in the wake

She woke once again from a deep sleep and lay with her eyes closed for a few seconds, savouring that warm feeling. Then she became aware she was awake and felt a second's utter confusion, for it didn't seem like she had been sleeping. As the seconds passed, reality seeped in and her eyes fluttered open. At the same moment, she realized it had happened again--she had had one of what she called "those dreams". She lay for a moment staring vacantly at the cupboard, trying as ever to recall a single detail from the dream. As always, her mind was blank; and as always, she began to wonder if she'd even had a dream. Perhaps she'd just woken from a very deep sleep. Yet the memory of that deep sense of contentment in the moments after waking remained with her, along with a feeling of loss, as if she had forgotten something very dear, and forgotten that she's forgotten.

These were happy days in her life and this sense of loss was odd and slightly upsetting to her. It was a strange way to wake to days that she looked forward to starting, busy days, full in themselves of happiness and beauty. Why then, the sense of loss? On days like today, she wished she remembered, just so she could get on with her day. In the past, when life was very far from ideal, those dreams were both dream and curse. She would wake from them and feel that heavenly sense of contentment, and she was sure she woke smiling--probably the only time in those days when she smiled. And then consciousness would seep in and she would feel as though she had fallen with a thump. Getting through the day would seem like such an unpleasant task, she would just want to roll over and return to that dream--if she had dreamt at all. But even then she would push herself out of bed because the sense she had about that dream was that it had been a glimpse into someone else's life, someone so different from herself as to be from a different country, a different culture.

Some mornings, she fancifully toyed with the idea that perhaps she actually lived another life, one that began in a different world when she slept. Though she had never recalled a single detail of those dreams, she always had a feeling that she was waking from a full life, a pleasant life but a life completely different from the one she woke to.

Now she spread her hand over the empty space next to her on the double bed, stretched and got out of bed. And as ever, the dream and all the strangeness it brought her many mornings was forgotten, never to be thought of . . . till the next time.

 

liminal spaces

You approach the mirror, sure that when you touch it, your hand will ripple through it like through water and touch someone else, someone who is not you because they cannot be you. You are sure of this, very sure, and yet... You hesitate to do that, to put your hand forward and prove to yourself what you know. Instead, you stare at that person who stares back at you unblinkingly.

You note the hair, the lips, the hands hanging limply and feel the tingles go through your arm. The reflections are too different, too other to be your own. Those are not the hands you see and use everyday. That hair is not what slides through your fingers when you are tired. Those lips... You quirk your own just to see what it does and yet desperately avoid noticing. You jerk your eyes away in time and end up looking into the eyes.

The eyes... And now two moments blend, fade in and out eerily as you see yourself for a moment and then the stranger until the power of the eyes make you breathless and you want to look away and can't but you must...

In sheer desperation, frightened of something--yes, for you are frightened and the ridiculing of your fears will only come much later--you reach out your hand and slap it on the surface of the mirror. Whether your hand goes through or not suddenly seems immaterial. For whatever it is, you are trapped.

we<-->me

The longer I live, the farther she gets from me. I lived with her once, constantly. Then she drifted and became an ideal I would reach one day--and that day, I'd feel successful and whole. But days pass and I doubt she'll ever come back to me. I begin to wonder if I can live with just me, without her to give that meaning, that hope of redemption some day. Slitted wrists and melodrama tempt and yet can never be.

She is dead. That confident, gregarious woman. Though only I knew of her, she was still as real and tangible as the summer sun. I mourn her as a dear, precious friend, now gone forever. No one mourns beside me, for the world never truly saw her. I skim through her past and her thwarted future, but it's painful to look through it and despair at the futility of it all! Melted dreams and disappearing hopes now remain like scattered debris from a happy picnic that only lives now in sepia-mind-photographs.

within

She floats in the fog, drifting… a whisper through a world that isn’t quite real. The fog is so cool, so comfortable – it crept up so slowly on her that she didn’t notice it. And now it consumes her existence and yet, she still does not notice, for she can’t remember a time that was free of the fog.

