The man and the woman

We all want to grow up. We're desperate to get there. Grab all the opportunities we can to live. We're so busy trying to get out of that mess, we don't think about the fact that it's going to be cold out there. Really freaking cold. Because growing up sometimes means leaving people behind. And by the time we stand on our own two feet, we're standing there alone.

For the past, at least, 10 years, I have been waking up feeling I am the one who holds my own choices, decisions, and consequences. Friends, best friends, family, lovers, acquaintances, people around me, come and tap all kinds of resources out of me even at the heart. I have given it all and most of the time without tapping into theirs.

However, the man of my life and my mom have taught me an essential life lesson.

That the human body is made up of systems that keep it alive. The one that keeps you breathing, the one that keeps you standing, the one that makes you hungry and the one that makes you happy. They're all connected, take a piece out and everything else falls apart. And it's only when our support systems look like they might fail us that you realize how much we depended on them all along.

There’s an endless gravitational limitation on how this man has pulled me into a force to reckon with.  Healed.

I have never fully and heartedly understood this piece, which I have once performed years ago in front of a bunch of talented performers in Movement for Actor class in Purdue Theatre. A recent ‘fall’ has reminded me that this piece speaks directly on how ‘beautiful’ this man is in accompanying me to get back into the battlefield of life.

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 I hold her hands and press her to my breast.

 I try to fill my arms with her loveliness, to plunder her sweet

   smile with kisses, to drink her dark glances with my eyes.

 Ah, but, where is it? Who can strain the blue from the sky?

 I try to grasp the beauty, it eludes me, leaving only the body in

   my hands.

 Baffled and weary I come back.

 How can the body touch the flower which only the spirit may

   touch?

                   The Garderner, Rabindranath Tagore

Mom used to tell me that I could go out and play. Running and chasing all different kind of victories. But do come back before the sun goes down. She hopes for happiness.

I came back with a great wound.

She has come comforting me as the truest friend I have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon me; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with me in my sunshine desert me; when trouble thickens around me, still will she cling to me, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to my heart.

Thus, now, I have learned that everything is connected. Every little kid knows the words to the song. The foot bones connected to the leg bone. The leg bones connected to the knee bone. In biology, I learn it's a little more complicated than that. The song’s not wrong. Everything is connected in order for ME to stand tall. Again.