Nimitha > Recent Status Updates

I owe so much
to those I don’t love.
The relief as I agree
that someone else needs them more.
The happiness that I’m not
the wolf to their sheep.

My choices are rejections, since there is no other way,
but what I reject is more numerous,
denser, more demanding than before.

It’s still taken by particularity.
It flits in the dark like a flashlight, illuminating only random faces
while all the rest go blindly by,
never coming to mind and never really missed.

Let the people who never find true love
keep saying that there’s no such thing.

Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.

We, too, can divide ourselves, it’s true. But only into flesh and a broken whisper.
Into flesh and poetry.

The throat on one side, laughter on the other,
quiet, quickly dying out.

It turns out I was right.
But nothing has come of it.
And this is my robe, slightly singed.
And this is my prophet’s junk.
And this is my twisted face.
A face that didn’t know it could be beautiful.

No one in this family has ever died of love.
No food for myth and nothing magisterial.
Consumptive Romeos? Juliets diphtherial?
A doddering second childhood was enough.
No death-defying vigils, love-struck poses
over unrequited letters strewn with tears!

“You shall not enter,” says the stone.
“You lack the sense of taking part.
No other sense can make up for your missing sense of taking part.
Even sight heightened to become all-seeing
will do you no good without a sense of taking part.
You shall not enter, you have only a sense of what that sense should be,
only its seed, imagination.”

I knock at the stone’s front door.
“It’s only me, let me come in.
I don’t seek refuge for eternity.
I’m not unhappy.
I’m not homeless.
My world is worth returning to.
I'll enter and exit empty-handed.

And my proof I was there
will be only words,
which no one will believe.”

I knock at the stone’s front door.
“It’s only me, let me come in.
I want to enter your insides,
have a look round,
breathe my fill of you.”

“Go away,” says the stone.
“Tm shut tight.
Even if you break me to pieces,
we'll all still be closed.
You can grind us to sand,
we still won’t let you in.”

Our snakes have shed their lightning,
our apes their flights of fancy,
our peacocks have renounced their plumes.
The bats flew out of our hair long ago.

We fall silent in mid-sentence,
all smiles, past help.
Our humans
don’t know how to talk to one another.

We treat each other with exceeding courtesy;
We says it’s great to see you after all these years.

Our tigers dink milk.
Our hawks tread the ground.
Our sharks have all drowned.
Our wolves yawn beyond the open cage.

Why do we treat the fleeting day
with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It’s in its nature not to stay:
Today is always gone tomorrow.

Does that mean that altruism is selfish? In evolutionary terms, certainly, because the individuals that show these traits have a higher chance of survival in the long term.

The researchers at McGill University compared the empathetic behavior of students and mice, and concluded that empathy for family members and friends is much more pronounced than empathy for strangers. The reason was the same for all the experimental subjects—stress. Stressed individuals are less affected by the suffering of others.