You And Me – Solitary Amid Silent Ruins

I am tired of building sand castles, tired of so tastefully infusing each grain with love and passion only to be swept away by tide or the strong breeze blowing across the oceans that lie between us. Nothing remains, not even ruins. Nothing but handfuls of sand slipping through my fingers into the void left by crashing waves. I love the stories written in stones and bricks, ancient, crumbling structures that once were home to lovers and kings, temples made in honor of goddesses, tombs, castles and once vibrant, thriving city states now nothing but crumbling ruins shrouded in folklore, mystery, and intrigue, blurring that thin line between myth and reality. Each brick, each stone whispering a story. Touch them, run your hand on these broken walls and they will come alive and speak to you of passion, betrayal, envy, compassion, deceit, and death, everything that love is capable of. Sometimes I feel they were built as ruins and all the grandeur was added to them only to fall off with time to reveal once gain the alluring perennial beauty like that of a  woman whose true essence lies underneath the layers and layers that cover her. Her true self emerges only when all the veils drop.

Ruins have that strong naked feminine energy running through them, holding them together in all their beauty despite the ravages of time. Tinged with melancholy there is an unsaid acceptance that these ruins are more real than the perfection we aspire to.

We ventured into this haze, arms locked together, hand in hand strange warmth radiating between us, a light squeeze of hand in the grip of another, a message, assurance of being there in that moment. We traced invisible lines on the crumbling walls, our fingers laced together as one. It was in this moment of togetherness I realized even if this meeting had an end at least it had a beginning.  Time stood still as we talked along the trodden path. The fringes of the day lingered on the arches and columns that stood like trees of life. Supporting whatever still remained of the glorious past. The stones spoke to me and I seemed to know their mute language, and they too seemed to understand what I felt.

Patches of light played hide and seek on the building facades as the sun played mysteriously sought its path among the silhouettes frozen in time. He was a tourist I a traveler  seeking something more than what lay before my eyes but somehow it was enough to just be with him even in our differences.  The unintentional occasional brush against each other sent sparks shooting up my spine like a comet. I wondered what feelings these ruins evoked in him. Between the sunset of past glory and an uncertain dawn he and I stood separated by a dark frightening night.

Today I stand solitary amid the silent ruins. We never really forget someone after we have felt their hands, their fingerprints on ancient walls, after we have engrained their body heat into our very body chemistry and the fragility of it all. Today these ruins are filled with silent murmurs of our hearts. I ran my fingers along the weather-beaten Gothic columns like prayer wheels of monastery and suddenly I felt his presence, as if he had come back to me travelling all the seven thousand five hundred miles, filling all the gaps and cracks in me, filling the emptiness, the void, for I am a ruin myself, wandering among the ruins.

I leaned against the pillars draped in twilight and felt my inner darkness merge with the lengthening shadows of these pillars. I began to walk along the familiar path, now empty and more ruinous that it was meant to be. I reached the arch from where we had looked down upon the eerily silent, dramatic, desolate vast expanses of structures with dark lonesome interiors. My own loneliness and the pain of separation began to rise from some deep dark crevice within. The walls of my heart resembled those that lay beyond the frame the door made. Piles and piles of abandoned stones once part of some structure built brick by brick with some ol’ loving hands now in ruins flung up in jealous rage by winds of change. No wonder these ruins remind me of love, of distances, of  deep sorrow that clings to the senescent walls like jungle vines eclipsing everything that comes in its way.

Strange, how darkness paints everything in its own color.  I climbed the staircase into the open, out of the darkest recesses of my being. These stairs had seen many ups and downs in the lives of those who lived and dreamed. I chased scents of those as the landscape began to dissolve into inky night.  Sometimes a sorrow greater than ours acts like a sedative and tranquilizes the emotional pain, the ruins did just that today and now It was time to leave , the company of inner storm and wind that rushed through the decaying, neglected, lonesome structures of the past.

I know why I love to linger among them. It is because they aren’t neat and safe like buildings of today too superficial and undisturbing. It is only in the broken, obscure, jumble one can find oneself. only here one can shed all that is not part of the real self and look at the naked truth. I picked a handful of sand and watched it slip slowly from between my fingers.  Just like time.

The moment that brought us together as one had ended. Each of us carried with them a part of other. He was gone for I don’t know how long and left me wrapped in a myriad of emotions. I took the bridge which he had crossed with me that day filling my world with laughter, love and an immense feeling of togetherness leaving the shadows of the past behind.

I will wait for you as these ruins wait for travelers who seek the voice of  their soul. I will wait for you to run your fingers along the contours of my body just as we ran them along the walls and columns, plinths and arches. I will wait, even though it is hard to be left behind.  I want to get used to this feeling that you are with me even though you are not by my side or may never be. Waiting isn’t about patience or even hope, it is about keeping the dream alive for sometimes it is the only thing one has. The only thing to live for. A mirage that keeps a lost and lonesome traveler alive with hope in the harsh reality of life. I know that no oasis awaits me with its bountiful gifts .. love is sometimes just a distant dream, togetherness an illusion. Sometimes one knows one’s place -  outside the periphery, just as these ruins in the desert and that is the beauty of it.

I would like to thank James Goddard  for allowing me to use these excellent photographs from his travels to Syria and Spain. The photo credit goes  to him. 

This is the last post of the  series    You and Me .. at least for now ..

Would you hold me? Give a real hug?

I like the way you say “we will find a way”. I like the word “we”. It feels like a warm hug even from such a distance. I have lived a life fractured into “You” and “I”.  It never became “we” until you came in it.

