Prologue
I watch drops of water fall from the ends of my hair. They streak down my face, puddle in my hands. My heart pounds so hard I can feel it in my ears.
Rain.
I look up to see the smoke-stained skies cry.
All heavenly things disappeared,
behind the grasping veil of thick clouds.
I dint feel like running for cover, cause I was in the middle of the running track, and I knew running to the nearest shelter wouldn’t alter my chances of getting drenched.I sit down by the track. The dusty trees far away were changing hues. I try to be light as air. But my mind is wild, the voice back in my head, a sound track for catastrophe, and drowns everything out.
I try not to blink for too long,
when I do I see creatures of the past.
I try not to keep my eyes silent for too long either,
for then visions of the future haunt me.
Desperate thoughts of a Desperate being.
When you stand in the rain, you are not really standing at the place you were before it started to rain. The beauty of the rain is in its ability to transport you to the realms of reality which you would seldom walk into on your own. For the curtain of rain drops shuts out the world and makes you stand at a place you normally wouldn’t visit without the company of the immensity portrayed by rains.
I was woken up out of the heavy sleep
I carried around in my head.
The rains had transported me to a world unknown.
I found myself in the brink of an abyss,
the melancholy valley of unending wailings and emptiness.I walked afraid and lonely,
in the valley of the Phantoms of the Ages.
Every time I blink I can see,
a giant ghost-like hypnotic ghastliness far away.
approaching me.
I turn around and walk the other way.
I walk against the winds,
winds that seemed to carry sighs of an eternal sorrow.
In the life of every man there occurs at least once a time when the insides, the soul, seems to abandon, for a brief period, the body, and, elevate itself above mortal affairs, to grasp the perplexity of experience. Here the spirit separates itself from its own rigidity, struggle, resistance, conformity, and attachment to be unified with the spirit of the cosmos, albeit briefly. All important revelations, changes in our character, intuition, silence and peace, are brought about by these crises of life which causes the experiencing self to be withdrawn briefly to its universal nature.
There was a deep silence amidst the noise of the rain,
and that peace which comes when all things are alone.
The aloneness of being, that is uncorrupted, rich, complete.
That oak tree has no other existence than being itself.
So is this aloneness.
There is an aloneness intertwined with the fabric of existence.
There is an inherent aloneness in experience.
An aloneness that stems out of the wholeness of life.
We are born alone, but we hide this truth from ourselves.
We grow old alone, but as much as possible we deny this again.
Then those who kept our company in denial start disappearing.
Where are they?
We cant believe they are gone from this world.
We then start to slowly arise out of this deception.
The ghostly being behind,
no farther than ‘twas,
and no closer shall it be.
It read my thoughts,
and changed directions before I could.
I wondered,
if it was following me or leading me.
Then la morte, the greatest denial we carry within….
We are to face our death alone,
and at that point of existential realization
that you are going to die,
its too late to understand aloneness.
For then fear creeps in,
and fear is the very negation of all that is life.
We are to understand the aloneness when fear is not.
For from that aloneness alone arises love, which is its own eternity.
The hills on the horizon were melting away
into thick shadows of the dark.
Were these thoughts that were whispered,
mine, or of this forgotten shadow far behind,
I wondered who this ghost was,
I turn around to ask…
the winds change direction
and no longer carry my thoughts to it…
Its arms are now trying to reach me from far away,
as if it was trying to hold and separate me from the rains,
But as the rains began retreating,
All that was seen was transfiguring,
like the shadows of an unborn God,
lost between heaven and earth.
And all I heard from the disappearing valley of the unknown,
was a faint whisper carried by the winds…
“Erzahler”….
.
this was the tale of how i met Erzahler…
trapped in the world sheltered by the rains.To be continued….
Note:
The Verse here has an identity of its own, and can be read without the prose in between. This rather curious and strange incident does not end here, and nor does the writer’s modest philosophy, they shall show themselves again more fruitfully in future posts.
