Things Fall Apart

দেখেছি রূপসাগরে মনের মানুষ

কাঁচা সোনা,

তারে ধরি ধরি মনে করি

ধরতে গেলে আর পাবো না...

Dekhechhi roopsagore moner manush

Kancha sona,

Tare dhori dhori mone kori

Dhorte gele r pabo na…

How vain, how futile I have been, trying to capture curves and shadows in a digital camera, trying to sink my finger deep into the autumn sky and revolve and revolve and revolve it until spring. How silly it was to imagine of controllable happiness, of tears welling up and melting away at regulated intervals, of eternal bliss curling up my doorstep through bottomless bonds of domestic love.

Oh fuck!! Oh bloody fuck!

How do I move ahead? How, with full knowledge of self-disintegration into a mass of heavy, unchangeable, predictable, stationary, peaceful lump of contentment? And discontentment? I do not know. Probably, the usual inertia keeps me on the move. It is this concoction of love, repentance, pathos, desire and hope that stirs behind my eyelids every night when I sleep and wakes me up and then again lulls me back to a state of drowsy semi-consciousness. Difficult. Very, very difficult indeed, to be unable to pretend happiness in front of people who want to see you smile, very difficult to be filled with the colorless sky when expected to stare at someone’s eyes instead, very difficult to talk without being able to persuade yourself to enter into a conversation, very difficult to touch without tactile sensations, very difficult to master an encouraging word or two when the sun of undoubted conviction sets ablaze your naked neck and ears.

I do not know what lies ahead, what time has written on a sheet of whiteness and blown away with neglect. I do not know whether I will ever have enough strength to drift away. Neither do I know whether I am blessed with the rare ability to divide myself into distinctly different and well-constructed pieces of one integrated identity, each to be cherished and lived for its own sake even in incompletion.

How inane, how ignorant I have been in trying to find fulfillment for more than a moment. In trying to round up happiness with repeated strokes of a delicate paintbrush. In trying to sew together all the beautiful threads of life. In trying to bring the wilderness of my spirit under the control of an idyllic bond.

I will break free.

I must not die.