#culminations

Our last Maltese Falcon post for a bit, most likely. But it constitutes a culmination of sorts, of a most profoundly rewarding variety. The warmth coming from Sydney Greenstreet when the Moment arrives is monumental, yet subtle, buried within an armoire of so many disappointments. In perhaps the most satisfying moment in his life, Mr. Greenstreet, though he's uttered the same words on several occasions, revels in the  epoch-definingly comprehensive confirmation that, indeed, and by Gad, Humphrey Bogart is, in fact.....a "character".

The Moment overshadows even some first-rate finger-pointing by Bogart. Such are its immeasurable depths.

(ഒടുവിൽ translated)

Let us begin from some culminations themselves. Some things reach a weird kind of lethargy after a lot of distancing/distance. Like some kind of an empty reality. Without any vitality, like a hen released in moonlight, lacking all sense of direction. Will we become like that? Maybe not. Maybe it's just an afterthought. Maybe it's owing to the mind, which is akin to a spittoon nudged gently by at least a little senility. Is it a little? Albeit very slowly, isn't what's happening in the soul an assured eating away? I think so.

When I contemplate all things that change, I see that all things grow, and that all these growths have an end(ing). When I contemplate all those end(ing)s, I see that no end(ing)s are definite. They slither away to unbeknownst climes and unexpected lands without a tinge of regret. They exist in a latitude where everything seems possible.

Now, more specifically, when it comes to the human and his peoplemeetingtalkingliving adventures, where does it end? Where does the sun set and disappear?

Answer: In the soapy, slippery old age which bubbles like shaving foam on the contours of a lengthy childhood. It is here that all consummations begin. And all beginnings consummate. While I grow old, insignificant and all around, I'd smell like trees at the end of a siesta-ish summer on the edge of a desert. Across my way, I see you in the woods. In the woods that you grow, there's the faint aroma of strangled loranthus leaves. Woods. Woods spread across by mosquitoes. After sacrificing the green heartlessly, coldly, they wear the black along with the night. Past the woods, I see you in the sea. The sea, like the night-y wood, was pitch black when the red sand — sunburnt on the other end of the culmination of a seashore — was creating postmodern art on the dust. It was then that your hair was playing hide-and-seek with the wind. On elevated planes. What does the wind, which elevates the impure lives of those dust particles to higher altitudes—facsimiles of eternity—got to say to your hair strands? Ah, let it go.

When I offer you imagined flowers of an absent spring from my desert to your woods, you'd shrug. All my flowers would have crushed cheeks. The knees of their stems would be broken and their memory would be decaying. They'd wilt in the wind like crabs running to the sea from an aggressive shore.

A kindness of white light innocently plagues the nooks and corners of the mind.

While we drown in a vast summer of the inside, desert and wood, flowerless and numb, there'd be neither rain nor mist. While we look for an instant of a soothing mirage, we'd realise that light is just a well-told lie. Then, when we unclose our eyes, we'll see stars and smell the sea-wind with a credible promise of rain. Maybe we may wonder of worlds inside and outside. Of planes elevated and depressed.

Then, we'll see, that neither the stricken retreating sun, nor the arid wind has the capacity to create an endless summer. Then who is it? Oh thought, it has to be you. The prime mover and sole guardian of all (seemingly) immeasurable distances is you. Saludos to you!

—Maani—