I.

The invitation that came from Ilumigen to the Court of the Celestials last Friday was surprising and welcomed. To be asked presence in the Enchanted Forest is a great honor. With neither an idea of what to expect, nor persuasions to visit a locale that may remind me of recently failed faerie tales, I went ahead and headed north of the border; to the land of milk and barley, honey and homies: The Lothlorien of the Vespertines.

The Enchanted Forest was intimate that evening. I was a mere hobbit lost in its dense woods, but I found company with Ilumigen, the midnight mist, Athednae, the bearer of truth, and Jaceun, the young sprite. Later on that evening the Gemini of Coriolis, the keeper of Knossos, and Lustern, the oracle of orbits, arrived, imbibing our conversations with their dynamic presence. Finding no Middle Earth, I was initially reserved, a silent spectator. It was awkward, it always is, finding rapport with a new crowd, knowing that they’re held at such high esteem by Ilumigen. I wanted to be respectful of the company. Their lively banter and affectations, and shared narratives weaved the filaments of the Court of Celestials' enduring camaraderie, loyalty and friendship. I felt humbled, and yes grateful, to be in their presence.

But soon, I found myself jovial and conversant. Sharing stories and sentiments, perspectives and propositions with the Court of Celestials. The vibrant laughter of that evening could only be heightened by the breadth of the topics we covered. I discovered that the Enchanted Forest was no mythic deciduous thicket, clandestine and sublime, but a welcoming tropic, varied and symbiotic. And I was a seed, nurtured and welcomed by its rich humus of acceptance.

A few hours later, the vessels laid empty across the table, we found ourselves drawing the evening to a close. Thanking Athednae and Jaceun and bidding them farewell, and agreeing with Coriolis and Lustern that it was too brief, we concluded with warm embraces and appreciative anecdotes. It was swift, yet saccharine. One cannot help but be moved.

To the Court of Celestials, my deepest thanks. May the Enchanted Forest remain as verdant and vigorous.


II.

With the evening’s infancy and our spirits elevated, Ilumigen and I decided to walk. Prying the path that lead to the clearing of the woods, we found ourselves recounting and revisiting the events that transpired that day. How the coming eons seemed amorphous and full of potential. Establishing the lessons we learned from our own histories, and the wisdom it imparts on how to nurture the future into fruition. Fears were shared, and abated. Options were laid out and assessed. We both had decisions that tested our convictions, but the dialectic proved that possibility and commitment can go hand in hand. That by pursuing what one wanted, and doing what needed to be actualized, we can create our own possibilities.

Our bond was renewed and fortified, in the light of La Luna, and in light of his new moon.


III.

“Are you going home?” Ilumigen asked.
“I don’t want to. Not yet. My body is craving the faerie ring.” I replied.
“You should.”

And I did. With him as my companion, and my keeper for the night, we took the swift winds to the west, where the shores intersect with the shades. Shortly, I found myself in the place I used to call home. My former dominion of segues and séances, of alcohol and allure, where my body was my voice, and the music my muse.

I knew that soon Ilumigen’s pace will change, and his situation will become different, his company becoming a rarity. In a way, it too was a last hurrah for him. A homecoming for the prodigal son, and a farewell to the longtime resident. The homecoming was bittersweet. His path will digress to seek happiness of a different brand, while I am faced with the taste of a drug I used to be a recidivist of. He was evolving, I was atavistic.

His pedagogical guidance briefed me of the situation. The faerie ring has changed tremendously. It seemed almost unrecognizable since my last foray into its embers over half a decade ago. Yet it was also vaguely familiar. For I too have changed. Gone is the physique of a shaman, the posture of a sprite. But the thirst for its mused meanderings was reincarnated in this weak shell, unwavering and voracious. Although I am but a shadow of my former self, Ilumigen reminded me, that it was still me. Beneath this form, this body, this present, it was still me.

So I danced.