It is true that every time I think of you  it is like getting a hug from inside out but sometimes the want for a real hug consumes me like a wild-fire. I wonder if the love we put into words will ever transform into hugs - real hugs not virtual.

I have forgotten how a  real hug feels like, the warmth of a human body against yours, nothing sexual or romantic but just a need to be held. I can’t remember even if I go back looking through my youth or even my childhood. Just simple hug, that cocaine high , that surge in the blood, that solace of being desired, that shamanistic, trance like feeling of ecstasy which strangely illuminates from within.   I desire you in the simplest way, simpler than you can think of and this desire is constellation of  wants and needs, hopes and dreams exploding inside me yearning for that one hug. The warmth of your arms around me.

I get that warmth from the words you say and write and the yearning increases with each day.

Sometimes I sit and wonder, why do we feel so uncomfortable giving a hug as we grow up? We don’t teach our children importance of non-sexual touch. They grow up without that knowledge and don’t know what to do when someone wants to hug them. They freeze. They feel confused when a sudden voice from inside tells them to go embrace someone. They burn but can’t bring themselves to give a simple hug. It surprises me how my own boys somehow lack in this especially when I instilled it in them. I guess society has a lot to do with this inhibition we have. These simple gestures of holding hands, hugging are lost in the rigid norms society enforces on us. It is surprising that two girls hanging out, hugging , walking hand in hand, giving a friendly peck on the cheek is acceptable but when boys do it becomes a matter of concern and ridicule, something abnormal, out-of-place. What kind of world are we living in? Aren’t we depriving our children of basic human needs? What will they become when they grow up, if not skewed up, frustrated adults fighting with their basic instincts?

We grow up to be icons of romance, fulfil those slush fantasies but so lack in these simple things. It is strange that sometimes those in a relationship/ marriage too lack these simple pleasures just like we, the lonely ones do. It is not gender or age based either.  We connect with each other at many levels but not on this one. There are times when one wants to give a hug and restrains and if one gets a hug one freezes and shrugs it off. Either way we lose, curl up, and go into a shell yearning for a  hug.

Empty hearts give empty hugs, even the pleasure of sex quickly goes cold in cold arms. I have been there so I know. They are just physical motions one goes through, a routine, devoid of love, desire, care or longing empty arms which may feel warm but leave your cold and drained. Slowly that dies too leaving a void, a starved body longing for human touch. Nothing is more bitter than to be forced to submit to the falseness of love. To endure the cage of arms that suck life out of you instead of  nurturing it.

I long for those arms, those arms that can end the growing longing; arms that would wrap me in the comfort of loving energy that matches mine. Arms that would make me feel safe, cared, understood for who I am. Not possessed, owned or used as an object, not holding me as an obligation to dead vows .

I sometimes feel like hugging random people on streets but I notice how suspicious we are of each other. We restrain ourselves and lock ourselves afraid that the floodgates of human emotions may overflow. Unsure if we can handle the deluge. We give virtual hugs freely but a real hug is a herculean task. I have felt the flow of energy even when touched accidently but it just ends in a surprised reaction. Hardly anyone gives a real hug these days. It has been reduced to a social gesture. We hug our animal companions more than we hug our fellow human beings. Isn’t it something to think about? Have you ever wondered “why”? Why is there such a social disconnect?

I sometime ..no, actually all the time … feel the need to put my head in someone’s lap or shoulder and cry or open my arms to someone who needs it, to stroke someone’s hair, to simply hold someone’s hands, simple things that words can never express.

You have to be in this place to feel the emptiness of the feeling of having someone who can change this forever and yet being a distant dream. This feeling is beyond the loneliness of any sort.

To be held in true love is a rare experience these days, be it from children, parents, friends, lovers, be it in any relationship even marriage.

I am looking for those arms, those arms which would hold me and true love, compassion of human heart, comfort and understanding.

Would you hold me? Would you turn those words into real hugs?

Would you?

You know

I would

If you choose so

Till then I will just desire. Feel your words wrap me in their warmth and make my fragmented state of ordinary life a little coherent. No longer scattered like autumn leaves through  time and space but contained at one place. In You.

When was the last time you gave or got a real hug?

If it makes you think, I feel for you.

Here is one  for you

Empty Spaces, Inky Nights and a Sound Cave

This is just a collection of thoughts triggered by a fabulous photograph of an empty walkway, a message exchange of thoughts on the beauty of sunsets and nights, an emotionally charged lash-out from someone right in the morning and a gloomy rain filled day.

Words explode in my head pushing and thumping against its walls to escape, thoughts stumble on each other like perplexed mass but I could not bring myself to write a single word. Frustrated with myself I turned to reading but the words became a blur. Crying is therapeutic and I was filled since some days. Suddenly my eyes became pools of hot liquid and from under the closed lids streams of hurt and pain and utter dejection with self began to slid down my flushed cheeks. For a long time I just let it all flow. My temples throbbed and zillions of electric currents passed through my head sending shock waves down my tired body. Then it all ceased. Sleep is a healer too.

Words still kept their distance. When the walls begin to cave in and suffocate you light streams in from some crack somewhere. I chanced upon a lovely photograph of a walkway and a simple exchange of thoughts and a some comments reminded me how I miss the empty spaces in life. How all the life, even in lonesomeness, I am filled with an inner chatter, how I need to calm my self and embrace what I love. Go where love is. I have always been fond of long empty corridors, walkways. They give me a sense of intimacy. There are stories drifting in the play of light and shadows.Shadows that add meaning to the mundane. I remember how I would lean against a pillar , a tree or against the coolness of a wall and watch the deeper play than that which words can express. I would imagine the people who must have walked there once, their conversations, silences and then those empty places would fill with colors, textures, sounds and smells and as suddenly they would appear, they would vanish. Leaving a quiet silence and I would stand at its threshold not moving a muscle listening to the silence.

