Saturday, February 5, 2011

Why Love is Blind

A professor once told me that there are two ways in which you can interview someone.. as a miner digging deep in search of facts and truths and lies and as a traveller, floating by, in search of a story.. nothing else.
I used to think there's a bifurcation possible; that one can be either of the two and that one MUST choose.
But I think it's really 'me' vs. 'everyone else' now. When I tell my own story, I flow. I create. I remember what I need to and want to and forget all the rest. I travel without a map or a planner. I travel for the sake of travelling, illuminating each and every corner of my being.
But when I listen to another, I feel like I'm stretching. I don't know that topography. I don't know the weather there. And I want to be safe. So I ask questions that have 'right' and 'wrong' answers. In other words, I find excuses for not travelling.
I'm both a miner and a traveller. What you bring out in me depends on how I see you, therefore.
It's a bit like the Sun and the Moon really.
At night, you don't mind travelling to the realms of the impossible. Dreaming. Believing. Taking leaps of faith.
But it's daylight that exhausts you. You open your eyes. You begin to see the loopholes. The crevices. The obstacles. The 'not-worth-it's. Suddenly, everything has a name. They catch you red-handed because the light shines and they KNOW it's you.. they KNOW it's red. And they THINK they know what it means. Yes, memories of the night hiss below the surface as they let the past interfere with the present.
What would you not do to be sure?
Maybe. Perhaps. Wonderful, wonderful words.
Why do you want to see everything? What about the sense of touch? Why can't you feel?

What If God Were One Of Us?

They named her after Durga, the Goddess with ten hands and a reputation that makes her uniquely Bong, or so I believe.
There's something distinctly hazel about how she makes me feel as I walk into the classroom. It's a bit like her hair and her eyes could very well have been black, but she holds them back.. so much so that they fade to brown. Uncertain whether to declare themselves.
Her earrings make me nervous. Rings, that remind me of my childhood.
Thin rings of gold which glitter in the afternoon sun and threaten with how pure she claims to be.
I used to think she's stuffy and organised to a fault. I used to wish she left her seat more, danced more, ran and never stopped. That was before I came to know about the divorce.
Blink and miss. A quiet end to her surname on those immaculate, laminated brown paper covers.
I could think that it's rude of her to sternly push away a classmate who wanted to ask me a question (about how Sports transformed Jesse Owens' life).. just because she had got to me first.
I could scold her or make a moral out of the episode and bore her to death.
I chose to laugh instead. So that I'm with her, on her wavelength.
And so that she laughs too.