Daily Mantras and Such

virgin-white snowflakes softly glide down, I grit my teeth, burry my mittened hands deeper into my coat pockets, look at my reflection on a shop display window to see how red my nose looks, not too red I see and smile. As I stand there and wait for the Q-38 bus, which only on its weak moments, runs on schedule, I slide my gloved fingers through my hair and ruffle it further, as I always do, to master that unkept, unruly, look…in this trying age, when people have something against traits they were born with and find chemical manipulation trendy, when synthetic pink takes over forlorn black, I have decided to present myself on private as well as public spheres, exactly the way I appear, when I completely unaware of the ways of this world, snap out off my bluish slumber. My way of coping! Resisting! Protesting! Rejecting! Looking away! Thank you very much!…

Near the curb this mom-daughter duet, laugh away the evening; in the smoky, barren cold, their giggles permeate the misty ambiance, like rain thudding on a tin roof, their bodies respond to their chuckles and quiver, fluttering like a butterfly about to be clipped and displayed in a glass box. They snuggle, all comfy under the same coat, dazed from all that Christmas shopping. The all white monumental Santa with the ever lasting smile glued to his mug jingles his bell transfusing his old-man’s charm…his white beard points to the white snow…I take off my gloves to agitate this virtuous whiteness..I add some melanin, tad novelty to the achromatic tableau..I smile to an alienating satisfaction. A leather jacket clad chirpy man light a cigarette, Marlboro red I notice, towing a meshwork of dislocated memories, some of them that bear no relevance at this time and place; evoking fractured recollections that take little jabs, at a time, when I have become a responsible adult, in a place, that is far away, leading a life, that can be called sane, unlike then….

… those night-blabbers crept into day with Swiss precision. I would draw the blinds unleashing the creamy yellow light that would blaze in, making us squint…us, the entire bunch….it was like the lights coming back after the last show in the theater downtown. After every show, we stand outside the theater, cupping a coffee mug, marooned in the blackness of the night, and say, “has it been this long?”, just like that, even back then, awe struck, as if the simple twist of fate failed us, we would blurt out at the streaming light, “hey! morning already?!” ….tricky were the puffs off a freshly lit Benson, the faded yellow of the filter, now faded yellow memories…nostalgia is sometimes too lucid..almost like chunks of sugar cradled on the crook of a spoon, delicate-sweet, dangling, vulnerable to touch…arent memories supposed to be abstract? less vivid? distant? bygones?

We grew up on a weekday, no? perhaps not, weekdays are too busy for anything else, it was probably a Friday with the promise of a leisurely weekend…I failed to notice when 'the sac of tales' spilled, the bubbly narratives plummeted all over the snow capped ground, which savored the last breath of our stories. The suggestion that, the patch work of stories that so many people, so many generations, so many races knit, had an end, escaped me..… it was supposed to last a lifetime, a lifetime of childhood, I didn’t know it could be any other way, I am sorry…And now only when we go under, at the bottom of that ground, we can get glimpses of that time, get our stories back, stand corrected.... okay, so yes, the apple was too tempting, the forbidden alluring, while eating the fruit I wasn’t guarding the sac...but later i heard that on that very day, in some faraway land a collage of colored mirrors broke into many-hued fragments, casting a bad-luck that would not leave us….…we were cursed for life? with an adult life? Too big a price to pay I tell you….and no repentance in our time? too big a price again…