The Power of Faith leads one to God

We all go through the seasons of the testing of our Faith, times when things seem far and God seems beyond our reach… No matter the intensity of our prayers our hearts are never relieved of their burdens…. We feel stricken and rather heavily pressed…. Fear appears to have the upper hand and we are reminded of our immense weakness as a human being…. The walk of the Christian is always one of overcoming…. I often wonder how it is that I survived all these years… I often feel that I am not strong enough to hold on to the promises of God… I feel that I will succumb to the temptations of the world and I feel that I will never satisfy God…. I most often feel like I was born to hurt him…. I can never be the person that He wants me to be…. I struggle with a lot of doubts and confusions…. And never does a day go when I don’t war with the longings of my flesh …. But something pulls me through… despite my massive tendencies for self sabotage and self pity… Somehow I am renewed whenever I approach the throne of God… Despite my weaknesses… Despite my flaws… Despite every bit of me that convinces me that I am just another ordinary, average and forgotten individual…. Something within me positively glows and keeps me warm…. Pushes me on… Despite my need for confirmation in the divine sense, I realize that I am never deserted… My moods tend to draw me to dark pastures filled with the hurts and the failures of my past, the endless memories of disappointment and the unpredictable reminders of my foolishness…. I am only human… Every day I set out with an open mind eager to understand the nature of my own heart… But I realize that my emotional nature is too vast and almost imperceptible to be totally understood or comprehended… They like the climates and the seasons serve their purpose unconsciously…. I wonder how I can lean on God when my own nature is at war with what He represents…. I wonder how I can be faithful to my Saviour when all my thoughts uncontrollably blame Him for all of my problems… And most of all I wonder if I am worth the love that he so freely offers….? A part of me desires, even hungers and thirsts for God… and another side wants me to follow my own path…. To search for my own glory and to do whatever my heart desires…. Life certainly is complicated and rather complex…. And feelings seldom seem to reveal their reasons…. And my troubles with sadness often re-emerge and I am cast into a bleak and murky world of despair and guilt…. Which I feel represents the sadness of my soul…. And in those moments of hurt and sorrow I wish that my savior was there to wrap His arms around me… I wish that I can see Him who holds my destiny in His palm… And these expectations fuel certain anger related feelings within me that I have not let go… And I become angry like Job and Jonah… The life of the self is filled with all forms of deceit… The life of human nature is filled with unpleasant realities…. The nature of life is quite hard to engage in, maybe that’s why we repress or rather oppose certain facets of reality, and choose our own version of reality to exist in… And all through these problems my soul calls out to its maker… Yahweh…!! Lord God Almighty… Where art thou when I need thee the most…?? 

And so many times my answer is silence, my heart is not relieved of its burdens… I don’t pray , I am so enamored of my own complex dialogues that further excavate reasons to move my heart further away from the most High… I remind Him that I am not like other Church goers and Believers…. I tell God that hardly has a day gone by when I have felt comfortable in the depths of my own skin… I am determined to tell the one who knows everything there is to know about me that I am done… I am finished…. And I do these things in order to feel the pain that my existence too often makes me feel… I see the world and I see incompleteness… I see vulgar materialism… I see everyday violence, I see deep seated apathy, bitter hatred, prejudice and inequality… And these are all the traits of a life without God… I know that despite my own complaints, I know deep in my heart that I am trying to rebel against the ways of God …. All my life I had been on the other side… The side that looks from the outside at the Christian Faith… But now that I have accepted Christ into my heart and my life has become so free and effortless…. I am rebelling against God in an unconscious way, I ask Him unwanted questions… Who am I to be saved…?? There are so many wonderful people in the world why haven’t you reached out to them Lord….?? My questions make no sense, and I am glad they don’t…. Because truth be told… For the first time in my life I feel perfect, unconditional love and despite my over the top addiction to it… I am plotting out ways to complicate my life since following Christ removes all the complications and reveals the truth… Even when I hurt, I realize that I am the one who is hurting me and by default allowing Satan entry into my heart, and his vicious taunts and spiritual weapons know the greatest weaknesses that I suffer from…. I have forgotten the fact that Christ removed all of my chains and has cast them away… I have forgotten the fact that I have a refuge to run to when I feel sad and suffer….. I have forgotten the fact that Christ dwells in me , that I have asked Him to live in my heart and to live through me, I entertain the meaningless questions that all men suffer from, the questions that are mere words in some ways but filled with all the venom of doom and persecution…. And these questions are pushing and driving me away from the author of my Faith… I know my words in this post have not been linear or well planned… I ask that you forgive me… I write this fresh off a major debacle, I write this after I had fallen down briefly this past week, and after I had convinced myself that God would have had enough of me, Even the prodigal son returned and after that He lived beside the Father…. But I was relentless on having my own way…. And though it has not satisfied me and I have realized the error of my ways… I wondered if I had burned all bridges with God… Maybe I would die as a friend of mine recently did( in a major road accident) or suffer some major catastrophe… Maybe God would desert me…. I was giving up, a part of me was… I believe that he was the outer man, the one who was giving up was external… The inner man knew the way… He knew that He had to run back, that no matter how faraway God seemed He was only one step back… The ways of God require great sacrifices… And though I love Christ with all of my heart… And have been faithful for the past two years… Satan has been beating me down through certain questions and circumstances and defeats….And the intense spiritual wars have left me feeling drained and exhausted …. I wonder how much more I can take..!

