Hergest Ridge

For the last few days the city lies under a blanket of spring fog. The snow recedes, the earth bleeds water flooding everything. From my sixth floor residence, I watch the peaks of trees and the few tall buildings hold their own above the milky mess that clings to the earth below.

I take another shot of Troika, attempting to smother a realisation… the realisation that where ever I go I will find landscapes that leave the soul breathless, while the absence of the people I’ve left behind will forever leave me feeling fragmented.

When I was a child, I’ve cut up a picture into a puzzle. When that was done, I reassembled the pieces, and then cut them into ever smaller bits for a tougher challenge. My father warned me that the pieces I’m making will be too small to be ever put together again.

I tried long and hard but never did manage to prove him wrong.

Father never did have any words of wisdom that stuck, and in that way he remains a hollow being. But as I look around me, I’m struck by a notion that perhaps I’m again cutting things into pieces too small to ever form a proper whole – only this time I’m cutting apart my essence.

Look it up in the Urban Dictionary – do with it what you will.

The Devil is in the details, but then so is God. Fortunately, neither God nor the Devil probably exist.

I’ve so much to express, but no prism to focus any of it. The time has come to write a eulogy of sorts, as all I can see is my own self staring back at me; On the surface, cold, expressionless, unmoved – just the way I aspired to be for so long. Birth is a bitch. So is rebirth. We enter our daily lives with death on our heels, its fangs and claws pulling us under every step of the way.

I read once on an online profile someone’s description of self: “melancholic, not in a pessimistic, but stoic way.” Today, I am borrowing the description for my own purposes. I say borrowing, for I’ve the utmost intent to return or pass it on to the next person that may find it fitting.