Nothing disappears. It only ceases to be where you are.

You go on believing your life is something you understand, as if you’ve already traced its edges—every doorway you’ve crossed, every wall that has stopped you, every window that has let in just enough light to keep you moving, kept you warm. Yet what you truly know may be smaller than you think, shaped not by the fullness of your life, but by what you are able—at any given moment—to face, to hold, to name without turning away. Beyond that boundary, the rest does not vanish; it waits. And when it comes, as it inevitably will, it does not arrive with menace or surprise, but with a quiet certainty, like something long promised finally stepping forward to be seen.

Something in us remains untranslatable.

When we are young and full of theories, nobody tells us that most of life will be based on incomplete information. We choose people before we fully know them. We stay with them while they become someone we didn’t choose. We love them through versions of themselves they haven’t met yet, and they do the same for us. The whole arrangement proceeds without guarantee, without footnotes, without so much as a terms-and-conditions page — which is either the most romantic or the most alarming thing about being human. Possibly both. Probably both.

Nothing is asked to stay. Still, we answer with devotion.

Time does not spare what is beautiful. It asks only that we love it while it is here. Even the places that seem fixed beyond argument—mountains, shorelines, old trees rooted in silence—are already moving, slowly, toward another form. Wind, water, and time work without urgency, but without pause. A stone at a river’s edge thins a little more with every monsoon, and no one is there to watch it happen.

What stays is not the place, but who we were inside it.

The silence in an empty house is never truly silent. Not the silence of a forest or a desert—those are silences that have always been, with no past to recover—but the silence of a gymnasium on a Sunday, a classroom in July. The silences in an empty room remember themselves. They hum with the weight of laughter that once bounced off the ceilings, the echo of conversations, the rage of arguments, the tinkling of utensils during meals—routines and ordinary days that never seemed important while they were happening.  Footsteps sound sharper against bare floors; shadows stretch longer in rooms stripped of curtains.

Morning comes without the night, but not without its outline.

The blue hour gathers at the edge of night, and the sky begins its slow turning—pale at first, then carrying traces of pink and red, deepening into orange and gold as the light gathers. Night has been leaving all along, the stars withdrawing like something not said. The light moves through haze and cloud—neither fully day nor fully night. It clears the darkness, and the darkness leaves without protest, without a wound we can name; only its outline remains, faint but insistent, in the sky that follows.

Some moments ask before we know how to answer.

The fairy tale made it all seem simple—the glitter fading, the clock’s clear strike, the note that told her when to leave. How merciful that warning. How enviable, to know the very second when wonder turns back into the world. How comforting it must be to have a single bell mark the moment when enchantment ends, when one must step away from grace with dignity—and answer, if only to oneself, for what was seen and left unspoken.

*Some moments do not end.\

They recur.*

At 3 a.m., it begins again.
Its message is simple, almost ceremonial: those days we left behind.

***Love is known by its movement—\

and by the silence after.***

No one has ever seen an electron—not in the way a stone is seen, or a table, or the tired body of someone who has waited too long for a letter that never came. It does not exist in a single place the way those things do. What we have are traces—interactions where something invisible leaves a mark.

What has happened is not finished with us

What if memory was archaeology? That if you dug carefully enough, brushed the dust from the right edges, you might retrieve the past intact. That events are fixed once they happen, that a day is a day and a choice is a choice, sealed in the hard amber of fact.

We learn to recognize each other long before we learn to see.

Before you spoke a word, the world was already drawing its maps. We are, in some sense, the children of other people’s imaginations.

There are moments when conversation becomes shelter. A particular kind of courage is required to speak about the things we fear most and need shelter from. Not the courage of soldiers or explorers, but the quieter, more domestic bravery of sitting across a kitchen table from someone you love and saying the words the world has taught you to swallow.

This is the kind of conversation that steadies a frightened mind, restores dignity to a confused heart, and reminds a person they do not stand alone in the hardest passages of being human.

Every photograph is a small argument with time.

Threshold

Moments slip away while we try to hold them. As the present grows thinner, the past grows thick with memory.

Memory reduces mountains to sentences.

An angler sits by a riverbank with a rod, reel, line, and hook. Waiting is the preamble, but the imagined event is the catch—no matter how small the fish. You, too, spend your life waiting for the main event.

Nothing living is ever finished.

Most people seem more complete from a distance.

We watch them from across the room—the way they hold a conversation without their voice rasping, the way they laugh without looking around first to see if it’s allowed. They move through the world with an ease that feels rehearsed—or perhaps simply natural—and you’re not sure which is worse to consider. From where you stand, their lives appear seamless, like a length of cloth cut with perfect precision—no fraying edges, no loose threads pulled nervously in the dark. Distance performs a quiet kind of editing. It removes the tremor from other people’s lives and leaves behind the illusion of shape, certainty, and finished form.

Sometimes the wound is called living.

Note:

“Pall of night” is a poetic phrase meaning a heavy, dark covering of night, as if darkness were a funeral cloth spread over the world. It suggests not just literal nightfall but an atmosphere of gloom, secrecy, or foreboding settling over everything.

— A companion essay to “Threshold.”

Most people sense the distance between who they are and who they might become. One self is lived daily; another is imagined — clearer, stronger, more disciplined, more whole. The space between the two quietly shapes many decisions. That distance can awaken effort. It can call forth restraint. Properly held, it even invites humility, because growth reveals how unfinished we remain.

— A companion essay to “The Better Version.”

There was a time when the whole world could rest in the softness of a face not yet marked by decision. A time when every road ran open, when every name might have belonged, when the future was not a single door but a field without fence or horizon. No one is born as someone. Each begins as the beautiful, terrifying possibility of many selves.

It was always in motion.

We are custodians of the tender moments when our paths meet beauty. It rarely announces itself. We claim it as ours, though we often cannot explain why it moved us in the first place. We think we love beauty itself, but what unsettles us most is the moment we realize it will not stay.

Remorse is a beginning. Repair is the proof.

There are moments when the past does not feel past at all. It feels near. Reachable. Almost negotiable.

We fear not an empty future, but one that will not honor the contract we wrote for it.

If tomorrow could answer one question honestly, most of us would hesitate before asking it.

When the light thins, what remains is what was always there.

Author’s note:

This piece is a conversation with the imaginative “I”—the interior witness and conscience that accompanies us quietly through a lifetime.

Nothing shapes a river more than what it quietly carries.

Note:

Windlass [Pronunciation WIHND-luhs]

Meaning: (Noun) A device for lifting or hauling, using a rope or cable wound around a cylinder.
Verb tr.: To extract, lift, or bring forth with deliberate, steady effort.

A room of unspoken selves, waiting for the right hue.\

Sometimes silence is the most protective act of love. It is mostly neutral, though not always. Often it extracts payment. We survive it by pretending otherwise.

Nothing belongs to us; it passes through us.

A magnifying glass can braid sunlight into a narrow, concentrated point, compressing what was already there until heat becomes inevitable. The heat burns and it is not a surprise; it is the law asserting itself once conditions are right. Sometimes the universe narrows the same way: to the width of two heartbeats, to the moment when the membrane between two human beings thins until it is almost imperceptible.

In the sea of hours, we learn how to be carried.

At a fortunate moment, standing on a coast, the sea may take hold of you—offering not a destination, but the idea of one, something like Shangri-La. Here, it is the Pacific.

What breaks is what was asked to hold too much.

There is a word in Japanese—ma—that means the space between things. Not emptiness, but the pause that gives shape to sound, the breath that defines the note. In Kumiko, a traditional Japanese woodworking technique, space is everything. Intricate patterns emerge without nails or glue, forming shoji screens where light and shadow braid together.

A Meditation on Becoming

Live the questions now. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Author’s note:

What ends is the count, not what was counted.

Author’s Note:

This piece follows an earlier meditation on time as motion—planetary, seasonal, indifferent to witness. Here, the scale narrows. What was once orbit becomes pulse; what turned without us now turns within us. These are not sequential arguments, but adjacent ways of listening.

Each rebirth leaves a quiet ember in its wake.

As we age, hair falls and returns—until, one day, it simply does not. Skin renews itself silently, like a hidden clock. Nails rise from their beds as if unwilling to yield to time. Even taste—our most fleeting sense—reinvents itself every ten days, restless for something new. Only the spine lingers, stubborn and still, guarding the echo of who we once were.

We invent mercy out of memory for world does not heal.

Without warning—here again—a landscape of unbounded barrenness. A blasted expanse where color has bled dry. The ground itself giggles like a hyena while the air thickens into a fugue of despair, a festering vapor rising from unseen graves. This land shackles my ankle; everything conspires to make the world unreachable, to turn clarity into murk. Has any soul ever learned to live with the gnawing poverty of affection, care, or love? With the unending cycle of sickness? These specters have chewed at me without mercy for as long as my memory survives.

Pray to learn how to live beneath the rules.

Once, when I was barely more than a baby, I lived as an uninvited guest inside my own skin, a stranger wandering the rooms of a body marked by an unnamed malady. A quiet fracture in the flesh, an invisible seam — yet no one in my family ever traced its tender line or laid a word along its edge. When our anguish goes unnamed, we hang it on a small metal thought, a rivet in the mind, hoping the act might bless the hurt into meaning. But the ones I called home wrapped it in silence instead, as if it were a brittle heirloom kept in the dark corner of a drawer — an inherited conviction that anomalies fade when left unattended long enough.

All motion curves toward loss; in that curve, meaning.

The lingering maiden moon, harbors no wish for miracles, no faith in angels to anoint its slow awakening into fullness. It glides along a script written in invisible ink, long before memory—a prophecy of light, silence, and obedience. The Santa Ana winds surge without care or conscience, without repentance. What they touch, they scatter, leave beauty and ruin intertwined. White light bends toward red as it curves past a massive star, drawn by the gravity it cannot escape—like a soul bleeding under the weight of what the universe demands of it.

Belief is memory in motion.

