Phoenixes and Futility

Surely you remember the betrayal.
From….was it yesterday?
Last week?
A few months ago?
Or has it been years now?

Have you cried? Paced up and down? Woken up with a sudden fearful start?
And was it because of the bitter hurt of being betrayed, or was it because of the cold metallic guilt of betraying someone else?

Got a secret, can you keep it?
Swear this one you’ll save…

An inevitable temptation to re-examine and rethink earlier, black-and-white statements about “I’d rather be honest” and “I’d rather know than be deceived”…

I see her standing on high moral ground… Lonely… Alone… With wreckage and debris all around her, and no possibility of magical phoenixes.

Truth yields fleeting satisfaction.
And then…
All that’s left is regret.

Surely you remember the regret.
The incessant “why-didn’t-I-just”…
The ruthless reconstructions….the defining moment just before the-point-of-no-return.
Wondering why you did it.
And wondering why you told.

Surely….life would have been simpler, happier if some things had been concealed….secreted….locked up in a neat, shiny treasure chest and taken to the grave…

But…

…no-one keeps a secret
Why when we do our darkest deeds, do we tell?
’Cos everybody tells…

Remember the look on your friend’s face?
Or was it your lover?
Or did you look into the face of your brother?
Or perhaps, your sister?

Were you speaking?
Or were you being spoken to?

Snapshots veer into the haze.
Years of midnight snacks, and gossip sessions.
Endless phone-calls.
Being held.
Falling over with laughter on the staircase.
Car-rides with comfortable silences.
Being supported.
Cold beer and togetherness.
Road trips to the mountains.
Being cherished.
Barbecues on the terrace in winter.
Finding a special song.
Being loved.

All that is remembered in those moments is already tinged with nostalgia.

And did you wish, later, that you hadn’t been able to work up the courage to do it?
Because….it wouldn’t really have changed anything….would it?

I’ll keep you my dirty little secret
Dirty little secret…
Don’t tell anyone or you’ll be just another regret
Who has to know…?

He told me his universe altered when it happened. When the betrayal happened that is, not the telling of it. She was an old childhood friend….it was a weak moment….it meant nothing….and it was certainly a one-time-thing. There really wasn’t any point in telling the love of his life what had happened. Things were going well, and they were going to get married in a year or so.

Who has to know, when we live such fragile lives
It’s the best way we survive

Regardless of all that, his world tilted.
Sleepwalking through the next few weeks. Zoning out of conversations.
Not thinking.
Not breathing.
So very still…
River turned stone...

Are you hypnotized by secrets that you’re keeping?

“Things came back into focus only when I told her.”

She left him. He’s currently working himself to death and, when he’s not doing that, he’s drinking enough to send himself to an even earlier grave.

“The price of living an honest life,” he cracks a sardonic grin.

Ah.

“At least I have that.”

At least you have that….

And so, after all the beating around the bush, and all the insensitive allusions, and all the questions that must have made you cry….at last now, let me answer your question to the best of my abilities.

I don’t know whether you should tell, or not.

Either way, there will be repercussions that we cannot even imagine at this point in time. Either way, life will change. Whether explicitly, or in subtler, hidden ways.
Consider him. Consider your life together.
And then… Turn inward, and investigate your own heart.
What would you want? From him?
Absolute, razor-sharp honesty? Or a tenacious weighing of factors, determined by circumstance, implication, and so on?
Therein, I suspect, lies your answer, or at least a shadow of it.
What you want is a marker of what your want your equation to adhere to.
Let that help you decide.

That’s the best I can do.
And when we look back, many years later, hopefully we will discover humour even in this situation. For now, let the pain hone you.

We all do the best we can.
And, if it’s any comfort….
Everybody hurts.

Image source

Mirror, mirror on the wall.

Distance is an unknown variable.
There are many unknown variables but distance is certainly one of the most uncertain.

If I were to be a cynic tonight… what would I see? What would I choose?

There are vignettes of feeling, of sensation… like memories from a previous life.

flaming flowers that brightly blaze
swirling clouds in violet haze


I love that line by Salman Rushdie: “The past is like a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

How do they do things? How does one locate, retrieve, and archive the old ways?

I look.
I delve into the depths of the sea and grasp blindly at something hidden between seaweeds and fragments of shells.
What have I brought to the surface? What have I retrieved?

