Stay Away from the Circus Train

Let me give you some advice, young one.

When the loose cobblestones tremble,

and you can feel the crowds as they come...

Keep singing your tune, don't dissemble.

When their rabble engulfs you, an isle,

and your ears tingle for gluttony,

Know that they traipse silent single file,

Keep your soul free from fragile debris.

When you see them approach, close your eyes.

The most savage animal eats all,

To look will feed them little white lies

Keep your heart steady, for truth stands tall.

And I remember what an old sage once told me when I was young:

Entertain the unnamed untamed lion mane,

Seek no fame, no glory in the game,

Go against the grain, try to stay sane,

Stay away from the circus train.

Insight

I want to go on forward into life- eyes gliding, taking it in;
inner eyes set, staying away from those cabins
like that line from the book I told you I didn't like-
keep the oil on the spoon. No longer howl at the moon-
when it's three years ago October
and my mind broke through, sober.
make me forget those nights, not because they weren't nice:
air evaporating off me like it had to catch supersonic flights.
but bring me back to the matter at hand, down to the atom,
and up past the skies to the interstellar stratum,
Don't wanna fuck it up with my last throws
Do I exist in a place that I'll never know?
want it microscopic and cosmic, This shit is not even comic:
All I want is everything.
And we have plenty of time...

Spirals

He didn’t know where to go, so he followed the road. The road was already there, he was not there yet. So, not knowing when or where he would arrive, he drove. He looked on either side, behind him, and in front– the world’s mysteries lay before him. As he drove on, neatly staying within the little white lines, things came at him fast. Foliage of many kinds, people of even more, surrounded him, getting closer and then farther away as he whizzed by. Concrete, steel, and wood structures grew out of the ground, concealing the people living inside in the same way that each of them hid their souls. There were a few windows, he thought, to let the light in; but these only offered a glimpse. A closed window cannot be penetrated without the shattering of glass.
As he traveled, these abstract thoughts filled his mind. They entered like osmosis and lingered until he forgot where he was. The steering of the car, the shifting of gears, the very actions that were propelling him across the landscape became as involuntary as his heartbeat. The blazing sun snuck silently across the clear sky until it had gone too far and begun to fade. He had started driving at dawn and the open flatlands and the forested areas had changed to rolling hills with mountains visible in the distance. He reflected on where he was and realized that he was not going back home. A week ago, he was going to the family office and making phone calls trying to arrange jute sales. That all seemed long ago and far away though, and the thought was like a relic of an ancient civilization that he had dug up in his mind.

His car hurdled over a bump in the road, jarring his mind away from what he had been thinking and back to what he was doing. Up ahead he could see that the road was going to get more and more windy as it spiraled around the foothills of the mountains. He stopped the car on the side of the road. He had been driving all day, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to drive up into the mountains just yet. He got out and began walking away from the car down a narrow path that looked as if it could have been created by the monotony of a single human life. He put his hand to his crown making a visor and looked out into the setting sun. There were lush tea gardens flourishing not far away that evoked a strangely deep yet momentary peace in him. The tea gardens were deserted at this time, and although they were man-made, he admired how they seemed so devoid of humanity.

Without too much deliberation he drifted along the route, which itself aimlessly looped around areas that could’ve been traversed easily in a straight line. The atmosphere was thick with silence. Like a thousand insects, his head buzzed with it. It didn’t annoy him, though, because the silence was more like the harmless gnats which came out here in the summers than the itchy mosquitos. It swarmed around him till it was dispersed by a faint stirring of his awareness. The culprit was not a rustling in the brush, nor a shimmering bough, but was the far-off scent of his religion. If his faith was less distant, perhaps he would have smelled the burning incense sooner. It was a sweet smell for him. He associated it with quiet, cool alcoves that provided respite from the noise, the pollution, the gritty squalor of the city. As a child he had enjoyed these places, and he regretted that as he grew older, the aroma’s simple enchantment had been superseded by associations of silliness and unease. Maybe the winds had taken that charm to someone else, he reflected, as they now brought someone else to him.

The man was staring up at him with an unflinching gaze. Humbly dressed, he clasped a small clay pipe between his hands which was cylindrical in shape, tapering at the end. A sadhu, he thought. The ragged man sat cross-legged around the single stick of incense which had drawn the two men together. Neither of them spoke. For ten minutes it remained this way, the man putting the tapered end of the pipe to his mouth and inhaling calmly every so often. His guest remained standing. He looked beyond the bony man but watched him at the same time. His mind was gaining momentum and his mouth began to move ever so slightly, but at the threshold of speaking, his jaw dropped down again in silence. This man, this ascetic, with eyes fixed on him, what did he want?

“What do you want?” asked the sadhu. He did not wait for any answers. “Do you come to live like me?” At this he paused and took another puff. His voice was measured and his speech mirrored the economy of his actions. His eyes were a fiery red.

The traveler thought to himself for a minute. “I smelled the incense,” he replied.

“If you like it, take it and be on your way. It is my gift.”

“No, it’s fine. I don’t want it.” He had seen there was only one.

“Nothing will content he who is not content with a little.”

The traveler hung around, but did not comment. The man continued, “You will not find what you are looking for here. I was once told when I was young like you: ‘A large mountain has many streams.’ For years I explored this mountain. I have seen the many streams, and I have found the sources of those streams. But I have chosen this clearing now, and chosen to stay here, for it nourishes me, and...”

By this point he had stopped listening. He still didn’t know where to go, and he was beginning to feel like he should have just taken the stick and left. He wasn’t in the mood for a lecture or a lesson, or whatever it was that this man was trying to express. He didn’t make eye contact, but he looked at him, examining the creases on his forehead. When this became tiring, he nodded a final time and then asked, “Have you found what is the source of the mountain?”

