Tread Softly..

I was thinking about the nature of dreams. For me dreams sprout from nowhere, sometimes from an ideal or a desire, sometimes from a need, sometimes from an experience, sometimes as part of my evolution..

Part I

I let my garden grow wild with dreams. My garden does not have trimmed hedges, rows of pretty plants or a flower or two peeping up from neat flower beds. It has gnarly black trees that are entwined by exotic creepers, fronds of surreal purple leaves hanging overhead, foliage that reminds me of childhood needs, thickets overgrown with passion, untended wild vegetation, thorny flowers smelling sweeter than love, bizarre and myriad-hued poisonous berries, and roots that grip the very centre of my being like the clenched sinews of a corpse.

This untended garden suited my needs. I could hide myself in the overgrowth. I could meditate seated on wild reeds, while the creepers clambered slowly onto my limbs. I could let the smell of broken leaves and the sounds of twisted twigs fill my senses. I could watch mutilated trees fall over, tearing themselves off from their very roots, away from my being. I could hack some dreams, let others fall over me, walk in their midst all day, get lost in one part of them and be found in another.

So grew my dreams. They were and are a part of me.

A day arose when the shadow of a spirit in the woods fell on my garden. What began as a blessing turned into a curse. A bed of dream roses began blooming in a delusive frenzy. Day after day they grew to enormous sizes. “The multifoliate roses” I called them, after something else that had inspired me. The roses were the color of blood red beetroots. Their petals were thick as leathery lettuce leaves. Their epicentres had an abyss each that led into unexplored darkness. The dew drops that grew on the roses smelled and tasted like tears. The roses were fed on blood.

They overshadowed all the other dreamlets. The toadstool dreams got crushed underneath the gigantic and heaving heads of the multifoliate roses. The creeper dreams moved out of the way not wanting to die. The gnarly tree dreams sustained the roses by giving them shade and comfort. What did these roses want? They were meaningless, ruthless and cruelly beautiful. They began choking every other dream out of me. I was in a daze. The roses were like the zahir. I could not forget them day or night, knowing fully well that they were eating into me. I too was eating into them. I did not have the space or the capacity to let them grow riotously. They choked me. I choked them in turn. The battle between the roses and me grew to epic proportions within me.

I wanted to counter these roses. They were growing on love and eating into love and returned the favours by crushing out tiny harmless dreams. I did not like them any more. I wanted them to leave me be. Wild as it might be, my garden had no place for lies and hatred. That was when I sowed a tiny seed to counter their growth. A venomous seed of betrayal. The roses were betraying me all the time with their cruel meaningless beauty. Their uncertainty, enormity and spiteful manner of destroying me and all that was me. Yes I had let them grow believing they would turn out to be as harmless as the other little dreams that inhabited my garden. Yet they had grown into something grotesque, gargantuan and macabre. The seed of betrayal that I had planted with great reluctance and self-hatred undermined the roots of these roses and killed them in a day. The roses were only watered by lies and delusions. So they went flimflam and disappeared in a thousand fragments. Like every being that misses pain after it leaves, I too missed the roses and their cruelty. I tried sowing them over and over again. They refused to be reborn. My solitary masochism ended.

Part II

I woke up one morning to find my garden filled with the most predictable peace. Chaos had settled into a contented sleep because chaos was loved. The gnarled trees did not want to strangle me any more. They had reclined into a watery stillness like gnarly old men without their dentures. They grinned toothlessly and felt like home.

The toadstools had been occupied by elves and faeries overnight. Their laughter filled the chaos. This was most predictable as well.

Then it becomes a day at work, a giggle, an ordinary strand of hair in the eye, a vehicle horn, a cloud, a fleeting fear, an open window, a word, cashews, redness…………..

Now…
I cannot separate myself from what is happening in my garden and write about it as if it were happening over there beyond the hills where Jack and Jill went for a pail of water.

When dreams are unfulfilled you see them, you sigh, you realize emptiness, you distance yourself from what you do not possess and you write.

When your dreams come true, it becomes life. You live.

I am living.

Waiting :)

My metaphors are naked
Swimming like laughter on the sea shore
I try in futile minutes
To wrap drippy chocolate dreams
In a thin mist of shy smiles
Now I see myself slipping
Down into a void of beautiful fragrances
Now I rise and gaze
Into a haunting pair of fish
Back I go
Into a sleepless dream
And a dreamless sleep
If waking be dream
Sleep is not missed.
All my beautiful songs
Belong to you
I snatch them away
From butterfly wing snippers
Bequeathing them to you
Because a featherless bird
Is safer in a fluff-lined nest
Your timely reassurances
Are salve to the healing wounds
My dearest
Perhaps I have lived my entire life
In two days of being loved endlessly
Maybe I am better at deciphering you
Than many others I tried to
Because you place your petals
Carefully all the way
So I may not tread them
But pick them up
And place them in my wicker basket..
You are a rarity
I was watching if you would
Disappear in a puff of faerie dust
I was wondering if you’d
Walk up a silver ladder
Back to the place where you came from…
My words sound like cats on hot tin roofs
There are days of endless love awaiting
The aroma is in the air
Of warmer climes
I am waiting…

P.S: Of course you know I feel infinitely happier than the words here convey. Those feelings are not for anyone but me.

