Songs of Thunder - II

Clap! Clap! Clap! Went the hooves. He was not a knight in shining armour. He was rusted. His was not a stallion with shining skin and a flowing mane. His was an old warhorse... decorated with scars. She was not a princess locked away in a tower. Just a girl with her fears and demons. There was no fire breathing dragon. Just the world and its people. The moon was waning...much like him. There were no clouds... no lashing rain... no lightening. In the moist damp room, he sat with a girl he came to free, but she was not ready. She felt home in the tower...where she knew each brick and each moss. So she asked him to wait.

And so he did. The rusted knight waited in the dampness that slowly ate away his armour... but he waited. Outside, there was thunder. No lightening... just thunder. Hollow... Weak... Confused... Thunder. Like a child lost in the dark woods... not knowing whether to cry or sing. The rust on his armour resonated...as to greet an old friend. This old friend... with his songs...these songs of thunder.

I do not know
What to make of your songs of thunder,
But when you sing,
I hum along.

We are what we choose to be.

Before we came into existence,

And long after we were gone,

The moonbeams kissed our graves,

For we lived with hope.

In everything that was in between,

We flowed like the river,

Separating two shores,

Never standing still.

In the eyes of the eternal soul,

We were but dust floating in the sunbeams,

Yet we searched for the universe,

In everything that was stardust.

For there lay the truth,

In all its beauty and brutality.

We were what we chose to be,

My dearest friend.

Heavy is the heart, that is filled with regret... but heavier is the mind that is filled with the idea of a failed future. When the darkness sets in, I sit beneath the dim lit spring moon and look back at the things we did together... and fear comes and sits beside me... puts his hand on my shoulder... and tells me that everything will not be all right.

It is like being a child again... a child of innocence and love.... and watching your best friend walk away forever. The Robin to your Batman. The Hobbes to your Calvin. So many adventures slowly wither and die without ever coming into being. It is not a fear of loneliness, but one of loss of the dearest thing that you hold close to your heart... within the little refuge of your mind. It is a debilitating sadness that originates from where adrenaline would...and it spreads...and spreads... until it you cannot sleep at night.

And you don't know whether to leave... or sit and wait for your friend to come back.

Travelling Friends

It is good to be back. I have wandered and seen so much since the moon was last full. Birds, fish, turtles, alligators, cats, dogs, deer, loins, porcupines and snails. Made friends with them... had a talk... shared an afternoon sun and the midnight tides. Sort of kinship to ones own... rarely ever felt in the walls of the city. They weren't sad like you were when I left... they just turned around and went back into the jungle... into the leaves... into the sea. I stood there and wondered how it must be to have a friend go and not come back again. I don't think I will ever see the same friends again. I don't even know if that's how it's supposed to be or not. I do not know if the butterfly remembers the caterpillar. I don't know if the star dust is falling the way it should be or not. All I know is... I'm back home. Safe. Secure. Comfortable.

Yet... restless as the day I left.

Firefly.

We came upon it suddenly... like travelers discovering a cave... and has it given us shelter ever since.

Three years... the prelude to the symphony of the dancing fireflies.

Metamorphosis

One night, the starry eyed boy went to sleep and never woke up. In his place, woke a man. The was no lightening. No firecrackers. No elephants. No trumpets. No cartwheeling clowns or beautiful women with roses. It was like any other day. It was not sudden like the caterpillar turning into a butterfly. No... it was slow and almost unnoticeable. Like the tree that slowly grows taller. Like the gradual accumulation of dust. Like the slow weathering of rock into life bearing soil. Apparent, undeniable and eventual... yet invisible to the naked eye.

He wore his man shirt, his man pants, his man shoes... and walked out into the world of men and women.  

Her eyes followed me all night... and I did not wonder what she saw. He told me about his mother, but I cannot remember her name. His dog died when he was four... everything dies eventually. Her sex life is of least concern to me. His dilemma about which shirt to wear does not excite me. Will it rain tonight... I do not know. Will the wind blow like this all through the day... I doesn't make a difference.

Like the sight of a colorblind man... in time, the frivolous and the pointless will slowly blend into the background and only the purposeful shall glow. When the metamorphosis is complete, I shall sit with her next to the fireplace and live on the warmth of the sacrificed embers as the years slowly burn away... and life will be complete... hopefully.

To willingly seek bliss in the wonderful institution of love by abandoning the concept of absolute freedom for they cannot coexist within the same mind... that is the fate of the entangled two.

The Elusive Fulfillment

Don't be mistaken my friend, do not worry.
I have not strayed,
I have not become lost.
I just haven't reached my destination.
Forgive me for the delay,
I left the paved road some time ago,
And chose to take the path through the forest,
I could not resist.
The journey could not have been more meaningful.
For I now believe that in the woods lies The Elusive Fulfillment.

