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Dear A,

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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. 

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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! 

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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,

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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.”

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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)\

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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!