The Invinsible Summer

This is a picture I took on a trail. It felt like magic, more so than my phone's camera could capture.

I had been rotting, or marinating, in my hot humid room, juggling papers that make me feel, and the ones that covenant reprieve, and the ones that are asking me to decide which one it is. These are the ones that crave my pen, and my colored pencils, and paint like I do too. These are the ones I pay least attention to. I'd despise each and juggle all. Kept awake to torment myself more because more is promised if I do as they say. And with love, patience and not all while obsessing over what I lack.

And love comes like a jar of pickle is waggled so that it doesn't go spoiled. And like coffee, hash potatoes, and sprite and mojito. And patience comes in voice of George on medito, Billie Eilish in Wildflower, and my sister. And I lack still.

I'm not a religious person per se. But I've studied a bit into it when I used to be. There was doubt in my faith, and there's hesitation in my disbelief. As they say, you cannot truly stop loving anything. There's things that stuck with me, beautiful little trinket postulations. There's this concept called dukhamishritatvam, it suggests that there's sorrow mixed in the state of being. It's natural. As long as you depend on the worldly pleasures, there'll be dukha. To confirm it Van Gogh said, "The sadness will last forever."

But I'm only human, so I do turn to worldly rapture, hence, I suffer. That's human. But Van Gogh also said, "Though I am often in the depths of misery,

there is still calmness, pure harmony, and

music inside me."

And Camus said, "In the midst of winter, I found there was within me an invincible summer."

And so I believe in the dark night that drapes me often even in the broad daylight, sun rises in my chest. That's human too.

Despite of the strain that linger for months, disenfranchised grief that loiters for years, and the burden that have encumbered shoulders since generations altogether, there's lightness.

In the breakfast that's served too hot, and the gaze that's held for a second too long.

And thus the days come to become merciful and move slower so you can too. And one can indulge in a book as opposed to entirely being consumed with misery. And at some point, smell the stories in the ruffle of its pages instead of reading it and discovering that that's enough too. That slow. That kind of ease.

And the ease never erases the next ruin. And the ruin never can hold the next relief. I've come to understand life to be oscillating between the wish to extinguish completely and to burn relentlessly. Both is human.

It is advised to remain equanimous in the face of both. But I've foregone the advice. To me it's beyond the bounds of possibility. For as the feet hurt after a exuberant dance and as the peace dawns after a clash, life demands to be lived.