April 12: In & Out of Time

Today began with
Lacan;
my head ached and
brimmed over with
yearning, I wanted
to know and yet
understand that I
could not know;

I grazed the receding edge
of my desire as it skimmed
the horizon; I blossomed
with a hundred realisations
and a hundred brand new
mistranslations;

I was glad,
all in a rush,
to be here, to be
learning these things

that left me at the edge of my seat
full to bursting with the world.

I felt like I feel after conversations
that shake me up, inside and out,
and warm me up like a sea in sun;
conversations with A or with P that
traverse the serrated teeth of my mind
and teach me more things than I can
tie down in language or in image;

I felt like I do after P
plays the surbahar for me
and my skin is at the edge
of an unfamiliar raga
aching and breathing
and feeling as though
I exist, but not here;

as if this time is irrelevant,
as if I could have these conversations
or listen to the tides of this music
at any point in human history,
and feel this same immense
sense of being
alive.

~

Today ended with
me collecting a jarful
of tears that I could not cry
because they were not mine:
listening to Himanshu ji talk
about the plight of the tribals
in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh;

I felt as though my body
were afloat; how could
any of these facts be
real, how could this
reality occupy the same
time and space as I do?

All of a sudden my throat
was aflame, my eyes in pain,
my heart too full with guilt
to feel any other thing.
How to balance these
various stories, these
joys and these realities,
these worlds that exist
at cross-edges and margins
and always push too hard
and feel too far;

how can I live this life
when too much of me
will always be made
of guilt and privilege
that I could not earn
if I tried?

My head aches and
brims over with
yearning. My
conversations
are fragmented
and fierce.

I am suddenly
deeply aware
of being here,
now, the flies
quivering on the
table and the sun
setting in a quiet
arc; my body, here
scripted in so many
lines that I can only
try to read; myself,
now, as real and
alive in this
very time;
as aware,
as fierce
as I can
be.