4.48 Psychosis

I saw the reflection of her face in the mirror  in a dim light at exactly  4.48, when she stood with her wrists slit and the redness of her being dripping down on her white trousers. Love me, she said... Love me...
That's how I first met Sarah, and I've kept meeting her for so many years of my life... Night after night and day after day... Love me...
She kept waiting to be loved and I kept waiting for her to tell me whose love was she anticipating so much... Love me...
Until the day when I realised that it was me she kept calling, me she was waiting for, me she was needing. Love me...
She wanted me to love myself in her, something that she was incapable of doing herself. Something that I was not able to do for so many years. And what was stopping me? Sometimes it is so complicated to comprehend ourselves, our own needs and feelings.
Love me...
My wings might have been broken hundreds of times, but still I know I have the strength to fly again.
My body might have been torn into thousands of little pieces, but still I have the power to pull myself together.
My world might have been shuttered more than once, but still I exist.
And I don't want to run away from myself anymore. I want to stand in front of the mirror and whisper... I love you...

For myself and Sarah Kane.

Synchronicity

I am a magician in the greatest circus of the world. Each day I take myself out of my hat and place in front of you so that you could examine the wrinkled structure of my skin. The fears coiled at the bottom of my spine. The hopes trying to reach the sky like the balloons that a twelve year old child tried to sell to a half drunken crowd at 11 PM on the last night of the carnaval.
Sometimes I dig deeper in the hidden layers of my Jungian spheres of unconscious. I pulled out the feeling of insecurity the other day. It wore a sari and had long curly hair. We took the same bus together, but I decided to get down before seeing the turning face. The feeling left by the green DTC bus, but how much damage has it caused me in the past?
A rabbit of my low self-esteem was held by its otherwise dangling ears. He looked so funny in the center of the stage unable to squeak or move its legs while being held in the spot light. I let it hog on the grass as it began to complain about the pain at the back of the vertical axis of the body... or was it the horizontal axis of time? I heard him say that his back hurts.
I cast a spell and a street opened in the middle of the audience. The sign read it leads towards the eternal happiness, but my heart and feet chose to run over the black wire hissing, twisting and spiraling on its way to the lands of my dreams miles away from the reality.
I stood with eyes closed by the side of the street waiting for his arrival. My hand outstretched with a key to my heart, and that firm belief that one day he would return to find me. He would keep a gramophone to play the piano to the monkeys and I would follow him to the desert. And no... I will not see his FACE in a BOOK... He will come to say that he had seen me in a dream before. But they declared me mad and drove to the hospital instead.

The smell of a butterfly

She was walking through the city that day and somehow each end every smell reminded her of the decaying effect that city life had on society and culture. One more such stench and she might even vomit she thought. And to think that some creatures, whom we often don't even perceive as human, live all their lives picking up such dirt from under our noses. Do they constantly feel disturbed by the rotting values mixed with pieces of daily bread that the wealthy ones throw away from their windows? Or did they get used to their demeaning existence?
She wondered where did all the trees go, and then her eyes fell on two huge MCD dustbins. One was grey like the city around her, the other had the green colour of nature. Did they cut down all the branches and buried them in the trash? Uncivilised civilisation vs Organic nature. They burst some crackers after their cricket match last night, but she was not sure who the winner was.
Her thoughts drifted towards the boy who found her swimming in the river eons back. How peaceful and colourful their days were on the desert where he lived. She left her shadow far away and was just a little girl lost in the oceans of the world. But there was no danger involved. Only peace in the heart. Where was the boy today? Did he vanish together with the disappearance of a flight bound to nowhere? Was he still walking in the desert? Or did he lose himself in the wanton pleasures of the city?
As she was pondering so her feet came to a sudden halt. In the middle of a parking space there was a black and blue butterfly lying on the concrete. One of its wings was torn. She picked it up an kept on her palm. She was not sure what to do next but she knew she could not leave this flying painting of nature to a certain death under some heavy vehicle. She still had a vague memory of a film she watched many years back in which a dancing girl breaks her ankle and the magic of a puppeteer turns her into a butterfly. She could very easily identify herself with that girl and butterfly today.
A huge car stopped next to her and a wealthy mother of a fat child ordered in a high pitched voice "Could you please come here? He would like to see your pet. He has never seen a butterfly before, we still haven't taken him to the zoo."
Really? she thought... do you really need to go to the zoo to see a butterfly? You see, she would meet at least one butterfly each day. There were more butterflies around her than people she knew, and she could feel connected to the souls of those butterflies more than to direct ties that linked her with the outside world.
She thought of the boy again... would he think about her when he sees a butterfly? Or has he forgotten her completely?
She walked to the park and kept the butterfly on a small patch of grass next to some flowers. She did not want to go away, as if the magic of the butterfly captured her whole existence. She did not want to leave the colors and the wounded wing and dissolve herself in the world of those horrible stenches, fat children and the zoo with captivated animals.
She did not want to leave but she did...so that now she could sit with her fingers flying over the keyboard of her laptop to tell you the story of that day when she found a wounded butterfly in the busy market street.

