Message for myself

Today, this is my message for myself, as I try to heal myself:

I cannot heal with my soul broken down into bits and pieces, hidden away in the objects that represent my happy past. I must deal with the present and face the future with all of my selves, so that I can evolve as I should, as a soul. I cannot trap myself into the pictures and mementoes that I took during those happy times, like a princess waiting to be woken up from sleep. Those times are over, and the one who was with me will not come back, like Sleeping Beauty's Prince, and wake my slumbering soul with a kiss. I must let go -- of the pictures, of the cup, of the many bric-a-brac that now lie scattered in my house. I loved him and maybe he loved me, too -- but he is gone now. I may stay and wait for him, but then I will not evolve. That is why I was born, that is why I am here, now: so that I may learn the lessons meant for me, so that I may evolve -- blossom is the better word -- into what I can be.

The Man and the Mime

Long ago there was a girl who loved to sing. Then she met a man whom she thought she loved more than herself, and she gave her voice to him, so that he could sing and be loved as much as she was loved.

He took her voice, but not her heart, for it was her voice that he needed, not her love. He had neither the facts nor the logic with which to convince people, but he hoped that her voice would win them over to his side.

But magic is never enough for people to give you their souls, and though many believed what he said, none stayed to make his dream come true.

The girl, in the meantime, had become a mime, for she had songs to express even though she had lost the voice with which to sing them.

He saw her dancing, and heard the words as if she had sang them. Will you come with me, and dream my dream? he asked her again.

She shook her head: my soul expresses itself, makes stories for others to read and find themselves in. Yours would take another’s dream and debase it until it becomes more like your dream.

She never said it, though; she had no voice for words. Anyway she knew he would not hear.

The Dream Keeper

There is, somewhere, a house. On its walls are the most beautiful dreams the world has ever seen, and will not see again.

No one knows how it was built, or when, or who owns it. Not even the man who lives there, and keeps the dreams, hanging, on the many walls of the house.

I collect dreams, he says. But I will only take them if you beg. There is no other way to lose your soul.

The line to the house is long. Few could stand the beauty of their souls, nor the fire with which the dreams burn.

Sometimes, those in line have mangled bodies: those who tried but could not, for long, pursue their dreams. More often those who want to leave their dreams are young: born with a dream, but could not live with one. From afar, the line looks like a rainbow: each person burning with the colors of a dream.

The door at the side, through which they all leave, is small. Everyone fits, anyway, no matter their size when they came in with a dream. They always leave smiling, and with empty eyes.

Sometimes, I see the man in my dreams, talking to me, telling me to keep dreaming. In the end he gives up; I’m very good at begging. I wake up screaming.

Those who dream, see their dreams before them. Those who don’t, see nothing. No one sees whose eyes are empty, whose eyes are not.

But everyone sees the smile on your face, and no one cares, anyway, what it means, or if it means anything at all.

The Princess and her Castle

Once upon a time there lived a young princess, in a castle made just for her. It had all that she wanted, and more; all she ever had to do was wish, and it was granted.

She was grateful for her life, and wished for very little. All that she needed was in the castle, and if it wasn’t there, she felt she didn’t need it very much, or that she had to learn to live without it. Lack – and luck, too – was something that she took for granted. Life is not perfect, the princess told herself early on, and it is that way because we have to live with the imperfections, and from it create a perfect life, a perfect being in our own selves.

Yet with all her logic, and all her luck, there was something the castle never had. Exactly what it was the princess could not tell. She only knew something was lacking because it never felt like home, though she had lived there all her life. She had always felt on the verge, as if about to leave. Though she loved dearly all that was in the castle, not one of them, she knew, could make her stay, when it was time to leave.

Having grown up on the usual stuff of fairy tales, the princess thought that a Prince Charming was what was lacking. One day a prince would come and take her to his own castle, and make her his queen. She never really belonged in HER castle because she was meant for HIS castle.

A succession of princes came, but not one was satisfactory. There was always something wrong, somewhere, though each at first seemed perfect. She loved each one of them with all her heart, but somehow felt that not one loved her enough.

And so she stayed in her castle until the years had bleached her hair gray, and written lines on her face. By which time, the princess knew, no prince would come to take her as his bride. Princesses have expiry periods, as everyone knows; though people become better with age, like wine, men think of milk instead of wine when they marry and so prefer their bride to be fresh, not aged. Innocence trumps wisdom anytime, in the eyes of a man.

One day, finally tired of waiting, the princess took a hard look at her castle. This is my castle, she told herself; this is where I live and will die. And she set about to cleaning it and ordering it and transforming it into what she really wanted, regardless of what everyone else wanted.

She closed some rooms and demolished others, and opened up some that she had always wanted to use. She tried not to think of what her family would say, or even her past lovers – and she told herself the future ones, if there were still any coming – would just have to adjust to what she wanted. Age has its privileges.

