Choosing Life

Seclusion

For periods in my life, I have hidden from the world because that was what I needed to do. But it’s obvious that now I must grow, I must strive to reach my full potential – in spite of my desire to escape the responsibility that follows. Maybe now I am ready to bear the responsibility of living a significant life with a wider horizon...

To grow up is to learn that one’s mature life consists of personal choices and decisions, and to realize that options give freedom. To dare to take upon oneself the responsibility and the pain in this kind of freedom is the condition of living.

My life and the time span that makes up my life are my concern. It is up to me alone to decide how I will spend my life – and the consequences of each choice are my responsibility.

We as humans set goals for ourselves throughout our lives. We achieve some and set new ones… so it’s all about enjoying the journey of life while it lasts.

And what is a goal anyway?
Select only the most sublime; force of habit will take care of the rest.

OBSESSION:
I have chosen obsession. Or have I? What determines why we act in one way or the other in life, or abstain from choosing the other option? Is it fate or free will?

I realize that at any point, I can make a new choice. Any day, any time. I can decide whether I’m willing to pay the price for the way I have chosen.

I also realize that my choices – even choosing to bail out at a point in the future, will have consequences.

In the past, I didn’t think or act as I do now: I was more flexible, more compromising; I wanted to tread on an even path and I guess not step on too many toes.

What do these challenges spark in me? Am I a gambler, who ticks only when this much is at stake? Or is it simply the right circumstances coming together at the right time?

Normally I try to find answers to such questions. Analyze. Perhaps I have finally achieved the state of just living – living without pondering too much about it.

The well-balanced person strives for not only a goal but lives fully in the flow of life, because every expression in the process is equally important.

What vanity in the art of ZEN ARCHERY,
wanting to hit the target!

There will always be one stronger than you.

The only importance is the correctness of the
movement.

– Kungfutse.

The universe of humans often seems menacing, full of conflict stemming from people’s own inner dramas, little wars that have nothing to do with me, but which are likely to effect my well – being. That’s when I withdraw into the simplicity of the mountains…. To peace.

I want to find out if I am capable of what, deep inside, I believe I can accomplish.
But visions have to be transformed into reality, otherwise they are nothing but illusions.

I seek solitude, to connect with inner peace. TAI CHI amongst the giants of the universe. Belonging “to” & “in” the moment…... Absolute serenity…… Peace……

That moment of oblivion, ex stasis, two bodies joined in bliss, transformed.

The pleasure seems incomparable to anything.
Little deaths, they've been called.

I've gone spinning out of control, unaware of anything else but that explosion-- by far the most vulnerable point in existence.

Sometimes it feels like the soul flies away, circles above the trees like a bird, returns by gradations;

Breathe, breathe.

I wonder if it is a glimpse of the afterlife, the eternity we may all find if we seek truth and love. The energy generated and released during that peak of pleasure must be astounding. Open the floodgates.

The yin and yang, pearls from the sea, the earth, the curves of your body.

Dark......

Suddenly I find myself awake, wet and hot... It's confusing and conspiring...

Sensory perception shifts in the dark and I study the lines and shapes of furniture, drapes and sense rather than see the layout of my room.

I can hear the slumber of the world, and of my world, the house creaking and settling, The silence creeps onto me, there is an eerie silence in my soul, I try and remember where I am...

The old Goan House.....,
The high wooden roof......,
Stained glass windows casting colorful shadows on the pale yellow walls...
the ancient fan revolving ever so slowly.......,
the creak of the blades as it completes another circle,


The air is laced with a sweet smell of Jasmine... Raat Ki Rani (Queen of the Night)...

It reminds me of her... She came into my dreams again tonight...
Her haunting smile luring me to the edge of reason , taxing my sanity.
I miss her next to me, the softness of her skin, the mammoreal sheen of her body as it gleamed on moonlight nights... Where did those nights go....??

Outside the air hangs still, the trees are all hushed, the cicadia's have stopped their screaming, it makes me feel so alone on this mosquito net covered four poster bed, drenched in sweat on this steamy sultry night..

There is an unearthly silence which envelopes me and folds the night over me , blanketing my sorrow, but hope is yet to dawn and I am alone and forlorn....

But I am not the only one awake at this hour; I hear a stray dog bark once...then twice....the siren for the shift changs goes off for the nearby docks, and that means it's 3:45 a,m. The morning catch coming in...

Another night of fitful sleep...


I’ve been dwelling in dark books, good books but not good for lending, books that if I loaned out I’d have to make an apologetic disclaimer about the images trapped in the black and white text by the authors.

Images of death, of dead animals, of sickness, of plague, of drowning, of murder and rape and suicide, images I wish I hadn’t seen in my mind’s eye.

Images I wish I could put back inside the book and close the cover. It was not my intent, just as so much of my life was unintentional...it wasn't my intent that things would turn out the way they have..;

A good book is more than its fragmentary images, but some thoughts linger like retina burns.