Caught off-guard by the question, the sadhu briefly showed his bemusement before quickly recovering his wits and replying, “The mountain has always been there. It is the oldest and most important of all things.”

“How can you speak so much about this? Have you ever even climbed to the top?” He had imagined sadhus to be men for whom silence was the source of great wisdom. But he knew that in his own experience, speaking always took him farther from the truth. As his surroundings gave way to night, the peace which had warmed him during the day began to vanish along with them.

“No, I have not climbed to the peak...” he said, gazing thoughtfully, “but I have been there.”

“What do you mean? Do you mean to speak in riddles?” He was getting flustered.

To this the sadhu smiled and said quietly, almost to himself, “The quest in a question is never fulfilled by the answer. You have not yet become akin to how I seemed to you the first time we met. I’m sorry. Come back again when you have lived both sides of the coin. Now choose. Do you wish to see the ancestors or the aliens?”

“What are y–” The old man’s last question jolted within him a feeling of deja vu, which reached him after he had begun to respond in confused dismay. He abruptly fell silent, and as he searched the man’s eyes for clues that would explain the fleeting familiarity, he noticed something quite new. It was the staff, swinging beautifully, which the sadhu had kept by his side for the duration of their encounter. Carved on it were the grooves spiraling up to the culmination which in the crescent moonlight he could see large and vividly, and when it crashed through him and split him open and his head thundered, and for a second made him feel like he was back in the beam between the sky and the earth, he dropped. And then it all leaked out.

Hospital

What happened to life helplessly pouring out of delicately pierced organs, collecting beneath the bed in puddles? If you had gone to view the last drops dripping, you would see where air had kissed the porous openings and breathed sorrow into the room. It was all cleaned up now. The glistening eyes subdued, things had been kept safe. The lab coats could rinse their hands off and turn to each other and remark on a job well done. Which they did, smugly. They paraded their latest opus down the corridor, a seething glare replaced by a blank stare. A fine piece of work.

The rooms are watching him walk by. If they hope he’ll turn and say goodbye, they’re sorely mistaken. Because immediate relief at being released drowns out any nostalgia he might feel for the place– like when a man stands over the failing body of a nemesis in satisfaction. There will be enough time left for the fondness to haunt him later. As it is, the walls of the dark room still echo with the blinding revelation: “Primo Levi was the first to levitate.” He approaches its heavy set door without smelling the Zyklon B, without peering through its tiny window which gave him “Work Will Make You Free” hope not too long ago. The boy had survived Auschwitz, but they had taken his license to kill. It exasperated him, and it didn’t help when he realized this was the year of Bond. At last, he wondered if they would fix the rattling in the ceiling in time for the room’s next patient, and if the mouse would find the cheese before the principal electrocuted his friend.

By the time he steps past the dark room, the ringing walls have been whitewashed. Next thing that comes near is the line he waited in for hours to get the lethal injection only to be given mass-produced biscuits. Had to sit there trying to keep his head straight while trying not to look at the spy in the tie dye that had followed him there from his school. Had to keep it from lolling around to save his hair from the gravy. Had to fight the horrible heaviness– had to lift the weight while Atlas was gone. The boy knew he would pay back debts for the dreadful thing he had done; he just didn’t know what it was. The other kids talked normally. He couldn’t relate. With his feet already fulfilling half their mission, the boy looks straight ahead as the last whiff of cafeteria leaves him.

The blank stare ambles around the corner. His uprightness while walking pleases the lab coats, though he is lacking any semblance of probity. A man and woman who have been walking alongside him for some time now speak to him. He trades words without remembering what is said. The couple awakens his inert mind slightly as he struggles to recall why they seemed familiar, but all the while the blank stare remains aimed at the door as it advances. An unnerving mystery to him when he was at the other end of the hall, the doorknob twists slowly under his cautious hand. One of the lab coats makes an obligatory parting comment which he does not comprehend. The door opens out into a sunny parking lot which floods the boy’s senses more than parking lots usually do.

He is silent, with quiet thoughts, back at the scene of the crime. It is a lot more still now, the room. The carpet where the past was revealed to him, where the universe flashed before his mind’s eye like a near-death experience, where they found him eyes glazed-over drooling; it is still here. He wouldn’t be able to remember these things, though. If the boy lied down face sideways on the carpet now, he would feel only discomfort. He would not see in a solitary glittering speck of dust the embryo of an unborn world– or the course designed for it in the intricate patterns of the oriental rug. Destiny’s DNA would not untangle its double helix and mingle with his own this time, either. There would be no more magic carpet rides.

Those two trees loom, casting a shadow on his right in the yard where he played when he was younger, but they have less of a presence now. Tall and straight they stand at the end of the property down a stone path that he would follow to the play set when he was three feet tall and the bushes on either side made him feel like he was in a maze. He never noticed them when he was little, though, since they were behind the fence. When he looks out the window now, their deadness mocks him, and he tries to shield his inner self from their triviality, which is menacing.

While he rests on the bed in this room, the lady who had walked with him out of the hospital enters the room carrying a tray which holds a cold glass of milk and a plate of macaroni and cheese. It turns out she is his mother. She looks at the boy expectantly and smiles as she brings him the meal. Noticing her presence he remains silent. Mac and cheese is a favorite of his, but he isn’t hungry. Lingering around, she asks him how he is feeling. “Fine,” he says softly. She attempts to strike up more conversation, but he isn’t eager to talk. He hadn’t spoken much lately. If he said anything, it was with his face. Even so, it didn’t say much. To see this hurts his mother in a way similar to how her dull blades are more likely to cut her while she chops vegetables.