Mercedes Benz

The stretched hands of a peace sign crossed
the shiny red crane of  the new social order.
I shut my eyes not to see
the whirling body of the forth class citizen
striving for shade on a sunny pavement of my country.
Is there a bottom line that your dignity would hit
when you cease to be human,
and become living meat,
an animal roasting on  the cement of the city?

the lost order of things

I lost myself
somewhere in between the sliding doors of the metro train
and the open window of the bus
the heart of the forest girl hit the wall of oblivion
with thoughts galloping like black horses
following the words and photographs of the speedy city at 2 PM on a Summer day.
Was it a plan of fortune
Or unfortunate turn of events that
made me stand with my eyes closed and the hand extended in the middle of the crossroads?
A tree with tired branches and brownish leaves of a thirty and five springs of greyish hair
that lost touch with the landscape and begged for directions lost in the traffic of events.
Dear God... Please come and find me for I lost myself
somewhere in between the sliding doors of my own mind
and the open window of other hands around me,
find me so that the horses could graze again on the plains surrounding the green land of the forest.

Ironic, iconic, but not interesting

After everything had been said between you and me, why do I still feel restless and wait for your unspoken words.
Why do I speak to you with my eyes closed and imagine that maybe somewhere far you are now thinking about me the way I do of you.
I don't even know you. Ironic, isn't it?
Iconic, isn't it?
But not interesting. Interesting would have too many syllables to cover the distance between us. I never thought of myself as interesting, have you?
I miss you... these days I miss you in a blue colour of an open sky. 
Simple as that.
Missing that human that you were.
       

Silence

I have chosen silence, it is a very prominent figure of speech. Sometimes remaining silent can help you in finding the dignity that was lost while the words were flowing out of its own, as if they had their own independent existence that you cannot control.  They floated and floated (would be great if you could sometimes help me to find a synonym for floating, I always admire how good you are with words, while for me they stick to my skin like little drops of sweat that has a salty taste after I finish my rehearsal) but they couldn't reach anywhere. Is there always somewhere where one has to reach? Can't we just float (see - again a synonym would be needed) aimlessly through life enjoying the sweetest bites of it? Eating life like children having chocolates - open a box and pick up anyone you want and you imagine that the box would never become empty. Or you secretly enjoy the sweet taste of things in your mouth... hidden somewhere behind an old tree, your grandmother's dress or simply sitting on a bed in your room? I love licking chocolate when it melts on my fingers. Developed the taste for it when I was a real child, but I had told you this story before. 
I don't even know if you are enjoying my stories. They are becoming shorter and shorter every day. I think I'm tired. Sometimes it feels as if every word was taking away a bit of me, wiping me away from the surface of the earth. As if  I were the chocolate melting in your eyes when you are reading this. A playwright once told me that writing is a very private affair, something that drains him out and makes him feel that he doesn't want a company of people around him anymore. 
Can a soul hold somebody's soul in the arms? Can you hold me now?
 I think I'm melting.
Silence is a very prominent figure of speech. Can you break it? As if you were breaking a glass, a brick or a wall? I hate walls around me.... Can a soul hold anther soul? Silence... Figure of speech... break... wall... silence...

