Friday, August 22, 2008

Dreams & Angels


And yet again, I started dreaming of Angels this week. Through the night I aroused and sensed that I picked up subdued whispers. I peeked through the heavy curtains of my room, past the shadows to a quiver of lights. The neighborhood smelled like a thousand marshes reeking in the sun and the night suddenly was filled with a thousand howling dogs. On an impulse, I quietly covered up my nakedness and without switching on the light tiptoed out of the front door, scrambled up the stairs, crouched beside the terrace parapet and peered into the darkness, my heart thumping violently.


A sight so awing confronted my eyes and for a moment my body benumbed. There they stood in a circle, seven Angels in all, all their scales glinting in a blackish shine with their squirming action. They held burning torches that seemed burning obscure silhouettes. Suddenly the moon faded as if hurt in pain, and the dark clouds dissolved to tears as the gates of paradise violently closed. All wet by the pouring rain I looked on as the night continued to loose itself in endless howling of a thousand dogs.


Soon they laid down their fire torches, now extinguished and threw them down. I watched in horror as the moon suddenly came out and I noticed the snakes around their white flowing robes. I suddenly realized that the fire they held earlier were actually serpents. Abruptly the inevitable happened: I coughed.

A silence engulfed the night and suddenly I heard the flutter of a thousand ravens and found myself lifted into the naked night. I struggled in pain as the claws cut into my bareness and I soon found myself falling with a thud among the snakes. I attempted to yell and place myself upright but noticed that the snakes now coiled around my arms and ankles and disgustedly across my mouth.

Then, as the circle closed behind me, with me sprawled fully naked in the center, I heard chanting. They stood there singing and chanting. There was the vibrating sound inside the circle like a thousand angels, singing, chanting the music of a thousand hyenas. A state of being carried away by overwhelming emotion, rapture?

After some time, the full serpent circle began to disperse. I blindly looked around me. The world looked different. The surroundings looked different. They were different. It just didn't feel different, it was different. I suddenly heard drums. How could and from where could I hear the drums? Surely someone was drumming. Surely someone was dancing around me. Surely someone was around me. Suddenly everyone was different. What had passed? As I stood watching, a shadow suddenly came over. The shadow put his hand on my shoulder and asked me, what happened. For an instant I remembered what it was like to be with the warm earth, the cool sky and each other; living. It is the happiness of that reminiscence that I feel. The shadow shook his head in complete agreement, comforted and patted my shoulder as it walked away.

Friday, August 15, 2008

The 7th Heaven



It was one of those instances where the cosmos opens up, where the infinite and the finite meet for a charming and magical moment in a lurking, passionate, cosmic kiss. An instant that descends down to you from the glassy clear star studded sky like a flimsy, parlous bubble stooping down on a moonbeam. Its beauty you accommodate in your hand in awe and with the fondest of touches knowing that if you even dare to look away, the moment might be lost.
The moonlit waves pounding relentlessly against the massive rock that rose like a giant out of the surf. The sweet smell of the enigmatic sea hung in the air. The air was chilled and calm, pregnant with a halo of illusional beauty. It was a moment that you relish, a moment that you respect, a moment you arrest in awe, in heavenly worship. You talk in subdued voices about deep feelings of the soul. In the instant where the abode of God and the angels and the earth connect, you hush yourself adequately to hear, to view timeless existence with your own eyes.
It's a cherished instant that the soul interconnects to the bottom self, deep down - the deep that calls out with a mournful sound as it dashes upon the rock. The apparently infinite, realizing its finiteness as it stretches itself upon the moon drenched rock. The deep that echoes from the infinite expanse of the moonlit sky, elongated from horizon to horizon, extending back through the ageless expanse of the universe, yet approaching to meet you in that instant, in that moment, at that time.


It was the cry that vibrated and echoed from the giant rock standing firm for eons against the hammering surf, evidencing to an obstinate strength beyond imagery. It was the cry that thundered to me, rich with pain, a spirit of their own. It was the cry that beckoned me in the expanse of the silvery moon, spattering all around, softly gracing the view with an enigmatic, yet mesmerizing glow.


