Where we belong.

Art by: Katisaryna Dubovik

Suspended in what Banana Yoshimoto calls the ‘cosmic darkness’.

Humans cannot be let free to roam. We cannot be untethered. The image I have in mind is that of an astronaut drifting in space. Free, by all means, of all bonds. But she is left alone to wonder, to gaze upon the cosmos, to reach the ends of time and space, and ultimately to surrender.

That is how I feel now: adrift in loneliness, unbound by responsibilities or impositions. I stare into space, conjure a bit of it wherever I go. It’s deep and dark, like the bottom of the ocean, where I’m walking. I wish there was a lamp in my hand, one of the old ones fueled by oil. Something heavy to weigh me down and help me feel the comforting Earth beneath my feet. To bring me back.

Who knew there was a balance in this too? That too much freedom is a curse, and we were all meant to belong somewhere.

Cut off a kite string and it is lost, forever. Pull it too tight and it never fulfills its purpose. To fly, while being planted in the ground. To be a tree, rooted solidly in place, but with flowers that dance with the breeze.

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Note: A few years back, someone on this blog kindly shared some book/author recommendations. Among them was Banana Yoshimoto, who I started reading just a few days ago. “Kitchen” was the exact book I needed at the time to make sense of myself. Totally recommend it.

Lost Frequencies

Art by: Elesq

In the heart and solitude of the desert where echoes of nothingness sink into the dunes, my weary hand turns the radio button and catches onto something that is not the static. A thread of Fate, a wave from the Universe. For no reason at all, the radio tunes in to the frequency of you. Your voice, like an old record, scratches first and then promptly fills the space between morning and night. It reaches miles across the desert, floating around like lost words from an old language. Something that, idly, the now-rousing desert recognises. Something it allows.

Yet, I think, there is no greater meaning to this connection. Joy is a mere season of life. It comes, it goes. There is no need to question it. Neither this, nor sorrow nor solitude, either. Each must happen. Each must succeed the other. But like the winter brings frost, all other seasons bring change.

And so, for a while, your voice makes the desert flowers grow. It teases out the small animals from hiding. For a while, the birds fly back to the heart of an all-encompassing nowhere, bringing back news of the port and trade and the people who left. The static and loneliness are only mirrors now of what they used to be. For a while, the desert is anchored to the Earth, and not just a piece of land floating ever further away from it. It is grounded to the world by your voice that, in all fleeting irony, is carried over by the atmosphere and a random, snaking wire of Fate. And so it is that in the essence of the season, all else is forgotten. Everyday becomes a ritual of turning the button to the frequency your voice lives in.

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And just like that, your voice fills the void.

Until one day, your voice turns loud and your words clash with mine. For a long time since you first spoke, the radio emits silence. Not static either, but smooth, cold silence. The next day, as I turn the radio on, the static is back.

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Static. Static. Static.

You did arrive because of exceptional showers, because of a bored, sneaky thread of Fate that was let loose. No, it was never meant to be, let alone last.

Yet I call out your name in the desert, beg the birds to tell me where you are. But you’re just a lost frequency now. A season in time I can never get back to.

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Note: I actually came up with the idea/keyword of ‘Lost Frequencies’ almost a year back. I couldn’t do the idea justice at the time, so I just jotted it down. I actually might redo this later though, I’m not entirely satisfied with it >.< But if I don’t post this now, I never will, so…

Sucker punch to the Void

Art by: Hannakdraws

I used to think that lovers who carved their initials on trees were stupid. Why would you hurt a tree like that? I used to get angry. But now that I’m older I get it, I think.

Cave paintings, initials on a tree, even youtube ‘firsts’… You do it to say:

“We were here!”

To show that there was a ‘we’ once. You carve those initials to show that there was happiness and laughter and joy during a picnic on a summer too beautiful, too blurry to remember. We were alive! We lived, we loved. We were there. So complexly, so beautifully, so mind-numbingly, persistently, resentfully, there.

And even though the love has gone, even though our lives have passed, we are still there. We will always be. A picture of us etched into a tree lost in this world somewhere.

We need others to see, others to know. Because it is not enough to tell ourselves it was real. The memory of how real it was will stray in the black holes of our consciousness. It will be lost if others do not remember. If the memory isn’t shared consciousness, or if it is not agreed upon that it is reality, it will all be lost. If you’re the only one who remembers you, then everything you have been dies with yourself. And after a while, you stop being real.

So we try our damnedest to buckle ourselves to choice moments of this life. Even though in reality, Life is a great waterfall that perennially flows, carrying us with its currents. And any attempts to go upstream, to defy its waters will ultimately lead to a slip, a fall. Even so, even if it is foolish, I understand now.  We do what we do because we want to bookmark our existence, to cry at the Void that we are, we were. For a moment, we were true and infinite and you could not touch us. We shone so bright we illuminated the ultimate darkness of our existence, like the city lights that sparkle so bright they can be seen from space.

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Note: Day 8 of ‘NaNoWriMo’. You can also find the entry for the previous day here 🙂