only with you.
After midnight you can find the profound philosopher in me, blunt, conspicuous, ungrateful. But then the morning comes and brings out the liar in me. By my window I often see the moon looking through the trees, transforming from amber to a wise white, in due process rising higher and higher to the zenith. I have been asking for all the wrong things, I have been cherishing my wrong deeds, hoping, one day it will be my salvation. I do not know if I was with wrong people or I was wrong for those people but most certainly there was something extraordinarily wrong with everything me and they had. The day I kept mentioning to you, that ‘someday’, that ‘one day’ has finally arrived. Life is bewitchingly paradoxical, incessant yet spontaneous. When you are about to leave everything, all of it comes storming down to you asking to be noticed/discerned. But when it was no use to me while I was with it, how in the world would it be of any use/avail at all now that I am leaving it? I wanted all of it or nothing at all, what’s the point of having piecemeal satisfaction while your arms are open to the winds? When I can be gusted away with every fibre of my being like a fallen leaf, I would not wait for all the branches to shed free.
I am looking for something but I don’t know what I am looking for, it’s not here though and that is all I know. I want to be miserable and vulnerable. I am sorry for a lot of things but most importantly I am sorry to myself. I want to strip my soul naked. And this hope, this hope was the death of me. It keeps stabbing me and yet I wouldn’t relinquish. We submit to it, bow down to it or accept defeat but in the end we don’t get what we want. No, I am not looking for redemption. I am smeared dancing in the lap of sin, too near to its core, too pleasurable to let go. We just take it or sloth with whatever life gives us. Shouldn’t each our lives have it’s unique meanings, our own expression beyond the hedges of age and convention? Shouldn’t we be the embodiment of our lives and not the same old submissive reality that repeats and fades in million different forms and yet never ceases to rest? It takes more and more people away, wrapped in same lusts, with the same mistakes, with that very same ending. How mundane, how utterly depressing. Sadness is nothing new, it’s still nothing new and happiness even now is the rarest of all things.
My friend, I can go on writing and no words would be enough. I can go on describing and yet cannot say what I want to say. Known has a beautiful quality, to take us to the unknown. We fail to notice it but it often pushes us towards it and we get to decide the vigour. I have come to believe that opportunities are constantly knocking on our doors, following us around but we are the deaf-blind ones. We chose our insecurities, blanketed under our fears and keep deceiving us in the name of good days, which by the way, never arrive. We are always complaining things not going our way. But the truth is, if things start going exactly the way I want them to be, I don’t know how would I react to it. Nor can I imagine a life like that, neither myself living one. Did I mention you this paradox of life that what keeps us going are the unfinished desires? They are like morning mist, it is there, you can see but you can’t touch and then you go on chasing it because this defeat is rather disconcerting. We can’t win. The whole design is designed to lose. But we all secretly love our lives even though we are fed up with most things. Else how would you explain us going on? Exhausted, defeated, maddening, yet we cling. There must be something we are clinging to, we should be more careful what we cling to for mixing desire with wine is a recipe for slow poison. People are strange. Now that I think about it, I have only met beautiful people and some ugly minds.
This selfish endeavour I have taken upon would haunt me whenever I would be reminded of this day. But it would be devilishly arousing as this is the day I dared. You were asking me that day what was I writing. Here, I have enclosed it for you and have taken no part of it with me. Even though away, I do wish to live alongside of you wether it be in the form of this piece of paper, so be it.
A mighty eagle stares the moon
It’s the dawn of dusk
Aloof it encircles the sky
Imprisioned I write
To set a part of me free
I have blind fold over my eyes
Atleast it can see
I’ll give it wings of gold and will of steal
Melting only when sun merges within
It is my beautiful escape
This is the only way
The quill is forged by my bones
It uses my blood as ink
The gaps are my breath
And the impressions my skin
No fire no heat no restrain no desire
Star holding my destiny has fallen
It’s debris and ashes I seek
I will smear what I find
And wisp it off to the wind
Thus I will travel abound
To the meadows through the brook
In the furnace pouring down with rain
Sometimes quite sometimes thunderous
Not at one place but everywhere
Quietude of being can echo the wonders
Mountains will melt and tides will surrender
Beyond this horizon a world would end
What’s engraved on heart will remain
Nearer to dark even when light tears it away
Surmounting despair then another grief
No memories no hunger no lust no hope
Neither the drop nor the ocean
Like the hapless vapour that repeats the motions
Dreamless and deranged
Surpassing the coarse lands
Without anchor I waited by the sea
Bellowing snow cold hearth
Seeds bore no saplings
A heathen in every tongue
Banished from solace and mirth
Greater the suffering purer the gold
Elysium never existed to be found
I am aware, I am so acutely aware
My very last to you with every ounce of love that I will ever have.
Farewell.