 But then I leave my own stupid reasons and their high sounding ideologies and go for the real thing, I got to the rock that is higher than I…. I run ….I run back to my Master, my sins with their insidious nature were doing their best to rip away my bridge to my Savior…. I have heard through the testimonies of many Christians that whenever they were on the verge of giving up God intervened… I wanted the same… But maybe I was too caught up in testing God that I did not realize that humility, perseverance were far more worthy than merely whining like a small child… And that was not me… I have never been one to whine or complain… Acceptance has always been my thing… But I realized that I wanted more out of God and in some misguided ways I was asking something that was unnecessary… All the scores of improbable Prayer requests which had been answered , which included 3 consecutive nights of shooting stars, The championship trophy for my favorite basketball team The Miami Heat, An aunt who was diagnosed with Cancer and increasing writing frequencies to name just a few…. I tended to retain the feeling of loss when my prayers were unanswered… And I tended to brood away hurt by the so called rejection… But I realize that I enjoy my Faith…. That these small distractions afford me a chance to find a deeper more fulfilling Faith in my Savior… I remember too clearly that when I take these problems in prayer instead of struggling to control and resolve them through my own will and determination…. I feel them fade, I feel the relief offered by the companionship of my Savior… The Holy Spirit bridges my heart’s anguish and suffering to Father and speaks what I struggle to convey… And that is when I am offered a peek into the massive almost infinite amount of love that the Father pours out into my spirit… All my troubles vanish… The Sovereign Emperor of all Creation, of all creatures and of all mankind… The creator in his divine mercy and grace helps me realize that no matter what He would always love me… And He would never stop and He never will… If only I stop torturing myself and yield to His will… Obeying and waiting on Him in prayer… He is in charge and in command… I need to stop fretting and learn instead to rely totally on Him, He reminds me gently … And I feel His love heal me… Gently embracing every hurt and wounded inch of me in His warm strong arms…. And I return to life again. 

The Idealistic Loner – Short Fiction

“That guy was utterly stingy, I mean there was a selfishness to him that you could make out, he wanted to display how he could deal with people with all the essential emotional coldness which he brought attention to in a subconscious attempt to notify me as well that he could essentially bite my head off if I messed with him. … ”
I said, happy that I could finally open up and let go of something that I had held to myself for a lot of years, I had held onto it since I believed that all things can and must and should be forgotten, but seldom do we tend to forget the marks left on our heart’s tender surface. And I don’t like to remember people who used Fear as a technique in order to control and to trumpet their advanced stage in matters of personality and handling the affairs of these life, and since I was timid and shy and loved to hide beneath a state of dubiousness, people tended to feel stronger and quite rude in my presence. But I also described him in the way that revealed the truth, and only because I was asked to, or else I normally held them inside, no matter how painful their memories be. I was used to communicating in the language of truth that I failed to realize that the manner in which I expressed it might make it seem like I had a grudge with whoever it was that I was talking about.

And I played sidewinder by Lee morgan to this confession since I believe all conversations should have soft slow Jazz music playing alongside them, I am fascinated by the way in which music opens up and touches one’s feelings, and I wanted a background score to suit the tone of my words, and the Jazz trumpet worked on a smooth groovy tune with attached stinging cymbal plates that the drummer tenderly caressed with a tingle that reminded me of twinkling exploding stars, I suddenly felt like I was in the middle of a busy restaurant with people moving all around me, and I stood to my spot transfixed, I stretched the length of my arms and felt the waves where memories lie awake, waiting to be created with layers of all sorts of subtle feels and colorless imagery, and my eyes were fixed on the stage where the Jazz band played, maybe on some days I would be up on the stage as well playing the trumpet like Miles Davis, feeling each note arise out of my slumbering soul, you see Jazz… well it moved me ….and connected me in an almost open manner to the realm of life, no longer was I the loner that I normally am, it made me believe in my mental projections, it helped me translate the unperceivable and helped me forget my own place and opened the window into the nature of soul and of time.