In my mind, there are tiny, bead-like elements of opinion—minute seeds of faith and doubt that compose the hidden skeleton of identity. They slipped in without announcement and melted over years of living, grief, imitation, and defiance. Over time, they fused into an intricate, invisible lattice of thoughts, hardened into an architecture of assumptions and certainties. Some sparkle with a strange, ageless light; others lie neglected, exiled to the dim outskirts of awareness, yet still shape the way I move through my world. It is, usually, a different world than the one you would notice.
​
When I must justify an action or intention—a desire or a hesitation—I reach for these beads and begin to string them. A garland forms, fragile yet insistent, and it wraps around me, whispering, “This is who you are; this is why you do what you do.” But not every bead can bear daylight. Some appear corroded, their surfaces flaking with old fear, old imitation, old obedience. Their tarnish confronts me with uncomfortable truths. So I take up a brush fashioned from my present understanding of life and start to paint over it. At times, I choose the bright hues of trendy ideas; at other times, I lean toward the subdued tones of introspection. In this private ritual, I enter a wordless dance with myself—the self that was, the self that is becoming—and I paint until the colors match the desire of the moment.
​
As time passes, these ideas feel less like beads and more like fat cells, swelling beneath the skin of my consciousness. They cling to the excess: borrowed opinions, hand-me-down creeds, ill-fitting certainties I once adopted in the name of prudence or belonging. Layer by layer, they thicken until the weight of carrying them grows almost unbearable. To lighten myself, I wield dissent and experience as chisels, carving and scraping and paring away the surplus until something leaner, more honest of myself, begins to emerge—trembling but unmistakably alive.​

Flight is the first prayer

No one knowingly courts a life shadowed by regret. We set out to choose wisely—for the right cause, for the right person, at the right moment, with the right heart. Yet regret slips in like frost through a windowsill, inevitable even in our purest purposes. Being wrong brings a sharp toll. The greater loss, though quieter and harder to name, is to refuse to choose at all. The danger lies less in missteps than in the stillness that masquerades as safety, a hesitation renamed as virtue —admired from afar, but hollow at the core.

Some ghosts do not rattle chains; they revise thoughts in whispers.

A ghost holds me captive in conversations! It has no shape, scarcely any objective sentences in our discussion, yet its voice glides through my mind, clear as glass, firm as facts. It never speaks aloud, sometimes only a residue of faint echo, yet the consequence presses upon. Our exchanges are fraught, each one sapping me until weariness seeps into the marrow of my will. Every dialogue sets my skin aflame with anguish. Anxiety unmoors me, and I chase the horizon as though I could outrun my shadow, flee the dusk, and burn in the mercy of the sun —but it clings to me, unrelenting.

A collapsed heart arrives one postponed prayer at a time.

**On that typical summer morning, **when you woke, the bright sun seemed not to have moved since the day before. Everyone else still dreamed. With half-shut eyes, you floated barefoot to the restroom. The unfamiliar reflection in the mirror shocked you—you were losing the “you” that had always been a trusted companion. You squinted to absolve the trick of sight, but vision held steady; the disappointment was not optical—it was inward. What you saw was true. A dispiriting weight held you in place. Time had turned traitor. You had believed otherwise. The key to your quests was still missing, and the clarity of how things ought to be now seemed worthless. Your breathing grew labored.

There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen. [Rumi]

I move through my days half-awake, drifting with the ripple of habits. The world watches with patient eyes—wide, silent, unblinking—even through the dark. Each small motion, each weary effort, plants the seed of who I become; too often, I forget this. What should I be doing instead? The question burns, for I already know too well what I should not be doing—a list absurdly long, a pall I dare not confront. Perhaps it will fade if I look away long enough—an idea I confuse for mercy but closer to delusion.

One life is all the warning we receive.

A solitary life offers a rare freedom: it lifts the burden of constantly weighing alternatives. As the impulse to consider every option fades, life softens—no longer frozen in hesitation. Decisions arrive like quiet rain, steady and unforced. Action flows, and awareness sharpens into stillness. The familiar self-talk of endless “should” and “shouldn’t” loses its grip, and the mind, once divided, comes to rest in presence. The “what ifs” dissolve, and the moment stands whole—needing nothing, becoming everything.

All blossoms report, in time, to dust.

The wind in springtime—always a nomad soul—wanders over shrubs and hedges, over brick-covered roads that remember a thousand footsteps, over prairies that stretch like open palms, and meadows soft as a dream. It roams as if searching for a long-lost companion from yesteryear. Along the way, it gathers a few dry leaves from recent seasons to hear worn-out tales. With a sudden rush and a whooshing tune, a swirl of sand leaps into its invisible lap, ready for a joy ride across the changing landscape. Beneath their joyousness, the sun breaks. Its warm palms caress winter-wrinkled skin, peeling winter rust from the quiet bones beneath.

Running toward the exhilaration of stopping.

Stillness feels like suffocation when you’re running from yourself; motion becomes your only form of devotion, the rhythm that keeps your fears from catching up. Each stride feels like a small act of salvation, a way to blur the edges of what you can’t face. But the earth is round, not endless—a quiet, patient reminder that every arc curves homeward. However far you go, your shadow travels too, until its circle closes and you find that what you fled was always waiting within you, the self you can no longer outrun.

In the hush after ruin, the heart falls to love.

I. The Language of Gaps

Who owns the past—our past?

Flicker held in pause—before the storm claims it.

The moment vanishes, like the last ripple on a pond—before understanding has learned its name, before feeling clothes itself in speech. It is a sigh trembling on the lips, a tear that shimmers before sorrow names it, a gentle twilight between being and becoming. Every flash fades before meaning takes root, before memory dares to hold it close. Like a photograph blooming in slow light, life reveals itself only when we pause long enough to revere it. To linger is to love; to notice is to nurture what would otherwise drift unseen. Reverence molds the moment; without stillness, existence remains unfelt. To seize that flicker before comprehension—to dwell, however briefly, in the “moment before the moment”—is to to mend what is broken, to love what is small, to rise in grace even when the heart trembles in longing.

We learned to count because we could not learn to stay.

The ground gives way without warning.
It simply withdraws.

A spring sky darkens, and the wind from the northwest arrives like the breath of something older than fear—something that remembers us better than we remember ourselves. I tell myself this shaking is familiar—that I have known it before, that it has passed through me in other seasons and left me standing. But reassurance is a fragile architecture. Anxiety arrives unbidden, loosening belief, thinning conviction, erasing the quiet assurances I once mistook for permanence. What once held me steady disappears, and I am left kneeling among the scattered pieces of myself, unsure which fragments still belong.

What remains learns how to speak.

What lingers does not remain inert. It moves quietly, shaping how we enter the present. Memory is not a vault we revisit, but a force that accompanies us—altering the temperature of each encounter, bending the light by which we recognize one another.

We remember not what happened, but what stayed.

Only fragments of the past remain within reach. The rest slips away, settling into an unmarked reliquary beneath consciousness, where forgetting is less an erasure than a quiet form of shelter. What we carry forward is never the whole—it is what survived our leaving.

Note:

Kaizen:

Meaning - Kaizen is a Japanese concept in business studies which asserts that significant positive results come from the cumulative effect of many, often minor (and even trivial), improvements to all aspects of an operation.

Niyamat:

Primarily found in the Arabic-speaking world, it means “blessings” or “gifts,” and it often carries a connotation of grace and favor.

On the edge, right before a sensible understanding occurs, a feeling before it has a moniker, a tear that swells before grief takes shape, an uncharted span before being or becoming: the flash, the moment is on the run! It vanishes swiftly before meaning emerges, or we etch experience into memory. Moments are lonesome, mostly. The interrogative spear of judgment in loneliness unsettles us. We are fearful of being alone for a moment! Without acute awareness of the instant, we are oblivious to what we lose.

Note:

Flit: verb -

to move in an erratic fluttering manner

to pass quickly or abruptly from one place or condition to another

Spadiceous: adjective - of a reddish-brown color

The sun surrenders to the horizon, leaving behind layers of amber and rose-gold clouds that fade into deep indigo—each hue a slow confession to the night. Near a valley, dusk drapes the grand contours of the distant mountains in its dark embrace. Faint light seeps from nearby dwellings, spreading across the sedated land until its shapes turn to traces—souvenirs of Earth’s past. We bury bygone days deep in some distant gorge, but the past resurfaces; it endures. As the time ticks on, the ambient sound loses its vigor, a hush cloaks the bustling metropolis. The world itself exhales after a long day. The land seems to whisper: nothing ever truly ends - only transforms.

Time does not stop; it simply ceases to include us.

Asystole names the moment when rhythm stops.
In the body, this appears as the absence of a heartbeat—the flat line where motion ceases and measurement loses its authority. What follows is not merely silence, but confirmation: a pause where measurement no longer applies.

Note:

Leal: Pronunciation (leel)

Meaning: Adjective, Loyal; honest; true.

Inspiration: The Notebooks of F. Scott Fitzgerald - [#249] “The wind searched the walls for the old dust.”

The wind in springtime, a nomad soul, wanders over the bushes, brick-covered roads, prairies, and meadows as if it is in search of a friend from yesteryear. It gathers a few dry leaves from recent years to consult. At that opportune moment, the sand dust jumps on its lap with a whooshing tune for a joy ride across the landscape. A rhythmic symphony emerges from the sound of dropped leaves and sand dust landing on hard surfaces after their wind-sailing, inviting the heart to dance. The sun, with its warm touch, caresses the wrinkled skin, peeling off the winter’s rust from the old bones. Everything - the new green leaves, jubilant birds, busy bees on flower beds, and consoled souls recovering from the winter spell - all are ecstatic. The sky-blue sky, with its jolly white puffy clouds, transforms the surroundings into a dazzling celebration for the attentive residents. These were the memories of spring in the western US before the COVID pandemic eradicated tranquility and normalcy. Where might she have eloped, and why? Frequent triple-digit heat has replaced mild temperatures, and the weather has undergone a consequential transformation, it seems. Ominous, menacing clouds often cover the cheerful sky and its animated inhabitants. Crisp breezes that once offered a healing touch turned into hostile winds.

Note:

Ozymandias: Pronunciation (oz-uh-MAN-dee-uhs)

Meaning: (Noun)

A symbol of the impermanence of power and pride.

A megalomaniac tyrant, especially one whose arrogance is undone by time.

A lone life offers a profound liberation: it eliminates the illusion of alternatives, making any consideration of options irrelevant. Without the perpetual pros and cons analysis that plagues decision-making, a truly lived single life becomes a series of decisive acts. This singular approach to presence erases moratorium and the endless “should” or “shouldn’t” deliberations from what-if scenarios, allowing for an unburdened engagement with the present.

Note:

Stiggins > Pronunciation: (STI-ginz)

 Meaning: (Noun) A pious impostor.

