Meditations

It is in the rising of the sun and the falling of the stars. There is rain on fields, and graveyards, and hospital roofs. There is light glinting off rooftops, and subsumed electricity below neon lights.

I am standing alone on a deserted street. It is late at night. The air hums with its own chill and desperation. In the distance, sirens wail, and then are silent. It is the city. It is winter.

Three months later I am on that same city block. The sirens peak and wail again, no meaning to their shrill chorus. The air is warmer, and flowers bloom from the branches of trees that grow squeezed between the cracks in sidewalks. I am again alone.

It's not long before all is green, and a dense heat settles over the same city. I am gone from it, home with my family, surrounded by the insects, and their unending song, one that eclipses the nature of years and of all my petty concerns. It is again late, it is silent. No sirens screech in the distance. But still, the incessant hum of existence pulses in my eardrums. I can feel it. It is close to me, and I want to reach out to it. The sun sets, and then it rises again. The young grow older, have children, teach them, and then die, having left their mark only in the objects they touched, but never in themselves. Somewhere else, a log shifts from its position in a stream, the flow of water irrevocably changed.

It is summer. The hot air makes my flesh stick to the fabric of our sofa. The light from an ailing laptop, and the hymn of its whirring fan keep me awake. I am uneasy. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I am ignoring something.

School begins again, and then, I lose sight of everything.

But I can still feel it, everywhere, and at all times. It is a soundless hum, a beat and a rhythm, a pulse not dissimilar to my own heartbeat, which, all the while has been chanting its own song, with its own finite length.

When can I understand this feeling that transfixes me at two in the morning on abandoned streets, or keeps me awake at night, listening to the wind? What is this natural rhythm that evades the logic of my mind, and struggles with me for dominance?

It seems the more distant we become from it, the more confused our lives become. The proliferation of technology does not preclude us from the understanding of this Undercurrent. Yet, we find it easy to become distracted. We sit on subway trains with music in our ears, and eyes on newsfeeds and stock tickers. All the while, the trees are growing, sleeping, and bearing fruits of the next generation.

Where does happiness spring from? Is it in the following of the Undercurrent, or in coming to terms with it? I long to utterly surrender myself to it, to sit in the secluded copse of a forest, full on the fruits of my own labors, and cut off from the dizzying noise.

Somewhere, a beautiful film is being screened. Everyone is staring at the rain falling on tree leaves, and horses running in the woods. They think it is beautiful. They leave the theater, and go back home to sleep, ignoring the growth around them.


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This is a short essay I wrote almost a year ago. It defines, vaguely, some elements of my personal philosophy in anxious, excited tones. The ideas at play in this piece eventually became central to the novel I started to write that summer, which I am tentatively calling "Rain". What I like about this essay is the use of imagery, and the appeal to the gut emotions of the reader.

More substantial posts are forthcoming. I need to finish a short story that I wrote for this blog. This semester was a whirlwind that left me with little time for writing. Stay tuned!