From Me to You

Some people, it’s impossible to write for. After you spend all afternoon in a cloud of your thoughts, memories and pretty phrases clinging to your eyelashes, making them droop, the blank page still stares at you in accusation. And then you let yourself drift away on a wave of happiness, and soon it is a little too hard to trap all those little waves of feeling in metaphors and stilted images stolen from your favourite pages; it’s like trying to catch sunlight on a wave, and then store its glint in a jar to shine forever. When this doesn’t work, you wonder what would. Elbows on your hard, unyielding, stolidly factual desk, your eyes reach inward, wandering airy, lit-up corridors, tinted red in the light of the setting sun, and laughter echoes in your ears. it doesn’t help. How do you capture neon, buzzing around you and in you effortlessly, brightening every day with references and anecdotes and so many things? You know then that you are not the writer you thought you were, and twiddling your pen self-importantly will not be of any use whatsoever. There is magic in the world; there is magic, and it cannot be tied down to the page with its wings struggling to escape. The blank page is not so cruel, you think. it’s not accusatory as much as friendly and understanding, and it is so full of your unfulfilled dreams that for today, you let it rest. Some people, you know, they are like neon, but you also know that they will not burn out.

Newspaper Taxis

I have always imagined time machines to be a little like newsaper taxis: incredibly fascinating, and so complex that they are almost depressing. The possibilities of a time machine are, of course, endless, with all the wizardry and the magic it implies. The problems too, are endless, and round in upon themselves. So of course, the questions posed are as answerable as they are not: why wouldn’t one go back to save the dead (read: Sirius Black, Fred Weasley, pretty much everyone, of course), how one would go about changing the course of events and so on. And what of the misuse of a Time Turner or of, say, a Newspaper Taxi? How would you determine what was right and wrong in a world where the concepts of time do not hold true anymore? What concerns me even more, though, is how one would go back. In my life, there have been so many days when I have re-thought and re-re thought things, over and over again, wondering where exactly I went wrong, and what I could have done differently.

When things begin to splinter and tear off, I am always the escapist. I want to leave, to run away from what I feel I cannot solve. And so I have always inevitably found myself considering the myriad possibilities a newspaper taxi would present to me. The problem with this is that after years of wanting to go back in time with a passion that is almost frightening in its intensity, I have come to understand one thing, and that is that I would  never know when to go back to. And that itself is very intimidating. I know I am no Dumbledore, with three turns to set things right immediately, but I also know with an assured certainty that there is, in fact, no certainty to this. Events start, as one of my favourite Christie books says (Towards Zero, in case you were wondering), long before we believe they do. In the case of a murder, like in the book, things start hurtling towards the actual outcome of the murder long before the crime actually takes place. Now this is an immensely interesting concept when put together with my ephemeral taxis. My concerns are not of murder, of course, but other, rather mundane things. How would I set about putting right the consequences of a decade-long crush? Would I go back to where I fell “in crush”, or would I go back to where things went wrong, and solve those tangled issues I had left there? Would I need to go back to what defined me and my preferences and change that at the root? Because I am not sure anymore if I want that particular happy ending at all. With something as integral to my being as an important friendship, it is the same. If things go awry, where would I even start to change? Would my taxi stop at the point where I think I pushed things off kilter, or would it stop long, long ago, and again, change the person I am today?

Or would it do none of those things? Much like one of my favourite movies tells me (again, Midnight in Paris), the past is rarely as we view it from the present, For someone as Miniver Cheevy-esque as me, the idea of a nostalgia shop is attractive, precisely because the past for me is always painted with the gloss that nostalgia brings with itself, and the past is always perfect. This is where I have always wished the newspaper taxis would take me, back to a place where everything was perfect. But things were not perfect in the moment that I lived them; my childhood was a conflicted one (wasn’t everyone’s?), when I was spending my “perfect” time with that one ‘crush’, I was ignoring my friend who perhaps needed my company, and when I thought I was growing closer to one friend, I was losing out on chances to know others, leaving me in the present with no options and nowhere to turn to. And why indeed would I want to change the past or exist in it? This might be growing up, but I know that all I experience goes into that huge witches’ cauldron that produces the apparitions which define my future. Worrying about either will only take away from my present, and I will end up not knowing where my time went, and having, yet again, to take recourse to the dream of those taxis. I might not particularly like who I am today, or know who I am (I did just turn 20), but I do know that I would not want to give up on the past. Or even my present. It makes me me, and it lets me understand the world around me, no matter how skewed things seem to be. To recapture what I don’t have anymore will of course, always be something I want to do, but I have understood that it is not a desire that can rule my life. This need might not go away, but I know that I do not want the tragedy encapsulated so well in the last few lines of Gatsby; I do not want to be “borne ceaselessly back into the past”, as beautiful and heartbreaking as that sounds (and I do have a penchant for the heartbreaking). Life might not always be particularly easy, or even preferable to certain other options, but I know what I must do id to go on. And that will be my new life goal and my 20th year resolution: I will go on (much in the manner of vastly popular song, ‘I Will Survive).

Recognition

“Do I know you?” you ask, your face twisted, puzzled.

