Sunday, November 21, 2004

Clutching At The Winds To Control My Destiny

Do we really control anything at all? We get things into our lives ourselves, or so we think. We adapt ourselves to keep what we think we want. And then can't keep up any more. The more we attempt to control our emotions the further they carry us away from the direction we are straining in. And then they interfere with the very values we hold dearest. What do you do then? The choice is one that I would want to make. Nor one that I could ever advise someone on. After all, how does one decide whether it is better to kill one's dreams or kill one's self. The two seem so inextricably entwined. Yet, try we must, to choose one over the other. After all, one cannot be lord and master of a house with two owners. Control or emotion? Could they ever go together? And though it seems so abstract, each one of us faces this at some time or the other. There are no easy answers......and no common answer either.

Floating within, trying hard to grasp,
Fingers clawing wildly for walls they can't find,
A mind trying hard to control a life,
Whose complexity a stranger tries to deny,
Tranquil shattered by hands I invited inside,
Now twisting my thoughts to bring blinded cry,
Is all that I see through the beholder's eye,
Coloured to make a cloak and lose me in time

Once alive, flying free, nothing ever denied,
Now constraints that I feel tear my frail being,
But could I ever break free from the bars,
That I made dreaming of bliss never seen,
Torn between the sky and the fear to fly,
A silent man seeks solace in arms opened wide,
But will they be yours, sweet friend of mine,
Or do I return to the cell I once left behind

Did you believe that it was me you saw,
Or just a crazy dream that you took for a metaphor,
A man of clay, just a toy that you gave,
A shape that forever your mind's desires craved,
But your world I had once forsaken and run,
For a world whose truth you now can't see,
Though at the time you seemed so true and so free,
Would you now hold that hand or divide Destiny

Meltdown threatening now, staring me in the face,
Why does it seem as if the winds whisper your name,
The way things go driving to the edge and back,
More complexities unearthed in what was so simple to start,
When letting go is not a course on my chart,
Would the tides of time heal or open a chasm,
Would the waters cause to drift or hold together,
The raft of lives and free Fate I dreamt of at the start

Friday, November 19, 2004

I Run to Stay Hidden From Myself

What does it really take to be content with where one is? A deep realization of one's being and surrounds? Or a blanking out of all that is painful? Was forced to ponder over this a few days back. A friend of mine kept insisting that I was just wasting my time by seeing all that surrounds us, because the only way we would escape the misery that is today, was by shutting out the reality when it pained and transporting ourselves to a time when aall was well and all we saw and heard were things that gave us joy....was there ever such a time?

Maybe there was. There was a time when we failed to see the things around us as we see them now. They didn't change much. We did. Our perception, our cynicism. It changed everything. Suddenly the 5-year old boy who could do Integral Calculus was no longer a genius, but a persecuted victim of a society that no longer has time nor the patience for childhood. A society where fun no longer means anything other than a late-night party at the hippest nightclub in town with a semi-nude model on your arm, all of which requires you to forsake the small joys of life......

But does that really mean I should shut myself to what is around me? Do I really need to mask reality? Do I need to live in a place that exists nowhere but in my dreams? Or can I find bliss in the truth? Would a deeper understanding not help me?

Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in between. For, one thing I do know. The once I tried shutting myself to reality, something entered and left my life, while I did not realise it. Though I may not regret that in particular, I do regret the countless other things I may have allowed to pass me by while I was stuck in my unreasonable hole.....and so, I wrote something for this friend of mine.....and hey, Neeta, this is something in which you can't even blame me for being "complex" or "high-flown"......

Close my eyes and drift away,
To places and times gone by,
Live in a world where dreams prevail,
And laughter causes eyes to run dry

Scared to see, afraid to believe,
That the world inexorably moves on,
For scenes of bliss and lost peace,
Are where I wish to ever belong

She came in like a whisper,
Her footfall I didn't feel,
Emptiness of her passing,
Is what now makes that time feel real

I shut my eyes and closed myself,
And lost what I didn't see,
For when the moment came past me again,
I knew not, for the moment I did not feel

If you were me for that's what's real,
Perhaps you'd care to see,
My future became my past,
And once again I surrendered to the surreal

Cheers!
M!