But then I remembered that I had to get back to the conversation on my phone, my last few lines had created a sort of a divide to my listener and in my confidante’, I could almost hear him with that tone of self doubt that so crucified his inner person, I picked up on what he felt and decided to address his own feelings that were probably making him realize how being good hearted was a great something to brag confidently about in retrospect, I could see him almost feeling guilty that he had not made the best possible use of his manners and his good heartedness. He and I had had some misunderstandings in the past, and his quick and confrontational response in some of those experiences to threatened feelings had made him react in a self centered manner, a common sin that we all fall prey from time to time, we are all human after all, I knew that he thought a great deal about what others thought about him, so I spoke kindly reminding him that I did not speak them with any intentions to rake up slumbering guilt. I truly believed in getting past negative reminders, I forgave strangers easier than I did when it came to my own sister, I thought it necessary to be a little wiser in my dealings with her since she suffered a major attention deficit disorder most of the time and tended to discount my own credibility based on what she felt were more necessary responsibilities like taking care of the family and leaving my apartment in the city.

I suddenly stopped, feeling quite empty and still, why was human connection so filled with all the characteristics of the egoic…? I feel that in many ways it is almost impossible to create a connection without reverting to known tricks and persuasive techniques that convinced one of their importance. I wonder often …. Whatever happened to normal conversation…? I remember that often my most memorable conversations have always been with strangers, with people whom I would never meet, I had to check myself in order to not feel any sort of emotional connection towards them, since I desired to not feel an attachment to any form of human institution. I loved the feeling of being in the midst of a million self occupied strangers, that feeling that one gets walking in a big city with dripping buildings and humid and filthy appearing pavements, that feeling of truly feeling connected to something so transitory and passing, I always fell for things that seldom lasted. I was a dreamer after all. But to be honest strangers made me feel open, I felt more and more like a saxophone player with a great band that picked up on my energy, I desired spontaneity more than crude normal conversation, I believed in ‘ in the moment’ dialects, I desired more to feel what one can be a part of more than understanding what one already knows, or what one wanted everybody to know, I did not desire in any manner a great display of lavish knowledge, I desired spontaneity in my fellow beings myself. That’s why I believe Jazz truly connected more deeper in me, since it tended to carry the same intense explosive quality that relied on improvisations and soulful insanity, that was true art, I have partaken in a million dead conversations, but in very few memorable ones. And since I had greater skill as a listener when I spoke I wanted to forget the fact that I actually had a role to fulfill, I did not desire that role to be filled with all sorts of expectations and necessities, I only spoke when my heart and my soul were connected, since I believed that words had to, had to make sense. If I were to speak, and I did, I wanted it to be a performance, something that touches one’s heart or rather increased one’s perceptual vision, or made things rather clear with zero egoic intentions. I should tell you that I have rather fanciful ambitions, and I can tend to be more and more centered on my own pathway when I did communicate I wanted to more or less open the corridors into the workings of my lonely profession of becoming better in heart and soul.

I tuned out the moment he began describing his own actions with a great self awareness, that cunning sense of self-justification was pregnant in the air, I was tired of the entire routine, I had neither care nor concern for this ancient practice of somehow brushing aside one’s mistakes with emotional confessions, I believed in taking full credit for one’s mistakes, I believed that all men and women have a great tendency to commit immensely great mistakes, and one needed to remind himself that he needed the grace of God in order to completely wipe out that flawed inner being, or else all men and women would forever be walking here and there without the slightest clue to their sense of abject despair.

