Wine

Pain can be incestuous; the familiarity it breeds and spouses excruciates instances of impotence. As I write this, I try and lurk in words surreally linked with penned pills. I lie prostrate on wet grass and muddy pools of water, anaesthetized; my stomach on the ground and my right temple playing drudge to a grimy piece of stone. Loud imaginings flit up the sky, like birds which wake up from sleep and gallivant to instinct, expelling dreams inadvertently, before taking to the other branches. And I pen them up; these light, floating thoughts. Heavy, deeper ones agglomerate into a murky sludge – perhaps the heaving in my stomach and the rush in my temples. The feeling dawdles. The sieved residue, black and grey, are out of the rational, and in some irrational way, they silhouette my silence and eloquently border my solitude.

Love or no love, my wedding with words is falling apart. And I fear that I have no courage to envisage such bereavement. But it is not as I wish. Eloquence takes its toll and pain drones on stinging me; it pains to salvage the cost I must pay. I’m merely afraid, afraid that my eloquence will dissolve. Perhaps I am not even maimed. I have never been beaten up. And as I write, I constantly reassure myself that there is nothing to be proved, no judgement to be respected.

I took to a long drive. Photography. Music. Arts. Women. Coffee. Cynicism. Emptiness. Blood. The fear still swivels around the winding annals of my mind. Nothing, nothing in 19 years has swiveled away that fear which grips my mind. I used to measure men with eloquence, and now as I indulge in this orgy of repetition of cumbersome spoonfuls of language, I wonder if I can stop this unlearning, this gradual evaporation, and take to a pseudo intellectual status. I wanted life anew, knowledge slit open and rendered impotent, in a rage for orgasmic freshness. And now I can no longer bear to stay adrift from my haven of words. With seared skin, empty eyes, a loveless beard and bone dry hair, I crave for a revitalizer.

How could I not be in love, now that I have fallen in love with the need to be in love? How could I unlearn words and measure familiar terrains with coffee heaps which I swore never to use?

A I read this piece to myself, I savour less and less of the emanating pain, less of the depth and the eloquence in those vials of chided volatility. I even smile at some lines. None of the exquisiteness and beauty seems to matter. Words aren’t life.

Through curtained windows, I see the child I love engrossed in play. There are days I wake up to see his face. And now, as he wipes sweat away, I laugh a happy laugh. A happy laugh of abandon. I move down to the playground, to watch him from proximity. He waves at me and I smile a smile of love. I pretend to be entangled in a book, a book that I said I love and wouldn’t mind rereading, throwing smiles, parts of which will be visible well outside the book’s geometrical life. Antithetically, I hope to ensnare; I came enchanted. Oh, how I laugh! I haven’t yet learned to love in the open. Watch the child who silhouettes my own childhood in a way not very far from how it should be done. I seem to be certain about many things when I’m around with the child. I seem to know the one way in which my childhood could be silhouetted. The one child I could ever love. A woman who claims to love me calls and I don’t attend the call. I can not slit open this moment of trance. She calls up over and over again. I switch off my mobile phone. I seem to be certain about love. Certain that she doesn’t love me, for I could certainly not love her. I must prepare an excuse to give her, for I lust her. And I don’t wish to go hunting. She fell into my cave, charmed by the little eloquence that I could conjure, and from the very beginning, I have been honest. At least in patches which matter.

The child comes to me, hardly exhausted, and asks me about my day. I do not realize if I’m saying the correct things. The child lacerates all signs of realism from in me. I hum while we walk away to our homes. There were times we’ve had brilliant conversations in the times before, but today I chose to walk silently. Even behind him. He doesn’t demur. His mind wanders too, perhaps. But now and then, he turns behind and I am enamored. I watch him as I would stay sentry to the night’s passing. Gaze up and think my own thoughts. The child connects me to fundamentally introverted parts of me which I would lose otherwise. He never asks me why I have befriended him. Why him of all people. Why this child. He never asks. He asks of trivialities which I remember as if they were facts of significance. But I have asked myself why I do love him. His rationalism, his indulgence, his bohemian self, his brilliance, his way with people, his eloquence at things which I could never quite be eloquent about, his reflection of what I must, perhaps, be, and most of all the spectacle of him talking to people, loving them with love in his eyes. I could never love people. I could never love good things and bad things alike, with whatever certainty I attach to each definition.

Or perhaps it is just that I am more eloquent than he is, generally, or with the passing of those few years that would take him to my own horizons. “Child” I call him. Perhaps it is just those few years in vacuum that I love. Those few years, which will now elapse, along with my own years. Side by side. I will live two lives.

I take him to the nearby restaurant and he doesn’t demur. I sit far away from him, asking him to make the orders, sending him of to the waiter and everything else that would create a crevice of distance. A proximal distance, from which I can watch him and live him. Once I took him to a beach and I scribbled on the sands, quite legibly, to the lady I love and the one who claims that she could never love me, one and the same, “Wish you were here”. She loves Floyd. I had him take a photo of it so I could email her that. He probably suppressed surprise and asked me for who the photo was written. I told him what I thought, without channeling my thoughts to the maze of roads my mind is. Mindlessly, I said what I thought. Perhaps it was what I felt about the woman.

Now, in solitude, I realize that this eloquence that I employ fades by the day; my marriage is falling apart and rarely do I indulge in epiphanies of this sort any longer. I would no longer be able to tell the child what I think. A kind of senility will befall me and I would stay stuck for words. Lost as I have lost so many of my material possessions. Lost from myself. But, perhaps, more importantly, I must break the child while I can. Let him discover that he will, too, lose his eloquence and his grip. Let the fear in me plague the child’s mind, hover around him and grip him, like it does in me. I must force him to unlearn, stop loving and turn placid grey. Sometimes I think this is all I do. Break people. Break children. Because they may break in a more traumatic manner, hurt physically, rendered disable and in conditions which I myself fear; fear more than anything else. Perhaps this is love. Its side effects are a cyst and resistance. End results are fleeting moments of much pulchritude or perhaps, even orgasm. Or may be my priorities are skewed; side effects end results and end results side effects. My impotent self can do nothing to slow down my divorce. I stay sentry to my own heart’s sinking, waiting to pick up the pieces and then do as impulse will tell me to.