As I saw the photograph I was sucked into that place, that time and for a moment nothing else existed. The conversation drifted to sunsets and nights and I remembered what beautiful sunsets I had seen during my various journeys. Each one distinctly different from another. Sometime a carnage of dreams and memories, a sun stabbed sky turning  from Merlot to scarlet to shades of crimson, purple, blue and bronze which existed only in the box of crayons from my childhood. As I grew up I usually found them spread across the sky. A few of those brilliant sunsets I still carry in my heart. The orgasmic meeting of sky and earth at the horizon. The shimmering snow-clad peaks of Himalayas. The deepening evening shadows, the cacophony of birds, the sweet fragrance of pine or flowers riding on the back of evening breeze, the timelessness and a knowledge that we have a few hours of solitude ahead of us. It is surreal experience that remains etched in the memory for ever.

The sunsets led to the nights. The rich hues of night sky, the changing patterns, the calm that slowly seeps into the hollow of your bones. Night sky holds a very special place for me. I find it more alive than the day sky. I have memories associated with the night sky from my childhood, from my growing years and those years in between when it became my constant companion. The healing dark, I called it.

I often wondered what pulls me to the night and realized that just like memory it suppresses the idle details. Night is all-inclusive. Everything is draped in one single color.  A vast expanse of oneness that takes everything in its compassionate fold. There were times I felt choked behind the walls and curtains during nights and it loomed large over me like a hungry carnivore ready to take a plunge and dig its sharp claws in my soft flesh of my heart. I longed to step out and reach for the night sky outside my prison , lay bare my body and soul to it but then slowly I realized that all the serenity and calm that the night brings is inside me. Nights became the blotting paper for my sorrows, a playground for my desires, a confidante for the untold secrets and unfulfilled dreams just as it has been a fairy kingdom with stories written in stars and imaginary shapes and figures lingering in the drifting moon and cottony clouds during my childhood.

There was something about the darkness I loved then and do now. Every perspective changes as the night deepens and then fades with the first break of morning light. Laying in bed  just before the sleep takes over is the most rewarding time. It is a time  when the human heart , alone and unperceived, is full of powerful emotions and surrenders itself completely to the darkness. When all that is concealed is revealed.

City nights are harsh, artificial, haunted by neon dreams and smog that chocks its lungs and yet there is a time when everything stops. When one is pulled by the magic of the night sky. The few hours before dawn when I usually step out for deeper communion with self and whats around me.

Nights spent lying under the stars on terrace during summers still makes me nostalgic. The first thing that we lose when we grow up is the sense of wonder. I remember nibbling on a blade of grass and just watch the night sky. A million zephyrs, a lonely and frayed moon tugging the corner of a cloud drifting aimlessly, smokey wispy clouds,  sometimes  just inky blackness  of a winter night descending on everything under it like a widow of the universe it mourns in silence.  Its deep horizons yearning and longing for all that is lost.

The wild stormy nights of rain armed with jagged spears of lightning slicing the sky in two. Rainy nights that cleanse the venom inside and outside. I have spent hours standing under the night rain letting it out flow out.

Have you ever heard someone play soulful music on a wooden flute in the stillness of the night? Ever felt the warmth of human body next to you on an endless summer night without even touching? Ever thrown your arms open to the sky as if fishing for stars? Even looked at the mist moving like a ghost in the night from behind a glass window. Ever stood in an open filed, a lonely beach, a moonlit desert, at the edge of a cliff jutting across a deep valley drinking in the night? Ever walked the smoke-filled, neon lit, city roads at night? If not then you haven’t lived to the fullest.

I have walked the meandering , winding roads in the hills with sweet intoxicating smell of wet pine filling my lungs and puddles dull of moon light creating a magical scene after a sudden mountain rain. Roads hold me captive but we will talk about them some other time.

I woke up to a rain-soaked day today. When you stir a dying fire there are chances of some spark turning into a flame. Some questions burn like embers and should be left alone. Relationships are complex tangled web of emotions. I watch an emotional outburst turn bitter  and pungent with rage right in the morning. With heavy heart and tear filled eyes I took the blows , scared that one wrong word may spin the thing into uncontrolled roller-coaster and it was the last thing I want at this point of time in my life.

Brimming with pain I tried to stop the deluge that waited to be unleashed. The best option at such times , and I have faced many of them, is to go into a sound cave.

This is something I learned over the time. To switch off, disconnect, choose some music with drums, guitars, preferably rock, heavy metal , turn up the volume, put on the headphones and go into a sound cave. My favorites in such times are Enigma, Nirvana, The Rasmus, Evanescence etc. I used to listen to soft melodies which acted like fuel to fire marooning me in deeper in sadness. Music can be a great stress reliever as well as an escape into another world which is far remote from the grim, heart wrenching reality. Wearing headphones acts like  insulation from outside world – a sound cave where nothing else exists. In times when the world seemed too much for me I learned to slip into this sound cave. For an hour or so I sedated myself with music giving myself time to emerge out of  the incident that shook me. I often play some music according to my mood and listen with headphones on. It is my way to kill loneliness , to disconnect with the unpleasant and to connect with the sounds and rhythms , to absorb the lyrics which may or may not really have any relation with my current situation and mood but it soothes my inner.

I realized that doing this cleared much of the blocks within me including the writer’s block.

The sand is slowly shifting from under my feet. Uncertainty is looming large. Am at the edge of desire. I tell my heart that everything will work out well but I know certain things are elusive, distant dreams that may never get fulfilled. Sometimes we are at a crossroad of emotions and all we can do is either push through the fear and go ahead with the flow where ever it takes or become a cynic and get caught in the web of “what if”s and “if only”s .