Etymology: After Reverend Stiggins in Charles Dickens’ novel The Pickwick Papers .

Al-girbah: An Arabic word for a pouch made of leather for Bedouins to store water.

Soliloquy: (noun) an act of speaking one’s thoughts aloud when one is by oneself or regardless of any hearers, especially by a character in a play.

I often converse with a ghost, but rarely remember what we discussed! It has no shape, yet its presence is weighty. It doesn’t speak out loud, but I can hear its voice persistently and clearly. Our conversations are argumentative. Exhaustion from the dispute ruins all my energy. Yet, there are no concrete results when I investigate to uncover who this opponent truly is! I can outrun my shadow and seek refuge in the light, but the phantom’s presence is in the countless wrinkles of my brain. And, it dictates relentlessly, as if it is sure that the world’s end is near. I cannot withdraw entirely from the whispers. All efforts fail miserably. Do we all carry burdens as ghouls? Shouldn’t we all learn to cohabit with our ghosts, if they exist? Instead, we preferred to remain in hiding and became skilled at it, but for how long? Isn’t it an entire lifetime for the charade to continue for too long?

NOTE:

Carthaginian Peace [Pronunciation - kar-thuh-JIN-ee-uhn pees]

Meaning: (noun) Peace or settlement in which very harsh terms are imposed on the defeated side.

The term harks back to the Punic Wars (264-146 BCE), where Rome decisively defeated its rival, Carthage. After the third and final war, Rome didn’t just win; they went full scorched-earth (and possibly salted the earth so nothing would grow, though historians debate that part). Carthage was destroyed, forced to pay massive tributes, forbidden from having a military, and its population killed or enslaved. The economist John Maynard Keynes popularized the term.

Note:

Whatness

Meaning: (Noun) That constitutes a thing’s fundamental nature: the essence or inherent quality.

I don’t see what I am doing. I sleepwalk on autopilot while everything stares at me like an owl, even in the dark. Constantly oblivious that all my minor grinds are the embryones of what I do and everything else. What should I do instead, then? That is challenging to acknowledge because the list of things I should not be doing is overlong and laughable. I am ashamed to revisit the list purposefully! They might disappear if I don’t look at them long enough - a fantasy I value and cling to. What if there is a day of reckoning when there is nothing to refute, all arguments are over, only facts stand, and nobody can deny anything? That would be most terrifying since I have lived in camouflage. No, this false assertion needs a correction: I have not lived with the truth.

Note:

Korero: Pronunciation (KOR-uh-roh) OR (kuh-REE-roh).

Meaning: (noun) A meeting, discussion, conversation, or storytelling session.
Verb Intransitive: To speak, talk, or discuss.

Perspicuity: (noun) clearness, lucidity, or the quality of being easy to understand.

Pule: To cry softly or weakly, often when you don’t have the energy to cry louder.

The qalb (Arabic), or heart, is the center of the human spirituality and personality. Its root meaning suggests that the heart is always in a state of transformation.

Note:

In Japanese, a “prayer of ancestors” is most commonly referred to as “Obon” (お盆), which is a festival where people honor the spirits of their deceased family members; it is a combination of ancient Japanese beliefs and Buddhist customs to venerate ancestral spirits.

Insufflate: pronunciation (IN-suh-flayt, in-SUHF-layt)

Meaning: verb transitive\

1. To blow or breathe into.\
2. To bless by breathing or blowing on baptismal water or a person.

Of course, being wrong could be an inestimable loss. Avoiding mistakes could cost even more than we foresee. European Robins of Scandinavia sacrifice their lives in both instances—if they fail to estimate the arrival and severity of the Nordic winter on time, or do not risk flying without a precise map on their maiden trip to a warmer climate. Which prayers guide it in forecasting winter without the Doppler radar or a weather satellite? Where does the certainty come from when it decides the flight path? All we see is that its days are full of chirps and hymns. While it is utterly oblivious to the dangers ahead, it flies to safety.

Note:

Asar is an Arabic word for time.

The root of “Asar” relates to “leaving a mark, trace, or effect.” Words derived from this root often revolve around ideas of “impact, consequence, and legacy.” “Asar” conveys the idea of something remaining behind—a physical trace, an effect, or a legacy—and its root ties it to the broader concept of leaving an impression or influence.

An invitation.

The earth does not hiccup when missing a soul. It is inattentive to what it carries while spinning animatedly.

Note:

Abulia: An absence of willpower or an inability to act decisively as a symptom of mental illness.

A priori: Relating to or denoting reasoning or knowledge that proceeds from theoretical deduction rather than from observation or experience.

Oblate: In geometry, it describes a shape flattened at the poles and bulging at the equator, like a slightly squashed sphere. Earth is an oblate spheroid.

Spheroid: A spheroid is a 3D shape that’s very similar to a sphere, but it’s not perfectly round. It’s formed by rotating an ellipse (an oval shape) around one of its axes.

Note

Wahm (وهم): This Arabic term refers to an “illusion,” “delusion,” or “error.” A false perception or belief resulted in the outcome or the result.

Penumbra: (noun) The partially shaded outer region of the shadow cast by an opaque object. Example: The shadow cast by the earth or moon over an area experiencing a partial eclipse.

Sometimes, our only fault is that we open our eyes in the morning! All bones and cells instantly sense the manic absurdity of our lives and everything around us. It could be either the land beneath our feet is slipping away, the sky with a minacious look turning into a terror, or the wind spewing fire like a mythical dragon. We are beyond the aid of convictions, faith, and devotion—the anchors of consolations vaporize like hot steam. More than anything, we want to pick up as many broken pieces of ourselves as possible at that moment! We want to tie a leash around the sudden changes and those anomalies that disregard the reasoning of logical thinking. All this frenzy often transpires simultaneously with a vengeance to destroy our life-trails. So, even in kinder circumstances, our every waking instant is tangled in counting—count with a clock, calendar, chart, or benchmark! Counting creates a safe haven, albeit a false sense of security. At some point, the grace of counting ebbs; we abandon counting; we are forced to tolerate the inconsistent behavior of numbers.

Note:

Hitorigoto: In Japanese, literally means “talking to oneself.” The concept of self-talk in Japanese is seen as a valuable tool for personal development and language learning.

Solandis means “delicate flower” and is considered an Old English name. It is a feminine name that is considered whimsical and unique.

This post is a conversation with the imaginative “I.”

We have reached dusk, and it is getting darker with each blink. Can we try to untangle the skein of your existence in our shared life? The sun, moon, wind, and seasons danced in synchrony as if only to have shaped an enigma, you—so they say. Is this the truth?

Note:

Penetralium: Pronunciation (peh-nuh-TRAY-lee-uhm). Meaning: (noun) The innermost, secret, or hidden part of something.

Hypnagogic is the transitional state of consciousness that occurs when you’re falling asleep, characterized by involuntary and fleeting perceptual experiences called hypnagogic hallucinations

Heliacal: pronunciation (he-​li-​a-​cal) relating to or near the Sun. Significantly, the last setting of a star before, and the first rising after, invisibility because of conjunction with the sun.

Kiswa: The Kiswah, or kiswa, is the black brocade cloth that covers the Kaaba, the most sacred shrine in Islam, which is located in the Great Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The term “kiswah” can be translated as “robe” or “garment.”

Note:

Kifah (noun in Arabic): Struggle, Fight  

Once, I was young and a stranger to myself because of my disability; I was born with it, and surprisingly, no one in my family has acknowledged it. Many moons have passed since I began, in silence, to accept it reluctantly. So, I had learned to pray before I could coo, babble, or make any short sound. Nature instills an elixir to rebuild categories of life forms like mine that could sustain harsh realities.

Note:

Curio (noun): a rare, unusual, or intriguing object. 

Skosh (noun): a small amount. 

I have visited this landscape many times. It is well known to me that a miasma from despair makes the visible world opaque. Everything seems cynical. I never got used to this drudgery—nobody gets used to poverty or sickness. At times, I yell; at times, I cry. And at times, I do both, hoping that is what may crush the stalemate. Ultimately, what becomes evident being alive is that I must summon the absurd courage to inhale.

Note:

Concinnity (noun): The skillful and harmonious arrangement or fitting of the different parts of something.

When we struggle to name our anguish, we unload and hang it on a mental rivet to hold the way we anoint it. 

With older parents in the family, we are a breath away from anything that could happen to them and constantly preparing in the shadow for everything that would. When we encounter a diagnosis, it is never how we want it to be but simply how it docks. Life becomes unmoored by sorrow in an instant. Each day becomes a crawling struggle, as if we are looking up from the bottom of a deep, dark well to understand what is happening. Each day becomes an eternity, one forcibly piled up on the other, muddied in a dazed clarity inside a disorder. To hope that diseases move along a reasonable, navigable, negotiable path is absolutely pathetic! We forcibly retreat into a dreadful solitude of brokenness. Sometimes, we bring others briefly over a phone call into our fierce battleground of coping. But before the sun dips into the horizon, it is always just us alone again and again. A merciless pull into the wreckage of our damaged psyche. From the intense force of unfathomable loneliness.

Note:

Aeipathy (noun): an enduring and consuming passion.

Solandis (noun): a delicate flower

{A conversation with the imaginative “I.”}

We have yet to unravel the mystery of your being in my life. In their cosmic dance, the sun, moon, wind, and seasons have shaped you into the enigma you are today. Or so they say. Is this the truth?

Do you form connections with others as you have with me? What symphonies do you orchestrate, and what choreography guides you when the bond blooms? How do others grasp you? Yet, the uniqueness of our bond, like a rare solandis, is a marvel to witness. Is it a bond only ours, a treasure that we alone possess?

Note:

Scintilla (noun): a tiny trace or spark of a specified quality or feeling.

Moni is a Bengali word meaning “retina.” In literature, it is the door to a person’s soul.

Mon a Bengali word. Meaning “ heart”

Centripetal force is what keeps moving objects in a circular path.

Dear “L”,

Oh, my Love, hug the Silence; our whispers dwell in it! “Listen” and “Silent” use the same letters but are arranged differently. We can attend to emotions that words and sounds can’t construct, but in silence, the realm beyond our acoustic capacity fosters them tenderly. It is not empty of sound but an invitation to concede the boundaries. We do not hear a ping while standing close to a sound source because of our ear’s structural deficiency in deciphering it. Or, the wave could be far away and have dissipated before reaching us. Without silence between notes, music would not exist—the gap between notes is as important as the instruments musicians play. Or between the words we gift, the unvoiced makes us the lover.

