Posted in Art Scene, Books, Current Affairs, Film, Literature, Memoirs, Philosophy, Poetry, Relationships, Society, Technology, tagged asleep, bath, beautiful, beauty, bee, belong, blank, bleed, blood, blue, cold, come, crumple, cut, death, desire, door, dream, drop, else, empty, endure, envelopes, expression, field, fingerprint, flight, flower, foreseen, fountain, frost, hand, handwriting, heart, hit, hours, imagination, ink, innocence, jealousy, knife, knock, know, lady, leave, letters, life, light, line, love, lucky, mailbox, man, memory, morning, motionless, neighborhood, night, oblivion, One, open, outsider, page, paper, pen, pigeon, poem, poetry, postman, probe, read, refusal, sanity, scar, scent, sentences, shadow, sheet, someone, stare, still, struggle, surrender, today, trashbin, undelivered, understanding, unhealed, victim, window, world, wound, written on July 16, 2011|
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He stares at the frosted window,
dreaming of pigeons in flight.
Probing shadows in his oblivion
while the neighborhood is asleep
on this night bathed in blue light.
His heart refuses to surrender
to someone else’s handwriting.
He’s an outsider, perhaps a victim.
No one knows how he spent hours
imagining a beautiful world.
Unable to express, struggling
for a line to be understood.
An empty love bleeding sentences
that can never be written.
Such beauty, a flower in the field
belonging to some lucky bee.
Jealousy hits his innocence
like a knife to a man’s desiring,
leaving his wounds unhealed.
For the lady who reads letters
from some scented envelopes.
There is blood in the trash bin
and it does belong to him.
Among the crumpled sheets,
the fingerprints and drops of ink-
a memory of his scarred sanity.
How he endured the paper cuts;
this man’s life in blank pages.
The postman didn’t come today
and the letters were undelivered.
No one has foreseen death’s coming-
such as his knocking on doors
and opening of mailboxes, each morning.
They found a fountain pen in his hand,
motionless and still- in cold blood.
25.239727
51.520386
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Solitude Amidst the Maddening Crowd
White Flag
Posted in Current Affairs, Essay, Literature, Memoirs, Prose, Relationships, Society, tagged ambition, childhood, commentary, doctor, dream, Essay, father, flag, memoir, memor, Prose, son, surrender, white on September 22, 2006| 1 Comment »
It started during the last year of my high school, when father has decided that I would be going home to our province with my mother. He had decided that I will be studying there, for the reason that he cannot afford to sustain me through college if I will be bent on pursuing medicine. Besides, my brother and sister will be forced to stop their schooling just to give way for me.
You must know how my world crashed like a domino at that time. It has been my life-long dream to pursue medicine since I was a kid. I have prepared for this for such a long time. And I am in utter disbelief that even if I had to avail a scholarship, my father imperiously zeroed all my options. I was so distraught. I am in complete shambles.
Before, I have made myself to believe that becoming a doctor is so near to becoming a reality. That no amount of circumstances and obstacles can stop me from making it happen. But no, I never had the chance. If only if father is a little braver to let me pursue it. But father didn’t take his chance on me, and I think he didn’t gamble enough for my destiny. Because of this, the cycle of blame is cast.
I would always blame him for my depression. For this shrinking self-esteem. For this sickening moral degeneration. For this career stagnation. Whatever case of bad luck that had befallen on me, the blame would surely go to him. And a zillion of regrets would suddenly shoot up like splayed bullets on my head.
After all these years, I have tried to abide all his rules. Like a sheep. Who cannot shout in retaliation. Who cannot raise a fist in objection. Instead, I internalize this as something of a sacrifice and a demonstration of unselfishness. An understanding of our family’s situation and circumstances of poverty.
I have endured the pain of not pursuing medicine. And I have come to many battles I have continuously pitted silently against father. For controlling my life as if he is a demi-God. I have used the weapon of silence to kill my compassion and concern towards him. I have build a fortress of reclusivity around me to shield me from further hurt. And I have created a moat of indifference to keep him away from manipulating me.
I don’t want this feeling. But what can I do? (pause) For now I should stop pointing fingers to him. I don’t want to wallow in this pain forever.
Maybe he had some valid reasons for not letting me pursue my passion of becoming a doctor. Maybe I don’t know how hard he lived during his adulthood. Maybe he too, is learning the way and I cannot expect him to know the future. Maybe it is much harder than mine, how in his married life, did he manage to feed us and make us to live decent. Besides, no one said it would be easy to be a father anyway. After all, he have tried his best to give us what he can truly afford. Oh, how limited is my grasp on his circumstances. Father must have been overridden too by fear because of poverty. His fear of not being able to cope from pressures of keeping us through college. Can I blame him all that much? I need to accept that in this lifetime, battles will have to be fought hard. And the ultimate surrender is not yet called for.
I guess, I need to move on. I have felt that I am so immature, now that I have breezed through Architecture and made a good outcome out of it. I should be thanking father enough that even though I didn’t like my course of study, I was able to survive it somehow. Thankful of the way things have turned out to be. For that, I will be raising another white flag as a sign of my complete surrender. And I am crying my hearts out.
Father is growing old, and is about to retire. Father must have silently ask forgiveness for this lapse in judgement. I know, he must have accorded to me his pride and joy when I triumph after all, though not in words. His life is no different with mine.
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