Strange Love

Strange Love

“Run!” She said.  

“Run like you haven’t run before. Run till your lungs clench your heart and your heart swallows the water from your mouth. Run and don’t stop till your limbs are not yours rather, individual states fighting for independence from the tyranny within and outside their kingdom of anarchy.”

He had stopped trying to make sense of what she said, these days. Literal meaning was never her modus operandi and the more he tried to make sense of it, the closer he seemed to reside within his palace of temporary pleasures and comfort zones. Her presence had always been known to him but acknowledgement of her conversational presence was relatively young. He still remembered the series of first timid steps towards her which snow-balled to colorful missteps of adventures, uncomfortable predicaments pinched with a wonderful sense of rambling bliss.

That. That, he figured was what scared him often. Often enough to run behind the curtains of restricted consciousness at the slightest hint of trouble. This was how he had also handled life for a long time that is, until he met his first band of gypsies. But that’s a story for another day.

These were the kind of private conversations he afforded himself when he felt she was off discovering her secrets around the corner. However, he knew he was not alone, even for those fleeting moments she was always there, encouraging, urging, protesting, rejoicing, exclaiming the sweet release of everything he held sacred and all, which he abhorred.

Chaos.
In my face.
Around my being.
All over my senses.
Infusing, Imbibing, Mutating.
Chaos.

Childhood comprised of corners laced with portals to a multitude of worlds. As he was tantalizingly hooked on the printed words oblivious to the ‘life’ unfolding around him. His Parents always worried that he would ruin his eye-sight, if he read so much under the dim lamp, not that it mattered much to him. There were stories to be told and adventures to be had and he wanted to experience them all. They were however quite glad that this kept him out of trouble and considered him to be so well-behaved with the small but significant exception. These exceptions which were accompanied with earth-shattering tantrums towards the privilege of devouring the birthday cake irrespective of whose it was. But these were aberrations and in this culture of ours, a silent child is a good child. They still looked back at that phase in time with a smile and a teary lump.

She was back. Bounding and skipping with cart-wheels of explosive colors, ideas and wonderful epiphanies. These epiphanies never ceased to excite her irrespective of its scope, depth or implications on life. A life they were not entirely sure as to which shade of grey, it belonged to. It never occurred to her rather, she chose to ignore the fact that she may not have been the first to stumble upon such ideas, or that this was all a process of life. It didn’t matter one jot and he loved this about her, loved that no matter where they were or what they were doing, this was living, this was the world and this was the universe in all its glories and black-holes.

He often wondered of the exact moment when he became aware of her presence. The exact moment when he made that step to acknowledge her; what led him to that? Was he sad, happy, non-committal, bored, apathetic? All he could recollect was her presence. He felt she had always known and had bid her time waiting for the moment, for the opportunity, always believing that while his consciousness ignored, his subconscious knew.

Melancholy.
Cloudy Shiny Rain.
On my once-dusty parka boots,
Puddles of forgotten childhood abandon.
Slip in a hole, a friend to the flood.
Melancholy.

She was a myriad of colour, a kaleidoscope of orgasmic emotions. She was his darkest demon and his guardian angel. She was the music in between the breaks of the story that she whispered and the dance they danced knowing they were one and yet separate.

Life wasn’t always easy with her though. Their hushed conversations, while loud enough to shake the foundations of every belief, tended to spill out catching an unsuspecting passenger off-guard. He could always side-step the awkwardness of that raised eye-brow with a laugh and slapping his forehead followed by a joke of early-stage Schizophrenia or an invisible friend that failed to move on with age. More often than not, it worked and the stranger appeased whilst they laughed in hysterics.

He loved her. He’d had a few bed-warmers in years gone by and there were a few relationships that had completely bewitched him and made him believe of a heaven in this life. All the while, she had rejoiced with him and cried with him as they eventually returned to the soil like a garden of lilies. But, she was there and in time, they knew they would be okay. For, his loss was her loss and her epiphany was his epiphany.

She was his best friend and she was the other side to his coin. She was him and he was her, he had always loved how he could see the other person’s point of view and while it made it difficult to have a point of view at times, it was never considered too big a barrier.

He loved his imagination and it was only appropriate that she grew from residing in a part of his head to metamorphosing into his entire being and loving him back. She would always be there until the moment he breathed his last and smiled that one last smile while they shared a cynically ironic joke that they were convinced, no one had ever thought of before.

Shanti.
The rising sun.
Orgasm of color and splendor.
Everything will be okay,
with New dreams and Old hopes.
Shanti.

But for now, he must ‘Run!’

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This is the story of a young man not too unlike myself who lived in the clouds, printed words and his imagination. It is the story of a shy young man, who eventually realizes the existence of his greatest gift, how it metamorphoses into an entity (she) and his acceptance that while he may be alone, he'll never be lonely.