Melancholy, Again

The ability to write a new thing, an entirely new train of thought, a new idea, think about something else, something different, something else seems difficult. When we are almost complacent, half seduced by nature and half by this material world, we are reminded of our mortality and of those around us. It should not shock us but it does since we almost believe that death happens to others and not us, the most ignoble and unfortunate assaults on our mortal frames happen in medical text books to people unwittingly or to those who are in some way prone.

Hence this sadness and this melancholy again. This inability to write anything cheerful, different and wise. For true wisdom is outside lamentation and in acceptance, outside defiance and in fortitude. The same thought runs through these paragraphs whenever it suits me, thoughts of parting and meeting, of desire and memory. I thus naturally look for allies, for kind words and sullen prose, for sad poems. Sometimes one gets lucky and discovers The Loser and so on, because the great bulk of sad and not so cheerful reading has finished by now, leaving no trace however.

Yet I remember that I did not want to write about myself but about the uncertainty of being, the hilarious idea of trying to seek permanence and the helplessness of trying to communicate or help another kindred spirit, one in some agony and in distress. For words are useless when nights are long, poems worth nothing in desert suns, all philosophy child babble and heart's echoes songless when the spirit is mute.

Our mortality prevents the establishment of anything realistic and permanent. Words and people have piled up over the centuries and vanished. Culture and barbarism have seen eye to eye and reason has rubbed shoulder with ignorance. After winter, usually after a cold winter, the suffering earth has forgotten and welcomed spring and warmth as a natural friend, ignoring the myriad deaths that winter claimed. Then all that spring and summer do is to prepare for a torturous falling, a turning of colours, a failure of holding, a maturing, a call and a plea for winter and death.

Everything artistic and aesthetic and things barren and crude die in the way of death. How many brave and authentic thoughts and how many sad and tender expressions melt in its heat. We who linger outside the domain of words, outside the real realms of writing greatness too feel the papable sadness of this world.

The Dust Of Meeting

When we met
after many days and nights,
days and nights that had spread and hardened layers on my heart,
layers of seperation
in seperation,
after many days and nights when seperation stays in the eyes,
hard to drop off.

When we met after this black science had destroyed my essence,
the vitality of my humour, the lies of my reason,
I thought of the trigger that will appear soon,
that spawns nights and days of thoughtless despair,
hard to break from.

When we met after endless hours, struggling to look each other
in eyes that have published misery and made it a discipline,
a perfection in silence. After all, who dares to look at love?
Love that is hard, not easy, never asked for,
hard to name.

When we met surrounded by symbols of parting, at an airport
beside the car park, lifting my heavy heart into the boot of the car,
driving blindly down a road that leads to a willow,
and a magnolia, bright with flowers or sad with waiting,
hard to cut down.

We always part in the afternoon, besides a garden that we grew,
surrounded by hedges, by silence.
You never look at me and I always look back, hoping
that you might turn, hoping that I might turn back,
hard to leave.

On Meeting A Dear Friend

Since I met a dear friend A.W recently, after nearly a decade, I have realized the impossibility of memory and the stupidity of desire. We met in a haze of sunshine, in a place previously familiar to us. Time has added its signs to us both and we quickly recognized these. It was not a new meeting but a continuation of the last one, only this time we did not talk about being acrobats. I have started my deterioration process long ago and I sensed so had he.

We did not suffer for lack of words, in fact prolixity was dancing its wings. We interrupted each other and suffered. Obviously we sat on a bench, in a garden formerly liked, looking at stones adored once in a world of hope and without cynicism. I remember now that I looked straight when I talked, shielding him from cigarette smoke which light breeze blows into faces. We did not remember old times because that was too tiring.

Time flew. We walked through corridors sometimes hated and mostly ignored. Faces had disappeared, the trees shrunk in the glow of a volatile sun of memories. We talked about present times, times of discontent, bright melancholy in different worlds, beyond different seas, across oceans that must be heaving. We surmised and perhaps lied too. Yet, I sensed it was the natural thing to do.

Things change. The awful sadness of time makes one grow old. Many other people have grown older and some are simply resigned to waiting and patience. We have left behind that time, a time when I thought only others lie to themselves, times of idealism, without disgust, when eyes shine, faces glow, mornings are warm.

Yes, we left then, I to collect those words and spread their sadness and think of more comfortably numb times. I told him about the deterioration process and how it must be continued. I remember the frantic speed of that meeting and the inevitable slow fast parting.

The Melancholy Of Departure Lounges

Departure lounges at Airports and waiting areas at Train stations are symbols of oppression. One has parted and suffered, one has to part and suffer and the neon bright luminosity of these places sticks its poison in the system. People, all different, rush in and through these mazes and brightness, there is incessant and loud chatter, suffocating the one, who arguably, more sensitive or less adaptable, sits in a corner, revisiting memories, imagining the profound faces of love or the dismal colors of seperation.

This lament, lament as it is, is not for the happy traveller. The happy traveller travels bound by nothing, surrounded by sun even in winter. He or she travels for something, aided by the false and unreal reality of all travel. This man gloats in the sophistication of modern travel, inspite of its suffocation. Since there is a place, and since men can fly, one must get there, though the place visited is the same as the previous place.

But I am talking about the person who is travelling inspite of himself, beside himself, because he has to. The only colours he sees are of seperation and parting, memory and desire. He has seen it before and will see it again. This searing pain and sometimes lack of it is cause for pain. He has left behind himself and others, himself in others and others in himself. He has done that before because he does not know anything besides that.

Then at night, and after break of day, once the traveller has deposited his mortal materials around himself, redecorated his so-called reason with the illusion of words and convinced himself that that parting was an illusion, he settles down with a pen and a blank sheet of paper. He must write something, to help him to help him. But the pen has broken, the ink has dried and the blank piece of paper is still blank.