the times of fast foods and slow digestion..

Times when the world was flat and we weren’t so sucked into the concrete instead we had muddy feet and bicycle rides making tracks down memory lane, now the taillights of our cars are rampant in various directions, none leading towards a place I call home.. And once they are off I’m left in the dark.

Breaking mirrors and staring at the back of steel plates and silhouettes of the past that refuses to leave our side, a hazy picture meanders at the back of my head. Not exactly a ghost of unfinished business rather the comfort of that smell of old times spent, taste of fresh earth that we struck once in a while, the memory of loved ones cooking ‘my favorite food’, the yells that had strong undertones of love rather than rage. Childish longings, I have come a long way from pigtails and scarlet ribbons adorning them, but the craving for the non material simple things in life... the magic that ceased to be magical now, the fairytales on which my dreams were founded, the rush I got running in circles escaping the ‘lock’ hit,
All over the horizon.

Walking in my slippers trying to trace back on that silk route, along the way I realize the quote “there's no place like home,” doesn’t hold true, but rather that there is no longer such a place as home except, of course, for the homes we make, or the homes that are made for us anywhere and everywhere, except the place from which we began. I have become the fallible adult; the world has grown into me, over me, taken me by a wave of materialistic needs onto the shore of wants, far from the redemptions of those childhood dreams. Im now a part of a world where things we see with our own eyes we doubt, instead conspire behind the peepers to believe what is beneficial instead of the truth, where people sell emotions for a promotion and tackle their families with tact and manipulation. The celebration of the familial bond that binds us is passé. Now we spend our life accumulating things we call ‘assets’ and fussing over them, to earn a place on the social ladder, we care too much about the ‘society’ than our conscience; the intricacies of a family gathering today mite as well become a synonym for ‘business time’.

Solidifying the fluid emotions..
“We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little,
drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too
little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our
possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and
hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to
life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but
have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer
space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things. ”--Bob Moorehead.

and then came hope..

From your memories, sad brother—from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,
From under that yellow half-moon, late-risen, and swollen as if with tears,
From those beginning notes of sickness and love, there in the transparent mist,
From the thousand responses of my heart, never to cease,
From the myriad thence-arous’d words,
From the word stronger and more delicious than any,
From such, as now they start, the scene revisiting,
As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,
Borne hither—ere all eludes me, hurriedly,
A man—yet by these tears a little boy again,
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,
Taking all hints to use them—but swiftly leaping beyond them,
A reminiscence sing. "
— Walt Whitman (Song of Myself)

Why is it that we cant put the past away, everyone likes to take a stroll down memory lane and think about the life that was, there is an aspect of our spirit that is historian, a bit of a pedant who reminisces or remembers things that were. We all are bombarded with the clichéd thoughts of ‘What it all meant’ clashing the curvatures of our heads until the brain hemorrhages and the train of thought sooner or later gets derailed and we act on the trauma and head towards the jar of memories stored in brine safely kept away till this moment struck. These thoughts are sometimes constant like the patterns of dust on the butterflies wings, only when the wings flap swiftly do the patterns stick on..

Talking about things that fly and jars..I think about Pandora and the jar she opened which let out evils in the guise of horrid brown winged creatures..She let them all out first but she shut hope in the jar until she let it out the second time

In a time when the air was pure and balmy, and sickness and evils unknown she went ahead and opened the jar...Similarly in times when life is good I feel the need to walk down memory lane, open the jar of memories stored away...Thinking maybe, just maybe the second time around I would find hope.

“Hope...which is whispered from Pandora’s box only after all the other plagues and sorrows had escaped, is the best and last of all things. Without it, there is only time. And time pushes at our backs like a centrifuge, forcing us outward and away, until it nudges us into oblivion."
— Ian Caldwell