Broken pieces, broken world
A crack. A crevice. A gaping hole. Broken pieces. Now the pieces want to get back together. They can’t and it pains…. a lot.
The pieces are screaming… they can’t take it anymore. They can’t hold it anymore. They are losing it.
It’s been a lazy morning. Stormy as usual. Everything feels like it is going to crumble. There is an urgency, like ever. Something needs to be written. Or said. Or someone needs to be talked to. Otherwise, the world will end. I mean, really.
I gotta do something. Glue the pieces together and make them feel like they are whole. Just that they aren’t. They will know it in a short while and the chaos will resume.
How can I “un-shatter” myself? How can I undo what is undone already?
The Chaos. The urgency. The shallow breaths. The flitting eyes. The nervous hands. The weak legs. Something needs to happen right now. Or it will all come crashing down.
Something is wrong. Something needs to be corrected and unravelled and made right. Even if it was all right in the first place.
Something stirs. And then life turns upside down. Bloodbath. Something doesn’t. And life is peaceful. Crickets, blue skies, and white sparrows. What’s the difference? The same twenty-four hours. When one day has no sense on another. When one day of living has no impact on another. When I start again and again like everything is wiped off clean as I write.
I am happy and I start again. I am sad and I start again. Every hour, every minute. The same questions, the same constraints. The same thoughts, the same ideas. The same triggers, the same impulses. I start again and again and again.
There could be some variation some time. The ingredients could be different. The recipe could even change. But the concoction is the same. Stuck like a pattern. I am in a maze. Every time I go to the starting point, it feels like a different one. But then midway I realize it is the same. And then the bloodbath. Then I go to the starting point. And it all starts over, again.
The muscles feel so rigid and tight like I have used them again and again, without any rest. What I feel every moment has etched itself on my face and neck and shoulder and hands and ears and feet. It has etched itself like a river on the rocks. Like the hands of a painter on the canvas. Now, any new river follows the same path. Doesn’t matter if the emotion is new. The etchings are there. On my face, on my brain, on my neurons. And they travel the same route again and again. The traveler might be new but the journey is the same.
When I sit and look back sometime in the future, I hope it all feels like a great war story to be told. Because it feels like a shitty war right now. It does feel a little calming to think that maybe, this could be my war story. Everyone got one, why not me?
I think. No, someone is talking inside me. I become one with this talker. I become the way the talker expresses herself — in words and sound. I believe am the talker. Shortly then, another talker erupts out. And then another. And then another. They start to talk about the same thing the same way, and then they stop. Then they argue. Then they fight. Bloodbath.
I want this to be my war story.
This constant churn. This constant chaos. This constant consternation. This constant earthquake. It’s like someone is playing the drum all the time, inside my ears.
Time flies. And stops. And then flies again. And then becomes remarkably slow.
You need a center of gravity, I am told. Something that would give meaning to everything I do. This constant struggle to prove myself — my words, my dreams, my ideas, they all need a point to revolve around. They all need a pole to dance around.
A theme that would give meaning to my life. A theme that would explain all the chaos and stupidity of my actions. A theme that makes sense of myself. A theme that makes me the hero of the world. A theme that breaks my life into bits that people can chew upon. A theme that breaks my life into bits that I can chew upon.
I search within myself, in and around the dark corners of my mind. I come up with ideas and connect them with what others do. I am the broken part of the world that’s trying to connect back. I am the piece that the world does not know what to do anymore with. And the piece keeps coming up with ways to connect back to the world.
Every idea, every thought, every word, every visual — is a way to connect back to the world, a way to add meaning. It is a way to add value to the people and animals and things around. And that value, that connection, that meaning, is what my life’s sole existence relies upon.
Harish is obsessed with all small things that make people different.
“I write what I can’t say. And sometimes when I don’t write, I can’t tell anyone anything, whatsoever.”