Last one year  has been a journey within. I discovered facets of me that I never knew existed. I found myself doing things I could never imagine doing in wildest dreams and yet I am still unable to cut that one thread that is rubbing against my soul and making it bleed.

There is also something else tugging at my heart apart from losing my new-found economic independence. Something which holds the key to my life.  Love is a many splendored thing. Right now , with my muse back, I am letting the universe take over. I have slipped the questions to the universe. I know the answers will come .

Leaving you with a song I love

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6qLNnxGDaA&feature=related

Photograph : Part of the collonaded walkway that surrounds the Plaza Mayor at Salamanca. Photo Credit  James Goddard  . Many thanks.

Breathless – GBE 2 Week #62

Little rivulets streamed down the nape of her neck as she stepped out of shower and reached for the fresh lavender fragrant bathrobe. Usually she would hurriedly pat dry herself, get into some clothes and start her usual routine but today something made her linger. Absently she ran her slender fingers over the soft plush fabric smoothing out the nonexistent creases and remembering how he had looked at her the other day. His eyes pools of longing.

Friction of her wet thighs started a fire that exploded in her body like a rocker flare. She shifted uncomfortably, surprised by her hunger and as she turned she caught sight of herself in the long mirror and then, she saw herself  from his eyes.

It was long since she had really seen herself  in nude. Little prisms of water quivering on her smooth flesh, her prominent collar bones and the taut angular muscular neck, ripe full breasts, the curve of her belly, the supple soft folds of her body now glowing in the sunset colours of her beauty, she felt the heart of her desire throb with longing between her legs.

She was at an age where she had begun to regret staying faithful to a man who had never really loved her. For years her soul dwelled in an unknown body of  a woman she did not associate with, an empty bottle thrown in a corner by some drunkard.

But now, as she stood there gazing at herself,  inflamed by the urgency of a choice between a last hope of an exotic experience or a final resignation. Drenched in a blend of magic and mayhem, need and disruption, she began to question the course her life had chosen long ago. For the first time in her solitary, confined life she saw in herself a possibility and a potential of corruption that left her breathless.

This post is written for WEEK #62 (7-22-12 to 7-28-12): Breathless

You and I – Secret Tales

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don’t know any other way of loving.”  Neruda

There is a certain relish in what you steal, in savoring the flavour of forbidden fruit. Stolen kisses . … stolen moments … a sudden brush against me in the cyberspace that made my soul dizzy. Today I am searching for words, searching for those apt words to describe the feeling of intense love that I feel for you. Love that is not laced with passion or lust or longing but with a  warmth that rises from different strategically located places in your body and then slowly sweeps over your entire being .

You entered my life like a comet and exploded into a zillion stars, illuminating my night , my life, me. I felt star spattered. A blooming new galaxy.

You made me feel like meadow of wild flowers. Not roses. Not tulips. No. Just a beautiful landscape blazing with thousands and thousands of wild flowers.

You brought out all the essences of a woman in me. The wild gypsy girl , the sensuous lover, the porn star, a nurturer and a healer . You stimulated and ignited my intellectual side, spiked it with wit and humor.

With that and much more you gave me dignity, honored my womanhood, held my hand and pulled me up into the comfort of your embrace.  Shielding and protecting me like a cocoon. A womb for my metamorphosis.

Unlike all those who scarred my life where ever it touched theirs, you asked for nothing in return and that I guess made me open myself to you completely without fear and inhibitions.

This is called Trust.

One doesn’t sign a treaty for this. One just believes totally and with no reservations and second thoughts.

This is called Love .

Across thousands of miles hearts connect, blossom into something nameless. Something much above the usual norms of friendship and romance, above everything that’s temporal and ephemeral.

I know when we meet , it will be enough for me to just sit beside you.

There were million little things that added up together over the time and I knew we were destined to be together. I knew it the first time we reached out to each other. It was like a journey back home and You were the talisman I needed to survive the highest highs and the lowest lows.

It is so simple to love you. To go about doing the mundane just with knowledge that you are there. It’s easy to let you be with your solitude, understand the language of your quiet and return when beckoned with love.  It is an aromatic blend of cinnamon and clove, ginger and honey, strawberry and cream,  Fragrant Tisanes.  It is the raw mango and mint. It is the citrus moon and the marmalade sky.

A margarita with its lush flavors and smooth delicate blend in a salt rimmed glass. A long tropical cocktail. A tequila shot. Single malt on a rainy day besides the fireplace.

We are different, yet similar. Distant  and alone yet together. Whatever we do is as much  yours as mine. Love grows in spaces between, not in bodies or someplace else.

Every time you call my name some piece of me falls into place. I’m glad to have you in my life. I feel  infused with glitter and stars and popping candy. It’s flowing in my blood and brain. fingertips and toes. I love him. I don’t know how to describe how happy I am. I am still searching for some apt words to describe my love for you.

For now I will just surrender myself to you, my laughter, pain, truth, lies, half-truths, half lies, my hopes, dreams and secrets, my fleeting days, endless nights, . I give you my flesh my skeleton . I let you occupy me. I will remain vulnerable for that is how love is supposed to be.

There is a pleasure in simple things. Simple words of love carelessly thrown , stolen kisses, stolen moments. These are secret tales. You may have your own. We all have unbridled desires, secret wish lists and they all start coming out when you are in love. 

read all the posts here YOU AND ME 

You and I – Corazon

Heart 

helium filled balloon

there is goes 

floating into unknown

chasing dreams

mine but not really 

who is it seeking ?

who knows? 

whose calling ?

