leaves of un-grass

I could not turn and live with animals. 

I see a dog sleeping on the ground, the weight of his body pushing into the gravel on the road. A warm monsoon breeze floats on the air, and a replete smile dons his face as he continues to sleep in a foetal like position. I envy the dog, and the freedom with which it is snuggled into life's bossom. 

As I walk back I see a tree. The leaves sing to me the wooshing hymn of a banshee and the tree floats over it, bathed in the yellow glow of a streetlight. The breeze disconnects it from the world and its sensations and gives it an ethereal floaty feeling. And yet there is something constrained in both of us that I see bursting at the seams. In my reflective self absorption I remember a metaphor. I want to experiment with what emotions it brings out in me as I ascribe it to myself. 

I limp back to my hostel room, after a day of "practice" and fall to the bed. The weight of my body presses into the pillow too, but there is a cortisol filled wakefulness, a bearaami even in my extreme exhaustion. There ain't no rest for the wicked, nor for the victims. Glaring red lights always stay on in the interiority of my brain. 

My preferred metaphor is Kratos's blades of chaos. chains and swords branded into my skin. A great power coming from a faustian exchange that I had no choice but to expect. That is how I see my trauma. My self awareness lurches and moralizes against me turning this into a glorified, aestheticized diary entry. But today I push it into the ground and let myself feel. 

People appreciate my discipline. Though my self-hatred and self-doubt stops me from proclaiming this too loudly, of accepting the legacy I have built and the seeds I have sown through my half broken existence - it is true. Atleast in so far as the average person's understanding of discipline goes (which disgusts me).

 We humans love romanticization. The scene from whiplash of a drummer bleeding out onto a snare, almost every motivational song and video ever flash into my brain. We like a torn and tattered, worn and battered path to success. We like raping the human spirit into motion. 

I suppose it is a capitalist fantasy - money, desire burning through into a human, forcing them, possibly even against their will into action. Perhaps there is some truth to it too, the play involved in a human's faculties being incentivized through desire. But really that is no discipline. My maniacal desire for control, inflicted upon my body. Hoping, screaming that it may be rendered so dynamic as too disappear into that ethereal mist - a perfect dance, a perfect performance, a perfect line of thought - a flurry of moves so complete I merge into the moment. Every day a prayer for the same.

But a tainted one. For what is a prayer that expects something from its god? a transaction? My desire for control inflicted on my mind - a distillation that guides my energy up to the upper crevices of my brain through increasingly drier regions of my throat. Journalling, Meditating - trying to think my woes out of existence. 

But the wounds of us humans go much deeper than we imagine. We see how tied up the thread is in moments of surrender. How deeply imprinted are the burning scars of my blades of chaos. Perhaps I also don ashes, the ashes of an authentic existence. And like all of us I go into the world. None of us are innocent, none of us are unhurt. yet that is not what causes our problems. our problems are the cop-out humour, the unseriousness and the deflective words that defend our crying hearts. 

A metaphor taken too far, into the realm of the emo. I must sarcastically un-condone my own linguistic experiments for fear of being considered too cringe. And after acknowledging nothing through this statement of self awareness I can continue forwards with my inquiry, only slightly derailed. 

Our hearts are always crying. Or perhaps this is only the people who have not yet gone to therapy and ingested some pills. But really they are. 

And yesterday it hit me. I couldn't un-see it any longer. 

The past few years of my life, atleast the evenings where I go and work on my body in a trance like state stared back at me, like the scene in Avatar the Last Airbender.

Every single one of those guys, as they hit that plank or that last rep, or a sprint - with tears about to well up in their eyes stared at what they had built. And I stared back into their eyes. I had someone with me, standing behind me. Of course, I would not allow even her into this secret prison room on the top of my light house. 

But I could see the fire in their eyes as they all looked back at me. I could see how brokenness shaped them further - a cycle of pain mutating into different forms. Had this pain been alchemized in the crucible of my body? Or had the cruel Galbatorix twisted it to shape me to a form an older me would not have fathomed. 

Or was my yearning for innocence the real twistedness? For life happens to everyone.

The answer wasn't quite clear. And I didn't really know what to feel. 

Why do we move?

Or rather, why did I move?

The way I did. 

an answer did not quite touch my zehen, did not drop onto the river surface of my chitta. 

But I knew really that this was not all of alchemy. 

There was something I had missed. 

In my desperation, my insecurity. There was betrayed a need. 

And what again, is a prayer with a need?

In my want to twist my gym workouts into the most optimal. 

In my indecision of what I want with my body - spurred further by hyper-consumerist propaganda. 

In my fetishization of skill - of quants and that of footballers. 

In my defensive words dripping with a need for validation and appreciation for the truth I have seen. 

Something escaped my heart. A subtle feeling that I would not have even seen if not for her. 

And yet I still do not have words for it. 

What is a me who does not need? 

Who does not yearn for love.

Who does not yearn to become unbroken?

Who is replete. Not hungry. 

Whose mouth doesn't open in a disgusting manner, like the Rinnengan's king of hell as it salivates over the food and sex in samsara. 

Nor does it relegate it to merely nutrition. And a woman's body to just a body. 

Just because it is too afraid to begin unseeing. 

Is that why my eyes are twisted?

And now it fetishizes a genuine encounter. 

To have nothing in my mind but a thought of a deeper penetration into her core. 

A void at my center and a magnetic pull in my head.

I hope nothing will matter when you see into my soul. 

The naked priest prayed in the church on his knees.