Jesus, Don't want me for a sun beam

A high, Late - Looking Sun beam, worriedly raced across the eastern sky and sneakily entered my room through the gap in the curtains....

Then like an uninvited guest, it fell across my face disturbing my vivid dreams and restless sleep,

I shammed sleep, hoping to get away with it just for thoise all to essential few minutes more.............

As you would expect, O !! idle reader, it was'nt a good welcome to the now mortally offended and brooding, high - late looking sun beam who had travelled light years to greet me this morning....

Dejected it sat down and continued to glare at me..I turned over....

but then ........

Dawn, dressed in Gold Sandals, came at last, in all its glory and whispered into my ear:
Wake Up.... sleepyhead, there's tons to do and nice lassies to meet...

I finally gave up courting that Jealous mistress Sleep & re joined the world of the living...............

Sins II -- The Remdemption Song....

When your head gets twisted and your mind goes numb,
You are too tired to think and then start acting dumb,
When you just want sleep and it never comes.

You begin to think there isn’t a soul, who cares,
You take gentle steps but then from sheer effort just go slump.

The uselessness of your existence strikes you cold;
it suddenly occurs to you that all you do is
Alienate people who were willing to listen but you go yours
by turning away and got busy just having fun.
Getting your kicks while leaving others with wounds to lick.

A searing ache throbs deep in your heart of the memories
of people who once you thought were yours,
since then have long ago been apart.
Things have changed and now you find yourself alone and estranged
Paranoid in an all conspiring world.

Tormented by your demons you grit your teeth, willing to go your way for keeps,
Looking and seeking a way out, from the memories of days of your inglorious past.

Slowly but surely you start to hate yourself, for what you have done to others and yourself,
Just not caring for anybody else, serves you right to be in this self contained cell.
This is your private hell…. And here you will be till eternity rests…

The memories of cruel deeds is scant comfort for your conscience to live with,
and you often consider to atone for your sins,
but penance is a long road and atonement comes from deep within
after treading on various emotional & physical treadmills.

To figure out this world is the hope that makes you delve
into deep crevasses of your serrated soul,
Making you think of your existence in our sordid world.
You become your own guide and on and on you go paying no heed
to others who yell out warning cries,


The peak is your goal and you head out on this seemingly endless road.
To the crossroads you go and when you finally find them,
you turn the wrong way, caught in the web again you fool!!

Just when you are about to give up,
hope comes in the shape of someone who shares your pains
but you cannot unite to form a single way
and alone you are condemned to go in your quest,
high up in the mountains where solace rests.

Over the fields and under many a tree you ponder on the,
Doubts, which creep into your thoughts,
but you are bound to your oath of never giving in to your detractors words.
To the very top you will go or perish in your quest as the errant knights of yore


Then the end is in sight but God doesn’t oblige, as you’re hurting his pride,
by giving up all that he has provided for you.
So he too turns the face away from you … as your intentions are not that pure,
Many more turmoils will you have to endure.

Realization dawns one fine day on you
that you figure no where in the fate
of what will eventually become of your beloved earth.
The world’s place in this universe is but a figment in the great plan
and people like you are just passengers like sardines in a can.

Not bothering to care of what comes out of this amazing craving
to know whether yours was a life pre destined or you are what you make yourself into.


You are here now, you have arrived and somewhere down the hallway
a newborn baby cries!!

Here’s another one you say,
who will also have to bear this burden everyday,
this lessens you pain as you come to reconcile your erroneous ways.

You are not alone,
there are others just like you out there in this simple world
but they too like you are seeking something which has always eluded your steps
in this incredible journey to dry clean your soul.



Sins Part 1

The sky purple and deep above the fast black surface. In the half light before dawn all the violet and the rare shadows reveal colors we cannot name, something beyond cobalt and viridian and umber. The dew wet pavement streaks the streetlamp light in silvery cold with dapples of thick heavy dewdrops and my body relishes the splash of the cool damp air. The heat of the previous day forgotten…

The big road running to my left looks like India ink, the asphalt which shimmers with the heat wave during the day is now a mirror of reflections of car windows and headlights and the pale glow of street lights of sodium gas lamps soak into my eyes….

I can hear the cars traveling on the road, the hollow rush of the tires and engines and the quick dull thump as the tires roll over the steel joints of the span of the nearby bridge.

Something in me loves a bridge like I love dreams in which I’m flying. The suspension, the rise coinciding with the falling away of the ground, the feeling of traveling over water.

Something in me fears a bridge like I hate dreams in which I’m flying. The pinprick feeling at the nape of my neck of no solid ground, the notion I might jump and fall, the ending of the dream.

As the night’s curtain parted for dawn I could see the blue and the branches, tall slumbering trees, sap thickened and slowed by the night cold. Things of the night withdrew like the tide as the sky lifted and lightened ushering in a brand new day…..

From sport to sport they hurry me,
to stifle my regret

And when they win a smile from me,
They think that I forget..


An English Ballad from
P.G. Wodehouse's ~ 'Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves'