My Autumn Sonata

It has been a longish time away from home and I realise I am even more of a gypsy in familiar surroundings. With dust and soot to greet me on my return, it indeed would have been possible to pitch a tent.

I ran my fingers over the table top. A tiny film of black stared at me. The portion where I had run my finger was now bare glass; I could now look below through it. Looking at floors through smoked glass amongst the patches of dust is an experience. Everything appears altered. The floor is a small strip; you are not sure which part of the glass is for real -- the one with dust or the clean bit; as for the dust, it seems to overwhelm you. Even as you clean it, there are trails of it left, on your hands, on mops, in the air.

I reconcile myself to remnants. I always have. The fact that having left something and then returning to it and finding it covered gives an indication of how we can be overtaken and ensnared.

A bunch of letters were waiting. Greeting cards, bills, pizza promotions, offers for 2006 diaries/calendars. I preserve most. Junk is gratifying.

Imagine, some pizza outlet needs me! And whatever would happen to 2006 if I do not legitimise it with a desktop calendar, never mind that I lose track of Time?

I throw open the windows. The air is still. The wind-chime is silent. I shake it. It makes a laryngitis-like sound. Perhaps the metal is rusting and those little thingies hanging down are numb from disuse.

I tie the cord to the curtain and something drops down. I assume it to be a piece of jute from the threads. I pick it up gingerly. A flaky dried cockroach is what I end up holding. How fearless one becomes! A little leg, thin as hair, falls. Perhaps I am ridding myself of the past, after all...one leg at a time.

The bamboo plant was supposed to live forever. You did not have to care for it, water it...it grew and grew. But this time it did not. The roots were dead, sodden and sullen. The stems drooped and the leaves had turned brown.

And to think I travelled all the way hoping to see Fall.

Is it self-destructive to see things die? Or is it a hope for rejuvenation?

I took a picture of two trees -- one with Fall colours, the other tall, proud and green. They stood together.

Nothing ever ends if it ever existed.

A non-linear life

I live in a linear city. You can get where you want from one point to another and if you crane your neck from where you are, you may see the road snakes ahead as cars make hissing sounds. It feels good, like soup when you are down.

Can lives be linear? Aren’t most lives? Yes, if you think chronologically. Yes, if you have it all chalked out. Yes, if you do not venture to take a turn.

Needless to say, my life is not linear. Sometimes, I curve my way across roundabouts, and those roundabouts are not always filled with flower-beds and fences. Often the soil itself seems to have turned stagnant from just lying there in wait to be planted with seeds or even have the residue of a shrub with its furrowed brow mocking it.

How must it feel for life to feel so lifeless?

I digress. I turn those bends and find things that surprise me. Perhaps a person suddenly caught in the middle of traffic trying to cross a street that was not meant for him. That dazed look where a human being could have been killed transfixes me. I put on the metaphorical brakes. I watch as he sighs with relief and fear. Can relief and fear co-exist? They always do. We are relieved of a fear but never from fears. To some, fear is a relief -- you are so afraid that it puts you in a state of inaction and relief from several things you could do.

There are times I see monstrous buildings and, as I inch closer, I realise there are people living there….families leading lives. What kinds of life? Are they happy? What is happiness? Are buildings happy? Aren’t they supposed to be? They are the edifices on which we build what we called ’homes’ (Hey, this was a house, I made it a home, we say, as we add a few roses and paintings and TV sets and rugs and cushions and air fresheners…).

What I love best about a roundabout is when I go round and find an empty street. I can then savour it in silence and watch my surroundings. This is meditation for me. I look into the rear-view mirror, not to see what I have left behind but to meet my own eyes.

People rarely do that unless they are checking out how they appear to others. I look to see how I feel about myself. The road in lonely, but I am not alone. For, in those eyes, as in life, I see a thousand and more promises to keep, to make, to honour and to cherish those that have been made and kept to me.

Had I chosen the linear way, I would have reached a destination and been turning around to watch remnants. This is not life when you are an ’ex’ something or the other.

What are we now? I turn another Today curve and flashing before me is an eternal road.

I drink the sight. I consume life.

You want to know where I am?

I love the scent of Bengay. These mentholated smells are beguiling. I apply the ointment to my shoulder and arms, then cover myself with the comforter and feel transported in a cold-hot atmosphere. Like fire on ice.

But I ought not to love it so much that I mistake it for toothpaste as I did yesterday.
“Do you know you are absent-minded?” a friend asked.

“Hmm…yes, sort of…okay, I know.”

“Do you know what happens?”

Was this the right moment to discuss? The dark twilight vista was spread around me. Should I be getting visions or be confronted with myself?

I sat there smiling - partly from knowing and partly from seeing myself from another’s eyes.

“You are holding conversations or listening and suddenly you are lost…you seem to have gone to a different place, a different thought and then when you ‘come back’ you snap…”

“Snap out?” I asked.

“No, you snap at whoever is with you.”

I flickered like a candle in the wind -- or was it the candle doing the flickering?

Where did I transport myself to in those ‘absent’ moments? I know I get ideas suddenly, line leap out at me and like windy whiplashes I shut my eyes and inhale-exhale with internal fury. I think when I ‘return’, those moments remain with me and having forgotten who/what I was with, I snap.

I am not like that in normal times. But I have no clear concept of what is normal…and most certainly not of Time.

The contradiction is that I am a stickler for punctuality. It is as though I have to reach somewhere before I go away…