~Muse Corner~(updated -02/11)

Hola, everyone!

In my quest to rid an insufferable mind of its myriad of thoughts - writing seems the only solace...

What you can expect to come via this thread, is nothing I can predict, anymore than any of you.

If you are a reader, or plan to be one, on this thread - I lay that fact before you now!

If you're persisting past this, enjoy reading!


Between Space and Time ...

You say you wanna move on and
You say I'm falling behind ...

It is a cue. My pace gathers, not that I'd been going slow at any rate, mind you! But if my feet are weary, they show no such signs. Of course, there is this possibility that I am in complete ignorance of the signs. The signs. I would have let out a sigh with enough breath to afford the luxury of one. Determinedly, I haul all my reserves, specifically the ones which were employed in poking and evoking thoughts, and put them into the singularity of meeting the increased speed, and incline, of my mechanical rescue.

I never really gave up on
Breakin' out of this two-star town

Hypocrite!, my mind cries out. Home was not a heaven circumferenced in a secure haze. It was just a usual home, with its fair share of highs and lows. But homes could be more than that... I moved out in wishful pursuit. Whims, in retrospective I say, can take you a long way. Whims can be, and are powerful motivators. It seems, also in retrospection, they are stronger than what genuine concerns can ever manage to be, in good time. It was one such whim, a dark anomaly in my bright, wise world.

A subtle kiss that no one sees;

I built the castle, of sand and shell. Intricate, involving, with a secret ingrained into its very soul. There was a grandeur those around me foresaw in the dream. I saw above all my dark desire gaining blood. Ceaselessly, I chased the obsession. With care for minute details, the passion of an illicit lover. No magic, alas, I conjured the splendor with, could keep it from crashing from where I suspended its fate - high atop the neighborhoods of countless other castles, high in the skies above, fascinatingly adrift midair, until!

A broken wrist and a big trapeze

I have lost what I had, for what I never did. Everything haunts me now. Reality is a thick smoke which suffocates me, blinds me, tears me. And still, in it I can't lose the one thing I desperately wish to - my sense of perspective. Oh why I pray, must insanity evade me afar when melancholy is its sincerest soul mate? Should enduring the consequences not relieve me of solemn comprehensions? Can I not be the unassuming loser - a pitiful mockery who wears for the world a silly unknowing mirth...

The good old days, the honest man;
The restless heart, the Promised Land

There is something about good old days, that remains unseen, more importantly unappreciated, until they're past. I was happy once, and honest. Maybe I should say this the other way round. When I say honest, I refer to times when sleep did not have to be pill induced, or a deliberated exhaustion. (Distantly it reminds me, and I increase the pace of the belt slipping beneath my fleeting feet). When I say happy, I refer to times when I was not reduced to cling on to specters of it. When unrest was in what was unattained, not what I had brought upon myself. When the promised land was not a term I could think about, in utmost optimism, with grim satire. When hope was not a delusion I forced upon my brain from one aimless day to another. When every unseen adventure I thought about was not shadowed by the knowing despair - it would never come true, not again.

It's funny how you just break down
Waitin' on some sign

I have an inherent knack to miss them. For the first one should have glared right back at me when I was busy making a fancy of my whim. There was a world just green, there was a life just rich, there was a love just pure - I told myself, to go and never return. Schematically, I followed the book, but not the signs. The fool I was, the fool I am, I wait for them still, to show. Am I broken? Hell, yes I am! Have I given up? I wish...

I got the green light
I got a little fight
I'm gonna turn this thing around

I've returned, a failure. But in nursing my secret wound, I continue to house the cursed flame of desire. I want to be what I once was, and I want to be what I had to become. But I dread in the past. No less what it will bring upon the future, except, in the ignorance of the latter I pretend a happiness. There is a point of fatigue past which pain fails to reach you. Until you stop.

I'm scared, I plead, that's all. Too scared to stop - and turn around ...

The scale reads its maximum, for speed and incline. And I keep my feet going. Stationary in space, covering the miles...

Can you read my mind?



(S.L.)

Another one. Nothing related to the previous, just something that came when I was idling with my pen, trying to write quite something else - oh well! (The phrase elected silence was coined by a Trappist Monk, Thomas Merton. And i read of it recently somewhere, ever since it has stuck!)

Elected Silence

I saw him again today. His chair alongside the glass window which covers half of the wall it is framed in, overlooking the lane between opposite rows of houses. Three storey houses, for the most - its norm in this city for non commercial constructions, and as my dad tells me, also in accord with legal procedures set by the State Dept. This window by the way, that he looks out of, is on the top floor of its house.