I am in Love…

Tonight the peace of many centuries has descended on me
Heaviness has lifted its burden from my brow
The dust of butterfly wings has settled on my hair
Stars that were used to my sighs are surprised by my smiles
The veil of uncertainty and insecurity has been torn
Darkness has been defeated by the shining moon
The shroud of fear has been shredded
In cloud nine I am embedded

I AM IN LOVE.

Let it Snow – Frank Sinatra

Oh the weather outside is frightful

But the fire is so delightful

And since we’ve no place to go

Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

It doesn’t show signs of stopping

And I’ve bought some corn for popping

The lights are turned way down low

Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

When we finally kiss goodnight

How I’ll hate going out in the storm!

But if you’ll really hold me tight

All the way home I’ll be warm

The fire is slowly dying

And, my dear, we’re still goodbyeing

But as long as you love me so

Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

On a pencil road that was your eyebrow
Tendrils sprouting up tenderly
I walked bare feet

Slipped on a certain slope
Falling into the dark endless abyss
That was your eye…

Moonstruck

Not what you expect!

To love someone
Is to slice a piece of memory
Offering it up at the altar
To stain parts of yourself
With permanent ink
Tattoo yourself on the forehead
“I was a prisoner of love”
To be obscenely happy
And to hide sadness
To love someone
Is a madness disapproved of
A private tingling
Smothered in giggles
And shy glances
Walking in tiptoe
To smuggle sugar lumps
To love someone
Is to sell your soul
To the devil
Be condemned to hell
Irrevocably
To love someone
Is injurious to mental health
An addiction
That ruins you
And sucks your blood
Even when you have
Nothing left to offer
To love someone
Is to hide love for others
To overlook parts of yourself
To stifle dreams and desires
To love someone is fear
Lies and more lies
Truth spoken in cryptic poems
Followed by ‘Why’s

Now don’t judge. Don’t ask me why. Don’t try to understand. Don’t try to live my emotions for me. Just leave me be!

A Prayer for Peace

I pray that some day
The suicide bomber forgets to die
And the soldier forgives his nation
The destroyer values the creator
And the terrorist remembers butterflies

I only wish mothers kissed
Their children more often
And told them tales
Of dreams that came to life
Of sculptors
Of statues chiselled from stone
Of builders
And bricks after bricks
Of farmers
And seedlings sun-kissed

I only hope children understand
The empty silences
And the shattered dreams.

I only hope they believe
In resurrection of the dead
More than in retaliation
In alleviation of hearts
More than in anger
In respect for lives
More than in revenge.

I was reading a poem by Maya Angelou. The poem spoke to me beyond its time and space. Nothing much has changed. I also read another poem by her called “A Brave and Startling Truth” which brought tears to my eyes. The world has remained just the same. Only the poets and idealists have not given up hope. Wonder if there is any change brought about by dreaming alone!

The poem I was initially reading was this one here:

These Yet To Be United States
by Maya Angelou

Tremors of your network
cause kings to disappear.
Your open mouth in anger
makes nations bow in fear.

Your bombs can change the seasons,
obliterate the spring.
What more do you long for ?
Why are you suffering ?

You control the human lives
in Rome and Timbuktu.
Lonely nomads wandering
owe Telstar to you.

Seas shift at your bidding,
your mushrooms fill the sky.
Why are you unhappy ?
Why do your children cry ?

They kneel alone in terror
with dread in every glance.
Their nights ["rights" ? - Schrift nicht lesbar] are threatened daily
by a grim inheritance.

You dwell in whitened castles
with deep and poisoned moats
and cannot hear the curses
which fill your children’s throats.

…And ironically I remembered love, compassion, forgiveness and mercy. And I pray for peace not to invisible gods but to living humans.

This is not one of those hundred and one posts on the importance peace. I sincerely hope it will make us think about the way we live our everyday lives and that we would become aware of the violence that is part of our own psyche.

I also found an animation which seemed to portray what I mean.
http://www.bozzetto.com/neuro.htm

Ten Thousand Saw I!

Did anybody notice I have had 10000+ visitors on my blog? Yay! (Of which at least 600 are spammers..hee hee)