Darkest Light

I don’t know where I am going.

So, I wrote. For Me. For You. For Us.

I am keen on keenness and arch lights or lack of them and before I fill my lungs with dust at Petra’s ruins, I’ll let you have my heart for a while. I find relief in belief. I ‘ll let you in on me. A cliché must’ve been someone’s discovery. So I have started to admire clichés from a distance. A considerable distance. Though right now I can feel one aiming to cross my path. Right now.

Don’t know where you goin’..till you know where you been..

On the extravagance of History that was lavished at me when I was standing at Ramses throne. Ham-Sa. I am That. The Sky seems to look forever stunned when glancing down at Abu Simmel.

I ve been here and there and then some.

Where are we going? Use the progressive tense, the unbalanced psyche says. Progressive.

The Mahayana cycle spins within me as I measure the possibility of extinction perched on Buddha’s giant toe in Leshan.

Tara’s green aura percolates through Angkor Wat’s roots tying down the sentience that combats serpentine desire nestled in a tiny syringe awaiting my body and more when I step out.

36 sleepless hours of watching pixies trying to catch moonlight in glass jelly jars. On a forgotten island. Ungoogleable names of places that don’t worship the iJesus yet. Downing innumerable plates of Papaya salads that can burn a hole in the tongue. Conversing snappers in Koh Chang and sometimes even include a human voice to partake in it.

Arguing with the Pantheon in public view. Laughter that would have been otherwise served with a plate of tortellini and labeled as “Another Crazy American” except this is Rome and crazy is a good thing. Casually flirting with epithets and epicurean delights even as I dangerously fall in love with a language and its glory. They keep saying Benvenuto! – Welcome to Bologna, Naples and it continues.

The not so gentle murmur of the Tiber hasn’t even faded in my ears and The Sea starts to make its symphony resonant. Archipelago as they would’ve called it. Atlas says –The Aegan Sea. Mother, mystic, moral compass. All of it. I rise so that I can get lost in the Dadia.

Then suddenly, tending to a temple garden outside a 19 million people city that changes its name every autumn I think. Bombay or Mumbai or just “My SoulCave”. Cradling my inability to be with my own self in the presence of a spirit who might throw a rock at me or may hold me in an eternal embrace. And I feel good with both. Feeling a shift of the blue energy from my spine to my heart. In bouts and turns.

And You ask ..why can’t I be home?

Feel.

Forgive.

Find.

A Life of principles or A Life of clarity or A Life of disenchantments?

A Life ‘s sparsely disguised imperfection, a consummate love affair with reluctance of Being punctuated only by an epochal coming of Time and falling into Age. I am here. As much I can be. As much I can ever be.

You’d say - Insatiable.

As much as I ever was. I exited Automatism. I entered Make-believe. And I gallantly seek it out. I would cease to exist if I didn’t live like this. Do. Recognize Me. Don’t. Analyze me. The attitude or the latitude of change. The highs of low lives and the lows of high living.

You’d say –Then… How do I hold onto you?

I’d say - Don’t.

Let go.

In the stillness of a ricepaper town’s fantasy. Let go. In the webbed microcosm of a download destination. Let go. Amidst the redundant sequence of foreplay and decay. Let go. Atop all of summer’s secret mounds and drunken sounds. Let go. Between baptisma and ekphora. Let go. In the feverish downpour that threatens to break all physical and emotional dams. Let Go. On spring mattresses from that historical night that moaned and then mourned. You must let go.

Because, it won’t come back to haunt you later if you do. That you couldn’t see me the way I wanted you to see me. That you could keep me by letting me go. That guilt will make your veins split. I know that guilt. I live that guilt. Of not knowing myself, the way I wanted to, when I really wanted to. To know that I can cure me in less than 12 steps just to find out I got 24 more to go.

So, I let go.