"On the wan walk to Foxhill,
My set eyes took a glance,
To find a mighty trunk stood mighty still.
They gazed at its red and yellow frills
And my heart with them in a merry thrill,
Move to the wind in song and dance,
Merrymaking on its loyal roots until,
The hasty hands of Time with will,
Pressed on with a voice too shrill,
To hustle and halt the brief romance.

So, deeply the heavy heart exhaled
To see that the eyes were paled
And my feet below blinder still
Pulled the heart again to Foxhill."

 

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"All the time I thought that I was wrong
Wanting to believe but needing to belong
If I'd've just believed in all I had ..."
- Barry Manilow, All The Time

Maybe it was wrong.

As if in the moment, the sea parted: All the time, all the wasted time, All the years waiting for a sign. It will soon be apparent to ordinary vision that the flags will rise and arms thrown up but heads down - a walk to an end. There is an end. It need not matter. Denial is a demanding self-prescribed sedative whose search for a willing victim or companion is almost never in vain. 

The wind in its imposing stateliness gathered and conducted the leaves to a seemingly odd waltz - a flick, a bow, a turn. Black ravens swarmed across the sky to complete an unlikely social gathering.  The sheeps led and the horses trotted pass. Every click of every hoof heard, drummed to a fixated melody of the wind. Every click, every merciless hoof against the tender soreness of the heart. A swirl, a swoosh at the shins and the knees bent and one will fall. Fists clenching the earth and weary arms pushing against the ground so one could stand again.

From below, there are no more than a dark blanket across the sky and waves which stood like legions of guards and militants awaiting inspection. Tall, still but threatening to collapse at the fall of a hat. Some part inside one's self almost wanted, wished for it to collapse. One could be guided away nobly by the blameless seas serving as escorts, drifting to the shores of the unknown. Not one end or the other. Nor one decision against another.

But, carried to somewhere unfamiliar to nosy, cursory judgments of empty shells and coarse voices of strangers' hasty accusing pretensions. Needless to defend a tactless jest, needless to contest against a floating accusation. After all, life should not be a anyone else's ritual but one's alone. From below, a vision of one end is no better than a glimpse of the other. From below, one could crawl away into the waves of indifference. There is an escape. Denial. One cannot. The sea was parted so it could be crossed.

The Wind swings its wand again - to impose, to push, to rush. So the arms pushed once more against the ground and one stood up, stood still. Brushed off the dirt on the knees and palms. Rotated a full circle. To walk back is not cowardly; it is a choice one could make. To look ahead is not bravery; it is just another choice one could make. To have choices is not luxury; it is just another heartache. 

Another round and I walk on.

All the time, all the wasted time
All the years waiting for a sign
To think I had it all
All the time

So, I walk on.

 

[[ music ]] Barry Manilow - All The Time
[[ book ]] Julie Andrews - Home: A Memoir of My Early Years
[[ mood ]] moody

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"... because continuing, no matter what, was so vitally important."
- Julie Andrews, Home: A Memoir of My Early Years

 

But, not so vitally easy.

The grass sways to the rhythm of the wind.  And, the mighty trees dancing, flirting with ease. In unity, it all seemed like a spectacle from an autumn ball. Nature has a way of humouring itself and reduces everyone else to an admirer or a suitor. Occasionally though, a critic will stumble upon a scene as such and make 14 lines worth of complaints. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines ... He, the poet.

As a spectator, I stood, watched and then walked away because I was unmoved. The scene stuck and struck like £4 poster at a university sale against a pale, bare wall. Adding only colours but no angles, no perspectives. Just strokes of cheap imagination against a torn canvas. As a spectator, the wind blew too strong, too cold. I, the whiner.

By now, one should think that the story of the road less travelled by would become something more of a Thumbelina than the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk - small and tucked neatly at a corner of the untouched folds of the mind. It hasn't. Instead, it has taken the liberty (and with no pinch of a request or interest from me either) to recite the chant like a rooted cult curse. I never blame the poetry. Poetry is beautiful. I blame the poet. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Oh, how the man mocks me.

So, you walk on - with the rough winds and sometimes against the rough winds. Because Nature and its whims do not stop for a nod or bow for a kiss. They move in their ease and at their pace. When you reach the famed two roads diverged in the yellow woods, you let your heart flutter with its Tinkerbell's wings and carry you as far as it could.

