The Journey

Drawing by Calcifer Shepherd

“We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed in seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.“

– J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Elliott

As I walk through the world in the morning, I walk through chores:
Brush my teeth, feed my flesh, lift my eyes and observe the world.
See the light watch the shadows: frightened and slightly porous
It is braving the dark, but the darkness remains unfurled.

Like a puppy, to no avail
Light is chasing its own tail.
Ceaseless effort – no rest, no sleep
Leaves the shadows dark and deep.
In the forest, the room, the mind
They just move as they hide behind,
They never diminish
Fade out or finish.

And the dance goes on, like a tide – as it ebbs, it flows.
And the mind wanders off, but off what and off when – who knows?

Oh, but time is a funny thing:
Lucky – spiral, unlucky – ring;
Snake consuming its own tail
Has no future, no past, no fail.
With no fail comes no gain – no foul.
As ouroboros tries to howl
It’s unable to rant and rail,
Mouth gagged with a scaly tale…

It is time to abandon this train of thought
As it leaves us nowhere and profits nought.
If I look the look, talk the talk
Then I also should walk the walk.

As I wend my way through the virgin wood,
All I see are multiple shades of green,
All I hear is hue, hue and cry of birds
Known just by the sounds – a sight unseen.
But my mind gets pulled from the joy sublime
Of the sight and sound, the leaves and birds
To the stinging nettles that intertwine
Unremitting brambles, as sharp as words:
“Why the fuck did I wear shorts?”

As I focus on light and sound,
I forget to attend to thorns.
Joy is found, but also bound
By recurrence of cuts and burns.
The annoyances and the strain
Can be taken away by train.

The train that blurs the near spares far,
Serenely cloudscapes through heavens glide.
An airplane left antiseptic scar
Amid the clouds, stumble on the ride.
Landscape renews and we in comfort cruise,
But dusty windows engender dusty views.

A patch of lights through clouds gives me joy
Untampered, instant and without words.
It filters down softly to alloy
Itself with shadows in subtle smooth sensations –
The joy of pure vision midst the turds
Of unremitting complications.

My elasticity declines as I get older –
Of skin and time, and arteries, and veins.
My hands and feet – they are a little colder
Each winter with increase in aches and pains,
As well as other relevant increases
In colds and flu with snottiness and sneezes.
If snake of time contracts then what remains
Is an attempt to stretch the space with trains.

Ouroboros of time constricts my breath.
As body shrinks my mind expands – and shatters
Its dissolution congruent with death
But also with infinity of matters.
What cannot stretch can break and reassemble.
Abandon frame, you all who enter here.
Reconstituted, you will still resemble
Yourself to others, even those near
And dear, them, who try to fix in space
Of ageing body time’s dissolving trace.

At the end of the day we arrive. It’s a velvet curtain.
The applause increases politely as curtain drops.
At the end of the day you are feeling alive and certain.
Your heartbeat is apparent to you just before it stops.