An Evening A Bliss

This is a story I wrote in the days that were a curious mix of restlessness about the future with peace of being productive, ................ of the frenzy of emotions in heart and certain acuity of a thoughful mind, ................ of either doing or dying and yet being at the cusp of liberation, .................. of finding and testing my significance and feeling like a speck in the vastness of experiences. .................. Doesn't it sound like just another day in life .... :)
Here's the story .. Unedited right now as soon as find the edited version. .. will post it

THE EVENING … MY PERSONAL BLISS

We have been endowed with precious gift that nature, so benevolently, so meticulously created for us. Through the days and most especially through the nights we sail in the winds of emotion, on waves of the events, in the waters of lives, ours and of people around us. In this journey we start alone on a rickety ship, given to us by our antecedents. Some of us are given with the maps to avoid the harshness of this sea of the world, some start alone without any direction and hope to find their way. The there are some, who though provided with a map, set out one their own to find their way. My person being the latter, typically first cringes from the adversities faced, then later anticipates them for in the seas, it gives him an opportunity to prove himself and to assure himself that the gift that was given to him is rightly placed and carefully nurtured.

In the course of the journey, there are times with a mammoth of a wave, in the turbulent water with howling wind, so furious that any man would find his existence no more than a trifle apropos to the situation he faces. If he endures, then is again bound to observe of what caused his triumph. The journey goes on, the sailor getting accustomed , his muscles providing the strength to him and his ship, his mind sharpening enough to respond with poise, anger, humility, frustration, indulgence, rejoice, despotism, fear , minuety, magnanimity, anticipation, anxiety, boldness, facing the truth, telling a lie, lasciviousness, cupidity, pity, providence and most of all patience.

As the atrocities grow, so grows the temerity of the sailor, he challenges to what troubles the experienced of the sailors; he questions their methods, gleans from them, tells them of his own and goes on.

The nights and days go by, years pass in the struggle between a man’s mettle and the harshness of the world. He follows the streak in his mind and leaves in wake a trail to be followed by some and deserted by some. After this duration of time, when he is accustomed, he grows a respect for the sea, for his ship and for the sailors around him .he grows camaraderie which he so cherishes in his privy and in the open of the sky.

He no longer is troubled by what is to come, of what harshness he is to go through concocted by the waters and the winds. He has grown wonted so that he is reflexive to spot the vicious; he chooses to avoid it or go inside and belittle it. he no longer is confused by dilemmas, for he selects them impromptu, not caring about the outcome, but the determination of molding them so or be molded by them. He takes it unadulterated, respects and yearns for the purity, be it of any kind.

On a day, one of such sailors on one of such journeys wakes up in the morning, fresh under the blue, clear sky, rejuvenated by the cool soft breeze, watching the birds fly, the art of Nature. He sits on the balustrade and lets the gentle water warmly lap on his feet he feels wholesome. He relishes this morning with all his savor. Suddenly he descries on the horizon, where the sea meets the sky, A shape of an island. He becomes curious, for in the days of his green he took frequent refuge on the land to let pass the storms and boiling waters, to continue again. Later he took seldom an invitation of the land, for he thought that the diversion to it would delay his itinerary. He had seen other sailors happily retreating in the alcoves of the green poetries of nature, unscathed whiteness of the dry land. He had smiled and waved to them and moved on into the oncoming new challenges.

As he sails closer, like a wandering bee, he happily smells the scent of fulfilling nectar that the blossom of the land offers. He enters through the lagoon, enchanted by the soft hushes of the trees. Mesmerized by nuances of the colors of birch and cedars surrounding him. He moors his boat, which has now transmuted into a galleon, to a firm tree. He swims for the shore, nearing, he walks on the soft mud and approaches the welcome dry. He walks around, observing the riches that the land had bloomed into. Hearing the happy clamor of animals welcoming his arrival on the virgin land, He settles on a spot, sun high above his head, playing with white clouds, casting shadows that made the scenery surreal.

He sat there to all his strength absorbing the bliss that was offered to him. He feels ingratiated, humble and peacefully calm. he lies down and goes into a deep slumber with the lullaby of sweet nothings whispered in his ears. Feeling united with the microcosm, which was created for him. He sleeps undisturbed by his thoughts and his surroundings.

He wakes up with sweet perfumed air in his lungs, soft light of the afternoon sky in eyes, warm touch of the air on his skin, Mellifluous melody of water , leaves, sweet far cries of a cuckoo in his ears, and serenity taken over his mind.