But then with all the seriousness of a saint, He probed me further, he asked me a question that implied that he already knew the answer, But I played along, the world was filled with all sorts of people… I could not only look forever into how they made me feel…. “Supposing you were again asked to talk with him and duke… Would you… would you do it…??” He asked so that he could feel my own weakness so that he could compare it with his own and in some ordinary manner feel more empowered and calm… ‘ That depends…’ I said… ‘ That depends on my sizing up of the situation, I have spent a lot of time with them both, I don’t want to spend time with them worrying about how they would strike or belittle me into something that they can control, I crave the freedom of openness, But as I was uttering these lines my heart reverted to its state of unease… Why is no man perfect…? Why was I so conditional and touchy…? Why was the guy that I was talking to so inclined to reveal his own supremacy by touching upon my downfalls …? Reminding me that I was supposedly no better than he…! No wonder I was a loner

So I filled my mind with abstract images that drew me far away…. a shot of driving in the ghetto is quite a powerful reality television image… owing to reality television penetrating into the flat gravity dull roads with bright blunt headlights eating away the miles in a mindless exploration of life as it really feels….. the shot of cities glittering in the distance, a powerful symbol for opportunity, chaos, of something so intense and filling in the deepest parts of one’s being, I drew and filled my heart with these images, the feelings that they would conceive … The climax of the song that opened the soul to the world of dreams… That one selfless, kind hearted stranger who bared his soul and helped me not lose Faith in the human race… Why can’t men be more benign..,more kind…, more compassionate and gracious and merciful…?? And the boy talked on and on and on…. And I listened … Hardening my heart to his faults… Persevering on, reminding me of my own faults, it was not easy being me…..! Men want men to rise… To conquer the divide, to do away with the formal and be free… The insides of me was searching for a dream in a land filled with reality… It was not easy to be me… And the piano played on the sadness I felt sink in my heart.

The Loner’s Chronicles – Short Meditative fiction

The covers flapped and the pages surrendered to the persuasions of the wind, I sat there forcing myself to work, I had a million worries that were working and having their way below, but above I pretended that I was not bothered about what happened down below … I was growing more and more discontent within and I felt a great chaotic power grip and rip away at my inner cord, the wind was slow, the day balmy and the light a fading white, I had no particular picture in my mind apart from an approaching madness… A frenzied sense of compulsion arose to engage in restless acts of carelessness, temptations battled for the right to pull and twist me away from the right path, and I fought to maintain a hold on my sanity.

My mind wandered over the tight little spots where not the slightest bit of consciousness eased through, wherever my attention wavered it seldom settled nor caught in , I was a wave that could never stop its mindless ebb and flow, I felt claustrophobic within the rapidly enclosing spaces of my mind…. I loudly clapped my hands attempting to snap away from the vicious and infernal state of affairs, but they barely reached me, I was a slave, a slave to passivity, a slave to the unchangeable soul of the town that seldom ceased to exist, my so called influences would not help me, my dreams tormented me more than they offered me fleeting glimpses
I had such little information tripping out of me, there was no lucidity to my thoughts, they were as indistinguishable as a hectic crowded street, my brain offered me nothing to access, life was no story , life was more or less a state of being… The ones who wrote stories seldom prevailed, they were seldom the voice of the collective consciousness, they were drifters, observers and seers… Their real talent was in writing to survive… I wrote to stay awake, whatever caught my imagination’s keys I ran off into the thick black smog in order to retrieve and make something of it… I was an outsider… A term that I had picked up from Colin Wilson’s great book concerning the life of the great artists, writers and poets… Those who had always felt different, I used it not as a grandiose cover that would set me apart, but rather I used it since I was truly alone and quite outside of the normal streams of normal society… I felt like life felt like being inside a lab.. Despite the influences of being attention deficient, dreamy, brought up in what was quite possibly a tame home with normal good parents, I felt trapped… I wrote to remind myself of the difference, I wrote to feel my own confusing feelings… I guess I mainly wrote since it offered me life… and to stay true to the nature of my soul… I guess I wrote chiefly to remain sane and maybe not feel overwhelmed by the blank vagueness that ran below oppressing one’s senses to the big, large vast world outside.

Why couldn’t I switch off the analytical feelers attached to my thoughts, a process that was so unconscious, had some event of the past set them off or where they woven into the fabric…? I would refer to myself as sensitive, but that did not mean that I suffered from a bad ego, or that I couldn’t take things critically or a lack of inner strength, I feel things more, a lot more than the average minded person. I would venture forward to call myself unique and I use that same terminology to everybody else, but these are hardly of any use to me, these self confessed platitudes, for you wouldn’t know if I didn’t convey them to you, and they lack force, or the power of persuasion, I use them since I wish to be clear about how I have been all the days of my life.

