The Silverfish

Lying in a womb of soft wetness, I see streaks of white chasing each other in a vast blueness. Life rushes through me in cold waves, teasing me, keeping me alive, but only for minutes. The streaks keep getting distorted, but I am unable to determine if they really are changing shapes, or is it my vision failing me. I try to turn around, I toss around, trying to change my view, but it never does. All I can see is white streaks in a vast blueness.

A cold fire is devouring my skin. Life seems to be gushing out of me. I try to hold on to it, but it seems impossible. I open my mouth wide open, as much as I can, as if to suck in all the life around me, to stay alive, but all I get is the same cold fire burning me inside. The white streaks carry on.

The white streaks suddenly start changing shapes, recognizable ones. I can see myself in those shapes, and some more like me. I know this. Its my own life being played in front of me. The cold fire has become fierce, uncontrollable. The waves of life rushing are dying out. They just tease me from a distance now, not coming forward to sooth me, not touching me anymore.

The soft wetness is drying out, becoming hard, harsh, hurting me. I try to move to somewhere more comfortable, but my body doesn't bear with me, refuses to move at all. My eyes are not in my control anymore. They move fast, randomly, but still, the view never changes, its the same white streaks in a vast blueness.

The cold fire has become unbearable now. Its has seeped through my skin, into my very being. Every nerve in my body seems to be burning with it. Suddenly, a chill takes over my body, and I go numb. Completely numb. No more burning, no more pain. No more sounds, just a soft white light, immense peace, and numbness. Finally, I die.

Tethered to a thin sliver of light, as I rise above the world, I see myself, lying lifeless, still, covered with bits of sand, lying on the shore, my silver scales glitter and the shimmer like the sand itself. But death leaves no beautiful marks. My mouth open, as if trying to suck the whole world in, my eyes, stony, dead, blood shot with all the frantic rolling. I see a huge wave rolling on the surface of sea. As it breaks on the shore, it drags my body along with, into the ocean, into the sea, into the very world where I was born and survived, the very world where I had wanted to live, the very world I longed for when I was dying... a divine funeral may be.

At the heart of the tornado...

Years of struggling within has come to a standstill, questions stirring the turmoil have for the moment faded away, the shrilling noise has dissolved away into a distant silence, that envelopes the vast emptiness beneath the dark brooding clouds, the tornado has finally stopped.

Poised between a moment of violent flurry and and a moment of sublime peace, the tornado pauses and watches as streaks of light travel and break through the clouds in a slow dance of ruptures and explosions.

The tornado waits, looks on to the slowly appearing sun. The heart has now begin to stir, in a calm swirl-pool of colors and dreams, the furry rises again. The tornado is still waiting. It writhes and wrenches, muffling the screams of its agony, fighting against the heart, holding on to it.

The swirling gets faster and faster, pulling the wind along, the tornado screams, louder and louder. Mad streaks of lightning scorch the tornado and agitate it from within... the flurry rises and rises, going out of control, breaking through.

With a shriek that echoed through ages, the tornado explodes into a deluge of bright colors. Speckles of dreams drift through pillars of light breaking through the clouds. The tornado is still there, still waiting, calm, and patient, as time comes to a halt, and dreams move on.

I just wait.

In my fantasy, I have a butterfly. As it flutters, grains of light shed from its wings and add to the brightness of my horizons, but do nothing to the darkness of my sky.

The sky remains perennially dark. Occasionally lightened up when the silver clouds above throw sparks of greetings to the grains of light at the horizon, the sky remains, dark.

The butterfly flutters and flies, settling here for a moment, hovering there the next. The winds tremble to the beatings of the wings and shake the walls of my world. But the butterfly goes on, oblivious to the tremors its causing, the butterfly continues to hop and fly.

I stand in a dark corner, and wait. I feel the powdery light falling and slipping over my closed eye-lids. And as I open them, the soft brightness of the horizons entice me and capture my attention. But then, the butterfly... the butterfly.