Only the heart knows

I am flawed, fractured,scared and I know am living an impossible dream Love is a long haul and am ready to brave the tides and the whirlpools, storms and crushing waves.  I call it impossible not because I fear of losing it but because you are afraid to push though your fears. Nothing kills love more brutally than our own incapability to hold it together.

we talk more say less

think more act less

hear more listen less 

forget more remember less

empty more fill less 

conceal more reveal less 

take more give little

we leave a lot unsaid undone 

we do everything wrong 

just about everything

we turn love into a mental illness 

we pretend

we deny

and then we regret

we suffer

we live a heartache

.

 .

.

I wrote a letter to you last night. I wrote it on a white paper. With a pencil. I did not just write it to fill the nightmarish hours, or to make it seem as close to reality as possible, nor did I write it so I could trace my fingers over it and feel the throb of each word. I did not write it to bring it to my lips and kiss the way I would have loved to kiss you – gently or to inhale your imagined warmth from it.

 I wrote it for a simple reason that I missed you in the most desperate human way. Raw naked want. Just that. Simple hunger. No , not the one that consumes the body and makes it burn over the cool white sheets. Not that. A want , a hunger of togetherness. Of being with each other.

It is something very private. Something that you may not even feel or may clothe it with your perfectly woven wordrobe so that it loses bits of its reality but I, I miss you more than you can imagine, more that I can  believe and I was prepared to miss you a great deal you see. This missingness is a deluge.

How do you miss someone whom you haven’t met in flesh and blood?

Why?

Let us not debate that. This is not a courtroom. This is not a trial of love .

It just is . Period.

It is a wait.

A wait that maybe you may realize and accept  that you too want me with the same intensity after all.

If not , maybe you will gather strength to say it otherwise, to put love to trial, to hold court, and the verdict will be given and love will lead us to our separate graves.

Have you walked through empty corridors? There is an intimacy there. Like love. It fills you.  A fusion of light and dark. Shadow and light.

Sometimes I feel you brush past against me , a presence, just as you in my mind, in my heart, sending a tingling sensation down the nape of my neck all the way to the small of my back.  It gets under my skin, circulates, and takes residence at various places I had forgotten they existed.

I wrote to you with a pencil .. why ? you will ask.

I never liked pens. I like the black on white. I like the fragility and fluidity of writing with a pencil. I like the way it softly moves, like foreplay.  Pens are crude in my opinion. violent.

There is a movement in words written with pencil.. I watch them lazily curl up on your pillow or slide beneath your nightshirt clinging to your chest, I watch them nestle in your hair as my fingers would. I watch them trace patterns on your body like kisses.  They are secrets, sensuous syllables cuddled under the supple  folds of your skin. Taking your shape, spooning . Only words written with pencil can do this. This perfect merger of hard lead and soft smooth delicate paper. Only they come with so many more possibilities.

Only they can map the topography of your body without leaving a tell-tale sign, silently like a tendril wrapped around a stem. With thousand miles between us I let them make what we can not. Love

So I wrote a letter to you last night, like every night . I can not keep away from you.

Go buy a pencil. Run your fingers over its spine. Hold it gently. Let its soft tip move on a white paper. Let the heart do the rest.

I wrote to you a letter like I do each night  and tied it to my heart .. there it goes .. it will find you … if you chose so.

Read all the YOU AND I posts here.

GBE2 : We are one and one is many

WEEK #57 (6-17-12 to 6-23-12): Two Days Ago

My feature on ancient art and culture took me to various places still tucked away from civilization. Sometimes to the jungles and at others to the deep valleys in the mountains where even the sun dreaded to make an appearance and this time I was in Shanghai. After a month of extensive work I decided to indulge my other self.

I saw her at the flower shop. A young woman practicing the 21st-century version of the oldest profession. street-walker in fish net stockings. She wore a short white dress and no make up. She didn’t need to.  She had personality that could smoke a man with one intense look.  Vulnerability makes women stronger and she sure was a strong woman not just physically but her eyes  clearly stated who was in control. I felt the hunger rising in me.

I stood rooted to the ground unable to take my eyes off her. She must have felt the glare burn into her but decided not to notice. An eternity passed before I could muster up the courage to walk up to her.

“100$ for night and no fantasy sex”, She said in a businesslike tone. No emotions attached.

“Fantasy sex? What’s that?” I asked, amused by the term.

She looked hard at my face, rolled out a cigarette and said” Never mind. You got a car?”

I nodded. There was no bigger turn on than a combination of intelligence and beauty in a woman.

I led the way to the car and we drove off to my cottage. It was late and I had a flight to catch next night. There were many loose ends but who cared. All I wanted at that moment was Her. I noticed that unlike others in her profession she hadn’t gone any extra miles to “perfect” herself. I liked that.

” Sana, that’s my name”.

Not much of a talker she was beginning to scare me in a very exciting way.

I smiled to break the ice.

I was sure I saw a smile appear at the corner of her mouth , it made my knees turn into jelly.

We reached the cottage and she immediately began to undress.

Beginning to feel uncomfortable I fumbled with my clothes and after years I really felt alive again

She was strong and gentle and knew the game.

I had never given to such needs before but felt good and relaxed.

It was sometime in the early morning when I slid my hand into hers and she stiffened, woke up startled, jumped out of the bed, grabbed her clothes and rushed to the bathroom screaming abuses and sobbing.

I had no clue what hit me. Too shocked to react I hurriedly grabbed the bed sheet , wrapped it around my waist and began to knock on the bathroom door. I could hear her sobbing but she did not respond even after my continuous appeals and assurances that I won’t harm her.