Note:

** Kopfkino: (noun) the act of playing through an entire scenario in your mind. Pronounce it without the “p” sound. A German word that translates to “head cinema.”

** উদার [Meaning: generous, liberal, bountiful, noble, free]
{Udar: Pronounce the “U” as Woo. The Bengali word sounds as Woo-dar.} 

It’s always the eyes. It’s always the ‘I.’ These two seeds are the root of most of our problems! But what if we were empowered to change this? What if we turned our gaze inward and reflected on the ‘I’ that shapes reality? Introspection is not a burden but a powerful path to understanding, empowering us to control our narratives.

Note:

Finifugal (adjective): hating endings; someone who prolongs saying goodbye for as long as possible.

The verdict was never in doubt, always a matter of ‘when ‘rather than ‘if’. No matter our deeds, the final call will not be a whisper. None will emerge unscathed; it’s a harsh reality: No one will escape the trial of life. 

Our existence, in all its facets, is undeniably transient and ephemeral. We navigate our days as active participants, seizing every moment or withdrawn observers. But regardless of our approach, time inevitably erodes its custodians. This truth becomes most poignant as we transition between life’s chapters, weather its changes, and ultimately meet our fate. Does the fleeting nature of life not compel us to seek guidance and make our choices count?

Note:

Ataraxia: (noun) a state of freedom from emotional disturbance and anxiety; tranquility.

Apricity: the warmth of the sun in winter

Only sometimes does the exact outcome yield. There is invariably an exception, a pause, or an anomaly in how we may predict future consequences to take shape!

I used to think that time was boundless and that an elegant, charismatic self would surely bloom sometime when I traveled through a tranquil, picturesque landscape. The flowery meadow appeared endless in dreams and unwilling to welcome the horizon. I romanticized this expensive panorama could soothe a broken heart in a blink. When the heart heals, I could be on my way to prosperity, a sentiment I cherish. But I never met outcomes in the cranial abode where I lived! A dead man walking, if you have not noticed.

NOTE

Memorous pronunciation: (MEM-uhr-uhs)

Meaning: (Adjective) Likely to be remembered; notable.

We don’t realize the end of our vigor approaching us every second. The unknown has been the most trusted companion for eons, but we never conquered the art of coexisting agreeably with this mystery. Mostly, we nurture a belief to outrun.

My pulse loses tempo when the idea of demise surfaces in awareness. How must it feel when the present dissolves—that last word, action, or emotion gushes out of my heart into oblivion? Is there any assurance that we become acutely aware of the last breath? How does one contemplate impermanence? What could constitute success in daubing the white paper with ink blobs to convey emotions? Can we paint all sentiments? What is the other side of this coin of temporariness? Does an acknowledgment make us involuntarily grateful for our short fling on earth? Annoyance ignites all my cells.

Note:

Palladian (Adjective): 1. Wise or learned. 2. Relating to wisdom, knowledge, or learning.

Anupol is a Bengali word that means short duration of time. It pronounces “Awe – noo (as in nook) – Paul.”

Another way to dissect this word is to use the word “Anu,” which means an atom and a “pol” moment.

My shoulders felt heavy in a picturesque setting on a spring evening. A sudden, long exhale surprised me, and I said to myself, not here, not now, not like this. Do I want to open the Pandora’s box I have been avoiding to examine? What I have been, what I gave back in return, what I meant to others, and how I treated myself looking at a mirror. These deliberations were folded away in the corner of my mind but suddenly bubbled up like an old, faithful geyser. I realized the odds were decked against me to define all these.

Note

Mibae (Pronunciation Me-Ba-A) a Japanese word

Meaning: (Noun) Vanity, Appearance, Attractiveness, Appeal, and Attraction

What a great surprise that we must learn to embrace the constant fierce flux to stay grounded on this ever-spinning globe! How do we love something—our body and mind—that constantly needs to be elsewhere and invariably changes with the earth’s rotation every moment? 

Our heartbreaks, too, often lead us on a journey of transformation—a flight from the pain. Unknowingly, we move towards pain in our imaginations, hopes, and dreams. When we, the earthlings, return to the bruises along with her rotations, we mistook the authority of these injuries. They reshape our future. A journey with scars is a one-way street. We don’t return to the same state as the person we were. We become another being. So, we long and yarn for a magical erasure of all illness and misfortune to heal wounds, mend brokenness, undo wrong, and serve justice.

Habits, as reflections of our thoughts and perceptions, serve as a mirror to our inner selves. They are the remnants and imprints of our thoughts, including opinions and biases, that necessitate regular, honest introspection. This reflective journey, free from the need to seek approval from others, is vital in stopping a skein of words from taking root in our hearts. It helps prevent the growth of assumptions that often lead to views that seem accurate but are rarely correct.

Note

Ripstaver: Pronunciation (RIP-stay-vuhr)

Meaning :(Noun) Something or someone remarkable.

Etymology: From rip (to tear) + stave (to break or crush). The combination suggests forceful energy, a breaking of boundaries, or implying something exceptional.

As I stepped foot in a foreign land, the euphoria collided with my ill-conceived understanding of what awaited! The weather, the culture, and countless other issues. Leaving our known environment is always a surprise, but mine was rooted in shallow insight and feeble, slipshod research. The moment I started my life in the newfound land, I relentlessly dodged hail and thunderous situations only to smile, sometimes almost immediately by a bright sun of hope through a thick cloud of my anxiety. There were headwinds in all of my efforts! Moving, getting up, and doing mundane tasks felt excruciatingly demanding on every part of my mind and body. Always chasing for more time, holding my breath often, and constantly being uncomfortable with myself left me exhausted, even when I woke up in the morning! The scenarios became routine, and I believed that was how my life would be. But during these stormy periods, quietly and blessedly, my earliest grown-up realization about life began to sprout without fireworks, banners, or confetti. The sense of being in a pendulum state, oscillating between the crest and trough of possibilities and chances, turned my metiers endurable. I resolved on an order for my exertions; choose quickly but firmly and begin—that’s all there is. There is never an end to analyzing all options, and there is never a perfect time to start.

Choosing and owning a sailboat is entirely riddled with conflicting ideas and desires. Both activities require constant compromises. Accepting that no single boat, no matter how technologically advanced, can have all the features one desires. As we add features critical to its construction, albeit essential, another component must give up its right to be part of the vessel. If we were serious about sailing! Ultimately, it becomes a matter of concession: what we must select for our expedition and its remaining features that meet most of our fundamental needs but only a few of our opulence and wishes. Without a contemplative devotion towards longing, it would be challenging to be at peace with our final commitment.

An officer scanned a parking violation ticket on a van as I walked by her after parking a half-dozen cars behind. It was a pitch-dark 5:15 AM Friday at the bus stop, and many surrounding apartment residents barely woke up. I unintentionally sparked a debate among other passengers. The discussion was about whether the driver, passenger, or both had to use the nearby convenience store due to an urgent need. One of the passengers quickly refuted that the officer might have checked the bonnet and determined that the car had not been used for a while. Some contended that, to all parking officers, infractions are all the same, regardless of the specifics. Without complicated options, how would the world appear?

Humility coalesces our understanding of the universe’s mysteries. Only when we are mindful and humble can we begin to grasp to some degree the enormity and complexities of the cosmos. Our assumptions are put into perspective with the aid of, say, the James Webb telescope, an engineering marvel that peers through millions of light-year distances. We can see the stars and planets, but not the force that keeps them apart or the power that shapes them in the galaxies. Our perception seems tiniest! What we think or assume is significant—arrogance—falls apart quickly compared to what is invisible and how immense the universe is! As if there is no end. What we fail to notice is far more significant than what we can.

NOTE:

Taym (Arabic) enslavement by Love

Zugunruhe is a German word to describe the “restlessness” experienced by migratory birds. It’s a behavioral manifestation of the physiological changes leading to migration. The word is made up of the words “Zug” (move, migration) and “Unruhe” (anxiety, restlessness). It’s an internal cue that wild birds use to begin their seasonal migrations.

Moni is a Bengali word meaning “retina.” In literature, it is the door to a person’s soul.

Note

Palooka: pronunciation (puh-LOOK-uh)

Meaning: (noun) 1. A clumsy or foolish person. 2. Someone who is incompetent or inexperienced, especially as a boxer.

Balsam: (noun) Something that soothes or heals

It is a blessing that we don’t know our precise endings. Otherwise, the finest go-getters among us could not have moved past a single step. A sense of uselessness, a moot feeling, would tie everyone with heavy gravity-like shackles to the earth’s core! Regularly, though, we lurch into an inconsistent belief from the eruption of our doubts. The exactness of fate seems arguable in our minds, which fuels the yearning to turn things around to our ultimate advantage. How much absolute control do we retain over this assumption? What would constitute a good ending if we walked through it on our terms? Would the verdict be universal? The brittleness of these inquisitions is too convoluted to confront head-on. The hermit says, “You can change how, when, and what path you choose, but you reach the same finish line. Everyone’s permanent address is not unique. It is the same.” So, every heart is always ablaze in a stupor. Is it then a crime to avoid heeding any path? Can we not seal ourselves in a dungeon and twiddle our thumbs instead? We would feel triumphant momentarily in the most mundane, monotonous activities, but would our hearts feel ameliorated, at least temporarily?

Note

Sciamachy Pronunciation (sy-AM-uh-kee) Also, skiamachy (sky-)

Meaning (noun): a mock fight or a fight with an imaginary enemy.

Etymology: From Greek skiamachia, from skia (shadow) + machia (battle).

The ghost has no shape, yet I can feel its presence. It does not always say anything audible, but I hear its voice relentlessly. Heavy exhaustion from my fight with an imaginary adversary swallows up all energies. Yet, there are no tangible results from any investigation to discover who this opponent is! I often outrun my shadow and find refuge in the light, but how do I draw away from myself? Do others have phantoms like mine? If they do, shouldn’t we learn to cohabit with our ghouls like we learn languages to express our emotions? We may prefer and become skilled at hiding the demons, but for how long? Isn’t an entire lifetime for the charade to continue too long? Who, if anybody, is even listening to or paying attention to my despair? No one!

Note

Kumiko is a traditional Japanese woodworking technique for creating intricate patterns and designs without nails or glue for “shoji” screens and other decorative elements in architecture, furniture, and various modern applications.