It was 8AM then, the usual start of my day when I come into the kitchen to grab myself some breakfast. And everyday, it was the same sight. He was always sitting right there, in the chair, looking out. A floor beneath his own a girl with waist length hair is also always, as if by rule, walking to and fro in her balcony, talking on her cellular. I asked my mother once, soon after I had moved into my parents' house, if it was just me who always seemed to spot her at such times. No, my mother had replied, she is indeed on the phone as many times as I see her. Oh well!

Returning to him. I stood some extra seconds just looking at him. At one point it even seemed as if he was looking right back. Like honestly, I could see his eyes precisely, and they happened to be on me. It surprised me, for between us was the entire width of two front porches plus the lane, and heightwise we were separated by a couple of storeys. Strange it was indeed, that it felt like we had shared a look. As always, I moved my gaze away. I have this weird thing, I can't stand looking people in the eye even momentarily. When I share this fact with friends or kin, they find it absurd - I'm generally supposed to be a confident, unnerved sort of girl, and this trait is of lesser, fidgety mortals.

Anyways, so I finally walk away, carrying a loaf of onion-garlic toast and a cup of water. Milk, I absolutely loathe. Coffee, I'm trying to get rid of. Tea, I suppose I could have some, but then, water is definitely the healthier of options. From this last comment, I would not mean for you to believe I'm a health freak of some kind. In fact, in all honestly, I'm as far from it as can be. Yes, I like fruits and veggies, but I'm a junkie no less. And a consistent muncher in between the three meals. And a die hard chocolate, ice cream fan. Who isn't, in their rightful mind?

So, after getting over with the formality of this breakfast in under a hundred seconds round about, I return my trays to the wash sink - the maid comes in sometime later in the forenoon - and as if out of an instinct I did not plan, my eyes go back up to the window. He is sitting there, as I know he always is, and looking down to the lane.

Someday, when I'm motivated enough, I shall seek to know of him, first hand, how it is possible for him to follow that routine, hour after hour, day after day. Somewhere inside in the back of my head, I almost know its a bleak chance I will go as far to know the answer. Still, the sight of him intrigues me. And after I'm out of this kitchen and return to my routine for the day, I don't dwell in thoughts of the same. But every morning when I find him there, it makes me think. Generally, I'd think it was one of those unchanging things around you - like them aging trees, or the cinema hall which is a lane off our own. And in that sort of permanence, I daresay should be a comfort. Except, thats not it. In some way, its depressing to find him there every morning.

Inevitably, my mind delves in speculations about why it is so. Why there is never anyone with him to share a tea, or a chat. Why he isn't reading a morning paper, or watching news, or on a call ... or anything else. It makes me then explore the obvious possibilities in response - maybe he has some medical condition. Maybe its just him in that entire top floor apartment. Maybe, its a statue?

I'm wandering into weird realms to explain, and its not making much sense, I admit. The point is, I wish I didn't have to see him there every morning. And realistically, I don't have to. I can well mind my eye and keep it away. But I can't seem to do that.

I look up at him, again. And nothing has altered, except, I'm glad, it doesn't seem like he is looking at me. Then suddenly, as if he can sense my gaze (which should be impossible, given the physical distance between us, as I described before) his eyes turn back to me. Or so I feel. Again, I avert my gaze. And then just as abruptly, I look back. On an impulse, a weird one that I have absolutely not planned, and certainly can't explain, I wave out to him.

A second passes by. Then another. Its a strange disappointment, I feel, on getting no response, when on the contrary it should have been relief. After all that did imply he wasn't looking at me, that it was only a trick of my mind.

He smiles. I swear on this second of my life, he smiled. There was no mistaking. Still, to ascertain, I wasn't imagining, and that it was for me if it was real, I wave again - even smiling this time before knowing so - and his smile widens.

Its crazy that I should be able to observe such details as the widening of his smile, or the forming of something like craters where dimples should be in his sunken cheeks, but I can and I do. With a strange satisfaction, after a second or two, I walk out of the kitchen to start my day. I can't word for you exactly what has changed, but something has. Something so much, that I'm looking forward to seeing him by that window tomorrow morning, already...


(S.L.)

You write beautifully! Especially liked the second one!

Originally posted by: nanshr

You write beautifully! Especially liked the second one!

Glad you like it, thanks!

I have not read them yet, but I will..
*to be edited*

hey ..nice stories..