Wednesday, May 03, 2006

"I am a landscape," he said,
"a landscape and a person walking in that landscape.
There are daunting cliffs there,
and plains glad in their way
of brown monotony. But especially
there are sinkholes, places
of sudden terror, of small circumference
and malevolent depths."

"I know," she said. "When I set forth
to walk in myself, as it might be
on a fine afternoon, forgetting,
sooner or later I come to where sedge
and clumps of white flowers, rue perhaps,
mark the bogland, and I know
there are quagmires there that can pull you
down, and sink you in bubbling mud."

"We had an old dog," he told her, "when I was a boy,
a good dog, friendly. But there was an injured spot
on his head, if you happened
just to touch it he'd jump up yelping
and bite you. He bit a young child,
they had to take him to the vet's and destroy him."

"No one knows where it is," she said,
"and even by accident no one touches it:
It's inside my landscape, and only I, making my way
preoccupied through my life, crossing my hills,
sleeping on green moss of my own woods,
I myself without warning touch it,
and leap up at myself--"

"--or flinch back
just in time."

"Yes, we learn that
It's not terror, it's pain we're talking about:
those places in us, like your dog's bruised head,
that are bruised forever, that time
never assuages, never."


- Zeroing In by Denise Levertov

Beautiful isn't it. I find pain beautiful. I find struggles fascinating to behold. It captivates me because the fragility of the human soul is so piercing. To feel something deeply, something that stirs your heart. Its always accompanied by something more troubling just beneath the surface. It never comes alone; the stray strands of connections that wanders in and out of the consciousness. When you feel a prick, you cannot deny it. You cannot see blood and look away. You are worked up to a point of emotional wreckage. You are led to a road of self-discovery that branches out quickly without stopping. One thing leads to another. It works like a catalyst of destruction and honesty. There is no way back on a landscape that belongs to you and you alone.

You come close to me but you never really reach me, the same way you linger upon a general meaning of a certain poem but can never fully substantiate it towards absolute certainty. You leave with indelible impressions that are not right but neither are they wrong. Maybe I meant for you to have them. Maybe you arrived at your own conclusion which shatters and gathers simultaneously. I leave little traces of hints and confessions. I play games whether I desire it or not. I believe we all do that. How do you say, "Let's not play games with each other" when even those very words suggest the possiblity of another game? It is only natural to be suspicious and to create barriers around yourself. You build a relationship with a person and you communicate and trust each other over time. But you can never really know if you are on the right track because most things will reveal themselves only in the reflections of the past which cannot be undone. People change. Circumstances change. Different routes are embarked upon and people begin to lose themselves into pockets of places and memories. You can never really know if a mutual understanding has been established. A voice when heard holds a thousand different possibilities. Every word said or unsaid, every look implicit or explicit, triggers a thousand different possibilities. It's like a lock with a thousand different combinations.

I know I will make it hard for you. I know I might or might not do it deliberately. I know I can only offer you pieces of me and leave you to decide if it is my sanity or my insanity which gives you the best answers to my personality and intentions. I know I will want to draw you nearer but I will want to push you away as well. I will hold back and I will open up depending on so many other things and I will watch you do the same as well. I might hurt you. I might be hurt by you and cover it up for the sake of pride or instinctive forgiveness which I give as easily as the air I breathe. I might reveal your weaknesses or strengths and manipulate them to protect myself, all the while acknowledging that you might do the same as well. I might lie to you the same way you might lie harmlessly. I might drop all pretence and you might never realize it. There is too much confusion and there is too much mystery. You might try to keep things simple but you know as well as I do that you are not who you claim to be. You are who you have grown accustomed to become in front of certain groups of people. You change your masks the way you change your identities from student to friend and you do it so convincingly you might have convinced even yourself. The paradoxical nature of the human condition. It makes me feel even more lonely and afraid.

Perhaps that's the reason why I believe in God. To seek solace in the comfort that there is someone up there, a higher greater being, who knows me through and through. You can be weak and you don't have to say a single word because He can read your heart and your thoughts. To be transparent in such presence, you have the warmest sweetest belief that you are safe and that you are loved and accepted for who you are no matter how hideous you are inside. To be able to wipe away the shame and the past mistakes. To know that miracles can happen. To know that nothing is impossible. There is such power in the mystic which transcends all harshness of reality to provide a hiding place where you can rest and rest deeply undisturbed. It doesn't matter what others think- whether God really does exist or not, or whether this whole thing is simply just romanticized bullshit. What matters is what I think. What matters is whether it fuels me to keep running and fighting my battles and inspires me to live my life.

I ask only for a little spark of optimism and hope. I ask to have the courage to fall to pieces. To have faith. To trust. To be honest. All in the midst of shadows of self-doubt and fear and paranoia, to hold on a little longer to what is deemed inconceivable.

3 comments:

QM-pest said...

Heh. I think Mrs Gan will be shocked to know the effect the poems has on us. Haha. Take care girl!=)

Faith said...

haha... she would be very pleased indeed.

Anonymous said...

i so so so feel the same way