I remember K. and R.
Vivacious, steady, bright-eyed K.
Who went away to a faraway land and refused to stay the same person. She grew and changed and she became an older, different K. It would be silly to say “better” or “worse” than before. She was just different…
And tenacious, steady R. became the past- he became part of the foreign country and she no longer knew him, or loved him with an everlasting passion like they had promised one another.
Is such a promise viable? Realistic?
People change after all- how can we blame someone for evolving?

You said you were going to conquer new frontiers


Then there are D. and B.
She went. He stayed.
She tried. He tried.
They both tried- really really hard.
But they fell apart anyway, and she smiled her way into the glimmering life of money, and he stayed back and began to look for love again.

We promised the world we'd tame it, what were we hoping for?


W. and P. would have tamed the world.
They would have fulfilled the fairytale fantasy of love-across-the-seven-seas.
Except that W. didn’t make it.
If ever someone has searched in a possessed, frenzied fashion for some sort of saving grace in an unexpected, inexplicable death, it is P.
She’s still trying to find it.
She’s found other things along the way- but there are no more castles in the air.
Perhaps it’s easier to think of them making it because circumstances allow for that romantic possibility..?
But no… I think not.
I really think they would have managed…

We laid her next to him beneath the willow
While the angels sang a whiskey lullaby


But while distance is an unknown variable… and the past is painful and incoherent… it seems there may be a mantra of sorts…

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
…
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)


Nothing is known. To attempt certainty is to defy the very laws of life, isn’t it?
Yet we strive and strain and search and seek…
Surely even the most “rational” among us cannot resist the occasional glance at a horoscope prediction..? Surely there is an inevitable thrill of expectation as we crunch open a fortune-cookie after a Cantonese dinner? I know I am susceptible. The temptation to know is ridiculously powerful.

However…it is impossible to really, truly know… So where do I go from here?

It’s easier when you go with the flow, and believe what makes the most sense to your heart.
It’s easier to find a mantra, and let it cartwheel and echo through the void of distance.

So then…that is what I choose, I suppose.
I choose to enjoy the dynamic of love.
I choose to believe in it.
I choose to have faith in the concept of bridging distance, of transforming unknown variables into manageable realities.
I choose to be talk about it, to write about it, to revel in it, to learn not to hold-back-and-keep-some-part-of-yourself-as-insurance-just-in-case…
I choose to believe that I have a choice…surely the greatest illusion of all?

I choose not to be a cynic tonight.

So here we are reinventing the wheel
I'm shaking hands with a hurricane
It's a colour that I can't describe
It's a language I can't understand

Chaos meets sunshine meets destiny.

Serpentine Fiction

And all the lives we ever lived
And all the lives to be
Are full of trees and changing leaves...

Addictions are old friends. And sometimes you just don't want to let go.
Say, one is addicted to being a million different people...

In one day, say the 1st of May 2008, you can...
wander through london in the great frost
fall in love
traipse around on a jamaican beach
lose yourself
eat the best fried chicken in the world
be granted eternal life
commit heinous sins of darkness
go to turkey as an ambassador
find yourself
get jilted
win literary awards
fall in love again (the repetition here is inevitable- people seem to do this a lot)
sail into magical oceans
commit suicide
be resurrected
win a war
lose your mind

Pure.
Phantsmagoria.

And then you can go out and get a drink, and live yet another life.
Icing on cake.
Fantastic.

But (and there is a but).
If you're used to living many lives, you start to explore the possibilities in your own, right till their logical conclusions.

Say there is an ongoing something in your life.
Well. I have already lived this something out to its various possible ends in my mind.

I have seen the worst that may happen
I have said what I might say.
I have foreseen heartbreak.
I have already cried.

This is substantially different from being "prepared for the worst".
It means you have already lived through the worst.

The ideal blissful conclusion is also lived out of course.
This again, is different from "hoping for the best".
It means you have already lived the best that can be.

But the cynic in an addict persists in dwelling on the former... Illusions can only sustain you so far, right?

If you have already walked down the paths that lie before you... do you convert it from the possible to the probable? Even if it is just in your head?
Does thinking about things make them happen?
Can a private performance lead to a real change?

A superstitious cynic...?!!

No wonder the madness of literature beckons.
Some temptations are impossible to resist.

And the addiction spins out of control.
Mortality, time, and space collapse.
Lives must be lived.

Valentine Confessions

To write about love is... simplistic... reductive... implausible... incorrigible... Irresistible!

Did I really think that something this perfect existed?

