Slow release…

These days, when I sleep, I have vignettes playing about in my mind, showing me things that don’t exist. Through the day I walk from wall to wall inside my head, writing several words on them, sentences scribbled from my subconscious; like file cabinets I have divided and segregated my memories, thoughts, ideas, wishes and daydreams. I can’t remember much of what I dream when I am asleep. I wake up with incoherent thoughts of troubled nightmares and things that do not make sense. I ignore them and go about my day. My dream, which I am sculpting with my own hands, is turning into my obsession.

Speaking of obsessions, I have let go of many recently. Some were displaying themselves in fatal manifestations, leaving me undulated in abrupt heaves of emotional quicksand. And my feet wouldn’t touch the bottom; no matter how hard and long I stretched myself; like the tension in a trip wire, extended and taut, approaching breakpoint at several times, ready to explode.

When I close my eyes at night and pretend to shut myself out of the chaos inside, I am walking through the dark passage of my heart, where many lights flicker, showing me shadows I do not want to see. Shimmering reflections in the liquid black pools of pain and hurt call me, whispering my name, beckoning to me from below.

A network of tunnels I’ve discovered, leads me to the center of my spirit sometimes, if I make the right turns. Sometimes I am chased by a voice, an echo. Somewhere there is water dripping; endless analysis about several pieces of information I have picked up through my day, leaking from the cracks that have begun to slowly develop on my surface.

It feels like, more than one needle of a slow anesthetic is stabbed into my bloodstream, and my veins are filling up with this intravenous numbness, slowly infecting the marrow of my fears. Thudding beneath these ribs is a steady device of soft flesh, giving birth to an impressive progeny of hopes and wishes. Wearing itself out with every instinctive move is an inner armor of steel; protecting a tender pulsating ball of fire; my inner Sun, slowly dying a celestial death, transforming into a black hole, inside the universe of my body.

But my revolver is loaded and I am going after what I want. It is within reach. What implores me to step out of my bounds, and over the edge, is within reach. The path ahead, is treacherous. I will come face to face with my adversary on many occasions. Full guard now, red alert, there is not a moment to miss.

Ensuing terror inside my mind adds to the palpable, rising heat. Mercurial beads of my calling precipitate on the skin underneath, and my tongue can taste time; it tastes like plain salt.

I lose myself in the hunt, moving faster by night, after the Sun has fallen asleep, under the streetlights outside. Making my way through foggy streets, chasing myself across the dimly lit seashores of the city I become, when I am awake inside.

Up ahead, there is a narrow passage, a long quiet alley where light does not travel more than a few feet. There is a lamp flickering at the other end; it is approaching me. I must step into the cold cellar, for it is my only way across to the other side. I must cut my way through. The enemy is near, the enemy is about; the enemy is within.

It has begun, this fight, once again, bringing me face to face with my adversary. With the flick of a switch the lights go out. I must learn to fight in the dark. Crouching at the feet of my own shadows, I have set out to destroy or be destroyed.

Nothing is going to stop me now. Another moment, a changing feeling, back on my feet; another minute, life slips by, leaving deep wounds; must stay sharp, on the edge, for my becoming, lies in wait, at the next right turn.

I must keep moving.

Siddharth Pathak | 13th June 2013