Saturday, February 27, 2016
SPRKS IN CSF: Japan-images, fuzzy yet may be clear
SPRKS IN CSF: Japan-images, fuzzy yet may be clear: As the dawn creeps along on the tail of fading darkness, I lay somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. Some images come floating by again....
Japan-images, fuzzy yet may be clear
As the dawn creeps along on the tail of fading darkness, I lay somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. Some images come floating by again...vivid, more bright, full of life than life itself.
I connect these and recognize the dots, the dots of fire that dance all around me, flickering,little tongues and comma-shaped worms ...all curling up along the wall. The repeated theme of my nightmares before I was even four...nightmares that came with my birth, pieced into my awareness , may be even before birth. I would call out and some-one get me down from my be,or soothed me. they were there even before I learned to stretch and crawl up the steps at my grandmothers house.
They stayed even on the day I heaved myself grasping at the hard cement step, holding to the edge of the stone that jutted out a little, enough for my tiny fingers as I hauled up scraping part of that four year old abdomen.I had scampered after my grandmother as she went along to feed the goat somewhere under a low tree.I followed her foot steps that stayed as fleeting depressions on the wet grass.I followed these depressions gingerly as I wanted to see her awed joy at my new and unexpected ability..
Jewels of the first dew drops smiled at me and at the morning sun that peeked through the leaves. Fear had stopped me briefly as I neared the top of the stairs...the vast expanse of the universe in front looked scary and different from all my previous reference points. As I climbed that last step the yard seemed smaller yet big, but an attainable expanse. I had brought along my friend, invisible to all others, talking to him,the encouraging words and looks keeping me busy and with that courage I had made that epic climb.Of course he would become very quiet if any body came by, but would look at the adults and blink the eyes to tell me to be quiet. The only exception was my gandma, some-times..
When finally I caught up with my grand-ma she had that surprised look...for "there i was...indeed"...both of us excited about -growth catching up.
Despite all these landmarks , the nightmares came. They came nearly everyday. My invisible friend could not do anything...but just watched, powerless.
I never really understood then, nor paid much attention to those dreams for most of my life, those nightmares stayed in the back up stack of memories...until I visited Japan. As I walked through Hiroshima, there was one picture by someone who had seen it, the horror, the awful depth of the horrors at some far off time...
He had seen it and lived it...My nightmares , exactly as I had them, so exact, so clear,yet he drew them, lived that ,with no way to escape ..... The flickering glow of fire worms, against the gray orange of the days, the all enveloping heat and the hazy orange gray of evening.... I used to wake up screaming "puthan, poothan' , then I could hear a jumble of conversations as a faint murmur of sounds , and it just repeated night after night
Then as I walked out to the park by the river it came, as a vision , the recall merged into something I could not express...just profound fears next to past horrors..the fear of water in my little river where the ground shifted, algae that felt to my child hood mind as grasp by hands,all pulling me down.I had tried to tell my mother,she just said" it is just algae, it cannot catch you or pull you", all matter of factly.. My fear of that algae was so extreme, that I could not step in without checking for the green algae in the water,but I loved the river so, yet feared.I understood that feel of silt on the quite side of our small river which I had tried to describe to my cousins as they wanted to play in that part...tried telling them how it felt like people, like a doughy yield of skin,but they just laughed and splashed water at me. I stayed to my safe area where the gravely sand was never soft,but cushioned my feet pressing gently against my tiny arches,my tiny feet.
In the park I sat on a bench, thirsty,parched throat that refused to be hydrated despite the water and milk tea...
The stone lanterns in the park, the carved stones- there it was again, what I had obsessively drawn,tracing the outline,despite the annoyance in every adults' glance. Finally my grand-mother bought me a slate and slate pencil,so I could draw with a clean washed surface each time as the pictures filled up that board. Yet it remained the same picture..over and over. It was one of those lamps in silhouette....I had forgotten about my constant drawings until I saw that lamp , just as I passed by it that evening.. my children stared at my tears and were concerned, rightly so....then it all came to me as a flood of memories, all locks broken, from some unknown past pieced into my present life...
It had never crossed my awareness that rebirth may be possible, but now I am not so certain. I do not have clarity about my imaginary friend, but one was by me all that time...may be still is,or will come...The nightmares are still vivid in my memory, so is the feel of the algae and the silted riverbed. I can close my eyes and feel those, same feelings. They rushed through my mind again this morning as I moved into wakefulness,thus that uncertainty has taken form and spilled out as words.Now that it has found some clarity,the disquiet has calmed itself again. In one sense I only belonged to my grandmothers house, yet the only other place I felt happy and really that same sense of belonging was just in Japan. How can I explain that sense of "not quiet right" even when I build a home, even through the many countries I have been to and yet never felt 'I know the place, that I was fully part of it in any way', with a disquiet, a longing...
