“The Remaining Beautiful Sculpture” – Nayana Nair

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The houses are all empty, the roads deserted,
the remaining beautiful sculptures,
in the overgrown lawns of this plastic world,
have no eyes and no intent to save anyone.

Someone tells me my new lines
and I nod and wait for my voice to arrive.
Someone else opens my cage and you are also
somewhat released from your prison.
We walk the small distance of this model road,
revising the conditions of our freedom in our head.

You hold my hand and it feels like nothing.
How perfect. How hollow.
But soon the sun will rise and fill us with light.
Soon it would all be beautiful.
I almost wanted tell you,
“this emptiness is such a beautiful catalyst
for reckless beginnings”. But I guess you already knew.

As we all wait for the sun,
you tell me you have a name and I nodded.
I realized I could not say the same about myself anymore.
I realized much later that you never told what it is, your name.
A name is such a hollow thing, to be filled up by the person only later.
I don’t know the order of importance of things in this world.
So I guess this must be normal.

As the sun came out of hiding, I was filled with words again
and the words that I wrote in that first light was,
“we both could write poems that can break worlds.
we could be so much more than this. and maybe we are.
maybe we want to be something less. something simple.
something harmless. but is that even possible?“

As I wondered what your real words looked like,
I uttered the words I was told to,

“the houses are all empty, the roads deserted,
the remaining beautiful sculptures ,
in the overgrown lawns of this plastic world,
have no eyes and no intent to save anyone.
i won’t save you. i will be just like others.
i will look at you and wonder. i will smile and forget.
i will love and forget.
but i will remember you in your crudest form.
you will exist in my vocabulary like waves and perfumes
and home and roads. but you will remain.
i will make sure of it.“

And with all the conviction and gratitude you replied,

“that is enough. i can be saved just by that.“

I believed you so much in that moment
that I wanted to mean every word I spoke
and maybe that was the moment my love was born
for you.

“Denied”- Nayana Nair

I have not been denied my dream.
But I was given too much time,
and too less conviction in myself.
I have been denied the vision
to see me for what I am,
for what I do.

Three Day Quote Challenge – Day 1

O’Shine ORIGINAL (who has a lovely blog) nominated me for Three Day Quote challenge (long long back). Thank you for nominating me. 🙂

Here’s a link to his post : https://oshineoriginal.wordpress.com/2016/10/02/two-in-one/

Day 1:

“This was the recognition of the freedom of every man to think, to feel, and to look at things in his own way; the recognition of the impossibility of altering a man’s conviction by words.”
– War and Peace

I love this quote. Read War and Peace an year ago. Although it is a long long read. It’s worth reading. Leo Tolstoy is one of my favorite writers. Its not just the story that is engrossing but the honest observation he makes about life in general.

I won’t say that this quote changed me. But it definitely gave me an aim what I would want to change in myself. The idea that every person should be allowed to think or feel whatever they want to and any attempt to do so is futile. You can convince them but that will just be a temporary alteration in his belief system. One can’t feel something just because they should feel it or want to feel it.  It reminds me of another quote by Gandhi (I don’t remember it word to word, just the gist of it) : You cannot force someone to realize the truth, truth must be realized, not forced.

And my opinion is that everyone is biased. They give preference to their own way of thinking. And while we may be busy trying to convince someone of how wrong they are, we fail to notice that there is as much chance that we may be equally wrong ;if there is something ‘wrong’ in the world. As I read somewhere: The opposite of an absolute truth is another absolute truth.

So lets stop trying to change everyone and let them live the way they want live.