It was the cry that rose from the interiors of my own soulfulness in that instant, that pined, that screamed to unify it's sound with the deepness of eternity, the depths of that very moment, the sounds that performed around me, echoing against the watery grave an eery, sympathetic symphony that grew louder every minute.


I trudged back through the sand with a heavy heart that I've left the witching instant at the base of the lonely rock, under the moony pounding waves, under the shelter of the stars. I knew that nothing lasts for ever, yet in one last salvo of magic, I see a celestial star freaking through the moonlit heaven cueing me that I should not always cherish myself in magical instances, but the deepness of eternity are never far away.


It's so strange to notice how the continuous nonspatial of the soul works, how the arousing realism can so well melt into dreamy realities while the unconscious soul creeps it's way into life and beliefs.

Monday, August 4, 2008

Cognitive Masks



The shadow slipped away from me, as the sun continued to dive into its pit. It seemingly mocked me to follow but I was in no mood to play. I stared down at it till it vaporized with the burying sun. I don't know why I always get caught up with the illusions of my relationships and I forget that everything that I see in others is simply my own shadow. I don't know why I see myself in them as if in a mirror, reflecting my past and my issues back to me. I find it so hard to accept this verity because when I relate to other people, my reflection is often masked through a smoke screen full of my emotions. My outer projects smoothness, but I know that the calm exterior is my mask, ever-changing and ever-concealing. I wear hundreds of masks, masks that I'm unwilling to take off and none of them are at all me.


I start with the thought that the people around me have remained the same and then one day I find that they are not the same. Even among people subjected to only a slight change I felt that the change was not purely material. I see them as through a bleached misty glass which feigns their facial aspect with a sort of fogginess and they expose what they allow me to observe as if it were life-size, though in reality it was far away, not in the sense of space, but, basically like being on another shore wherefrom they had as much difficulty in recognizing me as I them. Some assay to smooth out, to extend the whiteness of the soul, disowning the piquancy of menaced dimples, suppressing the resistance of a smile condemned and unarmed, while others, realizing that their beauty had finally bygone, take refuge in expression, as one compensates the loss of the attractiveness by the art of choice of words, and hang on to a haughty grimace, to a smirk, to a pensive gaze, or to a smile to which muscular unskillfullness gave the appearance of a mask.


Emotions flourish no longer than roses live, and unlike the roses it flowers in the dead of winter, emits a sort of faint foul smell, and dies before the summer sets in. It may be true. In this view there is room for every love except for the reversed creed of love, the mask and cloak of waterless despair; for every joyfulness; every sorrow; for every dream, for every hope. The ultimate aspire is to remain true to the emotions called out of the bottom of our souls surrounded by our friends, our relationships, our bygone loves, whose countless numbers and awful distances may move us to laughter or tears. The success in hand, however, is to keep these reminiscences from turning into confessions


Time bought my way: daily obligations, new impressions, old memories. I've noticed that it was not the outcome of a need - the famous need of self-expression which impels me as a hidden, blurred necessity, a completely masked and unexplainable phenomenon.


That past brims me with weariness while exchanging conversations, for it links with those imaginings of my past which seems the most cherishable and inaccessible. I console myself by masking myself but my past relations with other beings are magnified by dreams more ardent and with complete hopelessness with which my day opens up everyday, so entirely exiguous, narrow, mournful ribbon of a despised and unloved intimacy in which I discover no trace of what had once been their enigma; their always-wanted fever and their loveliness.


I'm petrified that my own mask is already so hidden beneath me and I don't think I'm so strong enough to retain my past that has escaped back so far. If at least, time takes pity and allots me some, I wouldn't fail to bond it with the chains of love, the scarcity of which nests itself upon me with so much force today occupying a place in time infinitely more important than the curtailed mask reserved for them in space, a place, on the, contrary, elongated boundlessly since, simultaneously touching widely separated years and the distant durations they have lived through, that they stand like giants immersed in time and I cherish that I lose my memory and be born again.