May be this is where my affinity for Buddhist philosophies came into being-or may be it was there all along waiting to get out into my conscious thoughts,despite another religion that enveloped me always, that I have passed on to my children, along with some life principles that I strive to ...I will never know with certainty,will I? Instead I will continue to course through life trying to cause the least damage all around as those principles advise......
I connect these and recognize the dots, the dots of fire that dance all around me, flickering,little tongues and comma-shaped worms ...all curling up along the wall. The repeated theme of my nightmares before I was even four...nightmares that came with my birth, pieced into my awareness , may be even before birth. I would call out and some-one get me down from my be,or soothed me. they were there even before I learned to stretch and crawl up the steps at my grandmothers house.
They stayed even on the day I heaved myself grasping at the hard cement step, holding to the edge of the stone that jutted out a little, enough for my tiny fingers as I hauled up scraping part of that four year old abdomen.I had scampered after my grandmother as she went along to feed the goat somewhere under a low tree.I followed her foot steps that stayed as fleeting depressions on the wet grass.I followed these depressions gingerly as I wanted to see her awed joy at my new and unexpected ability..
Jewels of the first dew drops smiled at me and at the morning sun that peeked through the leaves. Fear had stopped me briefly as I neared the top of the stairs...the vast expanse of the universe in front looked scary and different from all my previous reference points. As I climbed that last step the yard seemed smaller yet big, but an attainable expanse. I had brought along my friend, invisible to all others, talking to him,the encouraging words and looks keeping me busy and with that courage I had made that epic climb.Of course he would become very quiet if any body came by, but would look at the adults and blink the eyes to tell me to be quiet. The only exception was my gandma, some-times..
When finally I caught up with my grand-ma she had that surprised look...for "there i was...indeed"...both of us excited about -growth catching up.
Despite all these landmarks , the nightmares came. They came nearly everyday. My invisible friend could not do anything...but just watched, powerless.
I never really understood then, nor paid much attention to those dreams for most of my life, those nightmares stayed in the back up stack of memories...until I visited Japan. As I walked through Hiroshima, there was one picture by someone who had seen it, the horror, the awful depth of the horrors at some far off time...
He had seen it and lived it...My nightmares , exactly as I had them, so exact, so clear,yet he drew them, lived that ,with no way to escape ..... The flickering glow of fire worms, against the gray orange of the days, the all enveloping heat and the hazy orange gray of evening.... I used to wake up screaming "puthan, poothan' , then I could hear a jumble of conversations as a faint murmur of sounds , and it just repeated night after night
Then as I walked out to the park by the river it came, as a vision , the recall merged into something I could not express...just profound fears next to past horrors..the fear of water in my little river where the ground shifted, algae that felt to my child hood mind as grasp by hands,all pulling me down.I had tried to tell my mother,she just said" it is just algae, it cannot catch you or pull you", all matter of factly.. My fear of that algae was so extreme, that I could not step in without checking for the green algae in the water,but I loved the river so, yet feared.I understood that feel of silt on the quite side of our small river which I had tried to describe to my cousins as they wanted to play in that part...tried telling them how it felt like people, like a doughy yield of skin,but they just laughed and splashed water at me. I stayed to my safe area where the gravely sand was never soft,but cushioned my feet pressing gently against my tiny arches,my tiny feet.
In the park I sat on a bench, thirsty,parched throat that refused to be hydrated despite the water and milk tea...
The stone lanterns in the park, the carved stones- there it was again, what I had obsessively drawn,tracing the outline,despite the annoyance in every adults' glance. Finally my grand-mother bought me a slate and slate pencil,so I could draw with a clean washed surface each time as the pictures filled up that board. Yet it remained the same picture..over and over. It was one of those lamps in silhouette....I had forgotten about my constant drawings until I saw that lamp , just as I passed by it that evening.. my children stared at my tears and were concerned, rightly so....then it all came to me as a flood of memories, all locks broken, from some unknown past pieced into my present life...
It had never crossed my awareness that rebirth may be possible, but now I am not so certain. I do not have clarity about my imaginary friend, but one was by me all that time...may be still is,or will come...The nightmares are still vivid in my memory, so is the feel of the algae and the silted riverbed. I can close my eyes and feel those, same feelings. They rushed through my mind again this morning as I moved into wakefulness,thus that uncertainty has taken form and spilled out as words.Now that it has found some clarity,the disquiet has calmed itself again. In one sense I only belonged to my grandmothers house, yet the only other place I felt happy and really that same sense of belonging was just in Japan. How can I explain that sense of "not quiet right" even when I build a home, even through the many countries I have been to and yet never felt 'I know the place, that I was fully part of it in any way', with a disquiet, a longing...
May be this is where my affinity for Buddhist philosophies came into being-or may be it was there all along waiting to get out into my conscious thoughts,despite another religion that enveloped me always, that I have passed on to my children, along with some life principles that I strive to ...I will never know with certainty,will I? Instead I will continue to course through life trying to cause the least damage all around as those principles advise......
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