It captures my senses and my imagination, enveloping me in a mist of soft brightness. I follow it around, even with my eyes closed, and my ears full of music, and my mind in a whirlwind of emotions, I can sense it, I can feel it, I keep running behind the fluttering wings of light... never getting nearer, but never falling behind, I go on running.

I am out of breath now. I stop, I wait, I breathe, I look up. The butterfly hovers above me for an instant. I turn my face up and close my eyes. I feel the particles of light falling and slipping over my closed eyelids, and I sense the butterfly flutter away, not caring whether I follow or not. I stop.

I turn around, look at the horizon, look at the sky, and the streaks of lightning. And over the distance, I still see the butterfly, fluttering, flying, settling for an instant and flying again. I don't try to follow the butterfly anymore.

Footprints

I kept walking,
Away from myself,
Away from you,
Unsure of direction,
My heart and soul blue,
I kept walking.

The night,
It got darker,
My eyes weeping,
Never knowing why,
My mind sleeping,
I kept walking.

The wind,
Shards of glass,
Tearing through,
Cutting me apart,
The pain only grew,
I kept walking.

The silence,
Heavy like my heart,
Howling in my ears,
Deep, like pain,
Moist, with tears,
I kept walking.

And you,
Cold, distant,
Silent, smiling,
I wept, I cried,
Tears shining,
I kept walking.

and so I was hated...

"Get out, Let us live our lives..."

The voices ringing through my ears as I walk back to myself, to my loneliness. I am passing through a myriad tunnel, like passing through time, people swooshing by me in jittery lines of various colors, suns and moons playing tricks with my eyes, feelings playing hide and seek with my heart, and thoughts playing around my mind, and I wonder... is that all I stand for? Is that all that I mean to the world? Is that all I am?

I don't know if I will ever get an answer to that, and I am not sure if I shall live long enough to wait for one. But, now I do realize something for sure, I am hated. I cannot be a part of life... not even my own.

How could I be blind to that all this long? I keep running away from myself, how can I expect others to stay? There's no point looking for an answer to that one, because there doesn't exist one. Its just that I am hated, and I guess I must live with it. But one thing is for sure, I do miss everyone, I miss myself, and my loneliness too.

My Definition of Life... Revisited

Sun and Rain and Smiles and Pain,
Nights and Days and Gloom and Glaze,
Quill of Feather and Edge of Knife,
Yes, my friends, That is Life.

Sitting at the shrine of solitude, at the bottom of my own heart, I was going over these very lines of mine. Pondering, wondering... what made me write these? Is this really what I feel about life? The answer, though hard to find, was sure lurking somewhere in the deep recesses of my heart itself, and I resolved to find it.

I got up and started walking, feeling the walls with my hands... looking for answers... The walls felt all cold and hard, rough... almost bruising my fingers. A chill started taking over me... it was getting difficult to walk. And I started wondering, where is the sun, the smiles, the days, the glaze.... where are they all? Is it that I have never been happy in my soul, that I have never smiled from my heart? Somewhere, there has to be a little warmth, a little softness. But where?

As I kept wondering, forcing myself to go on walking, I stumbled, and fell. I couldn't get up anymore. My body wouldn't respond. It felt like I had been packed with kilos of ice... I tried to keep breathing, to keep my eyes open, to avoid the darkness that was closing in, to stop the blue clouds that were forming all around me, getting denser and heavier. Shadows... dark shadows... darker than the darkness around me, started emerging from the walls and moving towards me... I tried to get up, to run, to keep them away... but I couldn't. I was getting weaker, and weaker. The walls of my own heart were closing in on me, trying to crush me... and I couldn't stop it.

But then it's my heart after all, so why couldn't I? I tried, but then I realized, I had run away from myself long back, my heart was not my own anymore, we were strangers to each other. My own heart was trying to kill me. But why?

Illusion

Here I am, sitting in the shadows... of my own dreams. I am trying to hide in here, hiding from the world, from people, from myself. And thus, from the shadows, I am trying to observe the world around me, and see if it means anything to me, if I mean anything to it.