Aaj suraj dhala nahi
Aaj woh doob gaya.
Lehron ke aaghosh mein
Aaj woh simatt gaya.
Kal subah hum milen ya na milen
Itna toh yakeen hai
Suraj nahi toh kyun hon khafa
Saath mere mera chaand hai.

Kabhi toh socho ke dil mein aisa kya raaz tha.
ki kal ka mu'min,
kyun aaj kaafir bana.

Bridge

Between what you were born as and what you will go forth to become, lies the longest bridge you will ever cross. One that you must cross for your existence is not of longing, but of learning. What you have become when the sun sets and the darkness begins will carry you through because you are marvelous, in every aspect of your being the miracle of every day life. Remember, you are the reason the bridge exists for it becomes a part of you with every step that you take.

In between what you are and what you will become, you are never lost. You just haven't reached the other side yet.

I search, though in vain for the place where I will surrender. Where the existence of my self shall be visible to me through the colored glass of life. Such a place of hope and freedom, is not of pieces of string strung in enchanting hymns, of blinding lights or of waves that wash away the fears. It is of a moment which transcends love, joy, pain and life itself. It is in between the darkness and the light which I only feel like the blind man feels the sunlight. Moments of surrender born out of freedom and into life as I have come to see. I search for them till the endless chime of the clock, for I have tried in my ways to be free.

The greatest tragedy of man is that the darkest memory of War and Death is unfortunately also the greatest memory of Victory and Conquest. In this paradox of Life and Death, we have never sensed true freedom, for it can never exist among the bullets, within the concrete walls and burdened under the gold coins.

If only I had enough money to buy the whole world.... I would set it free of it's own captivity.

Somewhere, I have no faith left in the principles of conquest. The concept of victory I believe defies everything I have come to see as logical and true. True to the laws of existence. We have come a long way from the fields of the Motherland. When we stepped off the road of biological evolution and stepped into the tarmac of social evolution, we became remnants of everything that we were.

They say one realizes life in its aspects over the journey that one makes; from childhood to adolescence, through youth and the prime, to finally come to old age and death. All through this journey, we have come to think of life as a competition of survival, at the end of which the victorious shall stand at the highest podium. The more i learn of our history, the more i feel it is foolish.

Each of us are a solution to the complex equation of 'Life', captive to our own desires to be victorious... to be remembered through the pages of time as "The most successful species".

Peace

Peace is difficult.

Difficult to find, difficult to maintain, difficult to understand... and even more difficult to comprehend. In the course of one life you will stumble upon many moments that will make you question the very concept of peace.

In the morning dew, I found God.
In the searing sun, I found Truth.
In the darkness of the night, I found Hope.
In sorrow, I found Man.
In between all this, I stumbled across Peace.

Crossroads

Like travelers we have traveled. Who didn't know where they began, why did they pack their bags in the first place and to where they were headed. The thing about traveling is that once you have gone around the world, you always reach the start. The foolish ones say they never went anywhere. But you never come back same. Nor the place, nor the person. Never the same.

And so here we are again... the people who began the journey... the place where it all began... at crossroads.

Arrival

Once a boy asked the sun "Did you know, from the time you were born, that you would burn? That you would burn out and die?"

The sun replied "In our essence, we are what we are. We will be what we will be. One day I will burn out and die, but I cannot blame the fire for that. It burns in me... into me... through me... And it has brought me where I am. What would i be without my flame?"

The roads that I have passed through.
The moments that have passed through me.
The rivers that have flown through
and the wind that has blown.
Have all brought me to this.

The trees and the birds never really die. The howling wolves come back to the hunter moon. The wind doesn't die. Nor does the sunlight or the waves. We never die. Nor do our emotions.

Everything is either trapped in a cycle to come into the light again or buried till its time. The eventuality of every moment that is yet to come defines death and rebirth. In the time that we spend awake, we form a being that collects the sleeping moments of our inner self. Over the course of time, these moments arise and fall like the waves.

Relentless and infinite.

The time has come to die.
To die and be reborn,
To wither and be sown.
In this endless cycle of loss and gain,
It is time to flow again.
The days were alive,
and we lived because we were alive.
We ebbed and flowed,
Were swept out to sea,
Only to come back again.
Crash on the shore.

But let us now cover the sun.
Let us pretend.
Let us say it is night.
Let us imagine the moon and the stars.
Now that the darkness is here,
Let us slip quietly into the streets
and disappear.
The time has come to die.
For that is what we believe.