‘Eunoia’ is a linguistic marvel, the shortest word in English to contain all vowels. Its shortness is not a mere quirk but a profound symbol of unity and harmony. Its existence is indebted to a single consonant, ’n,’ an impurity in a vowel world. The same is valid for jewelry: small contaminants are necessary to give ornaments a solid shape. For the word ‘soul,’ there is no such pollutant. We perceive it simply as a noun. The wonder is not in spelling but in usage—it could be more! A time-dependent effort to keep our souls alive. Without such activity, could we lose our souls?

Even without a single beat inside the cranium, the dance of our desires is seemingly endless. Was it perhaps primarily built to move erratically? Or may it pause—out of generosity—to give us a breather from its breakneck speed of wondering? Does our plea have any merit in softening its spirit? How do we navigate the complexities of our minds and the fleeting nature of our experiences? Is our quest for serenity simply an illusion, a mirage in the desert of our thoughts? Seeking answers merely leads to more questions!

NOTE

The Arabic word Ma Yakfi means “enough.”

The Arabic word Qafila/Kafila means “caravan,” “train of travelers,” or “large party of travelers.”

What is heaven other than where you are not yet?  

Turbulent emotions overwhelm as you rush to set sail alone across the ocean in search of your Eden. Without feeling convinced about your checklist, you simply leap, you finally sail—and the mind locks onto the destination. A fixation on discovering your Shangri-La and a profound longing that you will arrive, ease your worries. But once you’ve cast off, the obsession begins—not with the destination, but with the vessel itself: Is the hull sound, are the seams watertight? An incessant mind to check and recheck every plank, every rope! The ship that should carry you toward Wonderland becomes the only thing you can see, your vigilance so consuming that you forget to look up at the horizon, forget even why you departed. The journey to ecstasy stalls in an endless present of anxious maintenance.

Note

Arithmetic operations such as addition, subtraction, etc. in mathematics.

Quarry: Something or someone hunted or chased.

Every waking moment of our lives is ensnared in counting—count with a clock, calendar, chart, or benchmark! Many, however, stop counting at some point when they concede that the behavior of numbers is not consistent. There was no guarantee that the numbers were immune to exploitation, forfeiting their importance and consequences. Yet this leaves most of the users not callous but benumbed. Lifeless numbers become uncaring for the laws of the physical world because of the counter, context, time, place, and purpose of count - rendering a simple arithmetic operation into a gibberish pile. When this realization blossoms in their mind, they notice what has always been around them, but they pretend otherwise: things could be uninterpretable in consciousness! At the same time, they had been sleepwalking with bowed heads—lest the truth from the heart swell out with a scream! Everybody is desperate to avoid looking at each other to hide the heftiness of their unresolved feelings, frantically trying to stay afloat during thunders of contemplation. All their attempts fail only to swell up time and time again on every crease of appearance. Everyone becomes soaked in the shame of stripped sentiments. The struggle hunts them and makes them incapable of articulating their sensations, even if there were anyone to care about listening. Utterly anguished, they conspire ways to move on with impromptu yet impermanent logic for the time being. Their endurance of mind and body can withstand only so long before their knee or heart collapses from the consequence of the false sense of security they tended to all these times.

Note

Tsimmes or tzimmes: Pronunciation is TSIM-is/uhs

Meaning:(Noun)

1. Fuss; confusion.

2. A stew of fruits and vegetables, and sometimes meat.

Etymology: From Yiddish tsimes (stew).

The future is always on my mind. But it transforms its facade into a fleeting present moment when it arrives. In my cusp, I hold on to what used to be a dream, hope, or uncertainty until it evaporates and gives birth to “now.” The idea of future events, moments, stories, actions, etc., is only a silhouette that thrives within my restless concepts. Everything I may conjure up about the future, from the contour to the color, the aroma, how it would feel to my touch, and the chilliness of suspense, is a shape-shifting dancing smoke in my mind. Yet, I am sure I know the details of my future, not from the accidental predictability of events but beyond any doubt. I don’t; instead, I relentlessly alter it simply by looking, with closed eyes, at what might come true but has yet to be born. In physics, the nature of light oscillates between waves or particles because of our involvement! We change its character by sheer mulling—the more we fine-tune our attempts, the more light varies according to our participation. So, what are we left with if we let go of the unease about the future and the past remains docked, withering every moment in our memories?

More than pursuing happiness, we want to know what our future holds. Of course, our desire is to ensure all euphoric surprises are tightly wrapped up until we arrive in the future. We are elated by the jolt of unease and unlived moments. But our millennium-old experiences made us accept, though grudgingly, that we can never quite figure out this dilemma: to know about the unseen episodes of our lives and be surprised at the same time when we reach there. Only with an assumption can we create our thriving future in our heads and strike out forcefully what we perceive—sometimes mistakenly—as a threat.

We don’t see the end of our vigor. The unknown has been a companion for eons, but we never conquered the art of coexisting agreeably with this mystery.

My pulse loses tempo when the idea of demise surfaces in awareness; how must it feel when the present dissolves—that last word, action, or emotion gushes out of my heart—into oblivion? Perhaps my life scrawl on this lush blue-green oasis might become a baton for loved ones—only if for a little while, so I hope when I do not pace on her soft ground.

Note

Kifah (Noun in Arabic): Struggle, Fight  

Once, I was young and a stranger to myself because of my disability; I was born with it, and surprisingly, no one in my family has acknowledged it. Many moons have passed since I began, in silence, to accept it unconditionally but not reluctantly a bit. So, I had learned to pray before I could coo, babble, or make any short sound. To some extent, nature instills an extra dose of hope in making categories like mine sustainable in the harsh realities.

The present instant keeps slipping away, leaving the past fixed and the future insecure, which either recede beyond awareness or approach within grasp. For now, two strangers encountered each other on a busy sidewalk in an eastern US city for a split second. A common phenomenon on crowded city sidewalks. Both immediately became incidents in the past for each other. The present moment tumbled from their consciousness, and they marched to their respective futures only to feel a mysterious pull! Soon after they left the crossroads, an acute sensation of a cosmic desire to gently hold hands or wrap an arm around the shoulder to walk each other home flared in their hearts. Where did this emotion drop from? They wondered! A decisive impulse made both turn around quickly, and they headed to rediscover each other in the sea of a crowd. As if they were toddlers, enthralled to pick up something mesmerizing from the ground! In a blink, immediately after recollecting each other, a twisted route through mysteries and toward where they both must travel begins. They are entirely unaware of the spell. But their journey begins without a grand plan or the warmth of a quilt stitched with great hopes and dreams. Their expedition starts spontaneously with zest but is shrouded in a puzzle.

Note:

Zugunruhe is a German word that describes the “migratory restlessness period” experienced by migratory animals, especially birds. It’s a behavioral manifestation of the physiological changes leading to migration. Zugunruhe is made up of the words “Zug” (move, migration) and “Unruhe” (anxiety, restlessness). It’s an internal cue that wild birds use to begin their seasonal migrations.

Moni is a Bengali word, meaning “retina.” In literature, it is used as the door to a person’s soul.

Note

Stultiloquy: Pronunciation (stuhl-TIL-uh-kwee) 

Meaning: (Noun) Foolish talk.

Etymology: From Latin stultus (foolish) + loqui (to speak).

When you’ve been avoiding it for a long time, there comes a time when you must force yourself to do the dreaded reconciliation. What have you been to others? How much have you given away or taken back? What have you accomplished? The lists of unfinished tasks might grab your attention instead. Anxiety ensues, and you squint at the shadows of undoneness at the fringes of your doing—oh, the haunting feeling of incompleteness! Even your triumphs may feel like jerry-build. A weighty sigh escapes with its full ferocity and uproots you to a higher plateau, where you faintly peek at the end of your journey; your bones feel the end beginning. You become desperate to start over but concede the most challenging part: not just the work of changing to a better self but also of unbinding everything you already knew about how you knew yourself. You feel the enormity of your concept; you let it sync in; you allow yourself to recollect. You must, however, wait to answer your inquiry since the exact ending still needs to be determined. You linger, and you delicately nurse your idea—that you can undoubtedly better yourself.

Choosing and owning a sailboat is an activity made of constant compromises. Accepting that no single boat, no matter how technologically advanced, will have all the features one desires. As you add features critical to its construction, albeit essential, another component must be sacrificed - if you were serious about sailing. Ultimately, it becomes a matter of concession: what you must select for your voyage and its remaining features that meet most of your fundamental needs but only a few of your opulence and wishes.

At some point, you stop counting. You are intensely reluctant to accept that the property of numbers is neither universal nor constant. You notice a simple arithmetic operation may yield an incorrect outcome—not to you, perhaps! Examples of numbers dishonoring the law of the physical world depending upon the counter, context, time, place, and purpose of counting are common. But you assumed otherwise all these times! You also realize numbers are not immune from exploitation, which destroys their importance and consequence, leaving you not to be callous but benumbed. Then, only then, do you begin to notice what has always been around—things that are uninterpretable in consciousness while you, me, and the others have been sleepwalking with bowed heads—lest the truth spill! All are desperate to avoid looking at each other to keep hidden the heftiness of moot feelings. Frantically trying to hold, rumbling from the reflection’s tremor. All attempts fail only to swell up on every crease of appearance. Everyone is soaked in the shame of a naked feeling. The struggle seeks you and makes you incapable of articulating your sentiments if there were anyone to care about listening. None. Utterly anguished, you conspire ways to move on with impromptu yet impermanent logic for the time being. The endurance of mind and body can withstand only so long before your knee or heart collapses from the consequence of the false sense of security you tended to all these times.

My destination was vaguely defined, or I only contemplated it partially. Yet a typhoon-like energy in my mind nevertheless made me start! I distinctly remember that I may not be returning to the same place I have called home for years, or, worst yet, the house might not be there to welcome a homecoming. It was also possible that I couldn’t return; all alternative scenarios were reasonable! No arguments, however, were decisive enough to deter me because a life journey isn’t a guaranteed path in a circle; there is no such principle that dictates it must end at the starting point. Since I needed to start somewhere, why not make it immediately? As a youth in my mid-twenties from the poorest country in the world, I left my country.

