in earnest

“and the air was full of Thoughts and Things to Say. But at times like these, only the Small Things are ever said. Big Things lurk unsaid inside.”

--arundhati roy

i sat down to write this ritualistically

with pen and paper

to only remember i don't have your new address.

i am listening to arcade fire,

which of late

has become my new soul stirrer.

for me it releases the hormones of

utter love, despair, hope and

general exhaustion at the incredible emotions that can

whisk us into being,

into being human.

it's so tiring to live life in its entirety;

but it is that concrete filled sack of fatigued bones

and that sleepy eye lid twinge

that satisfies

that allows this decaying body to sink into inspired peace.

its all of the above i feel now.

its all of the above that i felt

on sunday night

when i sat on r's bed

and watched him read out

a letter/card you wrote to him from india,

when he had just returned to nz.

the tiny writing,

the revelation,

the regret,

the inspiration.

the paths of pursuit;

the microcosm of tolstoy

the warm embrace his writing gave/gives you.

the stirrings.

i was held captive

controlled by the power of your thought,

the selfless pursuit for a better being,

the demeaning ways upon yourself;

the ideals.

oh, the ideals.

and deep within me,

when i saw a solitary tear glisten down r's cheek

i realised just how much i wanted to know you more.

how i wanted to talk about all these things

you mentioned in the letter.

the ways of being moral.

of what it is to be.

to be.

i became acutely nostalgic for the first few times we hung out,

(almost a year ago now....)

the music, the thoughts, the late nights.

the wonder.

the endless river.

and i wonder what happened.

i firmly believe we don't live in one moment,

that we cannot afford to hang onto one facet of a person.

i feel each person is a liquid cosmos unto themselves,

a colourful world of meaning, quest, fragility and knowledge

that ebbs, flows, and shifts.

so i don't lament on the interactions we have had since,

i merely wonder whether our priorities are shifting

and whether the alcohol shadowed nights are a habit?

or individually have sincere meaning?

i don't expect you to hold the answers or to grasp the meaning

of what i am trying to articulate with my limited control of language.

i just hope that we can be children together again,

without letting the earnestness of adulthood bury our thoughts.

love.