“Sandstorm” – Nayana Nair

The sandstorm is just another setting
for this story to continue.
There are no trees in our desert
that could be broken.
There are only lights that learn to flicker,
there is only skin that knows what this wind carries,
there are only roads that will drown.

With half closed eyes you walk out
to search for what you have left behind.
With half closed door I wait for you to return.
I find another quote in another book
foretelling the loveless life that will continue henceforth.
Another book, another friend I must burn
for speaking the truth, for wanting my best.

I am destined to die on the night of a full moon
without a reason, without a witness,
with a piece of broken mirror becoming a new part of my body-
another prophesy that I wish you had not gifted me.

Three fairies sleep in our bed,
who do not yet know the violence of your broken heart.
I hope you get what you cry for,
I hope you forget our names,
I hope this storm saves us from every moon, every sky.
I hope this storm saves us from you.

“Sense of Urgency” – Nayana Nair

Today I realized
what to call all that I have been reading for so long.
A person I didn’t mean to overhear called it ‘a sense of urgency’-
the desire to save this world as soon as possible.

It seems the enemies are too many.
I saw many names in the list of these enemies
that I silently agreed with-
pollution, dictatorship, bullying,
monetization of education, competing in a rigged world,
oppression of lives and loves of minority, hate crimes,…

I scoffed at some:
the collapse of society in the hands of socially withdrawn,
collapse of economy in the hands of those who want and do less,
the unfeeling and unapologetic generation that seems to love depression,
women whose learning and thinking too much only breaks families,…

“this is the cause worth dying for”-
I suddenly became afraid of that feeling.

As I read all the absurd causes I couldn’t agree with.
As I read and became exasperated at the words of those
who were convinced that they knew better
even as they killed and killed and killed
and got addicted to seeing blood dissolving in oceans.
I realized
how dangerous this feeling could be.

“this is what to means to change the world.
to change the world
is to walk over everything I don’t want to see”
My sense of urgency hated me for thinking this.
It recited every quote about silence of good men.
But all I could now see was the line that I must not cross,
the words I must not say, the knife that I must never hold-
no matter the cause.

“It is fine if you don’t understand” – Nayana Nair

Being here
and seeing,
allowing this world
to enter your mind
is an isolating experience.

Only I can know
how something enters my mind,
how my mind cannot make sense of it,
how I close my eyes to new light,
how I give up
and let this experience take over me.

We can look at a flower together.
But only I can know
what it means
to look at this flower as me.

I can show you my playlist,
I can tell you the quotes that stay with me,
I can even give you my heart.
But at the end
all I see,
all I feel
can be only felt by me.

To some extent

“…we must never forget that though the author can to some extent choose his disguises, he can never choose to disappear.”

Wayne C. Booth

“Argument” – Nayana Nair

The essays I have written
on the wretchedness of this world,
they are merely an argument,
a poor argument,
the only argument I can give
when I am confronted
by the wretchedness of my own soul,
the blood on my own hands,
the weight of shame on my conscience,
and my inability to change.

(Quote from manga Oyasumi Punpun)

“What I Remember(7)” – Nayana Nair

I have got something against
most words and most sentences
that proclaim that everything is achievable,
that dreams come true,
that life is perfect picture if you want it to,
that everything is in our hands,
and happiness is ours if we have to courage
to step out of the shadows of our fear.

Because I may have lived just over 20 years
but I have feel like I have lived a lot
and I think it is unfair
that I feel so old and weary already.
I feel I am disappointed in many things,
many small things,
things that I could have easily ignored,
things that I could have got used to
if I was aware of their existence
before reality crawled into my world without any warning.

So when I cross my path with these filtered picture of this world
the fun, the bright and the confident who deserve the world.
I am sad, because that is the world I have never seen,
that world doesn’t exist for me.
In the world I see not everything is achievable-
somethings are and somethings aren’t.
Dreams come true, but not always
mostly we end up changing, skipping and down-grading
till we reach the ones we can achieve.
Life is not perfect.
Yes, it is the biggest gift,
but it is not perfect and it all doesn’t depend all on me.
My life is more in the hands of others
than I would want it to be
and helplessness comes in all forms
dressed in the form of situations that no one else can see.
Helplessness is as real as our dreams.
That out of the shadows that we hide in
it is not all warm and sunny.
The rains, the storm,
the climate of life is not same for all.