I wish I could move closer and closer and peer into the other people that surrounded me and their lives, but they hardly seemed to interest me. In my younger days I had spent a large amount of time going through magazines that had an excessive amount of information of cars and their body parts. But I did not buy them from the small roadside stalls that hung them sideways like a piece of blood red meat, I bought them since I had wanted them. I had no interest in cars or bikes, I loved the pictures, I had always loved pictures, I remember my earliest memory of cutting out pictures and pasting them on to cheap small notebooks with margins and lines. The first ever pictures that had totally excited and held me in were those that I came across on National Geographic, we had bunchloads of them, I was always interested in the ones that took snapshots of cities in motion, life in its perpetual emotion, the urbanite in his modern day, glossy thin snaps and photographs of people staring into or away, the ones who looked away showed more character, the ones who looked into the camera seemed to come alive and seemed to contain that element of simplicity that I had always lacked or rather longed for. Back in school my appearance was made fun of, my skin color was brought up to make me feel more ugly and unattractive, so I seldom possessed the courage to truly appreciate my own appearance, for all I knew it changed and expanded everyday. But I don’t say these things in order to elicit sympathy, they came out rather unwittingly, I wondered if I should follow the path of the artist or the path of mere existence…, the road always taken or the road less taken…? Dualities… They have always defined the essence of me, and will continue to define me even when life appeared meaningless and cold.

What was the most successful man interested in, was it a case of talent or was it a case of determination…? Why are the cities always filled with premonitions of carefully concealed violence…? Why are the hours seldom appreciative…? Why was life filled with such abstract mental tension…? Why was it so hard to actually connect… The simple process of mutual appreciation with no dissatisfied interior feelings that contained the weights of experience, what lay between people..? Was it their thoughts..? Their ambitions…? Their own evil and cruelty trapped in their sinful nature that would never let them sleep at ease…? Propagating messages of guilt and indoctrination into the religion of the self deeper and deeper as one struggled to comprehend his space in the passage of time, I look at any social page and I see attention seeking at its best, narcissism and the familiar brand of fighting over the rights to who had the idea or the thought best that would completely sum up the nature of all our dreams and thoughts wittily. I was sick and I was tired, I had no patience to offer them, but this was the modern condition, you had furnish and promote all that you could about your own uniqueness and speciality, legends were made out of cardboard boxes, great lingering stories were told of people whom everyone admired, where could one free himself to truly be himself…? All life was it became, all the hassle of the outer realms reached the inner, there was no peace, harmony was a special word constructed to promote Yoga businesses, I constantly looked over my shoulder wondering if I was being watched, judged or mocked, visions of death frequented me more and more, great emotions of righteousness held me in sway, bitter encounters and absorbed experiences of rejection tormented and chemically attacked my heart. I began to lose tendencies that were good natured, the rhythms of whatever I felt were aversive were slowly intoxicating me into a forceful submission. The majority of the day was ordinary, slow, unattractive and filled with colors that insignificant but characteristic of the dullness that constituted reality. I reflected more or less the pulse that was affecting the streets, I grew tired when culture was talked off in a grandiose manner since the only culture was that of the self, which was self centered, repressed and oppressive.

I took in life, I swam its streams, I opened my eyes and wished to hold all its memorable experiences, but I am fluid as are all my memorable experiences, I fly away and I hold on to none of them, for I wish not to be held down by them, I appreciate them and I often allow them to whisper words of wisdom, but I can’t hold on to what happened in the past, I am the future, I am me, I am right now, I am here in this den writing these lines, thinking these thoughts and allowing my soul to communicate through me. I wish to speak exactly like I have always dreamed, bold and free, fearless and mighty passionate, soulful and rather articulate, I realize now that life is a mystery, no matter how much one can research its contents, its size and measure its vastness within the boundaries of day and of night, it regenerates and becomes new the day after, it changes, but I don’t, I wish I could change alongside the day, my heart it still beats the same, my soul it still contains treasures of heaven that I can never fully comprehend, but I persevere on wanting, even hungering to make something of experience, and walk the infinite stretches of this lonely highway with the dazzling stars…!

The silence

I enter the crowded station, I take it all in, the uncontrollable sounds that were affecting the sound waves, the layers of dirt that had accumulated over the years, the putrid waste that lay scattered over the roads , the frantic pace, the endless activity, the unstoppable chaos of it all… Over here space is a luxury often denied,  my senses take in the enormous disorientation of the largest and probably the most busiest railway service in this part of the world, terms such as post modernisn and existentialism offer no such insight into this place and its workings.