As he watched the moon backtrack the sun, in nothingness of his mind, he drifted to memories and events of his journey till now. He laughed at some; some took his realm of irony, some instigating him and some being the tactics of the game that was life. As he was shuffling through his own life, he saw or secluded a certain something which was always amiss or such that he had ignored it. He had had this feeling before, but since beyond his reach or knowledge, he almost usually dismissed it. He had tried on other occasions to derive meaning out of it but in evidently and miserably failed. Some said it was “The curse of every sailor standing on dry land”, in other words it was the unidentified object whose presence was observed but seldom understood or conquered. This unknown, which now he feared and yearned for at the same time, came into being as an unsolved conundrum. Being as he was or had grown into, he wanted to conquer it. A feeling of foreboding crept inside him because what may seem trifle and out of the reality to others, had become the very question of existence for him. This was because he never thought of anything to be unknown, for he knew that the unknown was the cause of fear and he had grown to fear nothing except himself. This only fear of his own person was also temporary, he knew because the journey that he is on shall provide for the means to reach his destination. But this, this unknown x factor now hammered his mind, like a splinter of sharp glass in his head. He mulled over it never hoping to be defeated because he knew up till now his acumen has led him out of the fiercest of battles, he trusted it like he trusted the very breath that he inhaled. Yet at this tryst with X he was dunce as a dead wood log. Slowly he started to realize how lonely he has been, all through these years. he felt the serenity around him suddenly turning into empty silence, which took nothing and promised nothing. The shadows growing seemed to engulf him. The hint of clouds suddenly the onslaught of an impending storm, The wind piercing him, needling and bringing chills so horrid that threatened to freeze his until now warm soul.

He looked at the sky for hope, for a cloud with an outline of silver, there were none. He looked at the sea to find the jovial waves; it was pacific as a moment before storm. He looked at his ship to gain his fiat over the black horse of fear, but it stood as a ghostly carrion in abandon. The Innocuous birds on the trees suddenly silent with the gleam in their eyes of a vulture, waiting for the dying to give up its last traces of battle and devour its flesh. He cringed like a child in front of a beast. The horror in his split wide open eyes staring at the beast’s. Into the stymie abyss of the devil himself. The sharpness of the claws threatening to tear his flesh into shreds. Running him into a blind ally and then playing with him like a pack of hyena plays with its prey. Biting on the vitals and then backing away to see it’s masterpiece of maneuver. Giggling in short cries as they enervated the prey, finally it’s own fear sapping it away the prey gives into the demands of nature, giving away it’s body to be thrashed and poked by razor sharp teeth, enveloped in numbing venomous saliva, giving the prey a last token of homage, letting it die sooner, not to see the sight of its own pulsating heart, ripped out of it and shared as a prized encomium amongst its predators.

The ferality of his own thoughts shook his very core. The bile from his stomach started brimming in his throat. Its noxiousness dwelling tears into his eyes. He did not notice when a gust of air escaped his throat like a sharp blow in the midsection. He heard a shrill howling cry. To his surprise, his own. His eyes burned and he felt the warm liquid flowing incessantly on his cheeks. He looked up and shouted at the sky, at someone who was making him miserable. He shouted at his own inability in front of this phenomenon. In the frenzy of hiccups, gasping for air, buried in his own hands, he cursed at this unknown for not showing itself.

He cried through the night, with the only sound being of his own wails.

When he was able to see again, it was noon. He felt numb, the sharp sound of silence ringing in his ears. He was not even with the energy to get up. He lay prostrate faintly feeling his back and his cheeks getting burnt by sun. He was distraught, did not know where he was. Then he remembered the night. The pain again started to take over him. The warm inexhaustible liquid again giving a sour taste in his parched mouth. Suddenly he was angry, very angry. With all the strength he could summon he got up, half failing in the task. He consciously made a choice of not going through the ordeal again.

Like a lost warrior, he dragged his feet in his ultimate shame. Disgusted by his own self but not wanting to acknowledge it, For the acknowledgement will again start the cycle he dreaded. He walked with the certainty of wanderlust, knowing no aim. A stark contrast of the intrepid that he used to be, and gait that of a nearing death canine.

However asinine this feeling was, he was not able to shirk it. So he walked through the jungle scathing his feet, bleeding to the extent when no blood would come, as his body shamelessly accustomed itself to the atrocities of the terrain. He walked through the hills, thorns grating his skin, shearing his clothes to tatters. He did not stop, for stopping now would mean certain death and his brazen soul would not want, that soon a death in its form, worst of all.

He walked for two days and two nights, without food or water. He walked a whole day in the downpour of a tropical rain. He was amused when the rain rehydrated him and thought maybe the hyena, was not benevolent. Maybe it won’t let him die this soon. He fainted twice and as soon as regaining a meaningless vision, started again in machination, on his peregrination which knew no end.

