I’ve been chewing on the words “twenty twenty one” a whole lot these last few weeks and they just don’t go down right. There’s an uncanny sense the earth’s been spinning a little too fast and the world’s been hoodwinked into counting store brand days.
I met an old friend recently- well I say friend because I can’t bring myself say the actual words because they might ring out like a foul incantation.
I find it difficult to imagine a family member with whom I might feel a kind of solidarity. In a rather embarrassing fact of life, I was a bit too young to actually register the kindness and support we found in each other. It must have been a rather bleak home to have six year old me as the only source of good conversation.
However incomprehensible I find our camaraderie with only a self centered void where they recount old tales, I find it strange how they became a persistent phantom in my life. The empty figure becoming an archetype I see in my friends and the ones who aren’t. I have been looking for the same person over and over again. The way I talk to people, the same pantomime playing out again and again. Yet after casting a shadow that’s followed me my entire life I’ve nothing left to say to the progenitor. We’re not the same people anymore and you can’t search for old ghosts when nothing is the same. Like me, my old companion has forgotten who they were and unlike me have no reasons to look back, with so much in the present.
Previously I only had fragments. Fragments of other scandalous fragments, angsty, adolescence oriented Japanese TV programming that hinted at transgression. I could never find these shows a second time which gave the memories an esoteric quality always maddeningly out of reach of my hands that only grasp the bleakest realisms that forced themselves on me. I have drifted, constantly, relentlessly in the dull tyranny of my circumstance.
I’ve always had the notion that relations are panopticons. I can’t bear the foolish mouth sucking guards uniformed in familiarity saying isn’t it nice? Are we all getting along? Aren’t you glad we’re here? I don’t know what to say; I’m fighting the urge to do what comes naturally, hoping I’ll float away. One day I’ll leave them all behind.
Tag: memory
Spider Crack
Up my arms
A shiver at the rustling
Sorting through the keys
We pause and smile
Shimmering in moonlight
Cool breeze swirls around the closed door
A spider with only a thread
Flying blind, I see spider cracks
I bought bright padlocks
For her backpack
A funeral, her first trip
Alone.
Taxidermists
We are a family of collectors. We have diverse interests and collect many things- perfume bottles, magazines from the soviet union, yellow pages for cities that don’t exist anymore. Even seeds. In the summer we often catch fireflies and lost flowers. The flies are pinned up in memories, the flowers in books- so many of them. All for a personal library that began decades ago. Yellow books that’ll never be used, no one can write over flowers and perfumed paper.
So much for memories I guess, but you won’t me writing on those pages either.
Back then
All I remember
The sound of tea
being poured
While wool
Disguised as fog
climbs up
closing the windows
The tick of the clock
interrupts.
Flower mark
An old book of mine,
A flower I cannot name
So faded you might think
It was painted, not placed.
Relics
Between childhood relics, board games and jars of collectables I found a dead moth.
He died right next to a magic box and my collection of seeds and leaves. Those plants would never leave their jars. For the first time I felt like I’d lost something. The universe was talking to me in simple but effective metaphors.
Rented homes
In rented homes
people shift to
native tongues and
tired slippers.
Half closed eyes,
blue screen &
stupid memes.
Home away from home.
Abdul
Abdul cannot remember anything.
The questions are rare now because they know a “No” will invariably follow. Occasionally there are flashes in those glassy eyes but who would notice? Now and then images will consume him.
Bright robes dirtied by runs through the markets. Seated figures and gossip under the old mango tree. Their wares spread out on rough cloth, they watch him fly his silk kites and ignore the cuts the thread gives him.
“No” he repeats to no one as he looks out his window. Surely the city and roads of tar were always there. “Surely I dreamt.”
The Dreamer
In the portrait of a mind unsoiled,
freed from tangible sight
Skyward eyes opened embroiled
in her dream alien from contrite.
Thought I, of the dreamer
lost to her dream of no repent,
of what sight might keep her
in an escape so eager, so spent.
While I spied this flight
the tables and dream I study
Careful not to make dreamer alight,
in her eyes I seek prosody.
The memory of the quiet scene
and a dream the only proof
of all that had been
in those days of monsoon.
Amelie
Ah, there she goes again. Curious little creature. And its’s… 8:30 now. I have a feeling she’ll be gone for a long time.
She’s got something about her. Maybe that’s why I can’t paint the woman. There’s this whiff of destiny- look at that gait- a bit of fear too. Perhaps it’s time I offer a bit of help. How long has it been? Half a century? Maybe more. Back when things were still different. I think I spent months working on my painting. I wonder what a young and virgin eyed version of myself would say if someone told me I was going to paint the same thing every year. Maybe I would be happy, happy about knowing.
Who was that other girl? I think I remember her. The one with silky,yellow curls who pranced around in her apartment when I was young. I can’t remember her name. Years. Years I spent looking out through my window. they say the world changed. All I see is another woman at the window, in shadows where my dreams paint in the blanks. I wonder if I really want to know who she is. But Amelie seems so permanent.
Like the woman in the painting, captured on canvas now and forever. That is of course, only if I manage to paint her. To copy the window, that seems to have her preserved forever. But first my bones of glass will have to carry me far. to understand her I must tell her all I know. Tell her not to make my mistakes. To look through no windows.
Rijul Ballal 