Where the lost things go

Mary Poppins was a wonderful movie. It took me to a place where the lost things go. It reminded me of why I was called Peter Pan by a friend so many years ago.

In the middle of life, I grew up somewhere, some time, and I lost perspective of the things that mattered.

Friends and siblings have grown up. The conundrum is that I look for independence and maturity in people I choose to build bonds with. I look down upon the ones who don’t think, who hope extensively. But I’ve also realized, especially when faced with people who are alien to emotion and responses based on the heart, I do not think that they will be happy in life.

I set a lot of score in things that have no real tangible source of happiness. A good wad of cash gets good things that are wanted, tangible, things that can be touched and – perhaps even loved. But these things, along with the cash, do not really matter, in the end. We are human beings – unfortunately – and we need love and we need the succour provided by the Other.

Death becomes final, if there is no love. Memory makes the person immortal. Experience and history are what carries you into the future, into existence forever. The poets and the writers and the painters tried to capture this into art and transcribe it into the tangible. I have known people who have moved away from sensibility and into sense, but I have also seen them despondent and eventually, I have seen them float into the sphere of feeling, sometimes unwittingly, sometimes deliberately and sometimes, fighting tooth and nail.

I have seen how sense takes flight and sensibility takes over, with a vengeance. It is almost as if she wants to wreck love with a violence. She seeks to punish, and she feels it is right as is her wont. But I have dealt with emotion my entire life. I grow weary of her. Sense has come to me while sensibility has been told to wait in the corner. I haven’t discarded her. I just wanted to talk a bit with her sister. It is as Mary Poppins says, it is the time between the dark and light. And sensibility hides quietly.

Some people I loved died, and some, tragically, have grown up. Yes. These elite have no need now of sensibility. They haven’t just taken a break from her… or so they like to think. They wish to do without her. They wish to draw boundaries. They wish for rules. Lines. Space. Independence. Finding themselves. But they do not realise that sense isn’t the only thing that will lead them to peace and fruition.

I know that when my child died in the middle of my home, she left for good. The floor she lay on is just a floor. The home she breathed her last is just a house. Sense asks me to know that death is final. Dreams are dreams and fears are unfounded. But somewhere from the dark within, sensibility whispers, gone but not forgotten. Trust, she says. Love, she reminds. And I turn to the dark, searching for the place where the lost things go. And I trust and I love and find her in me – sitting right next to Peter.

Fangorn

‘When winter comes, the winter wild
that hill and wood shall slay;
When trees shall fall and starless night
devour the sunless day;
When wind is in the deadly East,
then in the bitter rain
I’ll look for thee, and call to thee;
I’ll come to thee again!’

Since the past two days I have been feeling sick to my stomach and generally in a state of being low. The nation is gripped right now in the turmoil generated by two brutal incidents, of people, by people, against people. I followed them as most do in the news, but sometimes the cases aren’t one of many, some speak to your jaded humanity, they make you move out of the darkness that experience and tired wisdom have harboured. They shake you and that cocoon of grey that has covered your life as you grow into not wanting to believe in blacks and whites. Sometimes, the mantle of lassitude brought on by the intellect is shaken from its own self-imposed fatigue and you are pulled up by the collar and shaken and shaken and shaken.

It’s an age-old metaphor I have fallen into. Having tried to reject the world’s problems –
because of all the inanity and cruelty that I have seen in it – the world tells me that she isn’t quite done with me just yet. I feel like Treebeard. I have lived and I have seen and I do not want to participate, but here comes Merry, frowning and demanding to know, “you’re a part of this world, aren’t you?” And I, as Treebeard, am stunned into empathy – something that I do not want to feel anymore. But I must.

I call onto my partner and speak about how I see his community, and my partner reacts by calling onto mine. We both stand offended. And I realise in that moment, what it means to be divisive. What it means to stand on the pretext of religion or faith or family or love or revenge and believe our actions are justified. If we love each other so, and even so, mention a divide and stand affronted, what if we didn’t know, or worse, disliked the other. How quickly could a warmonger get to us… will it be just a matter of time before we descend into violent thought or violence, or will our sanity and erudition prevail?

Am I so different because of the education I received and the Masters I earned? Has education created my mindset or was I always prone to open ended thinking? Was it my upbringing? My experiences? What I was told or taught? Am I rational? Am I emotional? Am I now being divisive?

I lost my faith and my hope over the course of 2013. I felt bewildered and lost. I looked at the cruelty of nature. I tried to understand it. Then I looked at the mean attitude of the justice system and was let down by those who are supposed to be unbiased and fair, within the confines of structured society. But then I learned that life, of course, isn’t fair, and never promised to be. We like to think we are civilized, but civilization is just a very thin veneer that can be torn down in a matter of seconds… Of all the times, I believed I felt ten times the fool. If I moved from humanity to animal welfare, I shuddered at the deepening futility – for if eight-year-old girls aren’t spared torture, rape and bludgeonings, how and in which tattered aspect of this society could I find a hope for an animal?

Humanity is hungry for blood and in so doing, has lost out on being humane. The ones who preached the word of tolerance, restraint and forgiveness are now part of a small mythology that no one seems to acknowledge. As I grow, I have no anger left in me to be passionate, I have no hope left in me to wait for justice, I have no conviction left in me to stand upright. Everything is grey now. Everything except love.

The thing that stands out in books and movies and themes and music – it does linger. The paradox is: the horror sets in because I can still love. Love makes me empathise. What if the girl was someone I loved? The horror of those four days. The confusion. The pain. The smells. The terror of knowing and yet not knowing. The utter horror. And then the horror of knowing that the ones who are capable of this terror did not feel the horror themselves. Did not feel the pain, did not understand what it means to be human.

The mind cringes. The heart wilts. I am lost.

“I do not like worrying about the future. I am not altogether on anybody’s side, because nobody is altogether on my side, if you understand me…” But something has to give. I cannot be Treebeard and wait to rally others and wage war on Isengard. I cannot be Treebeard and let the fires of Isengard reach the ones I love. But one thing I know for sure: “The world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air.”

‘When winter comes and singing ends;
when darkness falls at last;
When broken is the barren bough,
and light and labour past;
I’ll look for thee, and wait for thee,
until we meet again:
Together we will take the road
beneath the bitter rain!’

‘Together we will take the road
that leads into the West,
And far away will find a land
where both our hearts may rest.’ “

Faith

Faith moves mountains,
They say.

Faith moved me
To be a disbeliever.

Don’t get me wrong.
I wish I could kneel
And look up and say,
I know you have my back;
I could say,
Oh, you know best;
There will be something better,
That there is
A larger plan.

But my children died.
And all I asked was for less suffering.
A little lesser than the last.
Until with the last there was nothing left.

I asked when I believed.
Now I know the blankness.
And the silence.

I’ve seen religion and ritual
Twist me into softness:
Into believing there is law,
There will be justice.
But
There isn’t.
There is silence and sacrifice.

So I choose to turn away
From a fait accompli.

I’m uncertain.
That makes me stronger.
Less kinder.
But if I have given up on
Divinity
Being kind is an anticlimax.