The Bridge- Short Fiction

The bridge was old, it stretched forth like a pipeline, beneath was the dried up river bed filled with the flailing thin branches of thorny bushes that hung on to the sand that stretched below into the distant silhouettes of the aging hills. I remember in the years before when the monsoon rains filled up the basins below, there was supposed to be a dam far up north, and the waters were released and I remember standing near the bridge and its ledges watching with bated breath as the thick coffee brown waters rushed forward with a fury that I had seldom witnessed before in my life, bursting forth with foamy rage as it ran into the legs of the bridge. For some strange reason I wished for dangerous sea animals to exist in those muddy thick waters, sharks, crocodiles and orcas. I wish I could see the town with the same innocence of the eyes that my soul possessed back then, when my vision was naive and filled with hope eternal from unfathomable springs hidden deep in the wells of my spirit. I remember walking on the bridge one time in my later years, lone and filled with pressing thoughts, and I saw the dry vegetation aching to the afflictions of the dry and parched soil below. The sun ruled the skies, the heat cutting through with pressures of immense magnitude, breaking away at one’s body… Boiling one to his limits…draining one of his resolve… The heat rose after it had hit the ground and blurred distant vision by suspending itself in the air with formidable intentions as people moved on, unaware and rough around the edges.

I saw a few eagles fly every now and then from below the bridge and into the skies, the plains below stretched forth into the horizon, seemingly with no end… They appeared desolate and barren… And I wanted to travel its lengths and see where it lead to… But life drew a line around me and I stayed within its boundaries and attempted to sketch out what lay around me with thoughts and a sensitive curiosity. The mood of the town was one of great fear, as time had progressed, divisive elements had crept in and the old tranquility was replaced by a sombre cynicism owed to progressive motions that were sweeping the land of the former wilderness. Though the grasses had been trimmed, the trees felled, the woods and the forests cleared, there still loomed in an invisible manner the peculiar repression that grated on the open mind. Deeply concealed vaults of inhibitions had set in and on the surface was the fruit of such poisonous affections, close mindedness, snappy temperaments and volatile affections.

But maybe through the disembodied body of feelings I was capturing frequencies of whatever transpired beneath. But I guess that through the rough terrain, through the unkind and suffering dispositions, through the hardened exteriors I was searching for mercy, for kindness, for universality… And through its denial, I closed my heart and pretended like all the others that apathy was the religion and ignorance the creed.

The Loner in a bustling serious Town – Meditative ( Fictional… I found this stale and unfinished… I decided to give it a little life, I know that its bad.. But please do bear with me )

It was that part of my life that felt very disappointing and unfulfilling. I write this short experience with a preoccupied mind, my mind fresh of a great disappointment in my life. I think that the measure of a satisfied life would be measured by the depth of laughter in the soul, by great experiences offering insights that sink gradually into the open plains of personality, and by love, by passions and their proximity to one’s life. I am affected by a strange condition, only in certain moments do I come upon in full the nature of who I am, I often forget my own appearance and I forget what I have come through, I am quite a confused man…I claim no sure understanding… The years have become like the sharp wooden blocks of the fence, they guard the soul. The dreamer I find often places increasingly hostile circumstances deep within his own psyche, and these appear as the frightening rivers where one faces his own peril, the closed rooms with concrete darkness where one seems to have run out of ways to escape and the most fearsome loss of direction in a land where I have no money and knowledge, what were these dreams trying to convey to me…? In the mornings the disappointments of my life weighed down my heart, in the nights I dreamt dreams, and they were abrupt and ended before I could understand them before they vanished and trickled into the sink where dreams seeped out of… What was I confronting..? I assumed that I dreamt of rivers and water bodies since I had a psychotic obsession with drowning and though the vast and wind kissed water moved filled with unconscious force and symbolic excitation, I retreated often into this imagery… Determined to escape away into whatever they offered… I realized that in my dreams I felt no fear….. It seemed like I had run into them as a part of my journey… A bold and heroic journey seemed to be the disguise of these highly emergent and stirring dreams, I had once penned some lines with distracted imagery… I write them now devoid of the poetic function…. A boat that was entering a tunnel, with no light and I entered in like Theseus entering the Labyrinth containing the Minotaur…. I had written them after I closed my eyes and had attempted to stare deep into the unconscious in an attempt to conjure up dream imagery that revealed whatever I was at the moment facing in my life.