On his third day he reached a mountain. There was a cascade rendering into a clear sparkling stream. He got beneath the cold shower of water, hammering him. He sat there for a while. He no longer had any reason for his actions, no longer had a desire of his. Just a contingent but placid wait until the time he knew that it’s over.

Bedraggled and drenched to his soul, He scaled through the dense foliage and reached the other side of the mountain. Then he stopped. A mischievous mirth formed on his countenance. He started with a guffaw and broke into a hysterical laughter. He came into the similar state of being, as he was three days before, only this time there were no tears. “Now what”, he thought, drown my self in the ocean? And he continued the laugh until again tears came into his eyes. After sometime he sobered up, he sat, staring ahead like a corpse with eyes made of stone.

He had inevitably reached the other side of the island.

It was afternoon

He was still not blinking.

Then he started mumbling, he started telling himself his own story. Like a deranged man, while sitting on the shore, he would look at his feet then his pulverized stare would track the path in the ocean to the horizon, then from horizon to the sun and then back to his feet and then again. Whenever in his story he encountered the X and his escapades from it, he would stop mumbling, his stare transfixed. Then after a while he would start again from where he left off. In this way he followed the sun until it was near the horizon red with it’s shame, going to hell as it did every evening, succumbing to the dark night that was to follow, until again it regained it’s consciousness and start journey to the dusk from the dawn , much like the man staring at it. The figure of zero, a circle with no start or end, bending menacingly into the figure of infinity.

During this his senses, the very sharp senses of a seaman wanted to tell their master that a faint glimmer was observed on the horizon. But their master would not respond, like a dead body would not respond to a jolt of lightning.

He again unconsciously fled the realm of consciousness and again he came back to the reality, this reality of his altered self, which would neither let him die nor gave way for his soul to thrive.

It was night now.

He woke up and saw the sky. It was ominously blotched with dark clouds and clouds lined with that silver ray, that he was so longing to see a few days back. The moon was full. He had lost count of the days and nights. He felt as if his whole life had gone by in those lost moments and all that was left for him and of him was this night.

There was an uncanny serenity on his face, face of a man who had accepted his fate. He looked at the sky, the ocean, the clouds, the moon, the palms, the white sand. He smiled generously for what a coincidence was this. That this was the kind of night he had dreamt of, in the arms of his beloved, his unknown. As he was watching the panorama, he saw a white figure, a feminine figure, standing on a promontory. Her white dress was carelessly flapping, with the gusts of the tropical wind. Her clothes pressed to her body by the wind, revealed a firm but fragile figure. Her curves were conforming to the myths that he had heard from his fellow seamen and conjured in his mind. The reason being his physical desires, making him hungrier than most of the men of his brotherhood.

Then the moon came out from a rift in the clouds. It shone a ray on the figure. He saw the moonlight shining on her face, on her cheeks as a diamond shines in the dark with the tiniest of light beam. The luster of her ebony wheatish skin, radiated with vigor. Her hair flowing with the breeze, like black velvet playing with her face.

He kept watching her. He knew, what he was going through was the confirmatory insinuation that he was nearing his end. Dementia is the foremost sign of loss of control of body and an eventual death. He was happy; at last he had reached it. As he was thinking this and when he came out of his reverie, he saw the figure approaching him. He could now fully witness the glory of the cherubic face belonging to a figure of carved marble. A carving so meticulous that his revered eye of skepticism could not find a flaw. The gossamer fabric of her raiment was simply iridescent with the glimmer of her body. The angular features of her cheekbone, the sharp curves of her nose scintillated his soul. Her eyes with the depth of sea filled with nectar beckoned him. Her sensuous mouth lined with those thin, fragile but supple lips, promised him of eternal sweetness. Her hands that of an artist, soft, lithe and smooth as a pearl. Her long legs, supporting her from the pelvis, were like two threads of silk undulating uniformly in a stream of water, giving her a gait, which seemed as if she floated on the rocky ground.

At first he was enthralled by the witness of the definition of beauty, in its way so simple that he could not find any elaborative word for the person he was looking at.” She is beautiful”, he thought. In the gratitude he also mentioned to himself that the person upstairs is magnanimous after all. Certainly she was the angle who would take him away from the inevitable truths, unnecessary lies and the formidable unknown.

He watched her,

She came near him.

She sat down and faced him.

She looked into his eyes.

She touched his forehead with her soft fingers.

She smiled at him.


He slowly came to realize, that his quest is now over.

He had found what he had been yearning for all his life through all his battles.

On that Fateful Evening …… ...