The alarm made a mad sound as it announced the arrival of the destined hour. He groped around in his semi-awake state and put it to rest. Morning. Yes, like many others that have come and gone, another morning. He put on his glasses, his most reliable and consistant companion for the past 17 years. He moved with a surety in his room like that of an exhibit familiar with its surroundings in its glass enclosure, and switched on the lights. He came across to the window in his room and slowly parted the curtains - another morning; nothing poetic about it; the sun still rose in the east, the colors of the sky did not make him think of 'hope', 'despair' and the associated emotions that one might associate with them. A perfectly ordinary and normal morning.
'Poetry is not words and rhyme', he thought. 'It's a state of mind that requires a certain reconciliation with the self...'
As was his natural wont, he wandered meaninglessly to the kitchen and took out the pan from the utensils rack. He wasn't fully conscious of the sights and sounds around him, and it was his habit alone that made him get to the refrigerator and pull out the milk packet and move with practiced dexterity back into the kitchen without running into any of the doors and walls. He pulled out his favorite tea cup from the many drawers that were installed on one of the kitchen walls- plain, simple, mauve in color; nothing spectacular about the cup. A friend made him buy it; one for herself as well, as a symbol of their kinship and association. Like all other such relics acquired over time, he gave it its due respect and made sure he involved it in his day.
'It's easier to deal with the inanimate than with the living. They at least have a certain consistency in their form and function...' With that in his mind he filled the cup to two-thirds with water, and poured it in the pan and lit the gas. Fron the neatly arranged rows of steel and plastic containers lining the wall in front of him, he pulled out two- one green and one yellow- and proceded to add tea leaves and sugar; two and a half tea-spoons and three tea-spoons respectively. Precise, constant and just the way he knew it. He lowered the flame and let the mixture simmer in the pan. As his hands moved around, his mind was slowly awakening to realizations; and hopes; and dreams. Dreams, yes, like the one that he had had last night...
It made him think of these few lines in a poem he had come across recently
'Last night I dreamed of X again.
She’s like a stain on my subconscious sheets.
Years ago she penetrated me
but though I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed,
I never got her out,
but now I’m glad...' *
He was bad at recollecting dreams... as well as understanding poetry. But when brought in conjugation the two fulfilled a symbiotic purpose and made sense to him. A marriage that had his approval; and to his restless self held a promise of answering a few pertinent questions... years ago he had thought of maintaining a 'dream diary', inspired by the many around him in order to understand the supposed subliminal messages from the sub-conscious that dreams carried. But every time he was in a stationery store, he'd get put off by the supposed stereo-typical, psychedelic drawings on the cover page of those 'dream diaries... Poetry was different; and slightly more tangible to understand than dreams. These days, he agreed more with the modern style of poetry that at times abandoned rhyme and even metaphor and allegory. Metaphors and allegories can be tedious; they leave a lot to the reader's imagination and leave too much doubt around who or what is being spoken about. Ambiguity wasn't his best forte and he never thrived on it... unlike a few he had come to know; specially in the circles that he frequented. They used it as their shield in order to avoid letting the world know they were vulnerable. Still they talked of love and its ilk in a manner most befitting. It surprised him at first; this apparent, visible contradiction. But then acceptance would sneak in and he wouldn't bother himself much. 'To each, his own', he would tell himself.
Like this fellow intellectual who, once, while sitting passenger on the front seat had, asked him.
'So...how do you want your life to be like; let's say when you are fifty?'
'Not a good question to ask especially when you have a novice at the wheels', he had said
'Still...'
He mumbled something to the effect that the question was slightly exasperating. She still persisted.
'Oh! I'd like to have the Nobel Prize for Literature by the time I turn 50', he finally declared.
No, he wasn't being dishonest to her; it was as honest as he could be. But then he had answered the question in a modicum of honesty she expected of him. And it was then he had realized how easy it had become for him to be honest to others on their scales. Honesty to oneself was an entirely different thing- he had posed the same question to himself several times that night. He was afraid of the answer he would find and like so many dreams and plans he abandoned the quest. He found his sanatarium in hopes and not in plans or dreams. 'Plans are rigid; they allow little flexibility. Hopes on the other hand are sublime; and they allow an element of comfort even if they don't come through. Their intangibility is assuring; for you can never lose what you practically never had.', he mused, as he added milk to the boiling liquid in the pan.
It was amusing at times to think how people were busy planning their lives; it made him think of this conversation he had had; long time ago it was...
'Have you ever wondered what kind of death you'd like to have?', she asked .
'Death? No, not really. Except maybe it shouldn't be a nameless, faceless death like that in a bomb explosion or a random car accident . Not much dignity in that... not like some poor animal who got run over by a car. Yes, just that.', he spoke with conviction.
'I'd like to be assassinated', she declared with a spark in her eye.
It didn't make sense then; but now it did. Death gives you a purpose with the certainty it brings with itself. You can't really plan a life, can you? But you can plan your life around your proposed death. Yes, now it made sense. Life has a purpose only because of the concreteness of death...He smiled at his own thought process. And all the curious memories that were flooding his conscious this morning. 'Nearly there', he said to himself as he brought the aromatic mixture in the pan to another boil.
All these words; people who claimed were his well-wishers have told him to forget; what they don't realize is that the act of forgetting in itself encompasses the act of reminiscence - to forget means to remember what you want to forget and the fallacy of this vicious loop is perhaps the realization of an oblivion that each one of has at our disposal. Perhaps, to live, means to remember...
'But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep
for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:
I am living. I remember you. ' **
He poured the tea through the strainer in his cup and put out the pan in the wash basin. As he sipped on his tea, he soothed himself in the comfort that he most certainly will forget everything he had thought about...
____________________________________xxxx___________________________________________
* A Color Of the Sky by Tony Hoagland
** What The Living Do by Marie Howe
