My Elements

I am blind and insensible to many things, and dimly know it, but to all that was light and air, perfume and color, every droop of blood in me responds. I love the roughness of the dry mountain grass under my palms, the smell of a flower, which I crushed in my face, the fingering of the wind in my hair and through my cotton shirt, and the creak of the twigs as they swayed to it.

If I could, I climb up a hill and sit there, or lay there if I want to – alone for there pleasure of feeling the wind and of rubbing my cheeks in the grass. Generally at such times, I don’t think of anything, but lay immersed in an articulate well being. Today, the sense of well being is intensified by her joy at escaping from the realm.  

I am blind and insensible to many things, yet dimly know it, but to all that was shimmering in the vast starry universe, dark blue and pierced in little sub creations of joyful miracle, every sinew in me vibrate its chord. I love the vast preset and sinking feeling into the nothingness of infinity. The smell of chill in the air, the elevation of my soul in romantic densities, the caressing of the dark in my countenance, so pure, so elegant, it makes me burst into some non-entity of beauty.

If I could, I will fly high up to the night sky and land among the stars, or sometimes, reach for the moon.  See what’s out there and come back to my stool, in the terrace with my pillow in my bosom, hugging it tight, smiling, and beaming, with heart full of love to the cosmos. Tonight, this dream has come into being and I believe that nothing could really destroy me if the stars guide me in every way.

I am blind and insensible to many things, yet dimly know it, but to all that was sweet-smelling and enchanting and bewildering in my shelf which exudes all kinds of ideas and romances and words that spill in every corner of my room, I am at ease. They are my angels in the morning, my beloved in the night. They never leave me alone, keeps me company during the loneliest nights.

If I could, I will let them envelop me all over, so that I can absorb them – every little letter they expel and sink into them, graze my teeth and just cherish them. When I open them, I no longer feel dull and insignificant. I am a heroine; I am important and indispensible to everyone’s happiness. The same thing never happen in my life and such tragic fancies makes me want to just die in their presence. This is how I feel, melancholic, dramatic, but this is nothing but pure truth.

I am blind and insensible to many things, yet dimly know it, but to all that was mellifluous and enigmatic and love-bound chained in my ears which induce every kind of emotion in my lifeless soul, with lyrics honeyed like poetry in motion, with melodies as dumb as a dumb lyre – it has chained me into a force.

If I could, I will open up myself in music, lift the notes up into my lips and bedew them with kisses. The impossibility of such a fancy is nothing but a flake in my imagination. I have involved myself to their pretty poetry and smooth rhyme and witty play of words. I have uncovered every dose of riddle in each line, and read between them and recoiled into this tuneful person with depths and rises of a songster, rivulets of tears in my cheeks, and laughter hidden deep within the creases in my sleeves.

But to writing I am all but naked. For last year’s words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice. This is my only way to understand the world, to be intimate with things, my only participation in what is real, my engagement with voices and images. This is why my poems and letters and writings speak both of ideal life and of actual life. These words, I hear them and they are like all other words, ordinary, breathing out of lips, moving toward you in a straight line. Later they shatter and rearrange themselves. They spell something else hidden in the muscles of the face, something the throat wanted to say.

These are the things I am. These are the things that define who I am. For I am a tortured mess, repressed now by the imposition of ponderous stupidity, the weight of the entire world. But I suppose I love this life, in spite of my clenched fist.