Reeds

If almost any man were made to feel the grief you feel they would go mad, stark raving insane.

The reeds blow in the wind. They are pale and white, and the wind that moves them carries tears. The storm is here in pieces and in waves, some stronger, some lighter, all in their own insidious ways carrying its wailing grief.

I imagine I am there among the reeds my hands held out, tears streaking down, the eternal grief coursing through me, that one where we only get to know people only to say goodbye. You have to stand alone one day, I cannot be there forever, you have to go on without me. I stand there, and there is that horrified expression on my face mingled with bewilderment as I feel so gut wrenchingly that no one can understand my universe, or its horrors, they can only stand and watch and listen from afar, spectators to what is ghastly, or what is like the spring, or like these grey storm clouds hanging so low over the reeds and the bit of pond between them. Its for rented fish catching they told me, the rod and string kind, not the massive net pulled through the water by a little boat’s boatman in the thundering full bodied river back home. Its for catching one at a time, the glory of the catch, the glory of what comes afterwards. Tall pale blonde reeds with pale heads blow the way we were going. It filled me with deep sadness and terrible thoughts that circle me in the me in my universe, inasmuch that I am alone.

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Meanderings

Bodily functions are the weirdest oddest thing. The most important people have them as well as others. I wonder if spies ever took advantage of the desperate need to poo after a milky breakfast for the large numbers of lactose intolerant south asian subcontinent people, or if battle strategies were held in place simply by providing adult diapers to the soldiers. Farting is something that still strikes me as odd. Its rude to fart in some places, yet its unhealthy to hold it in. Either you learn to hold it in or fart silently or go and not care about the annoyed reaction around you. Or campaign for a more fart tolerant society. Of course everyone could just laugh it off. It is funny. Imagine if that was commercialized as an experience. Like a food that made people fart loudly and smelly-ly was sold at fair stands and people stood around eating, farting, laughing.

Burps are always slightly more acceptable due to obvious reasons, but they can be loud and smelly and commercializable too.

I wonder if indomitable formidable people ever paused to fart or burp or vomit in the most vulnerable of ways, or was it part of their tyranny or force to be impeccably not gassy all the time.

These type of meanderings can only come in the dire need to poo, after eating the said lactose filled meal. Do you find pooing- a good pooing- satisfying or annoying?

You

Autobiographical accounts tend to be dripping with ego, unless you can put the truth of you in it.

You know that feeling when you turn to those whom you are accustomed to getting answers from, and they tell you this time they don’t know, and they are quiet as their eyes look far at something you can’t see or understand. They are busy their actions say. You never realized how busy they are or how much you must waste time or have been a time waster without knowing it.

You want to grab ahold of their lapels, their hems and beg them to tell, to give the anwers of life, you want to writhe and scream and cry, tell them not to be aloof, if thats what it is, tell them to divulge what makes them so calm in the face of it all. Did they too feel so anchorless, so anxious and afraid of doing the wrong thing, so badly that there is no turning back, like a small thing like an unnecessarily extracted tooth by a possibly inept dentist or something bigger than that, or did they feel so restless, wasting time, and feeling so terrible about it and yet unable to not waste time? Did they feel like that too, that everything is just chance and luck and there is a constant possibility that you will fall away into the pit of mortal peril and not be able to climb out?

Did it hurt so much in finding out uncomfortable truths about themselves like how you don’t pay attention enough to people or the things that make them run, because you are too into ideals and big broad gestures to see, too into the world of your head to pay attention to whats going on all around you all the time? You literally cannot see a thing as it is or anyone as they really are. Learning quickly is the only way to go from here, but where is that? Why is it so scary and unknown?

Bittersweet

Bittersweet always reminds me of Naira, a girl back in school, because it was the most profound essence of the incredible essays she would write for English class. Our teacher would rave about them. She was quiet, bookish, introverted and a kindred spirit to me in Form 4 and in the science stream, and she was loud and gorgeous and boy crazy and very popular in the arts stream in Form 5.

I don’t know why I wrote that, except its that depth that she had under all her chasing after Lee, the one guy who wasn’t into her, not even a bit, and just about every other guy, that should be noted. I for one did see it. As an introvert who succeeded in graduating as an introvert, I did very much understand the appeal then of being all gorgeous and popular and boy crazy in highschool. It wouldn’t matter so much anymore anywhere else.

So bittersweet is a word that seems to describe me, my self, and my inside world right now, in a small way like it seemed to describe Naira, who would faint in school due to her migraine challenges and whose best friend tried to commit suicide and survived for an undetermined bit of time only to regret it in another country that Naira once lived in, and who Naira rushed to visit in hospital and listened to the tears of a dying person’s regret. That was her greatest essay, the one none of us will forget, the one about the moment her friend swallowed all the pills and watched, bemused, as the room slowly spun.