The lost words

I lost some words. I don't remember if it was me who let them go, or was it the words that wanted to run away from me. 
Little "I love you" run away from my blue skirt, but it stood in front of a huge old mirror with a wooden frame and suddenly got scared of its own distorted face which read "I hate you".
So "i love you" run away and hid behind it's mother. Other words tried to run away too, they wanted to be a string of pearls that I write on the keyboard but the dyslectic writer mixed them up a bit: Do you stillll memberre how the green taste apple????
Other words got stuck in my mouth when i was to shout them loud so that a child of the desert could hear them properly, but they refused to leave when the time was needed... They are sitting now somewhere in the company of grapes and green apples. Laughing like mad children, while I search for them sweeping under my new bed.
The words that are lost..... will they ever be found???

Nawfar and the sea of stories

There once was a girl who was found in a small bundle somewhere by the sea. And no, her name was not Sita, She could have had many names but we can call her Nawfar in this story.
She was a daughter of a fisherman and it was only few months after her birth that the tiny vessel of her father reached the island where she and her mother lived. When father saw Nawfar for the first time he could not believe how such an ugly child could have been his....
Only few days ago on a moonlit night did he proclaim to his tribe that Nawfar was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.
Nawfar was always close to the water and all the fishermen treated her as if she was their own daughter. And sometimes it even seemed true to me - as if she was the child of feeling and emotions that all the fishermen carried into the ocean.
The life was simple and she floated through various days, months, hours.... Until one day she noticed that people no longer acknowledge her presence....
She was surprised and could not understand why...
She wasn't beautiful, this she knew from the beginning, but still she had a gift of listening and talking to those who sat close to her. People still sat around her, but they no longer looked into her eyes. They looked somewhere beyond her and she could not understand the change that happened so suddenly. Until one day she looked back to see her own shadow sitting on a bench and laughing while pearls would drop gently from her mouth into the people's extended palms.
Oh, no..... How come nobody want me for who I am? Why is only the beauty and magnificence of the shadow that they appreciate? People still kept coming to Nawfar whenever they needed help, whenever some work had to be done, a task to be completed. But the gaze of people and their smiles were no longer directed at  Nawfar. It was only the shadow that they smiled at.
She din't know what to do to show them that she is still herself and it's just a shadow that they all admire so much. So one day she took huge scissors and cut the shadow away from her long blue skirt.
 She threw the shadow at the people, while she herself jumped into the river... And she floated with the stream....... Remember she was a fisherman's child so she knew how to swim through highest waters. Until one day a child played by the side of the river in a desert and caught the bundle in his hand..... but that's another story, you know....

Dari Joocchu Chunnaree...

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts...

