It is sometimes good that something holds you back when you feel like writing nasty stuff about people who don’t deserve a bit of it because they love you. And its sometimes good not to get what we crave because that prompts us to discover alternatives that save our lives later. Can I divide my soul and replace and alter a few parts so I can be nice to some and rude to others instead of being rude to the “some” and nice to the “others”? maybe I have partially wrong orientation of the soul that feels. And can I transcend the petty emotional needs from you when you are too tired to give them a thought? They do not have the intellect to read into things. I do not have the patience to make them read or try to understand the non-reader’s scientific mind that hold formulae and no improvisations or postulates on them.
Thus my alternative is my love for myself. I can even gratify myself in ways you cannot and they cannot, and weirdly I know so many of the experienced who never had certain experiences in their entire lives in spite of being on the bed of life for so long. Life is strange at times. And then there are my dreams. I dread the day I achieve them, if I ever do. I may never come back. I may change my concept of home. I may lose all love for the old things and forget how to feel sorrow or pity. It is strange and amazing how inhuman we humans are. I cannot go up to a woman looking solemn on the streets and ask her “what is wrong with you? I am here to listen.” I cannot, because I don’t know her, or maybe because if I do, she may harm me. In many ways she can. I cannot afford to be not careful.
There was this little child of a human who did everything short of tugging at our clothes while we slurped our ice cream. I carefully moved away avoiding its filthy body. It looked like a creature from another abominable world and I could smell its stink from the distance as I hurried away. It is only when I am within my safe six walls that I write didactic stuff about the child or the shriveled downsized adult. Are they ever born as children? So, do not pay me any attention. I am as inhuman as you are. I would do nothing for the child, just like you. I would only write and except stares and comments pregnant with meaning, with the depth of something that stretches to the trenches beyond our eyesight. I wonder if the best pieces come from the biggest hypocrites. If not, then we have hope.
My life is a toss up of so many rooms and backyards. My home is the foundation because the rest all revolve around it. From the life on the street to that in the house, to that in the dream, I am sufficiently rich – in words, in ink, in paper, in space. And I use and throw them at will. And there is the staircase that is still being constructed and one day the lower steps will disappear (if they don’t, I wont live long to see them thrive.) and I will fly forever never to touch the streets again. These sentences should mean nothing then. It will be just a meaningful day in an old life with the meaning all forgotten, a trophy with the memory of it missing. What good will petty things like pens be then? What good are they now?
There are the people who live a little higher than the streets, but not as I high as I do. You say our altitude is the same, but I don’t see them gasping for oxygen every time they talk. They must be below me. It is, as I said, strange to know that they have never experienced things I have done in my short life, and yet they have come a long way. Maybe I have also not experienced what they have but I do not even want to, because whatever it is, it must not be too nice in the long run, because I do not see them smiling in their airy open environment. They have all the money and gold and no happy climaxes that make them shiver or laugh. I shall get all the gold one day and I already have my happiness. And I even talk less than they do. Thus I am better and I can even afford to give a bit of my meat to them. But why bother? If they have money they can sew their own clothes, paint their own palaces and brew their own pleasure. The impotence of their hearts is not my concern. I am here to watch their sad gold glitter till they finish their walk and then I shall hop down a step or two and catch the gold before it slips away as a hot liquid.
I need, now, to go back where I started – to myself, and to diplomacy, because that is what creates great art. I cannot call a spade a spade, because even the tramp down the darkest alley knows that it’s a spade. I need to make myself obscure to convey something I want you to remember, to share. Thus it is a very innocent man who looks puzzled by artifice and is better satisfied with straight strong words. Because they hit harder. It singes the skin to be told that you are a coward who fears famine and stores grain for himself and no other. It, on the contrary, gives you intellectual orgasms to be told that it is ‘them’ who are selfish cowards. You know you are among them and yet you appreciate the criticism and even nod and shed a thought or two. And again I need to come back just to myself – at the very top and quite alone apart from shadows I conjure. And I find that I have forgotten the personal dissatisfaction that drove me to delve deep into what I am living for. It makes me reach out to the souls in the other levels while they are not looking. It makes me genuinely feel for them and create something for them, but only when they are not looking. And I feel how lucky they are and how lucky I am, that they don’t know I think of them.
I still cannot recollect what made me unhappy today. Perhaps my dinner menu or unmade bed. But everything seems so perfect now. They made everything perfect again with their huge imperfections. I need to shut my door, the little slit on one of the six walls, before they wake up and realize that they help me. They know I help them and that is the best way to leave matters for eternities to come.
I am falling asleep. I do not have much oxygen up here. I cannot talk anymore.