Right now, 17 year old Naira stands again before me, with that demand in her eyes asking to be counted as an adult, and I want to be quiet, silent and sad. The past comes and goes, and I no longer have the energy to insist on anything in my own ‘adult’ world now. I can only just leave things be and trust that everything will be okay in the end because I don’t have it in me to do anything else. This is a shield and I wish this bittersweet shield around me wouldn’t leave me, except I have to follow its precepts and principles otherwise it will go away. I wish there was a way to put this shield into my writing, to set the voice, the tone, the notes and the strings, instead of saying it directly, because as quiet and sad and silent that it is, its beautiful. Like Sorrow, and Wistfulness.

What happened is what happens and it doesn’t exactly become un-happened, not in our heads, not in our memories, not in friends from way back when, nor do things change just like that, but the sheild still slowly builds around me more every passing day. I feel sick these days, my head aches with it, the longing for something more than just these small little things that yell at me and my brain “you are too much and too little all the time now.” What dreams fade for people and what hopes go away, never to return, not in the same way they once came and once guided them to do incredible circumstances-defying things! How much one used to love and hate life’s bitter things with such passion and intensity!

How many distorted bitter tears Naira must have hidden from us in the very last days of school.

Does this all matter when you may not understand what I am trying to say, and I cannot be more clear than I already am being? Yes it does, because at least I do. And maybe Naira does. And that is more than enough.

Portrait of Sue

I wanted to write bad stuff about you and hide them all behind some complicated play of words. Instead I feel like crying because my thoughts keep turning back to myself like a strong search light, and all I see is my flawed self, and yet even then, I can’t see me perfectly, nor can I see all of me.

You’re tall and graceful, including in that purple sari, your beauty is understated and subtle, and yet you dress and hold yourself so smartly. You seem to conform in ways I never could, and stand out in ways I didn’t. A flower should be in your scarf, tucked in just above your ear. The people you hang out with are coloured by you. They all seem happier simpler people, even in their brightest be-deck-ery, their most elaborate painted faces and lovely straight-not-curly hairdos. Its fun rendering it all in gold, except you look better in silver and purple, back straight, bag shiny, and your book of dreams in your hands, clasped close to your chest.

I used to know another girl who shared your name. She too wanted to run to far away places, to Paris or New York or Auckland or Sydney, she too wanted to live uninhibited by family. She’s not in Facebook world anymore, I don’t know what happened to her.

I try to point out your flaws in my usual cynical way, and all I see are my own back lit by the setting sun, all I know is that we all sin, and I just have them hidden better due to no fault of yours or mine, due to living in a different country from the native land, due to being able to chose what person I wanna be to everyone else back home. Its both easier and harder than it sounds.

Now that you’re almost done with your degree from that prestigious university in Dhaka, what do you see from your high vantage point? What difference does it make? What dreams do you see?

The biggest thing that confuses me is how, although not more than four years separate us, I no longer feel that understanding of fellow youth, an automatic grasping of whats what and whats not, of you and your generation. I know I would be dubbed that frumpy goody goody from whom all things should be hidden to avoid any trouble whatsoever. Its such a silly thing, I think I don’t really care, I always face that perception anyway and sometimes it breaks, sometimes it doesn’t, yet now I feel again that search light.

Do you think I don’t know that, or that I never changed? That perceptions never drove me to desperation? Stay in your assumptions, it just fits the pattern of your portrait better. There are things in me and my history that I will always hate and your perception cannot take that vantage point away from me.

Wide eyed child

Why did you finish it? It stands alone. My hand feels shaky as I quickly scribble out another picture.

Right now the world seems so fresh, and I feel young, only its too young, I feel like a child. I keep remembering my mother, I wonder if she too felt like this, like a wide eyed child walking through the dark without really knowing what will happen because of a few of her careless words or actions, not knowing that a man with integrity will always bring that integrity into love and not relent even then. Integrity is so sharp, it hurts so much when one is sharpened by it, or when one is just blown away. Why didn’t I think that a hand held in the dark was worth the small amount of time lost for fullfilling ones dreams? Why didn’t I think that the sick may need me?

No, I walked head first into my scariest self, the one that is built on a mistaken idea of my hopes and dreams, and refuses to relent, even when there is no real threat of destruction, even when it hurts those who I love the most. That hurtful sensitive anger at not being able to get a book or that firm annoyingness at wanting to stay up late, even when there is so much at stake.

Why is my hoping and dreaming self tied so closely to another self, one that is scary, spoiled, selfish and mean? One that can’t see what really matters then, dream or love? Things or people? Fame or true friend?

Why was it so hard to see at once that I act in a way that’s spoiled selfish and mean?

I am made of bricks, my head is numb, I am going off the slide, into the abyss of the sandbox. Please wait for me, please don’t leave me behind.

The heart of the tree and its soul

If you see the heart of the tree, you can see its soul.

Right now, I feel like a liquified drop of coldness, so lost in nothing

In being nothing in knowing I am nothing, to the ones I love, in knowing there is someone else in the place where they are in my heart, in their heart,

I know it was because of the others, to forget and impress the others that they love, that I am here in the first place.

If my heart was not so wrapped in coldness, I would break and burn again and again.

There is nothing but devastation in my future and my past and its so cold here.