So all these quotes meant to motivate
don’t mention the subtext
don’t mention the terms and conditions,
the cases where they don’t apply.

I would have coped better with these small hardships
if I expected them when I chose my dream.
I may have taken it as my grand adventure,
if I didn’t feel duped or betrayed half of the time.
Maybe then I would not feel obligated to always have an excuse
to give, for the times when I fell short of the default way of things.
It would have helped or perhaps consoled me to know
that everyone has to work hard, has to sacrifice a lot,
that many struggle for years and sometimes for their whole life
to get what to they want.

Or maybe I am just bitter cause someone else is living a better life.

“The Usual” – Nayana Nair

Sure I don’t feel hollow for the every minute we don’t speak.
Sure I don’t wait for your messages when I am with friends.
And I don’t feel weak
even when your anger breaks my back
and your love breaks my heart.

You told me something was wrong with me
and this is not how people usually love.
They find ways to be with each other
and miss everything they had together,
even with the distance of few hours.

You told me, so I doubted.
I doubted the way I loved.
I doubted I knew what I feel and how I feel,
but after putting myself under the heat of
uncomfortable observation
and comparing what I was to every girl you liked.

And now I can assure you
that I love you and I miss you
but just not the way you’d like.
For every hero that walks this earth,
that shines on screens and stories
takes up your face
and every quote of love gone good and love gone bad
brings up our image.

But my kind of love knows not how to turn away from
everything I have always loved
(even my loneliness)
just because I love you.
So sorry for not being the usual.
Sorry for being this weak.

Abstraction

“It is terrible to destroy a person’s picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.”

― Doris Lessing

We all long to be something

“The Flower“-Kim Chun-soo

We all long to be something.
You, to me, and I, to you,
long to become a gaze that won’t be forgotten.

Day 2 – Quote Challenge

“I guess my life hasn’t always been happy, or easy, or exactly what I want. At a certain point, I just have to try not to think too much about certain things, or else they’ll break my heart.”
― Jonathan Franzen

This is a thought I can relate with but not know why. I am not entirely sure whether the interests that I have actually catch my attention, or I am trying to pile up more things to distract me from looking at things that might upset me. It is not that I try to avoid problems. I do face the problems in my life (most of them), take them up as challenge, try to find solution. But I do all this with an attitude of an onlooker. I do not engage myself emotionally in that, even if (especially when) it is about my own life. But one thing I know about myself is that I take everything personally, I am anxious about all small things, so sometimes even I am amazed at how coolly and with a disturbing nonchalance I handle the bigger issues of my life. I might be going through a really hard time, and would be enjoying everything as I normally do, I keep myself so busy with things (sometimes with ridiculously irrelevant things ) that I do not have to think about how I feel about all this. I do not want to see how I am affected by it, for I know every small thing affects me in ways no one would understand. But knowing that and facing that are two different things. I do not want to ask myself questions that I do not have answers to, whose answers even if I know will be more difficult for me to handle. I do confront my feelings and act them out, only when I am pushed to. That’s when I loose my cool. When I do loose my cool, when I get into why rather than what, I turn into this hysterical person that I don’t want to be.

And here is why this confuses me more, one of the reason that I write is so that I can see all these feelings without having to claim them as mine. I can write about feelings of a character and somewhere in his pain flows my pain, so much that they become inseparable. It is not about me, but it is still about me.

But I do not try to change myself, I believe the way I behave and deal with things are the best possible way to deal with this life of mine. Something that works for me, even if at times it is ridiculous.

And this is exactly what I think about myself:

“He couldn’t figure out if she was immensely well adjusted or seriously messed up.”
― Jonathan Franzen