Sunday, January 24, 2010

a mother

A smile is the only thing she offers, and yet everything I ever need. It is a welcome so captive in my thoughts. Her voice is low and soft, short but aversive. She is a simple human with a diverse worry.
Sad is not appropriate for the caravan of rituals I see. Like the many, I believe in an unseen and unknown. That is how I come to know about a soul we inherit. It comes and goes without a smile at all.
When the unseen depart, that which is left is washed. Dressed in unpick white cotton filled with sandalwood and camphor. The cherished ones glimpse for that one last moment and pack like a gift that I never open. I pray forgiveness for the unknown who left to journey the eternity. I pray for eternal paradise, the place the unseen left us for. The gift is then taken on the hands of mine and others who walk slowly to the place. The place is sand; dust and earth, widely open to receive that present which was once hers. Slowly they give up on the gift that once belonged to them. And I throw three handful of fine pure white sand just as the others did. And soon the earth closes above taking that which belonged to her.
I walked away with the many faces that turned and left. Turning back I leave behind again who once smiled at me. How strange it is that in time even that smile will fade like how that precious gift turns into dust and scatter. How strange it is indeed that even those thoughts so enslaved will someday be forgotten like a memoir inked on paper that’s washed away slowly in sea, sun and rain.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

The Potter’s Wheel

I am on a journey to find a potter who turns clay that sounds my song. It is in this particular pottery that I can happily share my soul. Since pottery is an ancient art form my journeys are endless. Potteries are many like the many towns and potters too like those many that dwell. Likewise clay is here and there like the many flowers that grow of many colours, some lucid and others obscure.
I carry this soul within myself to share someday if I wish. And this desire is my journey along the waters carrying the earth. It shares my body for a while like a traveler in a lodge. Neither the traveler nor the lodge owns one other.  This being and place hold in each other a selfless nothingness and yet fulfill each other’s need perfectly.
Where shall I journey to find that one potter? Is that one among the ones gone long ago? Is that one still waiting among the ones to come after? Or is my potter simply here refining the clay until I come? I wonder if my potter is waiting too. Or I wonder if we may ever feel the presence in times of contact. Or do I simply journey until my desire to share is over or that which I need to share is no more with me.
One last wish I may have is my zeal to journey. Though I find my potter or may never, this journey that I travel carries a shadow by day and a dream by night along with the sounding clay of my body and the song of my soul.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

waiting by the sea

Do I walk into the sea up to where I can walk no more and swim far beyond the unseen horizon to reach where hope floats adrift? Or do I simply wait here by the sea until the monsoon changes bringing in those distant dreams onto my shores?

Saturday, January 9, 2010

a walk with you

Why am I walking? As my one foot touch the many little specks of sand the other leaves as much. I usually pass untouched even more sand than I can ever step on. Repeatedly I am doing so, saying hello to some and passing by others I know not. No one knows why I walk or where I go. Where can I go? To the places I go everyday or to those places I have never been to at all. Sometimes why I walk is of no importance just as the sand that I pass by. Only the few tiny specks stuck on my feet know what happened along the way. The walk is soon forgotten by the many little things that happen around.
Today I walk with you. Along a white sandy beach that stretch a long way. On one side are bushes and trees of many greens. The other side is a sea of many blues. The beach is sloping slightly towards the sea. The bushes and trees in front are bent slightly over to the beach. And the sea becomes opaque and darker as it goes afar. The beach narrows as it stretch away and vanish at distance. The sky is deep in blue with some white patches of cotton like clouds moving slowly with us.
If you look back you can see our footsteps being slowly washed away by the waves. As if no one ever walked along these shores. The sea is never tiring and sweep off the moments faithfully so that we have no regrets left ashore. Together we walk slowly along the music of the waves that wash ashore like a jazz quartet. Each wave, like each player, is so unique and improvises yet together makes a soothing music like one sea flowing into the lagoon.
Look at the sand where we walk. Where the wave wash the sand is a bit hard, wet, smooth and shiny with reflections of us on it for a moment at least. But the rest above that is dry, irregular and uneven soft sand. In between is the place I want you to squat for a moment. This is another universe that you can wait a lifetime. This is the place where many tiny and colourful shells are left ashore. You are staring at the many different shapes, patterns and types of perfectly beautiful or sadly broken pieces that are left paralyzed. Once they were shelter to many lives and now abandoned for at least better or otherwise mistakenly unfamiliar homes. Are they being thrown away as unused objects of the marine kingdom so that someone from the surface can make a different use?
We walk along exploring this irregular never ending line carrying so many inspiring geometry and colour. At this moment you realize that it is true why I forget to know why I walk. So much happen in between that the walk is simply forgotten as a simple regular means to all the possibilities that lies ahead. It is not too late to realize that without this walk that which lies ahead will only remain there unless we reach ahead for it. Or do you want to sit and wait here for the sandy beach to roll under us so that all the possible specks of sand pass through us. In that case a lot of sand making a huge pile will surely stop at us unable to move across and finally burying us beneath the load of it.
Why I walk is simply to explore the possibilities that lie ahead. I usually do not walk backwards, unless it is the deep roots of an ancient tree, and hence it is ahead that I walk. The steps I left behind taught me when to move up along the sloping shore without getting my feet wet from the waves that wash ashore. And my foot prints along the path that I came taught me a lot more than I ever knew about the many shapes and colours of all I met along. If I walk along this same shore I am sure I can presumably figure the possible combinations of the patterns and colours that I shall come across.
Why I walk has no meaning unless you come along, without whose smiling eyes this walk is simply a walk along a beach.