I sometimes swam these crocodile infested waters, fought with soldiers on boats armed with spears , I place too much emphasis on the nature of ‘I’… I seldom allow the life that is in me to speak… I am reminded time and time again of the scars that are hidden deep in me, the endless hurtful experiences that have hardened my heart, and whenever I move to an understanding of them I am confronted by their injustice and I am left disturbed, they appear to have a life in me, they are in many ways more powerful than me. Was it my nature that was being revealed with these memories…? Or was it a force that had a life all its own in my soul…? I had tremendous wars with myself, A part of me moved upward, into the sublime heights of peace, into the clouds above filled with higher thoughts, and the other opposing force filled with demons and darkness pulled me down below, the town reminded me of a forgotten core, where people were routinely filled with notions and cycles of life, it was the signs of the times that all men and women were in a universal manner saturated of life and were bored plain out of their minds and were constantly on the search for the next high that would have a brief fantastic life of its own before fizzling away. All my life I had been exposed to the turmoil’s of everyday people… -. Office workers, mechanics, the gardeners, the street sweepers, butchers, Missionaries, Drunks, Milkmen, evangelists, Pastors of small churches etc. Whilst I knew about the unseen, they were fully grounded in their existential despair and sought often to educate me of the plight of a wasted life often, I only saw the traces of something far more toxic than what was uttered in their cynical downsizing. Their warnings condemned one more than the lifting up of one’s disposition. People assumed that their humiliation was unveiled, their minds worked perhaps with the incessant friction of their lives, with pressure, they were impatient and easily irate. It was the nature of one’s mind to feel in a manner that was volatile the effect of reality’s disappointments, the moods of the times was controlled by the infernal passions that were shallow and materialistic. Their spiritual notions were filled with fear, they were unaware that their soul needed spiritual guidance and clarity. The idols that they bowed to looked fearsome and seemed only to crave a power that seemed sinister and shady.

The stability of the town depended on what had supported it in the past, they were in the dark.. their ammunitions to the outsiders was based on territorial reasons…There was something rather exquisite about the utter lack of space in the town… The overhanging cables… The moderate traffic storms… stripped of any dreamy layers and insight, just the rough, unfiltered flow of reality’s contents… the universe was forgotten and I took a careful note of all the insanity that gripped this small hamlet. There was a threatening effect to most interactions… I wondered why I tried so hard to be who I found much comfort to be in the city… The same code made me feel obsolete and an easy prey for the lurking pride that lay beneath all facades that sought to feed on the young dreams and cruelly destroy them so that the soul might lose its vision and settle for the ready state of reality. My conversation with the nature of all things, the end of all things destroyed any deeper connection that I might have possessed to all people, I was an apostle of open minded detachment, all people would undoubtedly change, in the nature of life miseries and blows to one’s mind and heart would be aplenty, Love for all its might was the consummate force that moved on beyond its hurts and failures, the people of the town struck me as a damp match stick, there was no spark, not to say that I did not encounter the true and the genuine, but my own warring feelings held me inward, life seemed to be just an eternal battle between good and evil, I turned instead to an analysis of the landscape, the psychological and the psychoanalytical. But my heart was furious and filled with visions of grandeur and heroic intentions, in my day dreams I fantasized about flying high and saving people from burning buildings, making generous contributions to end poverty, but these dreams were eating me as well… For the moment they subsided… I understood that I had not moved an inch from wherever it was that I was standing at when my mind escaped beyond the trapdoor.