We used to have a garden. Technically the garden is still there next to my mother's house but somehow it does not resemble anymore that space that I used to like so much as a child.
The garden of my childhood was a mixture of wilderness of uncut grass and broken pieces of bricks and pavement that marked the alleys. There were some old trees, that did not give many fruits, but still I loved them. I don't remember climbing them, I guess I was too scared that they might break under my load. But I do remember climbing numerous trees in a park that was there in front of my house. It was so much of fun to be playing with other kids, running around, playing football. Sometimes the games were not that nice and I can feel how my body suddenly shrinks at the very memory of it. I'm always amazed at how the body responds to memories, touch, even words.
There were two trees in my garden where a hammock would be hung in the summer and I loved spending my time there. I think I even insisted on being allowed to sleep outside a couple of nights.
There was everything one needed - sunflowers, gooseberries, blackberries, grapes, cherries, apples, peach, plums, wild strawberries, my favourite lily of the valley...  Oh... I could die for a bunch of my favourite flowers... I haven't seen them for years! They are not there next to the house anymore...  I used to buy small bunches of them in the street. It felt so beautiful to be walking down the street with a small bunch of those flowers.
My mother loved gardening. She would spend hours watering the plants, planning what new flowers to bring, cutting the roses before the arrival of winter. I remember seeing a rainbow in a rain of her garden hose. I think I do admire her for her gardening skills, for the patience she had and thousands of little almost invisible sacrifices that she made for her plants. It was women in my family who knew how to take care of various plants in and around the house.
Men prefered spending long hours in front of TV screens. They don't even realise this but it was this common inclination towards certain sports channels that unites them despite the miles of cold waters in between them. I never liked sports channels and till today can not understand the point of discussing the assets of one sportsperson or the other in public. Sports programmes and driving cars... these two things unite them a lot.

Books are much different. One can read them over and over again and each time your eye catches some hidden meanings that you could not see before. The puzzles of words... The pieces of a puzzle that you slowly put together until they become a whole. It feels like translating Sanskrit verses again... I used to love those late night hours spent with a dictionary. And words and grammar that you had to combine into one meaningful sentence.'The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.' Sometimes you would know all the words and the grammar, but still have problems with deciphering the meaning. And then one would run to the teacher and ask if the translation was correct or not. I had this amazing teacher of Sanskrit who spoke so many languages of this world... Polish, English, Sanskrit, Hindi, French, German, Latin, Greek, Lithuanian, Russian... I miss him a lot. He died few years back. I love visiting his grave with prof S. whenever I am there. Speaking of teachers... I do get angry now for when I was trying to learn another language few months back and thought I'm progressing with my knowledge of vocabulary and grammar then the teacher confused me with his defensive answers and I got lost in the spirals of syntax of thoughts. Had the proper guidance been given at the proper time then the process of learning might have been less tearful and painful. But well... What could one expect from those who were trained at some foreign universities in prehistoric times? Sometimes a revision of  teaching methodology is desperately needed. And anyways... Dravidian languages seem to be more complicated than others... but well... so is Polish grammar...

Hm... I seem to be loosing a track of thoughts rather easily these days...

I can't tell exactly when and how, was it a slow change or a sudden one but the garden did not seem the same anymore... The sunflowers, strawberries and all other wild additions were gone, and a layer of socially acceptable grass of a certain social status was sown. And I can't but wonder if this is a natural order of things of family life, or a result of sudden discovery of capitalist society's value system? But then... how come I still dream of having a disheveled garden around my house? Why?

I woke up in the morning right next to a purring ball of fur and it amazed me how the feline animals have this incredible capacity to fill up the negative spaces our bodies create. My cat always knows how to lie down next to me with his head on my arm or waist, he always seems to find those sublime positions that fit perfectly into the curves of my body and purr into my ear. I keep him close to me and scratch his ears and the place on his neck which makes him close his eyes and purr even more... And then I forget if it is actually he who is trying to fit his body into mine, or is it the other way round? Who is a cat now and who is a human? Two beings drifting lazily somewhere between sleep and being awake. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

I don't enjoy the world of adults. It is too concrete, the shapes are too defined and there is no space for ambiguity of emotions, colours of memories and the touch of sunlight. I am happy being a child and I don't think I want to grow up, even though so many wise and experienced experts around me wish I would finally leave my childhood playground I call life and live according to their wishes, orders and expectations. Funny... They don't even realise that in reality they were just programmed to see life as a straightforward process of climbing up the social ladder. I think I am enjoying my space at the bottom. It often feels lonely here too, but I think that the world might be full of children who look outside windows, float helplessly in high waters, decide to spend endless hours in a jungle or walk across deserts in their hope to find teachers who would be willing to become students and who would have this amazing capacity of filling up the negative spaces of their minds, bodies and souls. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.