I see that loneliness is not a quiet phenomenon.
It is absolutely noisy and chaotic. The long lonely hours of my egotistic
contemplations…Wait…are the words comprehensible? Many say it’s
incomprehensible…hopelessly tangled with crowded images and strange feelings.
May be. For it takes great effort to see things from another eye. To hear those
sounds from another ear. To feel those thoughts from another mind. “To feel
those thoughts”; it can be done only by the metaphysical? It’s almost
impossible to be rational and emotional at the same time.
The woman in me switches back and forth
to being emotional and rational. At one time it pines for the beloved, for a
small touch and the feel of that familiar breath. The other times it convinces
and consoles the heart that being only emotional can bring stupidity and
misery. That I should reread Donne’s Valediction
Forbidding Mourning though I have taught the poem a few times in class. The
poem forbids any lamentation from the beloved’s part since the man who has
parted from her and the woman who is in waiting are like two legs of a compass.
The very celebrated metaphor that any literary enthusiastic would always
cherish and wonder. Like the fixed leg of a compass makes the outer leg draw
the circle in its perfect way and would reach back the same destination, the
trust, the love, and the strength of the bond would wonderfully preserve their everlasting
compassion and intensity for each other.
Longing in reality can be unromantic,
miserable and a series of disturbing tantrums. Reality can be beautiful when it
gets the consolation from these metaphors and valediction forbidding poems. I
have always groped for beauty in reality when it starts to slowly sink into those
monotonous moments. I have groped for lines, words, or may be at least the
sound of those iambs. That Shakespearean rag of me comparing my beloved to a
summer’s day or me imagining him sighing like a furnace as the young lover in
him longs for this chaotic woman.
I don’t know the words here are
comprehensible or not. The tiredness in me has brought me on a low key where my
hands shiver to dive deep and scare the perceiver, the non-existent reader, the
echoing empty theatre. Whatever that is difficult has got its quality of being
difficult through times of effort, keen attention and perseverance. Some may
loathe it since it would challenge their comfort zones of being all “normal”
and never wanting to sieve through and accept the challenge. Whatever that is
easy is easily admired and applauded because it can be commercialized; call it
popular, the taste of the mass, and the comprehensible sweet ticking sensation
of “can be understood”. Some artists can play at both ends. I can try to be the one.
