Part III: acceptance of all that is.
my mind is a fossil, preserved and frail with the weight of the world soiling it to the depths of its buried, tired self. i am sometimes hollow like a shell abandoned, sometimes full like the entire existence of motion, sight, sound, smell, touch infiltrating every inch of everything we see and encompass around our lives. full of wonders, of hopes, of failures, of dreams, of questions, on wonders, on hopes, on failures, on dreams, on questionable existence of time and how it offers its own two hands to the entire movement of a galaxy. the idea of 'now' is a relative term, contemporary like its passing definition. it is hard to avidly keep your eyes directed forward, when we are racing through a mental track of an ever-changing constant. everything we cling to will move back within the trail of our lives and we will have no time to construct what we bring to a future, by focusing so much on a present that is settling to the past. i find myself breathless and panting like an old dog. time goes away, to an unknown destination. i believe there lives a portal under our pillows and in the skyline where day meets night; it takes and takes and takes until there is nothing left for us to offer. and then we disintegrate slowly, from outside in, until our souls have no more homes to crawl back to.
then we are timelessly free, like sand in crosswind.
the walls speak to me like they understand me. i shivered in the velvet blue of the night and my toes tingled. i admired the art of dying and how I went about piecing it together; the 4/4 heartbeat dissonant to chaos on my mind, pink echoes of parquet flooring beneath the stretch of my body, drawn curtains over an open window where I dangled my feet five storeys above ground level many a times with my back to mirrors that glared down on me. I can still remember the smell of an overheating computer, of iron and the colour of wine. it is here, where i stopped to stare into another world, numb and completely accepting. It is the mindset of somebody sitting on death's worn and bent couch but somehow i have carried it with life because i took it back. but unlike the chinese childhood legends i grew up so eagerly on, i did not meet the blind woman, i did not drink the soup. i did not forget the past when i was reborn. i was, instead, spared this naivety by learning to embrace that mortality was as solid as the wall i stare at for long intervals on days when i am dazed and separate to my body.
what can i say? i adapt.
i have learnt to befriend pain, to learn its secrets and understand its cries. it has a stench like bleach but with a similar effect, it destroys and cleanses. it gives you the outcome you appreciate in the long run when your shoes have gone and your feet embrace soil. i have learnt to show it the way. i stop hanging my faces on the wall and wear them down until they no longer become disguises. this is a new age i have aspired to, when i can accept that things breach comfort and fall, teaching us to find salvation within ourselves.
the handmade blanket of colours drapes down my thighs to my feet. the cup of tea by my side is now freezing cold, numb like my mind as i look at what i believe is a synopsis of myself. i wonder where i can fix the loopholes, the gaping hollows of where i was once decapitated and carelessly sewn back on by hands that wanted to try too hard. i am a happy person, deep inside, in the core of layers and layers of selfish complications i bestowed upon myself. like a pulley, like a slingshot, the weight i carry tugs with determination the further i go, and it is the relief i get when i am lifted and let go to plummet down towards the core of my euphoria.
i listen to the sounds i hear when all is silent, for it is in silence, where secrets are loudest. sometimes, i listen for the songs of the cicadas by the olive trees of my grandparent's garden, and i hear them, distant and sad, ephemeral like the ever-churning concept of reality. i listen for the wind that catches between the wheels of my bicycle in a cool Manchester night. i listen for the dial tone to end and the first, minute, tired sigh of my mother's before she greets me with the romantic happiness i am grateful for. i listen for familiarity personal to me.
what is the permanence of this, other than life and death? everything else is subjective, personal, confusing - like passion, like fear. i try my most to stop anticipating, and embrace everything with the strongest passion i can conjure within myself. i will attempt even more so, to laugh at fear, for it brings nothing but the things i least wish to cross paths with, praying for the best and only the best, sometimes convincing myself that i don't deserve any less. i stare at the ceiling and crawl out from under my skin, dancing with air, fading with smoke. what is the permanence of this?
how many surfaces, i wonder, have i touched; a lamp post, the seat of a train, the condiments that make everyday things, that were once touched and loved by those now deceased in a forever slumber? how many moments have slipped past my consciousness, i wonder, when i was stood next to somebody i will never meet, who learnt my name and read my thoughts, maybe even touched my shoulder. it is an ethereal feeling of being able to connect with another dimension, another realm of living. it is almost like how i'd imagine to experience sitting cross-legged and casually hunched in the middle of a hurricane, when all that are destroyed are now a whirring, low hum of blur surrounding your small, solid levitational state of sacred sanctuary. i think i have touched upon the transcendental stems of my mind, and i will one day exert it to the surface and let it become.
i believe in the spirits, in the unseen forces, in the parallel universe, in the strange glitches we get out the corner of our eye when imagination runs too deep into the wild.
i don't believe such transcendence like this can be a lie.
nightfall. the stars they call to me, so i respond. i am insensitive to the callouses of the world. tonight, i am at peace.
