Pulvis et Umbra Sumus

Rubber Band Hearts Beyond the Cuts and Bruises

Pulvis et Umbra Sumus

We live and we die. That is how it is meant to be. It is a principle engraved in our flesh and bone, in the light of the stars falling on us, on the roots running deep in the ground, on every speck of dust and every drop of rain that falls on our faces and washes the blood and tears away. It is the inevitable. It is the reality.

Or is it? For what is reality after all?

We come into this world, all young and innocent; without any knowledge or perception of anything whatsoever. So they take us by the hand and lead us on. Where to, they decide. All we get is a pat on the back and a blindfold handed to us. Ignorance is the guideline in their books after all. We fall on our way, we stumble, we run, we walk, we crawl, we get back up��or we do not. All that is really visible to our otherwise blind sight at that moment is the path already laid bare for us by the blank minded amateur guides we have with us. Along the way, time and age catch up with us. The drops of innocence start to drift away from our minds and the sap of our hearts is replaced with a strong instinct to explore and search and live as much as we can.

When the sentinels leave our bed side, we feel we are left alone. For the demons that hid under our beds and behind closed doors and inside locked rooms and cupboards �� all of them find refuge in our blood shot eyes and tethered souls. There, they feed off from the pain and anger we try to hide.

The moment we step into the prime of life, we are handed a bowl filled with a drug of black principles and theories and what not, all of which we are asked to drink up without any resistance to the distaste it holds within it. And do we drink it? Yes, we do. Because that is what they have implanted in our apparently ignorant minds �� a seed which only requires a craving to help it grow, and that comes from the drug we are made to drink. It becomes an addiction, you see. The taste lingers, the burning sensation makes our insides thrum with a wakefulness. So we ask for more. More of the principles and theories and all else it comes with. When this drug sets in, it takes hold of all the dark and empty corners of our minds, all the silent hallways up there filling up with the scent of the drug. That is the moment when those principles and theories start to set in and grow in us. They cast a blind over the light within us; a light that could have led us to a sky filled with opportunities and so much more. Yet the drug makes us slaves to its crimson chorus of disease.

So we stop questioning and looking and wondering why and challenging and eventually��we stop trying. We become these silent figures just passing time in this otherwise empty valley of the lost. We accept things as they come knowing it could go differently, knowing it could be better than it actually is. So all we have been taught since the day we opened our eyes��what if it has all been nothing but an illusion? What if there is more to all these principles and theories we have been led to believe from the start? They say all good things come to an end, but why, they never say. Yes, better might come after the good has gone��.but what if you do not get to see the ��after��? For the wheels of life and time spin faster than your mind or perception can. They say if you love someone let them go, that if they are really meant to be in your life, they will strive hard for it. But what if you let go and so do they and then both start expecting the same thing from each other, waiting to see who strives first? For before you know, there might be nothing left to strive for in the end. They say silence is often an answer too. But what if the wrong question was asked to begin with? They say love is blind, but what if it is blind and deaf and paralyzed too? They say if it is meant to happen, it will happen for it is simply written in our fate, but what if that fate has already been erased? Should not another one be written instead, rather than just sitting and waiting? They say everything is going to be okay in the end.

But what if there is no end?

So we live and we die and that is how we fade away. Or rather, most of us simply exist. If we do not exist, we survive. If we do not survive, we struggle �� the hallmark of all the hiding away and pretending all breaking apart in silence as the joy walks past beside us. They say everyone deserves and can be happy. But they are wrong in that too. Happiness is a part of everyone; joy is the actual feeling. Now, not every one of us is born with that part, some have an empty, aching grey hole in its place instead. That part is rather things or people who, once come into our lives, bring about that feeling of joy to us.

Everybody strays, everybody falls. But not everybody has enough strength left in them to get back up, dust off the dust from their clothes, hold their head up high and walk on. There is this war we fight, with swords carved out of pieces of broken hearts, anger gushing out from mouths and blood seeping from lost lines, blames and lies and betrayal running with our shadows. The gloom hides, but it never leaves. Ending what has not started, chasing visions of a blind love we buried long ago. You or I does not even exist. It is just this earth with our shadows roaming on it, tormented. I fall into a deep iron sea and find the defeated souls swimming there, the blackness of their disease drowning me with them.

But then the sun breaks in through the strong waves. The hand that modeled this life shows me how to live and gives me wings to fly and even though I do not know anything about the art of flying, yet I will try.

For if it is not this soul that can fly, my dust and shadow definitely will; it is one or the other.