Part Faif - Love at First Sight

Love at First Sight

They’re both convinced
that a sudden passion joined them.
Such certainty is beautiful,
but uncertainty is more beautiful still.

Since they’d never met before, they’re sure
that there’d been nothing between them.
But what’s the word from the streets, staircases, hallways -
perhaps they’ve passed by each other a million times?

I want to ask them
if they don’t remember -
a moment face to face
in some revolving door?
perhaps a “sorry” muttered in a crowd?
a curt “wrong number” caught in the receiver?
but I know the answer.
No, they don’t remember.

They’d be amazed to hear
that Chance has been toying with them
now for years.

Not quite ready yet
to become their Destiny,
it pushed them close, drove them apart,
it barred their path,
stifling a laugh,
and then leaped aside.

There were signs and signals,
even if they couldn’t read them yet.
Perhaps three years ago
or just last Tuesday

a certain leaf fluttered
from one shoulder to another?
Something was dropped and then picked up.
Who knows, maybe the ball that vanished
into childhood’s thicket?

There were doorknobs and doorbells
where one touch had covered another
beforehand.

Suitcases checked and standing side by side.
One night, perhaps, the same dream
grown hazy by morning.

Every beginning
is only a sequel, after all,
and the book of events
is always open halfway through.

- Wislawa Szymborska

Part Fore - The Meaning Of

Life is to strongly desire to swing from the pole on the rear footplate of a bus.
Life is the ancient art of being able to balance the hot and cold shower taps.
Life is that kind of facial expression which is impossible to achieve except when having a passport photograph taken.
Life is a fitted elasticated bottom sheet which turns your mattress banana shaped.
Life is the sudden access to panic experienced by one who realises that he is being drawn inexorably into a conversation from which one has no hope of enjoying, benefiting from or understanding.
Life is the moment of realization that the train you have just patiently watched pulling out of the station was the one you were meant to be on.
Life is the entry in a diary (such as a date or a set of initials) or a name and address in your address book, which you haven't the faintest idea what it's doing there.
Life is the topmost tread of a staircase which disappears when you climb the stairs in the darkness.
Life is the tapping of an index finger on glass made by a person futilely attempting to communicate with either a tropical fish or a post office clerk.
Life is the look directed at you in a theatre bar in the interval by people who've already got their drinks.

Life is funny.

(based on 'The Meaning of Liff' by Douglas Adams)

Part Tree -stirred something, somewhere.-

After years of deafening silence and an almost unbearable waiting, I woke up one morning with a small but undeniable feeling of pressure on my left shoulder. I dismissed it as some sort of ache at first, but during the day I occasionally felt a short squeeze in my shoulder and by nightfall I knew he had returned. The Phantom Ape had come back to me. That night, when I was alone in my room, after making sure there were no cats around and I couldn’t hear dogs barking in the distance, I looked in the mirror. In the dark I could just see the outline of my reflection and to my delight, the clear glowing transparent form of the tarsier I held so dear.

I saw something in your eyes, I’m sure.
What was it, my friend?
You were lost. You hung up your coat in the closet and stopped thinking about it. You were in the fields all the time, always trying to get to the end of the field where he would be waiting by the road.
But there was no end, I couldn’t find the road.
You kept going in circles.
Where were you? Why didn’t you stop me?
You destroyed the house, I had to rebuild it.
A pioneering few concentrated their awareness on the still, sweet sound that lay across the chasm of sensory awareness, stirred something, somewhere, within the recesses of the glandular system and, in a transcendent moment, opened their third eye.
That’s right, go on.
The old Persian of the Achaemenian empire was an Indo-European tongue with close affinities with Sanskrit and Avestan, the language of the Zoroastrian sacred texts.
Don’t stop, please don’t stop.
Recidite plebes, the king’s men are on a mission! Search the farthest corners of the land with the prince with the golden eyes!
Yes, you remember now. Do you remember the valediction, the forbidden mourning?
If they be two, they are two so as stiff twin compasses are two. Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show to move, but doth if the other do.
You haven’t forgotten. You are ready now. Take your coat, we’re going out.

I look out the window and see it’s raining. Just like it was before, so many years ago. I walk over to my closet and all the way hiding in the back I find my old coat. It looks worn and battered but I smile when I put it on. I search its pockets and slowly I put everything I left there before me on the kitchen table. An empty wallet, a bottle of rum, a get-out-of-jail-free card, a folded picture of Madame Blavatsky, a pack of disposable razors, a Raageshwari album and finally one set of keys. The keys to the house I once saw in my dreams, then visited and ultimately destroyed.

When we visit, I hope you like the changes I made. They’re all there, they’re all there waiting for you. Yes, they’re all waiting.
I take a sip of rum and start putting everything back in my coat pockets.
Leave out the Raageswhari and put some money in your wallet. You might want to buy him a present.
Buy a present for whom?
You’ll see.

I do as he says, like I always do. I step out my front door and through the distorted street in front of me I can already make out the house he made for me. It’s only a short walk away. It used to be so hard to find, I walked the streets for hours and hours until I would finally fall on my knees, soaking wet and exhausted. And now, I can already see the lights burning on the first floor from my own front door.

Remember, you walk alone. The midnight street will spin itself from under your feet. When your eyes shut, my dreaming houses will all snuff out. You make houses shrink and trees diminish. Your look’s leash will dangle the puppet-people. If you choose to blink, they die. In good humour, you give grass its green, blazon the sky blue and you endow the sun with gold. In your wintriest mood, you hold absolute power to boycott any colour and forbid any flower to be.

Slowly, trying not to blink, I make my way towards the house.