Dissection of a Timeless Psychotic

The sun is down. Winter gloom has brought the fog factory alive and the night sky has covered up the horizon. I am slowly dissolving into the darkness. I need to be somewhere.

One footstep after another…

I walk indecisively on a long, tired road waiting for me to walk by. I am exhausted. I need to stop.

I stand still and look into the murk. There is no point in keeping my eyes open, but I want to draw her image in the fog.

“I’d like to spend my evenings listening to you. Your theories of life and death; of soul and flesh; of love and illusion.”, she had said once not realizing how much these words meant to me.

“What after that? When I am empty. When my theories run dry.”, I asked her.

I bet she does not have an answer to that.

“I’d become a soul after dying and roam around everywhere where no one can see me, but I can see everybody. Isn’t that cool?” She told me with excitement one day when I asked her what she was thinking.

“Would you not haunt me?”

The sun is down. Reddish rays of the evening sun are still lingering around the hills with the moon on top. A lonely star sits by its side. Maybe the others have decided to hide behind the shade today.

Vehicles zoom past me one after another, and I am walking on the footpath. City-lights scare me. Human obsessions drive me. I am going insane.

Everything is blurry. I stand still in the middle of the rushing people, closing my eyes.

I breathe in deeply and breathe out. In and out. In and out. In and out… I can feel every bit of air gathering inside my lungs.

The vehicles pass by, and blind me with their headlights. I see my mother in the daze. My mind is chaotic. I want to ask her questions.

“What dreams would you have if there were no one around? Would you still hope for something then?”

With every breath, I let my questions out.

She chooses to smile serenely as her reply. I stretch my arm to touch her cheeks. But I can only grasp colorless void within my fingers.

The sun is getting low. Machhapuchhre stands mesmerizing as ever, shifting her aura to the mountains nearby. The northward sky is exquisite with the crown of seraphic mountains and moist hills; it gives the feeling that there is a religious gathering of mountains, with everyone singing to Machhapuchhre, wearing white caps. The invited birds are flying towards them with excitement making enticing shapes.

I decide to stand on the ground and look around. I am surrounded by mountains.

In my Terai days where I spent most of my childhood, mountains symbolized a certain romance. We’d wait for days to look at the blurry blue hills on a clear morning and be charmed. Every picture I drew had mountains in the background otherwise they consider it lousy.

Now the mountains feel like walls erected to hide hopes and dreams, like I’m trapped with no revelation. I try to see beyond, but all I get is a sight of rusty memories and mutilated happiness. It’s quite mysterious how times and feelings change.

It’s getting dark, and the stars are already out. I don’t want to go anywhere.

“If we ever get a chance, some starry night we could lay on the ground under a thousand stars attempting to create patterns, wondering about their existence and about what’s beyond that perpetual darkness.” Her words still circle in my mind, like vultures around carcass until there is nothing left to hunt. Her hopes were real. Those words feel more real than my everyday lies.

I want to get buried under the thousand stars she talked about.

The sun is up, ascending with delight to peer into my life. The rays are calm, striking me with such tenderness that I want to capture them into my skin. The wind is strong, and clouds are drifting elsewhere, perhaps into the somber land where they can hide from the earthly happiness. Looking at the sun, the clouds, and the soft sun-rays, you get combined feelings of forlornness and felicity as if they have always lived together in peace.

I smile involuntarily, while I head towards a local coffee house, reminiscing about my childhood days. As I wait for my coffee, I take out a book from my bag and start pondering about the fig tree Sylvia Plath has brilliantly put in the book “The Bell Jar.”

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

I thought about the figs I could grow and my possibilities of becoming something. Somehow in the fig tree of my imagination, the figs didn’t plop to the ground. The tree was standing still, and I was gazing at the figs, picking which one to eat first. I never felt so hopeful.

The waiter comes with my coffee and puts it on the table greeting me with a ravishing smile. While I sip my coffee, Nat Cole’s version of ‘Autumn Leaves’ in the background makes me nostalgic of my times in the hostel, the times of alcohol, marijuana and jazz. I look out of the glass door, and I can see a short-haired girl with familiar face entering the cafe. As she enters I immediately recognize her. We have had several awkward eye-contacts before, but no one was courageous enough to start a conversation. Perhaps not this time. She gives me a unique smile and waves. I wave back. She pulls a chair and sits opposite to me.

“Hey.”

I can already see the regret in her eyes, as if she knew that nothing will be exciting from now.

“Hi”, I greet back putting my coffee on the table. I don’t have the courage to look at her face.

“So, what are you reading?” she asks me to start a normal conversation.

We talk about books, movies, music, and usual thoughts.

The light goes out. I am in the nowhere-land again.

“What after that? When I am empty. When my theories run dry.” I questioned curiously if she has any answers to that.

“I’d drown in your silence then, in your emptiness and we’d be wordless together, tired internally, tired minds, tired souls, tired of everything,”

The sun is rising but hasn’t already positioned itself wholly into the sky. It’s early at 6. I decide to sit and wait for him to grow. I let the chair out, sit there listening to classical music, and stare into the vacant darkness, as though there is nothing special for me to do. Tartini perfectly fits the situation. The crescendos and diminuendos of the violin touch me right in the heart as if the waves reach into my soul but never escape.

I think about how times and feelings change. I write something for her.

Buried are the times when thy dreams nudged you
As the moments come and go, it takes you and makes new
Beyond time and light, there lies an eternal tenebrous hamlet of hope and love
I will meet you there.

Her memories meander around me. I don’t want to wait for another day to engulf me again, in a loop, a perfectly constructed loop. I lean towards her image.

“I am in that forbidden land, counting stars beside you, thinking what pattern would you resemble. An unceasing contemplation.” I tell her, “I’d like to listen to Dylan Thomas poems recited by you again.”

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
…

I can hear her voice.

She can’t hear mine.