Notes – Piece written in November 2002. We were shifting houses. Moving from an area that had been lived in and bicycled over and over again for the last 15 years. And a new place. With no familiar street dogs to call out to. This piece was partly for Sri, who insisted that I must not restrict my world to him, and partly to welcome a morning in a new house.
Of all the ghosts that float beside the being tonight, none are talkative and all are lost in memories of life and the recollection of feeling. You decided to jump out of the little tufts of grass and make home in the pockets of my jacket and while you played with my keys, small spurts of fireworks in the sky danced in the centre of a dog’s eyes.
This path that I walk along, should have been a seaface, with salty foam water crashing and invading the spaces between my toes. But my feet are safe in footwear and the path is metalled with pebbles and tar. Moonlight shines through tonight though, and after long, the light of the moon actually falls on me. For some time now, we’ve been playing hide and seek. In the beginning, I asked you to look out for the loony chap in the sky at night to remember me, but if memories have to be timed to surface at certain angles between the minute and the hour hands of our watches, then are not really memories, but thoughts that pop up like fresh brown pieces of toast out of the pop-up toaster after the invasive familiar bell of the toaster rings loud through the space.
In my gaze towards the smog filled sky, there is a peculiar touch of the ancient. An ancient yearning and an ancient knowledge.
There was a time when I didn’t know if you could possibly be, and whenever I forced myself to believe that you were, it was hard to love you, especially because you had no name. You didn’t even have attributes. You neither had
a form, but nor were you formless. You were like this vast expanse of sea that I think I deserve to be next to now, neither form nor formless..
Do you know what it is like to be loved?
Its like stiff breeze laughing inside a shock of open hair.
In my search for inspiration, I walked on. I thought of what you said, that I ought to experience and express something that didn’t include your element. And I failed.
What part of this soul haven’t you touched?
What can be possibly be devoid of you?
You, me and sometimes Marienne have eaten mud together under trees in my grandmother’s house. She used to pickle small pieces of raw mangoes, green pieces of grinning fruit in red. And the mud in my mouth tasted of small giggles caught in the throat. Rain in the streets carried small paper boats and sometimes when the sun came out while it was still pouring, we were convinced that two donkeys were getting married somewhere.
The last evening I spent amongst trees that saw me grow, I saw the sun glint in the brightest shades of happy orange on the window panes of the building that we had sat near.. so many times. The coffee spoke to stones and I spoke to you. The first morning, in the new house, the sun glinted upon a far away building, and I swear I saw the colours that lit the world visit me in my new home.