And without meaning to, beyond my own volition and discretion, saltine tears started flowing down my ample cheeks. Like an ode to a bygone era, an acknowledgement of the pain of our long hiatus and sore yearning, I welcomed the faerie ring a new man. A different man. The god of gyrations now a mere mortal, human in all its vulnerable repercussions. The distanciation of time and oblivion now cleansed. I embraced the dark and dank, the smoke and mirrors, the anarchy and euphoria, of the dance macabre that lured me before.

Once again, I was as faceless as the crowd, singing cantatas of the carnal with every heave of my wholeness, and only Ilumigen would attest to the cathartic calisthenics of my own conception. Yet unlike before, the objective was different. The dance was not a mating call but an affirmation. The jive was a gesture of acceptance, rather than an invitation to the illicit. As the night wore on, the faceless crowd morphed and evolved. Each warm body seeking another for warmth, for bearing, for affection, sifting and shifting they began to pare and pair, creating pockets of unions. But I stood my ground. I needed to heed the call of my soul. Three curious souls attempted, and I willingly accepted the invitation to match their rhythm with the beat of my bends, but they soon grew tired of my stamina and detachment. One by one, one after another, they searched the ring for a requited and receptive romp. And I persevered.

It was euphoric. Holding my vessel of poison in one hand, and caressing my landscape with the other, I painted panoramas of space synchronized with the sound of the bass. The beats melded into mutated silences, punctuated by semblances of music and mayhem. And in those short syncopated silences I lingered, nestled in the bosoms of my hermitic hell. Sweat pouring down my garb as the morning approached. Ilumigen stood watch as I lost myself in the effervescence of the faerie ring, becoming one and none.

It was past the witching hour when we decided to leave. As we found our way through the throngs of drenched bodies, I couldn’t help but smile at each of them. An acknowledgement that went unrequited. But it didn’t matter. I had my fill. And I claimed that small real estate of the ring like I did years ago, in a different life. I did, and still do, dance to the beat of my own drum. And that night, my drum beat with the resonant confidence pent up and bottled all these years. An assertion of individuality, a profession of my humanity. The need to explore, to feel, to be lost, and be primal. The thirst to suspend the movement of time, into increments of notes and beats.

It may take a while for me to return to the ring, I still question now if I was already ready to partake in the bacchanalia again. It may be soon, or may not at all. But this I know, something within me was awaken that night. A glint of the divine. I only wish that when I do return, I would be with a partner before its gates. One I own, and who owns me. And we would create beautiful music with our bodies. But for now, it sufficed.

To Ilumigen, I am indebted. And elated.




Image from here.

In a room with no walls, where light is felt but not seen, a child slumbers peaceful. Lying in fetal and strewn across crumpled heaps, he dreams lucid and exquisite visions. Blanketed by a quilt of dripping parchments, and scored vellum, of gaudy canvasses and soiled newsprints, he is kept balmy. There, here, in this space of nothingness he can exist oblivious to the enmities of the world, devoid of the encumbrances of being and of becoming.

Hidden in a labyrinth of exotic sikats as intricate as Marrakech, in forgotten dunes as distant as Petra, across mountains of pallid barrenness, this room lies. From its window of twigs and emaciated leaves, an ocean heaves immense and amorphous. An infinite lullaby of waves and foam shower his deep eyes. Moist from the winds that playfully tussle his locks, the child awakens and begins to hum a faint melody imperceptible but there.

An aria begging to be heard. An incomplete tune seeking impervious ears.

The melody, vague and foreign, is unintelligible. Fragments of lines and thoughts, cryptic and dense. Their sounds a crescendo of fibrous tapestries luxuriant and unfinished. He persists, perseveres, with the guttural imploring of a fallen angel, a castrati. A dead language unspoken, unheard, unlamented.

Lachrymose and stirring, this fecund melody is swept by the winds. Sublimating into the ether of his eternal sunrise. Glaring and resonant across the expanse of this nothingness. His voice becoming the scape, the sand, the sea, the serenity.

