Photo by: Hakan Yilmazer
No! It shouldn't come to them so easily;
As if my utter misfortune has somehow entitled me to more...depth,
I resent the wise, beautiful people who feel...
I feel no compassion for those who live harmonized lives and accept what nice things come their way.
I slam happiness on its chest and yell no!
Scared that if I am ever happy, I will lose my... thoughts?
But what do I want to be? Why does it still feel like a possibility that I will grow up one morning into an entirely different woman?
But my heart is thinning and I’m developing feelings, for life…
“Meant for grandeur.” rings in my head as I make another pot of coffee and listen to trivial concerns of a beautiful woman with a beautiful life that I don’t envy…
He once held my shoulders, shook me and yelled: "feel it!"
His eyes scanning my expression, searching for a sign of amusement, of a fleeting moment of satisfaction, gratitude, recognition?
“You are never impressed.” He concedes.
It took me a long time to understand his confusion. Why am I not impressed?
Why is nothing new? or beautiful? or breathtaking?
why am I not excited?
Do I long for something so vague that I find no solace in the benign pleasures of the cognizance of beauty and novelty?
It didn't occur to me …. until Nigel sat in front of me with that uncontrollable shake in his hands, with his bag of lunch, spilling soup all over the table, when I was filled with rage and disgust at how I can't have a break, to read a page of this book, which talks about nothing, and meaning, and the nothingness of Meaning…
It didn't occur to me until my escapism was interrupted, that this, is what it’s like to be who I have wanted to be, and after being that, this is what it is like to be betrayed by our biological destiny.
He spits as he talks and asks me to heat his food, and pour him tea and I was secretly afraid he was going to ask me to feed him too while he stared at my chest.
I'm just filled with this icy bitterness, that he, was one of those whom I envy.
He passes a wrinkled photo of himself and his deceased wife to me…young, beautiful, laughing with such grace that I’m afraid I will taint this captured perfection if I hold it in my cynical hands for too long.
I see the glimmer of beauty in his eyes still, except the wrinkles on his face now match those of the photo…
He had found what he loved; he did it so well he is still being paid to sit around forsaken hotel rooms, read and judge!
He loved so deeply that the smell of the soap his late wife used at this hotel one summer in 1991 brings tears to his eyes.
He traveled, he learned, he loved, he danced and he thought and now he is sitting in front of me with frail fingers while Parkinson’s takes hold of his fragile bones.
I was struck by the convulsion I felt mixed with so much compassion I would have hated it a few years back when I thought feelings were for the feeble…but now my heart is thinning.
And then people die. It’s always the people who die, not you, until you do and then you are the people that are dead in someone else’s world. So it never really matters until it does, and then it doesn't matter anymore either ‘cause you’re already dead too!
But somehow, when you are away,
death is not even real.
It is as if it’s the season of death again and people just…fall.
And then our little survivor part sweeps the dead, just like dried leaves, from underneath our immediate consciousness and then we forget, that we will be the people that will be others until we are not…
I sip on the coffee custom-made for me by my name written on it, forcing me a feeling of grandeur I would otherwise lack in my days…
The janitor sweeps the dried leaves with such dignity, elegance and precision…and I wonder if he is meant for grandeur...if he has found it somewhere amongst cigarette butts and whistling Sinatra tunes.
Now for the first time in a long time you, have become my people! and I will notice you and perhaps even feel you.
I will notice you age, as wrinkles appear on the corner of your eyes. And one day I will wake up and notice that not only my life is in all different shades of grey, now your hair has joined it too.
I will be thinking about your death when you ask me what I am thinking about and I will lie and say I am thinking about grandeur...
Nothing gives me strength like your fragility.
It's like being told you are a poet and suddenly owning up to it.
It’s like the first time you are trusted with a pet;
the transition to when it's no longer a novelty but now a constant in your life that, you need to keep ...alive....
I thought it but never meant it.
Like that frisson of regret you feel when the moment to say a word has passed and it shall never be again…
that delicate sensation when you feel something so foreign that your brain goes into a foggy denial of the existence of a thought…that shall not be…
Then on an evening, ripe with the anticipation of a fall,
while you're sipping an exquisite glass of wine,
it bursts into the doors of your senses
and brings you to your knees
with its effortless beauty.
You watch it dance in front of you,
gracefully across the floor
like silk dragged on smooth curves
planting a soft, subtle kiss on your neck,
your wrists,
your chest…
And with its beauty,
the uncoordinated limbs and disharmonious incoherent physicality
no longer seem hostile.
A thinning heart she says, gets pricked by all the thorns in the world…
and you know it is well on its way when I can no longer look into the eyes of George, or Nigel, or Kasandra, or Edith.
The beautiful thorn of a life lived, either to the fullest,
or the life barely lived: sitting in a corner looking up at me with bright eyes too big for his bony face,
while I pour a handful of change in his cup and with it, a few melting pieces of my thinning heart.
The beautiful thorn of grandeur, when it was meant to be in the making of the coffee
or the sweeping of the leaves or the stillness of a painting…
One day I will turn 60 years old
and I will become her.
My childhood memory of her beauty, when it was constantly mentioned and admired:
The smell of her powder, her perfume, the dark red lipstick, the Nivea moisturizer, and the type of gum she always used to buy.
Before I was tall enough to no longer look up to her...
the moment when I found her old clothes fit me now, the sense of pride I felt the day I was told I look a lot like her,
the moment I realized she is becoming smaller and I am becoming taller,
the sadness when I heard of her heartbreaks,
I've known her for many years.
And I know I will know her for many more lives. I gave up trying to keep her out of my thoughts and writings and lives.
And as I breathe in and out in a rhythm foreign to my soul, away from her,
I understand what I was meant for.
She is the wise, beautiful one who feels, and I will live to be a hundred years wise and beautiful and live the grandeur she manifests in her smile.
