meanderings

Coming back home. The mechanical turning of the key is not mechanical anymore. It is simply a turning of the key. Why must one invest it with emotion. Or burden with description.

After a point you realize its just not worth it…you’re worn out of the decadence, the drudgery, the damned nuisance that life has become. The point in time where you’ve tired of the solace that memory has to offer. The day when you wake up not wanting nor working towards redemption. Or meaning. Or purpose. 

Breathing. But that’s all. 

You pick up and spread out that old dusting cloth. And start dumping. Stuff it with all the gratitude, the ill will, the telephone numbers, even photographs - of a time you could recognize yourself, and of later ones when you couldn’t, and the semi-tattered book of ‘thought for the day’ that you’ve been fooling yourself with for years now – and then tie it up and keep it outside the gate for the garbage van. Yes, as a last minute thought, run out and shove the word “deserve” into the bundle! 

There’s more back breaking to do. A broken spirit might not have been up for it, but a deadened one doesn’t mind.

The cell phone needs a new number. Or a new owner. Either way.

The bed will go. Mattress on the floor seems just fine. The bare floor – even better. Your sprawling new bed will keep you ‘grounded’ in more ways than one.

There’s the television. The kids at the orphanage would love a 40 inch Plasma TV with surround sound, 200 Hz motion picture speed, deep contrast and USB compatibility (which none of them may be concerned with, but then again who knows!). The fellows should be here to take it away any time now. When you had been there yesterday, the warden had told you of the tremendous amount of good grace you had earned for yourself. That’s one more thing going into that bundle!

The whiteness of the walls has jaded. There are portions of the cement chipping off and patches of rotting seepage within seemingly empty frames (the remnants of more artistically inclined days). If you look closer, you’d spot the fungi dotting the landscape. Sometimes in the evenings, the flickering lights make it come alive (you really don’t know whether to feel bad for the fungus that needs validation of its existence from a struggling bulb that was never asked if it liked being placed where it was). May be ugly is the new pretty. Who is to say.

There’s a red hope buried somewhere in the much abused (for being unused) thesaurus. Jammed between Pages 228 and 229. Pages that might’ve meant something, but don’t. Today that hope must go as well. Where it belongs. With that one sepia toned photograph. In the bundle.

The books will get distributed, though you have chosen to retain the teakwood book shelves. You look forward to the bare book shelves (without books, would they be just another set of shelves, you wonder). The dust on them will not be cleaned. Layer upon layer shall be allowed to pile up. Until there’s enough to get into your eyes and stick to your face when you blow on it. 

The maid has been given instructions. She is to come this afternoon, so she can take with her all the groceries before they rot themselves out of utility. You will let her take a few utensils as well. Give away some of those clothes, not just the ones you will never wear, but you intend to shut your eyes and let your roving hands pick out a few of your favorites too! She will take the battery operated water purifier. And the wall clocks, even the customized one with the family pictures (though she may refuse to take it, who’d want pictures of strangers in their one room house). 

(Strangely) the Gods will not be displaced. Nor relocated. (Unless divine intervention convinces you otherwise). The music will stay. Whether or not it plays. The marks will stay. Long after the scars have healed. You shall have moved on to another kind of existence. But before that you realize that there’s one last thing left to be consigned to the bundle. So you walk out the door, and to the gate. Look out to see the bundle gone, and the garbage van disappearing at the end of the road. Alas! Your dreams shall remain with you.