And, that's the Thing about Feelings

This post now also features in the Tangy Tuesday Picks at Blogadda. 

Dear You,

It’s been a while since I have written to you. But then it’s also been a while that I’ve spoken to myself. We are sometimes mirror images,you see. I’d forgotten that it is important to write whatever you feel, whenever you feel it. Even when there is a void staring at you; especially when there is a void staring you. Even if it means to write out of that vacuum that you have been in for so long. Because while this vacuum can make you feel special in moments when you may not be so special, it can also make you feel deserted and worthless even when you may be scripting history. But you still write, because maybe, if ever you have the time to look back from the gung-ho your life has become some years down, these moments will smile and remind you in hushed whispers how defining they were, whilst they were disappearing into thin air. So write. 

I have been jogging daily instead of writing, and that’s not because I am suddenly interested in or concerned about my fitness. It’s mostly because I’m trying to maintain a distance, from myself. Distance is good when you get too close to something; distance is good when you want some perspective ; after all, you can never see your own eyelashes. So yes, a distance. To forget what I remember, and to remember again what I’ve forgotten. To mute the incessant chaos in my head.  A distance, from feelings.

But then, that’s the thing about feelings - they haunt you time and again. That they probably never really leave you. The thing about feelings is that the deeper you feel them, the more adverse they get. That when you feel them the most, you express them the least. Tongue tied and a lump down your throat. That they rarely come in a surge, but in instalments, and slowly tread their way to that chord in your heart to somehow make sense at the end of it all. And, sometimes, they don’t. And, sometimes, they are so incomprehensible and yet so strikingly familiar. That’s the thing about feelings; that the more beautiful they get, the more vulnerable they make you. And the more helpless you become. That’s the thing about feelings. That they make you fly and then they drown you. But then there is another thing about feelings - you never return the same, you never return unscathed; but if you can survive it all, you return liberated.

It’s been a while I have felt calm the way I felt it a few months back, in the cold topography of Nagoya where the train started to slow as the track gauge thinned up the narrow hilly terrain. Standing on that lone platform enveloped in the chill made my fingers cold and I could feel a shudder in my legs. Despite the stockings that I was wearing. But there were tiny houses in motley colours across the landscape which was dotted by solar panels, mechanised tractors, modernisation and technology against a bleak backdrop. Some landscapes evoke a certain feeling in you as you stand with your eyes closed against a cold wind and simply smile, for a moment not worrying that the wind is ruffling your hair. It was peacefully quiet. Within and without.

I went to a bar a few days ago. I saw people come in groups and come as couples, ready to sample the taste of the evening. But then, I saw them engaged in their phones, in virtual reality and virtual friends, completely oblivious of what’s present right in front of them, with them. But isn’t that the thing about presence? That it only felt by way of its absence? And one is often pretty late in realising what one wants. Even, what one feels. But isn’t that human? To err? And sometimes, even circumstantial? But then this is life and nothing is bigger than it, and it gives you second chances. You are just one tiny speck of dust in the entire stardust of universe. But you matter. And, for a moment, it's all about this feeling. So write. 

Yours truly, 

Me.