‘Letter’
And there it came, like a far familiar cry from long ago. You hear it, you turn you head, not knowing if it is in your head, boring at you, telling you that it’s time you go to sleep, or if it is really out there. A voice so familiar and yet so distant that it could be from within you. You heard it, once, and never again. You strain your ears, but there is nothing but its muffled echoes in your head. Slowly it recedes into silence, into oblivion.
“We’re all going to die,” she said, “So what’s the use of living?” You didn’t know what to tell her, but you knew she was wrong. Somewhere deep inside you knew she was dead wrong. It couldn’t be. Somewhere deep inside you just knew that it is nothing but the interim between two long silences after all. But that cry, that short resounding cry, makes it all worth it. You just knew she was wrong. And you knew that all she was saying was “Hold me. Hold me tight; never let go.” That’s all she wanted; that’s all she cared for. For really, after all, that’s all that mattered. And you knew it.
And then the third movement begins, begins with an old familiar melody. It transforms, it twists and turns, and writhes and convulses on the floor beneath your cold view. And then it returns, its same old familiar self, as sweet as ever, but faint. And it passes in front of you, and you, you just look on in bewilderment and amazement, you just watch it go before your eyes. It doesn’t bother shut the door; the door is as good as shut in its absence. And yet till now you can still close your eyes and see its glow reflected at the inside of your retina; a halo, a spectre, nothing but a ghost. A ghost that is nevertheless just as real as you are.
So that is how I am, and that is how we are, and that is how we continue to be, a persistence of memory and forgetting, a harassment of songs, images and oblivion. You continue in me when you lose yourself, and I remain in you when I no longer exist. And yet on the way we become strangers and one and the same person, even when we look in the mirror and no longer recognize each other. For the persistence of memory is all that matters, as much as we ignore it.
I am fine, and not fine, and exuberant and ravaged and exultant all at the same time. I am nothing and everything and all and nothing in vacant repeating cycles, and you and I and him and noone once and again. What does it matter? What does matter? I don’t know. I know nothing but the silence I sink in when I know I know it all.