Yet he remains in this place, somewhere, nowhere, his Neverwhere.

Image from here.

Narratives are revised,
to fit the new story.
Familiarity I realized,
is a choice and a query.

The melody maybe different,
the tone and timbre and rift.
But the song is persistent,
it's as if I never left.



Image from here.

As far as the eyes can see, the void is simply that – a void. I’ve been in that void before and forced myself to adjust. And now, finally, I end up where I began, and I’d better get used to it. No one will weave dreams for me – it is my turn to weave dreams for others.
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South of the Border, West of the Sun
Haruki Murakami
2000 Vintage Books

A concluded book.
Its closure beautiful and poetic. Rich in imagery, laden in metaphors. The conclusion optimistic, a vindication of truth, a hope regained.

A coupled rediscovery.
The tale of serendipitous love, of a promise and a hope that challenges fate, daring it, to negate the infallibility of a bond afforded by circumstance, but cemented by choice. Two stories, two hearts. Of a sunrise that threatened a departure, and a sunset heralding a reunion.

A welcomed conversation.
To remind oneself that to be human is to be social. And that establishing rapport requires vulnerability, honesty, and sincerity. That to speak, entails to listen. To explain, allows one to be questioned.

A novel narrative.
A new tale to empower the suspension of disbelief. A perspective congruent but inequitable. The brevity of truth, and comfort of humility. An appreciated new voice.

An epiphany.
That beauty exists in the senescence of our existence. Its passing, cyclical and catalytic, allowing evolution to progress. The choice of whether to embrace this senescence or deny it, spells the difference between somnolence and salvation.

Naoko,


To say that I don’t miss you would be a denial of my own awareness. Each moment passes with a palpability that reminds me of a reality we lived. The gaps of my fingers lay like barren chasms in that divide that separates us. My cold skin, remembering your touch, aches during frigid evenings. My nape, swollen from the last breath you exhaled. My lips, parched from a hunger that knows no satiation. How I held you between the sheets and caressed your mind with mine. How our bodies filled pages of poetry, entwined and elegant.

But they are precisely what they are, moments. Pieces of a puzzle missing its center tile. Lost and frail memories effervescent and distant. I do not fear the day that these memories would sublimate to oblivion, only because I know that that day will never arrive. Your words, how they inhabit my consciousness like foreign urban paths. Menacing and familiar, dark and comforting.

Ironic how it ended where it all began. Along chaffed streets lit by dull lamps.

Looking back, there were moments that foretold of an impending dissolution. My ignorance birthed not from the poverty of awareness, but through the conduit of hope that maybe it is transient, and we can weather these chinks in our own little world, hermitic and substantial. Yet, we were beautifully flawed, you and I, perfect in our imperfections. And what we shared were attempts to satisfy fissures that previously had been dormant. It was surreal, and incongruous, how one can discover another so moving and consuming that you question certainty, thus unwillingly inscribing expiration.

I won’t question the veracity of our relationship, I know enough to know that during that time it was real, and sincere. Genuine and exquisite. But truth shifts indecisively and fate weaves her sword swiftly. Emotions waver, beliefs questioned, and soon the disparities that we have vehemently kept at bay resurfaces to remind us that to be with someone, we must first be complete ourselves. To be whole first, before we can offer our wholeness to another. We cannot share what we don’t possess.

To ask you to stay beyond what your heart expresses would be selfish. To say that I will await your return would be equally unfair, to you for the burden, and to me for the tedium of helplessness. And to encumber you with such an onus is a servitude that you never wish to obligate from another, for someone who thrives in free-spiritedness, and to concede myself to somnolent anticipation would be an obscure reality to live for someone who dwells in vivid contexts.

I prefer to leave with the optimistic thought that our parting is but an intermediary. A farewell to your journey of discovery. To find the answers that you sought, and did not find with, and in, me. That maybe, by this action of liberty, you’ll find the pieces that will suture the interruptions. Whether or not those pieces would lead you back to me is inconsequential, I am happy to be a humble catalyst, but know that I wish you the fortitude to seek your specific invention, not by the decisions that define your circumstances, but by that catharsis of being who you should be, or at least knowing and acknowledging it. And achieve the balance of pathos and ethos that I myself pine.