But as it seems from here, the world doesn't even exist. Its just an illusion, a kaleidoscope of illusions in fact. I see people, and yet they don't see me, I hear them talk, but its not me they are talking to, I feel them around, but they don't even notice me.

And yet again, a doubt creeps in, is it the world thats an illusion? Or, is it me? Is it that the world doesn't notice me? Or, is it that I am oblivious to it? I try to probe into myself to find out the answers, but I can't. How can I? I have been sitting here hiding from myself. I try to return, to the world, to myself. I emerge from the shadows, looking around for myself, hoping that he would be looking for me too. But...

Blue

On a high, I sit and watch things around me. My demented mind seems to be making multiple interpretations of everything around me, right or wrong not being the question at all.

The blue light and the songs seem to be augmenting the experience of it all. And as I keep looking at the source of the blue light, I can feel myself rising and drifting... up, up... right into the blue bulb, and suddenly everything around me disappears into a voluminous ambiance of blue light.

All around me, its just blue. I have no idea of the physical state, its neither solid, nor liquid, nor gas... nothing that physics can explain. It just seems to be something thats flowing all around me, and even through me. I am in the world of my mind... my own mind... which I seldom peek into.

A bleak world it is, various shades of blue engulfing everything around. But, I wonder, why is it so? Why is it that every other color, every other feeling has been totally purged out of my mind? Why is it that I can see or feel nothing but an emptiness... a solid kind of emptiness, something that hits with full force right across your soul, shakes you up to the very roots in a single impact. Or is that loneliness?

Now this might seem an entirely funny feeling, how can I be lonely with the best of my friends and so many people around me? Loneliness is not physical at all. Its the absence of people, not from the real world, but from the mind and the heart. Its the absence of people who I can talk to, who I can confide into. Its the absence of that someone that I have been waiting for so long.

But then, again, why is loneliness such a difficult feeling to cope with? After all, I always have at least one person to talk to, one person to confide into, Myself. But its difficult to talk to myself. The other me, the one that I want to talk to, has hidden himself under the thick blanket of the blue loneliness that fills every corner of my mind.

There... I see something move.. and there.. and there too. Its everywhere... its me.. trying to break away, trying to break free from this loneliness that has engulfed me. I will be free. I shall be free.

Full Circle

Its funny, and clichéd, but you realize the importance of something only when you lose it. I think I have lost something too... I have lost the capacity to feel, I have lost the capacity to be happy, or to be sad. And I miss it a lot.

There are moments, when I want to cry, to feel the tears on my cheeks, to let it all flow out, and give my aching heart some relief, but I can't. And now, I am caught in a vicious circle of pain. I am in pain, you see, and I can't cry, which causes me more pain. Its all welling up inside, I don't really know how it will come out. I am afraid that someday it will burst forth, engulfing all thats around me, destroying all the tender threads that hold my life together, that bind the various pieces of my existence into one, and I'll crumble into naught but dust.

And that dust, will dissolve into the wind, leaving not a trace of my existence, no one to remember me, or even notice that I existed once, and that now I don't. But that leads me to another question, does anyone notice me now ? Does it matter to anyone now, that I am alive ? I guess not. I guess is doesn't. And here I think, why should anyone notice either ?

And then the answer boils back to where I began... I can't feel. No one notices me because I can't feel. No one notices me because I don't notice anyone, or thats what everybody else thinks. But is that true ? No it isn't. Its not that I don't want to feel, its just I can't.

I guess at some point of time, everybody goes through this... emptiness. How can one not ? Although we are all different beings, living in worlds that we have created for ourselves, that has defined boundaries which no one can cross or alter in anyway. Within this world, everybody feels, unknown to others, unknown to themselves sometimes. Eventually, all the feeling seems to stem from just one feeling.. Pain. Its pain that causes us to be sad, desperate, to want to cry, and the absence of pain that makes us happy, hopeful and to want to laugh. And then, when one realizes this, the pain fills up his whole world, purging everything else, removing all other feelings, creating a huge emptiness, within which one can feel nothing but pain.