The trouble is and always has been that the heart is a brittle creature with no knowledge of its brittleness. It has no eyes and therefore cannot see that it is no more than flesh and blood. It has no ears and therefore would obstinately refuse judgment or reason. It is a Maria - A flibbertijibbet! A will-o'-the wisp! A clown! As much as the heart seems the foolish creature you try to keep its fairy dust from sprinkling everywhere, God made it the one part inside us that beats the hardest, the strongest; the one part willing to fight the battles others consider meaningless. Oh, how He mocks me.

So, in all the face of all the world's mockeries ... we walk on. Because continuing, no matter what, is vitally important.

 

[[ book ]] Julie Andrews: Home: A Memoir of My Early Years
[[ mood ]] blank

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"The rose is fairest when 't is budding new,
And hope is brightest when it dawns from fears.
The rose is sweetest wash'd with morning dew,
An love is loveliest when embalm'd in tears."
- Sir Walter Scott, Lady of the Lake. Canto iv Stanza

 

Racism. Corruption. Raja Petra. Tumbling markets. Sodomy. Immigration. CNN.
Tea and mooncakes.

Conversation with two middle-aged aunts.

Tomorrow will be a better day.

[[ book ]] Charles Frazier - Cold Mountain
[[ mood ]] blah

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"Each life unfulfilled, you see;
It hangs still, patchy and scrappy:
We have not sighed deep, laughed free,
Starved, feasted, despaired,--been happy."
- Robert Browning, Youth and Art



Follow your heart and chase your dreams.

Glorious words. I stacked everything up - the papers, the articles, journals, modules, the notes I stayed up nights and nights to labour and complete. And, like part of a ritual, I put them outside and tomorrow it will be another stack of the past - something isolated, something distant something forgotten. If Shaksepeare was right to say that all the world's a stage, then Life even with all its infinite variety would be an overstaged play.

Adulthood touches us in so many strange ways that it allows us the misleading liberty to stray away from the lessons we learn as a child. It allows us to look for excuses. It gives us the license to create a large gray area where we mingle the waters of our confusions, our doubts, our excuses and our flaws into a stream so that we can be absolved of all blame for having all that attached to our souls. After that, we are at peace again with ourselves.

After all, having to see means having to acknowledge and having to claim and embrace them as one's own. And, that would only create a sort of grave familiarity which one strives so hard to stray away from and be independent of. To run away is to be brave enough to find security.There is nothing particularly courageous in suffering in silent misery from a battle fought to be lost. But, what do we know of the word 'suffer'?

So many search in the depths of their hearts to find the beat which resonates to the rhythm of their souls. To learn, to know, to understand. So many more search in vain. Sometimes, you look up at the vastness of the skies on those unusually quiet nights and wonder at the vastness of the world and where your place is in it. You may be just another isolated, distant, forgotten soul.

But, is contentment to be found in ordinariness? Or in the under the cloak of non-existence or the behind the curtains of oblivion? Or in the inability to sigh as deep and laugh as free or to be constrained within a strict confinement drawn by our own hands and closes in at every attempt to escape? Is happiness to be found in its fullness with the absence of despair and suffering?

Perhaps, we have always been looking for something that we never knew was never to be found. Or, perhaps, we have not discovered what it was we are looking for and so it was never for us to find. But, how long would the reserves last before you realise you're another one of those odd souls whose efforts are futile.

Have you heard of the story of the fat Panda who defied all odds and became the Dragon Warrior who went on to save the entire valley from Tai Lung?

Things that are past are done with me. Destiny is a terrible story to tell. But, even in our own quiet, unassuming ways,there are matters we passionately pursuit. And, there will be things we valiantly battle for. Among many other things, we fight for ourselves, our conscience and our sanity so our lives are lived. To do otherwise, I deeply feel, is cowardice. Cowardice, my friend, is terribly human. But, so is courage. Perhaps, we can fight off our dreams. I don't believe we can truly fight off ourselves or comfort ourselves with an attempt at it.

And nobody calls you a dunce,
And people suppose me clever:
This could but have happened once,
And we missed it, lost it for ever.


Life is an overstaged play. But, I am not the playwright. And, tomorrow, some other past will unfold.

[[ music ]] Josh Rouse - Sparrows Over Birmingham
[[ book ]] Elizabeth Gaskell - The Life of Charlotte Bronte

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