Numb by the incident , I dragged myself to the side table and gulped almost all the water from the jug. Spilling most of it on the floor. With trembling hands I replaced the jug and waited. Unable to think.

After an hour  she emerged. Fully dressed but very conscious of her clothes. She kept pulling down her dress to cover her thighs, failing miserably. Her whole persona had changed. Suddenly she wasn’t the same woman I had picked up last night.

Her eyes were red from weeping. she clutched the hem of her dress and was trembling like a leaf.

” Who are you? Why have you brought me here?” She asked in low scared whisper.

I noticed that she stood very rigid near the bathroom door.

” Remember we met at the flower shop last night and you agreed to sleep with me for 100$ ?” I said as gently as possible carefully choosing my words.

She winced as if struck by a flash of lightning.

“Am not a hooker” she screamed and rushed towards the door crying.

I knew there was something wrong with her and I hurried to stop her fearing she might do some harm to herself.

“Sana, relax am not gonna hurt you. Calm down. I will take you to your home. Where do you stay?”

She backed off  immediately.

“Am not Sana. My name is Jen. I stay in Colaba. Where have you brought me? What did you do to me?” She began to weep again.

“Am sorry Jen but you told me your name was Sana. Trust me whatever I say is true. I am a journalist”. I showed her my ID.

She studied it for a long time.

“Where are we?” She was more composed now as she got up and walked up to the window and looked out.

“Shanghai”.

“You got me to Shanghai?”

“No. Absolutely Not. As I said I found you in the flower shop in the market.”

I was beginning to get worried now.

“Let me call a doctor”. I moved to the phone when she suddenly turned and grabbed my wrist.

” Don’t call the police. Please take me home. You are an Indian. Help me.”

I didn’t know how to react. I had a flight in the night and here I was stuck in the most unimaginable situation.

Naturally she had no idea where she lived in Shanghai According to her she wasn’t even aware how she got here.

I suspected a foul play as it is a normal thing with these hookers but the more I watched her the idea weakened.

I decided to take help. It took a lot of convincing to make her agree.

I ordered breakfast and told her to rest.

With a lot of resistance I finally  tucked her in bed and began to make the calls.

Even after some string pulling and persistence I was unable to get Jen’s identity verified. How she got to Shanghai also remained a mystery.

It was only in the afternoon we were able to leave the hotel. I took her to the same place from where I picked her in the night. She did not have any memory of it and stared blankly at the flower shop. This was another woman ; vulnerable and weak.

We began to walk towards the beach. She still clutched the hem of her dress uncomfortably. I took her to a store nearby and told her to buy a dress for herself.  She mustered a smile through tear filled eyes and chose  a comfortable pair of slacks and soft Tee.

I paid as she changed into them, feeling much at ease now.

As we  turned to leave I saw her freeze and then all of a sudden she broke into a run.

I ran after her calling out and very scared.

She was screaming some name I was unable to hear from such a distance.  The man in front of her stopped , turned and she ran into her open arms. I reached the spot panting and out of breath. She was crying bitterly.

The man was in his mid fifties.

“She lost herself. I was about to take her to the authorities.” I did not know what I was saying.

“She is my daughter Maya. We came to Shanghai  four days back. She disappeared yesterday morning with most of the money and I have searched for her since then”. His eyes filled with tears of gratitude. “Thank you for keeping her safe.”

I felt a surge of guilt sweep over me. All the events of last night came alive.

“Maya? Did you just say her name was Maya? She said she was Jen?” I thought I was losing my pebbles.

“Jen? No.no she is Maya. Here, see , this is her passport.”  I stared at the picture of hers and the name

Maya Nair.

24 yrs

“She does that often. Must have gotten scared. Sorry about that.” She smiled feebly, stroking her hair.

Somehow it was all complicated and it did not matter. I nodded and returned the smile

I had cancelled my flight tickets so accepted their invite for dinner.

I realized that she may have forgotten about Jen so did not offer to give any details.

I felt the same urge to hold her close to me as she came down to the dinning hall of the hotel they were staying in. She was exactly opposite of  Sana but had the same vulnerable intelligent eyes that made men drop to their knees.

I checked myself and greeted her warmly. She smiled and settled close to her doting father. She had a child like innocence and it made me difficult to associate it with the sensuous woman who has made love to him last night.

After a wonderful dinner and  innumerable thank yous I took their leave and headed back to my cottage thinking how my life changed two days ago. I wondered if I would ever meet her again in India.  I knew she lived in Colaba but did not have any address. They were supposed to leave by afternoon flight the next day.  I noticed she looked at me in a strange way. They were definitely Sana’s eyes. I wondered if she remembered our night together. Before the thought took a grip I drove away.

My flight was rescheduled for two days later so I thought of  just resting.  Exhausted I slept for I don’t know how many hours until  a waiter knocked at the door waking me from my slumber.

It was a note in childlike handwriting.

“We are all one and one is many. Our lives are the notes of the beautiful tragic score  life plays all the time. We have our eccentricities, secrets, game plans, vulnerabilities, and highs. We tip-off one another, wage wars, indulge in passion, sit huddled in a corner and weep and sometime plot murder. Ready to kill each other. But we stick together. We have one thing in common. Intelligent imagination. It keeps our strings attached.  There are many of us. Sana and I are the hosts. Then we are split and fractured into many more. Let us call them ghosts. Usually we are in command but sometimes these ghosts take over. Occasionally as individuals but more often combined. I live in a house of mirrors with these reflections I call myself, warped and twisted. Echoes of loneliness gets deeper sometime and I do not know my name or who I am. I become a stranger to myself. I can not tell what is real and what is not. I just endure  though at times I lose the will to do so. I know I have. 

