Thursday, April 07, 2011

If it was as simple as a clean slate, as flat as an expandable storage box- if this world was as detachable as Lego pieces and as reproductive as Russian dolls;
it’d be easy to slice that part of it I’ve always envisioned to own, and carve a new way through. It’d be just easy, to allow everything outside that slice to self-destruct – every nation with it’s red-taped borders, every alley, every government, every student with a too-void backpack and a too-stuffed lunchbox, every grocery store, every street wiped clean off ‘vandalism’, every teacher with a too straight-lined planbook and a too-relevant lesson, every musician with a too-hollow guitar case, every gift shop, every emergency room, every furniture shop with too-little furniture, every resort, every library gathering dust, and just about everything, as much as the word ‘everything’ is capable of bearing.
Yes, I’d let it all saturate itself into non-existence for then, with my own slice intact, I will no longer care.
In that slice of mine though, their ‘nothing’ would be the core of it all; that insanity they ridiculed would be the coastline of my self-proclaimed nation; their too-shabby artists would be its guards, and their too-cynical, too-curious, too-questioning, paranoid youth would be it’s population of 5000. I’d foresee to it all.
For I know someone, who’d be the Head of Education. Someone who’d create portable Schools, with students boarding trains and Fairies, instead of sitting behind scratched-off wooden desks, 1st graders with their copies of “Joody Moody” clutched protectively under their arms, and 5th graders reciting Lorca and writing lines of Darwish’s final words at the back of their hands instead of patriotic anthems and face-painted flags. I know, she’d foresee to all of that. I know, her students, wouldn’t fathom the chemical reactions of a formula but would know the language of despair in Monet’s paintings, and the undeniable tragedy behind Yanni’s compositions. They’d sleep at night with legends under their beds, and stars crashing down on them, too-few to collect, too-many to wish upon. They’d know, her students, they’d know God, they’d know him so well, and would touch upon him, every time they’d listen to her speak.

I also know someone, who’d be the Head of it’s law; Someone who’d build courts with thresholds made of thin steel instead of Golden Gargoyles, and hire lawyers with Comic-stripped ties, neon-colored socks, and opening arguments rimmed with shreds of door-to-door human interaction rather than prospects of bold first page newspaper titles. Someone who’d build prisons with book-bricked walls and issue personal hand-written verdicts; someone whose law would enable street artists and add new color palettes to their buckets. I know she’d foresee to it all; to see citizens with hopscotch-traces beneath their shoes and fathers impersonating Columbus down the streets. I know she cradles reason with one arm, and that utter raw humanity one weeps in the other; justice, would be that man by the door humming “ Somewhere over the rainbow”, justice would be that little boy writing a riddle for a stranger in the subway, justice would be that woman reading “ Kafka on the shore” next to her stroller. Justice would be, and would for centuries that come.

I also know someone who’d be the Head of it’s politics ; Someone who’d choose to invert meaning, into a new form of creation where politics, wouldn’t be in the hand of that tight-suited politician at the end of the mahogany table ,but in the firm grip of that long-haired musician, who wears a Morrissey T-shirt and vows to bring Kurt Kobain back to life. He’d be her politics; yes, he’d be that authority to bring forth foreign policies and dissect national securities, he’d be that person with ink-smudged thumbnails of nights spent writing lyrics and that person who stands on high podiums and shrieks “ liberty” and “ independence”. She’d know how to rewrite that notion of politics, she’d know how to jumble letters, and make it sound like that delicate piece of music she allows herself to touch every now and then – the voice of a human soul, that piano, that violin, that cello, that hard-rock drum, that politics of hers.

Jonathan Safran Foer once wrote, “If there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it heavy walls, and we will furnish it with soft red interiors, from the inside out, and give it a knocker that resonates like a diamond falling to a jeweler's felt so that we should never hear it”

1 comments:

That is one nation that will have God as its escort. I know He found you once, in your utterly heartfelt humanity; pure and compassionate, nestled into that slice. I know He halted the world then.

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