A walk in the clouds!

Isn't it ironical we have always found more pleasure in breaking or defying something than obeying it...It could have been the strange feeling of accomplishment and joyful abandon when we stole mangoes or guavas from the neighbour's garden.The feeling of belonging to 'the group' when we copied answers in school. The glee and bliss that pervades us when we evade any security guy, get past him and have our own fun.

'Fun', it seems, is too loud to describe a place where you can find total peace and tranquil. And, since the getting to the place takes some effort, the only thing you can possibly do as soon as you get there is to settle down on the remains of man's unfinished labour. Anytime I look down from a higher echelon, I do get the feeling of being 'on top of the world', but it is something different when all you can see are canopies of trees around you, lights shimmering like fireflies at a distant den of man's machines( inspired by the archaeopteryx), the steady, veracious beam of the pharos guiding many a soul at some distant shores and a few glimpses of the humanity around me by the way of the glow of neon lamps in distant rooms and signboards. There also were these pronged structures all around me, defining a safe path for one more of nature's toys to the ground, reminding me of my own pettiness.

It seemed like I was in some time trap of sorts, standing motionless in time..Now that is not possible since I can be constant only relative to something and since nothing is constant in the absolute sense, I cannot be . Anyway, that is exactly how I felt,like I was watching the world as it goes by me, admiring its brilliance and its ineptness, the darkness in the pit of the night and the distant but definite beacons of light, the things that I await with eagerness and the ones I loathe, I could see everything I have and I don't at that moment.

The keys to this place were probably just some unlocked gates and the free will of our minds, or more like unlocking some gates by the way of free will. And to know it takes just that to find 'the place' I was looking for, tired of the claustrophobic urbane setting, looking for 'emptiness'. I have always longed to sit on a lone bench facing the waters of a placid lake and see nothing but water around me. I've been told that's what living in a city for too long does to the psyche, but I don't think it would be much different if I was living in any other part of world either.

I could only see the efficient mirror of the sea doing its job,like it has always done since the time of Alexandria's Lighthouse, and mans' machines traversing their exclusive paths. But it only a takes a moments reckoning to see the shoreline and the waves lashing at the rocks, the babel of human activity at the den, the intellect at work , the bull frogs' mating, the lover waiting, my mind racing. This is definitely something I will carry with me forever and am looking forward to more such trips to sheer bliss, and appreciating the fact that I am and that this world is definitely worthy of veneration.

Mary Ray Lieu