All’s Well That End’s Well

Over time, real time, life has segmented me in sides and faces with very vague definitions.  I sense that there are things about me that are routinely yet obscurely fed to a vending machine which gives me newer passions, different interests in return. Maybe I can trace it back to “when” but “why” is draped in nights when I lay awake with a dream in mind, and the next morning seems to blur it into a background that slowly fades into wallpaper that needs to be torn down because it’s just not as pretty anymore.

I know what you mean. 
December raises the downy hair of yesterday on the back of my neck. No embrace for the girl of that calendar month, just a sigh of resignation and despair that rustles all the other pages of the calendar. A whole year of good intentions and failed dreams that cling so desperately to that wall and under my skin. It’s like the realisation that last New Year’s hope was just an impulsive mistake and I forgot if I even made any resolutions.

And it becomes an yearly abstraction, a push that plummets fractions, breezeblocks, out of an otherwise linear tower of reality. I look back at the lost pieces, and with what may be an illusion of growth, smile. That ache seems so small, unimportant, and what I have now seems okay for a minute. Maybe longer. Depends on the length of the song I listen to, and the longevity of the setting sun.

I can only say it in a whisper but this year has magnified the aches that have lingered for a lifetime. There’s a desperation in looking for the missing pieces in the fading colours of the sunset. In the hungry chaos of noisy gulls, I try to collect my crowded thoughts into groups of words that might ease my chapped lips and pour my coffee in the morning. I string them into necklaces and charms made of sentences – poems of moonless Septembers and melancholy Sundays. That way I can at least look at the dawn without shielding my eyes.

There is something about words strung together in a sensible philosophy. Its incomparable to have had times in your life that sharpens its blunt edges and cuts into parts of you, refreshes everything somehow, and becomes strange to look at. Like gawking at your reflection on the mirror plated wall of a hair salon, while the barber keeps trimming your hair in a really bad way but all you can do is investigate your face and strike your eyes with a gaze they obviously meet. Just to realize, that it’s all there what needs to be, what isn’t, will grow back with more original strands and fibres. There’s always a road to walk towards everywhere, and since ‘all roads lead to Rome’, why does anybody worry.

As we nudge December I look at the ocean and ask it this question.  Sometimes my catastrophic mind is too primed to see the tragedy in a gust of wind, to tread water when I need to swim more purposefully to my metaphoric Rome.  The sea answers me in soothing syllables of its rolling tides, calmly led by sing-song directions from the moon. And there I see that maybe there is a path for me, that I am connected by gossamer threads to possibilities I have always longed for but never thought I’d find.  Love, even. I just need to dive in and let the wind swallow up my caution and taste the salty water of the dawn.

The sea has all the answers, it’s like a friendΒ for all seasons. It’s funny to think that whatever is marked by anything doesn’t make sense to anything except the candle and the lighter, or the sea and the rocks it washes away from the shoreline. So, we ramble on and gamble with our hearts, and tear pages, anatomies away from old chapters and our memories become a collage of these broken bones. So, in our search for love andΒ happiness, we see too many disappointment and aches but to not linger on them would be best. At least, that’s what I think.

So maybe as the clock ticks this time, we should linger in that place where soft lanterns and gentle hands light and guide the darkened alleys of our hearts. Maybe it’s in that dim but shimmered glow that we find a stillness and a beauty.Β  A calm within our storms where there is no pitch black or bright white and there is an infinite wave of connections between all of us. Because surely, it seems that this is where we should linger, in that place where the paths lead us to each other.

By Watt and Rachel from In Mind and Out .

May everyone lead 2020 with brilliant direction!

Published by

Watt

It's all a matter of rust and shine, to serve a distinction between to have and to have not.

33 thoughts on “All’s Well That End’s Well”

  7. The surprise and pleasure of coming across Watt, Rachel, was to have come across you and your intermittent collaboration.

    Above almost everything, I like to hear the conversation of two people talking. As in a cafe. Or on a train.

    When they leave, gathering up their coats and looking back to see if they have left something, one or other catches me sometimes looking at the space they left.

    I am looking at the imprints which still hang in the air when people leave.

    Possible pathways; probable histories, tiny slivers of life encapsulated with words. And most of all, the good will, the careful listening, the little jumps to common recognition of the meaning of something lived in two different lives a world apart; the suggestive encouragement towards new possibilities in the future.

    That is what I take from these intermittent conversations between you. I hope you both continue into a new year rich with more exchanges between you and with us!

    Sarah

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    1. Sarah!!
      I think I speak for both me and Rachel, when I say “that means the universe”. Looking back at our imprints, tracing our steps to the feelings we feel, felt, the experiences that beset us, and the life to come amazes me, maybe her as well.
      Your precious words, and your immense meditation on reason and art, transcends the words we put forward. Thank you.

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    2. I said already Sarah but I will say again that this comment is beyond beautiful, it leaves exactly the kind of physical impression in the air that you speak of. One that glistens and shimmers that you would always want to come back to and revisit. Happiest new year to you.

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  8. Happy New Year. Writing with you has been such a highlight of the last year. May your 2020 be one that trails a path towards the place you want to be going, And one where that journey is meaningful and fulfilling.

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    1. And to you!! The absolute joy I feel when writing with you, or reading you is impeccable. May the year be the vessel thru which you pour forth your soul into rivers of happiness. Happily flow along.

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  9. “The sea has all the answers, it’s like a friend for all seasons.” So true, I remember that, when we livd by the sea. Everyday it changed and still was a friend. Beautiful, Watt and Rachel… and Watt, I love also what you said to Rachel in the comment above: “May the year be the vessel thru which you pour forth your soul into rivers of happiness.” What an image! I love it. Happy new year, once again πŸ˜ŠπŸ’›

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  15. Pingback: All’s well that ends well (a collaboration) – a stunning piece by Rachel and Watt #Guest Post – Short Prose

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