Accurately describing wounds, monsters, or ordeals is not essential when looking through the “satchel” we all possess. It must contain the experience of the death of family members, the loss of close friends, betrayal, burning from the wrath of greed, broken promises, a ruling of a diagnosis, mistakes—lots of them—and again, an account of deception. You could easily add many more episodes of heartache you endured. The scars from these affairs may wilt but never disappear completely, though I once believed time heals. It does not. It expands the canvas of our lives so that we can repaint it with different brush strokes of actions and colors of experiences. But I wrestled savagely with my mind and pinned it down to bury aches and demons six feet under the ground, then covered it with the heaviest plutonium-grade dirt called “denial!” Only to feel an unconquerable urge to escape the make-do resolution. I have yet to look back or return. The delusion ultimately chased me out until I settled in a new place twenty thousand miles away from the area of my anguishes. I was on the run, hiding from everything I knew as a home, without realizing I could run only for a while before my body would run out of eagerness. Writer David Whyte says that our past is never in the past. It is always here, in our conversations. Our narrative doesn’t follow us; we imbue it into our history to become a new portrayal! For a while, though, denial relieved me, akin to the effect of over-the-counter painkillers for a complicated and unmerciful disease. The pain returns; it always does with vengeance. First, I would smell its presence like a vapor from a distance. Then I would see it pursuing me like a shadow during the day and hear the whispers between the countless dozing on and off sleep at night. For the speakers of Aymara in Peru, looking ahead means looking at the past. The word for future in Aymara is “qhipuru,” meaning “behind time.” The four-dimensional spindle is reversed in their conversations. Like the rest, they believe the past is already known; we lived it. We can see it just like anything else that appears in our field of vision. We should look at the past rather than pretend to know the future or visualize it appropriately. Tomorrows are always in our imaginations and not a silhouette of reality, while accounts of our history are always perceptible but impossible to hide. The wisdom of the Aymara language nudged me to attend to each episode of grief, almost like a physical wound requiring regular nursing, cleaning, and healing agents. I made a ritual of greeting them instead, though reluctantly! The memory luggage was more than just a companion. It was an extension of my journey. This learning is agonizing, but I am compelled to avoid it. A tireless battle that will rage as long as the heart beats.

Nothing always happens. There is invariably an interlude, an exception, and an anomaly in how we predict our future to take shape!

Like many at my age, I used to think that time was boundless and that an elegant, charismatic self would surely bloom sometime when I traveled through a picturesque landscape. In dreams, the flowery meadow appeared endless and unwilling to greet the horizon—an expensive panorama that could soothe a broken heart in a breath. My dwelling was cranial, if you have not realized yet!

Tomorrow arrives at the clock’s rhythm. Until it does not! When we arrive on the day, its original moniker is no longer known; it becomes “today” or “now.”

The first encounter is convoluted! Every morning, we start our day by waking up to different sounds, such as an alarm, machines, the bustling of the crowd, or the cheerful chirping of birds outside our open window. Our thoughts and emotions can quickly become scattered, like boiling oil splattering everywhere. We construct scenarios like an avant-garde sculptor to make sense of everything. Sometimes, with just a tiny push from something outside of ourselves, we become completely absorbed in trying to comprehend the world and the moments we experience, as the idea of “tomorrow” lives only in memories. We dissolve into not anticipating “tomorrow” and merge into the present “today” and “now” as if we were in a parade.

With a surprised, long exhale, I say to myself, Not here, not now, not like this. Do I want to open Pandora’s box? What I have been, what I consumed, what I gave back in return, what I meant to others, and above all, how I treated myself against a mirror. These reflections tugged away in the corner of my mind but suddenly bubbled up like an old, faithful geyser. I realized the cards were decked against me: I would fail to define them. It is, however, a miracle that I continued my journey through life with unanswered inquiries and am now fortunate to rest under a jacaranda tree with beautiful purple flowers. The feather touch of the chilly spring evening breeze on my soft, wrinkled, aged skin is too comforting to welcome aches and pains—physical or emotional! Left with a profound marvel and drenched in a rain of wonderment, I close my eye and lie down on a patch of grass.

A lengthy and seemingly endless rainy winter slumped into spring—not the season we are familiar with with warmish sun and a breeze that tickles your skin—but a spring towards the summer nonetheless! One such morning, trapped in my own making, a conversation began with my imaginative partner, affectionately known to me as “I.” Documenting the dialogues with enthusiasm had the potency to unseat my inertia. If the excitement will continue beyond a few pages of writing, it is nothing but speculation.

There was never an if about the judgment; it had always been when: Regardless of our doing, the final whistle will ring not faintly. No one is getting acquitted alive. 

Everything about our existence is heartbreakingly fleeting and temporary! We go about our days either as active souls to make the most of the moments or as depressed recluses. Whatever our disposition, time destroys its keepers. Its effects become noticeable when we transition between phases, experience changes, and meet our fate. Though not always evident in our psyche, we have merely been loaned a term and only roam in our paths with others, bonding or recovering from unbinding. We still cry without mastery in the tears we wept once.

Adda - this is a boisterous yet cordial discussion. Anyone hosting first-generation Bangladeshi over a tea and treat in their apartment or house loves this get-together. The topics of conversation: how to stop climate change, inequalities in the US, poverty in Africa, or any other problem you can identify. The solutions that evaded the scholars and scientists in these subject matters are available in Adda. Attendees, primarily novices in the topics, can illustrate solutions to any situation that plagues modern times. By the display of knowledge and wisdom, they inadvertently want to show their existence matter. By sharing emotions with the group, they want to feel the warmth of a community, a belonging. It’s the chatter at Adda’s heart, not the actual doing of things -not least in a derisory sense! The sound of laughter and occasional heated high pitch opinion drift in the air far away from the gathering. Again, to spread the melody of presence, “I am here, we are here.” The back-and-forth comments and questions do not get to the “now we are talking” pinnacle without a cup of tea, which has a look of chai, but the taste is entirely different.

Dear A,

\

If you decide or mold into staying in the city of your college, you will eventually run out of tears, go off to work, or continue in the graduate program. You would finish the study - in a different discipline even. A mere flow of things to come. 

Anxiety and stress, however, will follow you everywhere like a shadow - even in the dark, outside the vast campus. You would be at the dinner table with some friends but would, in your mind, be present in the cloud of a faraway place. You would repeatedly question: Do I belong? Do I belong here? How long until they find out I’m an imposter? All sorts of questions would paralyze you. You would be terrified to make mistakes and be desperate for others’ validation, constantly feeling nauseous. You would still be sinking like a stone.  

I always have yet to settle for a verdict on how you become the way you are. The sun, moon, wind, and seasons labored in synchrony to sculpt your existence into how you are today. 

\

Do you befriend others too? What songs do you play, and what waltz do you dance to when tenderness sprouts? How do they stay attached to you? I fantasize that I have only discovered you and have been fortunate to keep you in hiding.

Always the eyes. It’s always the I.

Sometimes a sunny spring morning, lukewarm sunlight, and the young green leaves of trees may not have enough zeal to cheer the slumbering “I” when it is immured to the world. Not from the actual images the eyes witness but from the presupposed ideas folded in the nooks of the cranial that chaperone the “I” to the universe of seeing. Both—the actual images and perception of that image—are inseparable in the brain yet home to different dimensions. That’s why even white paper sometimes appears gray in mind; the black center dot inside a circle is a mere speck, though it is the core—one without the other does not exist.

A rumination with Love.

You asked what you saw in my eyes were tears. You wanted to know when we met for the first time. I close my eyes, breathe, and surrender to my “Mon” for an answer.

Would you slide your arm through mine like crochet and make an interlocking loop with affection? Lean on my shoulder to relax while we stroll through the snow-white meadow. The never-ending field is a computing screen interrupted with black marks; we call it language. Here we would find more empty spaces, as if silence and unspoken emotions convey more than we can construct by drawing, using alphabets and words! Our walk would be aimless in this landscape; nothing may seem adequate except for our breathing and heartbeat. But we could feel the intimacy! With our eyes closed, I hope you, too, sense it!

Kaketsugi, or ‘invisible mending’ in Japanese, is a remarkable cloth-mending technique. The process involves repairing damaged cloth—in an astoundingly exact manner, to the point where you can’t even tell it was damaged.

Bonshō (Buddhist bells), also known as tsurigane (hanging bells) or ōgane (great bells). You have seen them on TV; they are large bells in temples in Japan, Nepal, or Thailand - used to summon the monks to pray. Bonshō is struck from the outside using a handheld mallet or a beam suspended on ropes. To me, the bell cries, but in Buddhism, it symbolizes calmness and a call to prayer.

Oh, the homecoming! Everything smells the same, feels the same, and perhaps looks almost the same—a rare occurrence, but possible. The man-made structures appear to be smaller. Decades ago, my body was more petite, so the shapes seemed more pronounced. Above all, my outlook has changed. I have a distinctive perspective on many things, and this realization makes me tickled. Since I’ve changed in so many ways, the contrast between my past and current self is even more amplified when I reflect on old, faded memories. It’s interesting how memories lose their vividness over time without us even noticing.

You start. You start from somewhere. It may not be the home you would return to. Even if it were, it might not be there to welcome your homecoming. Or simply, you can’t return! Life isn’t a guaranteed path in a circle; it often does not end at the starting point.

The path you decided to follow was nothing but a hunch. It would change its course as if it were a land of flighty weather—you dodge thunder only to smile, sometimes almost immediately by a bright sun picking through a thick cloud. And, of course, the path is muddled with partings. You would have needed more time to finalize which direction would have been better—if you could conclude, ever! Yet you choose, you start—you start somewhere.

If I could see the future like a movie, I would undoubtedly want to can change it. But how much would I change? If I did alter countless events but were a little shy of complete redo, would I be the same person today? How much does it matter about my verdict?

With about two hundred plus bones in our body, we are heading towards the future facing our back. In our vision, the past replays like a film clearly in the mind’s eye, leaving the end in the dark. Always creating a reassurance that what was once faithful would remain so now, forever! So a tune of what we could and should do paralyzes our zeal. An alien, should there be other civilization, may consider us a messy blob of procrastination, constantly delaying actions for something different or better. The irony is that we hardly agree or accept what that better we await! Even if we watch every developing moment in our lives with periscope regard, we can not help or step in to change much! 

We unload and hang whatever we can’t remember on a “hook” that will hold it the way we anoint it. 