I look up at you as my world tilts on its axis, and a wave of memories hits me;

I know you. I know you intimately. I know you well, your dreams,

your hopes, your fears, and the little things you dislike. The furrow in your brow when

something was out of place; the pen you left just there, or the package on

your table that wasn’t yours. I know well enough that feeling like a black hole,

it used to pull me in too, until I too was drowning, clutching here and there at things that

never meant anything to me. I remember that, but I remember the

sunlight too. When we looked at each other and knew what the other was thinking, or we laughed

at something only we understood, or when you stood next to me and I

thought I could conquer the world, that day when you gave me so much affection that I did not know

what to do with it, and so I put it away in a pretty magic box, not knowing that it

would die there, languishing in the darkness, the same darkness that brought us together. It died,

all that fondness, that special bond, and I could not rescue it or nurse it

back to health. I remember, even though I have tried very hard not to, everything we shared, little moments

in the dark, when we knew the others’ soul, and we laughed in our innocence,

Arrogant as only twenty year olds can be. I know why we went wrong; I have dissected all those days for years now,

sitting at a lonely desk with only memories where I had thought I would have

something, maybe letters from you? Perhaps even a card for Christmas, or my birthday, scribbled in haste and posted,

but still a mark of remembrance, no matter how faint. But there is nothing,

and I knew there would be nothing, or you would not be you. I loved you for you, with all your moods and frowns

and loud laughter and odd preferences that happened to match in their

enthusiasm some part of me that I had thought long lost, submerged in the disappointments I had always had

to live with. But with you there was always a many-coloured, shifting

light to our days, and though the blues took over at times, I did not mind them, and the brighter colours slowly

filled everything, and soon I was sure, too sure of happiness again. And then

it happened, like it always does. The uncomfortable silences took over again, blotting out all thought of chatter,

bringing the sour taste of something gone bad, something left out too long

by someone in a careless moment. It was all gone in a day, or two; my new friends were silences and the top of

the stairs where I would now sit alone. Conversations were over now, no more

talk of books, or movies, or dreams we had hidden from everyone else and thought of only in the half-light

that colours the sky before dawn. And so it went, with the spaces ever increasing,

One day we did not have anything to say at all, and there was nothing we could do. Now there is today, when

we bump into each other on a busy street, two faces only in a maze of countless

others, and you look at me so puzzled, Ten years, or twenty, perhaps, I do not know, since I have seen

your face. i work to hold all the pieces of me together as I look away and I reply. “No”.

Hold- Part II

Parachutes

(Ok,so I decided to continue this, because I liked how the first one turned out. Hope everyone enjoys it. And a big thank you to everyone following me, I never expected such a wonderful response.)

Now, you’re used to the warmth. But it still catches you off guard. You look at each other’s face, you notice tiny details you did not see before; you realise with a jolt how much you want to reach out and touch. Now that the first touch is in the past, it seems easy, but it is infinitely hard, infinitely and excruciatingly slow. How do you move on? Your heart tells you to give in to the temptation of reaching across that infinitesimal and yet infinite space, touch each other’s faces. So difficult to do, and so very tempting. You both almost reach, and then you retreat, afraid of how the other will react. Apprehension fills both your eyes, and you both are enamoured of each other, so much in love, burning to come closer, burning, burning till you think you’ll explode with the heat of it all. And the longing you feel somewhere deep inside happens at the most unexpected moments, jolting you out of whatever you were doing. Then you sit there wondering whether your face betrayed you, or maybe your eyes, in one raw flash of love and desire. Deep breath, and things seem to be normal again. How to stop the whirling, the beauty, how to stop, and how not to stop? Things are not the same anymore, black and white have exploded into myriad, brilliant colours. You’re scared, terrified of leaping off the cliff and into the precipice, into the unknown darkness that seems so very promising. You tell yourself that none of it makes any sense, that it is not the wise thing to do, that you are not meant for this, that you do not even deserve this, and all the while you know you will jump anyway. You cannot hold on to sense anymore, sense has lost its symmetry, everything is skewed, and imperfect, and the beauty round you makes you ache, ache deep inside. You cannot wait, cannot reason anymore. You hold hands, not sure of anything, not even of life, and you jump.

Hold.

You know how it feels when you meet someone for the first time? You barely look at each other because you’re so scared to initiate that first bit of contact. And then it begins slowly. One word spoken by either, you don’t even remember why or who it was, just that it was. A spark of interest, perhaps, when you realize how similar you are. And you start thinking about it. Thinking about it a little, at first, and then looking for excuses to talk. What could be more innocent?

And then you move on to the first real conversation. The first time you dare to raise your eyes to each other when you’re talking, and this time, your eyes don’t slide off into the distance, taking the easy way out. You choose to look at each other, you choose to hold each other’s gaze. It starts, then, warm somewhere inside you, all yellow and orange in its warmth, filling you, lifting you up; you begin to know each other now, and it feels wonderful. But you’re still a little antsy, a little fidgety. You avoid more personal contact now, and talking is all you do. That, and looking. Looking so deep, being looked at so deep that it feels like you’re exposed, laid out in full view.

Pivotal moment as you’re thrown together once again. No choice now, nowhere to run. You do it, now. Almost simultaneously. Reach for each other in the crowd because you’re so afraid of being lost. And it happens. You clutch at each other, and you’re holding hands. A thrill, a spark, of electricity runs through you, you look at each other, and you know now that even in finding each other, you’re lost forever. Things bloom and whirl around the two of you, and you begin to live in a kaleidoscope of infinite beauty and charm.

(https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=474509945971266&set=a.389107594511502.97735.169003533188577&type=1&theater : the other piece of inspiration for this post. Do go check this page out,it’s amazing.)

(This is a bit of a departure from my usual style, I hope you all like it! )