#philcup

When Rowling wrote time will not slow down

when something unpleasant lies ahead; and

Frost wrote the only way out is through;

Zusak wrote that Death always finds humans

at their best and worst.

and it sees our ugly and our beauty, and it wonders

how the same thing can be both.

x

When Sontag wrote compassion is an unstable emotion.

It needs to be translated into action, or it withers;

or when she reminded us that etymologically,

'patient' means sufferer;

Or when Phoebe Bridgers

wished hard on a Chinese satellite,

wanting to believe but feeling nothing.

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When Lenker wanted to cover emptiness

with questions, explanations, music;

Or when she asked if we’d walk forever in the light

To never learn the secret of the quiet night;

Or when Hozier didn’t know where to start

Sweet music playing in the dark

Be still our foolish hearts.

x

When McCartney wrote

Take these sunken eyes and learn to see;

Or when Lennon reassured

It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out;

Or when Sufjan asked what we learned

from the Tillamook Burn

And the fourth of July.

x

When Murakami wrote no truth can cure the sorrow

we feel from losing a loved one.

No truth, no sincerity, no strength,

no kindness can cure that sorrow;

Or when Bond wrote

It isn't time that's passing by,

It is you and I.

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When Tolkien comforted

The world is indeed full of peril, and

in it there are many dark places;

but still there is much that is fair,

and though in all lands

love is now mingled with grief,

When I was going through a list of clients lined up for tax return preparation at my internship yesterday, my eyes met a familiar name – an old neighbour (quite literally). I looked up his particulars in the office directory and learned that he was about 87 years old. Some basic arithmetic informed me that he must’ve been 67 years old when I was born. Huh.

I have always known some people to be old. The number that denotes age loses all meaning after a certain threshold. Even the most dynamic of the lot cease to age at some point. Those around them simply forget to comprehend their age. It is much easier to affix an umbrella designation in one’s mind’s eye: old.

Somehow, such wrinkled faces comfort me beyond words. They appear as vines that reach out from the nostalgia of my infancy to remind my present juvenile self of ‘constancy’, a word made alien to me by the cruel myopia of adolescence.

I spent the better part of my commute back home thinking about this non-event. I use ‘thinking’ here with a mild qualification since it resembled more a blank ponderance which ledme nowhere closer to a tangible inference, to be frank. Yet, it inexplicably amused me.

It was just prior to nodding off that I could arrive at some inkling of clarity. I closed my eyes fora few long moments and revisited my old apartment complex in the soot-covered vaults of mymemory. In my head, I calmly walked down the same steps that past-me often glided through in a childish race against the elevator. I walked around the periphery, visiting the old frangipani tree in the south-eastern corner and touching, with a pilgrim-like reverence, the fragile, supple branches that past-me had climbed sans an iota of hesitation. And then I saw the faces — faces I had grown up with, faces that had surrounded me since my birth, and faces that had smiled at me, yelled at me, played with me, and engaged with me.

The funny thing is that this world still exists pristine and untouched. I can, if I like, drive to my old apartment complex in the physical world and experience this diabetes of nostalgia withoutgoing through the trouble of imagining it at some god-forsaken hour in my cramped room.

Why then, did I need the tax return of an 87-year old neighbour to remind me of a place that my mind still associates (in some capacity) with ‘home’? The problem, as per my shaky self-diagnosis, is a cognitive bias that favours the recognition of ‘events’ (no matter how trivial) vis-à-vis ‘non-events’ (no matter how deeply affecting).

When one extrapolates this on a larger scale, inconsistencies begin to appear in erstwhile immaculate records of the past, for it is our folly to document ‘events’ of valour, loss, tragediesand conflicts; not fond life fragments spent sauntering in parks, hugging loved ones, snuggling in bed, and laughing aimlessly. My cupboard, after all, has a certificate that tells me the atrociousness of my Hindi examination in the second term of my third grade; yet, all I haveis a primitive biological machine (one that is notoriously vulnerable to accidental deletions) to keep track of happy thingies, cute smiles, and flirtatious winks that hide between the lines of the past we opt to archive and document.

These strings hold us

In gust and storms;

Our drapes all around

Image Credit: Angry Browl Gal