The fog is a light blanket, pressing against her nose, her ears, skin, eyes, it muffles her senses. It isn’t unpleasant. Oh no, it’s quite wonderful, actually. Wonderful to not feel too sharply or think too deeply. She used to think that most of the problems in life came from feeling too intensely. She doesn’t need those emotions to define her existence. All she needs is… anything that leads to nothing. Like the fog.

Sometimes, she feels the panic. There are sudden feelings of oppression when she lets herself forget her own assurances or remember the before. But even the panic isn’t sharp and intense – the fog doesn’t allow that. The fog, her best friend. It is more of a vague anxiety, a nagging worry. Yet she knows, intellectually, that it is a panic. In these times, she desperately misses those unnamed and unnameable concepts, those ideas whose names she’s forgotten. She cannot be content or secure in the fog, which suddenly seems to fill itself with shadows that even she—a whisper—can see, and feels vaguely frightened.

But these panic attacks come so rarely and go so quickly that she hardly remembers or cares. They hardly cause any thinning in the ever-thickening fog.

(Nameless... again)

She stood at the edge of the cliff, looking down. Still, motionless. The waves moved forward and smashed themselves on the rocks so far below, with such force that she could taste the salt against her pale lips. Her eyes drifted to the calmer part of the ocean, the indescribably diverse shades of colour–green blending into blue, into grey. And all she saw was the ocean, the sky. All she heard was the sounds of the waves and the cawing of the birds around her.

She wondered idly why she saw nothing more, felt nothing more. Surely she ought to have some great, deep thoughts about the beauty, the loneliness and the sheer power of it all? Every human before her, every one of them who had stood where she now did, must have felt some sense of awe and wonder. After all, didn’t the poets find eternal inspiration from the sight of the sea? Didn’t they write endlessly on everything from despair to hope to hatred to time, inspired by this very sight? Who could count the number of artists over time who had tried, to their frustration, to capture the sheer vastness of the angry ocean on canvas, to freeze a moment of the grandeur for all eternity?

Why, then, she wondered. Why wasn’t she moved to any emotion but quietness… A sense of simply watching? Nothing in her stirred, nothing about the vista before her spoke to her soul. Just the thought seemed vaguely ridiculous to her.

She had noticed this about herself before. She was so often baffled when people spoke of grand passions, about being absolutely taken over by emotion. She had no idea what they meant. For her everything was even, smooth, like a well-pressed silk cloth without a single blemish. Her emotions, like her voice, were well modulated, without great variation in frequency.

She must be what they called “cold hearted”. Her mind shied away from the thought. Surely not! She did not like the sound of that. She had always heard such people being spoken of in the most horrified tones. To not have the heart filled with emotion, brimming with love–or hatred–seemed pathetic and unnatural. Surely she wasn’t either of that?

Now, she remembered as a child that there had been something different about her. A feeling inside that had made her–different, somehow, from what she now was. But she had grown up and lived her life. And a normal life it had been too. No great tragedies or agonies to kill that spark inside. And she realized now that it was dead. Strange that she had never noticed the loss. It has crept in on her slowly, silently, yet inexorably.

The fact that she was able to stand here and feel nothing–absolutely nothing–bothered her suddenly. Was she really dead inside? Something inside her whispered insidiously–yes!

She stood at the edge of the cliff, looking down. The waves moved, suddenly seeming hypnotic. She knew that a cold, emotionless life was surely not worth living. What was the use of being human, of being alive when the soul was dead? Wasn’t she just a shell, insignificant? A lifeless piece of driftwood swirled along by the whirlpool of life, caring neither about shores, nor jagged rocks? Surely it was better smashed against those rocks, far below?

Yet she stood still, motionless. A step would send her plummeting into the ocean, into oblivion. But she realized that such a thing was beyond her. She didn’t feel the despair… No traces of emotion strong enough for such a step existed in her. And even as she contemplated it, she didn’t feel fear at the thought. A strange, detached fascination with what would come after… but she did not need to discover that today.

Shrugging off what she considered temporary insanity, she stepped back… turned… and walked away.