Koori once mentioned how you longed for someone who can passionately move you to implosion, that overwhelming intensity boundless and radiant. Who can make you quiver by the sound of his voice, or misty by the touch of his fingers. How I longed to be that someone. Maybe I was, for some time. Maybe I lacked, too, that missing piece, essential and elementary, that lead to an unfurling, and ceased me from being that singularity.

So here we are.

I could easily conjure a myriad of reasons why it led to that misty evening. How the heavens seemed to wail, echoing and reverberant. How it felt like a defeat that begged for closure. A formality. A finality. So that you can progress, and I, simply continue. The silence that bound us contemplates the evanescence of that moment. I suppose too, that maybe the glint was too seductive we failed to discern it was cubic zirconia. Or that zeal distorted perceptions, and fed incoherent dreams. But the reasons would be irrelevant, truth remains that the decision was never mine to begin with, and by that act of exclusion you have asserted your defiance, questioned our pact, and negated my opinion.

Even now, I could still recall distinctly the innocuous details of our time together. Possibly due to an inherent memory acuity, more plausibly from the palpability of that period, for we latch on fervently to memories coinciding and defined by emotions. To assert that I was unhurt would be too couth and condescending, besides being a lie. But I also contemplate the possibility that what I possess and command is unparallel to what you yearn and concede. That possibly my predilection to logic and comprehension may have been too intense for my own good. That by the simple act of comprehension, I culled issues you meant to clandestinely ignore. That by my empathy I have unearthed semblances of a history you wished to rewrite. I cannot apologize for my own nature, but I would offer my acknowledgement that your salient points do hold water, to some depth at least.

In languor I would be reminded of distinct moments endemic to our narrative. The impatience to hold my hand on our first date, that lead to our first kiss. The thrill of our brief and illicit encounter at a café’s mezzanine toilet. The tranquility of your inebriated slumber upon my chest, whenever we were out drinking with your friends. The anxiety of us both when I introduced you to my friends. The surreal conversations we had whenever we found ourselves in Kabuo district searching for a place to get nasty. The luminance of your irises whenever we discussed our interests. The reassuring way we seek each others’ hands, and the audacity we held as by walking joined in-palm. Those leisurely nights at Martoa when all we had is a few hundred to spend. The simplicity of eating at Ba-ga Mashin, all the while holding hands. It seems infinite, those moments, and I would be inconvenient to specify all. But each one so distinct, unique, exquisite that their imprints reside in me with such adamantine completion, and to expound on would be a soliloquy you might find exhaustive.

Yet there they are. Moments immortalized in my frail heart seeking no validation, and demanding no warrant. Licentious may it be to have expressed them here, but it is not my intent to enumerate, but rather to elucidate. That I hold each of those moments precious, as remnants of our lost treasure.

I find no fault in the progression of this plot. I wish not to seem like an actor, portraying scenes to exact a reaction. I have no audience. I still am that chap, mesmerized by the poetry of your existence. And bear no resentment in your allowance to share that succinct serenade with you. I needed the distance to process it, empirically, to allow the truth of your absence to descend in my pool, so my heart could get accustomed to it. The sensation of your physiognomy embedded in my skin, factual and faint. And hope maybe, in that slight chance, I too have left an imprint in yours.

I long only that my being allow me to retain these traces of you. So that when fate beckons my heart to unlock once more, your memory may have enriched me with the wisdom of erudition.


Toru

We won't say our goodbyes
You know it's better that way
We won't break, we won't die
It's just a moment of change
All we are, all we are
Is everything that's right
All we need, all we need
A lover's alibi
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OneRepublic
1996 Dreamin Out Loud
Tim Myers, Ryan Tedder

Image from here.