He feels like standing in the street and crying shamelessly. The darkness, the denude seems to be shadowing the light that is failing and falling over the evening. He is sitting before himself. This other is many years older than him. And they are talking, but he is not really listening. His ears are closed with wax. He is somewhere in between the words. He tries to summon him to come back from this gap and listen to the conversation. But he refuses.

These are layers of memories that are being dug. And there is no purpose to this digging. Perhaps as the light falls all that remains of the day is memory, another knocked down building added on top of what already is there. And as the layers add up it almost seems impossible and futile to add another to take it’s place the next day.

He is going on now, in circles. He lost track of what he was talking about in the middle as something, a new tunnel perhaps came up in the digging and he followed it. He tries to recall when these things happened, was it a few years ago or many decades ago? The scale of time seems entirely meaningless in the long view. He is talking of someone now entirely new. Who this is he doesn’t know. But he doesn’t stop him to ask. He lets him talk; he lets him be alone with his memories. He has his to be alone with.

He is speaking of something that happened many years ago. Someone had done something very funny and he laughs. But he only wants to cry. What a strange predicament! He notices that the only conversations that he seem to be having about is the past, he is really only talking to his memories. Is that all that is left? That seems to be a hopeless proposition and he can’t quite accept it. But is this what will happen to him eventually as well? He shivers at that thought. Perhaps this is what was the problem was in communicating with her.

She said sometimes she noticed he wasn’t present at all and that she was frustrated about having to talk to a wall. She doesn’t realize that sometime he couldn’t simply take the sound of human voice anymore. His memories were revolving in his head, making a racket and he is beating his head against the wall of the shower till his forehead is scarred. The only other sound is that of the shower and water going down the drainpipe. He is calling out to her, his mouth a grimace, a silent moan. Who is she and why does she never come?

art by L.H

In opposition and sight, two women reflect each other. Or is that you alone, Who is going forth and turning back, from the unnoticing him?

You meet her at the court square. The rain, which had been falling all day, made the night fall early. She is disgusted, her mouth is hard and she walks with her fists bunched up. You hug her and try to kiss her mouth. She turns her face away, saying no not now, not here. You say but I haven’t seen you in so many days and I have suffered. She says this cannot go on.

She feels trapped and she wants her freedom back. You would give it back if it was a book you had borrowed from her to read. You don’t say anything but look at the statue in the distance. She sees you have looked away and turns her head to sees that you are looking at the statue. You had passed by it many times before without noticing it till she pointed out to you. This was before she lost her freedom somewhere.

You sigh and say what do you want me to do? She closes her eyes and says I don’t want all this. Does this mean the talk you had at this statue about wishing to grow old together like that old couple cast in bronze? You say she has always been free to do whatever she wanted and make whatever choices she wants to make. She looks at you as if you didn’t understand her at all, which of course you didn’t.

You know she feels responsible for your need for her, responsible for letting your need for her happen. You don’t know how to flush yourself of this need but you have been struggling with it for a while. You say what can I do to help, to make you feel better? You know that there is nothing you can do to help her. The choice is hers to make. And based on that choice, the suffering or joy is both of yours to bear.

She says she didn’t know that it would come to this. What is this? This meeting on a rainy evening? This whirlpool of emotions which seem to be sucking both of you in? She says she talked to her friend who had advised her to first sort out her priorities, determine what she wants from her life and not compromise with anything till she finds exactly what she wants. You say that is what you also believe in but you wonder how this is different from being selfish? Is freedom then a selfish instinct? You have no answers, you only have been talking about freedom, or as he said preaching the freedom gospel.

That’s why you have come to this country, haven’t you? You had termed it escape, in your poems. Escape from all that you said. Only now you are beginning to question, what is that you have escaped? You have answers on the surface; oh I didn’t want to waste days trying to access a printer as it was in that damn country. It was also suffocating and tribal. You had enough of that. You wanted to jump into a crucible of intellectual creativity and set the world on fire. You didn’t know the crossing would also mean heightened loneliness.

You say mournfully fine do what you please. Perhaps you should listen to what your family says and cut this off. She says don’t drag them into this but yes they think I am being foolish. You say yes they may be right, because you see those equations on the board as well. You are poor and still are a nobody to a large part of the world. You haven’t proven yourself. You also have fallen into the habit of flagellating yourself with her words. She says you don’t understand what she is going through. She hasn’t slept for more than a few hours in the last 48 hours. You hold her hand. What can you do? Can you take her place at the hospital so that she can sleep? Can you learn for her? Can you take the pain and suffering, this young girl with cancer, that woman who was infected by her former husband with AIDS, this color of blood from a gunshot, that junkie who has shit all over himself and can barely speak, instead of her?

These individual sufferings, how to make them vanish? You want her to be playful but how can you expect her to be playful always? She is also like you, a human being. She says I just want to have fun. She says she doesn’t want to deal with all the concomitants of this relationship. She would like to do her work, learn as much as she can and occasionally go out on random and fun dates. Is this a comment on how she views being with you? Or is she just being brutally honest? This cuts you to the quick, you flinch but don’t say anything.

You think if that is what she wants to do, she should do that right away, perhaps even this evening. You are sure she will find enough entertainment. But is that which is entertaining satisfying? Doesn’t what is satisfying have to be entertaining? How does one know the difference?

You talk to him and he says you are full of noise. You should let her have it, have this disgust and anger you are feeling. He says you should cuss at her, call her right away what you might call her later in your own mind. He says you don’t have to take this shit. You know you want to do what he says and that you will feel better if only momentarily. But that won’t give you any answers, won’t give her any answers. You have been seeking answers like a madman, but you always stop short of being desperate, being institutionalized.

Later that night you pick up Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet and read … “be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves… do not … seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will… gradually without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”