...

As the water enfolds me like a cool sheet, I feel the day's heat and exhaustion recede and melt. I abruptly forget strokes, kicks and other details as I sink in and just let myself float. Behind closed eyes, I can almost imagine staying here forever, with the body incredibly light and just floating, adrift, with water-deafened ears creating a sense of peaceful solitude. I can imagine being the only soul in the universe, or even a small part of a great, living, breathing universe. Was this how I was a short 18 years ago, floating in the serentiy and security of the womb, unaware of the world outside, suspended in a liquid reality where everything seems far, yet so near? Where you can never be sure of proportions, yet this hardly matters?

My eyes open and I am transformed again... Everything is blue or green, floating, insubstantial, in a world that is never still. This somehow seems real or even closer to reality than a world above ruled by gravity, weighed down by rules and unbreakable laws. Here, anything is possible. I can almost imagine an ancient, primitive ancestor floating and moving through this waterscape with ease, gills or some primitive organ drinking in and effortless limbs propelling it through the water. How did I reach this far? The gills are gone, the limbs are changed and all those memories are gone. But perhaps here, suspended, the mind remembers, some primal part of us remembers and yearns... the mind wanders, meanders into other places.

Suddenly I feel a bump against my arm and I rise to the surface, breathing deeply, blinking away water... and more... from my eyes.

Do you know the muffin man?

Do you know the muffin man?

The muffin man?

The muffin man?

Oh--the one who lives on Drury Lane? Yes... I do know the muffin
man.

It may be noted that some of the greatest secrets and conspiracies of the world are hidden in the most innocuous of places. There are millions of theories such as how a certain building is symbolic of the chaos that man lives in; or a certain painting of a scenery is actually symbolic of the artist's maiden aunt's nose which had an ugly wart on it. While these theories range from the profound to the ridiculously ridiculous, the fact remains that sometimes things are not always what they seem.

The same applies to the passage quoted at the beginning of this post. For the animated movie savvy, I hardly need to mention that it is from the king of all cartoons, Shrek. This particular dialogue is innocent enough (unless you consider the ginger bread man being tortured with milk by Lord Farquads goonda not very innocent... but that's another story.) Anyway... it is, I state, quite an innocent scene. On first viewing it, one may be mildly amused or like me, laugh like a loon for an hour. But a disturbing insight has come to light.

The muffin man they speak about, is in fact, a secret code word. Or rather, a secret man. Er... that is to say, the muffin man leads a secret double life. By day, he's a jovial, fat little baker, baking away runaway confectionaries but by night... Ah yes, few people know of his night shift duties. By night, he becomes a different man. He becomes a shadow among shadows---except for the fact that he is an oddly yummy-smelling shadow. He becomes the defender of the defenceless. He becomes the protector of the... protection less and the upholder of justice, and to blatantly plagiarise a particular movie, he becomes an all-round good guy.

Not that he's a bad guy during the day. His muffins are well know. He is peerless in his cakebaking abilities. His baguettes are to die for. But somehow loses favour among women--they say his food is too tempting and too fattening. But he strives on, everyday, baking away.

But it is at night that his true nature revelas itself. Armed with a frying pan and another lethal weapon--his blender--he roves the areas around Drury Lane, scourting the street for crime. It may be noted that the police are pretty good at this themselves and so the presence of a super hero proves redundant, rendering the muffin man into a slightly insane looking figure. But remember, it's the thought that counts!

The muffin man is often made conspicuous by the absense of any particularly great super powers, unless of course you, like me, have tasted his chocolate gateau and think it's a super human preperation. But he is still a super hero because in his heart he is one! He does have a constume which unfortunately does not fit anymore due to a weakness for his own preparations. He is still a dignified figure though (or so he would have us believe.)

To add to his good deeds, he also takes customised orders like giant ginger bread men, gingerbread houses, etc.

So, the next time you want to strike fear in the heart of a villain, walk up to him and whisper in his ear Do you know the muffin man? (Using a menacing tone while doing so might help.)