Sure. In the same way that someone who has never been outside of the city of their birth believes in foreign lands. But to know it... To taste it every single day... That is a different country altogether... an imaginary homeland, located and conquered.

Am I frightened as I write this?
Hell, yeah.
Scared to death as I consider the possibility of how it will feel to return and read these words in the hypothetical, impossible scenario of 'it's-not-working-out'.

But if there's one thing I have identified about this sunburst it is this: I have never been more vulnerable, or more fearless than I am in this moment in time.
Courage to face what lies ahead... Love across oceans and trudging across the deserts of millions of inevitable dusty hassles... And fragility to the extent that I cannot look beyond this...

For the love... the faith... the dreams...
For making it real, and keeping it real...
Happy valentines darling

And before you ask, of course it had to be a day late.
Delay is our bond.

All you need is time

If it can be broke then it can be fixed
If it can be fused then it can be split
It's all under control
It’s all under control

Are you telling me you don’t revel in your moments of darkness?
Does your depression hold no saving grace?
Is that midnight drink not being stored for future nostalgia?
Can it be that you’re not capering through the hollow years?

I have no fond recollections of the first time I met her… Of the moment that sealed our friendship...

I do however, remember the psychological rollercoaster that we all got into together.

Has someone ever walked up to you, demanding your strength?
Your best friend perhaps?
A lover?
Your sister?
A stranger?

There is a certain charm in being wanted by people when they’re coasting through jaded valleys of grief. And I have seen ridiculous numbers of people lean on her.

My favourite moment is still the same.
A Delhi nightclub… Allegiances are declared, battle-lines are drawn…
And she is victorious simply because you cannot beat sheer nonchalance combined with a complete lack of tact and duplicity.
How much we laughed that night..! Collapsing onto the sofa in the comforting glow of Peach Schnapps and sisterhood.

But…it took its toll, didn’t it?
Every time it happened, they sapped a little more of her strength.
Her eyes were brighter than ever but she was tiring…

Have you ever been tired?
Tired enough to want to never get out of bed?
Tired enough not to care where you wake up the next morning?
Tired enough not to care whether you wake up at all?

Do you enjoy the exhaustion as well?
Chances are it will lead to a renaissance after all…?
Maybe… Maybe not…
Sometimes it’s just too hard to find your way out of a maze of diamonds, dust and demons.

I’ve got to take it on the other side

You will, you know. Find your way that is. Some people get lost. But you won’t.

You’re stronger than you know.
Oh I know you’re already tiring.
Your voice is your disguise.
Your deception is your armour.
Distance…your weapon?
Against…us?

It’s time to come home.
Come home to the hugs.
Come home to the love.
Come home to the music.
Come home to the dancing.
Come home to darkness, and to light…

Being a little tired is better than being nothing at all.

Come home, and we will do it differently this time round.

If it can be lost then it can be won
If it can be touched then it can be turned
All you need is time
All you need is time

Resolve to...what?

There’s always one reason
To feel not good enough
And it’s hard at the end of the day...

Resolutions…

Resolve to…what?

To quit?

To resurrect a lost friendship on the debris of nostalgia?

To save? Yourself, or someone else?

To laugh more?

To buy less expensive shoes?
To buy more expensive shoes?

To heal?
To break?

To travel to the places less-traveled?
To travel to the places well-traveled?

To take more photographs in blackandwhite?

To leave?
To stay?

To crash? Into whom?

To make decisions?
To be willing to have some decisions made for you?

To try?
To stop trying?

To remember, and to forget?

To learn how to bake sinful-chocolate-cake?

To persist?
To desist?
To resist?

To be less Penny Lane?
To be more of someone else?
To be yourself? Alwaysalwaysalways?

To see more of your grandparents?

To dance more?

To destroy that which is comfortably numb?
To preserve that which is comfortably numb?

To start?
To conclude?

To be pulled from the wreckage of your silent reverie?

To leave the dark cold hotel rooms?

To stay focused?
To stay distracted?

To face the music?
To escape?
To walk the line?

To not fear the endlessness anymore?
To love the wheel of love, life, and laughter?

To chase?
To flee?

To get a tattoo? Finally?

To locate the appropriate song for death?

To whirl and freewheel?
To savour?

To speed up?
To slow down?

To search? And find?

To be the storm? And the anchor?

Let me be empty
And weightless... and maybe
I’ll find some peace tonight...