We know you understand. To understand is to feel love and compassion and to forgive. My father knows I am not well. We have found a therapist. Most of the time I do not recollect anything but this time I feel something that can’t be named. I feel you. You are a good man.

Sending my Indian address if you wish to meet sometime. Thank you for everything . I hope to write a book one day and I will dedicate it to you.

SJM”

I felt a tear roll down my cheek.  A tear of  respect and love for a brave woman. I prayed that she be cured of her illness for she deserved one whole healthy happy life.

Last Night

 

Last night was longer and made for torture or reflection or for savoring of loneliness. Like an ancient tomb where the souls come out gasping for life and searching for potential bodies which they can occupy. The soul with as opposed to them struggles to escape.

I lay taking in the  stuffy darkness of the room.  Everything began to rapidly merge into blackness. Unfamiliar shapes, menacing, uncanny, or merely grotesque began to emerge.

Some prisons don’t have bars, or guards. Such was last night, thicker than any wall, blind, empty and  immensely engulfing . Like a huge gaping hole which slowly sucks you in and  now and then you brush against appalling things that roam and prowl in its chambers. You see nothing. Hear nothing. The murderously asphyxiating silence is all one has for company . 

Was I scared? No. It was a trance like state where you feel nothing or feel so deeply that the pain makes you numb.

An owl screeched and I could imagine it gliding past my window. Stillness returned.

On the opposite wall a pattern began to emerge. The fluorescent hands of the clock like some invisible claws blurred into nothingness and a face of time emerged. The glowing numbers burned holes in my mind. Nothing stirred.

Spellbound by the deep penetrating eyes I lay transfixed on my bed.  Thirst like the scrape of hot sand-paper began to bruise my throat. I tried to get up but something held me tightly to the bed. My eyes returned to the face on the wall.

All the uncertainties, all the questions came rushing to me. Here was Time who had all the answers.

“Only the time will tell ” I was told.

I looked beseechingly , pleading for the answers. None came.

Maybe it wasn’t time for them to be revealed.

So, why was it here, staring at me like a death mask ?

What did it want?

Why it glaring eyes seemed to look accusingly at me, making me shift uncomfortably?

Time doesn’t tell anything. It doesn’t heal. Don’t believe it all you have been told. Time simply crushes you, chains you, makes you its slave and whiplashes you to obey its commands. The answers, the healing comes from either within or from elsewhere. Time just watches the drama and laughs at our misery . Time is the devil to whom we have sold our souls. It is the master , we  mere slaves. Only an inner uprising can bring the change. Only that can create true love, true courage, true self.

Tonight the battle was at its peak but something was amiss or maybe someone and it made all the difference.

I shifted my pillow to the other side but I could still feel its gaze  penetrating   through my skull.  It’s measured ticking reverberating.

With some effort I pulled myself out of bed and removed and shoved the menacing clock under a pile of clothes. The muffled sound of its breathing still audible.

I gulped a chilled glass of water and decided to lie facing the window. The hot summer night-sky claimed me.

The butter-gold moon came encroaching through my window. Suddenly filling it with a calm glow. Spent by my inner state of being I watched as it lingered in deep sky. Watching me with its forlorn eyes.

A jarring buzz vibrated in the small of my back  scaring the wits out of me. The cell phone had quietly slid itself and nestled in the comfort zone away from the events of the night. The led light brought me back to the real world. Reluctantly I opened my laptop to work. Sometimes one is just pulled from all sides like an elastic band and then released. The sting of pain shot through my head as my fingers tapped mindlessly at the keyboard.

The cellphone meanwhile breathed its last. Sleepless and restless I went to put it for charging, took the chair out in the balcony and slumped on it. The moon had disappeared behind the high-rise buildings. The air was still and did not provide any solace. Back in the room I brought the clock out . The hands had miraculously appeared, the face had melted into the fiber of the machine. 3 AM it said.

I could hear an early bird call somewhere.

Sometime loneliness and absence digs its claws deeper than usual and leaves one wounded. Such was last night. The ache hasn’t subsided nor has the yearning.

You and I – Unrequited Love

Days and nights have suddenly turned cold in the middle of summer. Cold and Hard like last year’s loaf of bread. I slice them with blunt knives and chew on them without appetite.  Indifferent messages do little to bridge the aching distance or break the deafening  silence that has occupied every fiber of life nor does an occasional assemble of  affectionate words give any comfort. Even though the heart longs, it knows it will never get more than that.

I wonder if this pitiless indifference is subterfuge for hiding the torments of love or it is  the opposite of love. Love has denied rest to my soul and slumber to my eyes. I have begun to dread the approaching night. It deepens the loneliness and hurt as I stare into the vast emptiness of the dark sky. A lonesome moon sometimes glides past the window and lying on my bed, fatigued by days of sleeplessness, I watch it disappear from sight.

Words that I wrote for you float like pipe dreams, adding fuel to the slow fire consuming me from within. It is funny how presence makes itself felt more poignant through absence. Stray memories come to haunt , it is amazing how darkness brings things to life, gives them a form, a voice.

I lie as still as possible , least I disturb your silence and it moves away just as you have. I don’t even dare to breathe.

Mind is a fucking manipulating control freak and in those moments of vulnerability , it leaves no chance to whiplash.

There is no feeling worse than knowing you weren’t worthy of truth, of love, of sharing, of  togetherness, of complete oneness, not even an incomplete one. Unrequited love curls itself in some secret crevice , wounded and bleeding. It doesn’t die.

There is always a part of me that hopes for more, and so there is a part of me that is always a fool. Love does that.