Sometimes in conversations you ran out of things to say and things turned awkward and one would desperately search for things to say that might stop the repugnant silence that suspended all motion of thought and made one feel inferior in a deeply affected way that stalked all of my namesake conversations with the people who lived here, who I would unwittingly meet and engage in a few tense moments with. I worried that the innocence that I had so possessed with a righteous strength had passed away, deserted me or I had wasted it on worldly affairs, that had left me highly skeptical and rather bitter, and I was left with a world weary sense of blurred vagueness, and thence the indistinct and the imperceptible became my vision, my life and my consciousness. The immoral, the normal and the unaesthetic plagued and tormented my sense of life, and I felt inhibitions that were strong and mighty ravage my soul, why was it all necessary..? I pondered away like the Philosopher of the Biblical Book of Ecclesiastes. In the town my thoughts were close and immediate, my reactions to the state of consciousness that seemed to perpetuate in the inmost parts of one’s mind seemed blunt and almost defensive. But real voices leave trails, they linger and they still when the mind reaches its boundaries, there are no cross roads visible, they are not pictures that contain the dull sobriety of concrete life, there are no pointing signs singing the song of life saying ‘ Walk this way young man and you will reach a point of sublime spontaneity…’, No we were reckless trains that wandered like searching motorcycles breaking the thick pregnant walls of the night, But I felt the entirety of desolateness and emptiness, I longed, even thirsted and hungered for my heart to feel a bit of color… Or just a tinge of emotion that seemed improbable and surreal… Everything was repetitive and closed…. I longed to feel the lyrics of life… My life brimmed with all the energies of poetic intentions, Philosophical journeys that sought exploration… But my life was filled only with half remembered dreams, acts that I wished to forget and longings that lead nowhere but into the blunt cotton clouds and then came back again, plowing into me with hardened sensations. I walked along with a chimney in the depths of my steel plated heart….I wondered about the life of many things… I dreamt about the Existential paradox of life , the destitute whose mind lay dead, but awakened briefly to excite his fatal habits, I imagined and chanced often upon damaging relics that often chanced in out of nowhere in the broad path of my mind…I engaged in the waltz of life, in the journey of half remembered things, I always enjoyed intimately the last few remaining drops of time when the night seemed on the verge of falling off the cliff of darkness and her imminent death, near the end when my heart sunk into the darkness playing with it tenderly, I meditated upon the unmatchable surrealism of infinite spaces, I found ways to enjoy the stars arrayed in brilliant specks, I was immensely worried about the surface of the settlers of this town, by their blunt and vicious demeanor filled with immediate actions that lingered and appeared to be filled with mental damage… I secretly gathered from my point at the window the moods that were switched on in the dirt roads with the fleeting wails , I was an outsider who often jumped in the air unseen, but had to be pulled down by the nature of the town that bored into me at a sub conscious level, I could never be free enough to release myself to the freedom that I dreamt for. But I realized that the waves were never meant to leave the sea, as melodic and far searching as their hearts are with sighs and hidden messages, they are pulled back into the soul… And I like the wave flowed in with ebbs and flows, eternal and unseen, yet felt and heard.

Far far away – Poem

And I wonder if it really happened,
How …?
Why…?
First time I met her it was a brief stare,
I ran into her when my heart was all infertile vastness,
or perhaps the sheets of water rolling in tune to the wind’s commands,
and then she chanced upon me,
and I wanted her all for myself,
And I grew fond of her, I did not know why I thought so much about her,
But I wanted her, I wanted her like I wanted the clouds to reveal the light,
I remember all the unspoken conversations, the emptiness between the hours,
I remember thinking that I wanted to trap her only in my heart,
and not share her with the world, for fear that someone else would think the same way that I thought of her,
In the nights when I dreamt, I would visit her and we would hold hands and watch the galaxies, the falling burning stones from the sky, and she would sink into my chest as we pondered the mystery of the stars,
But she like a song with feeling faded away, faded away after her sharp and dangerous intoxicating presence deep in my soul,
And thereafter I wandered lone and slow, My heart felt hollow and my senses empty,
I wanted to ask whatever it was she wanted, and maybe play the piano as she danced to the liberating drops of rain, or maybe hold her hands as the sea waves crashed and rolled,
I wanted to write her letters, or just be with her as normal people often did,
Was I wrong to trap her only in my heart…? To want her to light the dying flame of my cold, predictable existence,
I pursued her like lost souls pursued wanderlust, like dogs dreamt of bones and cats wished for trees,
I saw her many times during that particular passage of time,
its funny how things become clear only after the dust settles,
I always thought to myself, one of these days i’m going to summon up the courage to go up to her and ask her to think only in regard to her and I,
Forget the world, forget what has happened, forget what you wish for,
Forget what has been and what will be possibly be, What about you and me…?
I am here now, Maybe if we separate we might be taken a million miles away,
Maybe we are the last of our kind, would you not just talk …?
What if you develop feelings after we grow apart and finally place your fingers on what you really did want…?
Would I be in your heart as you close the doors to your life..?
But she walked right by me everyday taking away pieces of my heart that she trampled without realizing,
As the days passed me by, she stopped staring into my eyes, She stopped speaking through the medium of silence, she stopped walking, I heard that she went far away to a distant place,
And me, I knew that I should not have allowed my feelings to trap her in my heart, all this time I wonder I feel like she never really saw me,
I was maybe just another dot in an observable reaching glance,
So time stops, and people fade, and she has moved on,
Its been so long since I felt fine, but I don’t mind, I wanted her but she did not know how to see into me,
For if she did stare into me, she would see me lost in thoughts of her,
Would it even matter…? Would she even care…?
I wouldn’t know, And I most probably never will,
but I walk with her trapped in my heart.