I think thats what I am passing through. I may think that I cannot feel, but actually I can. The only problem is that I can feel nothing but pain. But this unending thought leads me to yet another question.. What is Pain ? Why is it so powerful ? Why ?

Pain, is just an emptiness, lack of all other feelings. It seems to be going round and round, pain causes other feelings, and the absence of all other feelings causes pain. But I guess thats the only way I can explain it. And the reason for that, for not being able to explain what it is, is just one - I cannot feel.

An Apology

First, an apology to th readers to keep them waiting for this long, but the fact is that the turn of events actually prevented me from getting time to introspect.

Its said that the nightingale pierces its bosom with a thorn to sing, how else can it sing ! Well, in my case, I didn't have the thorn to actually pierce my heart with...

Lets keep it short, the apology is here. Accept it please.

Contradiction...

On days, various days in fact, more often than not, it so happens with me that I contradict myself. I talk to, argue with and contradict myself, and thereafter contradict the very fact that I have contradicted myself.

It might sound pretty lame, but the fact is that we all, at some time or the other, feel an urge to talk to, to hold someone... to dispell those moments when the loneliness becomes larger than other things in life. It is at those moments that I, like all of us, look for companionship, for someone... anyone. The yearning becomes so strong that other things at that moment stop mattering all together. In fact, everything seems to be just as lonely, just as sad, just as I am. And then, in that moment of weak loneliness, I start talking to myself.

We, that is I and me, together we talk about life, about the meaning of and the need for life. We argue, we contradict each other, we fight... and we reach no conclusion about anything at all. Things keep moving in and out of focus. And together we sit and wonder.. about the mundane and the arcane. Forgotten is the fact that there is a whole world outside us, forgotten is the smoke hanging heavy upon us, the light around us and the darkness closing in upon us. Forgotten is the longing for companionship, the yearning for someone to hold on to, the desire for someone to talk to. We talk about things big and small... but we only talk about us. No one else matters then... no one.

And then I wonder, why do we need anyone else ? Together, I and me that is, have discussed that and realised that it is not the big things in life that matters to us. That it is the small things that we want to talk about. That person I am yearning for, I just want to tell her how I love the sunrise, how I love the white bird walking all by itself in the green lawn, how I like a particular song, a particular color, a particular book, how I love to sit all by myself and think about things, about everything...

But then... here I contradict myself again... if I so like to sit by myself, why do I need somene to tell this to ?

[No title]

On one of the days of my loneliness, I decided to sit by msyelf and talk... to myself. It was a strange feeling at first, the autism that I had gotten into had taken the better of me. People apart, I realised that I had even started running away from myself. But then, how long. How long can one elude himself, the confrontation has to happen someday. So I decided I better be today.

I discovered, when you have built up so many walls around yourself to make it difficult for people to approach you, you make it difficult for yourself too. Still, I kept on trying to talk... to myself. I hesitated in asking questions so that I dont upset myself, I hesitated in answering questions so that I dont upset myself. But then, words can only say so much. It wasn't much use talking.

I delved deeper into my interiors. I had colored myself black all over, everything was dark inside, it hid everything else that was there before. I tried putting in some other colors, some bright shades of life, but then, the darkness was so strong, any color that I tried comepletely lost its essence to the black that was all around. I was slowly realising my mistake. Its easier to add colors and soften the austerity of white, but difficult to change black, it just remains as it is.

I am still wondering, can I remove the black veil, can I fight the darkness and let the light spread around, can I ever talk to myself again ?

And then...

...a streak of lightning tore through the sky, highlighting the dark silhouette, sitting there all by itself... all cold and dark. I shouted out to him, but he wouldn't reply, the sihouette didn't even budge. Lonely and blue as I was, I needed someone to talk to.

Not knowing who he was or why he was there, it was difficult at the outset but I started talking to him. But still, it seems my words failed to register. The silhouette just sat there... still. The darnkess of the silhouette like that of a black-hole... absorbing all, giving nothing. All my words, my tears, my sobs, my smiles, my laughters, my anger, my outburst, my reveree, my remarks... just drowned into the silhouette, the lonely sihouette, invoking no response.

