Impressions of Life

Somewhere within an eternal silence, untouched, enclosed within soft watery perfection, where the turbulent waves of the surface can never touch you, where the shore is left unwashed, she watches you. The face in the clock, the hand in your hand, the voice that whispers upon your ear and plays upon your senses. She is there.

When you hear choirs singing, her voice is one of the whole; in waterfalls of music she is but a note. She is a certain expression on your face, the glint in your eye, a gasp in your breath.

Close your eyes. In darkness you see her. Alone you are aware of her presence. As anger grows she burns within you. With passions she caresses.

Where will you fit in? To which degree of the compass will you fall? You dream you shall be in the orchestra; you will be one of the voices; you shall have a part to play, a song to sing. Mirrors show us what we want to see, but sometime we look into the living, human mirrors and then, briefly, the fantasizing has to stop. Real life intrudes, your dream is over, the interlude is past. She has slipped away like mist in the wind. The hand moves round the clock, passing fragments of her face. As flowers stare towards the sky – blind, an empty and horrific glare, she fills the space with sight, makes sense where none can be found. There is no answer, no explanation, on the surety of her continue existence. Whenever you turn around, she’ll be there, just a step behind you. She’ll be your support, the only one you can ever rely on, though contemptuous words of her slip from your lips, splinters of insult – lean back, she’ll catch you.

She’ll always be with you till the day you pass on, have a different guardian angel –

-          If life can really be called that.

People

Through walls of silence we call out for love, reach a lonely hand through the mist, and bring it back – empty; lonelier than ever before. There is a part of us which can never be, a void than haunts us through loneliness, a vacuum that will never be filled despite our hopeless prayers. We are just people hiding all the need inside. Like children, we need other children. We were born half and can never go through life alone, never fulfil our dreams without something else, someone else.

It is dark, darkness enclosed by sky, enshrouded by trees, suffocatingly close. The moon was reflected off the glassy water, almost as perfect as its parent; like a mirror it repeated the glow, echoed beauty. Then suddenly, in one careless moment the mirror was shattered as, in someone’s arms she was carried out from the depths of the moon, her wet body glistening, limp and dead. She had found her other half. She had toasted her reunion with the sun.

With every step rekindling our yearning taste for life we will be left to recover in silence. We can only be whole for a little while, that is all we are granted. We cannot argue with nature, cannot change the beat. We stand warned, we have been told. It is for us to forget, for us to go against the possibilities set before us, to attempt to become one of the chorus. We reach out through the haze for something solid, in which we can place our trust. A hand holds our hand and lead us through the mist, and when we emerge from the other side we see the world behind us and that the hand is a child’s hand.

Others

They know the language,

Share the smile.
Don’t care for anguish
In their lives.
They’ve leant the word
Yet far too soon
Hold out for love,
Reach for the moon.

They’ve heard it whispered

In their dreams.
They know the world,
Not what it means.
They’ve made their wishes
Through the night.
They’ve learnt to love,
They’ve leant to fight.

And never lived to see the score,

Never looked behind.
The values held so dear before
Were out of sight and mind.
They wanted to go on forever,
Want to be the one
To suddenly return and never,
Never regret being young.

Fencing with an Omelette

Step 1 – break eggs

Whispers in the mind distracted her, fingers tightening around her heart made her catch on her breath, gasping, wanting life and yet wishing to die. When would she reach the fulfilment of her life, the ultimate, when love and wonder mix with all the other worldly emotions. We are fragile as eggs, kept perfect, harmonious and innocent within our shells. Ho swoon they will be broken, destroyed and the moment stolen from us. Alone we stand together, where on difference in another person makes them so alien from us, immediately cast away, forgotten. It shall be timeless. The words have been inscribed on the heavens, in the stars, throughout the sea; timelessness is murmured in the clouds, seen in shadows on the moon, remembered by mountains, subtle in beauty. It shall be timeless. It is an order. We cannot go against the law set down before our petty lives were even considered, before our verse was written, before our part was cast. We were never meant to be. Our existence is but a minor confusion of the powers that be. Our existence is a mistake. We should not be here. And yet gradually fade away, as the sound diminishes after the cymbal has been struck. It shall be …

And across time children were laughing, all together, living in a way which seems to pass us by as the years build up. Seeing life from a different point of view which are we are now blind to. They think they’ll go on forever, they think they will succeed where others have failed; believing the world had been lacking until the moment of their birth. And what a wonderful way to live. Where every tomorrow opens up new possibilities, new hope, new smiles, new tears. Together they will break hearts, wreck lives, leave their mark of pain. Yet now all they do is sit together and laugh, thinking of loved ones, planning their parties. If only life would fit the plans we make. Why not let God be God?

 

You ask her a question, she gives you a proverb. All she could do was to call out across the air, through a kaleidoscope of autumn leaves, through a lifetime of tears, burdened with experience; all she could do, all she could give to them, all she could off, all she could say was ‘stay young’.