It took such a long time to put the castle in shape that by the time she finished she was really old. Such a pity I have to leave my castle, just when I’ve finally made it into home, she thought.

But she was much too happy to regret anything, even the years when she had waited for someone to take her away from her castle. In her heart she apologized to all the princes who came when she was young, and whom she thought she loved. Her one regret in life was not admitting, early on, what she knew but could not believe: that a prince was superfluous, at least to her, though everyone else seemed to need a partner.

The Crows

I call them the crows.

They are young, maybe in their late twenties or early thirties, with straight, long black hair. They came to the courtroom dressed in black, the usual attire for women who are still trying to make it up the corporate ladder.

They sat in front of me on the morning that I watched a gruesome video of the earth giving up corpses it was forced to hide. The earth had been pounded hard, compacted, and the bodies were not easily separated from the flattened soil. Once a man pulled at a foot sticking up from the soil, expecting the rest of the corpse to follow; the next shot showed him holding up a part of a leg, broken at the knee. At first the men used shovels and their hands, but eventually they needed a backhoe to loosen up the soil. Once or twice, after the backhoe had moved back the mud, one could see a white line of bloated stomachs, the heads and legs still buried deep in the ground.

I never knew the victims; one maybe I met once, long ago; I couldn’t even remember his face. Yet I cried when I saw the mangled bodies, the faces coated with a mix of dried blood and mud, the blackened skin that an expert said indicated some of the victims were buried alive.

Just from looking at the bodies – arms askew, mouths gaping, all of them bloodied – it was obvious that they died horribly.

The man believed to be their executioner sat on the very first row, sometimes looking at the screen, sometimes yawning, sometimes nodding off.

And the crows – the two young ladies who were among those he hired for his defense – sat several rows ahead of me. I watched them as I watched the video, noting their reactions: they huddled as yet another body turned up from the bloodied soil, unrecognizable but for its clothes: yellow pants, red underwear, green shirt. The two young women, huddling together, were looking at the screen, and smiling.

The men continued to dig; the backhoe hummed as it parted the soil.

In front of me one young woman patted off imaginary sweat from her powdered face; she took out a compact, opened it, looked at herself.

I hated them as I thought of their age, and how they looked at the bodies on the screen, and managed to smile. There will always be crows, I know: people who feast on the dead without remorse, cackling and cawing as they feed.

Still, I wished that one day they would find themselves on the opposite side of the room, among the families of victims who have to listen as their truths are mangled into lies; as, in the name of justice, they are denied the justice that they seek.

Dark Night of the Soul

The Five of Pentacles is about sorrow, loss, deprivation. 'It is the dark night of the soul,' I remember reading in a book I have since lost. In my deepest, darkest moments, I see the card in my mind, and myself as the woman walking in the snow: cold, desperate, destitute.

Yet, the book points out that the pentacles are set in what seems to be the window of a church. She is standing outside the dark walls of a church, begging for what she does not have, apparently unmindful of the warmth and light that emanates from the window of the church.

'What is love? Does it go on, or does it die?' someone asked in a book I used to read to my son. 'I don't know,' the mother said, and then compared it to starlight, which lives on even after the star is gone.

And the pentacles in the card turn into stars for me: of love, of faith, of hope.

I read somewhere, long ago, that some of the stars we see are no longer there: the light takes so long to travel to where we are, that by the time it gets here some of the stars from which it came might have since died.

I do not know which stars have long since died; but I would rather enjoy their light, instead of looking at the sky imagining a universe bereft of stars. I do not know if God is there; but I would rather believe and be laughed at for being a fool, than imagine a world without hope, and faith, and love.

A true friend is one who remembers...

"A true friend is one who remembers the song in your heart, and sings it to you when you least remember," said a postcard I had when I was in college. I have since lost the postcard, but I kept the message in my heart.

Today I almost lost one of my friends. Or maybe I have lost him; he was depressed, and he didn't tell me. Maybe because he knew I wouldn't have approved of what he did, and he thought that I would never understand. I did tell him, as a sort of warning, that I would think less of him as a person if he were to do what he later did.

So he said goodbye, not to me but to another friend. And I, too busy with work and studies and the other things I try to cram into my life, did not notice there was something wrong with him.

Now he wouldn't talk to me, and so I write instead, telling cyberspace what I could not tell my friend: "Yes, I would have been disappointed, but that does not mean that I would love you less. Love, you see, has nothing to do with standards, but with acceptance and with faith.

"The years have taught me to believe in you, and that faith is not easily shaken; those whom I accept as friends, I accept unconditionally."

I don't know if he will come back, or if he will be the same person when he comes back. I do not know enough to judge his decisions; but what I have seen has told me that this time, I must put my faith in God and accept whatever His Will turns out to be.