Dejected, I fell silent... and remained so for a long time. Every now and then, a flash of lightning would show the sihouette was still there, the same way as it was, no change, as if time had stopped for it... the lonely silhouette. I thought I must move on, find some other soul to confide into, but somehow I couldn't. I felt a strange connection with it, I couldn't possibly leave him there, all alone. So I sat there, looking onto the place where the silhouette would momentary pass in and out of my sight with every flash of lightning.

The dawn was approaching, soon there would be light and I would probably be able to see who he was. I kept peering into the dark, trying to spot the blotch of darkness in an ocean of black. I kept wondering if he was still there, reassured of his presence by the momentary flashing lightning.

As the sun smeared the sky with vermillion, I thought I cound somehow discern who he was. But as the sun moved on, shedding light on the darkness outside and within, the sihouette began to move and fade. Little by little it trickled out of view till it had completely faded and dissolved into the light just the way it was with the darkness. Where did he go, what was it, who was he.

I dont know, maybe I'll may probably never find out either. But then, sometimes, when I look at my own shadow in the sun, I wonder... was it actually a silhouette or a shadow of something or someone else ? And, a gust of wind blew, passing through my hair, setting them flowing with the wind, and then I noticed the uncanny resemblence between my shadow and the silhouette... but then, I had to forget about it and move on, coz life goes on.

... and when I am dying...

as I fall through the infinite abyss... out of the darkness into the very womb of light, fly up while going down, I think.

I think of the times when I was alive. I think of times when darkness was sweet, I think of times, when solitude was a bliss, I think of the time when I missed both darkness and solitude. I think...

Its all coming back to me, the spectrum of colors surrounding me slowly fading into the darkness of the sun, the sonatas fading away into the silence of the sea. As the walls of the abyss leave light behind, the hiss of the still air in the abyss piercing my ears... I break.

My clothes burning away... shreds flying above me, tears fill my eyes and spill out into the womb of light, but I move on leaving them behind. I move on leaving the darkness and the light, the sound and the silence, solitude and society, I leave myself behind... and I move on.

As I near the womb of light, I realise, its not light that I am falling into, its not darkness that I am falling from, its not the walls of the abyss that are closing in, its not the hiss of the air thats piercing my ears... its nothing. Its the Nothing.

The Nothingness that fills the abyss hits me hard now... but I dont feel the pain. I dont feel the abrupt silence, I dont feel the sudden pause that has come about... I just feel Nothing... The Nothing. Have I reached ? Where have I reached ?

As the question haunts me, I look around. The Nothingness slowly fades out. I see myself fading back in view. I can now see the colors, I can now hear the sound, I can now experience the darkness and the silence as the absence of colors and sound. I feel happy again... I Feel again ! I have fallen back to the darkness of the sun, the silence of the sea and the spectrum of colors.

But then...wasn't it death ? Or was it just the absence of life... I wonder...I Wonder.

The Vacuum in the Emptiness

The vacuum in the emptiness of the lonely lanes that I am walking through, hit me harder than anything solid. The voice of the silence louder, harsher in my ears than anything else ever. I wonder... what is it that I am trying to feel, to listen... or maybe trying not to feel and not to listen ?

The vacuum in the emptiness is a strange thing to feel. As I keep on walking, I feel the vacuum dissolving into a solid mass of strange shades of gray... hitting me hard on my face. I realise how alone I am. I realise how the crowd that surrounds me means nothing to me, I realise that I mean nothing to them either. Its just me against myself... fighting the solid gray cloud of vacuum closing in on me. But it seems I am losing, the cloud keeps getting thicker... closer... I am losing sight of all thats around me...