With older parents in the family, one of my dear friends had come to know that anything could happen and that everything would. When she encountered the news of her mom’s diagnosis, it was not the way she wanted to be, but it was the way it was. Life became unmoored by sorrow. Each day became a crawling struggle as if she was looking up from the bottom of a deep, dark well to understand what was happening. Each day became an eternity; one forcibly piled up on the other, muddied in a dazed clarity inside a profound confusion. To sense that diseases move along a reasonable, navigable, negotiable path was a lost cause! My friend retreated into the terrible solitude of her broken heart. I could picture this from afar. Sometimes, she brought others - like me, briefly over a phone call - into her fierce battleground of coping. But before the sun took a dip into the horizon, it was always just her again and again. A merciless yank into the wreckage of her damaged psyche from the intense pull of unfathomable loneliness.

The earth is in constant motion, and so are we in her saddle. When something moves, it is moving away or moving toward us. How do you love something that constantly needs to be somewhere else and invariably changes every moment? 

With our heartbreaks, we are running away, sometimes unknowingly, from the brokenness. But we, too, move towards pain in our imagination, in our hopes, and in our dreams: to heal wounds, mend brokenness, undo wrong, serve justice for the unjust, and only magically wipe clean all the ill and misfortune. We, the earthlings, return to the bruises along with her rotations but neglect the notion of what injuries do. It changes the future; a journey with scars is a one-way street. We don’t return to the same state as the person we left. We become another being.

Not here, not now, not like this, do I want to trust that I know anything preciously? What I have been, what I took, what I gave back in return, what I meant to others, and above all, how I treated myself in the mirror. These thoughts keep bubbling up like an old, faithful geyser in my head. The cards were decked against me, and I knew well that I would lose. Yet, how I managed to swim against the streams and now sit under the purple jacaranda tree—an exquisite life form to contemplate a loss—is nothing short of a miracle! The feather touch of a chilly spring evening breeze on my soft, wrinkled, aged skin is too comforting to ease aches and pains. Now I wonder, and wondering I do endlessly! 

We are both; we are all bestowed with a fixed number of orange Moon in the sky. No one escapes from this allotment, and it ends abruptly, so it seems always! 

\

Only for now! We both feel an impulse and are surprised! Soaked in a yearning: eager to gently hold the other’s hand or wrap an arm around the shoulder to walk each other home. One step at a time. As if we are toddlers, picking up something exciting from the ground while strolling with a guardian. We are redeeming each other instead. In that instant, time halts, a twisted route, cloaked in mysteries, begins - we both must travel it together. Neither of us is sure what to expect. Both are puzzled, breathless to interpret why we ended up at that space-time continuum! The shared journey begins about how life should go but not like anything we are prepared for. We take hesitant steps without any grand plan or the warmth of a quilt stitched with great hopes and dreams.

She loves me; she loves me not—only doubt. It starts as a minor inconvenience in daily life, like a torn spinach leaf between the teeth. Someone may bring attention to that tiny misplaced substance in the mouth, and ever since, we have tried to eliminate it earnestly. Sometimes the uncertainty becomes a sore point in the physiology of the mind, similar to an ingrown toenail in a human body. When we let the doubt continue and refuse for a prolonged period to examine it with an honest inquiry, it invalidates the truth. Like red, hot coal, it simmers just beneath our awareness. By the time we unearth its permanence, it has stripped us of logic and left a barren land devoid of any conviction.

A few weeks after the start of daylight saving, the winter gloom returned to lashes at the joy of this spring morning. Flooded my backyard with shadowless light and made me reminisce that the seasons have become a sprint, interrupted by their brief stay. They arrive only to pass a baton to the next phase with an indecisive visit. Always fleeting as if they have to be rather somewhere else. Some days when the sun is not hidden behind gray clouds, the wrath of her bright light confuses me as if I walked into a summer day. The sparkle and softness of spring mornings seem slippery— even the temperature of the breeze sway between a cold artic shrill and a baritone heavy summer fury. This morning I wore a heavy puffer jacket to shield the frail bones and lose skins on withering muscles. I looked at the weather app on my phone and immediately disagreed. It does not feel like spring! Last year was the same -  a coat cuddled me until the desert-like heat engulfed the city I live in. 

Dear Love,

\

\

You asked what you saw in my eyes were tears. You wanted to know when did we meet for the first time. I keep searching in my “Mon.”

\

Slide your arm through mine like crochet and make an interlocking loop of affection. Tilt your head on my small shoulder. Let’s stroll through the snow-white meadow, a computing screen - interrupted with tiny black marks we agreed to call it language. There are more empty spaces as if silence and unspoken emotions convey more than I can construct by drawing, using alphabets and words! The walk is aimless; nothing may seem adequate except for our breathing and heartbeat. We could feel the intimacy with our eyes closed! I hope!

Dear Love,

Slide your arm through mine like a crochet and make an interlocking loop of affection. Tilt your head on my shoulder. Let’s stroll through the snow-white meadow, a computing screen - interrupted with tiny black marks. If you analyze, there are more empty spaces as if silence and unspoken emotions convey more than I can construct by drawing or using alphabets and words! It is an aimless walk, and nothing may seem adequate, except for our breathing and heartbeat. We could feel the sentiments with eyes closed! I hope!

We don’t know the end of this pandemic. We don’t see the end of anything. Yet, it happens often. The unknown has been our companions for eons, but we never mastered the art of living. 

So, I think ahead to my demise, the way it must feel: a moment when the present dilutes into oblivion. My life-scroll on this lush blue-green oasis then becomes a baton for my loved ones - only if for a little while!

Grab a printed picture from the dusty boxes. Any picture. It is the most neglected item in our households because for at least ten years we have been taking pictures only in digital format and saving them in hard drives. But pick one up, I am waiting. Great, you have one in your hand! It is unlikely that you would pick up a black and white photo. These genres are born out of traces from bounced ricocheted light or complete absorption of it on a surface, the science of imprisoning them in an “Anupol” on a film or sensor, and finally translated in a two-dimensional mural on a paper by an elaborate waltz of chemicals. So, you are holding a wonder in your palm. But the picture is color, you say. Is there red, any amount of red in that picture? Sometimes even if you do not see that color, it is present, barely breathing, hiding with an agency. It is my favorite, no reason.

Without prior notice, I find myself in this terrain, a land of unbounded barrenness. The scenery is devoid of color and lashes at me, the smell in the air is unmistakable - a miasma from the despair. Everything conspires to make the tangible world opaque. There would be a diagnosis of this condition if I cared to identify it. Though I never got used to this grind because no one ever gets used to extreme poverty or recurring sickness. Sometimes I scream, sometimes I cry, sometimes I scream and cry to find a way out of this ordeal. I am left to do this: summon the absurd courage to wait for the storm to pass. It is not spontaneous! My brain is hard-wired not to annihilate itself. It manipulates and compels me to create various scenarios—often absurd in my mind—to avoid self-destruction. Was it then in the “planning” to build an enormous amount of sorcery into the human brain lest a million more self-annihilate?
 
As long as the brain is humming along, I may not close myself off from the world. I will move around, chat, smile, cry, sleep, even sing - perform the so-called “normal” activities. But it would be insincere of me to promise that I would be happy to live and remain so for someone else, or it would be a false statement that I would do it just for myself. Why then do I get up one more time than I fall?
 
When a day dies in the west, and darkness covers half the earth, it whispers a song of promise to those who are listening and paying attention. Daylight will return, with nothing more than an opportunity to amend, to restart, to offer a second chance, to wash away the ill from the bygone period. It is beneficial if you can talk yourself into this lukewarm blanket - and perhaps it is the best of fortunes for the time being.

Anhedonia
(A loss of interest in activities or a reduced ability to find pleasure in normally enjoyable experiences)\

\

The flame and smoke of worries run the days. Every action of daily life turns into a grinding monotony of sameness, like a prisoner’s life. Halfway through the morning, the weight of fatigue tires me out, persuades me to change into a torn pajama. Unknowingly I repeatedly keep staring out the window wondering what happened, where all the hurried citizens went. All-day I keep doing the same. It is unthinkably grim wherever, whenever I look out from the kitchen, the living, or my bedroom windows. I see parked cars, trimmed front yards, colorful jacarandas, cloud-covered sky, but none are able to cheer me up. Sometimes I try to let fresh air inside my makeshift temporary workspace filled with a microphone, monitors, camera, and headphones. But the coolness of the breeze seems more interested in wick away any sign of singing leaving only a mournful cry. Everything seems brittle. When I try to write things down on a to-do list in my corner of the taut world, my calcium deprived old rusty bones make it hard even to sigh down onto a chair. Pain from heart spills over other body parts and makes a crescendo of agony. There is no end to the day because I never started the day as I have been for 55+ years. There is no separation between the start and end of my day; everything is in a Mobius strip. It keeps going back to the same starting point after a long trip to nowhere! There is only the deal I can strike with my anxiety, my exhaustion to get through the passage!

Only for now. Both feel an impulse and are surprised! An urge to gently hold a hand or wrap an arm around the shoulder to walk each other home. One step at a time. As if they are a toddler, picking up something interesting from the ground while strolling with a guardian! In that instant, a twisted route through mysteries and toward where they both must travel begins. The journey begins without a grand plan, or the warmth of a quilt stitched with great hopes and dreams. It starts.

The crescent moon does not hope for a miracle, does not wait for angels to visit for its transformation into a full moon. A predictive path it travels always. The Santa Ana winds do not care about what it tosses around to a pristine landscape. Its nature is to take an unrehearsed trajectory without repentance. White light bends towards the red wavelength when it travels past by a massive mass among the stars. As if the light bleeds from the influence of external pressure! 

Once I was young and a stranger to myself because of my disability - I was born with it and surprisingly, no one in my family has acknowledged it yet. Many moons have passed since I began, in silence, to accept it unconditionally, but not reluctantly a bit. So I had learned to pray before I could coo, babble, or make any short sound. Nature’s guide to instill an extra dose of hope in making these categories of life sustainable to some extent. 

Two of my emotions buried many moons ago hundreds of feet from visible light showed up - unannounced!

One: Everything about our existence is heartbreakingly fleeting, temporary and downright convoluted! Undeniably, in a blink, our appointment on earth will end. There was never an “if” about this verdict, it had always been “when.” This truth, however, is useless to navigate our complicated lives; so we helplessly resort to a delusion - that we may evade the inevitable, somehow, for a little longer. Perhaps self-deception might be the ultimate elixir to stay alive longer!