Am facing a silence so cold, so sharp you could cut yourself on it.  There is nothing so hurtful, nothing so bare and forlorn as the silence that falls like swords on two people who no longer know what to say to one another, and it is the kind of silence that tells you that you are no longer of any importance to that person, who really is no longer even there; it is a silence that renders you invisible.

It has rendered me invisible. Some days ago I wrote , sometimes one knows one’s place – outside the periphery.. The words come out so powerfully now. It is all good to talk of giving space etc, of trust and understanding and being comfortable even in silence of a loved one but this is not that silence.. this is a silence that cripples.

It’s a marvel that even with such agony the longing doesn’t diminish , it continues to feed on the loneliness and gain strength. It grows stronger , so does love- even the unrequited one, for it has its own rainbows.

“Because, if you could love someone, and keep loving them, without being loved back . . . then that love had to be real. It hurt too much to be anything else.”-Sarah Cross

but the other part holds true too. We are creatures of desire and desire needs to be respected.

Love needs to be fed. Nurtured. Nourished. It needs to be deeply felt.

It needs to be reciprocated.  Replenished.

It needs to be expressed. In actions as well as words

Especially when words are the only medium.

Unrequited love is an orphan of silence.

Abandoned to fend for itself  during the endless days and never-ending nights.

Read all YOU AND ME  posts here 

Am going to be alright

Some days are tough. Very tough. The days when you are torn into shred by the pain and grief. When you want to reach out and hug and wail like baby, when you just want the world to end. When you yearn for the human touch, when voice is not enough and yet it is the only solace you have. When the words get lost in the lungs and you clutch the cell in your fist shut, your blurry eyes , tears streaming down your cheeks, unable to  utter anything. When you swing between being a woman and a being a mother and feel helpless and defeated in both roles. When phrases like “hang in there” or ” this too shall pass” sound so hollow, for they don’t lessen the agony one bit.

When you feel the burn at the back of your neck and behind the ears, a throb at the temple, head heavy as boulder , eyes nothing but overflowing pools of hot liquid. When your cheeks, and jaw hurt as if you have chewed on something hard for a long time. When “moving on” seems like biggest hoax. What doesn’t kill you doesn’t make you stronger , it cripples you. It is intensity of the disaster that matters. The deluge of grief that opens up so many wounds. It makes distances grow manifold.

Last two days have been a chaos especially the Easter Sunday brought sad news that broke the floodgates and it all just flowed and flowed. All the pain that had accumulated for sometime slipped quietly into the new one and it became a lethal cocktail of emotions. All the parts of me that were vulnerable , opened. I still do not really know which was the dominating pain- of loss, of not being with my sons or my own unmet desires and loneliness.

Death is always brutal realization of  how fickle everything else is.   A few days ago a little pup brought warmth of love and filled the  empty lives of my boys with something to hold on to, to cuddle and care , to watch over and look forward to and they were ecstatic. I said a little prayer of thanks and hoped that my absence would finally not loom large and trouble their hearts. The pup would occupy that vacant place at least in some way but destiny has been cruel to us. We have not yet finished our quota of hurts.

Joe passed away early Sunday morning. A very brief  illness evening before and in the morning he was gone. Sometimes there are no words which can console a heart lashed again and again and again by life. Each Love creates its own theory of pain.

Do you know how it feels to bury a baby you have fed and bathed and cuddled next to you? Do you know how it feels to someone who himself is just a kid? Can you even imagine the pain that slices through the very core of a boy who brought the baby home, made him a part of his own self, shared his energies, his love, joy, sorrow, everything with the little animal companion. I do. Been there done that and to see my boys go through it just left me numb. We tried to put up a brave front, said positive things to each other and in  silence of our heart we scream in agony. We broke down , unable to bridge the distance between us and finally our brain shuts off.  Sometimes we the live just because of the stumbling breaths we exchange. There is disquiet of quiet all around. Once the first deluge is over , there is a complete disconnect. One wants silence.. complete silence.

I disconnected. Put everything on mute and my heart longed to connect . Just for a while. Just with you. To be there. For a short time. Just as it longed for the boys. Loneliness cuts deep. It swallows you completely. I guess that is the way it IS, to be there and let it take over. To feel it, observe it, endure it. Loneliness shelters in this unconditional hurt. You curl in and feel safe in its nets.

I buried my face in the pillow and wept. Tears heal. Then I opened the curtains and gazed at the night sky. Eyes dry and swollen , sleep as usual hiding somewhere as it afraid to enter those burning gaping spaces. Night sky is soothing. I guess its darkness repels the darkness within.  Somewhere between  those two darkness I drifted off  into an unknown land carrying the unbearable weight of all that can go wrong and has gone wrong.

We are all connected, through love, through loneliness, through pain and even from a  distance one reaches out in the darkness hoping to touch some other hand. We are designed for many things but loneliness is not one of them. Yet it came to me slowly and steadily. Circumstances brought it to me unasked. Now I guess I have become accustomed to it and sometime even seek shelter in it, appreciate it. It helps me still myself. To listen to my body. It’s aches and wants.

I decided to go some place quiet today. Sit sometime in silence. The church I visited was closed. Another sign that one must endure and not escape. The taxi driver was sleepy and we almost had a brush with death twice. I hurt my right arm. Bruised my middle finger. It turned a deep shade of blue-green.

The heat was unbearable. Throat parched and body drained with exhaustion I looked vacantly stared at the passing terrain.

Now the night has come, something is still tugging at my heart But am gonna be alright. Damn it.  I am still hanging between silence and words. Guess its time to let it flow. Let the body relax and let the pain ease out.

Joe baby, where ever you are , know that you are remembered , loved and terribly missed. RIP.