what do you do when you are surrounded by piles of sameness, with
nothing left to choose between one moment of another; a moment repeats
itself endlessly like a mechanical clock quizzically trying to judge you
yet locked in its own sameness...you inscribe meaning into one moment
and it spills out of the other; a moment which you dint know but which
existed nonetheless inside you, around you even when words were failing
to surprise you for the umpteenth moment when you wanted them to come to
your rescue...every new word a tired memory of shed clothes which leave
a shine on you only the first time when you wore them...one can just
sit and discern the differences in the sound across the window, the
chirping of the birds and the endless passing of people in cars and
buses...beyond a point you fail to register for somewhere you see to
have rhythm with them...the breath a tune of their fragrance, the time
flowing in your nerves a faint remembrance of the silent shake in the
building when a bus crosses through, or the movement in the eyelids just
a passing everyday glance of the sea gull perched on a TV
antenna...even the everydayness does not seem to surprise you when you
wear it and discard it in the nights of the evening where a tired day
sleeps like a child in a cocoon, protected from its own face and their
own mischievous doings......
perhaps you wake up in the morning with a shadow of the dream still
lingering behind the eyelids, slowly slipping down as the aroma of the
coffee steals itself into the slippages of the dream, some splashed in
the water as it rests still on the eyes, some clinging to the eyebrows,
and some waiting to evaporate to reveal a radiant face of the morning.
You wake up to a new day away from the dreariness of memories of old, as
if you were a different person who was living in the remembrance of a
memory, who was struggling the night before to un cling all, yet slowly
when the rituals of the waking, of lying in the bed with a tiny wink of
sleep hiding somewhere, calling you in the arms, the pillow crooning
over your face, the blanket reveals a warmth lost to the night, the bed
promises a new dream and the table lamp seems to be sleeping for ages,
the alarm clock has long been tired waiting for you to be awake, it goes
in its own slumbers, the night air is still fresh in the home, the
shutters have not yet revealed the light of the day, the morning air
blows outside the shutters waiting to carve in, waiting for the windows
to welcome it...its an eternal play with its patience, as the sleep is
the play with the patience of the morning to engulf it in your arms, but
you have already forgotten the dreariness of the night...till it comes
back when words start filling the gaps of the dream or a nightmare of
the sleep, the words slowly move in to take their place where there were
just images fleeting past as if on a TV screen, you could see the
characters, perhaps you were one of them, playing a part which will
never be replicated in real life as if fulfilling a fantasy.....yet the
day promises a new beginning, but the old slowly becomes familiar as the
smell of your own body, the bed, the blankets, the pillows all start to
look familiar, the feel of the room suddenly dawns you back, stitches
the slippages in time and fixes it in memory to bring all of it back to
you...and suddenly what was a slow waking up comes like a deluge, the
walls look the same, the fractures in the plasters reveals the same
face, the moistness in the hands the same air, the mirror still shying
away from its own face, the table lamp in the same position where you
left it last night, the book still open with a character quizzically
staring at you because you could not complete their story, they are
waiting like us all to tell their story and it is like meeting a
stranger on the train, before their story is finished you know the
station has arrived and you have to get down, for that one moment you do
not mind the train being late, you pray being lost in the story for the
slowness of time, for the story encapsulates you and yet the train
arrives on time and with a heavy heart you make the decision to get
down, away from the story, somewhere with a promise to bump in to the
stranger again...yet you know it will not happen, but you do not leave
it there..you start the story where it was left, but now it is through
another story, of another stranger, on another train , in another
journey, the sojourn changes but the story remains..you know the story
is not the same, yet you start from where you left the last time,
because somewhere you want to complete that story, because somewhere you
know that most stories have some similarity and you yearn for the
familiar even when you begin the new, just because removing the old
cloak is all so different and all so difficult .....