Two: Time destroys everything at the end. Add a hundred years more to our count of things, and there will only be a memory of us in faded paper or if we are fortunate, on stones. When moving between points, moving towards our rendezvous with destiny we notice the change in time. Laws of science conflicts with reality and obscure uncertainty principles make perception opaque, plagues us, makes us desperate for assurance. We frantically look for ways to make sense of it all because what we perceive to be true is far from it. Our existence seems mute, yet we still want to make an imprint to remain alive - only if in the memory of our loved ones - little longer than this pathetically small space-time continuum.

Perhaps there are no answers to our quest; we are only to ask questions as magnificent and vast as the universe itself. We started off our life to achieve a fixed outcome and choreographed a target. A target that changes its color like chameleons or shapes like an octopus or outright keeps moving away like a mirage because our meager understanding of the world was insufficient. Instead, we should have been floating like melting ice on a stream just being awestruck at every turn! Even when eyelids become heavy with the burden of age, it would be a comfort to acknowledge this concept. Realize we must that a stretch of life turns Payne’s grey only to announce the darkness of nothingness to arrive. Could we settle for it? Could we resolve it thankfully?

More than our pursuit of happiness, we want to know what the future holds for us. Of course, we don’t want to spoil all the surprises. We do want the jolt of apprehension. But our millennium-old experiences made us accept, grudgingly, that we can never quite figure out this dilemma: to know about the unseen episodes of our life and be surprised at the same time when we reach there. With this assumption, we begin a process to create our so-called prosperous future, one that exists only in our minds. During this tenure, we strike forcefully at the things we perceive – sometimes mistakenly – as a threat. The reaction is our “fight or flight” instinct.

As we age, our hair falls out and typically regrows up to a certain age.We shed skin, but it too regrows. We cut nails only to see them reappear within weeks. Our taste buds change about every ten days. Spine takes the longest time to change. By the end of seven years, we don’t have a single cell in our body that we had seven years ago. They are all new, reborn but older in some way - we are not who we were. Still, it would be naive for us to believe that there is a complete do-over in life; mostly, we settle for what little we have.
 
If you have already inhaled two decades of air into your lungs, then you would hope that by now we must be getting better at dealing with change. Sometimes we are, but often we condition ourselves to ignore. We put pressure on our minds to forget, and we cunningly develop elaborate, fabricated stories to tell others and to keep the influence of change at bay. Unknowingly, we merge into an impulsive herd of directionless motion. We become captives of conformity. We stop noticing the perfume we are wearing because of our adaptation to the smell. And long before Alzheimer’s kicks in, many of us, we almost all simulate some amnesia. All these actions demonstrate how our biology adapts to cope with change, allowing us to feel alive during the remaking of our anatomy by the sheer force of change.
 
Then there is the wall of insulation we build with self-proclaimed lies and impurity. We act this way not only to deceive others but also to declare that we are moving, floating with the tides of life. We do these for ourselves. Amidst all the absurdity in our environment, we don’t want to lose the only cohort we have. We don’t want to lose ourselves.

This terrain is well known to me, where a miasma from despair makes the visible world opaque. Everything seems cynical. I never got used to this drudgery, just like nobody ever gets used to poverty or sickness. Sometimes I scream, sometimes I cry, sometimes I scream and cry to find a way out of this ordeal. I am left to do, as long as I am breathing, is this: summon the absurd courage to live. This “choosing” is not spontaneous! But my brain is hard-wired not to annihilate the self. It tricks and coerces me to create various scenarios—often absurd—to prevent the destruction of my self. The Almighty also knew very well that he must build an obscene amount of sorcery into the brain. Otherwise, he would have witnessed millions more self-destructions.

Whether we like it or not we are bestowed with a life. It’s a journey we all have to make. Some go gladly; some go recklessly; some attempt drudgingly; some move on automatic pilot. It includes death, grief – obscene loads of it – not as an opposite but as an integral part of the way life is made. Nobody, however, gets an accurate map. Everybody just has a hunch. So this journey is the oldest trip in any manuscript - from birth to death, from self to world, from known to unknown - but each of us travels it anew, and totally alone. \

If it is of any consolation, I too have an ache to go back to “those good old days"—even only to correct my mistakes. You know, the satchels of our mistakes are full of their ridge! But if we were able to, miraculously, snatch back our bygone years and restart life—of course not the way we actually did, but any young heart may want to live—then it sure would feel like a Mobius strip. We simply would end up where we started from with our naïve wishes. It is indeed cruel if you think it is part of a grand scheme. If it is part of randomness like Charles Darwin portrayed, then we are in a merciless puddle of quicksand! The more we try to escape, the more trapped we become.

If no one told you yet then let me tell you. Life at your age is as good as it gets. If you heard similar cliché before then let me say it again - you are living one of the most bountiful periods of your life. It was true for me; it is true for any twenty something.

\

Twenty something dream about a prince charming, a  house with white picket fence decorated with Victorian furniture, traveling to exotic places around the world, etc. you get the point. Some dreams are outlandish. Some are a little too impractical. Some are just a dream just because of your REM sleep. The point is that you the “twenty something” have fantasy, you float on anticipation, you move with faith and hope without a sympathy towards reality. It is not bad.

Every year our clocks whiz by 12 AM and finish the last day of December to rush off in hunting just like a Cheetah! It’s a hunt for a new year - for better days, perhaps. Time snatch us from our natural inertia only to shove into a marching towards the New Year - ignoring that we all, always have an inherent thirst to know where we are heading. Nonetheless, a fresh start awaits us! Thanks to the calendar – any calendar – it happens every year. It is a gift for surviving the past year and a chance to bring in the tradition of New Year’s resolutions of all kinds. All kinds of media and mental care professionals encourage to bury our past problems behind us and start over. Indeed the intoxicating lure of a new beginning becomes very hard to resist!


How can we be so certain about the moment when the old ends in our life? Can it be a single day, say a birthday or a New Year’s day on a calendar when we impose so much significance on those particular days? I feel this moment must implant: a hope, a new perspective to look at life differently, a new appreciation to reveal that there is an abundance of surprises in nature, a strength to let go of old habits and hideous memories. It must become an aide-mémoire* of hard work for a new beginning that sometimes appears to be impossible.


So. Before you realize what has actually happened, you will be celebrating the holidays again. As if, you blinked an eye and you were there! Does this sound like a marvel to you? What I hope most is: you will take a vacation, feel the dew on a winter morning and the warmth of the sun on a spring day, laugh your heart out, have a bite in a café with a friend, laugh again, take a stroll aimlessly, smile at your little victories and may just stand still to notice life as it goes by. Please keep a souvenir though, anything. One day it will remind you not all that you felt was a dream – just felt like one. “It’s also important to remember that amid all the absurdity there are a few things really worth holding on to.”

(* An aide-memoire is something such as a list that you use to remind you of something. Noun: A memorandum summarizing the items of an agreement)

Note:

(*The Möbius strip or Möbius band (pronounced /ˈmeɪbiəs) is a surface with only one side. The German mathematicians August Ferdinand Möbius and Johann Benedict discovered it independently in 1858. It is easy to make. Take a paper strip and give it a half‐twist, and then join the ends of the strip together to form a single strip.)

In my head, I have these tiny bead-like rudiments that constitute what I believe in. I don’t know how they melted inside me and created an elaborate pile of blocks. I can feel they have existed for ages, and some have even been neglected!

Our clocks whiz by 12 AM on December 31 and rush off in predation like a hungry Cheetah! The tide of time yanks us from our inertia and shove into a marching towards the New Year - ignoring we have an inherent thirst to know where we are heading. We, however, acknowledge not to spoil the finale by ruining the surprise of course, but we want to ensure that when the ending comes – and you may define “end” in many ways - it will not be trivial.

When Baba (your grand father) was sick, we tossed around many hypotheses. We wanted to figure out how his liver cirrhosis did not get detected sooner, we debated over how effective the treatment would be in Bangladesh, and we anticipated how the nursing would be better in Calcutta. One thing was common - every body were simply baffled, taken aback, and were heart broken to say the list. Before anyone could do anything meaningful for him he passed away within 3 months from his diagnosis. We blamed a lot to the medical system for poor treatments.

At that same period I came to know that Peter Jennings was diagnosed with lungs cancer. It was an awful shock. One evening he showed up on the TV briefly and announced in a broken voice about his illness. I told your mom about Peter while you two were in Dhaka. Among the three anchormen in our time, I liked him the best. I remained a passionate viewer of his program “World news” for 15 years. At one point I even started imitating some of his styles in spoken English. However, four and a half months later he too lost the battle. I could not blame any thing this time since the best medical treatments were at his disposal.

One day I became interested to know a little bit more of Lance Armstrong since he is a cancer survivor. I purchased one of his books. He was diagnosed in 1996 with testicular cancer that spread to his brain and lungs. Interestingly enough he has been cancer free since his chemotherapy in December 1996. He then became the first human being to win the tour de France 7 straight time after he had recovered! Your mom also read the same book on him.

We can never know for sure if Baba could have done anything differently in his prognosis. We can never know why Peter’s disease did not get detected sooner. We can never comprehend why all those cancerous cells stopped mutating in Lance’s body. Usually they stay aggressive until the host body becomes a total pandemonium and there is no room for their recklessness!

I know for sure that many of the events in our life do not give us an option to steer them in any other direction – they have their mind of their own. This year many such events snatched our sanity to an isolated island. Nothing, especially your mom seems familiar to me anymore. She appears to be quite a different person - constantly fighting off the dreadful feeling of losing the most important person in her life. Often she redefines in her mind the religion once she knew. She become numb about many things that otherwise would have made her agitated.

I on the other hand keep hoping that some how your mom becomes an agile, vibrant and spirited butterfly that once she was.

I want to start two chronicles “My era” and “Silent tune” for my daughter. I do not expect them to become elaborate pile of expressions - but just enough to amuse her inquisitive mind!

I want to tell about my environment in “My era” because I believe surroundings play an immense role on us. It shapes how we think, live and hope. In the other texts - I want to capture some of the convictions that brought me where I am today, some of the beliefs that got rooted in me without much ado, some of the notions that puzzles me and some of the dreams that remained far reached!

This is the best way I could communicate and leave trails of the untold side of me. Until now, for some reason or the other I never got around opening up this container of contemplation to anyone. However, I do not want to be the one who left the stage “with his music in his heart”!