Pain and Freedom... not the Painful Freedom : Exile on a Quiet Wild Stream




What did I need? To be lone? To have a salvation? To walk away from life? I really didn’t know at the start. But now I know what I needed.
Why through some path out of this same old life-line I had or needed to walk? Well, some may represent this story as a reason. Story of one of my best friends I ever had. Her name was… whatever her name... it didn’t or doesn’t matter at all… may be she’s Mary may be Jane… whatever she was something out of your and my way, way out of our ordinary common life. Everything to her was just like a beautiful poem. From her very first childhood she has an ambition of flying, flying far far away… but to where I never knew. Just few weeks ago she messaged me, “The wildest thing I’ve ever wanna do is fly. Should I give it a try?” Well, all my life I always encouraged people in creativity. So I didn’t even think twice. I replied, “Why not? Spread your wings and fly away.” So she did the same.
From the fifth storied window,
She flied,
Closing her eyes…


Again, some may put this incident, as the reason, happened just few days after the first one. I was walking down the road lost in thoughts. I stopped by our town bridge and lit up a cigarette. Unmindfully watching people came and gone. Suddenly my vision fixed on a little boy about 9 or 10. He was flying a kite. I felt his mind lost in the spaces with that flying li’l red kite in the blue sky. He was so much on himself that he didn’t even recognize when he had stepped out of the pavement. Then it happened. A car rushed through the road as usual in its high speed. Before my slow brain reacted I already did the act by the direction of my fast heart. Well, I did rescue the lost boy completely but couldn’t make myself rescue myself properly. My spinal cord injured badly. Some said, I’m an idiot, some said, brave, I really don’t know who am I, may be an idiotic brave. Well, there are guys think this horrible accident leaded me to a frustration and in this exile.

Another group of people like to state this one as the reason of my exile. My recent confusion about a simply growing complex relation throws me into this isolated exile they say.

Well, me myself didn’t know the actual reason was, in fact I don’t know the reason even now. Actually in my life I never do a thing for a reason, I do everything only because I feel like doing. I just felt that I need more space, a bit like the lyrics,
“When you think more than you want
Your thoughts begin to bleed
I think I need to find a bigger place
'cause when you have more than you think
You need more space”
But my bigger place wasn’t any lone Alaska adventure or something like that. I needn’t to physically be present there. All I needed spaces around my mind actually, I needed to think and think until my thoughts would begin to bleed. So I choose our old farmhouse to stay for couple of weeks. No single person around. I even stopped to walk out of the room. I just kept the small west window open. For food sometimes I went to kitchen, otherwise only in that very dark room. Only company of mine was my old guitar and a pain, some says pain in my spinal cord where some says pain in my heart.

In my first days I really felt lonely, very lonely. My mind howled to grab my memories back. But as time pass there was strange change. I finally started to enjoy this loneliness. This serenity, complete silence started to whisper into my ears and the whisper then gradually grown louder and louder. As if this silence were singing to me,
“If I lay here,
If I just lay here,
Would you lie with me
And just forget the world…”
I discovered this new friend, loneliness, emptiness, darkness, voids… silence.

Well, I must say that at the last days there was no dramatic change in my mind, like not for a single moment I felt the urge or need to go back amongst so called society. Not for a single moment those words rang into my ear, “What if I were smiling and running into your arms? Would you see then what I see now?”

Again, it was always been in my realization that happiness is real when shared. But in this exile I realized that sharing doesn’t mean only with people ‘round you. You can share it with an imaginary friend, with your thoughts, with your memories, even with this cold dark black silence.

I enjoyed this exile on a quiet and wild stream. I realized the freedom, freedom of mind at the same time the pain. How strange it was to walk along when one hand of yours holding the wild freedom while the other arm is in a calm melancholic pain. Something like bittersweet symphony. I felt that caged bird inside me coming out breaking the chains. Or if I say it truly, I think my feelings were exactly described by the words from the ‘Sesh Kotha’(‘Last Words’) by Rabindranath, “Khancha theke beriye eseche pakhi, kintu paye ache ek tukro sikal. Norte chorte seta baje.”(*translated by me: “the bird comes out of the cage breaking the chains free. But there’s a small piece of chain still ‘round the leg. It sounds while he moves.”)...........