I am in a damp mist of gray smoke all around me. Its weightless.. it has not the physical properties of matter.. its vacuum. But still its heavy, it weighs down my heart, my eyes, my ears... all my senses are getting enslaved to it. I can see nothing beyond the mist... its all dense and heavy and light and weightless... I feel like I am flying with my feet anchored to the ground. The mist gets denser... stronger... so solid that I can move not anymore. I am suspended in mid vacuum, something wieghing me down, something holding me up. I feel like I want to implode and explode at the same time. I feel... the vacuum in the emptiness.

The mist has begun to roll... rolling into shapes... definitely alive but not human. The voice of the silence has begun to groan in my ears. The floor of mist beneath me begins to fade, but I dont fall.. I can see a boy bundled up below me. The ceiling of the mist fades too... but its a cloudy night, I can barely make out the moon. The mist is no more a mist now. Its a circle of shapes, definitely alive but not human shapes, surrounding me. I try to talk to them, but I cant articulate, I utter no sound. I just keep listening to the voice of the silence. I stop all attempts to articulate or gesticulate, I just concentrate on the shapes and the voice.

They are trying to tell me something... perhaps. The voice of the silence grows into my own voice. I have all the answers in the world... I listen to my own voice... But the boy huddled up over there, below me... pulls me back.. calls me back. I tear through the vacuum in the emptiness, shut out all the voices except that of people rushing right through me...

I am sweating profusely, my breathing is heavy, woice alien... but I know the answers... THE ANSWERS are all here... right here.

An account of I meeting Me.

At times when loneliness covers the horizon, and beyond, I step out of myself and meet Me. I see a boy, withering away with the worry that people hate him, or may be just dont like him enough... I see a boy thinking... deep in his heart craddling the perpetual desire to be loved by all, I see this boy who prepares himself for the unknown, the unobvious and the unexpected, but simply neglects that what is known, obvious and expected.

I try to delve deeper into him, but he has clouded the depths of his heart with voluminous smoke that hangs heavy. He has pushed his mind to where it is surrounded by glass lenses, which magnify the gigantic and shrivel the diminutive. He has bounded his senses in a kaleidoscope of illusions. He is perplexed to the extent of having to wonder who he his and what is he making of himself...

I try to talk to him, but he is too pensive to even notice. I wait, patiently... someday he will listen, and then I will tell him all that he needs to know. I have all the answers, I am his panacea.

But then, how long do I have to wait. Why doesn't he listen... why does he shun his own voice... when will I talk to Me ?

The night when I died...

Every night, we go to sleep, never knowing what we might wake up to. The silver moon that washes down my face and the liquid air that flows in my hair... none of it can help me in my conjecture about what the next morning would be like, would it be a red sun in a blue sky with white clouds and colorless silhouettes of early-morning prayers rising from the earth to the kingdom of gods, or would I wake up to a sun-less sky on a lifeless earth, or would it even be earth that I wake up on ?

At this point of time, sitting alone on a cold steel-bench, that is stealing the warmth off my body, I am letting my soul go free and wander in the depths and heights of imagination. From here, behind a gray cloud, I can see a psychedelic blend of colors... the colors of envy, pride, anger... enveloping the realm of human life... and I can see the black veil of death closing in... am I dead ?

I am floating now, the nothingness of space engulfing me, devouring me slowly, taking me into its folds, making me feel cold and warm and dark and bright and heavy and light and I dont know what, something that I know but I cant define, something that I do not know but can understand... something that I have never experienced, something that is so familiar... human-nature ?

Well, I guess so, I am inside someone else. Its misty in here, a wide spectrum of multiple colors and thick fog. Through the mist I can discern a silhoutte, sitting upright and looking into something, his hands steady, fingers moving fast. Then things go hazy, there is red and then there is green and then a flash of white and then blue and finally its all black and dark... and I am thrown out with a force enough to shatter mountains to dust.

What was it ?

My Definition of Life...

Sun and Rain and Smiles and Pain,
Nights and Days and Gloom and Glaze,
Quill of Feather and Edge of Knife,
Yes, my freinds, That is Life.

Pretty lame eh ? But well thats about it.

Its just the beginning, keep checking in and loads more will come through, I hope I shall be able to justify the title of my blog.