~ He has his hands inside his pockets, he's smoking a cigarette, trying to mush it with the pressure he has been forcing through his lips, and he's walking a road around the place where he used to live when he was young. But, he can’t remember it. He has spent a large fraction of his childhood in that vicinity, yet none of it seems familiar. This boulevard goes straight to somewhere he has forgotten, but he knows that he’ll end up in a nice place, because he has always believed that beautiful dimensions lead to better destinations.
On each side of the road, there are a few cemented structures with too many windows to open halfway each morning and to close halfway each night, there are lots of elms planted on a systematic distance from each other, which have their branches breaking the sun into graceful shafts of light. And, it’s going to be winter soon, so the leaves have started betraying their tenants and falling on the road making a rustling, dark green, carpeted path for him to walk on. And, the slightly cool breeze running with a considerably fast velocity is toppling the leaves and covering his footsteps as he moves on. The people that are moving around him are all strangers, he hasn't seen any of them before, or maybe he has but he doesn't remember, but he knows that they are all nice people who won't hurt him. All of this seems like an exquisite projection of his mind, a fascinating figment of his brain. Apart from that pain somewhere around the right side of his ribs, everything is so angelic and alluring. He feels like he’s undergoing some catharsis, like he’s going to be pure when he gets to the end of the road, born all over again, given another chance to relive his life. But, he doesn't know where the road is taking him. He doesn't even know about the genesis of this walk.
That’s the thing about dreams. You may know what you’re doing, you may think you know where you’re going, but you don’t remember where you started from.
And, this is his reality. He is in a dream, he has been there since the last 4 years. He has been walking that road for 4 years, but it hasn't ended. He has been smoking that cigarette and trying to mush it for the past 49 months, but it is still the same. And, that pain in his ribs, it is because of the bullet that went through his body, crushing and cracking the regions of his ribs it hit. He was waiting for his train near the Hoboken Terminal four years and a month ago, when he got shot by a robber after he refused to give away his possessions, and since then he is in coma. He always wanted to dream before all this, he wanted to feel the ability to do almost anything, but he couldn't. And now, he’s stuck in one for a very long time, and the only way to get out of there is to wake up, but he can’t. This road is the boulevard that goes to the firmament of heavens, and the day it ends, he will never be able to wake up, he will die and depart to the afterlife. But, it won’t affect him, he is happy to walk this road till the end, because it is by far the most beautiful one he has traveled. And, he is hoping to see the one person among all these strangers, that he has loved the most, he is hoping to meet her again and walk the rest of the path with her. It is this hope that has kept him walking for four years now, and the day he gives up, he’ll wake up and get back into his body. But, he probably won’t give up, because he loves that woman, and love is the strongest of all feelings. So probably, he will see her, the dream will end, and he will be in heaven.
Thoughts Deciphered into Words by Raja Abdar-Rahman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
No comments:
Post a Comment